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whom. At first he had
thought that four hundred eyes would be fastened on him, their glance
saying, "This youth is wearing a dress-suit for the first time, and it
is not paid for, either!" But it was not so. And the reason was that the
entire population of the Town Hall was heartily engaged in pretending
that never in its life had it been seen after seven o'clock of a night
apart from a dress-suit. Denry observed with joy that, while numerous
middle-aged and awkward men wore red or white silk handkerchiefs in
their waistcoats, such people as Charles Fearns, the Swetnams, and
Harold Etches did not. He was, then, in the shyness of his handkerchief,
on the side of the angels.
He passed up the double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocks
of unparalleled richness), and so into the grand hall. A scarlet
orchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floor
in attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned with flowers. The
thrill of being magnificent seized him, and he was drenched in a vast
desire to be truly magnificent himself. He dreamt of magnificence and
boot-brushes kept sticking out of this dream like black mud out of snow.
In his reverie he looked about for Ruth Earp, but she was invisible.
Then he went downstairs again, idly; gorgeously feigning that he spent
six evenings a week in ascending and descending monumental staircases,
appropriately clad. He was determined to be as sublime as any one.
There was a stir in the corridor, and the sublimest consented to be
excited.
The Countess was announced to be imminent. Everybody was grouped round
the main portal, careless of temperatures. Six times was the Countess
announced to be imminent before she actually appeared, expanding from
the narrow gloom of her black carriage like a magic vision. Aldermen
received her--and they did not do it with any excess of gracefulness.
They seemed afraid of her, as though she was recovering from influenza
and they feared to catch it. She had precisely the same high voice, and
precisely the same efficient smile, as she had employed to Denry, and
these instruments worked marvels on aldermen; they were as melting as
salt on snow. The Countess disappeared upstairs in a cloud of shrill
apologies and trailing aldermen. She seemed to have greeted everybody
except Denry. Somehow he was relieved that she had not drawn attention
to him. He lingered, hesitating, and then he saw a being in a long
yellow overcoat, with a bit of peacock's feather at the summit of a
shiny high hat. This being held a lady's fur mantle. Their eyes met.
Denry had to decide instantly. He decided.
"Hello, Jock!" he said.
"Hello, Denry!" said the other, pleased.
"What's been happening?" Denry inquired, friendly.
Then Jock told him about the antics of one of the Countess's horses.
He went upstairs again, and met Ruth Earp coming down. She was glorious
in white. Except that nothing glittered in her hair, she looked the very
equal of the Countess, at a little distance, plain though her features
were.
"What about that waltz?" Denry began informally.
"That waltz is nearly over," said Ruth Earp, with chilliness. "I suppose
you've been staring at her ladyship with all the other men."
"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I didn't know the waltz was----"
"Well, why didn't you look at your programme?"
"Haven't got one," he said naïvely.
He had omitted to take a programme. Ninny! Barbarian!
"Better get one," she said cuttingly, somewhat in her _rôle_ of
dancing mistress.
"Can't we finish the waltz?" he suggested, crestfallen.
"No!" she said, and continued her solitary way downwards.
She was hurt. He tried to think of something to say that was equal to
the situation, and equal to the style of his suit. But he could not. In
a moment he heard her, below him, greeting some male acquaintance in the
most effusive way.
Yet, if Denry had not committed a wicked crime for her, she could never
have come to the dance at all!
He got a programme, and with terror gripping his heart he asked sundry
young and middle-aged women whom he knew by sight and by name for a
dance. (Ruth had taught him how to ask.) Not one of them had a dance
left. Several looked at him as much as to say: "You must be a goose to
suppose that my programme is not filled up in the twinkling of my eye!"
Then he joined a group of despisers of dancing near the main door.
Harold Etches was there, the wealthiest manufacturer of his years
(barely twenty-four) in the Five Towns. Also Shillitoe, cause of another
of Denry's wicked crimes. The group was taciturn, critical, and very
doggish.
The group observed that the Countess was not dancing. The Earl was
dancing (need it be said with Mrs Jos Curtenty, second wife of the
Deputy Mayor?), but the Countess stood resolutely smiling, surrounded by
aldermen. Possibly she was getting her breath; possibly nobody had had
the pluck to ask her. Anyhow, she seemed to be stranded there, on a
beach of aldermen. Very wisely she had brought with her no members of a
house-party from Sneyd Hall. Members of a house-party, at a municipal
ball, invariably operate as a bar between greatness and democracy; and
the Countess desired to participate in the life of the people.
"Why don't some of those johnnies ask her?" Denry burst out. He had
hitherto said nothing in the group, and he felt that he must be a man
with the rest of them.
"Well, _you_ go and do it. It's a free country," said Shillitoe.
"So I would, for two pins!" said Denry.
Harold Etches glanced at him, apparently resentful of his presence
there. Harold Etches was determined to put the extinguisher on
_him_.
"I'll bet you a fiver you don't," said Etches scornfully.
"I'll take you," said Denry, very quickly, and very quickly walked off.
VII
"She can't eat me. She can't eat me!"
This was what he said to himself as he crossed the floor. People seemed
to make a lane for him, divining his incredible intention. If he had not
started at once, if his legs had not started of themselves, he would
never have started; and, not being in command of a fiver, he would
afterwards have cut a preposterous figure in the group. But started he
was, like a piece of clockwork that could not be stopped! In the grand
crises of his life something not himself, something more powerful than
himself, jumped up in him and forced him to do things. Now for the first
time he seemed to understand what had occurred within him in previous
crises.
In a second--so it appeared--he had reached the Countess. Just behind
her was his employer, Mr Duncalf, whom Denry had not previously noticed
there. Denry regretted this, for he had never mentioned to Mr Duncalf
that he was coming to the ball, and he feared Mr Duncalf.
"Could I have this dance with you?" he demanded bluntly, but smiling and
showing his teeth.
No ceremonial title! No mention of "pleasure" or "honour." Not a trace
of the formula in which Ruth Earp had instructed him! He forgot all such
trivialities.
"I've won that fiver, Mr Harold Etches," he said to himself.
The mouths of aldermen inadvertently opened. Mr Duncalf blenched.
"It's nearly over, isn't it?" said the Countess, still efficiently
smiling. She did not recognise Denry. In that suit he might have been a
Foreign Office attaché.
"Oh! that doesn't matter, I'm sure," said Denry.
She yielded, and he took the paradisaical creature in his arms. It was
her business that evening to be universally and inclusively polite. She
could not have begun with a refusal. A refusal might have dried up all
other invitations whatsoever. Besides, she saw that the aldermen wanted
a lead. Besides, she was young, though a countess, and adored dancing.
Thus they waltzed together, while the flower of Bursley's chivalry gazed
in enchantment. The Countess's fan, depending from her arm, dangled
against Denry's suit in a rather confusing fashion, which withdrew his
attention from his feet. He laid hold of it gingerly between two
unemployed fingers. After that he managed fairly well. Once they came
perilously near the Earl and his partner; nothing else. And then the
dance ended, exactly when Denry had begun to savour the astounding
spectacle of himself enclasping the Countess.
The Countess had soon perceived that he was the merest boy.
"You waltz quite nicely!" she said, like an aunt, but with more than an
aunt's smile.
"Do I?" he beamed. Then something compelled him to say: "Do you know,
it's the first time I've ever waltzed in my life, except in a lesson,
you know?"
"Really!" she murmured. "You pick things up easily, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you?"
Either the question or the tone sent the Countess off into carillons of
amusement. Everybody could see that Denry had made the Countess laugh
tremendously. It was on this note that the waltz finished. She was still
laughing when he bowed to her (as taught by Ruth Earp). He could not
comprehend why she had so laughed, save on the supposition that he was
more humorous than he had suspected. Anyhow, he laughed too, and they
parted laughing. He remembered that he had made a marked effect (though
not one of laughter) on the tailor by quickly returning the question,
"Are you?" And his unpremeditated stroke with the Countess was similar.
When he had got ten yards on his way towards Harold Etches and a fiver
he felt something in his hand. The Countess's fan was sticking between
his fingers. It had unhooked itself from her chain. He furtively
pocketed it.
VIII
"Just the same as dancing with any other woman!" He told this untruth in
reply to a question from Shillitoe. It was the least he could do. And
any other young man in his place would have said as much or as little.
"What was she laughing at?" somebody asked.
"Ah!" said Denry, judiciously, "wouldn't you like to know?"
"Here you are!" said Etches, with an inattentive, plutocratic gesture
handing over a five-pound note. He was one of those men who never
venture out of sight of a bank without a banknote in their pockets--
"Because you never know what may turn up."
Denry accepted the note with a silent nod. In some directions he was
gifted with astounding insight, and he could read in the faces of the
haughty males surrounding him that in the space of a few minutes he had
risen from nonentity into renown. He had become a great man. He did not
at once realise how great, how renowned. But he saw enough in those eyes
to cause his heart to glow, and to rouse in his brain those ambitious
dreams which stirred him upon occasion. He left the group; he had need
of motion, and also of that mental privacy which one may enjoy while
strolling about on a crowded floor in the midst of a considerable noise.
He noticed that the Countess was now dancing with an alderman, and that
the alderman, by an oversight inexcusable in an alderman, was not
wearing gloves. It was he, Denry, who had broken the ice, so that the
alderman might plunge into the water. He first had danced with the
Countess, and had rendered her up to the alderman with delicious gaiety
upon her countenance. By instinct he knew Bursley, and he knew that he
would be talked of. He knew that, for a time at any rate, he would
displace even Jos Curtenty, that almost professional "card" and amuser
of burgesses, in the popular imagination. It would not be: "Have ye
heard Jos's latest?" It would be: "Have ye heard about young Machin,
Duncalf's clerk?"
Then he met Ruth Earp, strolling in the opposite direction with a young
girl, one of her pupils, of whom all he knew was that her name was
Nellie, and that this was her first ball: a childish little thing with a
wistful face. He could not decide whether to look at Ruth or to avoid
her glance. She settled the point by smiling at him in a manner that
could not be ignored.
"Are you going to make it up to me for that waltz you missed?" said Ruth
Earp. She pretended to be vexed and stern, but he knew that she was not.
"Or is your programme full?" she added.
"I should like to," he said simply.
"But perhaps you don't care to dance with us poor, ordinary people, now
you've danced with the _Countess_!" she said, with a certain lofty
and bitter pride.
He perceived that his tone had lacked eagerness.
"Don't talk like that," he said, as if hurt.
"Well," she said, "you can have the supper dance."
He took her programme to write on it.
"Why," he said, "there's a name down here for the supper dance.
'Herbert,' it looks like."
"Oh!" she replied carelessly, "that's nothing. Cross it out."
So he crossed Herbert out.
"Why don't you ask Nellie here for a dance?" said Ruth Earp.
And Nellie blushed. He gathered that the possible honour of dancing with
the supremely great man had surpassed Nellie's modest expectations.
"Can I have the next one?" he said.
"Oh, yes!" Nellie timidly whispered.
"It's a polka, and you aren't very good at polking, you know," Ruth
warned him. "Still, Nellie will pull you through."
Nellie laughed, in silver. The naïve child thought that Ruth was trying
to joke at Denry's expense. Her very manifest joy and pride in being
seen with the unique Mr Machin, in being the next after the Countess to
dance with him, made another mirror in which Denry could discern the
reflection of his vast importance.
At the supper, which was worthy of the hospitable traditions of the
Chell family (though served standing-up in the police-court), he learnt
all the gossip of the dance from Ruth Earp; amongst other things that
more than one young man had asked the Countess for a dance, and had been
refused, though Ruth Earp for her part declined to believe that aldermen
and councillors had utterly absorbed the Countess's programme. Ruth
hinted that the Countess was keeping a second dance open for him, Denry.
When she asked him squarely if he meant to request another from the
Countess, he said no, positively. He knew when to let well alone, a
knowledge which is more precious than a knowledge of geography. The
supper was the summit of Denry's triumph. The best people spoke to him
without being introduced. And lovely creatures mysteriously and
intoxicatingly discovered that programmes which had been crammed two
hours before were not, after all, quite full.
"Do tell us what the Countess was laughing at?" This question was shot
at him at least thirty times. He always said he would not tell. And one
girl who had danced with Mr Stanway, who had danced with the Countess,
said that Mr Stanway had said that the Countess would not tell either.
Proof, here, that he was being extensively talked about!
Towards the end of the festivity the rumour floated abroad that the
Countess had lost her fan. The rumour reached Denry, who maintained a
culpable silence. But when all was over, and the Countess was departing,
he rushed down after her, and, in a dramatic fashion which demonstrated
his genius for the effective, he caught her exactly as she was getting
into her carriage.
"I've just picked it up," he said, pushing through the crowd of
worshippers.
"On! thank you so much!" she said. And the Earl also thanked Denry. And
then the Countess, leaning from the carriage, said, with archness in her
efficient smile: "You do pick things up easily, don't you?"
And both Denry and the Countess laughed without restraint, and the
pillars of Bursley society were mystified.
Denry winked at Jock as the horses pawed away. And Jock winked back.
The envied of all, Denry walked home, thinking violently. At a stroke he
had become possessed of more than he could earn from Duncalf in a month.
The faces of the Countess, of Ruth Earp, and of the timid Nellie mingled
in exquisite hallucinations before his tired eyes. He was inexpressibly
happy. Trouble, however, awaited him.
CHAPTER II
THE WIDOW HULLINS'S HOUSE
I
The simple fact that he first, of all the citizens of Bursley, had asked
a countess for a dance (and not been refused) made a new man of Denry
Machin. He was not only regarded by the whole town as a fellow wonderful
and dazzling, but he so regarded himself. He could not get over it. He
had always been cheerful, even to optimism. He was now in a permanent
state of calm, assured jollity. He would get up in the morning with song
and dance. Bursley and the general world were no longer Bursley and the
general world; they had been mysteriously transformed into an oyster;
and Denry felt strangely that the oyster-knife was lying about somewhere
handy, but just out of sight, and that presently he should spy it and
seize it. He waited for something to happen. And not in vain.
A few days after the historic revelry, Mrs Codleyn called to see Denry's
employer. Mr Duncalf was her solicitor. A stout, breathless, and yet
muscular woman of near sixty, the widow of a chemist and druggist who
had made money before limited companies had taken the liberty of being
pharmaceutical. The money had been largely invested in mortgage on
cottage property; the interest on it had not been paid, and
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"I know, Monsieur--Charles told me of your
meeting last night, and I am very glad that he asked you to dine with
us to-day."
Duroy blushed to the roots of his hair, not knowing how to reply; he
felt that he was being inspected from his head to his feet. He half
thought of excusing himself, of inventing an explanation of the
carelessness of his toilette, but he did not know how to touch upon
that delicate subject.
He seated himself upon a chair she pointed out to him, and as he sank
into its luxurious depths, it seemed to him that he was entering a new
and charming life, that he would make his mark in the world, that he
was saved. He glanced at Mme. Forestier. She wore a gown of pale blue
cashmere which clung gracefully to her supple form and rounded
outlines; her arms and throat rose in, lily-white purity from the mass
of lace which ornamented the corsage and short sleeves. Her hair was
dressed high and curled on the nape of her neck.
Duroy grew more at his ease under her glance, which recalled to him, he
knew not why, that of the girl he had met the preceding evening at the
Folies-Bergeres. Mme. Forestier had gray eyes, a small nose, full lips,
and a rather heavy chin, an irregular, attractive face, full of
gentleness and yet of malice.
After a short silence, she asked: "Have you been in Paris a long time?"
Gradually regaining his self-possession, he replied: "a few months,
Madame. I am in the railroad employ, but my friend Forestier has
encouraged me to hope that, thanks to him, I can enter into journalism."
She smiled kindly and murmured in a low voice: "I know."
The bell rang again and the servant announced: "Mme. de Marelle." She
was a dainty brunette, attired in a simple, dark robe; a red rose in
her black tresses seemed to accentuate her special character, and a
young girl, or rather a child, for such she was, followed her.
Mme. Forestier said: "Good evening, Clotilde."
"Good evening, Madeleine."
They embraced each other, then the child offered her forehead with the
assurance of an adult, saying:
"Good evening, cousin."
Mme. Forestier kissed her, and then made the introductions:
"M. Georges Duroy, an old friend of Charles. Mme. de Marelle, my
friend, a relative in fact." She added: "Here, you know, we do not
stand on ceremony."
Duroy bowed. The door opened again and a short man entered, upon his
arm a tall, handsome woman, taller than he and much younger, with
distinguished manners and a dignified carriage. It was M. Walter,
deputy, financier, a moneyed man, and a man of business, manager of "La
Vie Francaise," with his wife, nee Basile Ravalade, daughter of the
banker of that name.
Then came Jacques Rival, very elegant, followed by Norbert de Varenne.
The latter advanced with the grace of the old school and taking Mme.
Forestier's hand kissed it; his long hair falling upon his hostess's
bare arm as he did so.
Forestier now entered, apologizing for being late; he had been detained.
The servant announced dinner, and they entered the dining-room. Duroy
was placed between Mme. de Marelle and her daughter. He was again
rendered uncomfortable for fear of committing some error in the
conventional management of his fork, his spoon, or his glasses, of
which he had four. Nothing was said during the soup; then Norbert de
Varenne asked a general question: "Have you read the Gauthier case? How
droll it was!"
Then followed a discussion of the subject in which the ladies joined.
Then a duel was mentioned and Jacques Rival led the conversation; that
was his province. Duroy did not venture a remark, but occasionally
glanced at his neighbor. A diamond upon a slight, golden thread
depended from her ear; from time to time she uttered a remark which
evoked a smile upon his lips. Duroy sought vainly for some compliment
to pay her; he busied himself with her daughter, filled her glass,
waited upon her, and the child, more dignified than her mother, thanked
him gravely saying, "You are very kind, Monsieur," while she listened
to the conversation with a reflective air. The dinner was excellent and
everyone was delighted with it.
The conversation returned to the colonization of Algeria. M. Walter
uttered several jocose remarks; Forestier alluded to the article he had
prepared for the morrow; Jacques Rival declared himself in favor of a
military government with grants of land to all the officers after
thirty years of colonial service.
"In that way," said he, "you can establish a strong colony, familiar
with and liking the country, knowing its language and able to cope with
all those local yet grave questions which invariably confront
newcomers."
Norbert de Varenne interrupted: "Yes, they would know everything,
except agriculture. They would speak Arabic, but they would not know
how to transplant beet-root, and how to sow wheat. They would be strong
in fencing, but weak in the art of farming. On the contrary, the new
country should be opened to everyone. Intelligent men would make
positions for themselves; the others would succumb. It is a natural
law."
A pause ensued. Everyone smiled. Georges Duroy, startled at the sound
of his own voice, as if he had never heard it, said:
"What is needed the most down there is good soil. Really fertile land
costs as much as it does in France and is bought by wealthy Parisians.
The real colonists, the poor, are generally cast out into the desert,
where nothing grows for lack of water."
All eyes turned upon him. He colored. M. Walter asked: "Do you know
Algeria, sir?"
He replied: "Yes, sir, I was there twenty-eight months." Leaving the
subject of colonization, Norbert de Varenne questioned him as to some
of the Algerian customs. Georges spoke with animation; excited by the
wine and the desire to please, he related anecdotes of the regiment, of
Arabian life, and of the war.
Mme. Walter murmured to him in her soft tones: "You could write a
series of charming articles."
Forestier took advantage of the situation to say to M. Walter: "My dear
sir, I spoke to you a short while since of M. Georges Duroy and asked
you to permit me to include him on the staff of political reporters.
Since Marambot has left us, I have had no one to take urgent and
confidential reports, and the paper is suffering by it."
M. Walter put on his spectacles in order to examine Duroy. Then he
said: "I am convinced that M. Duroy is original, and if he will call
upon me tomorrow at three o'clock, we will arrange matters." After a
pause, turning to the young man, he said: "You may write us a short
sketch on Algeria, M. Duroy. Simply relate your experiences; I am sure
they will interest our readers. But you must do it quickly."
Mme. Walter added with her customary, serious grace: "You will have a
charming title: 'Souvenirs of a Soldier in Africa.' Will he not, M.
Norbert?"
The old poet, who had attained renown late in life, disliked and
mistrusted newcomers. He replied dryly: "Yes, excellent, provided that
it is written in the right key, for there lies the great difficulty."
Mme. Forestier cast upon Duroy a protecting and smiling glance which
seemed to say: "You shall succeed." The servant filled the glasses with
wine, and Forestier proposed the toast: "To the long prosperity of 'La
Vie Francaise.'" Duroy felt superhuman strength within him, infinite
hope, and invincible resolution. He was at his ease now among these
people; his eyes rested upon their faces with renewed assurance, and
for the first time he ventured to address his neighbor:
"You have the most beautiful earrings I have ever seen."
She turned toward him with a smile: "It is a fancy of mine to wear
diamonds like this, simply on a thread."
He murmured in reply, trembling at his audacity: "It is charming--but
the ear increases the beauty of the ornament."
She thanked him with a glance. As he turned his head, he met Mme.
Forestier's eyes, in which he fancied he saw a mingled expression of
gaiety, malice, and encouragement. All the men were talking at the same
time; their discussion was animated.
When the party left the dining-room, Duroy offered his arm to the
little girl. She thanked him gravely and stood upon tiptoe in order to
lay her hand upon his arm. Upon entering the drawing-room, the young
man carefully surveyed it. It was not a large room; but there were no
bright colors, and one felt at ease; it was restful. The walls were
draped with violet hangings covered with tiny embroidered flowers of
yellow silk. The portieres were of a grayish blue and the chairs were
of all shapes, of all sizes; scattered about the room were couches and
large and small easy-chairs, all covered with Louis XVI. brocade, or
Utrecht velvet, a cream colored ground with garnet flowers.
"Do you take coffee, M. Duroy?" Mme. Forestier offered him a cup, with
the smile that was always upon her lips.
"Yes, Madame, thank you." He took the cup, and as he did so, the young
woman whispered to him: "Pay Mme. Walter some attention." Then she
vanished before he could reply.
First he drank his coffee, which he feared he should let fall upon the
carpet; then he sought a pretext for approaching the manager's wife and
commencing a conversation. Suddenly he perceived that she held an empty
cup in her hand, and as she was not near a table, she did not know
where to put it. He rushed toward her:
"Allow me, Madame."
"Thank you, sir."
He took away the cup and returned: "If you, but knew, Madame, what
pleasant moments 'La Vie Francaise' afforded me, when I was in the
desert! It is indeed the only paper one cares to read outside of
France; it contains everything."
She smiled with amiable indifference as she replied: "M. Walter had a
great deal of trouble in producing the kind of journal which was
required."
They talked of Paris, the suburbs, the Seine, the delights of summer,
of everything they could think of. Finally M. Norbert de Varenne
advanced, a glass of liqueur in his hand, and Duroy discreetly
withdrew. Mme. de Marelle, who was chatting with her hostess, called
him: "So, sir," she said bluntly, "you are going to try journalism?"
That question led to a renewal of the interrupted conversation with
Mme. Walter. In her turn Mme. de Marelle related anecdotes, and
becoming familiar, laid her hand upon Duroy's arm. He felt that he
would like to devote himself to her, to protect her--and the slowness
with which he replied to her questions indicated his preoccupation.
Suddenly, without any cause, Mme. de Marelle called: "Laurine!" and the
girl came to her. "Sit down here, my child, you will be cold near the
window."
Duroy was seized with an eager desire to embrace the child, as if part
of that embrace would revert to the mother. He asked in a gallant, yet
paternal tone: "Will you permit me to kiss you, Mademoiselle?" The
child raised her eyes with an air of surprise. Mme. de Marelle said
with a smile: "Reply."
"I will allow you to-day, Monsieur, but not all the time."
Seating himself, Duroy took Laurine upon his knee, and kissed her lips
and her fine wavy hair. Her mother was surprised: "Well, that is
strange! Ordinarily she only allows ladies to caress her. You are
irresistible, Monsieur!"
Duroy colored, but did not reply.
When Mme. Forestier joined them, a cry of astonishment escaped her:
"Well, Laurine has become sociable; what a miracle!"
The young man rose to take his leave, fearing he might spoil his
conquest by some awkward word. He bowed to the ladies, clasped and
gently pressed their hands, and then shook hands with the men. He
observed that Jacques Rival's was dry and warm and responded cordially
to his pressure; Norbert de Varenne's was moist and cold and slipped
through his fingers; Walter's was cold and soft, without life,
expressionless; Forestier's fat and warm.
His friend whispered to him: "To-morrow at three o'clock; do not
forget."
"Never fear!"
When he reached the staircase, he felt like running down, his joy was
so great; he went down two steps at a time, but suddenly on the second
floor, in the large mirror, he saw a gentleman hurrying on, and he
slackened his pace, as much ashamed as if he had been surprised in a
crime.
He surveyed himself some time with a complacent smile; then taking
leave of his image, he bowed low, ceremoniously, as if saluting some
grand personage.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTEMPTS
When Georges Duroy reached the street, he hesitated as to what he
should do. He felt inclined to stroll along, dreaming of the future and
inhaling the soft night air; but the thought of the series of articles
ordered by M. Walter occurred to him, and he decided to return home at
once and begin work. He walked rapidly along until he came to Rue
Boursault. The tenement in which he lived was occupied by twenty
families--families of workingmen--and as he mounted the staircase he
experienced a sensation of disgust and a desire to live as wealthy men
do. Duroy's room was on the fifth floor. He entered it, opened his
window, and looked out: the view was anything but prepossessing.
He turned away, thinking: "This won't do. I must go to work." So he
placed his light upon the table and began to write. He dipped his pen
into the ink and wrote at the head of his paper in a bold hand:
"Souvenirs of a Soldier in Africa." Then he cast about for the first
phrase. He rested his head upon his hand and stared at the blank sheet
before him. What should he say? Suddenly he thought: "I must begin with
my departure," and he wrote: "In 1874, about the fifteenth of May, when
exhausted France was recruiting after the catastrophe of the terrible
years--" Here he stopped short, not knowing how to introduce his
subject. After a few minutes' reflection, he decided to lay aside that
page until the following day, and to write a description of Algiers. He
began: "Algiers is a very clean city--" but he could not continue.
After an effort he added: "It is inhabited partly by Arabs." Then he
threw his pen upon the table and arose. He glanced around his miserable
room; mentally he rebelled against his poverty and resolved to leave
the next day.
Suddenly the desire to work came on him, and he tried to begin the
article again; he had vague ideas of what he wanted to say, but he
could not express his thoughts in words. Convinced of his inability he
arose once more, his blood coursing rapidly through his veins. He
turned to the window just as the train was coming out of the tunnel,
and his thoughts reverted to his parents. He saw their tiny home on the
heights overlooking Rouen and the valley of the Seine. His father and
mother kept an inn, La Belle-Vue, at which the citizens of the
faubourgs took their lunches on Sundays. They had wished to make a
"gentleman" of their son and had sent him to college. His studies
completed, he had entered the army with the intention of becoming an
officer, a colonel, or a general. But becoming disgusted with military
life, he determined to try his fortune in Paris. When his time of
service had expired, he went thither, with what results we have seen.
He awoke from his reflections as the locomotive whistled shrilly,
closed his window, and began to disrobe, muttering: "Bah, I shall be
able to work better to-morrow morning. My brain is not clear to-night.
I have drunk a little too much. I can't work well under such
circumstances." He extinguished his light and fell asleep.
He awoke early, and, rising, opened his window to inhale the fresh air.
In a few moments he seated himself at his table, dipped his pen in the
ink, rested his head upon his hand and thought--but in vain! However,
he was not discouraged, but in thought reassured himself: "Bah, I am
not accustomed to it! It is a profession that must be learned like all
professions. Some one must help me the first time. I'll go to
Forestier. He'll start my article for me in ten minutes."
When he reached the street, Duroy decided that it was rather early to
present himself at his friend's house, so he strolled along under the
trees on one of the boulevards for a time. On arriving at Forestier's
door, he found his friend going out.
"You here--at this hour! Can I do anything for you?"
Duroy stammered in confusion: "I--I--cannot write that article on
Algeria that M. Walter wants. It is not very surprising, seeing that I
have never written anything. It requires practice. I could write very
rapidly, I am sure, if I could make a beginning. I have the ideas but I
cannot express them." He paused and hesitated.
Forestier smiled maliciously: "I understand that."
Duroy continued: "Yes, anyone is liable to have that trouble at the
beginning; and, well--I have come to ask you to help me. In ten minutes
you can set me right. You can give me a lesson in style; without you I
can do nothing."
The other smiled gaily. He patted his companion's arm and said to him:
"Go to my wife; she will help you better than I can. I have trained her
for that work. I have not time this morning or I would do it willingly."
But Duroy hesitated: "At this hour I cannot inquire for her."
|
business
|
How many times does the word 'business' appear in the text?
| 0
|
'll find this structure,
this order, this perfection.
<b> INT. MAX'S APARTMENT - DAY
</b> Max stares intensely at the ticker on the small TV that sits
next to his monitors.
<b> MAX (V.O.)
</b> Turn lead into gold.
The first. Right here. Right
here. With math. The numbers
of the stock market are my
lead. When I find the
pattern, then I will find
gold.
<b>
</b> Max watches the right edge of the screen where the numbers
appear. He wants to see what's before that edge...
Max slaps the RETURN button on his computer.
The phone starts ringing.
Max eyes it suspiciously.
Just then, Euclid starts printing results on an old dot-
matrix printer.
Max suspiciously answers The phone.
<b> MAX
</b> Hello?
<b>
</b><b> WOMAN'S VOICE
</b> Maximilian Cohen, please.
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Yeah?
<b>
</b><b> WOMAN'S VOICE
</b> Mr. Cohen?
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Who's this?
<b>
</b><b> WOMAN'S VOICE
</b> Hi. my name is Marcy Dawson.
I'm a partner with the predictive
strategy firm Lancet-Percy. Can I
speak with Mr. Cohen, please?
<b> MAX
</b> I told you...
<b>
</b> The printer finishes printing.
<b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> Mr. Cohen! How
are you? It's been a long
time. Sorry I haven't been in
touch. But I was hoping you
would allow me to take you to
lunch tomorrow, say one
o'clock?
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Sorry, I can't.
<b>
</b><b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> We're very anxious to talk
with you, sir
<b> MAX
</b> I can't.
<b>
</b><b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> I'm prepared to
make you a generous...
Max hurries to wrap up the conversation.
<b> MAX
</b> I don't take offers for
my research. You know that.
Sorry, I Couldn't help you.
<b>
</b><b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> Mr. Cohen, give
me a moment...
But before Marcy finishes, Max hangs up. He rips off the
printout and heads to the front door.
He checks the peephole, His landlady. MRS. OVADIA, is sweeping
the hallway stairs humming a turn-of-the century (the last
one, not this one) tune.
Max waits a moment. He tousles his hair. Then he checks again.
She's gone. He opens his locks and releases several bolts.
<b> INT.MAX'S BUILDING HALLWAY - DAY
</b>
Max locks his front door. Meanwhile, his next-door neighbor,
DEVI MINSTRY, a sexy young Indian woman, is just getting home.
Max looks away and tries to get his door locked.
She's weighted down by a bunch of bags filled with food.
<b> DEVI
</b> Max, good!
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Hi, Devi.
<b>
</b><b> DEV1
</b> I grabbed you some
somosas.
<b> MAX
</b> Great.
<b>
</b> Devi heads over to Max with her bags of food. She looks up at
Max.
<b> DEVI
</b> Your hair.
<b>
</b> Devi hands the bags to Max. Then she goes to pat down his
Hair. Max retreats.
<b> MAX
</b> What are you doing?
<b>
</b><b> DEVI
</b> Your hair, you can't go
out like that. Don't worry.
<b> MAX
</b> It's fine. It's fine.
<b>
</b> Devi pats down his hair. Max is humiliated.
<b> DEVI
</b> You need a mom.
<b>
</b> Max hands back the bags and heads quickly for the stairs.
<b> MAX
</b> I have to go.
<b>
</b><b> DEVI
</b> Your somosas!
<b>
</b> An embarrassed Max takes the bag.
<b> MAX
</b> Thanks.
<b>
</b><b> INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY
</b>
At the counter, Max stirs cream into his coffee. Then he takes
three pills from the plastic bottle and drops them in his
coffee.
Max flips past a full-page ad in the paper that reads
<b> LANCET-PERCY 86% ACCURACY (ONLY GOD IS PERFECT).
</b> Max flips the page before he or we can absorb it. He compares
stock quotes in the Wall Street Journal against his printout.
<b> MAX (V.O.)
</b> Sixteen, twenty-seven. Results: Euclid
shows tomorrow's Dow closing
up by four points. Anomalies
include PRONET at sixty-fire
and a quarter, a career high.
Possible explanations, either
A, an error in the June fifth
algorithm, or B, Euclid's
main processor is running a
recursion...
Max marks up the paper with lines and diagrams as he ponders
his bits and misses.
Then a puff of cigarette smoke drifts by and succeeds in
bothering Max. He fans it away when
<b> VOICE FROM OFFSCREEN
</b> Oh sorry, am I bothering you?
<b>
</b> Max shrugs and looks over.
The voice belongs to LENNY MEYERa bearded man in his late 20s
sucking on a cigarette.
On closer inspection, something is off. It seems that Lenny is
an Orthodox Jew. His yarmulke sticks out Slightly from his
wide-brimmed hat and the fringes from his tsi-tsis hang out
from the bottom of his untucked shirt.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> I'll put it out.
(Which he does)
The name's Lenny Meyer
<b>
</b> Lenny sticks out his hand. Max responds with a small nod.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> And you are?
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Max.
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Max?
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> Max Cohen.
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Cohen!
(Judging)
Jewish?
Max shrugs and turns back to his work.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> It's okay.
(Joking)
I'm a Jew, too.
(Serious)
Do you practice?
<b> MAX
</b> No, I'm not interested
in religion.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Have you ever
heard of Kabbalah?
<b> MAX
</b> No.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Jewish mysticism.
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> I'm sorry, I'm very busy.
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> I understand...it's just that
it's a very exciting time in
our history. Right now is a
critical moment in time.
<b> MAX
</b> (Sarcastic)
Really?
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Yes, it's very exciting.
Have you ever put on Tefillin?
Max has no idea what Lenny's talking about. Lenny pulls a
leather box with black leather straps from his pocket.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Tefillin. You know Tefillin.
I know it looks strange.
But it's an amazing
tradition that has a
tremendous amount of power.
It's a mitzvah for all
Jewish men to do. Mitzvahs,
good deeds, are spiritual
food for our hearts and our
heads.
And then Max notices that his thumb is twitching He grabs it
self-consciously.
<b> LENNY MEYER
</b> They purify us and bring us
closer to God. You want to try it?
Just then, Max pays his bill and prepares to leave.
<b> MAX
</b> I gotta go...
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Are you okay? Max? Max?
<b>
</b><b> MAX
</b> I'm sorry, bye.
<b>
</b><b> LENNY MEYER
</b> Well, maybe some other time.
<b>
</b><b> INT. MAX'S BATHROOM - NIGHT
</b> Max splashes water on his face.
<b> MAX
</b> Please God, Let it be a
small one.
He pulls a metal vaccinating gun out of the medicine cabinet.
Then be loads it with a small bottle of medicine. He rolls up
his sleeve, dabs alcohol on his arm, and fires the gun into
his arm.
<b> MAX (V.O.)
</b> Sixteen thirty-five.
Second headache in under
twenty-four hours. They're
getting more frequent
now...more painful, too. Drugs
don't work, just take the
edge off of it. Just gotta
wait for the nosebleed.
Relief comes from my nose.
<b>
</b> Next door, he hears Devi and her boyfriend talking.
<b> FARROUHK (O.S.)
</b> So I gotta make this drop off
in Harlem and on the way down
there's these three kids
hailing me.
Max slaps himself in the face a few times.
<b> DEVI (O.S.)
</b> You stopped?
<b>
</b><b> FARROUHK (O.S.)
</b> I was tight, so...
<b>
</b> Max watches his thumb twitch. And then pain shoots through
him. He grabs the right side of his head, massages it, and
pushes it in with his fingers.
In the mirror, he examines the right side of his scalp. He
sees nothing
<b> MAX
</b> Ahh...
<b>
</b> Max walks back into the
<b> MAIN ROOM
</b>
and sits down in a chair. The lamp is blinding so he
snaps it off. Only the bathroom light lights the room. He
takes a few breaths.
<b> MAX
</b> Leave me alone.
<b>
</b> His neighbors conversation begins to build in volume
and distortion.
<b> FARROUHK (O.S.)
</b> So I drop them off in the
Village and they dart.
<b> DEVI (O.S.)
</b> Oh God...
<b>
</b> Max gags and rubs his head.
<b> FARROUHK (O.S.)
</b> I get out, grab my bat and
start running. One of the kids,
maybe sixteen, I catch a block
later he's cursing at me, calling
me a Paki bastard. So I whacked him,
right in the head.
<b> DEVI (O.S.)
</b> Farrouhk!
<b>
</b> The pain seems to disappear. Max looks at his hand that was
rubbing his bead.
Then he looks at the front door. The doorknob seems to
move.
Something begins knocking on Max's door. The knocking gets
louder and louder then the locks begin to unlock.
FARROUHK's words begin to overpower Max.
<b> FARROUHK (O.S.)
</b> I'm kicking the bastard in the
ribs banging his ass, knocking his
head against the curb, harder
and harder, I fucking lost
it. A hot dog guy starts
screaming "You're cracking his
skull, you're cracking his
skull." So they pulled me off
of him and calmed me down.
Cops said he had it coming to
him.
<b>
</b> Then something starts pounding the door. The doorknob quivers,
the locks unbolt. The chains are the only thing keeping out
the intruder. The door shakes and the chains are strained.
MAX is paralyzed with terror.
<b> MAX
</b> No! No!
<b>
</b> And then the door smashes open. Blinding light fills the room
and we crash into the
<b> BLINDING WHITE VOID
</b>
A moment of silence, then we
<b> CUT TO
</b><b> INT. BATHROOM - DAWN
</b> A phone rings incessantly. Max's eyes pop open. He's scrunched
up in a corner of the room, squashed beneath the sink.
His nose is bleeding.
Max, crawls into the
<b> MAIN ROOM
</b>
and picks up the phone. He pinches his nose and tilts his head
back.
<b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> Mr. Cohen. Marcy
Dawson here again I was just
looking over my schedule and
I realized I'll be in your
neighborhood tomorrow around
three.
Max heads to the
<b> FRONT DOOR
</b>
and checks the locks. He is barely listening to Marcy
<b> MAX
</b> (Groggy)
Who is...
<b>
</b> The locks seem secure.
<b> MARCY DAWSON
</b> Marcy Dawson from
Lancet-Percy I'm so anxious
to meet you. It will be worth
itfor both of us I promise.
See you at your house at
three, okay?
<b>
|
examines
|
How many times does the word 'examines' appear in the text?
| 0
|
> "TO: BOB HARRIS
</b>
<b> FROM: LYDIA HARRIS
</b>
<b> YOU FORGOT ADAM'S BIRTHDAY.
</b>
<b> I'M SURE HE'LL UNDERSTAND.
</b>
<b> HAVE A GOOD TRIP, L"
</b>
He doesn't know what to do with it, and stuffs it in his
pocket.
The commercial people tell him when they'll be picking him
up, and ask if he needs anything else.
Some JAPANESE ROCK STARS with shag haircuts and skinny leather
pants pass by. Each commercial person has to shake Bob's
hand before leaving.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT. BOB'S HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
</b>
Bob sits on the end of the bed in a too small hotel kimono.
<b> INT. PARK HYATT BAR - NIGHT
</b>
Bob sits at the bar. A few minutes pass as he sits in silence
looking around, drinking a scotch. Chet Baker sings "The
Thrill is Gone" over the stereo.
We see Bob's POV of tables of people talking. JAPANESE WOMEN
SMOKING, AMERICAN BUSINESSMEN tying one on, talking about
software sales. A WAITER carefully setting down a coaster,
and pouring a beer very, very slowly. It's all very foreign.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT. BOB'S HOTEL ROOM - MORNING
</b>
The automatic hotel curtains open, pouring light into the
room.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT.HOTEL BATHROOM - DAY
</b>
Bob gets in the shower overlooking the view of Tokyo. The
shower head is at his elbows, he raises it as high as it
goes, and leans down to have a shower. This hotel was not
designed with him in mind.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT. STUDIO - DAY
</b>
Whiskey commercial shoot.
The set is full of activity as the JAPANESE CREW work. Bob,
in a shawl collared tuxedo sits at a European style bar set
with a cut crystal glass of whiskey. A JAPANESE GIRL quickly
powders his face as they adjust lights and the DIRECTOR and
crew speak in hurried Japanese.
The Director (with blue contact lenses) says a few long
sentences in Japanese.
TRANSLATOR, a middle-aged woman in a coordinated outfit,
translates but it is only a short sentence now.
<b> TRANSLATOR
</b> He wants you to turn, look in camera
and say the lines.
Bob wonders what she's leaving out, or if that's the way it
works from Japanese to English.
<b> BOB
</b> That's all he said?
<b> TRANSLATOR
</b> Yes, turn to camera.
Bob thinks let's just get it over with.
<b> BOB
</b> Turn left or right?
The Translator blots her face with a tissue, and asks the
director in a Japanese sentence 5 times as long. The Director
answers her in a long excited phrase.
<b> TRANSLATOR
</b> Right side. And with intensity.
<b> BOB
</b> Is that everything? It seemed like
he was saying a lot more.
The excited Director says more in Japanese. Translator nods
in understanding. Bob doesn't really know what's going on.
<b> TRANSLATOR
</b> Like an old friend, and into the
camera.
<b> DIRECTOR
</b> (to Bob))
Suntory Time!
They get ready, and roll camera:
Bob turns and looks suavely to the camera:
<b> BOB
</b> For relaxing times, make it Suntory
Time.
The Director yells something about ten sentences long. The
translator nods.
<b> TRANSLATOR
</b> Could you do it slower, and with
more intensity?
<b> BOB
</b> Okay.
The Translator answers for him in four sentences.
ON THE MONITOR - we see the next take: the moody lighting
shines on Bob, the camera gets closer as he stares into camera
and gives them the line.
<b> BOB
</b> For relaxing times, make it Suntory
Time.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> EXT. TOKYO - NIGHT
</b>
Shinjuku High rises sparkle.
<b> INT. PARK HYATT BAR - NIGHT
</b>
Tall glass walls show the neon and high-rises of the city.
A sad and romantic Bill Evans song plays. Bob sits alone
with a scotch at the bar.
Some drunk AMERICAN BUSINESSMEN, with their ties thrown over
their shoulders recognize him.
<b> BUSINESS GUY
</b> Hey- you're Bob Harris- you're
awesome, man.
<b> ANOTHER BUSINESS GUY
</b> Yeah, I love Sunset Odds! BOB Oh,
Ok, thanks.
<b> BUSINESS GUY
</b> Man, that car chase-
Bob nods.
<b> INT. BOB'S HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
</b>
Bob comes back to his room. The maids have left everything
perfect, his beige bed is turned down, and the TV has been
left on to a channel playing a montage of flower close-ups
in nature while sad violin music plays. It's supposed to be
relaxing, but it's just sad.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
Bob lies in bed. He flips through TV channels from the remote
control. He passes a Japanese game show, to an 80s Cannon
Ball run-type movie with him in it dubbed into Japanese. He
turns it off as he hears a knock at the door.
He goes to the door, and opens it part way.
<b> WOMAN (O.C.)
</b> (Raspy Japanese voice)
Mr. Harris?
<b> BOB
</b> Yes?
<b> WOMAN
</b> Mr. Kazuzo sent me.
<b> BOB
</b> Oh?
|
comes
|
How many times does the word 'comes' appear in the text?
| 0
|
You can paint the inside of a
cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; and you can
paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. You can cover a brick
wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steamboat, and you
can't do a better thing for either."
"Never tried it on the human conscience, I suppose," suggested Bartley.
"No, sir," replied Lapham gravely. "I guess you want to keep that as
free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. I never cared
to try any of it on mine." Lapham suddenly lifted his bulk up out of
his swivel-chair, and led the way out into the wareroom beyond the
office partitions, where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs
stretched dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused an
honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint. They were labelled
and branded as containing each so many pounds of Lapham's Mineral
Paint, and each bore the mystic devices, N.L.f. 1835--S.L.t. 1855.
"There!" said Lapham, kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of
his boot, "that's about our biggest package; and here," he added,
laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg, as if
it were the head of a child, which it resembled in size, "this is the
smallest. We used to put the paint on the market dry, but now we grind
every ounce of it in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant
it. We find it gives more satisfaction. Now, come back to the office,
and I'll show you our fancy brands."
It was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, with the rafters
showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, and darkening away into the
perpetual twilight at the rear of the building; and Bartley had found
an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he
was reluctant to leave. But he rose and followed the vigorous lead of
Lapham back to the office, where the sun of a long summer afternoon was
just beginning to glare in at the window. On shelves opposite Lapham's
desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders,
and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, the same label
borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. Lapham merely waved
his hand toward these; but when Bartley, after a comprehensive glance
at them, gave his whole attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where
different tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, Lapham
smiled, and waited in pleased expectation.
"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!"
"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and
we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking
down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label.
Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and
smiled.
"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and put the first of
it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased."
"I should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a
note of the appearance of the jars.
"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said Lapham
dubiously.
"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does.
Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn of
Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles with
Marcia had seriously begun.
"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast
majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives, but the
rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he
added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?"
"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place."
"Well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham
consolingly.
"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be
under a roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said
Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow
under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?"
"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at
Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the
first days of his married life. "I went right back to Lumberville and
sold out everything, and put all I could rake and scrape together into
paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back about
HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!"
Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry."
"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly little girls
grown up to LOOK like women."
"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second
thought.
"If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have
come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per
cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ORE that made that paint go; it
was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in HER."
"Good!" cried Bartley. "I'll tell Marcia that."
"In less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder,
nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region
that didn't have 'Lapham's Mineral Paint--Specimen' on it in the three
colours we begun by making." Bartley had taken his seat on the
window-sill, and Lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot
close to Bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that.
"I've heard a good deal of talk about that S.T.--1860--X. man, and the
stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in
that way; and I've read articles about it in the papers; but I don't
see where the joke comes in, exactly. So long as the people that own
the barns and fences don't object, I don't see what the public has got
to do with it. And I never saw anything so very sacred about a big
rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral
paint on it in three colours. I wish some of the people that talk
about the landscape, and WRITE about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks
OUT of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we
used to have to do up on the farm; I guess they'd sing a little
different tune about the profanation of scenery. There ain't any man
enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a
dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than I do. But I ain't
a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock I come across, as if we
were all a set of dumn Druids. I say the landscape was made for man,
and not man for the landscape."
"Yes," said Bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man
and the kidney-cure man."
"It was made for any man that knows how to use it," Lapham returned,
insensible to Bartley's irony. "Let 'em go and live with nature in the
WINTER, up there along the Canada line, and I guess they'll get enough
of her for one while. Well--where was I?"
"Decorating the landscape," said Bartley.
"Yes, sir; I started right there at Lumberville, and it give the place
a start too. You won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it
in the gazetteer. I give a pretty good lump of money to build a
town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it
they voted to change the name,--Lumberville WA'N'T a name,--and it's
Lapham now."
"Isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old Brandon
red?" asked Bartley.
"We're about ninety miles from Brandon. The Brandon's a good paint,"
said Lapham conscientiously. "Like to show you round up at our place
some odd time, if you get off."
"Thanks. I should like it first-rate. WORKS there?"
"Yes; works there. Well, sir, just about the time I got started, the
war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. The thing
dropped perfectly dead. I presume that if I'd had any sort of
influence, I might have got it into Government hands, for gun-carriages
and army wagons, and may be on board Government vessels. But I hadn't,
and we had to face the music. I was about broken-hearted, but m'wife
she looked at it another way. 'I guess it's a providence,' says she.
'Silas, I guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. Any
rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' Well, sir, I went. I
knew she meant business. It might kill her to have me go, but it would
kill her sure if I stayed. She was one of that kind. I went. Her
last words was, 'I'll look after the paint, Si.' We hadn't but just one
little girl then,--boy'd died,--and Mis' Lapham's mother was livin'
with us; and I knew if times DID anyways come up again, m'wife'd know
just what to do. So I went. I got through; and you can call me
Colonel, if you want to. Feel there!" Lapham took Bartley's thumb and
forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee.
"Anything hard?"
"Ball?"
Lapham nodded. "Gettysburg. That's my thermometer. If it wa'n't for
that, I shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains."
Bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "And
when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it."
"I took hold of the paint and rushed it--all I could," said Lapham,
with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography.
"But I found that I had got back to another world. The day of small
things was past, and I don't suppose it will ever come again in this
country. My wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody
with capital; but I couldn't seem to bear the idea. That paint was
like my own blood to me. To have anybody else concerned in it was
like--well, I don't know what. I saw it was the thing to do; but I
tried to fight it off, and I tried to joke it off. I used to say, 'Why
didn't you take a partner yourself, Persis, while I was away?' And
she'd say, 'Well, if you hadn't come back, I should, Si.' Always DID
like a joke about as well as any woman I ever saw. Well, I had to come
to it. I took a partner." Lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which
he had been till now staring into Bartley's face, and the reporter knew
that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, if interviews
were faithful. "He had money enough," continued Lapham, with a
suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know anything about paint. We hung on
together for a year or two. And then we quit."
"And he had the experience," suggested Bartley, with companionable ease.
"I had some of the experience too," said Lapham, with a scowl; and
Bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore places in
their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch again.
"And since that, I suppose, you've played it alone."
"I've played it alone."
"You must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries,
Colonel?" suggested Bartley, putting on a professional air.
"We ship it to all parts of the world. It goes to South America, lots
of it. It goes to Australia, and it goes to India, and it goes to
China, and it goes to the Cape of Good Hope. It'll stand any climate.
Of course, we don't export these fancy brands much. They're for home
use. But we're introducing them elsewhere. Here." Lapham pulled open
a drawer, and showed Bartley a lot of labels in different
languages--Spanish, French, German, and Italian. "We expect to do a
good business in all those countries. We've got our agencies in Cadiz
now, and in Paris, and in Hamburg, and in Leghorn. It's a thing that's
bound to make its way. Yes, sir. Wherever a man has got a ship, or a
bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, or a pig-pen
anywhere in God's universe to paint, that's the paint for him, and he's
bound to find it out sooner or later. You pass a ton of that paint dry
through a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-iron.
I believe in my paint. I believe it's a blessing to the world. When
folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me what I mix it with,
I always say, 'Well, in the first place, I mix it with FAITH, and after
that I grind it up with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that
money will buy.'"
Lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and Bartley perceived that
his audience was drawing to a close. "'F you ever want to run down and
take a look at our works, pass you over the road,"--he called it
RUD--"and it sha'n't cost you a cent." "Well, may be I shall,
sometime," said Bartley. "Good afternoon, Colonel."
"Good afternoon. Or--hold on! My horse down there yet, William?" he
called to the young man in the counting-room who had taken his letter
at the beginning of the interview. "Oh! All right!" he added, in
response to something the young man said.
"Can't I set you down somewhere, Mr. Hubbard? I've got my horse at the
door, and I can drop you on my way home. I'm going to take Mis' Lapham
to look at a house I'm driving piles for, down on the New Land."
"Don't care if I do," said Bartley.
Lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk,
pulled down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the
papers to an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the
outer office. She was stylishly dressed, as Bartley saw, and her
smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white
forehead. "Here," said Lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness
that he had used in addressing the young man, "I want you should put
these in shape, and give me a type-writer copy to-morrow."
"What an uncommonly pretty girl!" said Bartley, as they descended the
rough stairway and found their way out to the street, past the dangling
rope of a block and tackle wandering up into the cavernous darkness
overhead.
"She does her work," said Lapham shortly.
Bartley mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at the
curb-stone, and Lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, slid it under
the buggy-seat and mounted beside him.
"No chance to speed a horse here, of course," said Lapham, while the
horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, with a high, long
action, over the pavement of the street. The streets were all narrow,
and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the end
of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately against
the cool blue of the afternoon sky. The air was full of a smell
pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. It was not the
busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling
toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the cobble-stones of
the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous wheels, and
discoloured with iron-rust from them; here and there, in wandering
streaks over its surface, was the grey stain of the salt water with
which the street had been sprinkled.
After an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking
round the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the
horse, Bartley said, with a light sigh, "I had a colt once down in
Maine that stepped just like that mare."
"Well!" said Lapham, sympathetically recognising the bond that this
fact created between them. "Well, now, I tell you what you do. You
let me come for you 'most any afternoon, now, and take you out over the
Milldam, and speed this mare a little. I'd like to show you what this
mare can do. Yes, I would."
"All right," answered Bartley; "I'll let you know my first day off."
"Good," cried Lapham.
"Kentucky?" queried Bartley.
"No, sir. I don't ride behind anything but Vermont; never did. Touch
of Morgan, of course; but you can't have much Morgan in a horse if you
want speed. Hambletonian mostly. Where'd you say you wanted to get
out?"
"I guess you may put me down at the Events Office, just round the
corner here. I've got to write up this interview while it's fresh."
"All right," said Lapham, impersonally assenting to Bartley's use of
him as material.
He
|
sculpturesquely
|
How many times does the word 'sculpturesquely' appear in the text?
| 0
|
</b> Tell me about it.
Club Member #1 turns to Martin.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> P.P.P. Personal Pan Power. All the
secrets of your universe are divided
up into eight easily digestible
slices.
Club Member #1 pulls a laminated card from his wallet and
hands it over to Martin. In the distance, sirens begin to
wail.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> See, see. It's in the accessible and
everyday shape of a pan pizza. Each
day you have a little slice of
peace...
<b> INSERT - WALLET-SIZE P.P.P. CARD
</b>
A pizza-shaped diagram showing six "sections".
<b> MARTIN
</b> Oh I see. You got your individual
slices of hope, dignity, confidence,
self-love, justice, and harmony.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> You open 'em up and there's the
sayings, stories, little bites of
insight. It's the P.P.P. Six Day
Week.
<b> MARTIN
</b> So you eat-- read it everyday?
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> Yes.
<b> MARTIN
</b> And these pan pizzas have opened up
the doors to heaven?
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> Correct.
(re: the card)
That's for you. Keep it.
Sirens are getting louder, closer to the club.
<b> EXT. COUNTRY CLUB - DAY
</b>
The source of the sirens are almost upon us. Martin walks
toward his rented Town Car as the VALET pulls it up. He meets
the Valet by the trunk, where he trades tip for keys.
<b> MARTIN AT CAR
</b> He fishes out the laminated "Personal
Pan Power" card, looks at it, and
tosses it onto the ground. Police
cars, now visible in the distance,
wind into the long club driveway.
Martin gets into his car and pulls
away.
<b> LAMINATED CARD
</b>
As it lays on the asphalt. The wheel of a police car rolls
to a stop on it.
<b> INT. AIRLINER - DAY
</b>
Martin sits in a first class seat, the tray table flipped
down. On the left side of the tray is a stack of magazines
of all kinds - Sports Illustrated, Mademoiselle, Wired,
Rolling Stone, National Review, Spin, National Geographic,
and on. He draws one off the top, and flips through it,
impassively taking in images and reading nothing. When he is
done with one, he discards it into the empty seat next to
him and draws another-- Martin's way of instantly and
massively uploading the world around him:
Toothless hockey player in triumph, Sony product parade,
crouched starving child with vulture in the background,
supermodel in suede, Tic Tacs, living former Presidents, arm
in arm, smiling, etc.
<b> INT. HIRED CAR, NEW YORK - DAY
</b>
The livery weaves out of the arrival lanes at Kennedy airport.
Martin reclines in the back seat, a conversation having
already begun.
<b> DRIVER
</b> How was your day, today, sir?
<b> MARTIN
</b> Effective. But to tell you the truth,
I've lost my passion for work.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Do you like the people you work with?
<b> MARTIN
</b> I work alone.
<b> DRIVER
</b> That's it then. That's it. I've always
been alone. That's why I'm a good
driver. I can handle it. See, I can
think on my feet. I survive, I'm a
thinker. And I can sit there in front
of your house for two hours and it
don't bother me. Some people can't
do it! Some people are ranting and
raving, "Tell them fuckin' people to
get out here and get in this car, I
can't-- I want a go!" Where you gonna
go? You're gonna wind up back in
your garage at seven o'clock at night.
You ain't going nowhere. You leave
your house in the morning you get
back to your house in the evening.
What's the big deal, right?
<b> MARTIN
</b> You understand the psychology of the
job.
<b> DRIVER
</b> I do. Some guys can't adjust to it;
they can't handle it.
<b> INT. CAR - MANHATTAN STREETS - LATER
</b>
The car cuts through the upper east side. Martin and the
Driver exchange looks through the rear-view mirror.
<b> DRIVER
</b> You look like you're far away. Far
away and thinking about other things.
I'm right about that, aren't I?
<b> MARTIN
</b> No.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Well, let's just say that sometimes
I'm right. Sometimes you are.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Sometimes I am. Sometimes. It's only
natural.
<b> DRIVER
</b> (laughs to himself at
this great truth)
It's only natural....
The Driver pauses for dramatic emphasis
<b> DRIVER
</b> I been looking at you, and I've
decided that I want to share something
with you.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Okay.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Because your problem is you're bored.
And you have a very big mind.
(beat)
I am part of what I call a brain
syndicate.
No reaction from Martin.
<b> DRIVER
</b> I am part of a network of minds, a
group of five people who are all
connected, over hundreds, even
thousands of miles, through the mind.
We can think with each other, think
for each other. I can be driving
somewhere, sleeping with a woman--
whatever it is-- and at the same
time be thinking a thought in someone
else's mind, far away. Running someone
else's brain.
<b> MARTIN
</b> (indicates)
Up on the right.
<b> DRIVER
</b> And when you think of it, it's not
so surprising that a small group of
people control the whole world, is
it?
<b> INT. HOTEL ROOM, NEW YORK CITY - DAY
</b>
A sedate and well-appointed four-star suite on the Upper
East Side. Martin stands in front of one of the open windows
watching the canopied entrance of an elegant high-rise across
the street. He lifts an eye rinse cup to his eye and tilts
it back. A cellular phone RINGS, interrupting him. He moves
to the desk and draws one of three phones from his briefcase,
depresses a scrambler module, flips it open, and listens for
a moment.
<b> MARTIN
</b> If it's not there, I can't proceed.
Tell them.
Martin hangs up. Picks up another phone and dials. As he
waits for an answer, he goes to a Fed Ex blueprint tube lying
on the bed.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Tom. I've been waiting for an answer.
I'm only in town tonight.
He breaks the shipping seal and pulls out a series of finished
metal parts including a long thin barrel, a scope, and a
silencer.
<b> MARTIN
</b> What's different this time than the
last time? I have to be down front...
<b> INT. HOTEL ROOM - SAME
</b>
Martin stands in front of the window, phone in one hand, the
scope in the other. Next to him, the assembled rifle rests
across the arm of a chair.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...I don't bother to call anyone
else because you always take care of
me.
He glances over to a second window to his left, which offers
a view further down the street. He goes to it. He raises the
scope and sees
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE- WINDOW #2
</b>
A few blocks down, small even through the high-powered scope,
is your average BICYCLE MESSENGER dressed in lycra racing
gear, weaving through traffic toward us. Slung low across
his right hip is a black canvas bag. The Messenger's hand is
hidden in it. The other phone begins to RING.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Hold on a second, Tom. I got my hands
full here.
He sets down the phone and answers the other, still watching
the messenger.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Good. Account number 3649367, transfer
to account number 96-546-38739-47825.
Ask for Mr. Sanchez, tell him it's
Mr. Duckman. If there are any
problems, access file 673594638-IO-
98, and look at it.
Martin drops the phone and moves away from Window #2 to the
rifle. He mounts the scope and he looks out Window #1 at the
high-rise.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE - WINDOW #1
</b>
Of a DOORMAN opening the door for a group of five men in
suits. Four BODYGUARDS form a perimeter around the fifth
man, a mall, avuncular figure in his forties dressed in
Saville Row finery.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
Takes a step back into the shadows of the room, and raises
the rifle toward Window #2.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE - WINDOW #2
</b>
of an empty street. The bicycle messenger flashes past.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
concentrating, tracks the path of the Messenger, leading him
left to right across the blind spot of the hotel room wall
between Window #2 and Window #1.
<b> STREET
</b>
the bicycle Messenger bears down on the group of men, drawing
a Mac-10 submachine gun from his bag. The group see him--
just as Martin's sniper FIRE explodes the Messenger's chest.
Two of the Bodyguards collapse onto their boss. The other
two open fire on the Messenger as he wipes out horribly into
a parked car in front of them.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
withdraws from the window, and picks up the phone again and
begins to break down the rifle.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Sorry Tom. But look, I know it's the
playoffs. That's why I'm offering a
thousand dollars for one seat...
Martin listens patiently as he works.
<b> EXT. STREET - SAME - INTERCUT
</b>
<b> DOORMAN'S HANDS
</b>
unbuttoning his double-breasted long coat.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
just finishes packing.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...Well let me ask you, Tom. What do
I have to do to get courtside tickets
for the Knicks...?
<b> STREET
</b>
The two bodyguards kick at the Messenger's body. The other
two begin to move off of their boss, who rises cowering. The
Doorman stands behind it all, unbuttoning his coat.
<b> DOORMAN
</b>
a tall, dark, sharp-featured man in his forties, wearing a
handlebar moustache. He moves toward the group of men as he
flips open his coat back over two huge chrome .44 Magnum
Charthouse Bulldog revolvers and OPENS FIRE on them.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
is closing his bag when he hears the gun-thunder.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Never mind. I gotta go.
Martin drops the phone, grabs his scope, and spins to the
window.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE
</b>
of the Doorman kicking through the pile of dead bodyguards.
He gets to the man at the bottom-- their boss. The Doorman
FIRES both guns.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
reacts, surprised to see a second shooter. He pulls himself
from the window, puts away his scope, and accelerates his
exit.
<b> HIGH-RISE FOYER
</b>
Outside, we see the doorman drop both guns on the pile of
bodies. He walks back toward us through the glass doors and
makes his way through the building toward the service exit.
He sheds his uniform and stuffs it into a plastic bag.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
his two parcels in hand, exits out the side door of the hotel
and walks down the street.
<b> DOORMAN
</b>
now wearing rich man's sweats, hops off the loading dock,
walks to a Lincoln Town Car, and drives off.
<b> INT. MARTIN'S AND GROCERS CARS - DAY
</b>
Martin rolls down FDR Drive in a Lincoln Town Car once again
on the cellular.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...Tell them that's not my problem.
I was paid for one job-- the cyclist--
not two. See you tomorrow, Marcella.
<b> MARCELLA
</b> Wait. I have Mr. Grocer for you.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Patch him through....
Martin notices another Town Car appears in the next lane. We
recognize the Doorman behind the wheel, phone in hand. He is
<b> GROCER.
</b>
<b> MARTIN
</b> What do you want?
<b> GROCER
</b> I'm setting up a concern that would
enable those of us in our rarefied
profession to consolidate our efforts.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Like a union?
<b> GROCER
</b> Like a club. Work less, make more.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Thank you, no.
<b> GROCER
</b> We could be working together, making
big money, killing important people...
I'm willing to let you in on the
ground floor.
<b> MARTIN
</b> And you could be... sort of like...
a father figure to me....
Grocer ignores this.
<b> GROCER
</b> It's a free-market evolution. You'll
wake up to it... c'mon Kid. We used
to run together when you were a
rookie. I don't want to run against
you. This thing's real. Everybody's
in.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
|
tosses
|
How many times does the word 'tosses' appear in the text?
| 0
|
sense. Wringhim at length got into unwonted fervour about some disputed
point between one of these faiths and TRUST: when the lady, fearing
that zeal was getting beyond its wonted barrier, broke in on his
vehement asseverations with the following abrupt discomfiture: "But,
Sir, as long as I remember, what is to be done with this case of open
and avowed iniquity?"
The minister was struck dumb. He leaned him back on his chair, stroked
his beard, hemmed--considered, and hemmed again, and then said, in an
altered and softened tone: "Why, that is a secondary consideration; you
mean the case between your husband and Miss Logan?"
"The same, Sir. I am scandalized at such intimacies going on under my
nose. The sufferance of it is a great and crying evil."
"Evil, madam, may be either operative, or passive. To them it is an
evil, but to us none. We have no more to do with the sins of the wicked
and unconverted here than with those of an infidel Turk; for all
earthly bonds and fellowships are absorbed and swallowed up in the holy
community of the Reformed Church. However, if it is your wish, I shall
take him to task, and reprimand and humble him in such a manner that he
shall be ashamed of his doings, and renounce such deeds for ever, out
of mere self-respect, though all unsanctified the heart, as well as the
deed, may be. To the wicked, all things are wicked; but to the just,
all things are just and right."
"Ah, that is a sweet and comfortable saying, Mr. Wringhim! How
delightful to think that a justified person can do no wrong! Who would
not envy the liberty wherewith we are made free? Go to my husband, that
poor unfortunate, blindfolded person, and open his eyes to his
degenerate and sinful state; for well are you fitted to the task."
"Yea, I will go in unto him, and confound him. I will lay the strong
holds of sin and Satan as flat before my face as the dung that is
spread out to fatten the land."
"Master, there's a gentleman at the fore-door wants a private word o'
ye."
"Tell him I'm engaged: I can't see any gentleman to-night. But I shall
attend on him to-morrow as soon as he pleases."
"'He's coming straight in, Sir. Stop a wee bit, Sir, my master is
engaged. He cannot see you at present, Sir."
"Stand aside, thou Moabite! My mission admits of no delay. I come to
save him from the jaws of destruction!"
"An that be the case, Sir, it maks a wide difference; an', as the
danger may threaten us a', I fancy I may as weel let ye gang by as
fight wi' ye, sin' ye seem sae intent on 't.--The man says he's comin'
to save ye, an' canna stop, Sir. Here he is."
The laird was going to break out into a volley of wrath against Waters,
his servant; but, before he got a word pronounced, the Rev. Mr.
Wringhim had stepped inside the room, and Waters had retired, shutting
the door behind him.
No introduction could be more mal-a-propos: it was impossible; for at
that very moment the laird and Arabella Logan were both sitting on one
seat, and both looking on one book, when the door opened. "What is it,
Sir?" said the laird fiercely.
"A message of the greatest importance, Sir," said the divine, striding
unceremoniously up to the chimney, turning his back to the fire, and
his face to the culprits. "I think you should know me, Sir?" continued
he, looking displeasedly at the laird, with his face half turned round.
"I think I should," returned the laird. "You are a Mr.
How's--tey--ca'--him, of Glasgow, who did me the worst turn ever I got
done to me in my life. You gentry are always ready to do a man such a
turn. Pray, Sir, did you ever do a good job for anyone to
counterbalance that? For, if you have not, you ought to be--"
"Hold, Sir, I say! None of your profanity before me. If I do evil to
anyone on such occasions, it is because he will have it so; therefore,
the evil is not of my doing. I ask you, Sir, before God and this
witness, I ask you, have you kept solemnly and inviolate the vows which
I laid upon you that day? Answer me!"
"Has the partner whom you bound me to kept hers inviolate? Answer me
that, Sir! None can better do so than you, Mr. How's--tey--ca'--you."
"So, then, you confess your backslidings, and avow the profligacy of
your life. And this person here is, I suppose, the partner of your
iniquity--she whose beauty hath caused you to err! Stand up, both of
you, till I rebuke you, and show you what you are in the eyes of God
and man."
"In the first place, stand you still there, till I tell you what you
are in the eyes of God and man. You are, Sir, a presumptuous,
self-conceited pedagogue, a stirrer up of strife and commotion in
church, in state, in families, and communities. You are one, Sir, whose
righteousness consists in splitting the doctrines of Calvin into
thousands of undistinguishable films, and in setting up a system of
justifying-grace against all breaches of all laws, moral or divine. In
short, Sir, you are a mildew--a canker-worm in the bosom of the
Reformed Church, generating a disease of which she will never be
purged, but by the shedding of blood. Go thou in peace, and do these
abominations no more; but humble thyself, lest a worse reproof come
upon thee."
Wringhim heard all this without flinching. He now and then twisted his
mouth in disdain, treasuring up, meantime, his vengeance against the
two aggressors; for he felt that he had them on the hip, and resolved
to pour out his vengeance and indignation upon them. Sorry am I that
the shackles of modern decorum restrain me from penning that famous
rebuke; fragments of which have been attributed to every divine of old
notoriety throughout Scotland. But I have it by heart; and a glorious
morsel it is to put into the hands of certain incendiaries. The
metaphors are so strong and so appalling that Miss Logan could only
stand them a very short time; she was obliged to withdraw in confusion.
The laird stood his ground with much ado, though his face was often
crimsoned over with the hues of shame and anger. Several times he was
on the point of turning the officious sycophant to the door; but good
manners, and an inherent respect that he entertained for the clergy,
as the immediate servants of the Supreme Being, restrained him.
Wringhim, perceiving these symptoms of resentment, took them for marks
of shame and contrition, and pushed his reproaches farther than ever
divine ventured to do in a similar case. When he had finished, to
prevent further discussion, he walked slowly and majestically out of
the apartment, making his robes to swing behind him in a most
magisterial manner; he being, without doubt, elated with his high
conquest. He went to the upper story, and related to his metaphysical
associate his wonderful success; how he had driven the dame from the
house in tears and deep confusion, and left the backsliding laird in
such a quandary of shame and repentance that he could neither
articulate a word nor lift up his countenance. The dame thanked him
most cordially, lauding his friendly zeal and powerful eloquence; and
then the two again set keenly to the splitting of hairs, and making
distinctions in religion where none existed.
They being both children of adoption, and secured from falling into
snares, or anyway under the power of the wicked one, it was their
custom, on each visit, to sit up a night in the same apartment, for the
sake of sweet spiritual converse; but that time, in the course of the
night, they differed so materially on a small point somewhere between
justification and final election that the minister, in the heat of his
zeal, sprung from his seat, paced the floor, and maintained his point
with such ardour that Martha was alarmed, and, thinking they were going
to fight, and that the minister would be a hard match for her mistress,
she put on some clothes, and twice left her bed and stood listening at
the back of the door, ready to burst in should need require it. Should
anyone think this picture over-strained, I can assure him that it is
taken from nature and from truth; but I will not likewise aver that the
theologist was neither crazed nor inebriated. If the listener's words
were to be relied on, there was no love, no accommodating principle
manifested between the two, but a fiery burning zeal, relating to
points of such minor importance that a true Christian would blush to
hear them mentioned, and the infidel and profane make a handle of them
to turn our religion to scorn.
Great was the dame's exultation at the triumph of her beloved pastor
over her sinful neighbours in the lower parts of the house; and she
boasted of it to Martha in high-sounding terms. But it was of short
duration; for, in five weeks after that, Arabella Logan came to reside
with the laird as his housekeeper, sitting at his table and carrying
the keys as mistress-substitute of the mansion. The lady's grief and
indignation were now raised to a higher pitch than ever; and she set
every agent to work, with whom she had any power, to effect a
separation between these two suspected ones. Remonstrance was of no
avail: George laughed at them who tried such a course, and retained his
housekeeper, while the lady gave herself up to utter despair; for,
though she would not consort with her husband herself, she could not
endure that any other should do so.
But, to countervail this grievous offence, our saintly and afflicted
dame, in due time, was safely delivered of a fine boy whom the laird
acknowledged as his son and heir, and had him christened by his own
name, and nursed in his own premises. He gave the nurse permission to
take the boy to his mother's presence if ever she should desire to see
him; but, strange as it may appear, she never once desired to see him
from the day that he was born. The boy grew up, and was a healthful and
happy child; and, in the course of another year, the lady presented him
with a brother. A brother he certainly was, in the eye of the law, and
it is more than probable that he was his brother in reality. But the
laird thought otherwise; and, though he knew and acknowledged that he
was obliged to support and provide for him, he refused to acknowledge
him in other respects. He neither would countenance the banquet nor
take the baptismal vows on him in the child's name; of course, the poor
boy had to live and remain an alien from the visible church for a year
and a day; at which time, Mr. Wringhim out of pity and kindness, took
the lady herself as sponsor for the boy, and baptized him by the name
of Robert Wringhim--that being the noted divine's own name.
George was brought up with his father, and educated partly at the
parish school, and partly at home, by a tutor hired for the purpose. He
was a generous and kind-hearted youth; always ready to oblige, and
hardly ever dissatisfied with anybody. Robert was brought up with Mr.
Wringhim, the laird paying a certain allowance for him yearly; and
there the boy was early inured to all the sternness and severity of his
pastor's arbitrary and unyielding creed. He was taught to pray twice
every day, and seven times on Sabbath days; but he was only to pray for
the elect, and, like Devil of old, doom all that were aliens from God
to destruction. He had never, in that family into which he had been as
it were adopted, heard aught but evil spoken of his reputed father and
brother; consequently he held them in utter abhorrence, and prayed
against them every day, often "that the old hoary sinner might be cut
off in the full flush of his iniquity, and be carried quick into hell;
and that the young stem of the corrupt trunk might also be taken from a
world that he disgraced, but that his sins might be pardoned, because
he knew no better."
Such were the tenets in which it would appear young Robert was bred. He
was an acute boy, an excellent learner, had ardent and ungovernable
passions, and, withal, a sternness of demeanour from which other boys
shrunk. He was the best grammarian, the best reader, writer, and
accountant in the various classes that he attended, and was fond of
writing essays on controverted points of theology, for which he got
prizes, and great praise from his guardian and mother. George was much
behind him in scholastic acquirements, but greatly his superior in
personal prowess, form, feature, and all that constitutes gentility in
the deportment and appearance. The laird had often manifested to Miss
Logan an earnest wish that the two young men should never meet, or at
all events that they should be as little conversant as possible; and
Miss Logan, who was as much attached to George as if he had been her
own son, took every precaution, while he was a boy, that he should
never meet with his brother; but, as they advanced towards manhood,
this became impracticable. The lady was removed from her apartments in
her husband's house to Glasgow, to her great content; and all to
prevent the young laird being tainted with the company of her and her
second son; for the laird had felt the effects of the principles they
professed, and dreaded them more than persecution, fire, and sword.
During all the dreadful times that had overpast, though the laird had
been a moderate man, he had still leaned to the side of kingly
prerogative, and had escaped confiscation and fines, without ever
taking any active hand in suppressing the Covenanters. But, after
experiencing a specimen of their tenets and manner in his wife, from a
secret favourer of them and their doctrines, he grew alarmed at the
prevalence of such stern and factious principles, now that there was no
check or restraint upon them; and from that time he began to set
himself against them, joining with the Cavalier party of that day in
all their proceedings.
It so happened that, under the influence of the Earls of Seafield and
Tullibardine, he was returned for a Member of Parliament in the famous
session that sat at Edinburgh when the Duke of Queensberry was
commissioner, and in which party spirit ran to such an extremity. The
young laird went with his father to the court, and remained in town all
the time that the session lasted; and, as all interested people of both
factions flocked to the town at that period, so the important Mr.
Wringhim was there among the rest, during the greater part of the time,
blowing the coal of revolutionary principles with all his might, in
every society to which he could obtain admission. He was a great
favourite with some of the west country gentlemen of that faction, by
reason of his unbending impudence. No opposition could for a moment
cause him either to blush, or retract one item that he had advanced.
Therefore the Duke of Argyle and his friends made such use of him as
sportsmen often do of terriers, to start the game, and make a great
yelping noise to let them know whither the chase is proceeding. They
often did this out of sport, in order to tease their opponent; for of
all pesterers that ever fastened on man he was the most insufferable:
knowing that his coat protected him from manual chastisement, he spared
no acrimony, and delighted in the chagrin and anger of those with whom
he contended. But he was sometimes likewise of real use to the heads of
the Presbyterian faction, and therefore was admitted to their tables,
and of course conceived himself a very great man.
His ward accompanied him; and, very shortly after their arrival in
Edinburgh, Robert, for the first time, met with the young laird his
brother, in a match at tennis. The prowess and agility of the young
squire drew forth the loudest plaudits of approval from his associates,
and his own exertion alone carried the game every time on the one side,
and that so far as all I along to count three for their one. The hero's
name soon ran round the circle, and when his brother Robert, who was an
onlooker, learned who it was that was gaining so much applause, he came
and stood close beside him all the time that the game lasted, always
now and then putting in a cutting remark by way of mockery.
George could not help perceiving him, not only on account of his
impertinent remarks, but he, moreover, stood so near him that he
several times impeded him in his rapid evolutions, and of course got
himself shoved aside in no very ceremonious way. Instead of making him
keep his distance, these rude shocks and pushes, accompanied sometimes
with hasty curses, only made him cling the closer to this king of the
game. He seemed determined to maintain his right to his place as an
onlooker, as well as any of those engaged in the game, and, if they had
tried him at an argument, he would have carried his point; or perhaps
he wished to quarrel with this spark of his jealousy and aversion, and
draw the attention of the gay crowd to himself by these means; for,
like his guardian, he knew no other pleasure but what consisted in
opposition. George took him for some impertinent student of divinity,
rather set upon a joke than anything else. He perceived a lad with
black clothes, and a methodistical face, whose countenance and eye he
disliked exceedingly, several times in his way, and that was all the
notice he took of him the first time they two met. But the next day,
and every succeeding one, the same devilish-looking youth attended him
as constantly as his shadow; was always in his way as with intention to
impede him and ever and anon his deep and malignant eye met those of
his elder brother with a glance so fierce that it sometimes startled
him.
The very next time that George was engaged at tennis, he had not struck
the ball above twice till the same intrusive being was again in his
way. The party played for considerable stakes that day, namely, a
dinner and wine at the Black Bull tavern; and George, as the hero and
head of
|
healthful
|
How many times does the word 'healthful' appear in the text?
| 0
|
It orbits at an altitude of 500 km above sea level. It moves at
an average of 27,700 kilometers per hour, completing 15.7 laps
around the Earth per day.
It is cruising over Zimbabwe. To the East, the island of
Madagascar. Up to the North, the expansive dry lands of Somalia
and Ethiopia.
Soon, the ISS curves around the spherical planet, and it becomes
smaller, almost indistinguishable, no more than a small bright
spec grazing over the blue atmosphere.
<b> CLOSER TO US-
</b>
Orbiting at an altitude of 600 km-
The EXPLORER SPACE SHUTTLE becomes visible.
This icon of space exploration has played a key role in all of
NASA's missions since the late 90's.
Faintly we hear static, voices murmuring over radio frequences.
As the babble bulds we might hear one conversation amongst the
<b> REST:
</b>
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b> (On radio, faint)
Explorer, please verify that the P1
ATA removal on replacement cap part 1
and 2 are complete.
<b> EXPLORER CAP
</b> (On radio, faint)
DMA M1, M2, M3 and M4 are complete.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b> (On radio, faint)
Copy that Explorer. Dr Stone-Houston,
requesting status update...
A fizz of static and then the voice continues with sudden,
starling clarity.
<b> RYAN
</b> Installation ninety-five percent
complete. Running level one
diagnostics on circuits, sensors, and
power. Standby.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> Standing by. Looks like we're on
schedule. Dr. Stone, Medical is
concerned about your ECG readings.
<b> RYAN
</b> I'm fine Houston.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (RADIO)
</b> Well, medical doesn't agree doctor.
Are you feeling nauseous?
<b> RYAN
</b> Not any more than usual, Houston.
Diagnostics are green. Linking to
communications card. Ready for data
reception. If this works, when we
touch down tomorrow, I'm buying all
you guys a round of drinks.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (RADIO)
</b> That's a date, doctor. Just remember,
Houston is partial to Margaritas.
<b> RYAN
</b> OK, here we go... Booting comm card
now. Please confirm link.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> Houston, please confirm reception of
data.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> Negative. We're not seeing any data.
<b> RYAN
</b> Stand by, Houston. I'm gonna reboot
the comm card.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (RADIO)
</b> Standing by.
An ASTRONAUT - MATT KOWALSKI - floats thirty meters away from
the Shuttle wearing a bulky white space suit and a full, bubble-
like helmet.
<b> ASTRONAUT
</b> Houston, I have a bad feeling about
this mission.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b> Please expand.
<b> MATT
</b> Okay, let me tell you a story. It was
'96. I'd been up here 42 days. Every
time I passed over Texas, I'd look
down, knowing the second Mrs Kowalsky,
was looking up, thinking of me. Six
weeks I'm blowing kisses to that
woman. Then we land at Edwards and I
find out she'd run off with a lawyer
before I was off the launch pad, so I
packed my car and I headed to...
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b> Tijuana. You've told this story,
Kowalsky. As Houston recalls, she
took off in your '74 GTO. Engineering
requests fuel status on the jet pack
prototype.
Matt smiles, checks the monitors of the sleek device strapped to
his back.
<b> MATT
</b> Five hours off the reservation and I
show 30% drain. My compliments to
Engineering. Except for a slight
malfunction on the nulling of the roll
axis, this jetpack is one prime piece
of thrust.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> Engineering says thank you.
<b> MATT
</b> Tell them I still prefer my '67
Corvette though. Speaking of which did
I ever tell you the--
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> We know the Corvette story, Matt.
<b> MATT
</b> Even Engineering?
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b> Especially engineering. We're going
to miss you, Matt.
Matt grins, fiddles with a control and propels himself away from
the Shuttle.
Stationed around the telescope are TWO ASTRONAUTS carrying out a
repair mission. They are also wearing space suits but unlike
Matt, they are not wearing Manned Maneuvering Units. SAFETY
TETHERS are the only things stopping them from floating away
into space.
<b> RYAN
</b> Comm card reboot in progress.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> Thank you doctor. Shariff, what's your
status?
<b> SHARIFF
</b> Nearly there. Replacing battery module
A1 and C.
SHARIFF DASARI is an Indian engineer in his mid-thirties. He is
attached with tethers to a platform on one side of the Hubble.
This is his second mission into outer space.
<b> MISSION CONTROL
</b><b> (ON RADIO)
</b> Could you be more specific?
Indeterminate estimates make Houston
anxious.
<b> SHARIFF
</b>
|
comm
|
How many times does the word 'comm' appear in the text?
| 2
|
"You sat in front of his writing desk?"
"Just so."
"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"
"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on my face."
"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the professor's
head?"
"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from you. Yes, I
saw the picture--a young woman with her head on her hands, peeping at
you sideways."
"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."
The inspector endeavoured to look interested.
"Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger tips and
leaning well back in his chair, "was a French artist who flourished
between the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course to his working
career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed the high opinion formed
of him by his contemporaries."
The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better--" he said.
"We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am saying has a
very direct and vital bearing upon what you have called the Birlstone
Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called the very centre of it."
MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me. "Your thoughts
move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You leave out a link or two,
and I can't get over the gap. What in the whole wide world can be the
connection between this dead painting man and the affair at Birlstone?"
"All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked Holmes. "Even
the trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by Greuze entitled
La Jeune Fille a l'Agneau fetched one million two hundred thousand
francs--more than forty thousand pounds--at the Portalis sale may start
a train of reflection in your mind."
It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.
"I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's salary can
be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference. It is seven
hundred a year."
"Then how could he buy--"
"Quite so! How could he?"
"Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk away,
Mr. Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!"
Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration--the
characteristic of the real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he asked.
"We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch. "I've a cab
at the door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to Victoria. But about
this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr. Holmes, that you had never
met Professor Moriarty."
"No, I never have."
"Then how do you know about his rooms?"
"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his rooms, twice
waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving before he came.
Once--well, I can hardly tell about the once to an official detective.
It was on the last occasion that I took the liberty of running over his
papers--with the most unexpected results."
"You found something compromising?"
"Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However, you have now seen
the point of the picture. It shows him to be a very wealthy man. How
did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried. His younger brother is a station
master in the west of England. His chair is worth seven hundred a year.
And he owns a Greuze."
"Well?"
"Surely the inference is plain."
"You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it in an
illegal fashion?"
"Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so--dozens of
exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the centre of the web
where the poisonous, motionless creature is lurking. I only mention
the Greuze because it brings the matter within the range of your own
observation."
"Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting: it's more
than interesting--it's just wonderful. But let us have it a little
clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary--where does the
money come from?"
"Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?"
"Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel, was he not? I
don't take much stock of detectives in novels--chaps that do things
and never let you see how they do them. That's just inspiration: not
business."
"Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel. He was a
master criminal, and he lived last century--1750 or thereabouts."
"Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man."
"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would
be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day
at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circles--even Professor
Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden force of the London criminals,
to whom he sold his brains and his organization on a fifteen per cent.
commission. The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all
been done before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two things
about Moriarty which may interest you."
"You'll interest me, right enough."
"I happen to know who is the first link in his chain--a chain with
this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken fighting men,
pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the other, with every
sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is Colonel Sebastian Moran,
as aloof and guarded and inaccessible to the law as himself. What do you
think he pays him?"
"I'd like to hear."
"Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see--the American
business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance. It's more
than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of Moriarty's gains
and of the scale on which he works. Another point: I made it my business
to hunt down some of Moriarty's checks lately--just common innocent
checks that he pays his household bills with. They were drawn on six
different banks. Does that make any impression on your mind?"
"Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?"
"That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man should know
what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty banking accounts; the
bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche Bank or the Credit Lyonnais
as likely as not. Sometime when you have a year or two to spare I
commend to you the study of Professor Moriarty."
Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as the
conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest. Now his
practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a snap to the matter
in hand.
"He can keep, anyhow," said he. "You've got us side-tracked with your
interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts is your remark
that there is some connection between the professor and the crime. That
you get from the warning received through the man Porlock. Can we for
our present practical needs get any further than that?"
"We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime. It is, as
I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable, or at least an
unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the source of the crime is as
we suspect it to be, there might be two different motives. In the first
place, I may tell you that Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his
people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in
his code. It is death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man--this
Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the arch-criminal's
subordinates--had in some way betrayed the chief. His punishment
followed, and would be known to all--if only to put the fear of death
into them."
"Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes."
"The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the ordinary
course of business. Was there any robbery?"
"I have not heard."
"If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and in
favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to engineer it on a
promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid so much down to manage
it. Either is possible. But whichever it may be, or if it is some third
combination, it is down at Birlstone that we must seek the solution. I
know our man too well to suppose that he has left anything up here which
may lead us to him."
"Then to Birlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping from his chair.
"My word! it's later than I thought. I can give you, gentlemen, five
minutes for preparation, and that is all."
"And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and hastened to
change from his dressing gown to his coat. "While we are on our way, Mr.
Mac, I will ask you to be good enough to tell me all about it."
"All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet there was
enough to assure us that the case before us might well be worthy of
the expert's closest attention. He brightened and rubbed his thin hands
together as he listened to the meagre but remarkable details. A long
series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a
fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special
gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use. That
razor brain blunted and rusted with inaction.
Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a warmer hue, and
his whole eager face shone with an inward light when the call for
work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab, he listened intently to
MacDonald's short sketch of the problem which awaited us in Sussex. The
inspector was himself dependent, as he explained to us, upon a scribbled
account forwarded to him by the milk train in the early hours of the
morning. White Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend, and
hence MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual at
Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a very cold
scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally asked to run.
"DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:
"Official requisition for your services is in separate envelope. This is
for your private eye. Wire me what train in the morning you can get for
Birlstone, and I will meet it--or have it met if I am too occupied. This
case is a snorter. Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can
bring Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after his own
heart. We would think the whole had been fixed up for theatrical
effect if there wasn't a dead man in the middle of it. My word! it IS a
snorter."
"Your friend seems to be no fool," remarked Holmes.
"No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge."
"Well, have you anything more?"
"Only that he will give us every detail when we meet."
"Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he had been
horribly murdered?"
"That was in the inclosed official report. It didn't say 'horrible':
that's not a recognized official term. It gave the name John Douglas. It
mentioned that his injuries had been in the head, from the discharge of
a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was close on
to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly one of
murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was one
which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That's
absolutely all we have at present, Mr. Holmes."
"Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr. Mac. The
temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane
of our profession. I can see only two things for certain at present--a
great brain in London, and a dead man in Sussex. It's the chain between
that we are going to trace."
Chapter 3--The Tragedy of Birlstone
Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant
personality and to describe events which occurred before we arrived upon
the scene by the light of knowledge which came to us afterwards. Only in
this way can I make the reader appreciate the people concerned and the
strange setting in which their fate was cast.
The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of
half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of Sussex.
For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the last few years
its picturesque appearance and situation have attracted a number of
well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out from the woods around. These
woods are locally supposed to be the extreme fringe of the great Weald
forest, which thins away until it reaches the northern chalk downs.
A number of small shops have come into being to meet the wants of the
increased population; so there seems some prospect that Birlstone may
soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It is the centre
for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge Wells, the nearest
place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the eastward, over the
borders of Kent.
About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park famous for its
huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of Birlstone. Part of this
venerable building dates back to the time of the first crusade, when
Hugo de Capus built a fortalice in the centre of the estate, which had
been granted to him by the Red King. This was destroyed by fire in
1543, and some of its smoke-blackened corner stones were used when, in
Jacobean times, a brick country house rose upon the ruins of the feudal
castle.
The Manor House, with its many gables and its small diamond-paned
windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the early
seventeenth century. Of the double moats which had guarded its more
warlike predecessor, the outer had been allowed to dry up, and served
the humble function of a kitchen garden. The inner one was still there,
and lay forty feet in breadth, though now only a few feet in depth,
round the whole house. A small stream fed it and continued beyond it,
so that the sheet of water, though turbid, was never ditchlike or
unhealthy. The ground floor windows were within a foot of the surface of
the water.
The only approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the chains and
windlass of which had long been rusted and broken. The latest tenants
of the Manor House had, however, with characteristic energy, set this
right, and the drawbridge was not only capable of being raised, but
actually was raised every evening and lowered every morning. By thus
renewing the custom of the old feudal days the Manor House was converted
into an island during the night--a fact which had a very direct bearing
upon the mystery which was soon to engage the attention of all England.
The house had been untenanted for some years and was threatening to
moulder into a picturesque decay when the Douglases took possession of
it. This family consisted of only two individuals--John Douglas and his
wife. Douglas was a remarkable man, both in character and in person. In
age he may have been about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a
grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry, vigorous
figure which had lost nothing of the strength and activity of youth.
He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat offhand in his manners,
giving the impression that he had seen life in social strata on some far
lower horizon than the county society of Sussex.
Yet, though looked at with some curiosity and reserve by his more
cultivated neighbours, he soon acquired a great popularity among the
villagers, subscribing handsomely to all local objects, and attending
their smoking concerts and other functions, where, having a remarkably
rich tenor voice, he was always ready to oblige with an excellent song.
He appeared to have plenty of money, which was said to have been gained
in the California gold fields, and it was clear from his own talk and
that of his wife that he had spent a part of his life in America.
The good impression which had been produced by his generosity and by
his democratic manners was increased by a reputation gained for utter
indifference to danger. Though a wretched rider, he turned out at every
meet, and took the most amazing falls in his determination to hold
his own with the best. When the vicarage caught fire he distinguished
himself also by the fearlessness with which he reentered the building
to save property, after the local fire brigade had given it up as
impossible. Thus it came about that John Douglas of the Manor House had
within five years won himself quite a reputation in Birlstone.
His wife, too, was popular with those who had made her acquaintance;
though, after the English fashion, the callers upon a stranger who
settled in the county without introductions were few and far between.
This mattered the less to her, as she was retiring by disposition, and
very much absorbed, to all appearance, in her husband and her domestic
duties. It was known that she was an English lady who had met Mr.
Douglas in London, he being at that time a widower. She was a beautiful
woman, tall, dark, and slender, some twenty years younger than her
husband; a disparity which seemed in no wise to mar the contentment of
their family life.
It was remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew them best, that
the confidence between the two did not appear to be complete, since the
wife was either very reticent about her husband's past life, or else, as
seemed more likely, was imperfectly informed about it. It had also been
noted and commented upon by a few observant people that there were signs
sometimes of some nerve-strain upon the part of Mrs. Douglas, and that
she would display acute uneasiness if her absent husband should ever
be particularly late in his return. On a quiet countryside, where all
gossip is welcome, this weakness of the lady of the Manor House did not
pass without remark, and it bulked larger upon people's memory when the
events arose which gave it a very special significance.
There was yet another individual whose residence under that roof was, it
is true, only an intermittent one, but whose presence at the time of
the strange happenings which will now be narrated brought his name
prominently before the public. This was Cecil James Barker, of Hales
Lodge, Hampstead.
Cecil Barker's tall, loose-jointed figure was a familiar one in the main
street of Birlstone village; for he was a frequent and welcome visitor
at the
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How many times does the word 'face' appear in the text?
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the instruments is a
snapshot of a pretty young woman with a 2 month-old baby.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Closing fast. MUSTANG, THIS IS
<b> GHOST RIDER ONE ONE SEVEN. CONTACT
</b><b> ONE BOGEY, 090 AT 15 MILES, 900
</b><b> KNOTS OF CLOSURE.
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Look for the trailer.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> I don't see anything. MAVERICK,
<b> YOU HAVE A TRAILER?
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 10. MAVERICK'S F-14
</b><b>
</b> Flying in combat spread, 1 mile abeam, higher.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b><b> NEGATIVE, COUGAR. LOOKS LIKE HE'S
</b><b> SINGLE.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 11. INT. 117 - COUGAR'S COCKPIT
</b><b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b><b> HANG BACK AND WATCH FOR HIM. HERE
</b><b> COMES...MIG ONE.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 12. EXT. SKY
</b><b>
</b> Closing at 900 knots, The MiG is a speck, then a flash and a
ROAR, a knife-edge pass at 300 feet. It rockets past his left
wing tip and disappears. Cougar kicks rudder, whips the stick,
screams into a tight turning roll and dives after him. He slams
the throttle forward to ZONE 5 AFTERBURNER.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 13. EXT. - MAVERICK'S F-14
</b><b>
</b> Maverick sees a SECOND MiG drop from above onto Cougar's tail.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> BOGEY ON YOUR SIX. I'M ON HIS.
</b><b>
</b> Maverick swings after him, lights it.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 13A. ALL FOUR JETS SCREAM DOWN IN A POWER DIVE.
</b><b>
</b> They punch through cloud cover into the soup.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 14. EXT. COUGAR'S F-14
</b><b>
</b> He is closing on the first MiG when a shocking BLIPBLIPBLIPBLIP
tone breaks into their headsets.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> I've got a six strobe. I think
he's locked on us.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> It's a MiG 21. They don't have
radar missiles!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Let's hope you're right!
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> What is he doing?
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> He's pissing me off!
<b>
</b> Cougar swings mad gyrations, cutting back and forth across the
front MiG's tailpipe, trying to break the lock-on. The TONE grows
more insistant.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Can't shake him.
<b>
</b><b> MAVERICK (V.O.)
</b><b> WHAT'S MIG ONE DOING?
</b><b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Maintaining course. Straight for
Mustang.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Stay with him.
<b>
</b> The tone grows steady, BLIPBLIPBLIPBLIP.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> (alarmed)
That's missile lock!
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> He better be kidding!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Lordy! Eyeball to Asshole.
Hope nobody burps!
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 14A. INT. MAVERICK'S F-14
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b> I'LL LOCK ON THEM, COUGAR. (to himself)
Gotcha covered, don't nobody move.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b><b> I'M UP HERE TOO, MAVERICK.
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b> ROGER, COUGAR. (to himself and his RIO)
Okay boys, pull out with your hands up
and nobody'll get hurt.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 14B. INT. COUGAR'S F-14
</b><b>
</b> Up front, Cougar checks his gunsight...He gets I.R. lock...
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> We're locked on MiG ONE. Why
doesn't he disengage?
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> These guys are getting on my
nerves.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 14C. FINALLY, MIG ONE TURNS AWAY.
</b><b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b><b> GHOST RIDER TO MUSTANG. BANDITS
</b><b> TURNING AWAY.
</b><b>
</b> But Cougar presses forward, and MiG TWO stays on his tail.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> COUGAR, BREAK LEFT. TRY A HIGH G
</b><b> ROLL UNDERNEATH. BREAK OUT THE
</b><b> BOTTOM.
</b><b>
</b> Anger gives way to discipline. Cougar's Tomcat breaks left,
dives into dense cloud. MiG TWO still follows.
<b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> HE'S STILL ON YOU, COUGAR.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 15. EXT. COUGAR - IN THE CLOUDS
</b><b>
</b> Still hears the tone, BLIPBLIPBLIP...
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b><b>
</b><b> I KNOW. I KNOW.
</b><b>
</b> He rolls over into wild evasive maneuvers, finally breaks lock.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 16. INT. MIG
</b><b>
</b> Breaks out of cloud, looks around, startled. There is nothing,
no F-14. He scans the sky frantically, while rolling the
aircraft. ...Suddenly, he feels a presence. He looks straight up
and behind him. A few feet away, a TOMCAT slides into position
canopy to canopy, an incredible feat of flying. Maverick and
Wizard stare at him. Maverick slides even closer, canopies nearly
touching. The MiG pilot acknowledges them with a weak wave.
Maverick stares for a moment, then flips him the bird.
<b>
</b> The MiG pushes negative G, hard down and away. He heads for the
deck.
<b>
</b><b> WIZARD
</b> He's running for it.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b> Ah, the thrill of victory and the
agony of defeat.
<b>
</b><b> WIZARD
</b> Speaking of feet, fuel's down to
4.0. We're gonna get them wet
unless we find a Sonoco station.
<b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> COUGAR, THIS IS MAVERICK. I'M
</b><b> GETTING HUNGRY, LET'S HEAD FOR THE
</b><b> BARN. ...COUGAR, WHERE ARE YOU?
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 17. EXT. KITTY HAWK FLIGHT DECK - THE LSO
</b><b>
</b> Stands the on plunging deck, peering into the roaring night.
<b>
</b> CCA (Filtered)
<b> GHOST RIDER ONE-ONE-FIVE, THIS IS
</b><b> MUSTANG. WX THREE HUNDRED. ONE
</b><b> MILE VISIBILITY WITH HEAVY RAIN.
</b><b> FINAL INBOUND BEARING THREE-FOUR-
</b><b> ZERO. DECK IS MOVING.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 18. INT. COCKPIT 117 - COUGAR
</b><b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b><b>
</b> This is crazy. How the hell we
supposed to land on something we
can't even see!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Hey, if it was easy, everybody
would want to come up here and do
it..... Instead of just us.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> (corrects him)
You.
<b>
</b> MUSTANG (V.O. filtered)
<b> MUSTANG TO GHOST RIDER 115...110
</b><b> SPIN, 42 LOCK. AT 5 MILES READ
</b><b> YOUR NEEDLES.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 19. INT. COCKPIT 115 - MAVERICK
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> NEEDLES READ DOWN AND LEFT.
</b><b>
</b> CCA (V.O. filtered)
<b> CONCUR, FLY YOUR NEEDLES.
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> NEEDLES CENTER.
</b><b>
</b> CCA (V.O. filtered)
<b> ROGER. CALL THE BALL.
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b> Call the ball? I don't see the
ship!
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 20. INT. COCKPIT 117 - COUGAR'S POV
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b> BLASTS slam the airframe. Rain tattoos the canopy. A gust rolls
the Tomcat, he straightens it, A gust flips it again.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 20A. MAVERICK'S POV
</b><b>
</b> The Carrier lights appear and disappear through the storm.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 21. INT. COCKPIT 117 - COUGAR
</b><b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> (To Himself)
<b>
</b> A walk in the park, Mustang. You
with me, cat man?...Cougar...you
with me?
<b>
</b> Goose is thrown about as the wing dips, straightens, dips.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Help me with this one, I'm really
screwed up.
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> Bring it left. Bring it left,
You're high.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> This is crazy!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> What is?
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Wait! Hell!..Something's wrong!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> What? What is it?
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Were upside down!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> You're crazy. We're level.
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> Can't you feel it? I'm hanging in
my straps!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> You're not. We're level. Look at
the instruments, we're okay!
<b>
</b><b> COUGAR
</b> They must be broken. I'm hanging in
my straps! We're inverted!
<b>
</b><b> GOOSE
</b> We're not! Trust me! We're okay.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 22. FLIGHT DECK - LSO CONTROLLING 115 - MAVERICK
</b><b>
</b><b> LSO
</b><b> A LITTLE POWER...FLY THE BALL.
</b><b> LOOKING GOOD...HOLD WHAT YOU GOT.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 23. MAVERICK'S F-14 - ON FINAL APPROACH.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 24. INT. COCKPIT - MAVERICK
</b><b>
</b> He hears Cougar's chatter over the air.
<b>
</b> COUGAR (V.O. filtered)
<b> WE'RE UPSIDE DOWN! WE CAN'T LAND!
</b><b>
</b> GOOSE (V.O. filtered)
<b> WELL, WE CAN'T STAY UP HERE EITHER.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 25. FLIGHT DECK
</b><b>
</b> Maverick's plane settles in over the ramp, suddenly, BLASTS FROM
IT'S AFTERBURNERS...it ROARS over the deck without touching and
off into the night. The LSO is shocked into comment.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> LSO
</b><b> WHERE THE HELL YOU GOING?
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 26. MAVERICK'S COCKPIT - (AERIAL)
</b><b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b><b> I...FORGOT SOMETHING.
</b><b>
</b><b> WIZARD
</b> What the hell you doing?
<b>
</b><b> MAVERICK
</b> Helping him in.
<b>
</b><b> WIZARD
</b> What makes you think we can get
back in? We don't have the fuel
for this.
<b> MAVERICK
</b> Just get me to him.
<b>
</b><b> WIZARD
</b> He's nine o'clock high. We're two
thousand pounds low!
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 27. DARK TURBULENT CLOU
|
airframe
|
How many times does the word 'airframe' appear in the text?
| 0
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for that day, and for many succeeding ones; but still I
did not wholly relinquish my darling scheme. Mary got her drawing
materials, and steadily set to work. I got mine too; but while I drew, I
thought of other things. How delightful it would be to be a governess!
To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to
exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers; to earn my own
maintenance, and something to comfort and help my father, mother, and
sister, besides exonerating them from the provision of my food and
clothing; to show papa what his little Agnes could do; to convince mamma
and Mary that I was not quite the helpless, thoughtless being they
supposed. And then, how charming to be entrusted with the care and
education of children! Whatever others said, I felt I was fully
competent to the task: the clear remembrance of my own thoughts in early
childhood would be a surer guide than the instructions of the most mature
adviser. I had but to turn from my little pupils to myself at their age,
and I should know, at once, how to win their confidence and affections:
how to waken the contrition of the erring; how to embolden the timid and
console the afflicted; how to make Virtue practicable, Instruction
desirable, and Religion lovely and comprehensible.
âDelightful task!
To teach the young idea how to shoot!
To train the tender plants, and watch their buds unfolding day by day!
Influenced by so many inducements, I determined still to persevere;
though the fear of displeasing my mother, or distressing my fatherâs
feelings, prevented me from resuming the subject for several days. At
length, again, I mentioned it to my mother in private; and, with some
difficulty, got her to promise to assist me with her endeavours. My
fatherâs reluctant consent was next obtained, and then, though Mary still
sighed her disapproval, my dear, kind mother began to look out for a
situation for me. She wrote to my fatherâs relations, and consulted the
newspaper advertisementsâher own relations she had long dropped all
communication with: a formal interchange of occasional letters was all
she had ever had since her marriage, and she would not at any time have
applied to them in a case of this nature. But so long and so entire had
been my parentsâ seclusion from the world, that many weeks elapsed before
a suitable situation could be procured. At last, to my great joy, it was
decreed that I should take charge of the young family of a certain Mrs.
Bloomfield; whom my kind, prim aunt Grey had known in her youth, and
asserted to be a very nice woman. Her husband was a retired tradesman,
who had realized a very comfortable fortune; but could not be prevailed
upon to give a greater salary than twenty-five pounds to the instructress
of his children. I, however, was glad to accept this, rather than refuse
the situationâwhich my parents were inclined to think the better plan.
But some weeks more were yet to be devoted to preparation. How long, how
tedious those weeks appeared to me! Yet they were happy ones in the
mainâfull of bright hopes and ardent expectations. With what peculiar
pleasure I assisted at the making of my new clothes, and, subsequently,
the packing of my trunks! But there was a feeling of bitterness mingling
with the latter occupation too; and when it was doneâwhen all was ready
for my departure on the morrow, and the last night at home approachedâa
sudden anguish seemed to swell my heart. My dear friends looked so sad,
and spoke so very kindly, that I could scarcely keep my eyes from
overflowing: but I still affected to be gay. I had taken my last ramble
with Mary on the moors, my last walk in the garden, and round the house;
I had fed, with her, our pet pigeons for the last timeâthe pretty
creatures that we had tamed to peck their food from our hands: I had
given a farewell stroke to all their silky backs as they crowded in my
lap. I had tenderly kissed my own peculiar favourites, the pair of
snow-white fantails; I had played my last tune on the old familiar piano,
and sung my last song to papa: not the last, I hoped, but the last for
what appeared to me a very long time. And, perhaps, when I did these
things again it would be with different feelings: circumstances might be
changed, and this house might never be my settled home again. My dear
little friend, the kitten, would certainly be changed: she was already
growing a fine cat; and when I returned, even for a hasty visit at
Christmas, would, most likely, have forgotten both her playmate and her
merry pranks. I had romped with her for the last time; and when I
stroked her soft bright fur, while she lay purring herself to sleep in my
lap, it was with a feeling of sadness I could not easily disguise. Then
at bed-time, when I retired with Mary to our quiet little chamber, where
already my drawers were cleared out and my share of the bookcase was
emptyâand where, hereafter, she would have to sleep alone, in dreary
solitude, as she expressed itâmy heart sank more than ever: I felt as if
I had been selfish and wrong to persist in leaving her; and when I knelt
once more beside our little bed, I prayed for a blessing on her and on my
parents more fervently than ever I had done before. To conceal my
emotion, I buried my face in my hands, and they were presently bathed in
tears. I perceived, on rising, that she had been crying too: but neither
of us spoke; and in silence we betook ourselves to our repose, creeping
more closely together from the consciousness that we were to part so
soon.
But the morning brought a renewal of hope and spirits. I was to depart
early; that the conveyance which took me (a gig, hired from Mr. Smith,
the draper, grocer, and tea-dealer of the village) might return the same
day. I rose, washed, dressed, swallowed a hasty breakfast, received the
fond embraces of my father, mother, and sister, kissed the catâto the
great scandal of Sally, the maidâshook hands with her, mounted the gig,
drew my veil over my face, and then, but not till then, burst into a
flood of tears. The gig rolled on; I looked back; my dear mother and
sister were still standing at the door, looking after me, and waving
their adieux. I returned their salute, and prayed God to bless them from
my heart: we descended the hill, and I could see them no more.
âItâs a coldish morninâ for you, Miss Agnes,â observed Smith; âand a
darksome âun too; but weâs happen get to yon spot afore there come much
rain to signify.â
âYes, I hope so,â replied I, as calmly as I could.
âItâs comed a good sup last night too.â
âYes.â
âBut this cold wind will happen keep it off.â
âPerhaps it will.â
Here ended our colloquy. We crossed the valley, and began to ascend the
opposite hill. As we were toiling up, I looked back again; there was the
village spire, and the old grey parsonage beyond it, basking in a
slanting beam of sunshineâit was but a sickly ray, but the village and
surrounding hills were all in sombre shade, and I hailed the wandering
beam as a propitious omen to my home. With clasped hands I fervently
implored a blessing on its inhabitants, and hastily turned away; for I
saw the sunshine was departing; and I carefully avoided another glance,
lest I should see it in gloomy shadow, like the rest of the landscape.
CHAPTER IIâFIRST LESSONS IN THE ART OF INSTRUCTION
As we drove along, my spirits revived again, and I turned, with pleasure,
to the contemplation of the new life upon which I was entering. But
though it was not far past the middle of September, the heavy clouds and
strong north-easterly wind combined to render the day extremely cold and
dreary; and the journey seemed a very long one, for, as Smith observed,
the roads were âvery heavyâ; and certainly, his horse was very heavy too:
it crawled up the hills, and crept down them, and only condescended to
shake its sides in a trot where the road was at a dead level or a very
gentle slope, which was rarely the case in those rugged regions; so that
it was nearly one oâclock before we reached the place of our destination.
Yet, after all, when we entered the lofty iron gateway, when we drove
softly up the smooth, well-rolled carriage-road, with the green lawn on
each side, studded with young trees, and approached the new but stately
mansion of Wellwood, rising above its mushroom poplar-groves, my heart
failed me, and I wished it were a mile or two farther off. For the first
time in my life I must stand alone: there was no retreating now. I must
enter that house, and introduce myself among its strange inhabitants.
But how was it to be done? True, I was near nineteen; but, thanks to my
retired life and the protecting care of my mother and sister, I well knew
that many a girl of fifteen, or under, was gifted with a more womanly
address, and greater ease and self-possession, than I was. Yet, if Mrs.
Bloomfield were a kind, motherly woman, I might do very well, after all;
and the children, of course, I should soon be at ease with themâand Mr.
Bloomfield, I hoped, I should have but little to do with.
âBe calm, be calm, whatever happens,â I said within myself; and truly I
kept this resolution so well, and was so fully occupied in steadying my
nerves and stifling the rebellious flutter of my heart, that when I was
admitted into the hall and ushered into the presence of Mrs. Bloomfield,
I almost forgot to answer her polite salutation; and it afterwards struck
me, that the little I did say was spoken in the tone of one half-dead or
half-asleep. The lady, too, was somewhat chilly in her manner, as I
discovered when I had time to reflect. She was a tall, spare, stately
woman, with thick black hair, cold grey eyes, and extremely sallow
complexion.
With due politeness, however, she showed me my bedroom, and left me there
to take a little refreshment. I was somewhat dismayed at my appearance
on looking in the glass: the cold wind had swelled and reddened my hands,
uncurled and entangled my hair, and dyed my face of a pale purple; add to
this my collar was horridly crumpled, my frock splashed with mud, my feet
clad in stout new boots, and as the trunks were not brought up, there was
no remedy; so having smoothed my hair as well as I could, and repeatedly
twitched my obdurate collar, I proceeded to clomp down the two flights of
stairs, philosophizing as I went; and with some difficulty found my way
into the room where Mrs. Bloomfield awaited me.
She led me into the dining-room, where the family luncheon had been laid
out. Some beefsteaks and half-cold potatoes were set before me; and
while I dined upon these, she sat opposite, watching me (as I thought)
and endeavouring to sustain something like a conversationâconsisting
chiefly of a succession of commonplace remarks, expressed with frigid
formality: but this might be more my fault than hers, for I really could
_not_ converse. In fact, my attention was almost wholly absorbed in my
dinner: not from ravenous appetite, but from distress at the toughness of
the beefsteaks, and the numbness of my hands, almost palsied by their
five-hoursâ exposure to the bitter wind. I would gladly have eaten the
potatoes and let the meat alone, but having got a large piece of the
latter on to my plate, I could not be so impolite as to leave it; so,
after many awkward and unsuccessful attempts to cut it with the knife, or
tear it with the fork, or pull it asunder between them, sensible that the
awful lady was a spectator to the whole transaction, I at last
desperately grasped the knife and fork in my fists, like a child of two
years old, and fell to work with all the little strength I possessed.
But this needed some apologyâwith a feeble attempt at a laugh, I said,
âMy hands are so benumbed with the cold that I can scarcely handle my
knife and fork.â
âI daresay you would find it cold,â replied she with a cool, immutable
gravity that did not serve to reassure me.
When the ceremony was concluded, she led me into the sitting-room again,
where she rang and sent for the children.
âYou will find them not very far advanced in their attainments,â said
she, âfor I have had so little time to attend to their education myself,
and we have thought them too young for a governess till now; but I think
they are clever children, and very apt to learn, especially the little
boy; he is, I think, the flower of the flockâa generous, noble-spirited
boy, one to be led, but not driven, and remarkable for always speaking
the truth. He seems to scorn deceptionâ (this was good news). âHis
sister Mary Ann will require watching,â continued she, âbut she is a very
good girl upon the whole; though I wish her to be kept out of the nursery
as much as possible, as she is now almost six years old, and might
acquire bad habits from the nurses. I have ordered her crib to be placed
in your room, and if you will be so kind as to overlook her washing and
dressing, and take charge of her clothes, she need have nothing further
to do with the nursery maid.â
I replied I was quite willing to do so; and at that moment my young
pupils entered the apartment, with their two younger sisters. Master Tom
Bloomfield was a well-grown boy of seven, with a somewhat wiry frame,
flaxen hair, blue eyes, small turned-up nose, and fair complexion. Mary
Ann was a tall girl too, somewhat dark like her mother, but with a round
full face and a high colour in her cheeks. The second sister was Fanny,
a very pretty little girl; Mrs. Bloomfield assured me she was a
remarkably gentle child, and required encouragement: she had not learned
anything yet; but in a few days, she would be four years old, and then
she might take her first lesson in the alphabet, and be promoted to the
schoolroom. The remaining one was Harriet, a little broad, fat, merry,
playful thing of scarcely two, that I coveted more than all the restâbut
with her I had nothing to do.
I talked to my little pupils as well as I could, and tried to render
myself agreeable; but with little success I fear, for their motherâs
presence kept me under an unpleasant restraint. They, however, were
remarkably free from shyness. They seemed bold, lively children, and I
hoped I should soon be on friendly terms with themâthe little boy
especially, of whom I had heard such a favourable character from his
mamma. In Mary Ann there was a certain affected simper, and a craving
for notice, that I was sorry to observe. But her brother claimed all my
attention to himself; he stood bolt upright between me and the fire, with
his hands behind his back, talking away like an orator, occasionally
interrupting his discourse with a sharp reproof to his sisters when they
made too much noise.
âOh, Tom, what a darling you are!â exclaimed his mother. âCome and kiss
dear mamma; and then wonât you show Miss Grey your schoolroom, and your
nice new books?â
âI wonât kiss _you_, mamma; but I _will_ show Miss Grey my schoolroom,
and my new books.â
âAnd _my_ schoolroom, and _my_ new books, Tom,â said Mary Ann. âTheyâre
mine too.â
âTheyâre _mine_,â replied he decisively. âCome along, Miss GreyâIâll
escort you.â
When the room and books had been shown, with some bickerings between the
brother and sister that I did my utmost to appease or mitigate, Mary Ann
brought me her doll, and began to be very loquacious on the subject of
its fine clothes, its bed, its chest of drawers, and other appurtenances;
but Tom told her to hold her clamour, that Miss Grey might see his
rocking-horse, which, with a most important bustle, he dragged forth from
its corner into the middle of the room, loudly calling on me to attend to
it. Then, ordering his sister to hold the reins, he mounted, and made me
stand for ten minutes, watching how manfully he used his whip and spurs.
Meantime, however, I admired Mary Annâs pretty doll, and all its
possessions; and then told
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assist
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How many times does the word 'assist' appear in the text?
| 0
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book too, it will be your comfort on the way: these two
lines in it are worth a million, I have been young, and now am old; yet
never saw I the righteous man forsaken, or his seed begging their bread.
Let this be your consolation as you travel on. Go, my boy, whatever be
thy fortune let me see thee once a year; still keep a good heart, and
farewell.' As he was possest of integrity and honour, I was under no
apprehensions from throwing him naked into the amphitheatre of life; for
I knew he would act a good part whether vanquished or victorious. His
departure only prepared the way for our own, which arrived a few days
afterwards. The leaving a neighbourhood in which we had enjoyed so many
hours of tranquility, was not without a tear, which scarce fortitude
itself could suppress. Besides, a journey of seventy miles to a family
that had hitherto never been above ten from home, filled us with
apprehension, and the cries of the poor, who followed us for some miles,
contributed to encrease it. The first day's journey brought us in safety
within thirty miles of our future retreat, and we put up for the night
at an obscure inn in a village by the way. When we were shewn a room, I
desired the landlord, in my usual way, to let us have his company,
with which he complied, as what he drank would encrease the bill next
morning. He knew, however, the whole neighbourhood to which I was
removing, particularly 'Squire Thornhill, who was to be my landlord, and
who lived within a few miles of the place. This gentleman he described
as one who desired to know little more of the world than its pleasures,
being particularly remarkable for his attachment to the fair sex. He
observed that no virtue was able to resist his arts and assiduity, and
that scarce a farmer's daughter within ten miles round but what had
found him successful and faithless. Though this account gave me some
pain, it had a very different effect upon my daughters, whose features
seemed to brighten with the expectation of an approaching triumph, nor
was my wife less pleased and confident of their allurements and virtue.
While our thoughts were thus employed, the hostess entered the room to
inform her husband, that the strange gentleman, who had been two days in
the house, wanted money, and could not satisfy them for his reckoning.
'Want money!' replied the host, 'that must be impossible; for it was no
later than yesterday he paid three guineas to our beadle to spare an
old broken soldier that was to be whipped through the town for
dog-stealing.' The hostess, however, still persisting in her first
assertion, he was preparing to leave the room, swearing that he would be
satisfied one way or another, when I begged the landlord would introduce
me to a stranger of so much charity as he described. With this he
complied, shewing in a gentleman who seemed to be about thirty, drest in
cloaths that once were laced. His person was well formed, and his face
marked with the lines of thinking. He had something short and dry in his
address, and seemed not to understand ceremony, or to despise it. Upon
the landlord's leaving the room, I could not avoid expressing my concern
to the stranger at seeing a gentleman in such circumstances, and offered
him my purse to satisfy the present demand. 'I take it with all my
heart, Sir,' replied he, 'and am glad that a late oversight in giving
what money I had about me, has shewn me that there are still some men
like you. I must, however, previously entreat being informed of the
name and residence of my benefactor, in order to repay him as soon as
possible.' In this I satisfied him fully, not only mentioning my name
and late misfortunes, but the place to which I was going to remove.
'This,' cried he, 'happens still more luckily than I hoped for, as I
am going the same way myself, having been detained here two days by the
floods, which, I hope, by to-morrow will be found passable.' I testified
the pleasure I should have in his company, and my wife and daughters
joining in entreaty, he was prevailed upon to stay supper. The
stranger's conversation, which was at once pleasing and instructive,
induced me to wish for a continuance of it; but it was now high time to
retire and take refreshment against the fatigues of the following day.
The next morning we all set forward together: my family on horseback,
while Mr Burchell, our new companion, walked along the foot-path by
the road-side, observing, with a smile, that as we were ill mounted, he
would be too generous to attempt leaving us behind. As the floods
were not yet subsided, we were obliged to hire a guide, who trotted
on before, Mr Burchell and I bringing up the rear. We lightened the
fatigues of the road with philosophical disputes, which he seemed to
understand perfectly. But what surprised me most was, that though he was
a money-borrower, he defended his opinions with as much obstinacy as
if he had been my patron. He now and then also informed me to whom the
different seats belonged that lay in our view as we travelled the road.
'That,' cried he, pointing to a very magnificent house which stood at
some distance, 'belongs to Mr Thornhill, a young gentleman who enjoys a
large fortune, though entirely dependent on the will of his uncle,
Sir William Thornhill, a gentleman, who content with a little himself,
permits his nephew to enjoy the rest, and chiefly resides in town.'
'What!' cried I, 'is my young landlord then the nephew of a man whose
virtues, generosity, and singularities are so universally known? I have
heard Sir William Thornhill represented as one of the most generous,
yet whimsical, men in the kingdom; a man of consumate
benevolence'--'Something, perhaps, too much so,' replied Mr Burchell,
'at least he carried benevolence to an excess when young; for his
passions were then strong, and as they all were upon the side of virtue,
they led it up to a romantic extreme. He early began to aim at the
qualifications of the soldier and scholar; was soon distinguished in
the army and had some reputation among men of learning. Adulation
ever follows the ambitious; for such alone receive most pleasure from
flattery. He was surrounded with crowds, who shewed him only one side of
their character; so that he began to lose a regard for private interest
in universal sympathy. He loved all mankind; for fortune prevented him
from knowing that there were rascals. Physicians tell us of a disorder
in which the whole body is so exquisitely sensible, that the slightest
touch gives pain: what some have thus suffered in their persons, this
gentleman felt in his mind. The slightest distress, whether real or
fictitious, touched him to the quick, and his soul laboured under a
sickly sensibility of the miseries of others. Thus disposed to relieve,
it will be easily conjectured, he found numbers disposed to solicit: his
profusions began to impair his fortune, but not his good-nature; that,
indeed, was seen to encrease as the other seemed to decay: he grew
improvident as he grew poor; and though he talked like a man of sense,
his actions were those of a fool. Still, however, being surrounded with
importunity, and no longer able to satisfy every request that was made
him, instead of money he gave promises. They were all he had to bestow,
and he had not resolution enough to give any man pain by a denial.
By this he drew round him crowds of dependants, whom he was sure to
disappoint; yet wished to relieve. These hung upon him for a time, and
left him with merited reproaches and contempt. But in proportion as he
became contemptable to others, he became despicable to himself. His mind
had leaned upon their adulation, and that support taken away, he could
find no pleasure in the applause of his heart, which he had never
learnt to reverence. The world now began to wear a different aspect;
the flattery of his friends began to dwindle into simple approbation.
Approbation soon took the more friendly form of advice, and advice when
rejected produced their reproaches. He now, therefore found that such
friends as benefits had gathered round him, were little estimable: he
now found that a man's own heart must be ever given to gain that of
another. I now found, that--that--I forget what I was going to observe:
in short, sir, he resolved to respect himself, and laid down a plan of
restoring his falling fortune. For this purpose, in his own whimsical
manner he travelled through Europe on foot, and now, though he has
scarce attained the age of thirty, his circumstances are more affluent
than ever. At present, his bounties are more rational and moderate than
before; but still he preserves the character of an humourist, and finds
most pleasure in eccentric virtues.'
My attention was so much taken up by Mr Burchell's account, that I
scarce looked forward as we went along, til we were alarmed by the cries
of my family, when turning, I perceived my youngest daughter in the
midst of a rapid stream, thrown from her horse, and struggling with the
torrent. She had sunk twice, nor was it in my power to disengage myself
in time to bring her relief. My sensations were even too violent to
permit my attempting her rescue: she must have certainly perished had
not my companion, perceiving her danger, instantly plunged in to her
relief, and with some difficulty, brought her in safety to the opposite
shore. By taking the current a little farther up, the rest of the
family got safely over; where we had an opportunity of joining our
acknowledgments to her's. Her gratitude may be more readily imagined
than described: she thanked her deliverer more with looks than words,
and continued to lean upon his arm, as if still willing to receive
assistance. My wife also hoped one day to have the pleasure of returning
his kindness at her own house. Thus, after we were refreshed at the next
inn, and had dined together, as Mr Burchell was going to a different
part of the country, he took leave; and we pursued our journey. My wife
observing as we went, that she liked him extremely, and protesting, that
if he had birth and fortune to entitle him to match into such a family
as our's, she knew no man she would sooner fix upon. I could not but
smile to hear her talk in this lofty strain: but I was never much
displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more
happy.
CHAPTER 4
A proof that even the humblest fortune may grant happiness,
which depends not on circumstance, but constitution
The place of our retreat was in a little neighbourhood, consisting
of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to
opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniencies of life
within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of
superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primaeval
simplicity of manners, and frugal by habit, they scarce knew that
temperance was a virtue. They wrought with cheerfulness on days of
labour; but observed festivals as intervals of idleness and pleasure.
They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true love-knots on Valentine
morning, eat pancakes on Shrove-tide, shewed their wit on the first of
April, and religiously cracked nuts on Michaelmas eve. Being apprized of
our approach, the whole neighbourhood came out to meet their minister,
drest in their finest cloaths, and preceded by a pipe and tabor: A feast
also was provided for our reception, at which we sat cheerfully down;
and what the conversation wanted in wit, was made up in laughter.
Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill,
sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a pratling river
before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of
about twenty acres of excellent land, having given an hundred pound
for my predecessor's good-will. Nothing could exceed the neatness of my
little enclosures: the elms and hedge rows appearing with inexpressible
beauty. My house consisted of but one story, and was covered with
thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness; the walls on the inside
were nicely white-washed, and my daughters undertook to adorn them with
pictures of their own designing. Though the same room served us for
parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides, as it was
kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers, being
well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye
was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture. There were
three other apartments, one for my wife and me, another for our two
daughters, within our own, and the third, with two beds, for the rest of
the children.
The little republic to which I gave laws, was regulated in the following
manner: by sun-rise we all assembled in our common appartment; the fire
being previously kindled by the servant. After we had saluted each
other with proper ceremony, for I always thought fit to keep up some
mechanical forms of good breeding, without which freedom ever destroys
friendship, we all bent in gratitude to that Being who gave us another
day. This duty being performed, my son and I went to pursue our usual
industry abroad, while my wife and daughters employed themselves in
providing breakfast, which was always ready at a certain time. I allowed
half an hour for this meal, and an hour for dinner; which time was taken
up in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical
arguments between my son and me.
As we rose with the sun, so we never pursued our labours after it was
gone down, but returned home to the expecting family; where smiling
looks, a treat hearth, and pleasant fire, were prepared for our
reception. Nor were we without guests: sometimes farmer Flamborough, our
talkative neighbour, and often the blind piper, would pay us a visit,
and taste our gooseberry wine; for the making of which we had lost
neither the receipt nor the reputation. These harmless people had
several ways of being good company, while one played, the other would
sing some soothing ballad, Johnny Armstrong's last good night, or the
cruelty of Barbara Allen. The night was concluded in the manner we began
the morning, my youngest boys being appointed to read the lessons of
the day, and he that read loudest, distinctest, and best, was to have an
half-penny on Sunday to put in the poor's box.
When Sunday came, it was indeed a day of finery, which all my sumptuary
edicts could not restrain. How well so ever I fancied my lectures
against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters; yet I still
found them secretly attached to all their former finery: they still
loved laces, ribbands, bugles and catgut; my wife herself retained a
passion for her crimson paduasoy, because I formerly happened to say it
became her.
The first Sunday in particular their behaviour served to mortify me: I
had desired my girls the preceding night to be drest early the next day;
for I always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of the
congregation. They punctually obeyed my directions; but when we were to
assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife and daughters,
drest out in all their former splendour: their hair plaistered up with
pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up into an
heap behind, and rustling at every motion. I could not help smiling at
their vanity, particularly that of my wife, from whom I expected more
discretion. In this exigence, therefore, my only resource was to order
my son, with an important air, to call our coach. The girls were
amazed at the command; but I repeated it with more solemnity than
before.--'Surely, my dear, you jest,' cried my wife, 'we can walk it
perfectly well: we want no coach to carry us now.' 'You mistake, child,'
returned I, 'we do want a coach; for if we walk to church in this trim,
the very children in the parish will hoot after us.'--'Indeed,' replied
my wife, 'I always imagined that my Charles was fond of seeing his
children neat and handsome about him.'--'You may be as neat as you
please,' interrupted I, 'and I shall love you the better for it, but all
this is not neatness, but frippery. These rufflings, and pinkings,
and patchings, will only make us hated by all the wives of all our
neighbours. No, my children,' continued I, more gravely, 'those gowns
may be altered into something of a plainer cut; for finery is very
unbecoming in us, who want the means of decency. I do not know whether
such flouncing and shredding is becoming even in the rich, if we
consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the
indigent world may be cloathed from the trimmings of the vain.'
This remonstrance had the proper effect; they went with great composure,
that very instant, to change their dress; and the next day I had the
satisfaction of finding my daughters, at their own request employed in
cutting up their trains into Sunday waistcoats for Dick and Bill, the
two little ones, and what was still more satisfactory, the gowns seemed
improved by this curtailing.
CHAPTER 5
A new and great acquaintance introduced. What we place most
hopes upon, generally proves most fatal
At a small distance from the house my predecessor had made a seat,
overshaded by an hedge of hawthorn and honeysuckle. Here, when the
weather was fine, and our labour soon finished, we usually sate
together, to enjoy an extensive landscape, in the calm of the evening.
Here too we drank tea, which now was become an occasional banquet; and
as we had it but seldom, it diffused a new joy, the preparations for
it being made with no small share of bustle and ceremony. On these
occasions, our two little ones always read for us, and they were
regularly served after we had done. Sometimes, to give a variety to our
amusements, the girls sung to the guitar; and while they thus formed a
little concert, my wife and I would stroll down the sloping field, that
was embellished with blue bells and centaury, talk of our children with
rapture, and enjoy the breeze that wafted both health and harmony.
In this manner we began to find that every situation in life might bring
its own peculiar pleasures: every morning waked us to a repetition of
toil; but the evening repaid it with vacant hilarity.
It was about the beginning of autumn, on a holiday, for I kept such as
intervals of relaxation from labour, that I had drawn out my family to
our usual place
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residence
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How many times does the word 'residence' appear in the text?
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</b> What's the price for a smile round here?
They head for the elevator. Reed carries a small, black box.
As they enter the elevator, steel doors shut and we CUT TO --
<b> INT. VON DOOM INDUSTRIES TOWER - OFFICE - DAY
</b>
A large, dark office. Ben in the corner. He yawns,
watches...
BRIGHT HOLOGRAMS: Stars. Planets. They hover in the air,
making the room feel like a majestic portal into outer space.
<b> REED (O.S.)
</b> My research suggests that exposure to
a high-energy cosmic storm born on
solar winds might have triggered the
evolution of early planetary life.
REED stands among the holograms, speaking to a MYSTERIOUS
FIGURE in shadow behind a desk. An ominous, PULSATING RED
CLOUD covers the stars. It washes over a hologram of EARTH.
<b> REED (CONT'D)
</b> In six weeks another cloud with the
same elemental profile will pass
Earth's orbit. A study in space could
advance our knowledge about the
structure of the human genome, and
help cure countless diseases, extend
human life --
The SHADOW clears his throat. Reed speeds up, emotional.
<b> REED (CONT'D)
</b> Give kids the chance to be stronger,
healthier, less prone to --
<b> SHADOWED FIGURE
</b> Turn it off. Please.
The figure's DEEP VOICE pierces the darkness.
<b> REED
</b> But I haven't fully explained my --
<b> SHADOWED FIGURE
</b> Yes you have... Imagination.
Creativity. Passion. Those were
always your trademarks.
Lights brighten, revealing the face behind the voice: VICTOR
VON DOOM. 35, handsome, commanding. He looks almost...
airbrushed. He drops a WIRED magazine to the desk. REED is
on the cover over the words: RICHARDS BANKRUPT, GRANT
<b> CUTBACKS.
</b>
<b> VICTOR
</b> But dreams don't pay the bills, do
they?
(a condescending smile)
Same old Reed, the hopeless optimist.
Still reaching for the stars, with the
world on your back.
<b> REED
</b> You remember in school we talked about
working together. That's what I was
about to explain...
Reed presses the remote. Another hologram appears: A SHUTTLE
slowly approaching AN ORBITING SPACE STATION. Both bear the
VON DOOM INDUSTRIES logo. Victor smiles, more intrigued.
<b> VICTOR
</b> So it's not my money you want. It's
my toys... Tell me: if NASA doesn't
trust you, why should I?
Victor is a step ahead. Reed pauses, thrown for a beat. Ben
wakes up, suspicious. Victor notices. He notices
everything.
<b> VICTOR (CONT'D)
</b> That's my job. To stay a step ahead.
To know what other men don't.
Ben gets close to Reed, turning toward the door.
<b> BEN
</b> I can't take this.
<b> REED
</b> (low, quiet)
Ben. This is business. Just work.
<b>
</b> A beat. Victor cracks a smile, enjoying the tension. And...
<b> SUE (O.S.)
</b> He's right, Ben.
They turn to see...SUE STORM (demure, stunning) standing in a
corner...possibly for the whole presentation. A little cold:
<b> SUE (CONT'D)
</b> It's just business.
<b> VICTOR
</b> I think you both know my Director of
Genetic Research, Susan Storm.
<b> BEN
</b> Heya Susie.
(under breath, to Reed)
One more thing he's got.
Sue gracefully walks into the office, only taking her eyes
off of Reed to give Ben a warm hug.
<b> SUE
</b> Ben, it's been too long.
She gives Reed a polite handshake. Victor watches carefully.
Reed looks uncomfortable in her gaze. A little tongue-tied.
<b> REED
</b> You're, you've, I mean, how have you
bee--
<b> SUE
</b> Never better.
Victor sizes them up. He puts a hand on Sue's shoulder.
<b> VICTOR
</b> This isn't going to be a problem, is
it?
<b> REED
</b> Not at all.
<b> SUE
</b> Ancient history.
Victor smiles, eyeing Sue.
<b> VICTOR
</b> Good. Then you're just in time to
hear the great Reed Richards ask me
for help.
(to Reed)
You know, you made a lot of folks at
MIT feel like a junior high science
fair. So you'll excuse me if I savor
the moment.
Ben tightens. A hard beat. Reed sucks it up.
<b> REED
</b> You back this mission, and I'll sign
over a fair percentage of any
applications or --
<b> VICTOR
</b> The number's seventy-five. And it's
applications and patents.
<b> BEN
</b> What about his first born?
<b> REED
</b> (quiet)
|
round
|
How many times does the word 'round' appear in the text?
| 0
|
RAMIUS
</b> Quiet as grass, Vastly. Quiet as grass.
(louder, turning)
Good morning, Comrade political off=er
<b> IVAN YURIEVICH PUTIN
</b> block-faced, forties, pink-necked, political officer assigned to Red
October, clambers through the hatch into the air, wheezing:
<b> PUTIN
</b> Ah,, Captain, every time I climb that
ladder, I realize what an over-fed
ox rve become.
Put in smiles. Ramius smiles back, but his eyes are cold. Suddenly,
there's not a lot of Lave on the bridge:
<b> PUTIN (CONT'D)
</b>
<b> (EXPANSIVELY)
</b> Such a glorious day. So exciting to
h t ally put the land behind us and
be on our way.
<b> (TO RAMIUS)
</b> Bourgeois of me, I know, but my
enthusiasm at being chosen polidcica].
officer on this historic mission Its
me with pride.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> Me, a man of such humble birth, whose
father was only a mill. worker. Think
of it, comrades, a mill worker.
Borodin CHUCKLES. Putin stares at him. Borodin covers with a
COUGH. Putin keeps starring. Flushed, Borodin looks away. Putin
turns porcine eyes on Ramius:
<b> PUTIN (CONT'D)
</b>
<b> (TURNING)
</b> Your father was a Lithuanian, was
he not, Captain?
<b> RAMIUS
</b> You know he was.
<b> PU TIN
</b> I knew a Lithuanian once...
His words hang like rotten fru
<b> PUTIN (CONT'D)
</b> ...though I'm sure your father was
nothing like him. Pefmisrdon to go
below?
Smirking, Putin leaves. Ramius watches him go. SPEAKERS in the
<b> SAI :
</b>
<b> HELMSMAN (VO)
</b> Conn to bridge, sonar reports we are
crossing sixty fathoms.
<b> BORODIN
</b> it's time, Captain.
St M dealing with Putin's exit, Ramius turns away from the hatch,
contemplating the shore. After a beat, softly:.
<b> RAMIUS
</b> We go.
<b> BORO DIN
</b> (into the headset)
Clear the bridge! Prepare to dive.
Captain coming below. Of cer of
the deck, make signal to escort:.
Ramius and. Borodin disappear. Red October prepares to dive. All
that remains is icy .sea and the Sand. Then, faintly at first, from
the frozen coast:
<b> A RED ARMY CHORUS
</b> rises into the swirling sky. It seems to come from everywhere, the
rocks, the trees, the sea itself. Red October dives. The screen
fades to black and a giant title appears:
<b> KRASNY OKTOBR
</b>
<b> THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER
</b> CHORUS BOOMS. Male VOICES ring in thundering tribute to the
heart and soul of mother Russia. Credits keep rolling. Then, from
<b> THE DARKNESS
</b>
<b> A LITHOGRAPH
</b> of John Paul Jones fighting the Serapis appears. It's on the wall. in
a cluttered study. Books crowd every bit of space. Photos, models
and nautical memorabilia, everywhere.
<b> THROUGH A WINDOW
</b> an English suburb in drizzling rain. Red Army CHORUS SINGS
SOFTLY. In a driveway, a late model ROVER waits, lights on,
engine running. At a messy desk
<b> JACK RYAN
</b> early-thirties, good-Looking, disheveled and harried, stuffs papers
into a brief case. Slamming it shut, he reaches for his raincoat.
<b> BEHIND HIM
</b>
<b> A LITTLE GIRL
</b> appears in the doorway. Her name is Sally. She's Ryan's
daughter. Wearing a nightgown with butterflies on it, she's
carrying a well-worn Koala bear:
<b> SALLY
</b> Daddy?
<b> RYAN
</b>
<b> (TURNING)
</b> Hey.., What are you doing up?
You're suppose to be sleeping.
<b> SALLY
</b> I can't.
Kneeing beside: her, Ryan talks in a steady unpatronizing way. He
loves her to death:
<b> RYAN
</b> What's the matter?
<b> SALLY
</b> Where are you going?
<b> RYAN
</b> I have to go on a business trip and you
have to go to sleep or when you grow up
you'll only be two inches tall.
<b> SALLY
</b> Stanley keeps waking me up.
Stanley is Sally's bear. Ryan talks to it like it was alive.
it makes Sally grin.
<b> RYAN
</b> What's the matter, Stanley? Are you
nuts or something?
<b> SALLY
</b> He's not, nuts. He's lonely.
<b> (SLYLY)
</b> He needs a brother. If he had a brother
then he could go to sleep better.
Before Ryan can answer, a ravishing woman in her ..late-twenties
marches into the study. She is
<b> MARGARET RYAN
</b> English, intelligent features, in tweed suit and raincoat. A matronly
woman hovers in the doorway behind her:
<b> MARGARET
</b> We are never going to make it.
<b> RYAN
</b> Just a minute. -
<b> (TN SALLY)
</b> Daddy has to go, cricket. You and
Stanley go upstairs with Mrs. Wheeler
and go straight to sleep. When I'm
away, I'll see if I can find Stanley
a brother.
<b> SALLY
</b> Promise?
<b> RYAN
</b>
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> THE ROVER
</b> pulling to a curb in driving rain at Heathrow. Red Army CHORUS
SWELLS. Leaping out, Ryan grabs luggage and races to the
driver's side. Margaret pulls his face through the window.
<b> RYAN
</b> I'm all wet.
<b> MARGARET
</b>
<b> (KISSING HIM)
</b> You're sexy when you're wet.
<b> RYAN
</b>
<b> (GRINNING)
</b> I'm gonna miss you.
<b> MARGARET
</b> Get out of here, Yank. Or Ml
tear you limb from limb.
<b> (HE STARTS)
</b> Wait! I got you these. They'Il
help you sleep on the plane.
She has a bottle of piUs in her hand. He squints at it, shaking his
head in the pouring rain:
<b> RYAN
</b> Won't do me any good ---
<b> MARGARET
</b> Jack.
<b>
|
miss
|
How many times does the word 'miss' appear in the text?
| 0
|
see Dan settled somewhere. "A rolling stone gathers no moss",
and at twenty-five he is still roaming about the world without a tie to
hold him, except this'; and Mrs Meg nodded towards her sister.
'Dan will find his place at last, and experience is his best teacher.
He is rough still, but each time he comes home I see a change for the
better, and never lose my faith in him. He may never do anything great,
or get rich; but if the wild boy makes an honest man, I'm satisfied,'
said Mrs Jo, who always defended the black sheep of her flock.
'That's right, mother, stand by Dan! He's worth a dozen Jacks and Neds
bragging about money and trying to be swells. You see if he doesn't do
something to be proud of and take the wind out of their sails,'
added Ted, whose love for his 'Danny' was now strengthened by a boy's
admiration for the bold, adventurous man.
'Hope so, I'm sure. He's just the fellow to do rash things and come
to glory--climbing the Matterhorn, taking a "header" into Niagara, or
finding a big nugget. That's his way of sowing wild oats, and perhaps
it's better than ours,' said Tom thoughtfully; for he had gained a good
deal of experience in that sort of agriculture since he became a medical
student.
'Much better!' said Mrs Jo emphatically. 'I'd rather send my boys off
to see the world in that way than leave them alone in a city full of
temptations, with nothing to do but waste time, money, and health, as
so many are left. Dan has to work his way, and that teaches him courage,
patience, and self-reliance. I don't worry about him as much as I do
about George and Dolly at college, no more fit than two babies to take
care of themselves.'
'How about John? He's knocking round town as a newspaper man, reporting
all sorts of things, from sermons to prize-fights,' asked Tom, who
thought that sort of life would be much more to his own taste than
medical lectures and hospital wards.
'Demi has three safeguards--good principles, refined tastes, and a wise
mother. He won't come to harm, and these experiences will be useful to
him when he begins to write, as I'm sure he will in time,' began Mrs
Jo in her prophetic tone; for she was anxious to have some of her geese
turn out swans.
'Speak of Jenkins, and you'll hear the rustling of his paper,' cried
Tom, as a fresh-faced, brown-eyed young man came up the avenue, waving a
newspaper over his head.
'Here's your Evening Tattler! Latest Edition! Awful murder! Bank clerk
absconded! Powder-mill explosion, and great strike of the Latin School
boys!' roared Ted, going to meet his cousin with the graceful gait of a
young giraffe.
'The Commodore is in, and will cut his cable and run before the wind
as soon as he can get off,' called Demi, with 'a nice derangement of
nautical epitaphs', as he came up smiling over his good news.
Everyone talked together for a moment, and the paper passed from hand to
hand that each eye might rest on the pleasant fact that the Brenda, from
Hamburg, was safe in port.
'He'll come lurching out by tomorrow with his usual collection of marine
monsters and lively yarns. I saw him, jolly and tarry and brown as a
coffee-berry. Had a good run, and hopes to be second mate, as the other
chap is laid up with a broken leg,' added Demi.
'Wish I had the setting of it,' said Nan to herself, with a professional
twist of her hand.
'How's Franz?' asked Mrs Jo.
'He's going to be married! There's news for you. The first of the
flock, Aunty, so say good-bye to him. Her name is Ludmilla Heldegard
Blumenthal; good family, well-off, pretty, and of course an angel. The
dear old boy wants Uncle's consent, and then he will settle down to be a
happy and an honest burgher. Long life to him!'
'I'm glad to hear it. I do so like to settle my boys with a good wife
and a nice little home. Now, if all is right, I shall feel as if Franz
was off my mind,' said Mrs Jo, folding her hands contentedly; for she
often felt like a distracted hen with a large brood of mixed chickens
and ducks upon her hands.
'So do I,' sighed Tom, with a sly glance at Nan. 'That's what a fellow
needs to keep him steady; and it's the duty of nice girls to marry as
soon as possible, isn't it, Demi?'
'If there are enough nice fellows to go round. The female population
exceeds the male, you know, especially in New England; which accounts
for the high state of culture we are in, perhaps,' answered John, who
was leaning over his mother's chair, telling his day's experiences in a
whisper.
'It is a merciful provision, my dears; for it takes three or four women
to get each man into, through, and out of the world. You are costly
creatures, boys; and it is well that mothers, sisters, wives, and
daughters love their duty and do it so well, or you would perish off the
face of the earth,' said Mrs Jo solemnly, as she took up a basket filled
with dilapidated hose; for the good Professor was still hard on his
socks, and his sons resembled him in that respect.
'Such being the case, there is plenty for the "superfluous women" to do,
in taking care of these helpless men and their families. I see that more
clearly every day, and am very glad and grateful that my profession will
make me a useful, happy, and independent spinster.'
Nan's emphasis on the last word caused Tom to groan, and the rest to
laugh.
'I take great pride and solid satisfaction in you, Nan, and hope to
see you very successful; for we do need just such helpful women in the
world. I sometimes feel as if I've missed my vocation and ought to
have remained single; but my duty seemed to point this way, and I don't
regret it,' said Mrs Jo, folding a large and very ragged blue sock to
her bosom.
'Neither do I. What should I ever have done without my dearest Mum?'
added Ted, with a filial hug which caused both to disappear behind the
newspaper in which he had been mercifully absorbed for a few minutes.
'My darling boy, if you would wash your hands semi-occasionally, fond
caresses would be less disastrous to my collar. Never mind, my precious
touslehead, better grass stains and dirt than no cuddlings at all'; and
Mrs Jo emerged from that brief eclipse looking much refreshed, though
her back hair was caught in Ted's buttons and her collar under one ear.
Here Josie, who had been studying her part at the other end of the
piazza, suddenly burst forth with a smothered shriek, and gave Juliet's
speech in the tomb so effectively that the boys applauded, Daisy
shivered, and Nan murmured: 'Too much cerebral excitement for one of her
age.'
'I'm afraid you'll have to make up your mind to it, Meg. That child is
a born actress. We never did anything so well, not even the Witch's
Curse,' said Mrs Jo, casting a bouquet of many-coloured socks at the
feet of her flushed and panting niece, when she fell gracefully upon the
door-mat.
'It is a sort of judgement upon me for my passion for the stage when a
girl. Now I know how dear Marmee felt when I begged to be an actress. I
never can consent, and yet I may be obliged to give up my wishes, hopes,
and plans again.'
There was an accent of reproach in his mother's voice, which made Demi
pick up his sister with a gentle shake, and the stern command to 'drop
that nonsense in public'.
'Drop me, Minion, or I'll give you the Maniac Bride, with my best
Ha-ha!' cried Josie, glaring at him like an offended kitten. Being set
on her feet, she made a splendid courtesy, and dramatically proclaiming,
'Mrs Woffington's carriage waits,' swept down the steps and round the
corner, trailing Daisy's scarlet shawl majestically behind her.
'Isn't she great fun? I couldn't stop in this dull place if I hadn't
that child to make it lively for me. If ever she turns prim, I'm off; so
mind how you nip her in the bud,' said Teddy, frowning at Demi, who was
now writing out shorthand notes on the steps.
'You two are a team, and it takes a strong hand to drive you, but I
rather like it. Josie ought to have been my child, and Rob yours, Meg.
Then your house would have been all peace and mine all Bedlam. Now I
must go and tell Laurie the news. Come with me, Meg, a little stroll
will do us good'; and sticking Ted's straw hat on her head, Mrs Jo
walked off with her sister, leaving Daisy to attend to the muffins, Ted
to appease Josie, and Tom and Nan to give their respective patients a
very bad quarter of an hour.
Chapter 2. PARNASSUS
It was well named; and the Muses seemed to be at home that day, for as
the newcomers went up the slope appropriate sights and sounds greeted
them. Passing an open window, they looked in upon a library presided
over by Clio, Calliope, and Urania; Melpomene and Thalia were disporting
themselves in the hall, where some young people were dancing and
rehearsing a play; Erato was walking in the garden with her lover, and
in the music-room Phoebus himself was drilling a tuneful choir.
A mature Apollo was our old friend Laurie, but comely and genial as
ever; for time had ripened the freakish boy into a noble man. Care and
sorrow, as well as ease and happiness, had done much for him; and the
responsibility of carrying out his grandfather's wishes had been a
duty most faithfully performed. Prosperity suits some people, and they
blossom best in a glow of sunshine; others need the shade, and are the
sweeter for a touch of frost. Laurie was one of the former sort, and
Amy was another; so life had been a kind of poem to them since they
married--not only harmonious and happy, but earnest, useful, and rich in
the beautiful benevolence which can do so much when wealth and wisdom go
hand in hand with charity. Their house was full of unostentatious beauty
and comfort, and here the art-loving host and hostess attracted and
entertained artists of all kinds. Laurie had music enough now, and was a
generous patron to the class he most liked to help. Amy had her proteges
among ambitious young painters and sculptors, and found her own art
double dear as her daughter grew old enough to share its labours and
delights with her; for she was one of those who prove that women can be
faithful wives and mothers without sacrificing the special gift bestowed
upon them for their own development and the good of others.
Her sisters knew where to find her, and Jo went at once to the studio,
where mother and daughter worked together. Bess was busy with the bust
of a little child, while her mother added the last touches to a fine
head of her husband. Time seemed to have stood still with Amy, for
happiness had kept her young and prosperity given her the culture she
needed. A stately, graceful woman, who showed how elegant simplicity
could be made by the taste with which she chose her dress and the grace
with which she wore it. As someone said: 'I never know what Mrs Laurence
has on, but I always receive the impression that she is the best-dressed
lady in the room.'
It was evident that she adored her daughter, and well she might; for
the beauty she had longed for seemed, to her fond eyes at least, to
be impersonated in this younger self. Bess inherited her mother's
Diana-like figure, blue eyes, fair skin, and golden hair, tied up in
the same classic knot of curls. Also--ah! never-ending source of joy to
Amy--she had her father's handsome nose and mouth, cast in a feminine
mould. The severe simplicity of a long linen pinafore suited her;
and she worked away with the entire absorption of the true artist,
unconscious of the loving eyes upon her, till Aunt Jo came in exclaiming
eagerly:
'My dear girls, stop your mud-pies and hear the news!'
Both artists dropped their tools and greeted the irrepressible woman
cordially, though genius had been burning splendidly and her coming
spoilt a precious hour. They were in the full tide of gossip when
Laurie, who had been summoned by Meg, arrived, and sitting down between
the sisters, with no barricade anywhere, listened with interest to the
news of Franz and Emil.
'The epidemic has broke out, and now it will rage and ravage your flock.
Be prepared for every sort of romance and rashness for the next ten
years, Jo. Your boys are growing up and will plunge headlong into a sea
of worse scrapes than any you have had yet,' said Laurie, enjoying her
look of mingled delight and despair.
'I know it, and I hope I shall be able to pull them through and land
them safely; but it's an awful responsibility, for they will come to me
and insist that I can make their poor little loves run smoothly. I
like it, though, and Meg is such a mush of sentiment she revels in the
prospect,' answered Jo, feeling pretty easy about her own boys, whose
youth made them safe for the present.
'I'm afraid she won't revel when our Nat begins to buzz too near her
Daisy. Of course you see what all that means? As musical director I am
also his confidante, and would like to know what advice to give,' said
Laurie soberly. 'Hush! you forget that child,' began Jo, nodding towards
Bess, who was at work again.
'Bless you! she's in Athens, and doesn't hear a word. She ought to leave
off, though, and go out. My darling, put the baby to sleep, and go for
a run. Aunt Meg is in the parlour; go and show her the new pictures till
we come,' added Laurie, looking at his tall girl as Pygmalion might have
looked at Galatea; for he considered her the finest statue in the house.
'Yes, papa; but please tell me if it is good'; and Bess obediently put
down her tools, with a lingering glance at the bust.
'My cherished daughter, truth compels me to confess that one cheek is
plumper than the other; and the curls upon its infant brow are rather
too much like horns for perfect grace; otherwise it rivals Raphael's
Chanting Cherubs, and I'm proud of it.'
Laurie was laughing as he spoke; for these first attempts were so like
Amy's early ones, it was impossible to regard them as soberly as the
enthusiastic mamma did.
'You can't see beauty in anything but music,' answered Bess, shaking the
golden head that made the one bright spot in the cool north lights of
the great studio.
'Well, I see beauty in you, dear. And if you are not art, what is? I
wish to put a little more nature into you, and get you away from this
cold clay and marble into the sunshine, to dance and laugh as the
others do. I want a flesh-and-blood girl, not a sweet statue in a grey
pinafore, who forgets everything but her work.' As he spoke, two dusty
hands came round his neck, and Bess said earnestly, punctuating her
words with soft touches of her lips:
'I never forget you, papa; but I do want to do something beautiful that
you may be proud of me by and by. Mamma often tells me to stop; but when
we get in here we forget there is any world outside, we are so busy and
so happy. Now I'll go and run and sing, and be a girl to please you.'
And throwing away the apron, Bess vanished from the room, seeming to
take all the light with her.
'I'm glad you said that. The dear child is too much absorbed in her
artistic dreams for one so young. It is my fault; but I sympathize so
deeply in it all, I forget to be wise,' sighed Amy, carefully covering
the baby with a wet towel.
'I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest
things in the world; but I try to remember what Marmee once said to
Meg--that fathers should have their share in the education of both girls
and boys; so I leave Ted to his father all I can, and Fritz lends me
Rob, whose quiet ways are as restful and good for me as Ted's tempests
are for his father. Now I advise you, Amy, to let Bess drop the mud-pies
for a time, and take up music with Laurie; then she won't be one-sided,
and he won't be jealous.'
'Hear, hear! A Daniel--a very Daniel!' cried Laurie, well pleased. 'I
thought you'd lend a hand, Jo, and say a word for me. I am a little
jealous of Amy, and want more of a share in my girl. Come, my lady, let
me have her this summer, and next year, when we go to Rome, I'll give
her up to you and high art. Isn't that a fair bargain?'
'I agree; but in trying your hobby, nature, with music thrown in, don't
forget that, though only fifteen, our Bess is older than most girls of
that age, and cannot be treated like a child. She is so very precious
to me, I feel as if I wanted to keep her always as pure and beautiful as
the marble she loves so well.'
Amy spoke regretfully as she looked about the lovely room where she had
spent so many happy hours with this dear child of hers.
'"Turn and turn about is fair play", as we used to say when we all
wanted to ride on Ellen Tree or wear the russet boots,' said Jo briskly;
'so you must share your girl between you, and see who will do the most
for her.'
'We will,' answered the fond parents, laughing at the recollections Jo's
proverb brought up to them.
'How I did use to enjoy bouncing on the limbs of that old apple-tree!
No real horse ever gave me half the pleasure or the exercise,' said Amy,
looking out of the high window as if she saw the dear old orchard again
and the little girls at play there.
'And what fun I
|
greeted
|
How many times does the word 'greeted' appear in the text?
| 1
|
handle one little
girl.
Agent Smith nods to Agent Brown as they start toward the
hotel.
<b> LIEUTENANT
</b> I sent two units. They're
bringing her down now.
<b> AGENT SMITH
</b> No, Lieutenant, your men are dead.
<b> INT. CHASE HOTEL
</b>
The Big Cop flicks out his cuffs, the other cops holding
a bead. They've done this a hundred times, they know
they've got her, until the Big Cop reaches with the cuff
and Trinity moves --
It almost doesn't register, so smooth and fast, inhumanly
fast.
The eye blinks and Trinity's palm. snaps up and the nose
explodes, blood erupting. The cop is dead before he
begins to fall.
And Trinity is moving again --
Seizing a wrist, misdirecting a gun, as a startled cop
<b> FIRES --
</b>
A head explodes.
In blind panic, another airs his gun, the barrel, a fixed
black hole --
And FIRES --
Trinity twists out of the way, the bullet missing as she
reverses into a roundhouse kick, knocking the gun away.
The cop begins to scream when a jump kick crushes his
windpipe, killing the scream as he falls to the ground.
She looks at the four bodies.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Shit.
<b> EXT. CHASE HOTEL
</b>
Agent Brown enters the hotel, while Agent Smith heads for
the alley.
<b> INT. CHASE HOTEL
</b>
Trinity is on the phone, pacing. The other end is
answered.
<b> MAN (V.O.)
</b> Operator.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Morpheus! The link was traced! I
don't know how.
<b> MORPHEUS (V.O.)
</b> I know. Stay calm.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Are there any agents?
<b> MORPHEUS (V.O.)
</b> Yes.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Goddamnit!
<b> MORPHEUS (V.O.)
</b> You have to focus. There is a
phone. Wells and Laxe. You can
make it.
She takes a deep breath, centering herself.
<b> TRINITY
</b> All right --
<b> MORPHEUS (V.O.)
</b> Go.
She drops the phone.
<b> INT. HALL
</b>
She bursts out of the room as Agent Brown enters the hall,
leading another unit of police. Trinity races to the
opposite end, exiting through a broken window onto the
fire escape.
<b> EXT. FIRE E5CAPE
</b>
In the alley below, Trinity sees Agent Smith staring at
her. She can only go up.
<b> EXT. ROOF
</b>
On the roof, Trinity is running as Agent Brown rises over
the parapet, leading the cops in pursuit.
Trinity begins to jump from one roof to the next, her
moverents so clean, gliding in and out of each jump,
contrasted to the wild jumps of the cops.
Agent Brown, however, has the same unnatural grace.
The METAL SCREAM of an EL TRAIN is heard and Trinity
turns to it, racing for the back of the building.
The edge falls away into a wide back alley. The next
building is over 40 feet away, but Trinity's face is
perfectly calm, staring at some point beyond the other
roof.
The cops slow, realizing they are about to see something
ugly as Trinity drives at the edge, launching herself
into the air.
From above, the ground seems to flow beneath her as she
hangs in flight
Then hitting, somersaulting up, still running hard.
<b> COP
</b> Motherfucker -- that's impossible!
They stare, slack-jawed, as Agent Brown duplicates the
move exactly, landing, rolling over a shoulder, up onto
one knee.
Just below the building are the runbling tracks of
riveted steel. The TRAIN SCREECHES beneath her, a
rattling blur of gray metal. Trinity junps, landing
easily.
She looks back just as Agent Brown hurls through the air
barely reaching the last car
Agent Brown stands, yanking out a gun.
Trinity is running hard as BULLETS WHISTLE past her head.
Ahead she sees her only chance, 50 feet beyond the point
where the train has begun to turn, there is --
A window; a yellow glow in the midst of a dark brick
building.
Trinity zeroes in on it, running as hard as she can, her
speed compounded by the train. The SCREAM of the STEEL
rises as she nears the edge where the train rocks into the
turn.
Trinity hurtles into the empty night space, her body
leveling into a dive. She falls, arms covering her head
as --
The whole world seems to spin on its axis --
And she crashes with an EXPLOSION of GLASS and WOOD, then
falls onto a back stairwell, tumbling, bouncing down
stairs bleeding, broken --
But still alive.
Through the smashed window, she glimpses Agent Brown,
still on the train, his tie and coat whipping in the
wind; stone-faced, he touches his ear piece as the train
slides him past the window.
Trinity tries to move. Everything hurts.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Get up, Trinity. You're fine.
Get up -- just get up!
She stands and limps down the rest of the stairs.
<b> EXT. STREET
</b>
Trinity emerges from the shadows of an alley and, at the
end of the block, in a pool of white street light, she
sees it.
The telephone booth.
Obviously hurt, she starts down the concrete walk,
focusing in completely, her pace quickening, as the PHONE
begins to RING.
Across the street, a garbage truck suddenly u-turns, its
TIRES SCREAMING as it accelerates.
Trinity sees the headlights on the truck arcing at the
telephone booth as if taking aim.
Gritting through the pain, she races the truck --
Slamming into the booth, the headlights blindingly
bright, bearing down on the box of Plexiglas just as --
She answers the phone.
There is a frozen instant of silence before the hulking
mass of dark metal lurches up onto the sidewalk --
Barreling through the booth, bulldozing it into a brick
wall, smashing it to Plexiglas pulp.
After a moment, a black loafer steps down from the cab of
the garbage truck. Agent Smith inspects the wreckage.
There is no body. Trinity is gone.
His jaw sets as he grinds his molars in frustration.
AGENT JONES walks up behind him.
<b> AGENT SMITH
</b> Did you get anything from the
room?
<b> AGENT JONES
</b> Their next target. The name is
Neo.
The handset of the pay phone lays on the ground,
separated in the crash like a severed limb.
<b> AGENT SMITH
</b> We'll need a search running.
<b> AGENT JONES
</b> It's already begun.
We are SUCKED TOWARDS the mouthpiece of the phone, CLOSER
and CLOSER, UNTIL the smooth gray plastic spreads out
like a horizon and the small HOLES WIDEN until we fall
through one --
Swallowed by the darkness that becomes --
A computer screen.
We are on-line, inside a chat room called "The Matrix."
It is an exklusive web-site where hackers hang out.
<b> SCREEN
</b> JACKON: I heard Morpheus has been
on this board.
SUPERASTIC: Morpheus doesn't even
exist and the Matrix is nothing
but an advertising gimmick 4 a new
game.
TIMAXE: All I want to know is
Trinity really a girl?
LODIII: 87% of all women on line
are really men.
QUARK: The Matrix is a euphemism
for the government.
SUPERASTIC: No, The Matrix is the
system controlling our lives.
TIMAXE: You mean MTV.
SUPERASTIC: I mean Sega.
<b> FOS4: ALL HAIL SEGA!!!
</b>
We drift back from the electric conversation entering --
<b> INT. NEO'S APARTMENT
</b>
It is a studio apartirent that seems overgrown with
technology.
Weed-like cables coil everywhere, duct-taped into
thickets that wind up and around the legs of several
desks.
Tabletops are filled with cannibalized equipment that lay
open like an autopsied corpse.
We turn towards the center of this rat-nest of
technology, following the slurping and crunching of
cereal. We pass an open box of Capln Crunch as we find --
NEO, a younger man who knows more about living inside a
computer than living outside one.
<b> NEO
</b> Fuckin' idiots don't know shit.
He finishes his cereal and is about to disconnect when an
anonynous message slices onto the screen.
<b> SCREEN
</b> Do you want to know what the
Matrix is, Neo?
Neo is frozen when he reads his name.
<b> SCREEN
</b> SUPERASTIC: Who said that?
JACKON: Who's Neo?
GIBSON: This is a private board.
If you want to know, follow the
white rabbit.
<b> NEO
</b> What the hell...
<b> SCREEN
</b> TIMAXE: Someone is hacking the
hackers!
FOS4: It's Morpheus!!!!!
JACKON: Identify yourself.
Knock, knock, Neo.
A chill runs down his spine and when someone KNOCKS on
his door he almost jumps out of his chair.
He looks at the door, then back at the computer but the
message is gone.
He shakes his head, not completely sure what happened.
Again, someone knocks.
Cautiously, Neo approaches the door.
<b> VOICE (O.S.)
</b> Hey, Tommy-boy! You in there?
Recognizing the voice, he relaxes and opens it. ANTHONY,
who lives down the hall, is standing outside with a group
of friends.
<b> NEO
</b> What do you want, Anthony?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> I need your help, man. Desperate.
They got me, man. The shackles of
fascism.
He holds up the red notice that accompanies the Denver
boot.
<b> NEO
</b> You got the money this time?
He holds up two hundred dollars and Neo opens the door.
Anthony's girlfriend, DUJOUR, stops in front of Neo.
<b> DUJOUR
</b> You can really get that thing off,
right now?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> I told you, honey, he may look
like just another geek but this
here is all we got left standing
between Big Brother and the New
World Order.
<b> EXT. STREET
</b>
A police officer unlocks a yellow metal boot from the
wheel of an enormous oldsmobile.
<b> INT. NEO'S APARTMENT
</b>
They watch from the window as the cops, silently,
robotically, climb into their van.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Look at 'em. Automatons. Don't
think about what they're- doing or
why. Computer tells 'em what to
do and they do it.
FRIEND #l
Thc banality of evil.
He slaps the money in Neo's hand.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Thanks, neighbor.
<b> DUJOUR
</b> Why don't you come to the party
with us?
<b> NEO
</b> I don't know. I have to work
tomorrow.
<b> DUJOUR
</b> Come on. It'll be fun.
He looks up at her and suddenly notices on her black
leather motorcycle jacket dozens of pins: bands,
symbols, slogans, military medals and --
A small white rabbit.
The ROOM TILTS.
<b> NEO
</b> Yeah, yeah. Sure, I'll go.
<b> INT. APARTMENT
</b>
An older Chicago apartment; a series of halls connects a
chain of small high-ceilinged rooms lined with heavy
casements.
Smoke hangs like a veil, blurring the few lights there
are.
Dressed predominantly in black, people are everywhere,
gathered in cliques around pieces of furniture like
jungle cats around a tree.
Neo stands against a wall, alone, sipping from a bottle
of beer, feeling completely out of place, he is about to
leave when he notices a woman staring at him.
The woman is Trinity. She walks straight up to him.
In the nearest room, shadow-like figures grind against
each other to the pneumatic beat of INDUSTRIAL MUSIC.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Hello, Neo.
<b> NEO
</b> How did you know that --
<b> TRINITY
</b> I know a lot about you. I've been
wanting to meet you for some time.
<b> NEO
</b> Who are you?
<b> TRINITY
</b> My name is Trinity.
<b> NEO
</b> Trinity? The Trinity? The
Trinity that cracked the I.R.S.
Kansas City D-Base?
<b> TRINITY
</b> That was a long time ago.
<b> NEO
</b> Gee-zus.
<b> TRINITY
</b> What?
<b> NEO
</b> I just thought... you were a guy.
<b> TRINITY
</b> Most guys do.
Neo is a little embarrassed.
<b> NEO
</b> Do you want to go sorewhere and
talk?
<b> TRINITY
</b> No. It's safe here and I don't
have much time.
The MUSIC is so loud they must stand very close, talking
directly into each other's ear.
<b> NEO
</b> That was you on the board tonight.
That was your note, wasn't it?
<b> TRINITY
</b> I had to gamble that you would see
and they wouldn't.
<b> NEO
</b> Who
|
street
|
How many times does the word 'street' appear in the text?
| 3
|
and
a respectable jury sit up a bit. The first thing I heard when I came to
myself was the maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the
voice of the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face
out of his sou'wester.
"'Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as chief
mate of this ship.'"
His care to subdue his voice made it sound monotonous. He rested a hand
on the end of the skylight to steady himself with, and all that time did
not stir a limb, so far as I could see. "Nice little tale for a quiet
tea party," he concluded in the same tone.
One of my hands, too, rested on the end of the skylight; neither did
I stir a limb, so far as I knew. We stood less than a foot from each
other. It occurred to me that if old "Bless my soul--you don't say so"
were to put his head up the companion and catch sight of us, he would
think he was seeing double, or imagine himself come upon a scene of
weird witchcraft; the strange captain having a quiet confabulation
by the wheel with his own gray ghost. I became very much concerned to
prevent anything of the sort. I heard the other's soothing undertone.
"My father's a parson in Norfolk," it said. Evidently he had forgotten
he had told me this important fact before. Truly a nice little tale.
"You had better slip down into my stateroom now," I said, moving off
stealthily. My double followed my movements; our bare feet made no
sound; I let him in, closed the door with care, and, after giving a call
to the second mate, returned on deck for my relief.
"Not much sign of any wind yet," I remarked when he approached.
"No, sir. Not much," he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with
just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.
"Well, that's all you have to look out for. You have got your orders."
"Yes, sir."
I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face
forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen rigging before I
went below. The mate's faint snoring was still going on peacefully.
The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with
flowers, a polite attention from the ship's provision merchant--the
last flowers we should see for the next three months at the very least.
Two bunches of bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each
side of the rudder casing. Everything was as before in the ship--except
that two of her captain's sleeping suits were simultaneously in use, one
motionless in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain's
stateroom.
It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital
letter L, the door being within the angle and opening into the short
part of the letter. A couch was to the left, the bed place to the right;
my writing desk and the chronometers' table faced the door. But anyone
opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call
the long (or vertical) part of the letter. It contained some lockers
surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two,
caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks. There was at the
bottom of that part a door opening into my bathroom, which could be
entered also directly from the saloon. But that way was never used.
The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular
shape. Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung
on gimbals above my writing desk, I did not see him anywhere till he
stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part.
"I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once," he
whispered.
I, too, spoke under my breath.
"Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting
permission."
He nodded. His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had
been ill. And no wonder. He had been, I heard presently, kept under
arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks. But there was nothing sickly
in his eyes or in his expression. He was not a bit like me, really; yet,
as we stood leaning over my bed place, whispering side by side, with our
dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to
open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a
double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self.
"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side
ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he had
told me something more of the proceedings on board the Sephora once the
bad weather was over.
"When we sighted Java Head I had had time to think all those matters out
several times over. I had six weeks of doing nothing else, and with only
an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the quarter-deck."
He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed place, staring
through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of this
thinking out--a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of
which I should have been perfectly incapable.
"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land," he
continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing near as we were to
each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. "So I asked to speak to
the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to see me--as if he
could not look me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.
She was too deep to have run long under bare poles. And it was I
that managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came. When I had him in my
cabin--he stood by the door looking at me as if I had the halter round
my neck already--I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked
at night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits. There would
be the Java coast within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted
nothing more. I've had a prize for swimming my second year in the
Conway."
"I can believe it," I breathed out.
"God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of
their faces you'd have thought they were afraid I'd go about at night
strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it? By Jove! If I
had been he wouldn't have trusted himself like that into my room. You'll
say I might have chucked him aside and bolted out, there and then--it
was dark already. Well, no. And for the same reason I wouldn't think of
trying to smash the door. There would have been a rush to stop me at the
noise, and I did not mean to get into a confounded scrimmage. Somebody
else might have got killed--for I would not have broken out only to
get chucked back, and I did not want any more of that work. He refused,
looking more sick than ever. He was afraid of the men, and also of
that old second mate of his who had been sailing with him for years--a
gray-headed old humbug; and his steward, too, had been with him devil
knows how long--seventeen years or more--a dogmatic sort of loafer who
hated me like poison, just because I was the chief mate. No chief mate
ever made more than one voyage in the Sephora, you know. Those two old
chaps ran the ship. Devil only knows what the skipper wasn't afraid of
(all his nerve went to pieces altogether in that hellish spell of bad
weather we had)--of what the law would do to him--of his wife, perhaps.
Oh, yes! she's on board. Though I don't think she would have meddled.
She would have been only too glad to have me out of the ship in any way.
The 'brand of Cain' business, don't you see. That's all right. I was
ready enough to go off wandering on the face of the earth--and that was
price enough to pay for an Abel of that sort. Anyhow, he wouldn't listen
to me. 'This thing must take its course. I represent the law here.' He
was shaking like a leaf. 'So you won't?' 'No!' 'Then I hope you will
be able to sleep on that,' I said, and turned my back on him. 'I wonder
that you can,' cries he, and locks the door.
"Well after that, I couldn't. Not very well. That was three weeks ago.
We have had a slow passage through the Java Sea; drifted about Carimata
for ten days. When we anchored here they thought, I suppose, it was
all right. The nearest land (and that's five miles) is the ship's
destination; the consul would soon set about catching me; and there
would have been no object in holding to these islets there. I don't
suppose there's a drop of water on them. I don't know how it was, but
tonight that steward, after bringing me my supper, went out to let me
eat it, and left the door unlocked. And I ate it--all there was, too.
After I had finished I strolled out on the quarter-deck. I don't know
that I meant to do anything. A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I
believe. Then a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers
and was in the water before I had made up my mind fairly. Somebody heard
the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo. 'He's gone! Lower the
boats! He's committed suicide! No, he's swimming.' Certainly I was
swimming. It's not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by
drowning. I landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship's
side. I heard them pulling about in the dark, hailing, and so on, but
after a bit they gave up. Everything quieted down and the anchorage
became still as death. I sat down on a stone and began to think. I felt
certain they would start searching for me at daylight. There was no
place to hide on those stony things--and if there had been, what would
have been the good? But now I was clear of that ship, I was not going
back. So after a while I took off all my clothes, tied them up in a
bundle with a stone inside, and dropped them in the deep water on the
outer side of that islet. That was suicide enough for me. Let them think
what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till
I sank--but that's not the same thing. I struck out for another of these
little islands, and it was from that one that I first saw your riding
light. Something to swim for. I went on easily, and on the way I came
upon a flat rock a foot or two above water. In the daytime, I dare say,
you might make it out with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it
and rested myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last spell
must have been over a mile."
His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he stared
straight out through the porthole, in which there was not even a star
to be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was something that made
comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps in himself; a sort of
feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name for. And when he ceased,
all I found was a futile whisper: "So you swam for our light?"
"Yes--straight for it. It was something to swim for. I couldn't see any
stars low down because the coast was in the way, and I couldn't see the
land, either. The water was like glass. One might have been swimming in
a confounded thousand-feet deep cistern with no place for scrambling out
anywhere; but what I didn't like was the notion of swimming round and
round like a crazed bullock before I gave out; and as I didn't mean to
go back... No. Do you see me being hauled back, stark naked, off one
of these little islands by the scruff of the neck and fighting like a
wild beast? Somebody would have got killed for certain, and I did not
want any of that. So I went on. Then your ladder--"
"Why didn't you hail the ship?" I asked, a little louder.
He touched my shoulder lightly. Lazy footsteps came right over our heads
and stopped. The second mate had crossed from the other side of the poop
and might have been hanging over the rail for all we knew.
"He couldn't hear us talking--could he?" My double breathed into my very
ear, anxiously.
His anxiety was in answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I had
put to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that situation. I
closed the porthole quietly, to make sure. A louder word might have been
overheard.
"Who's that?" he whispered then.
"My second mate. But I don't know much more of the fellow than you do."
And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take
charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a
fortnight ago. I didn't know either the ship or the people. Hadn't had
the time in port to look about me or size anybody up. And as to the
crew, all they knew was that I was appointed to take the ship home.
For the rest, I was almost as much of a stranger on board as himself,
I said. And at the moment I felt it most acutely. I felt that it would
take very little to make me a suspect person in the eyes of the ship's
company.
He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the ship,
faced each other in identical attitudes.
"Your ladder--" he murmured, after a silence. "Who'd have thought of
finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out here! I
felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the life I've been
leading for nine weeks, anybody would have got out of condition. I
wasn't capable of swimming round as far as your rudder chains. And, lo
and behold! there was a ladder to get hold of. After I gripped it I said
to myself, 'What's the good?' When I saw a man's head looking over I
thought I would swim away presently and leave him shouting--in whatever
language it was. I didn't mind being looked at. I--I liked it. And then
you speaking to me so quietly--as if you had expected me--made me hold
on a little longer. It had been a confounded lonely time--I don't mean
while swimming. I was glad to talk a little to somebody that didn't
belong to the Sephora. As to asking for the captain, that was a mere
impulse. It could have been no use, with all the ship knowing about me
and the other people pretty certain to be round here in the morning. I
don't know--I wanted to be seen, to talk with somebody, before I went
on. I don't know what I would have said.... 'Fine night, isn't it?'
or something of the sort."
"Do you think they will be round here presently?" I asked with some
incredulity.
"Quite likely," he said, faintly.
"He looked extremely haggard all of a sudden. His head rolled on his
shoulders.
"H'm. We shall see then. Meantime get into that bed," I whispered. "Want
help? There."
It was a rather high bed place with a set of drawers underneath. This
amazing swimmer really needed the lift I gave him by seizing his leg. He
tumbled in, rolled over on his back, and flung one arm across his eyes.
And then, with his face nearly hidden, he must have looked exactly as I
used to look in that bed. I gazed upon my other self for a while before
drawing across carefully the two green serge curtains which ran on a
brass rod. I thought for a moment of pinning them together for greater
safety, but I sat down on the couch, and once there I felt unwilling
to rise and hunt for a pin. I would do it in a moment. I was extremely
tired, in a peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by
the effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement. It
was three o'clock by now and I had been on my feet since nine, but I
was not sleepy; I could not have gone to sleep. I sat there, fagged
out, looking at the curtains, trying to clear my mind of the confused
sensation of being in two places at once, and greatly bothered by an
exasperating knocking in my head. It was a relief to discover suddenly
that it was not in my head at all, but on the outside of the door.
Before I could collect myself the words "Come in" were out of my mouth,
and the steward entered with a tray, bringing in my morning coffee. I
had slept, after all, and I was so frightened that I shouted, "This way!
I am here, steward," as though he had been miles away. He put down the
tray on the table next the couch and only then said, very quietly, "I
can see you are here, sir." I felt him give me a keen look, but I dared
not meet his eyes just then. He must have wondered why I had drawn the
curtains of my bed before going to sleep on the couch. He went out,
hooking the door open as usual.
I heard the crew washing decks above me. I knew I would have been told
at once if there had been any wind. Calm, I thought, and I was doubly
vexed. Indeed, I felt dual more than ever. The steward reappeared
suddenly in the doorway. I jumped up from the couch so quickly that he
gave a start.
"What do you want here?"
"Close your port, sir--they are washing decks."
"It is closed," I said, reddening.
"Very well, sir." But he did not move from the doorway and returned my
stare in an extraordinary, equivocal manner for a time. Then his eyes
wavered, all his expression changed, and in a voice unusually gentle,
almost coaxingly:
"May I come in to take the empty cup away, sir?"
"Of course!" I turned my back on him while he popped in and out. Then
I unhooked and closed the door and even pushed the bolt. This sort of
thing could not go on very long. The cabin was as hot as an oven, too. I
took a peep at my double, and discovered that he had not moved, his arm
was still over his eyes; but his chest heaved; his hair was wet; his
chin glistened with perspiration. I reached over him and opened the
port
|
confounded
|
How many times does the word 'confounded' appear in the text?
| 2
|
marks
their passage. CAMERA HOLDS ON the scene and over the shot
comes the MAIN TITLE CARD:
<b> ROUGHSHOD
</b>
<b> EXT. DESERT ROAD - DAY
</b>
LONG SHOT. A buckboard drawn by two horses comes along the
road. Graham, a middle-aged rancher, is driving. As the horses
trot forward and dust rises above the road, the NEXT TITLE
CARD is shown.
<b> DISSOLVE
</b>
<b> EXT. CREEK - DAY
</b>
LONG SHOT - DOWN ANGLE. Graham's buckboard moves down the
road toward the clearing, as the TITLE CARDS follow and
change. When the buckboard reaches the creek, the LAST TITLE
CARD is ended.
<b> EXT. MEADOW - DAY
</b>
MED. SHOT. Graham drives the horses through the creek and
into the meadow. Through the trees the Forster camp can be
seen. Graham glances over, then suddenly pulls on the reins.
As the horses stop, he twists the reins around the whip stock,
grabs his rifle from under the seat, leaps out and hurries
forward toward the camp.
<b> EXT. FORSTER CAMP - DAY
</b>
MED. SHOT. Graham hurries through the trees to stop in horror
near the dead men. Then very slowly he moves forward to the
smouldering fire. Stooping he lifts Forster's arm away from
the fire, then picks up one of the prison coats and looks at
it.
<b> DISSOLVE
</b>
<b> EXT. DESERT ROAD - DAY
</b>
MED. LONG SHOT. The surrounding hills are covered with scrub
pinon pine and mesquite. Graham's buckboard, moving slowly
up a hill, passes camera, which PANS WITH it. In the bed,
covered by a tarp, are the three bodies. The narrow, one-way
road climbs easily up the gentle hill. Beyond, a dust cloud
rises. As Graham's buckboard nears the crest, a surrey appears
and starts down. Graham pulls his team into the bank, trying
to make room for the surrey.
<b> MED. SHOT
</b>
There are four women in the two-seated surrey, which is
heavily loaded with trunks, hatboxes, etc. Mary Wells, the
loveliest of the four, is driving. She is more poised, more
self-assured than the others. Her clothes, though a trifle
showy, are attractive. She wears a large spectacular hat.
Helen Carter, showier, harder and more cynical, sits beside
her. In the seat behind are Marcia Paine, placid, younger
looking than her years, and Elaine Ross, a striking blonde
with a pale haunted face. Elaine is obviously ill. Mary is
riding the brake and holding the team back.
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
SHOOTING PAST Graham.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> (annoyed)
What in thunderation --
(calling)
Wait a minute -- stop --
He jerks on the reins and tries to make room for the surrey.
A steep bank is on camera left. On camera right, the road
drops off into a gulley. As the surrey comes up Mary reins
the team in. The women all look frightened. Graham, trying
to force his team to pull the vehicle up the bank, is too
occupied to recognize the women at once. Having made just
enough room for the surrey, he turns and looks at the women.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> All right --
(then surprised)
What are you girls doin' way out
here?
Mary looks ahead at the narrow road and the canyon to her
left.
<b> MARY
</b> Until you came along we were going
to Sonora.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> What do you know about that. Did you
sell your place?
<b> MARY
</b> (dryly)
Not exactly. They decided gambling
and dancing were bad for people.
(pointing)
Can I make it?
<b> GRAHAM
</b> Depends on how good you drive.
<b> HELEN
</b> She's a little out of practice.
Graham jumps over the wheel.
<b> MED. CLOSE ON SURREY
</b>
Graham reaches the surrey.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> (cheerfully)
Slide over.
<b> HELEN
</b> (getting up)
I'm slidin' all the way over.
She climbs out. Marcia looks at the narrow space ahead.
<b> MARCIA
</b> (rising)
So am I. Come on Elaine.
Elaine leans back against the cushions and shakes her head.
<b> ELAINE
</b> (flat)
What's the difference if we fall in
the canyon.
<b> MARCIA
</b> Don't talk like that.
Helen is out on the road now. Mary has moved over and Graham
picks up the reins. Marcia gives up and jumps out.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> Nothin' to it --
He releases the brake.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> -- once you know how. Trouble is,
never was a woman knew how to handle
a team. Shouldn't let 'em loose on
the roads. No disrespect meant, Miss
Wells.
Mary isn't listening. She is looking at the road. Elaine
closes her eyes. Helen and Marcia scurry back out of the
way.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> Get up.
Adroitly he drives the surrey past.
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
featuring buckboard. Helen and Marcia start along the road
past the buckboard. Helen stops and looks at its cargo in
horror. She grabs Marcia's arm. The girls look at each other
and hurry after the surrey which has stopped below the
buckboard.
<b> MED. SHOT
</b>
on surrey. Graham jumps out.
<b> GRAHAM
</b> There you are. Now take it easy and
you'll be all right.
<b> MARY
</b> Thank you, Mr. Graham.
Helen and Marcia hurry up. Marcia motions back.
<b>
|
four
|
How many times does the word 'four' appear in the text?
| 1
|
secrets at this moment is there one I should have to frown at? I
can tell you a wickeder one than any you've discovered for yourself. If
you wish to live at ease in the doux pays de France don't trouble too
much about the key of your conscience or even about your conscience
itself--I mean your own particular one. You'll fancy it saying things it
won't help your case to hear. They'll make you sad, and when you're sad
you'll grow plain, and when you're plain you'll grow bitter, and when
you're bitter you'll be peu aimable. I was brought up to think that a
woman's first duty is to be infinitely so, and the happiest women I've
known have been in fact those who performed this duty faithfully. As
you're not a Catholic I suppose you can't be a devote; and if you don't
take life as a fifty years' mass the only way to take it's as a game of
skill. Listen to this. Not to lose at the game of life you must--I don't
say cheat, but not be too sure your neighbour won't, and not be shocked
out of your self-possession if he does. Don't lose, my dear--I beseech
you don't lose. Be neither suspicious nor credulous, and if you find
your neighbour peeping don't cry out; only very politely wait your own
chance. I've had my revenge more than once in my day, but I really think
the sweetest I could take, en somme, against the past I've known, would
be to have your blest innocence profit by my experience."
This was rather bewildering advice, but Euphemia understood it too
little to be either edified or frightened. She sat listening to it very
much as she would have listened to the speeches of an old lady in a
comedy whose diction should strikingly correspond to the form of her
high-backed armchair and the fashion of her coif. Her indifference was
doubly dangerous, for Madame de Mauves spoke at the instance of coming
events, and her words were the result of a worry of scruples--scruples
in the light of which Euphemia was on the one hand too tender a victim
to be sacrificed to an ambition and the prosperity of her own house on
the other too precious a heritage to be sacrificed to an hesitation. The
prosperity in question had suffered repeated and grievous breaches and
the menaced institution been overmuch pervaded by that cold comfort in
which people are obliged to balance dinner-table allusions to feudal
ancestors against the absence of side-dishes; a state of things the
sorrier as the family was now mainly represented by a gentleman whose
appetite was large and who justly maintained that its historic glories
hadn't been established by underfed heroes.
Three days after Euphemia's arrival Richard de Mauves, coming down from
Paris to pay his respects to his grandmother, treated our heroine to her
first encounter with a gentilhomme in the flesh. On appearing he kissed
his grandmother's hand with a smile which caused her to draw it away
with dignity, and set Euphemia, who was standing by, to ask herself
what could have happened between them. Her unanswered wonder was but the
beginning of a long chain of puzzlements, but the reader is free to know
that the smile of M. de Mauves was a reply to a postscript affixed by
the old lady to a letter addressed to him by her granddaughter as
soon as the girl had been admitted to justify the latter's promises.
Mademoiselle de Mauves brought her letter to her grandmother for
approval, but obtained no more than was expressed in a frigid nod. The
old lady watched her with this coldness while she proceeded to seal the
letter, then suddenly bade her open it again and bring her a pen.
"Your sister's flatteries are all nonsense," she wrote; "the young
lady's far too good for you, mauvais sujet beyond redemption. If you've
a particle of conscience you'll not come and disturb the repose of an
angel of innocence."
The other relative of the subject of this warning, who had read these
lines, made up a little face as she freshly indited the address; but she
laid down her pen with a confident nod which might have denoted that by
her judgement her brother was appealed to on the ground of a principle
that didn't exist in him. And "if you meant what you said," the young
man on his side observed to his grandmother on his first private
opportunity, "it would have been simpler not to have sent the letter."
Put out of humour perhaps by this gross impugnment of her sincerity, the
head of the family kept her room on pretexts during a greater part of
Euphemia's stay, so that the latter's angelic innocence was left all to
her grandson's mercy. It suffered no worse mischance, however, than to
be prompted to intenser communion with itself. Richard de Mauves was the
hero of the young girl's romance made real, and so completely accordant
with this creature of her imagination that she felt afraid of him almost
as she would have been of a figure in a framed picture who should have
stepped down from the wall. He was now thirty-three--young enough to
suggest possibilities of ardent activity and old enough to have formed
opinions that a simple woman might deem it an intellectual privilege to
listen to. He was perhaps a trifle handsomer than Euphemia's rather grim
Quixotic ideal, but a very few days reconciled her to his good looks as
effectually they would have reconciled her to a characterised want of
them. He was quiet, grave, eminently distinguished. He spoke little,
but his remarks, without being sententious, had a nobleness of tone that
caused them to re-echo in the young girl's ears at the end of the day.
He paid her very little direct attention, but his chance words--when he
only asked her if she objected to his cigarette--were accompanied by a
smile of extraordinary kindness.
It happened that shortly after his arrival, riding an unruly horse which
Euphemia had with shy admiration watched him mount in the castle-yard,
he was thrown with a violence which, without disparaging his skill, made
him for a fortnight an interesting invalid lounging in the library
with a bandaged knee. To beguile his confinement the accomplished young
stranger was repeatedly induced to sing for him, which she did with a
small natural tremor that might have passed for the finish of vocal
art. He never overwhelmed her with compliments, but he listened with
unfailing attention, remembered all her melodies and would sit humming
them to himself. While his imprisonment lasted indeed he passed hours in
her company, making her feel not unlike some unfriended artist who has
suddenly gained the opportunity to devote a fortnight to the study of a
great model. Euphemia studied with noiseless diligence what she supposed
to be the "character" of M. de Mauves, and the more she looked the
more fine lights and shades she seemed to behold in this masterpiece of
nature. M. de Mauves's character indeed, whether from a sense of being
so generously and intensely taken for granted, or for reasons which bid
graceful defiance to analysis, had never been so much on show, even to
the very casual critic lodged, as might be said, in an out-of-the-way
corner of it; it seemed really to reflect the purity of Euphemia's pious
opinion. There had been nothing especially to admire in the state of
mind in which he left Paris--a settled resolve to marry a young person
whose charms might or might not justify his sister's account of them,
but who was mistress, at the worst, of a couple of hundred thousand
francs a year. He had not counted out sentiment--if she pleased him so
much the better; but he had left a meagre margin for it and would hardly
have admitted that so excellent a match could be improved by it. He was
a robust and serene sceptic, and it was a singular fate for a man who
believed in nothing to be so tenderly believed in. What his original
faith had been he could hardly have told you, for as he came back to his
childhood's home to mend his fortunes by pretending to fall in love he
was a thoroughly perverse creature and overlaid with more corruptions
than a summer day's questioning of his conscience would have put to
flight. Ten years' pursuit of pleasure, which a bureau full of unpaid
bills was all he had to show for, had pretty well stifled the natural
lad whose violent will and generous temper might have been shaped by
a different pressure to some such showing as would have justified a
romantic faith. So should he have exhaled the natural fragrance of a
late-blooming flower of hereditary honour. His violence indeed had been
subdued and he had learned to be irreproachably polite; but he had lost
the fineness of his generosity, and his politeness, which in the long
run society paid for, was hardly more than a form of luxurious egotism,
like his fondness for ciphered pocket-handkerchiefs, lavender gloves
and other fopperies by which shopkeepers remained out of pocket. In
after-years he was terribly polite to his wife. He had formed himself,
as the phrase was, and the form prescribed to him by the society into
which his birth and his tastes had introduced him was marked by some
peculiar features. That which mainly concerns us is its classification
of the fairer half of humanity as objects not essentially different--say
from those very lavender gloves that are soiled in an evening and
thrown away. To do M. de Mauves justice, he had in the course of time
encountered in the feminine character such plentiful evidence of its
pliant softness and fine adjustability that idealism naturally seemed to
him a losing game.
Euphemia, as he lay on his sofa, struck him as by no means
contradictory; she simply reminded him that very young women are
generally innocent and that this is on the whole the most potent source
of their attraction. Her innocence moved him to perfect consideration,
and it seemed to him that if he shortly became her husband it would
be exposed to a danger the less. Old Madame de Mauves, who flattered
herself that in this whole matter she was very laudably rigid, might
almost have taken a lesson from the delicacy he practised. For two or
three weeks her grandson was well-nigh a blushing boy again. He watched
from behind the Figaro, he admired and desired and held his tongue. He
found himself not in the least moved to a flirtation; he had no wish
to trouble the waters he proposed to transfuse into the golden cup of
matrimony. Sometimes a word, a look, a gesture of Euphemia's gave him
the oddest sense of being, or of seeming at least, almost bashful;
for she had a way of not dropping her eyes according to the mysterious
virginal mechanism, of not fluttering out of the room when she found him
there alone, of treating him rather as a glorious than as a pernicious
influence--a radiant frankness of demeanour in fine, despite an
infinite natural reserve, which it seemed at once graceless not to be
complimentary about and indelicate not to take for granted. In this way
had been wrought in the young man's mind a vague unwonted resonance of
soft impressions, as we may call it, which resembled the happy stir of
the change from dreaming pleasantly to waking happily. His imagination
was touched; he was very fond of music and he now seemed to give easy
ear to some of the sweetest he had ever heard. In spite of the bore of
being laid up with a lame knee he was in better humour than he had known
for months; he lay smoking cigarettes and listening to the nightingales
with the satisfied smile of one of his country neighbours whose big
ox should have taken the prize at a fair. Every now and then, with an
impatient suspicion of the resemblance, he declared himself pitifully
bete; but he was under a charm that braved even the supreme penalty of
seeming ridiculous. One morning he had half an hour's tete-a-tete with
his grandmother's confessor, a soft-voiced old Abbe whom, for reasons of
her own, Madame de Mauves had suddenly summoned and had left waiting in
the drawing-room while she rearranged her curls. His reverence, going
up to the old lady, assured her that M. le Comte was in a most edifying
state of mind and the likeliest subject for the operation of grace. This
was a theological interpretation of the count's unusual equanimity.
He had always lazily wondered what priests were good for, and he now
remembered, with a sense of especial obligation to the Abbe, that they
were excellent for marrying people.
A day or two after this he left off his bandages and tried to walk. He
made his way into the garden and hobbled successfully along one of the
alleys, but in the midst of his progress was pulled up by a spasm of
pain which forced him to stop and call for help. In an instant Euphemia
came tripping along the path and offered him her arm with the frankest
solicitude.
"Not to the house," he said, taking it; "further on, to the bosquet."
This choice was prompted by her having immediately confessed that she
had seen him leave the house, had feared an accident and had followed
him on tiptoe.
"Why didn't you join me?" he had asked, giving her a look in which
admiration was no longer disguised and yet felt itself half at the
mercy of her replying that a jeune fille shouldn't be seen following a
gentleman. But it drew a breath which filled its lungs for a long time
afterwards when she replied simply that if she had overtaken him he
might have accepted her arm out of politeness, whereas she wished to
have the pleasure of seeing him walk alone.
The bosquet was covered with an odorous tangle of blossoming creepers,
and a nightingale overhead was shaking out love-notes with a profusion
that made the Count feel his own conduct the last word of propriety.
"I've always heard that in America, when a man wishes to marry a
young girl, he offers himself simply face to face and without
ceremony--without parents and uncles and aunts and cousins sitting round
in a circle."
"Why I believe so," said Euphemia, staring and too surprised to be
alarmed.
"Very well then--suppose our arbour here to be your great sensible
country. I offer you my hand a l'Americaine. It will make me intensely
happy to feel you accept it."
Whether Euphemia's acceptance was in the American manner is more than
I can say; I incline to think that for fluttering grateful trustful
softly-amazed young hearts there is only one manner all over the world.
That evening, in the massive turret chamber it was her happiness to
inhabit, she wrote a dutiful letter to her mamma, and had just sealed it
when she was sent for by Madame de Mauves. She found this ancient lady
seated in her boudoir in a lavender satin gown and with her candles all
lighted as for the keeping of some fete. "Are you very happy?" the old
woman demanded, making Euphemia sit down before her.
"I'm almost afraid to say so, lest I should wake myself up."
"May you never wake up, belle enfant," Madame de Mauves grandly
returned. "This is the first marriage ever made in our family in this
way--by a Comte de Mauves proposing to a young girl in an arbour like
Jeannot and Jeannette. It has not been our way of doing things, and
people may say it wants frankness. My grandson tells me he regards
it--for the conditions--as the perfection of good taste. Very well. I'm
a very old woman, and if your differences should ever be as marked as
your agreements I shouldn't care to see them. But I should be sorry
to die and think you were going to be unhappy. You can't be, my dear,
beyond a certain point; because, though in this world the Lord sometimes
makes light of our expectations he never altogether ignores our deserts.
But you're very young and innocent and easy to dazzle. There never was a
man in the world--among the saints themselves--as good as you believe my
grandson. But he's a galant homme and a gentleman, and I've been talking
to him to-night. To you I want to say this--that you're to forget the
worldly rubbish I talked the other day about the happiness of
frivolous women. It's not the kind of happiness that would suit you, ma
toute-belle. Whatever befalls you, promise me this: to be, to remain,
your own sincere little self only, charming in your own serious little
way. The Comtesse de Mauves will be none the worse for it. Your brave
little self, understand, in spite of everything--bad precepts and bad
examples, bad fortune and even bad usage. Be persistently and patiently
just what the good God has made you, and even one of us--and one of
those who is most what we ARE--will do you justice!"
Euphemia remembered this speech in after-years, and more than once,
wearily closing her eyes, she seemed to see the old woman sitting
upright in her faded finery and smiling grimly like one of the Fates
who sees the wheel of fortune turning up her favourite event. But at the
moment it had for her simply the proper gravity of the occasion: this
was the way, she supposed, in which lucky young girls were addressed on
their engagement by wise old women of quality.
At her convent, to which she immediately returned, she found a letter
from her mother which disconcerted her far more than the remarks of
Madame de Mauves. Who were these people, Mrs. Cleve demanded, who had
presumed to talk to her daughter of marriage without asking her leave?
Questionable gentlefolk plainly; the best French people never did such
things. Euphemia would return straightway to her convent, shut herself
up and await her own arrival. It took Mrs. Cleve three weeks to
travel from Nice to Paris, and during this time the young girl had
no communication with her lover beyond accepting a bouquet of violets
marked with his initials and left by a female friend. "I've not brought
you up with such devoted care," she declared to her daughter at their
first interview, "to marry a presumptuous and penniless Frenchman. I
shall take you straight home and you'll please forget M. de Mauves."
Mrs. Cleve received that evening at her hotel a visit from this
personage which softened her wrath but failed to modify her decision. He
had very good manners, but she was sure he had horrible morals; and the
lady, who had been a good-natured censor on her own account, felt a deep
and real need to sacrifice her daughter to propriety. She belonged to
that large class of Americans who make light of their native land
in familiar discourse but are startled back into a sense of having
blasphemed when they find Europeans taking them at their word. "I know
the type, my dear," she said to her daughter with a competent nod. "He
won't beat you. Sometimes you'll wish he would."
|
happy
|
How many times does the word 'happy' appear in the text?
| 2
|
Christianity, as a religion, was known in the world.
Will you, then, after learning these facts, longer dare assert that
Christianity is of divine emanation, or claim a special divine paternity
for its author. Only the priest, who loves his _salary_ more than
the cause of _truth_ (and I fear this class are numerous,) or who is
deplorably ignorant of history, will have the effrontery or audacity to
do so. For the historical facts herein set forth as clearly prove such
assumptions to be false, as figures can demonstrate the truth of any
mathematical problem. And no logic can overthrow, and no sophistry can
set aside these facts.
They will stand till the end of time in spite of your efforts either to
evade, ignore, or invalidate them.
We will here briefly state:--
WHY ALL THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS WERE ALIKE.
Two causes are obviously assignable for Christianity in all its
essential features and phases, being so strikingly similar to the
ancient pagan systems which preceded it, as also the close analogies of
all the principal systems, whose doctrines and practical teachings have
found a place on the pages of history.
1. The primary and constituent elements and properties of human nature
being essentially the same in all countries and all centuries, and the
feeling called Religion being a spontaneous outgrowth of the devotional
elements of the human mind, the coincidence would naturally produce
similar feelings, similar thoughts, similar views and similar doctrines
on the subject of religion in different countries, however widely
separated. This accounts in part for the analogous features observable
in all the primary systems of religious faith, which have flourished in
the past ages.
2. A more potent cause, however, for the proximate identity extending
to such an elaborate detail, as is evinced by the foregoing schedule,
is found in the historical incident which brought the disciples of the
various systems of worship together, face to face, in the then grand
religious emporium of the world--the royal and renowned city of
Alexandria, the capital of Egypt Here, drawn together by various motives
and influences, the devotee of India (the devout disciple of
Buddhism), the ever-prayerful worshipper of "Mithra, the Mediator," the
representatives of the crucified Quexalcoate of Mexico, the self-denying
Essene, the superstitious Egyptian, the godly Chaldean, the imitative
Judean founders of Christianity, and the disciples of other sin-atoning
Gods, met and interchanged ideas, discussed their various dogmas,
remolded their doctrines, and recast and rehabilitated their systems
of religious faith by borrowing from each other, and from other systems
there represented. In this way all became remarkably similar and alike
in all their doctrines and details. And thus the mystery is solved,
and the singular resemblance of all the ancient systems of religion
satisfactorily accounted for. (For a fuller explanation of this matter,
see Chapters XXX. and XXXI. of this work.)
In conclusion, please note the following points:--
1. The religious conceptions of the Old Testament are as easily traced
to heathen sources as those of the New Testament. But we are compelled
to exclude such an exposition from this work.
2. The comparative exhibition of the doctrines and teachings of twenty
bibles which proves them to be in their leading features essentially
alike (originally designed for this volume), is found to be, when
completed, of sufficient magnitude to constitute a volume of itself.
3. Here I desire to impress upon the minds of my clerical brethren the
important fact, that the gospel histories of Christ were written by men
who had formerly been Jews (see Acts xxi. 20), and probably possessing
the strong proclivity to imitate and borrow which their bible shows
was characteristic of that nation; and being written many years after
Christ's death, according to that standard Christian author, Dr.
Lardner, it was impossible, under such circumstances, for them to
separate (if they had desired to) the real facts and events of his life
from the innumerable fictions and fables then afloat everywhere relative
to the heathen Gods who had pre-enacted a similar history. Two reasons
are thus furnished for their constructing a history of Christ almost
identical with that of other Gods, as shown in chapters XXX., XXXI. and
XXXII. of this work.
4. The singular and senseless defense of your now tottering system
we have known to be attempted by members of your order, by the
self-complacent soliloquy "Christianity, whether divine or human, is
good enough for me." But such a subterfuge betrays both a weak mind
and a weak cause. The disciples of all the oriental systems cherished
a similar feeling and a similar sentiment. And the deluded followers
of Brigham Young exclaimed in like manner, "I want nothing better than
Mormonism." "Snakes, lizards and frogs are good enough for me," a South
Sea Islander once exclaimed to a missionary, when a reform diet was
proposed. Such logic, if universally adopted, would keep the world
eternally in barbarism. No progress can be made where such sentiments
prevail. The truth is, no system of religion, whatever its ostensible
marks of perfection, can long remain "good enough" for aspiring
and progressive minds, unless occasionally improved, like other
institutions. And then it should be borne in mind, that our controversy
does not appertain so much to the character as to the origin of the
Christian religion. Our many incontrovertible proofs, that it is
of human and heathen origin, proves at the same time that it is an
imperfect system, and as such, needing occasional improvement, like
other institutions. And its assumed perfection and divine origin which
have always guarded it from improvement, amply accounts for its present
corrupt, immoral, declining and dying condition. And it will ere long
die with paralysis, unless its assumption of divine perfection is soon
exchanged for the principles of improvement and reconstruction. This
policy alone can save it.
5. We will here notice another feeble, futile and foolish expedient we
have known resorted to by persons of your order to save your sinking
cause when the evidence is presented with such cogency as to admit of no
disproof, that all the important doctrines of Christianity were taught
by older heathen systems before the era of Christ The plea is, that
those systems were mere types, or ante-types, of the Christian religion.
But this plea is of itself a borrowed subterfuge of heathenism, and is
moreover devoid of evidence. The ancient Egyptians, also the Greeks,
claimed that Brahminism was a type, or ante-type, of their religious
systems. And Mahomedans now claim that both Judaism and Christianity
were designed by God as foreshadowing types of religion of the Koran.
And the disciples of more than a thousand systems of religion which have
flourished in past ages, could have made such logic equally available in
showing, in each case, that every system preceding theirs was designed
by Infinite Wisdom as simply a typical or ante-typical forerunner of
theirs. How ridiculous and senseless, therefore, is the argument thus
shown to be when critically examined in the light of history! So much so
as scarcely to merit a serious notice.
6. Here permit us to say that we believe Christianity to be not only
of human origin, but of natural origin also; I that is, a natural
outgrowth, like other systems, of the religious elements of the human
mind--a hypothesis which accounts most beautifully for the numerous
human imperfections now visible in nearly every line of its teachings.
Those imperfections correspond exactly to the imperfect minds which
produced it.
7. And we believe that the principle teacher of Christianity, "the man
Christ Jesus," possessed a very exalted and superior mind for that age
in the moral and religious departments, and in the intellectual to some
extent also. But his superiority in these respects was not probably
greater than that of Zera Colburn or Henry Salford in the mathematical
department. And all probably derived their peculiar extraordinary traits
of mind from the same causes--that of strong psychological influence
impressed upon the mind of the mothers prior to their births. Had these
ante-natal influences been as well understood then as now, we presume
Christ would have escaped the fate of an exaltation to the Godhead.
[The author, stating the above, demonstrates that same
assumption of a _truth_ which he criticises in the
Christians, Mohamedens and other proponents of religions.
_Ed._]
8. In conclusion, permit us to say that the numerous and overwhelming
facts of this work render it utterly impossible that the exalted claims
you put forth for your religion and its assumed author (that of a divine
character) can be true. And posterity will so decide, whether you do or
not.
Cherishing for you naught but feelings of kindness and brotherly love,
and desiring to promote the truth, we will answer any question, or
discuss any proposition embraced in this work you may desire.
Your brother,
Kersey Graves.
THE WORLD'S SIXTEEN CRUCIFIED SAVIORS.
CHAPTER I. RIVAL CLAIMS OF THE SAVIORS
IT is claimed by the disciples of Jesus Christ, that he was of
supernatural and divine origin; that he had a human being for a mother,
and a God for his father; that, although he was woman-conceived, he
was Deity-begotten, and molded in the human form, but comprehending in
essence a full measure of the infinite Godhead; thus making him half
human and half divine in his sublunary origin. It is claimed that he was
full and perfect God, and perfect man; and while he was God, he was also
the son of God, and as such was sent down by his father to save a fallen
and guilty world; and that thus his mission pertained to the whole human
race; and his inspired seers are made to declare that ultimately every
nation, tongue, kindred, and people under heaven will acknowledge
allegiance to his government, and concede his right to reign and rule
the world; that "every knee must bow, and every tongue confess that
Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
But we do not find that this prophecy has ever been or is likely to be
fulfilled. We do not observe that this claim to the infinite deityship
of Jesus Christ has been or is likely to be universally conceded. On
the contrary, it is found that by a portion, and a large portion of the
people of even those nations now called Christian, this claim has
been steadily and unswervingly controverted, through the whole line of
history, stretching through the nearly two thousand years which have
elapsed since his advent to earth.
Even some of those who are represented to have been personally
acquainted with him--aye! some of his own brethren in the flesh,
children in the same household, children of the same mother--had the
temerity to question the tenableness of his claim to a divine emanation.
And when we extend our researches to other countries, we find this
claim, so far from being conceded, is denied and contested by whole
nations upon other grounds. It is met and confronted by rival claims.
Upon this ground hundreds of millions of the established believers
in divine revelation--hundreds of millions of believers in the divine
character and origin of religion--eject the pretentions set up for Jesus
Christ. They admit both a God and a Savior, but do not accept Jesus of
Nazareth as being either. They admit a Messiah, but not the Messiah;
these nations contend that the title is misplaced which makes "the man
Christ Jesus" the Savior of the world. They claim to have been honored
with the birth of the true Savior among them, and defend this claim
upon the ground of priority of date. They aver that the advent of their
Messiahs were long prior to that of the Christians', and that this
circumstance adjudicates for them a superiority of claim as to having
had the true Messiah born upon their soil.
It is argued that, as the story of the incarnation of the Christians'
Savior is of more recent date than that of these oriental and ancient
religions (as is conceded by Christians themselves), the origin of the
former is thus indicated and foreshadowed as being an outgrowth from,
if not a plagiarism upon the latter--a borrowed copy, of which the pagan
stories furnish the original. Here, then, we observe a rivalship of
claims, as to which of the remarkable personages who have figured in
the world as Saviors, Messiahs, and Sons of God, in different ages and
different countries, can be considered the true Savior and "sent of God"
or whether all should be, or the claims of all rejected.
For researches into oriental history reveal the remarkable fact that
stories of incarnate Gods answering to and resembling the miraculous
character of Jesus Christ have been prevalent in most if not all the
principal religious heathen nations of antiquity; and the accounts and
narrations of some of these deific incarnations bear such a striking
resemblance to that of the Christian Savior--not only in their general
features, but in some cases in the most minute details, from the legend
of the immaculate conception to that of the crucifixion, and subsequent
ascension into heaven--that one might almost be mistaken for the other.
More than twenty claims of this kind--claims of beings invested with
divine honor (deified)--have come forward and presented themselves at
the bar of the world with their credentials, to contest the verdict of
Christendom, in having proclaimed Jesus Christ, "the only son, and sent
of God:" twenty Messiahs, Saviors, and Sons of God, according to history
or tradition, have, in past times, descended from heaven, and taken upon
themselves the form of men, clothing themselves with human flesh,
and furnishing incontestable evidence of a divine origin, by various
miracles, marvelous works, and superlative virtues; and finally these
twenty Jesus Christs (accepting their character for the name) laid the
foundation for the salvation of the world, and ascended back to heaven.
1. Chrishna of Hindostan.
2. Budha Sakia of India.
3. Salivahana of Bermuda.
4. Zulis, or Zhule, also Osiris and Orus, of Egypt.
5. Odin of the Scandinavians.
6. Crite of Chaldea.
7. Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia.
8. Baal and Taut, "the only Begotten of God," of Phenicia.
9. Indra of Thibet.
10. Bali of Afghanistan.
11. Jao of Nepaul.
12. Wittoba of the Bilingonese.
13. Thammuz of Syria.
14. Atys of Phrygia.
15. Xamolxis of Thrace.
16. Zoar of the Bonzes.
17. Adad of Assyria.
18. Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam.
19. Alcides of Thebes.
20. Mikado of the Sintoos.
21. Beddru of Japan.
22 Hesus or Eros, and Bremrillah, of the Druids.
23. Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls.
24. Cadmus of Greece.
25. Hil and Feta of the Mandaites.
26. Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico.
27. Universal Monarch of the Sibyls.
28. Ischy of the Island of Formosa.
29. Divine Teacher of Plato.
30. Holy One of Xaca.
31. Fohi and Tien of China.
32. Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece.
33. Ixion and Quirinus of Rome.
34. Prometheus of Caucasus.
35. Mohamud, or Mahomet, of Arabia.
These have all received divine honors, have nearly all been worshiped
as Gods, or sons of God; were mostly incarnated as Christs, Saviors,
Messiahs, or Mediators; not a few of them were reputedly born of
virgins; some of them filling a character almost identical with that
ascribed by the Christian's bible to Jesus Christ; many of them,
like him, are reported to have been crucified; and all of them, taken
together, furnish a prototype and parallel for nearly every important
incident and wonder-inciting miracle, doctrine and precept recorded
in the New Testament, of the Christian's Savior. Surely, with so many
Saviors the world cannot, or should not, be lost.
We have now presented before us a two-fold ground for doubting and
disputing the claims put forth by the Christian world in behalf of "Our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." In the first place, allowing the question
to be answered in the affirmative as to whether he was really a Savior,
or supernatural being, or more than a mere man, a negative answer to
which seems to have been sprung (as previously intimated) at the very
hour of his birth, and that by his kindred, his own nearest relatives;
as it is declared, "his own brethren did not believe on him"--a
skepticism which has been growing deeper and broader from that day to
this.
And now, upon the heel of this question, we find another formidable
query to be met and answered, viz.: Was he (Christ) the only Savior,
seeing that a multitude of similar claims are now upon our council-board
to be disposed of?
We shall, however, leave the theologians of the various religious
schools to adjust and settle this difficulty among themselves. We shall
leave them to settle the question as best they can as to whether Jesus
Christ was the only son and sent of God--"the only begotten of the
Father," as John declares him to be (John i. 14)--in view of the fact
that long prior to his time various personages, in different nations,
were invested with the title "Son of God," and have left behind them
similar proofs and credentials of the justness of their claims to such
a title, if being essentially alike--as we shall prove and demonstrate
them to be--can make their claims similar.
We shall present an array of facts and historical proofs, drawn from
numerous histories and the Holy Scriptures and bibles appertaining to
these various Saviors, and which include a history of their lives
and doctrines, that will go to show that in nearly all their leading
features, and mostly even in their details, they are strikingly similar.
A comparison, or parallel view, extended through their sacred histories,
so as to include an exhibition presented in parallels of the teachings
of their respective bibles, would make it clearly manifest that, with
respect to nearly every important thought, deed, word, action, doctrine,
principle, precept, tenet, ritual, ordinance or ceremony, and even
the various important characters or personages, who figure in their
religious dramas as Saviors, prophets, apostles, angels, devils, demons,
exalted or fallen genii--in a word, nearly every miraculous or marvelous
story, moral precept, or tenet of religious faith, noticed in either
the Old or New Testament Scriptures of Christendom--from the Jewish
cos
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Zenobia's entire development. It
did one good to see a fine intellect (as hers really was, although its
natural tendency lay in another direction than towards literature) so
fitly cased. She was, indeed, an admirable figure of a woman, just on
the hither verge of her richest maturity, with a combination of
features which it is safe to call remarkably beautiful, even if some
fastidious persons might pronounce them a little deficient in softness
and delicacy. But we find enough of those attributes everywhere.
Preferable--by way of variety, at least--was Zenobia's bloom, health,
and vigor, which she possessed in such overflow that a man might well
have fallen in love with her for their sake only. In her quiet moods,
she seemed rather indolent; but when really in earnest, particularly if
there were a spice of bitter feeling, she grew all alive to her
finger-tips.
"I am the first comer," Zenobia went on to say, while her smile beamed
warmth upon us all; "so I take the part of hostess for to-day, and
welcome you as if to my own fireside. You shall be my guests, too, at
supper. Tomorrow, if you please, we will be brethren and sisters, and
begin our new life from daybreak."
"Have we our various parts assigned?" asked some one.
"Oh, we of the softer sex," responded Zenobia, with her mellow, almost
broad laugh,--most delectable to hear, but not in the least like an
ordinary woman's laugh,--"we women (there are four of us here already)
will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a matter of
course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,--to wash, and
iron, and scrub, and sweep,--and, at our idler intervals, to repose
ourselves on knitting and sewing,--these, I suppose, must be feminine
occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual
adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that some of us who
wear the petticoat will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to
take our places in the kitchen."
"What a pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the housework
generally, cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd
enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just
that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life--the life of
degenerated mortals--from the life of Paradise. Eve had no dinner-pot,
and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day."
"I am afraid," said Zenobia, with mirth gleaming out of her eyes, "we
shall find some difficulty in adopting the paradisiacal system for at
least a month to come. Look at that snowdrift sweeping past the
window! Are there any figs ripe, do you think? Have the pineapples
been gathered to-day? Would you like a bread-fruit, or a cocoanut?
Shall I run out and pluck you some roses? No, no, Mr. Coverdale; the
only flower hereabouts is the one in my hair, which I got out of a
greenhouse this morning. As for the garb of Eden," added she,
shivering playfully, "I shall not assume it till after May-day!"
Assuredly Zenobia could not have intended it,--the fault must have been
entirely in my imagination. But these last words, together with
something in her manner, irresistibly brought up a picture of that
fine, perfectly developed figure, in Eve's earliest garment. Her free,
careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of
creating images which, though pure, are hardly felt to be quite
decorous when born of a thought that passes between man and woman. I
imputed it, at that time, to Zenobia's noble courage, conscious of no
harm, and scorning the petty restraints which take the life and color
out of other women's conversation. There was another peculiarity about
her. We seldom meet with women nowadays, and in this country, who
impress us as being women at all,--their sex fades away and goes for
nothing, in ordinary intercourse. Not so with Zenobia. One felt an
influence breathing out of her such as we might suppose to come from
Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought her to Adam,
saying, "Behold! here is a woman!" Not that I would convey the idea of
especial gentleness, grace, modesty, and shyness, but of a certain warm
and rich characteristic, which seems, for the most part, to have been
refined away out of the feminine system.
"And now," continued Zenobia, "I must go and help get supper. Do you
think you can be content, instead of figs, pineapples, and all the
other delicacies of Adam's supper-table, with tea and toast, and a
certain modest supply of ham and tongue, which, with the instinct of a
housewife, I brought hither in a basket? And there shall be bread and
milk, too, if the innocence of your taste demands it."
The whole sisterhood now went about their domestic avocations, utterly
declining our offers to assist, further than by bringing wood for the
kitchen fire from a huge pile in the back yard. After heaping up more
than a sufficient quantity, we returned to the sitting-room, drew our
chairs close to the hearth, and began to talk over our prospects.
Soon, with a tremendous stamping in the entry, appeared Silas Foster,
lank, stalwart, uncouth, and grizzly-bearded. He came from foddering
the cattle in the barn, and from the field, where he had been
ploughing, until the depth of the snow rendered it impossible to draw a
furrow. He greeted us in pretty much the same tone as if he were
speaking to his oxen, took a quid from his iron tobacco-box, pulled off
his wet cowhide boots, and sat down before the fire in his
stocking-feet. The steam arose from his soaked garments, so that the
stout yeoman looked vaporous and spectre-like.
"Well, folks," remarked Silas, "you'll be wishing yourselves back to
town again, if this weather holds."
And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the twilight fell
silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes
intermingling themselves with the fast-descending snow. The storm, in
its evening aspect, was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for
our especial behoof,--a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful
phantoms that invariably haunt the mind, on the eve of adventurous
enterprises, to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life.
But our courage did not quail. We would not allow ourselves to be
depressed by the snowdrift trailing past the window, any more than if
it had been the sigh of a summer wind among rustling boughs. There
have been few brighter seasons for us than that. If ever men might
lawfully dream awake, and give utterance to their wildest visions
without dread of laughter or scorn on the part of the audience,--yes,
and speak of earthly happiness, for themselves and mankind, as an
object to be hopefully striven for, and probably attained, we who made
that little semicircle round the blazing fire were those very men. We
had left the rusty iron framework of society behind us; we had broken
through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on
the weary treadmill of the established system, even while they feel its
irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. We had stepped down from
the pulpit; we had flung aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we
had thrown off that sweet, bewitching, enervating indolence, which is
better, after all, than most of the enjoyments within mortal grasp. It
was our purpose--a generous one, certainly, and absurd, no doubt, in
full proportion with its generosity--to give up whatever we had
heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a
life governed by other than the false and cruel principles on which
human society has all along been based.
And, first of all, we had divorced ourselves from pride, and were
striving to supply its place with familiar love. We meant to lessen
the laboring man's great burden of toil, by performing our due share of
it at the cost of our own thews and sinews. We sought our profit by
mutual aid, instead of wresting it by the strong hand from an enemy, or
filching it craftily from those less shrewd than ourselves (if, indeed,
there were any such in New England), or winning it by selfish
competition with a neighbor; in one or another of which fashions every
son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil,
whether he chooses it or no. And, as the basis of our institution, we
purposed to offer up the earnest toil of our bodies, as a prayer no
less than an effort for the advancement of our race.
Therefore, if we built splendid castles (phalansteries perhaps they
might be more fitly called), and pictured beautiful scenes, among the
fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all
went to rack with the crumbling embers and have never since arisen out
of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I
rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability
than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in
a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus
magnanimously persist in error.
Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did
speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For
instance:--"Which man among you," quoth he, "is the best judge of
swine? Some of us must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half a
dozen pigs."
Pigs! Good heavens! had we come out from among the swinish multitude
for this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising
early vegetables for the market:--"We shall never make any hand at
market gardening," said Silas Foster, "unless the women folks will
undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team enough for that and
the regular farm-work, reckoning three of your city folks as worth one
common field-hand. No, no; I tell you, we should have to get up a
little too early in the morning, to compete with the market gardeners
round Boston."
It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised,
after our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world,
should relate to the possibility of getting the advantage over the
outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But, to own the truth,
I very soon became sensible that, as regarded society at large, we
stood in a position of new hostility, rather than new brotherhood. Nor
could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the bigger and
better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting so
pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest
of mankind in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual
bond among ourselves.
This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness
by the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence
that supper was on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and
perceiving that her one magnificent flower had grown rather languid
(probably by being exposed to the fervency of the kitchen fire), she
flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a village girl would throw
away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her character,
although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous
nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers from her hand,
and to revive faded ones by her touch. Nevertheless, it was a singular
but irresistible effect; the presence of Zenobia caused our heroic
enterprise to show like an illusion, a masquerade, a pastoral, a
counterfeit Arcadia, in which we grown-up men and women were making a
play-day of the years that were given us to live in. I tried to
analyze this impression, but not with much success.
"It really vexes me," observed Zenobia, as we left the room, "that Mr.
Hollingsworth should be such a laggard. I should not have thought him
at all the sort of person to be turned back by a puff of contrary wind,
or a few snowflakes drifting into his face."
"Do you know Hollingsworth personally?" I inquired.
"No; only as an auditor--auditress, I mean--of some of his lectures,"
said she. "What a voice he has! and what a man he is! Yet not so much
an intellectual man, I should say, as a great heart; at least, he moved
me more deeply than I think myself capable of being moved, except by
the stroke of a true, strong heart against my own. It is a sad pity
that he should have devoted his glorious powers to such a grimy,
unbeautiful, and positively hopeless object as this reformation of
criminals, about which he makes himself and his wretchedly small
audiences so very miserable. To tell you a secret, I never could
tolerate a philanthropist before. Could you?"
"By no means," I answered; "neither can I now."
"They are, indeed, an odiously disagreeable set of mortals," continued
Zenobia. "I should like Mr. Hollingsworth a great deal better if the
philanthropy had been left out. At all events, as a mere matter of
taste, I wish he would let the bad people alone, and try to benefit
those who are not already past his help. Do you suppose he will be
content to spend his life, or even a few months of it, among tolerably
virtuous and comfortable individuals like ourselves?"
"Upon my word, I doubt it," said I. "If we wish to keep him with us, we
must systematically commit at least one crime apiece! Mere peccadillos
will not satisfy him."
Zenobia turned, sidelong, a strange kind of a glance upon me; but,
before I could make out what it meant, we had entered the kitchen,
where, in accordance with the rustic simplicity of our new life, the
supper-table was spread.
IV. THE SUPPER-TABLE
The pleasant firelight! I must still keep harping on it. The kitchen
hearth had an old-fashioned breadth, depth, and spaciousness, far
within which lay what seemed the butt of a good-sized oak-tree, with
the moisture bubbling merrily out at both ends. It was now half an
hour beyond dusk. The blaze from an armful of substantial sticks,
rendered more combustible by brushwood and pine, flickered powerfully
on the smoke-blackened walls, and so cheered our spirits that we cared
not what inclemency might rage and roar on the other side of our
illuminated windows. A yet sultrier warmth was bestowed by a goodly
quantity of peat, which was crumbling to white ashes among the burning
brands, and incensed the kitchen with its not ungrateful fragrance.
The exuberance of this household fire would alone have sufficed to
bespeak us no true farmers; for the New England yeoman, if he have the
misfortune to dwell within practicable distance of a wood-market, is as
niggardly of each stick as if it were a bar of California gold.
But it was fortunate for us, on that wintry eve of our untried life, to
enjoy the warm and radiant luxury of a somewhat too abundant fire. If
it served no other purpose, it made the men look so full of youth, warm
blood, and hope, and the women--such of them, at least, as were anywise
convertible by its magic--so very beautiful, that I would cheerfully
have spent my last dollar to prolong the blaze. As for Zenobia, there
was a glow in her cheeks that made me think of Pandora, fresh from
Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth by dint of which he
had tempered and moulded her.
"Take your places, my dear friends all," cried she; "seat yourselves
without ceremony, and you shall be made happy with such tea as not many
of the world's working-people, except yourselves, will find in their
cups to-night. After this one supper, you may drink buttermilk, if you
please. To-night we will quaff this nectar, which, I assure you, could
not be bought with gold."
We all sat down,--grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the
two bouncing handmaidens, included,--and looked at one another in a
friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of
our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of
superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we
unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already
accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however,
that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far
easier to condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I
refrain from questioning, in secret, whether some of us--and Zenobia
among the rest--would so quietly have taken our places among these good
people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by
necessity but choice. Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of
earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was at our own option
to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again to-morrow.
This same salvo, as to the power of regaining our former position,
contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we subsequently
bore many of the hardships and humiliations of a life of toil. If ever
I have deserved (which has not often been the case, and, I think,
never), but if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow
mortal, for secretly putting weight upon some imaginary social
advantage, it must have been while I was striving to prove myself
ostentatiously his equal and no more. It was while I sat beside him on
his cobbler's bench, or clinked my hoe against his own in the
cornfield, or broke the same crust of bread, my earth-grimed hand to
his, at our noontide lunch. The poor, proud man should look at both
sides of sympathy like this.
The silence which followed upon our sitting down to table grew rather
oppressive; indeed, it was hardly broken by a word
|
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quiet, but I will tell you what I am afraid
of: I'm afraid to play preference with Sergei Petrovitch; yesterday he
cleaned me out of everything at Madame Byelenitsin's."
Gedeonovsky gave a thin, sympathetic little laugh; he was anxious to
be in favour with the brilliant young official from Petersburg--the
governor's favourite. In conversation with Marya Dmitrievna, he often
alluded to Panshin's remarkable abilities. Indeed, he used to argue,
how can one help admiring him? The young man is making his way in the
highest spheres, he is an exemplary official, and not a bit of pride
about him. And, in fact, even in Petersburg Panshin was reckoned a
capable official; he got through a great deal of work; he spoke of it
lightly as befits a man of the world who does not attach any special
importance to his labours, but he never hesitated in carrying out
orders. The authorities like such subordinates; he himself had no doubt,
that if he chose, he could be a minister in time.
"You are pleased to say that I cleaned you out," replied Gedeonovsky;
"but who was it won twelve roubles of me last week and more?"...
"You're a malicious fellow," Panshin interrupted, with genial but
somewhat contemptuous carelessness, and, paying him no further
attention, he went up to Lisa.
"I cannot get the overture of Oberon here," he began. "Madame
Byelenitsin was boasting when she said she had all the classical music:
in reality she has nothing but polkas and waltzes, but I have already
written to Moscow, and within a week you will have the overture. By the
way," he went on, "I wrote a new song yesterday, the words too are mine,
would you care for me to sing it? I don't know how far it is successful.
Madame Byelenitsin thought it very pretty, but her words mean nothing. I
should like to know what you think of it. But, I think, though, that had
better be later on."
"Why later on?" interposed Marya Dmitrievna, "why not now?"
"I obey," replied Panshin, with a peculiar bright and sweet smile, which
came and went suddenly on his face. He drew up a chair with his
knee, sat down to the piano, and striking a few chords began to sing,
articulating the words clearly, the following song--
Above the earth the moon floats high
Amid pale clouds;
Its magic light in that far sky
Yet stirs the floods.
My heart has found a moon to rule
Its stormy sea;
To joy and sorrow it is moved
Only by thee.
My soul is full of love's cruel smart,
And longing vain;
But thou art calm, as that cold moon,
That knows not pain.
The second couplet was sung by Panshin with special power and
expression, the sound of waves was heard in the stormy accompaniment.
After the words "and longing vain," he sighed softly, dropped his eyes
and let his voice gradually die away, morendo. When he had finished,
Lisa praised the motive, Marya Dmitrievna cried, "Charming!" but
Gedeonovsky went so far as to exclaim, "Ravishing poetry, and music
equally ravishing!" Lenotchka looked with childish reverence at the
singer. In short, every one present was delighted with the young
dilettante's composition; but at the door leading into the drawing-room
from the hall stood an old man, who had only just come in, and who,
to judge by the expression of his downcast face and the shrug of his
shoulders, was by no means pleased with Panshin's song, pretty though it
was. After waiting a moment and flicking the dust off his boots with
a coarse pocket-handkerchief, this man suddenly raised his eyes,
compressed his lips with a morose expression, and his stooping figure
bent forward, he entered the drawing-room.
"Ah! Christopher Fedoritch, how are you?" exclaimed Panshin before any
of the others could speak, and he jumped up quickly from his seat. "I
had no suspicion that you were here--nothing would have induced me to
sing my song before you. I know you are no lover of light music."
"I did not hear it," declared the new-comer, in very bad Russian, and
exchanging greetings with every one, he stood awkwardly in the middle of
the room.
"Have you come, Monsieur Lemm," said Marya Dmitrievna, "to give Lisa her
music lesson?"
"No, not Lisaveta Mihalovna, but Elena Mihalovna."
"Oh! very well. Lenotchka, go up-stairs with Mr. Lemm."
The old man was about to follow the little girl, but Panshin stopped
him.
"Don't go after the lesson, Christopher Fedoritch," he said. "Lisa
Mihalovna and I are going to play a duet of Beethoven's sonata."
The old man muttered some reply, and Panshin continued in German,
mispronouncing the words--
"Lisaveta Mihalovna showed me the religious cantata you dedicated to
her--a beautiful thing! Pray, do not suppose that I cannot appreciate
serious music--quite the contrary: it is tedious sometimes, but then it
is very elevating."
The old man crimsoned to his ears, and with a sidelong look at Lisa, he
hurriedly went out of the room.
Marya Dmitrievna asked Panshin to sing his song again; but he protested
that he did not wish to torture the ears of the musical German, and
suggested to Lisa that they should attack Beethoven's sonata. Then Marya
Dmitrievna heaved a sigh, and in her turn suggested to Gedeonovsky a
walk in the garden. "I should like," she said, "to have a little more
talk, and to consult you about our poor Fedya." Gedeonovsky bowed with a
smirk, and with two fingers picked up his hat, on the brim of which
his gloves had been tidily laid, and went away with Marya Dmitrievna.
Panshin and Lisa remained alone in the room; she fetched the sonata, and
opened it; both seated themselves at the piano in silence. Overhead were
heard the faint sounds of scales, played by the uncertain fingers of
Lenotchka.
Chapter V
Christopher Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786 in the town of
Chemnitz in Saxony. His parents were poor musicians. His father played
the French horn, his mother the harp; he himself was practising on three
different instruments by the time he was five. At eight years old he was
left an orphan, and from his tenth year he began to earn his bread
by his art. He led a wandering life for many years, and performed
everywhere in restaurants, at fairs, at peasants' weddings, and at
balls. At last he got into an orchestra and constantly rising in it, he
obtained the position of director. He was rather a poor performer; but
he understood music thoroughly. At twenty-eight he migrated into Russia,
on the invitation of a great nobleman, who did not care for music
himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years
in the capacity of orchestra conductor, and left him empty-handed. The
nobleman was ruined, he intended to give him a promissory note, but in
the sequel refused him even that--in short, did not pay him a farthing.
He was advised to go away; but he was unwilling to return home in
poverty from Russia, that great Russia which is a mine of gold for
artists; he decided to remain and try his luck. For twenty years
the poor German had been trying his luck; he had lived in various
gentlemen's houses, had suffered and put up with much, had faced
privation, had struggled like a fish on the ice; but the idea of
returning to his own country never left him among all the hardships he
endured; it was this dream alone that sustained him. But fate did
not see fit to grant him this last and first happiness: at fifty,
broken-down in health and prematurely aged, he drifted to the town of
O----, and remained there for good, having now lost once for all every
hope of leaving Russia, which he detested. He gained his poor livelihood
somehow by lessons. Lemm's exterior was not prepossessing. He was short
and bent, with crooked shoulders, and contracted chest, with large flat
feet, and bluish white nails on the gnarled bony fingers of his sinewy
red hands. He had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and compressed lips,
which he was for ever twitching and biting; and this, together with his
habitual taciturnity, produced an impression almost sinister. His grey
hair hung in tufts on his low brow; like smouldering embers, his little
set eyes glowed with dull fire. He moved painfully, at every step
swinging his ungainly body forward. Some of his movements recalled the
clumsy actions of an owl in a cage when it feels that it is being looked
at, but itself can hardly see out of its great yellow eyes timorously
and drowsily blinking. Pitiless, prolonged sorrow had laid its indelible
stamp on the poor musician; it had disfigured and deformed his person,
by no means attractive to begin with. But any one who was able to get
over the first impression would have discerned something good, and
honest, and out of the common in this half-shattered creature. A devoted
admirer of Bach and Handel, a master of his art, gifted with a lively
imagination and that boldness of conception which is only vouchsafed to
the German race, Lemm might, in time--who knows?--have taken rank with
the great composers of his fatherland, had his life been different; but
he was born under an unlucky star! He had written much in his life, and
it had not been granted to him to see one of his compositions produced;
he did not know how to set about things in the right way, to gain favour
in the right place, and to make a push at the right moment. A long, long
time ago, his one friend and admirer, also a German and also poor, had
published two of Lemm's sonatas at his own expense--the whole edition
remained on the shelves of the music-shops; they disappeared without
a trace, as though they had been thrown into a river by night. At last
Lemm had renounced everything; the years too did their work; his mind
had grown hard and stiff, as his fingers had stiffened. He lived alone
in a little cottage not far from the Kalitin's house, with an old cook
he had taken out of the poorhouse (he had never married). He took long
walks, and read the Bible and the Protestant version of the Psalms, and
Shakespeare in Schlegel's translation. He had composed nothing for
a long time; but apparently, Lisa, his best pupil, had been able to
inspire him; he had written for her the cantata to which Panshin had!
made allusion. The words of this cantata he had borrowed from his
collection of hymns. He had added a few verses of his own. It was sung
by two choruses--a chorus of the happy and a chorus of the unhappy. The
two were brought into harmony at the end, and sang together, "Merciful
God, have pity on us sinners, and deliver us from all evil thoughts and
earthly hopes." On the title-page was the inscription, most carefully
written and even illuminated, "Only the righteous are justified. A
religious cantata. Composed and dedicated to Miss Elisaveta Kalitin,
his dear pupil, by her teacher, C. T. G. Lemm." The words, "Only the
righteous are justified" and "Elisaveta Kalitin," were encircled by
rays. Below was written: "For you alone, fur Sie allein." This was why
Lemm had grown red, and looked reproachfully at Lisa; he was deeply
wounded when Panshin spoke of his cantata before him.
Chapter VI
Panshin, who was playing bass, struck the first chords of the sonata
loudly and decisively, but Lisa did not begin her part. He stopped and
looked at her. Lisa's eyes were fixed directly on him, and expressed
displeasure. There was no smile on her lips, her whole face looked stern
and even mournful.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"Why did you not keep your word?" she said. "I showed you Christopher
Fedoritch's cantata on the express condition that you said nothing about
it to him?"
"I beg your pardon, Lisaveta Mihalovna, the words slipped out unawares."
"You have hurt his feelings and mine too. Now he will not trust even
me."
"How could I help it, Lisaveta Mihalovna? Ever since I was a little boy
I could never see a German without wanting to teaze him."
"How can you say that, Vladimir Nikolaitch? This German is poor, lonely,
and broken-down--have you no pity for him? Can you wish to teaze him?"
Panshin was a little taken aback.
"You are right, Lisaveta Mihalovna," he declared. "It's my everlasting
thoughtlessness that's to blame. No, don't contradict me; I know myself.
So much harm has come to me from my want of thought. It's owing to that
failing that I am thought to be an egoist."
Panshin paused. With whatever subject he began a conversation, he
generally ended by talking of himself, and the subject was changed by
him so easily, so smoothly and genially, that it seemed unconscious.
"In your own household, for instance," he went on, "your mother
certainly wishes me well, she is so kind; you--well, I don't know your
opinion of me; but on the other hand your aunt simply can't bear me. I
must have offended her too by some thoughtless, stupid speech. You know
I'm not a favourite of hers, am I?"
"No," Lisa admitted with some reluctance, "she doesn't like you."
Panshin ran his fingers quickly over the keys, and a scarcely
perceptible smile glided over his lips.
"Well, and you?" he said, "do you too think me an egoist?"
"I know you very little," replied Lisa, "but I don't consider you an
egoist; on the contrary, I can't help feeling grateful to you."
"I know, I know what you mean to say," Panshin interrupted, and again he
ran his fingers over the keys: "for the music and the books I bring you,
for the wretched sketches with which I adorn your album, and so forth.
I might do all that--and be an egoist all the same. I venture to think
that you don't find me a bore, and don't think me a bad fellow, but
still you suppose that I--what's the saying?--would sacrifice friend or
father for the sake of a witticism."
"You are careless and forgetful, like all men of the world," observed
Lisa, "that is all."
Panshin frowned a little.
"Come," he said, "don't let us discuss me any more; let us play our
sonata. There's only one thing I must beg of you," he added, smoothing
out the leaves of the book on the music stand, "think what you like of
me, call me an egoist even--so be it! but don't call me a man of the
world; that name's insufferable to me.... Anch 'io sono pittore. I
too am an artist, though a poor one--and that--I mean that I'm a poor
artist, I shall show directly. Let us begin."
"Very well, let us begin," said Lisa.
The first adagio went fairly successfully though Panshin made more
than one false note. His own compositions and what he had practised
thoroughly he played very nicely, but he played at sight badly. So
the second part of the sonata--a rather quick allegro--broke down
completely; at the twentieth bar, Panshin, who was two bars behind, gave
in, and pushed his chair back with a laugh.
"No!" he cried, "I can't play to-day; it's a good thing Lemm did not
hear us; he would have had a fit."
Lisa got up, shut the piano, and turned round to Panshin.
"What are we going to do?" she asked.
"That's just like you, that question! You can never sit with your
hands idle. Well, if you like let us sketch, since it's not quite dark.
Perhaps the other muse, the muse of painting--what was her name? I
have forgotten... will be more propitious to me. Where's your album? I
remember, my landscape there is not finished."
Lisa went into the other room to fetch the album, and Panshin, left
alone, drew a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, and rubbed his
nails and looked as it were critically at his hands. He had beautiful
white hands; on the second finger of his left hand he wore a spiral gold
ring. Lisa came back; Panshin sat down at the window, and opened the
album.
"Ah!" he exclaimed: "I see that you have begun to copy my landscape--and
capitally too. Excellent! only just here--give me a pencil--the shadows
are not put in strongly enough. Look."
And Panshin with a flourish added a few long strokes. He was for ever
drawing the same landscape: in the foreground large disheveled trees,
a stretch of meadow in the background, and jagged mountains on the
horizon. Lisa looked over his shoulders at his work.
"In drawing, just as in life generally," observed Panshin, holding
his head to right and to left, "lightness and boldness--are the great
things."
At that instant Lemm came into the room, and with a stiff bow was about
to leave it; but Panshin, throwing aside album and pencils, placed
himself in his way.
"Where are you doing, dear Christopher Fedoritch? Aren't you going to
stay and have tea with us?"
|
young
|
How many times does the word 'young' appear in the text?
| 2
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, and sheltering home, going about with hatless
friends to Socialist meetings and art-class dances, and displaying a
disposition to carry her scientific ambitions to unwomanly lengths. She
seemed to think he was merely the paymaster, handing over the means
of her freedom. And now she insisted that she MUST leave the chastened
security of the Tredgold Women's College for Russell's unbridled
classes, and wanted to go to fancy dress dances in pirate costume and
spend the residue of the night with Widgett's ramshackle girls in some
indescribable hotel in Soho!
He had done his best not to think about her at all, but the situation
and his sister had become altogether too urgent. He had finally put
aside The Lilac Sunbonnet, gone into his study, lit the gas fire, and
written the letter that had brought these unsatisfactory relations to a
head.
Part 4
MY DEAR VEE, he wrote.
These daughters! He gnawed his pen and reflected, tore the sheet up, and
began again.
"MY DEAR VERONICA,--Your aunt tells me you have involved yourself in
some arrangement with the Widgett girls about a Fancy Dress Ball in
London. I gather you wish to go up in some fantastic get-up, wrapped
about in your opera cloak, and that after the festivities you propose to
stay with these friends of yours, and without any older people in your
party, at an hotel. Now I am sorry to cross you in anything you have set
your heart upon, but I regret to say--"
"H'm," he reflected, and crossed out the last four words.
"--but this cannot be."
"No," he said, and tried again: "but I must tell you quite definitely
that I feel it to be my duty to forbid any such exploit."
"Damn!" he remarked at the defaced letter; and, taking a fresh sheet, he
recopied what he had written. A certain irritation crept into his manner
as he did so.
"I regret that you should ever have proposed it," he went on.
He meditated, and began a new paragraph.
"The fact of it is, and this absurd project of yours only brings it to
a head, you have begun to get hold of some very queer ideas about what a
young lady in your position may or may not venture to do. I do not think
you quite understand my ideals or what is becoming as between father and
daughter. Your attitude to me--"
He fell into a brown study. It was so difficult to put precisely.
"--and your aunt--"
For a time he searched for the mot juste. Then he went on:
"--and, indeed, to most of the established things in life is, frankly,
unsatisfactory. You are restless, aggressive, critical with all
the crude unthinking criticism of youth. You have no grasp upon the
essential facts of life (I pray God you never may), and in your rash
ignorance you are prepared to dash into positions that may end in
lifelong regret. The life of a young girl is set about with prowling
pitfalls."
He was arrested for a moment by an indistinct picture of Veronica
reading this last sentence. But he was now too deeply moved to trace
a certain unsatisfactoriness to its source in a mixture of metaphors.
"Well," he said, argumentatively, "it IS. That's all about it. It's time
she knew."
"The life of a young girl is set about with prowling pitfalls, from
which she must be shielded at all costs."
His lips tightened, and he frowned with solemn resolution.
"So long as I am your father, so long as your life is entrusted to my
care, I feel bound by every obligation to use my authority to check this
odd disposition of yours toward extravagant enterprises. A day will come
when you will thank me. It is not, my dear Veronica, that I think there
is any harm in you; there is not. But a girl is soiled not only by evil
but by the proximity of evil, and a reputation for rashness may do
her as serious an injury as really reprehensible conduct. So do please
believe that in this matter I am acting for the best."
He signed his name and reflected. Then he opened the study door and
called "Mollie!" and returned to assume an attitude of authority on the
hearthrug, before the blue flames and orange glow of the gas fire.
His sister appeared.
She was dressed in one of those complicated dresses that are all lace
and work and confused patternings of black and purple and cream about
the body, and she was in many ways a younger feminine version of the
same theme as himself. She had the same sharp nose--which, indeed, only
Ann Veronica, of all the family, had escaped. She carried herself well,
whereas her brother slouched, and there was a certain aristocratic
dignity about her that she had acquired through her long engagement to
a curate of family, a scion of the Wiltshire Edmondshaws. He had died
before they married, and when her brother became a widower she had
come to his assistance and taken over much of the care of his youngest
daughter. But from the first her rather old-fashioned conception of life
had jarred with the suburban atmosphere, the High School spirit and the
memories of the light and little Mrs. Stanley, whose family had been by
any reckoning inconsiderable--to use the kindliest term. Miss Stanley
had determined from the outset to have the warmest affection for her
youngest niece and to be a second mother in her life--a second and a
better one; but she had found much to battle with, and there was much in
herself that Ann Veronica failed to understand. She came in now with an
air of reserved solicitude.
Mr. Stanley pointed to the letter with a pipe he had drawn from his
jacket pocket. "What do you think of that?" he asked.
She took it up in her many-ringed hands and read it judicially. He
filled his pipe slowly.
"Yes," she said at last, "it is firm and affectionate."
"I could have said more."
"You seem to have said just what had to be said. It seems to me exactly
what is wanted. She really must not go to that affair."
She paused, and he waited for her to speak.
"I don't think she quite sees the harm of those people or the sort of
life to which they would draw her," she said. "They would spoil every
chance."
"She has chances?" he said, helping her out.
"She is an extremely attractive girl," she said; and added, "to some
people. Of course, one doesn't like to talk about things until there are
things to talk about."
"All the more reason why she shouldn't get herself talked about."
"That is exactly what I feel."
Mr. Stanley took the letter and stood with it in his hand thoughtfully
for a time. "I'd give anything," he remarked, "to see our little Vee
happily and comfortably married."
He gave the note to the parlormaid the next morning in an inadvertent,
casual manner just as he was leaving the house to catch his London
train. When Ann Veronica got it she had at first a wild, fantastic idea
that it contained a tip.
Part 5
Ann Veronica's resolve to have things out with her father was not
accomplished without difficulty.
He was not due from the City until about six, and so she went and played
Badminton with the Widgett girls until dinner-time. The atmosphere at
dinner was not propitious. Her aunt was blandly amiable above a certain
tremulous undertow, and talked as if to a caller about the alarming
spread of marigolds that summer at the end of the garden, a sort of
Yellow Peril to all the smaller hardy annuals, while her father brought
some papers to table and presented himself as preoccupied with them. "It
really seems as if we shall have to put down marigolds altogether next
year," Aunt Molly repeated three times, "and do away with marguerites.
They seed beyond all reason." Elizabeth, the parlormaid, kept coming in
to hand vegetables whenever there seemed a chance of Ann Veronica asking
for an interview. Directly dinner was over Mr. Stanley, having pretended
to linger to smoke, fled suddenly up-stairs to petrography, and when
Veronica tapped he answered through the locked door, "Go away, Vee! I'm
busy," and made a lapidary's wheel buzz loudly.
Breakfast, too, was an impossible occasion. He read the Times with an
unusually passionate intentness, and then declared suddenly for the
earlier of the two trains he used.
"I'll come to the station," said Ann Veronica. "I may as well come up by
this train."
"I may have to run," said her father, with an appeal to his watch.
"I'll run, too," she volunteered.
Instead of which they walked sharply....
"I say, daddy," she began, and was suddenly short of breath.
"If it's about that dance project," he said, "it's no good, Veronica.
I've made up my mind."
"You'll make me look a fool before all my friends."
"You shouldn't have made an engagement until you'd consulted your aunt."
"I thought I was old enough," she gasped, between laughter and crying.
Her father's step quickened to a trot. "I won't have you quarrelling and
crying in the Avenue," he said. "Stop it!... If you've got anything
to say, you must say it to your aunt--"
"But look here, daddy!"
He flapped the Times at her with an imperious gesture.
"It's settled. You're not to go. You're NOT to go."
"But it's about other things."
"I don't care. This isn't the place."
"Then may I come to the study to-night--after dinner?"
"I'm--BUSY!"
"It's important. If I can't talk anywhere else--I DO want an
understanding."
Ahead of them walked a gentleman whom it was evident they must at their
present pace very speedily overtake. It was Ramage, the occupant of the
big house at the end of the Avenue. He had recently made Mr. Stanley's
acquaintance in the train and shown him one or two trifling civilities.
He was an outside broker and the proprietor of a financial newspaper; he
had come up very rapidly in the last few years, and Mr. Stanley admired
and detested him in almost equal measure. It was intolerable to think
that he might overhear words and phrases. Mr. Stanley's pace slackened.
"You've no right to badger me like this, Veronica," he said. "I can't
see what possible benefit can come of discussing things that are
settled. If you want advice, your aunt is the person. However, if you
must air your opinions--"
"To-night, then, daddy!"
He made an angry but conceivably an assenting noise, and then Ramage
glanced back and stopped, saluted elaborately, and waited for them to
come up. He was a square-faced man of nearly fifty, with iron-gray hair
a mobile, clean-shaven mouth and rather protuberant black eyes that now
scrutinized Ann Veronica. He dressed rather after the fashion of the
West End than the City, and affected a cultured urbanity that somehow
disconcerted and always annoyed Ann Veronica's father extremely. He
did not play golf, but took his exercise on horseback, which was also
unsympathetic.
"Stuffy these trees make the Avenue," said Mr. Stanley as they drew
alongside, to account for his own ruffled and heated expression. "They
ought to have been lopped in the spring."
"There's plenty of time," said Ramage. "Is Miss Stanley coming up with
us?"
"I go second," she said, "and change at Wimbledon."
"We'll all go second," said Ramage, "if we may?"
Mr. Stanley wanted to object strongly, but as he could not immediately
think how to put it, he contented himself with a grunt, and the motion
was carried. "How's Mrs. Ramage?" he asked.
"Very much as usual," said Ramage. "She finds lying up so much very
irksome. But, you see, she HAS to lie up."
The topic of his invalid wife bored him, and he turned at once to Ann
Veronica. "And where are YOU going?" he said. "Are you going on again
this winter with that scientific work of yours? It's an instance of
heredity, I suppose." For a moment Mr. Stanley almost liked Ramage.
"You're a biologist, aren't you?"
He began to talk of his own impressions of biology as a commonplace
magazine reader who had to get what he could from the monthly reviews,
and was glad to meet with any information from nearer the fountainhead.
In a little while he and she were talking quite easily and agreeably.
They went on talking in the train--it seemed to her father a slight want
of deference to him--and he listened and pretended to read the Times. He
was struck disagreeably by Ramage's air of gallant consideration and Ann
Veronica's self-possessed answers. These things did not harmonize with
his conception of the forthcoming (if unavoidable) interview. After
all, it came to him suddenly as a harsh discovery that she might be in
a sense regarded as grownup. He was a man who in all things classified
without nuance, and for him there were in the matter of age just two
feminine classes and no more--girls and women. The distinction lay
chiefly in the right to pat their heads. But here was a girl--she must
be a girl, since she was his daughter and pat-able--imitating the
woman quite remarkably and cleverly. He resumed his listening. She was
discussing one of those modern advanced plays with a remarkable, with an
extraordinary, confidence.
"His love-making," she remarked, "struck me as unconvincing. He seemed
too noisy."
The full significance of her words did not instantly appear to him. Then
it dawned. Good heavens! She was discussing love-making. For a time he
heard no more, and stared with stony eyes at a Book-War proclamation in
leaded type that filled half a column of the Times that day. Could she
understand what she was talking about? Luckily it was a second-class
carriage and the ordinary fellow-travellers were not there. Everybody,
he felt, must be listening behind their papers.
Of course, girls repeat phrases and opinions of which they cannot
possibly understand the meaning. But a middle-aged man like Ramage ought
to know better than to draw out a girl, the daughter of a friend and
neighbor....
Well, after all, he seemed to be turning the subject. "Broddick is a
heavy man," he was saying, "and the main interest of the play was the
embezzlement." Thank Heaven! Mr. Stanley allowed his paper to drop
a little, and scrutinized the hats and brows of their three
fellow-travellers.
They reached Wimbledon, and Ramage whipped out to hand Miss Stanley
to the platform as though she had been a duchess, and she descended as
though such attentions from middle-aged, but still gallant, merchants
were a matter of course. Then, as Ramage readjusted himself in a corner,
he remarked: "These young people shoot up, Stanley. It seems only
yesterday that she was running down the Avenue, all hair and legs."
Mr. Stanley regarded him through his glasses with something approaching
animosity.
"Now she's all hat and ideas," he said, with an air of humor.
"She seems an unusually clever girl," said Ramage.
Mr. Stanley regarded his neighbor's clean-shaven face almost warily.
"I'm not sure whether we don't rather overdo all this higher education,"
he said, with an effect of conveying profound meanings.
Part 6
He became quite sure, by a sort of accumulation of reflection, as the
day wore on. He found his youngest daughter intrusive in his thoughts
all through the morning, and still more so in the afternoon. He saw her
young and graceful back as she descended from the carriage, severely
ignoring him, and recalled a glimpse he had of her face, bright and
serene, as his train ran out of Wimbledon. He recalled with exasperating
perplexity her clear, matter-of-fact tone as she talked about
love-making being unconvincing. He was really very proud of her, and
extraordinarily angry and resentful at the innocent and audacious
self-reliance that seemed to intimate her sense of absolute independence
of him, her absolute security without him. After all, she only LOOKED a
woman. She was rash and ignorant, absolutely inexperienced. Absolutely.
He began to think of speeches, very firm, explicit speeches, he would
make.
He lunched in the Legal Club in Chancery Lane, and met Ogilvy. Daughters
were in the air that day. Ogilvy was full of a client's trouble in
that matter, a grave and even tragic trouble. He told some of the
particulars.
"Curious case," said Ogilvy, buttering his bread and cutting it up in a
way he had. "Curious case--and sets one thinking."
He resumed, after a mouthful: "Here is a girl of sixteen or seventeen,
seventeen and a half to be exact, running about, as one might say, in
London. Schoolgirl. Her family are solid West End people, Kensington
people. Father--dead. She goes out and comes home. Afterward goes on to
Oxford. Twenty-one, twenty-two. Why doesn't she marry? Plenty of money
under her father's will. Charming girl."
He consumed Irish stew for some moments.
"Married already," he said, with his mouth full. "Shopman."
"Good God!" said Mr. Stanley.
"Good-looking rascal she met at Worthing. Very romantic and all that. He
fixed it."
"But--"
"He left her alone. Pure romantic nonsense on her part. Sheer
calculation on his. Went up to Somerset House to examine the will before
he did it. Yes. Nice position."
"She doesn't care for him now?"
"Not a bit. What a girl of sixteen cares for is hair and a high color
and moonlight and a tenor voice. I suppose most of our daughters would
marry organ-grinders if they had a chance--at that age. My son wanted
to marry a woman of thirty in a tobacconist's shop. Only a son's another
story. We fixed that. Well, that's the situation. My people don't know
what to do. Can't face a scandal. Can't ask the gent to go abroad and
condone a bigamy. He misstated her age and address; but you can't get
home on him for a thing like that.... There you
|
urgent
|
How many times does the word 'urgent' appear in the text?
| 0
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Royal family, that this apprehension was rather the
effect of his love, than grounded on any substantial reason. He had a
great number of rivals; the most formidable among them, for his birth,
his merit, and the lustre which Royal favour cast upon his house, was
the Chevalier de Guise; this gentleman fell in love with Mademoiselle
de Chartres the first day he saw her, and he discovered the Prince of
Cleves's passion as the Prince of Cleves discovered his. Though they
were intimate friends, their having the same pretentions gradually
created a coolness between them, and their friendship grew into an
indifference, without their being able to come to an explanation on the
matter. The Prince of Cleves's good fortune in having seen
Mademoiselle de Chartres first seemed to be a happy presage, and gave
him some advantage over his rivals, but he foresaw great obstructions
on the part of the Duke of Nevers his father: the Duke was strictly
attached to the Duchess of Valentinois, and the Viscount de Chartres
was her enemy, which was a sufficient reason to hinder the Duke from
consenting to the marriage of his son, with a niece of the Viscount's.
Madam de Chartres, who had taken so much care to inspire virtue into
her daughter, did not fail to continue the same care in a place where
it was so necessary, and where there were so many dangerous examples.
Ambition and gallantry were the soul of the Court, and employed both
sexes equally; there were so many different interests and so many
cabals, and the ladies had so great a share in them, that love was
always mixed with business, and business with love: nobody was easy, or
indifferent; their business was to raise themselves, to be agreeable,
to serve or disserve; and intrigue and pleasure took up their whole
time. The care of the ladies was to recommend themselves either to the
Queen, the Dauphin-Queen, or the Queen of Navarre, or to Madame, or the
Duchess of Valentinois. Inclination, reasons of decorum, resemblance
of temper made their applications different; those who found the bloom
worn off, and who professed an austerity of virtue, were attached to
the Queen; the younger sort, who loved pleasure and gallantry, made
their Court to the Queen-Dauphin; the Queen of Navarre too had her
favourites, she was young, and had great power with the King her
husband, who was in the interest of the Constable, and by that means
increased his authority; Madame was still very beautiful, and drew many
ladies into her party. And as for the Duchess of Valentinois, she
could command as many as she would condescend to smile upon; but very
few women were agreeable to her, and excepting some with whom she lived
in confidence and familiarity, and whose humour was agreeable to her
own, she admitted none but on days when she gratified her vanity in
having a Court in the same manner the Queen had.
All these different cabals were full of emulation and envy towards one
another; the ladies, who composed them, had their jealousies also among
themselves, either as to favour or lovers: the interests of ambition
were often blended with concerns of less importance, but which did not
affect less sensibly; so that in this Court there was a sort of tumult
without disorder, which made it very agreeable, but at the same time
very dangerous for a young lady. Madam de Chartres perceived the
danger, and was careful to guard her daughter from it; she entreated
her, not as a mother, but as her friend, to impart to her all the
gallantry she should meet withal, promising her in return to assist her
in forming her conduct right, as to things in which young people are
oftentimes embarrassed.
The Chevalier de Guise was so open and unguarded with respect to his
passion for Mademoiselle de Chartres, that nobody was ignorant of it:
nevertheless he saw nothing but impossibilities in what he desired; he
was sensible that he was not a proper match for Mademoiselle de
Chartres, by reason of the narrowness of his fortune, which was not
sufficient to support his dignity; and he was sensible besides, that
his brothers would not approve of his marrying, the marriages of
younger brothers being looked upon as what tends to the lessening great
families; the Cardinal of Loraine soon convinced him, that he was not
mistaken; he condemned his attachment to Mademoiselle de Chartres with
warmth, but did not inform him of his true reasons for so doing; the
Cardinal, it seems, had a hatred to the Viscount, which was not known
at that time, but afterwards discovered itself; he would rather have
consented to any other alliance for his brother than to that of the
Viscount; and he declared his aversion to it in so public a manner,
that Madam de Chartres was sensibly disgusted at it. She took a world
of pains to show that the Cardinal of Loraine had nothing to fear, and
that she herself had no thoughts of this marriage; the Viscount
observed the same conduct, and resented that of the Cardinal more than
Madam de Chartres did, being better apprised of the cause of it.
The Prince of Cleves had not given less public proofs of his love, than
the Chevalier de Guise had done, which made the Duke of Nevers very
uneasy; however he thought that he needed only to speak to his son, to
make him change his conduct; but he was very much surprised to find him
in a settled design of marrying Mademoiselle de Chartres, and flew out
into such excesses of passion on that subject, that the occasion of it
was soon known to the whole Court, and among others to Madam de
Chartres: she never imagined that the Duke of Nevers would not think
her daughter a very advantageous match for his son, nor was she a
little astonished to find that the houses both of Cleves and Guise
avoided her alliance, instead of courting it. Her resentment on this
account put her upon finding out a match for her daughter, which would
raise her above those that imagined themselves above her; after having
looked about, she fixed upon the Prince Dauphin, son of the Duke de
Montpensier, one of the most considerable persons then at Court. As
Madam de Chartres abounded in wit, and was assisted by the Viscount,
who was in great consideration, and as her daughter herself was a very
considerable match, she managed the matter with so much dexterity and
success, that Monsieur de Montpensier appeared to desire the marriage,
and there was no appearance of any difficulties in it.
The Viscount, knowing the power the Dauphin-Queen had over Monsieur
d'Anville, thought it not amiss to employ the interest of that Princess
to engage him to serve Mademoiselle de Chartres, both with the King and
the Prince de Montpensier, whose intimate friend he was: he spoke to
the Dauphin-Queen about it, and she entered with joy into an affair
which concerned the promotion of a lady for whom she had a great
affection; she expressed as much to the Viscount, and assured him, that
though she knew she should do what was disagreeable to the Cardinal of
Loraine her uncle, she would pass over that consideration with
pleasure, because she had reasons of complaint against him, since he
every day more and more espoused the interest of the Queen against hers.
Persons of gallantry are always glad of an opportunity of speaking to
those who love them. No sooner was the Viscount gone, but the
Queen-Dauphin sent Chatelart to Monsieur d'Anville, to desire him from
her to be at Court that evening. Chatelart was his favourite, and
acquainted with his passion for this Princess, and therefore received
her commands with great pleasure and respect. He was a gentleman of a
good family in Dauphiny; but his wit and merit distinguished him more
than his birth: he was well received at Court. He was graceful in his
person, perfect at all sorts of exercises; he sung agreeably, he wrote
verses, and was of so amorous and gallant a temper, as endeared him to
Monsieur d'Anville in such a degree, that he made him the confidant of
his amours between the Queen-Dauphin and him; this confidence gave him
access to that Princess, and it was owing to the frequent opportunities
he had of seeing her, that he commenced that unhappy passion which
deprived him of his reason, and at last cost him his life.
Monsieur d'Anville did not fail to be at Court in the evening; he
thought himself very happy, that the Queen-Dauphin had made choice of
him to manage an affair she had at heart, and he promised to obey her
commands with the greatest exactness. But the Duchess of Valentinois
being warned of the design in view, had traversed it with so much care,
and prepossessed the King so much against it, that when Monsieur
d'Anville came to speak to his Majesty about it, he plainly showed he
did not approve of it, and commanded him to signify as much to the
Prince de Montpensier. One may easily judge what the sentiments of
Madam de Chartres were, upon the breaking off of an affair which she
had set her mind so much upon, and the ill success of which gave such
an advantage to her enemies, and was so great a prejudice to her
daughter.
The Queen-Dauphin declared to Mademoiselle de Chartres, in a very
friendly manner, the uneasiness she was in for not having been able to
serve her: "You see, Madam," said she to her, "that my interest is
small; I am upon so ill terms with the Queen and the Duchess of
Valentinois, that it is no wonder if they or their dependents still
succeed in disappointing my desires; nevertheless, I have constantly
used my endeavours to please them. Indeed, they hate me not for my own
sake, but for my mother's; she formerly gave them some jealousy and
uneasiness; the King was in love with her before he was in love with
the Duchess; and in the first years of his marriage, when he had no
issue, he appeared almost resolved to be divorced from the Queen, in
order to make room for my mother, though at the same time he had some
affection for the Duchess. Madam de Valentinois being jealous of a
lady whom he had formerly loved, and whose wit and beauty were capable
of lessening her interest, joined herself to the Constable, who was no
more desirous than herself that the King should marry a sister of the
Duke of Guise; they possessed the deceased King with their sentiments;
and though he mortally hated the Duchess of Valentinois, and loved the
Queen, he joined his endeavours with theirs to prevent the divorce; but
in order to take from the King all thoughts of marrying the Queen my
mother, they struck up a marriage between her and the King of Scotland,
who had had for his first wife the King's sister, and they did this
because it was the easiest to be brought to a conclusion, though they
failed in their engagements to the King of England, who was very
desirous of marrying her; and that failure wanted but little of
occasioning a rupture between the two Crowns: for Henry the Eighth was
inconsolable, when he found himself disappointed in his expectations of
marrying my mother; and whatever other Princess of France was proposed
to him, he always said, nothing could make him amends for her he had
been deprived of. It is certainly true, that my mother was a perfect
beauty; and what is very remarkable, is, that being the widow of the
Duke of Longueville, three Kings should court her in marriage. Her ill
fortune gave her to the least of them, and placed her in a kingdom
where she meets with nothing but trouble. They say I resemble her, but
I fear I shall resemble her only in her unhappy destiny; and whatever
fortune may seem to promise me at present, I can never think I shall
enjoy it."
Mademoiselle de Chartres answered the Queen, that these melancholy
presages were so ill-grounded, that they would not disturb her long,
and that she ought not to doubt but her good fortune would accomplish
whatever it promised.
No one now entertained any further thoughts of Mademoiselle de
Chartres, either fearing to incur the King's displeasure, or despairing
to succeed with a lady, who aspired to an alliance with a Prince of the
blood. The Prince of Cleves alone was not disheartened at either of
these considerations; the death of the Duke of Nevers his father, which
happened at that time, set him at entire liberty to follow his
inclination, and no sooner was the time of mourning expired, but he
wholly applied himself to the gaining of Mademoiselle de Chartres. It
was lucky for him that he addressed her at a time when what had
happened had discouraged the approaches of others. What allayed his
joy was his fear of not being the most agreeable to her, and he would
have preferred the happiness of pleasing to the certainty of marrying
her without being beloved.
The Chevalier de Guise had given him some jealousy, but as it was
rather grounded on the merit of that Prince than on any action of
Mademoiselle de Chartres, he made it his whole endeavour to discover,
if he was so happy as to have his addresses admitted and approved: he
had no opportunity of seeing her but at Court or public assemblies, so
that it was very difficult for him to get a private conversation with
her; at last he found means to do it, and informed her of his intention
and of his love, with all the respect imaginable. He urged her to
acquaint him what the sentiments were which she had for him, assuring
her, that those which he had for her were of such a nature as would
render him eternally miserable, if she resigned herself wholly up to
the will of her mother.
As Mademoiselle de Chartres had a noble and generous heart, she was
sincerely touched with gratitude for the Prince of Cleves's behaviour;
this gratitude gave a certain sweetness to her words and answers,
sufficient to furnish hopes to a man so desperately enamoured as the
Prince was, so that he flattered himself in some measure that he should
succeed in what he so much wished for.
She gave her mother an account of this conversation; and Madam de
Chartres told her, that the Prince of Cleves had so many good
qualities, and discovered a discretion so much above his years, that if
her inclination led her to marry him, she would consent to it with
pleasure. Mademoiselle de Chartres made answer, that she observed in
him the same good qualities; that she should have less reluctance in
marrying him than any other man, but that she had no particular
affection to his person.
The next day the Prince caused his thoughts to be communicated to Madam
de Chartres, who gave her consent to what was proposed to her; nor had
she the least distrust but that in the Prince of Cleves she provided
her daughter a husband capable of securing her affections. The
articles were concluded; the King was acquainted with it, and the
marriage made public.
The Prince of Cleves found himself happy, but yet not entirely
contented: he saw with a great deal of regret, that the sentiments of
Mademoiselle de Chartres did not exceed those of esteem and respect,
and he could not flatter himself that she concealed more obliging
thoughts of him, since the situation they were in permitted her to
discover them without the least violence done to modesty. It was not
long before he expostulated with her on this subject: "Is it
possible," says he, "that I should not be happy in marrying you? and
yet it is certain, I am not. You only show me a sort of civility which
is far from giving me satisfaction; you express none of those pretty
inquietudes, the concern, and impatience, which are the soul of love;
you are no further affected with my passion, than you would be with one
which flowed only from the advantage of your fortune, and not from the
beauty of your person." "It is unjust in you to complain," replied the
Princess, "I don't know what you can desire of me more; I think decency
will not allow me to go further than I do." "It's true," replied he,
"you show some appearances I should be satisfied with, were there
anything beyond; but instead of being restrained by decency, it is that
only which makes you act as you do; I am not in your heart and
inclinations, and my presence neither gives you pain nor pleasure."
"You can't doubt," replied she, "but it is a sensible pleasure to me to
see you, and when I do see you, I blush so often, that you can't doubt,
but the seeing you gives me pain also." "Your blushes, Madam," replied
he, "cannot deceive me; they are signs of modesty, but do not prove the
heart to be affected, and I shall conclude nothing more from hence than
what I ought."
Mademoiselle de Chartres did not know what to answer; these
distinctions were above her comprehension. The Prince of Cleves
plainly saw she was far from having that tenderness of affection for
him, which was requisite to his happiness; it was manifest she could
not feel a passion which she did not understand.
The Chevalier de Guise returned from a journey a few days before the
marriage. He saw so many insuperable difficulties in his design of
marrying Mademoiselle de Chartres, that he gave over all hopes of
succeeding in it; and yet he was extremely afflicted to see her become
the wife of another: his grief however did not extinguish his passion;
and his love was as great as ever. Mademoiselle de Chartres was not
ignorant of it; and he made her sensible at his return, that she was
the cause of that deep melancholy which appeared in his countenance.
He had so much merit and so much agreeableness, that it was almost
impossible to make him unhappy without pitying him, nor could she
forbear pitying him; but her pity did not lead to love. She acquainted
her mother with the uneasiness which the Chevalier's passion gave her.
Madam de Chartres admired the honour of her daughter, and she admired
it with reason, for never was anyone more naturally sincere; but she
was surprised, at the same time, at the insensibility of her heart, and
the more so, when she found that the Prince of Cleves had not been able
to affect her any more than others: for this reason, she took great
pains to endear her husband to her, and to make her sensible how much
she owed to the affection he had for her before he knew her, and to the
tenderness he since expressed for her, by preferring her to all other
matches, at a time when no one else durst entertain the least thoughts
of her.
The marriage was solemnised at the Louvre; and in the evening
|
hopes
|
How many times does the word 'hopes' appear in the text?
| 1
|
bend his piercing gaze upon Claus.
The clear eyes met his own steadfastly, and the Woodsman gave a sigh of
relief as he marked their placid depths and read the youth's brave and
innocent heart. Nevertheless, as Ak sat beside the fair Queen, and the
golden chalice, filled with rare nectar, passed from lip to lip, the
Master Woodsman was strangely silent and reserved, and stroked his
beard many times with a thoughtful motion.
With morning he called Claus aside, in kindly fashion, saying:
"Bid good by, for a time, to Necile and her sisters; for you shall
accompany me on my journey through the world."
The venture pleased Claus, who knew well the honor of being companion
of the Master Woodsman of the world. But Necile wept for the first
time in her life, and clung to the boy's neck as if she could not bear
to let him go. The nymph who had mothered this sturdy youth was still
as dainty, as charming and beautiful as when she had dared to face Ak
with the babe clasped to her breast; nor was her love less great. Ak
beheld the two clinging together, seemingly as brother and sister to
one another, and again he wore his thoughtful look.
6. Claus Discovers Humanity
Taking Claus to a small clearing in the forest, the Master said: "Place
your hand upon my girdle and hold fast while we journey through the
air; for now shall we encircle the world and look upon many of the
haunts of those men from whom you are descended."
These words caused Claus to marvel, for until now he had thought
himself the only one of his kind upon the earth; yet in silence he
grasped firmly the girdle of the great Ak, his astonishment forbidding
speech.
Then the vast forest of Burzee seemed to fall away from their feet, and
the youth found himself passing swiftly through the air at a great
height.
Ere long there were spires beneath them, while buildings of many shapes
and colors met their downward view. It was a city of men, and Ak,
pausing to descend, led Claus to its inclosure. Said the Master:
"So long as you hold fast to my girdle you will remain unseen by all
mankind, though seeing clearly yourself. To release your grasp will be
to separate yourself forever from me and your home in Burzee."
One of the first laws of the Forest is obedience, and Claus had no
thought of disobeying the Master's wish. He clung fast to the girdle
and remained invisible.
Thereafter with each moment passed in the city the youth's wonder grew.
He, who had supposed himself created differently from all others, now
found the earth swarming with creatures of his own kind.
"Indeed," said Ak, "the immortals are few; but the mortals are many."
Claus looked earnestly upon his fellows. There were sad faces, gay and
reckless faces, pleasant faces, anxious faces and kindly faces, all
mingled in puzzling disorder. Some worked at tedious tasks; some
strutted in impudent conceit; some were thoughtful and grave while
others seemed happy and content. Men of many natures were there, as
everywhere, and Claus found much to please him and much to make him sad.
But especially he noted the children--first curiously, then eagerly,
then lovingly. Ragged little ones rolled in the dust of the streets,
playing with scraps and pebbles. Other children, gaily dressed, were
propped upon cushions and fed with sugar-plums. Yet the children of
the rich were not happier than those playing with the dust and pebbles,
it seemed to Claus.
"Childhood is the time of man's greatest content," said Ak, following
the youth's thoughts. "'Tis during these years of innocent pleasure
that the little ones are most free from care."
"Tell me," said Claus, "why do not all these babies fare alike?"
"Because they are born in both cottage and palace," returned the
Master. "The difference in the wealth of the parents determines the
lot of the child. Some are carefully tended and clothed in silks and
dainty linen; others are neglected and covered with rags."
"Yet all seem equally fair and sweet," said Claus, thoughtfully.
"While they are babes--yes;" agreed Ak. "Their joy is in being alive,
and they do not stop to think. In after years the doom of mankind
overtakes them, and they find they must struggle and worry, work and
fret, to gain the wealth that is so dear to the hearts of men. Such
things are unknown in the Forest where you were reared." Claus was
silent a moment. Then he asked:
"Why was I reared in the forest, among those who are not of my race?"
Then Ak, in gentle voice, told him the story of his babyhood: how he
had been abandoned at the forest's edge and left a prey to wild beasts,
and how the loving nymph Necile had rescued him and brought him to
manhood under the protection of the immortals.
"Yet I am not of them," said Claus, musingly.
"You are not of them," returned the Woodsman. "The nymph who cared for
you as a mother seems now like a sister to you; by and by, when you
grow old and gray, she will seem like a daughter. Yet another brief
span and you will be but a memory, while she remains Necile."
"Then why, if man must perish, is he born?" demanded the boy.
"Everything perishes except the world itself and its keepers," answered
Ak. "But while life lasts everything on earth has its use. The wise
seek ways to be helpful to the world, for the helpful ones are sure to
live again."
Much of this Claus failed to understand fully, but a longing seized him
to become helpful to his fellows, and he remained grave and thoughtful
while they resumed their journey.
They visited many dwellings of men in many parts of the world, watching
farmers toil in the fields, warriors dash into cruel fray, and
merchants exchange their goods for bits of white and yellow metal. And
everywhere the eyes of Claus sought out the children in love and pity,
for the thought of his own helpless babyhood was strong within him and
he yearned to give help to the innocent little ones of his race even as
he had been succored by the kindly nymph.
Day by day the Master Woodsman and his pupil traversed the earth, Ak
speaking but seldom to the youth who clung steadfastly to his girdle,
but guiding him into all places where he might become familiar with the
lives of human beings.
And at last they returned to the grand old Forest of Burzee, where the
Master set Claus down within the circle of nymphs, among whom the
pretty Necile anxiously awaited him.
The brow of the great Ak was now calm and peaceful; but the brow of
Claus had become lined with deep thought. Necile sighed at the change
in her foster-son, who until now had been ever joyous and smiling, and
the thought came to her that never again would the life of the boy be
the same as before this eventful journey with the Master.
7. Claus Leaves the Forest
When good Queen Zurline had touched the golden chalice with her fair
lips and it had passed around the circle in honor of the travelers'
return, the Master Woodsman of the World, who had not yet spoken,
turned his gaze frankly upon Claus and said:
"Well?"
The boy understood, and rose slowly to his feet beside Necile. Once
only his eyes passed around the familiar circle of nymphs, every one of
whom he remembered as a loving comrade; but tears came unbidden to dim
his sight, so he gazed thereafter steadfastly at the Master.
"I have been ignorant," said he, simply, "until the great Ak in his
kindness taught me who and what I am. You, who live so sweetly in your
forest bowers, ever fair and youthful and innocent, are no fit comrades
for a son of humanity. For I have looked upon man, finding him doomed
to live for a brief space upon earth, to toil for the things he needs,
to fade into old age, and then to pass away as the leaves in autumn.
Yet every man has his mission, which is to leave the world better, in
some way, than he found it. I am of the race of men, and man's lot is
my lot. For your tender care of the poor, forsaken babe you adopted,
as well as for your loving comradeship during my boyhood, my heart will
ever overflow with gratitude. My foster-mother," here he stopped and
kissed Necile's white forehead, "I shall love and cherish while life
lasts. But I must leave you, to take my part in the endless struggle
to which humanity is doomed, and to live my life in my own way."
"What will you do?" asked the Queen, gravely.
"I must devote myself to the care of the children of mankind, and try
to make them happy," he answered. "Since your own tender care of a
babe brought to me happiness and strength, it is just and right that I
devote my life to the pleasure of other babes. Thus will the memory of
the loving nymph Necile be planted within the hearts of thousands of my
race for many years to come, and her kindly act be recounted in song
and in story while the world shall last. Have I spoken well, O Master?"
"You have spoken well," returned Ak, and rising to his feet he
continued: "Yet one thing must not be forgotten. Having been adopted
as the child of the Forest, and the playfellow of the nymphs, you have
gained a distinction which forever separates you from your kind.
Therefore, when you go forth into the world of men you shall retain the
protection of the Forest, and the powers you now enjoy will remain with
you to assist you in your labors. In any need you may call upon the
Nymphs, the Ryls, the Knooks and the Fairies, and they will serve you
gladly. I, the Master Woodsman of the World, have said it, and my Word
is the Law!"
Claus looked upon Ak with grateful eyes.
"This will make me mighty among men," he replied. "Protected by these
kind friends I may be able to make thousands of little children happy.
I will try very hard to do my duty, and I know the Forest people will
give me their sympathy and help."
"We will!" said the Fairy Queen, earnestly.
"We will!" cried the merry Ryls, laughing.
"We will!" shouted the crooked Knooks, scowling.
"We will!" exclaimed the sweet nymphs, proudly. But Necile said
nothing. She only folded Claus in her arms and kissed him tenderly.
"The world is big," continued the boy, turning again to his loyal
friends, "but men are everywhere. I shall begin my work near my
friends, so that if I meet with misfortune I can come to the Forest for
counsel or help."
With that he gave them all a loving look and turned away. There was no
need to say good by, by for him the sweet, wild life of the Forest was
over. He went forth bravely to meet his doom--the doom of the race of
man--the necessity to worry and work.
But Ak, who knew the boy's heart, was merciful and guided his steps.
Coming through Burzee to its eastern edge Claus reached the Laughing
Valley of Hohaho. On each side were rolling green hills, and a brook
wandered midway between them to wind afar off beyond the valley. At
his back was the grim Forest; at the far end of the valley a broad
plain. The eyes of the young man, which had until now reflected his
grave thoughts, became brighter as he stood silent, looking out upon
the Laughing Valley. Then on a sudden his eyes twinkled, as stars do
on a still night, and grew merry and wide.
For at his feet the cowslips and daisies smiled on him in friendly
regard; the breeze whistled gaily as it passed by and fluttered the
locks on his forehead; the brook laughed joyously as it leaped over the
pebbles and swept around the green curves of its banks; the bees sang
sweet songs as they flew from dandelion to daffodil; the beetles
chirruped happily in the long grass, and the sunbeams glinted
pleasantly over all the scene.
"Here," cried Claus, stretching out his arms as if to embrace the
Valley, "will I make my home!"
That was many, many years ago. It has been his home ever since. It is
his home now.
MANHOOD
1. The Laughing Valley
When Claus came the Valley was empty save for the grass, the brook, the
wildflowers, the bees and the butterflies. If he would make his home
here and live after the fashion of men he must have a house. This
puzzled him at first, but while he stood smiling in the sunshine he
suddenly found beside him old Nelko, the servant of the Master
Woodsman. Nelko bore an ax, strong and broad, with blade that gleamed
like burnished silver. This he placed in the young man's hand, then
disappeared without a word.
Claus understood, and turning to the Forest's edge he selected a number
of fallen tree-trunks, which he began to clear of their dead branches.
He would not cut into a living tree. His life among the nymphs who
guarded the Forest had taught him that a live tree is sacred, being a
created thing endowed with feeling. But with the dead and fallen trees
it was different. They had fulfilled their destiny, as active members
of the Forest community, and now it was fitting that their remains
should minister to the needs of man.
The ax bit deep into the logs at every stroke. It seemed to have a
force of its own, and Claus had but to swing and guide it.
When shadows began creeping over the green hills to lie in the Valley
overnight, the young man had chopped many logs into equal lengths and
proper shapes for building a house such as he had seen the poorer
classes of men inhabit. Then, resolving to await another day before he
tried to fit the logs together, Claus ate some of the sweet roots he
well knew how to find, drank deeply from the laughing brook, and lay
down to sleep on the grass, first seeking a spot where no flowers grew,
lest the weight of his body should crush them.
And while he slumbered and breathed in the perfume of the wondrous
Valley the Spirit of Happiness crept into his heart and drove out all
terror and care and misgivings. Never more would the face of Claus be
clouded with anxieties; never more would the trials of life weigh him
down as with a burden. The Laughing Valley had claimed him for its own.
Would that we all might live in that delightful place!--but then,
maybe, it would become overcrowded. For ages it had awaited a tenant.
Was it chance that led young Claus to make his home in this happy vale?
Or may we guess that his thoughtful friends, the immortals, had
directed his steps when he wandered away from Burzee to seek a home in
the great world?
Certain it is that while the moon peered over the hilltop and flooded
with its soft beams the body of the sleeping stranger, the Laughing
Valley was filled with the queer, crooked shapes of the friendly
Knooks. These people spoke no words, but worked with skill and
swiftness. The logs Claus had trimmed with his bright ax were carried
to a spot beside the brook and fitted one upon another, and during the
night a strong and roomy dwelling was built.
The birds came sweeping into the Valley at daybreak, and their songs,
so seldom heard in the deep wood, aroused the stranger. He rubbed the
web of sleep from his eyelids and looked around. The house met his
gaze.
"I must thank the Knooks for this," said he, gratefully. Then he
walked to his dwelling and entered at the doorway. A large room faced
him, having a fireplace at the end and a table and bench in the middle.
Beside the fireplace was a cupboard. Another doorway was beyond.
Claus entered here, also, and saw a smaller room with a bed against the
wall and a stool set near a small stand. On the bed were many layers
of dried moss brought from the Forest.
"Indeed, it is a palace!" exclaimed the smiling Claus. "I must thank
the good Knooks again, for their knowledge of man's needs as well as
for their labors in my behalf."
He left his new home with a glad feeling that he was not quite alone in
the world, although he had chosen to abandon his Forest life.
Friendships are not easily broken, and the immortals are everywhere.
Upon reaching the brook he drank of the pure water, and then sat down
on the bank to laugh at the mischievous gambols of the ripples as they
pushed one another against rocks or crowded desperately to see which
should first reach the turn beyond. And as they raced away he listened
to the song they sang:
"Rushing, pushing, on we go!
Not a wave may gently flow--
All are too excited.
Ev'ry drop, delighted,
Turns to spray in merry play
As we tumble on our way!"
Next Claus searched for roots to eat, while the daffodils turned their
little eyes up to him laughingly and lisped their dainty song:
"Blooming fairly, growing rarely,
Never flowerets were so gay!
Perfume breathing, joy bequeathing,
As our colors we display."
It made Claus laugh to hear the little things voice their happiness as
they nodded gracefully on their stems. But another strain caught his
ear as the sunbeams fell gently across his face and whispered:
"Here is gladness, that our rays
Warm the valley through the days;
Here is happiness, to give
Comfort unto all who live!"
"Yes!" cried Claus in answer, "there is happiness and joy in all things
here. The Laughing Valley is a valley of peace and good-will."
He passed the day talking with the ants and beetles and exchanging
jokes with the light-hearted butterflies. And at night he lay on his
bed of soft moss and slept soundly.
Then came the Fairies, merry but noiseless, bringing skillets and pots
and dishes and pans and all the tools necessary to prepare food and to
comfort a mortal. With these they filled cupboard and fireplace,
finally placing a stout suit of wool
|
what
|
How many times does the word 'what' appear in the text?
| 1
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PROF. WEST
</b> How deep are we?
<b>
</b><b> SATNAM
</b> 8200 feet. Used to be an old copper
mine, Professor, sir.
<b>
</b> As Prof. West follows Satnam, he takes in the unusual setting
for this science lab.
<b>
</b><b> PROF. WEST
</b> Helmsley told me that the neutrino
count doubled during the last sun
eruptions.
<b>
</b><b> SATNAM
</b> Correct, sir. But that is not what
worries me...
<b>
</b> They enter a large room with low hanging ceilings. A small
group of WHITE COATS look up from their computers, which all
show images of the solar storm we witnessed earlier.
<b>
</b><b> SATNAM (CONT'D)
</b> There was a new solar storm, so strong
that the physical reaction got even
more severe.
<b>
</b><b> PROF. WEST
</b> How can that be?
<b>
</b><b> SATNAM
</b> We don't know, Professor, sir.
<b>
</b> Satnam walks over into another room. There he opens a hatch
on the floor and hot steam rises.
<b>
</b><b> SATNAM (CONT'D)
</b> The neutrinos suddenly act like...
microwaves.
<b>
</b> Prof. West slowly steps closer. When he discovers that the
water in the tank below is boiling, his face goes pale.
<b>
</b><b> CUT TO:
</b><b>
</b><b> 3.
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. LARGE TERRACE/WASHINGTON D.C. - EVENING
</b><b>
</b> A major fund raising party is under way. The setting is
spectacular. A terrace overlooking the Washington Mall and
the Capitol Building.
<b>
</b> ADRIAN HELMSLEY, 32, stands with a group of young POLITICAL
AIDES. He is the only African-American among them.
<b>
</b> One of the aides spots CARL ANHEUSER, 58, White House Chief
of Staff, working the crowd.
<b>
</b><b> POLITICAL AID #1
</b> Look at Anheuser. Anyone would think he
was President. Did you hear, he wants
us to sign in and out like school boys?
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> I still can't believe that Wilson chose
him of all people to run the White
House.
<b>
</b><b> POLITICAL AID #2
</b> Why not? Anheuser owns the Senate and
the Congress.
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> Shame he's such a pompous ass.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER (O.S.)
</b> Somebody mention my name?
<b>
</b> Adrian turns to see Anheuser smiling.
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b><b> (SHOCKED)
</b> Yes sir... No, sir.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER
</b> Which one is it?
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> We were talking about what a great
speech you gave tonight. Well done,
sir.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER
</b> It's Helmsley, right? I'll remember
that.
<b>
</b> Anheuser walks away with a dangerous smile.
<b>
</b><b> POLITICAL AID #2
</b> That guy scares the shit out of me.
<b>
</b> At that moment Adrian's cell phone rings.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 4.
</b><b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> (into the phone)
Professor West?
<b>
</b><b> PROF. WEST (O.S.)
</b> I've been trying to reach you!
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. LIVING ROOM/SATNAM'S HOUSE - NIGHT
</b><b>
</b> Prof. West is on the phone. In the background we make out
Satnam's family around the dining room table.
<b>
</b><b> PROF. WEST
</b> Listen, Adrian. The situation is much
worse than we thought...
<b>
</b> Satnam quiets his little son. It is the boy we saw earlier
with his toy ship.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. HALLWAY/WHITE HOUSE - DAY
</b><b>
</b> Adrian follows Anheuser through a hallway of the White House,
papers in hand.
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> Sir, the President needs to know this.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER
</b> Helmsley, how long have you been on the
job as science advisor?
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> Four months this week.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER
</b> I would say that's enough time to learn
that we have rules here. You'll just
have to wait until the quarterly
science briefing.
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b> If this is about what I said last
night, I am truly sorry, sir.
<b>
</b><b> ANHEUSER
</b> So you didn't like my speech?
<b>
</b> Exasperated, Adrian holds out the papers to him.
<b>
</b><b> ADRIAN
</b>
|
school
|
How many times does the word 'school' appear in the text?
| 0
|
, and he pressed his hand to his eyes, to exclude
these phantasms from his sight. But even thus they pursued him; and he
imagined he could hear the infernal riot going on around him.
Suddenly, he was roused by a loud joyful cry, and, uncovering his eyes,
he beheld Doctor Lamb pouring the contents of the matrass--a bright,
transparent liquid--into a small phial. Having carefully secured the
bottle with a glass stopper, the old man held it towards the light, and
gazed at it with rapture.
"At length," he exclaimed aloud--"at length, the great work is achieved.
With the birth of the century now expiring I first saw light, and the
draught I hold in my hand shall enable me to see the opening of
centuries and centuries to come. Composed of the lunar stones, the solar
stones, and the mercurial stones--prepared according to the instructions
of the Rabbi Ben Lucca--namely, by the separation of the pure from the
impure, the volatilisation of the fixed, and the fixing of the
volatile--this elixir shall renew my youth, like that of the eagle, and
give me length of days greater than any patriarch ever enjoyed."
While thus speaking, he held up the sparkling liquid, and gazed at it
like a Persian worshipping the sun.
"To live for ever!" he cried, after a pause--"to escape the jaws of
death just when they are opening to devour me!--to be free from all
accidents!--'tis a glorious thought! Ha! I bethink me, the rabbi said
there was _one_ peril against which the elixir could not guard me--_one_
vulnerable point, by which, like the heel of Achilles, death might reach
me! What is it!--where can it lie?"
And he relapsed into deep thought.
"This uncertainty will poison all my happiness," he continued; "I shall
live in constant dread, as of an invisible enemy. But no matter!
Perpetual life!--perpetual youth!--what more need be desired?"
"What more, indeed!" cried Auriol.
"Ha!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly recollecting the wounded man, and
concealing the phial beneath his gown.
"Your caution is vain, doctor," said Auriol. "I have heard what you have
uttered. You fancy you have discovered the _elixir vitæ_."
"Fancy I have discovered it!" cried Doctor Lamb. "The matter is past all
doubt. I am the possessor of the wondrous secret, which the greatest
philosophers of all ages have sought to discover--the miraculous
preservative of the body against decay."
"The man who brought me hither told me you were my kinsman," said
Auriol. "Is it so?"
"It is," replied the doctor, "and you shall now learn the connection
that subsists between us. Look at that ghastly relic," he added,
pointing to the head protruding from the bag: "that was once my son
Simon. His son's head is within the sack--your father's head--so that
four generations are brought together."
"Gracious Heaven!" exclaimed the young man, raising himself on his
elbow. "You, then, are my great-grandsire. My father supposed you had
died in his infancy. An old tale runs in the family that you were
charged with sorcery, and fled to avoid the stake."
"It is true that I fled, and took the name I bear at present," replied
the old man, "but I need scarcely say that the charge brought against me
was false. I have devoted myself to abstrusest science, have held
commune with the stars, and have wrested the most hidden secrets from
Nature--but that is all. Two crimes alone have stained my soul; but
both, I trust, have been expiated by repentance."
"Were they deeds of blood?" asked Auriol.
"One was so," replied Darcy, with a shudder. "It was a cowardly and
treacherous deed, aggravated by the basest ingratitude. Listen, and you
shall hear how it chanced. A Roman rabbi, named Ben Lucca, skilled in
hermetic science, came to this city. His fame reached me, and I sought
him out, offering myself as his disciple. For months, I remained with
him in his laboratory--working at the furnace, and poring over mystic
lore. One night he showed me that volume, and, pointing to a page within
it, said: 'Those characters contain the secret of confecting the elixir
of life. I will now explain them to you, and afterwards we will proceed
to the operation.' With this, he unfolded the mystery; but he bade me
observe, that the menstruum was defective on one point. Wherefore, he
said, 'there will still be peril from some hidden cause.' Oh, with what
greediness I drank in his words! How I gazed at the mystic characters,
as he explained their import! What visions floated before me of
perpetual youth and enjoyment. At that moment a demon whispered in my
ear, 'This secret must be thine own. No one else must possess it.'"
"Ha!" exclaimed Auriol, starting.
"The evil thought was no sooner conceived than acted upon," pursued
Darcy. "Instantly drawing my poniard, I plunged it to the rabbi's heart.
But mark what followed. His blood fell upon the book, and obliterated
the characters; nor could I by any effort of memory recall the
composition of the elixir."
"When did you regain the secret?" asked Auriol curiously.
"To-night," replied Darcy--"within this hour. For nigh fifty years after
that fatal night I have been making fruitless experiments. A film of
blood has obscured my mental sight. I have proceeded by calcitration,
solution, putrefaction--have produced the oils which will fix crude
mercury, and convert all bodies into sol and luna; but I have ever
failed in fermenting the stone into the true elixir. To-night, it came
into my head to wash the blood-stained page containing the secret with a
subtle liquid. I did so; and doubting the efficacy of the experiment,
left it to work, while I went forth to breathe the air at my window. My
eyes were cast upwards, and I was struck with the malignant aspect of my
star. How to reconcile this with the good fortune which has just
befallen me, I know not--but so it was. At this juncture, your rash but
pious attempt occurred. Having discovered our relationship, and enjoined
the gatekeeper to bring you hither, I returned to my old laboratory. On
glancing towards the mystic volume, what was my surprise to see the page
free from blood!"
Auriol uttered a slight exclamation, and gazed at the book with
superstitious awe.
"The sight was so surprising that I dropped the sack I had brought with
me," pursued Darcy. "Fearful of again losing the secret, I nerved myself
to the task, and placing fuel on the fire, dismissed my attendant with
brief injunctions relative to you. I then set to work. How I have
succeeded, you perceive. I hold in my hand the treasure I have so long
sought--so eagerly coveted. The whole world's wealth should not purchase
it from me."
Auriol gazed earnestly at his aged relative, but he said nothing.
"In a few moments I shall be as full of vigour and activity as
yourself," continued Darcy. "We shall be no longer the great-grandsire
and his descendant, but friends--companions--equals,--equals in age,
strength, activity, beauty, fortune--for youth _is_ fortune--ha! ha!
Methinks I am already young again!"
"You spoke of two crimes with which your conscience was burdened,"
remarked Auriol. "You have mentioned but one."
"The other was not so foul as that I have described," replied Darcy, in
an altered tone, "inasmuch as it was unintentional, and occasioned by no
base motive. My wife, your ancestress, was a most lovely woman, and so
passionately was I enamoured of her, that I tried by every art to
heighten and preserve her beauty. I fed her upon the flesh of capons,
nourished with vipers; caused her to steep her lovely limbs in baths
distilled from roses and violets; and had recourse to the most potent
cosmetics. At last I prepared a draught from poisons--yes,
_poisons_--the effect of which, I imagined, would be wondrous. She drank
it, and expired horribly disfigured. Conceive my despair at beholding
the fair image of my idolatry destroyed--defaced by my hand. In my
frenzy I should have laid violent hands upon myself, if I had not been
restrained. Love may again rule my heart--beauty may again dazzle my
eyes, but I shall never more feel the passion I entertained for my lost
Amice--never more behold charms equal to hers."
And he pressed his hand to his face.
"The mistake you then committed should serve as a warning," said Auriol.
"What if it be poison you have now confected? Try a few drops of it on
some animal."
"No--no; it is the true elixir," replied Darcy. "Not a drop must be
wasted. You will witness its effect anon. Like the snake, I shall cast
my slough, and come forth younger than I was at twenty."
"Meantime, I beseech you to render me some assistance," groaned Auriol,
"or, while you are preparing for immortality, I shall expire before your
eyes."
"Be not afraid," replied Darcy; "you shall take no harm. I will care for
you presently; and I understand leechcraft so well, that I will answer
for your speedy and perfect recovery."
"Drink, then, to it!" cried Auriol.
"I know not what stays my hand," said the old man, raising the phial;
"but now that immortality is in my reach, I dare not grasp it."
"Give me the potion, then," cried Auriol.
"Not for worlds," rejoined Darcy, hugging the phial to his breast. "No;
I will be young again--rich--happy. I will go forth into the world--I
will bask in the smiles of beauty--I will feast, revel, sing--life shall
be one perpetual round of enjoyment. Now for the trial--ha!" and, as he
raised the potion towards his lips, a sudden pang shot across his heart.
"What is this?" he cried, staggering. "Can death assail me when I am
just about to enter upon perpetual life? Help me, good grandson! Place
the phial to my lips. Pour its contents down my throat--quick! quick!"
[Illustration: The Elixir of Long Life.]
"I am too weak to stir," groaned Auriol. "You have delayed it too long."
"Oh, heavens! we shall both perish," shrieked Darcy, vainly endeavouring
to raise his palsied arm,--"perish with the blissful shore in view."
And he sank backwards, and would have fallen to the ground if he had not
caught at the terrestrial sphere for support.
"Help me--help me!" he screamed, fixing a glance of unutterable anguish
on his relative.
"It is worth the struggle," cried Auriol. And, by a great effort, he
raised himself, and staggered towards the old man.
"Saved--saved!" shrieked Darcy. "Pour it down my throat. An instant, and
all will be well."
"Think you I have done this for you?" cried Auriol, snatching the
potion; "no--no."
And, supporting himself against the furnace, he placed the phial to his
lips, and eagerly drained its contents.
The old man seemed paralysed by the action, but kept his eye fixed upon
the youth till he had drained the elixir to the last drop. He then
uttered a piercing cry, threw up his arms, and fell heavily backwards.
Dead--dead!
Flashes of light passed before Auriol's eyes, and strange noises smote
his ears. For a moment he was bewildered as with wine, and laughed and
sang discordantly like a madman. Every object reeled and danced around
him. The glass vessels and jars clashed their brittle sides together,
yet remained uninjured; the furnace breathed forth flames and mephitic
vapours; the spiral worm of the alembic became red hot, and seemed
filled with molten lead; the pipe of the bolt-head ran blood; the sphere
of the earth rolled along the floor, and rebounded from the wall as if
impelled by a giant hand; the skeletons grinned and gibbered; so did the
death's-head on the table; so did the skulls against the chimney; the
monstrous sea-fish belched forth fire and smoke; the bald, decapitated
head opened its eyes, and fixed them, with a stony glare, on the young
man; while the dead alchemist shook his hand menacingly at him.
Unable to bear these accumulated horrors, Auriol became, for a short
space, insensible. On recovering, all was still. The lights within the
lamp had expired; but the bright moonlight, streaming through the
window, fell upon the rigid features of the unfortunate alchemist, and
on the cabalistic characters of the open volume beside him.
Eager to test the effect of the elixir, Auriol put his hand to his side.
All traces of the wound were gone; nor did he experience the slightest
pain in any other part of his body. On the contrary, he seemed endowed
with preternatural strength. His breast dilated with rapture, and he
longed to expand his joy in active motion.
Striding over the body of his aged relative, he threw open the window.
As he did so, joyous peals burst from surrounding churches, announcing
the arrival of the new year.
While listening to this clamour, Auriol gazed at the populous and
picturesque city stretched out before him, and bathed in the moonlight.
"A hundred years hence," he thought, "and scarcely one soul of the
thousands within those houses will be living, save myself. A hundred
years after that, and their children's children will be gone to the
grave. But I shall live on--shall live through all changes--all
customs--all time. What revelations I shall then have to make, if I
should dare to disclose them!"
As he ruminated thus, the skeleton hanging near him was swayed by the
wind, and its bony fingers came in contact with his cheek. A dread idea
was suggested by the occurrence.
"There is one peril to be avoided," he thought; "ONE PERIL!--what is it?
Pshaw! I will think no more of it. It may never arise. I will be gone.
This place fevers me."
With this, he left the laboratory, and hastily descending the stairs, at
the foot of which he found Flapdragon, passed out of the house.
BOOK THE FIRST
_EBBA_
CHAPTER I
THE RUINED HOUSE IN THE VAUXHALL ROAD
Late one night, in the spring of 1830, two men issued from a low,
obscurely situated public-house, near Millbank, and shaped their course
apparently in the direction of Vauxhall Bridge. Avoiding the footpath
near the river, they moved stealthily along the farther side of the
road, where the open ground offered them an easy means of flight, in
case such a course should be found expedient. So far as it could be
discerned by the glimpses of the moon, which occasionally shone forth
from a rack of heavy clouds, the appearance of these personages was not
much in their favour. Haggard features, stamped deeply with the
characters of crime and debauchery; fierce, restless eyes; beards of
several days' growth; wild, unkempt heads of hair, formed their chief
personal characteristics; while sordid and ragged clothes, shoes without
soles, and old hats without crowns, constituted the sum of their
apparel.
One of them was tall and gaunt, with large hands and feet; but despite
his meagreness, he evidently possessed great strength: the other was
considerably shorter, but broad-shouldered, bow-legged, long-armed, and
altogether a most formidable ruffian. This fellow had high cheek-bones,
a long aquiline nose, and a coarse mouth and chin, in which the animal
greatly predominated. He had a stubby red beard, with sandy hair, white
brows and eyelashes. The countenance of the other was dark and
repulsive, and covered with blotches, the result of habitual
intemperance. His eyes had a leering and malignant look. A handkerchief
spotted with blood, and tied across his brow, contrasted strongly with
his matted black hair, and increased his natural appearance of ferocity.
The shorter ruffian carried a mallet upon his shoulder, and his
companion concealed something beneath the breast of his coat, which
afterwards proved to be a dark lantern.
Not a word passed between them; but keeping a vigilant look-out, they
trudged on with quick, shambling steps. A few sounds arose from the
banks of the river, and there was now and then a plash in the water, or
a distant cry, betokening some passing craft; but generally all was
profoundly still. The quaint, Dutch-looking structures on the opposite
bank, the line of coal-barges and lighters moored to the strand, the
great timber-yards and coal-yards, the brewhouses, gasworks, and
waterworks, could only be imperfectly discerned; but the moonlight fell
clear upon the ancient towers of Lambeth Palace, and on the neighbouring
church. The same glimmer also ran like a silver belt across the stream,
and revealed the great, stern, fortress-like pile of the
Penitentiary--perhaps the most dismal-looking structure in the whole
metropolis. The world of habitations beyond this melancholy prison was
buried in darkness. The two men, however, thought nothing of these
things, and saw nothing of them; but, on arriving within a couple of
hundred yards of the bridge, suddenly, as if by previous concert,
quitted the road, and, leaping a rail, ran across a field, and plunged
into a hollow formed by a dried pit, where they came to a momentary
halt.
"You ain't a-been a-gammonin' me in this matter, Tinker?" observed the
shorter individual. "The cove's sure to come?"
"Why, you can't expect me to answer for another as I can for myself,
Sandman," replied the other; "but if his own word's to be taken for it,
he's sartin to be there. I heerd him say, as plainly as I'm a speakin'
to you--'I'll be here to-morrow night--at the same hour
|
mercury
|
How many times does the word 'mercury' appear in the text?
| 0
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ience to conduct her to the inn, and the anxiety I
betrayed to get rid of him, had excited in his mind some suspicions of
my passion. He had not ventured to return to the inn where he had left
me, for fear of my being annoyed at his doing so; but went to wait for
me at my lodgings, where, although it was ten o'clock at night, I found
him on my arrival. His presence annoyed me, and he soon perceived the
restraint which it imposed. 'I am certain,' he said to me, without any
disguise, 'that you have some plan in contemplation which you will not
confide to me; I see it by your manner.' I answered him rather
abruptly, that I was not bound to render him an account of all my
movements. 'Certainly not!' he replied; 'but you have always, hitherto,
treated me as a friend, and that appellation implies a certain degree
of confidence and candour.' He pressed me so much and so earnestly to
discover my secret, that, having never up to that moment felt the
slightest reserve towards him, I confided to him now the whole history
of my passion. He heard it with an appearance of disapprobation, which
made me tremble; and I immediately repented of my indiscretion, in
telling him of my intended elopement. He told me he was too sincerely
my friend not to oppose every obstacle in his power to such a scheme;
that he would first try all other means of turning me from such a
purpose, but that if I refused to renounce so fatal a resolution, he
assuredly would inform some persons of my intention, who would be able
to defeat it. He held forth upon the subject for a full quarter of an
hour, in the most serious tone, and ended by again threatening to
inform against me, if I did not pledge him my word that I would return
to the paths of discretion and reason.
"I was in despair at having so awkwardly betrayed myself. However, love
having wonderfully sharpened my intellect during the last two or three
hours, I recollected that I had not yet told him of its being my
intention to execute my project on the following morning, and I at once
determined to deceive him by a little equivocation.
"'Tiberge,' said I to him, 'up to the present moment I thought you were
my friend; and I wished to prove it by the test of confidence. It is
true, I am in love; I have not deceived you: but with regard to my
flight, that is a project not to be undertaken without deliberation.
Call for me tomorrow at nine o'clock: you shall see my mistress, if it
be possible, and then judge whether she is not worthy of any risk or
sacrifice on my part.' He left me, with a thousand protestations of
friendship.
"I employed the night in preparing for the journey, and on repairing to
the inn at early dawn, I found Manon waiting my arrival. She was at
her window, which looked upon the street, and perceiving my approach,
she came down and opened the door herself. We took our departure
silently, and without creating the least alarm. She merely brought
away a small portion of her apparel, of which I took charge. The
chaise was in readiness, and we were soon at a distance from the town.
"You will learn in the sequel what was the conduct of Tiberge when he
discovered that I had deceived him; that his zeal to serve me suffered
no diminution; and you will observe to what lengths his devotion
carried him. How ought I to grieve, when I reflect on the base
ingratitude with which his affection was always repaid!
"We made such speed on our journey that before night we reached St.
Denis. I rode alongside of the chaise, which gave us little
opportunity for conversation, except while changing horses; but when we
found ourselves so near Paris, and out of the reach of danger, we
allowed ourselves time for refreshment, not having tasted food since we
quitted Amiens. Passionately in love as I felt with Manon, she knew
how to convince me that she was equally so with me. So little did we
restrain our fondness, that we had not even patience to reserve our
caresses till we were alone. The postilions and innkeepers stared at us
with wonder, and I remarked that they appeared surprised at such
uncontrollable love in children of our age.
"Our project of marriage was forgotten at St. Denis; we defrauded the
Church of her rights; and found ourselves united as man and wife
without reflecting on the consequences. It is certain that with my
easy and constant disposition, I should have been happy for my whole
life, if Manon had remained faithful to me. The more I saw of her, the
more I discovered in her new perfections. Her mind, her heart, her
gentleness and beauty, formed a chain at once so binding and so
agreeable, that I could have found perfect happiness in its enduring
influence. Terrible fatality, that which has been the source of my
despair, might, under a slight change of circumstances, have
constituted my happiness. I find myself the most wretched of mankind,
by the force of that very constancy from which I might have fairly
expected to derive the most serene of human blisses, and the most
perfect recompense of love.
"We took a furnished apartment at Paris, in the Rue V----, and, as it
afterwards turned out, to my sorrow, close to the house of M. de B----,
the famous Fermier-general. Three weeks passed, during which I was so
absorbed in my passion, that I never gave a thought to my family, nor
dreamed of the distress which my father probably felt at my absence.
However, as there was yet nothing of profligacy about me, and as Manon
conducted herself with the strictest propriety, the tranquil life we
led served to restore me by degrees to a sense of duty.
"I resolved to effect, if possible, a reconciliation with my parent.
My mistress was to me so perfectly lovable, that I could not doubt
her power of captivating my father, if I could only find the means of
making him acquainted with her good conduct and merit. In a word, I
relied on obtaining his consent to our marriage, having given up all
idea of accomplishing it without his approval. I mentioned the project
to Manon, and explained to her that, besides every motive of filial
love and duty, the weightier one of necessity should also have some
influence; for our finances were sadly reduced, and I began to see the
folly of thinking them, as I once did, inexhaustible.
"Manon received the proposition with considerable coldness. However,
the difficulties she made, being apparently the suggestions of
tenderness alone, or as arising from the natural fear of losing me, if
my father, after learning our address, should refuse his assent to our
union, I had not the smallest suspicion of the cruel blow she was at
the very time preparing to inflict. As to the argument of necessity,
she replied that we had still abundant means of living for some weeks
longer, and that she would then find a resource in the kindness of some
relations in the country, to whom she should write. She tempered her
opposition by caresses so tender and impassioned, that I, who lived
only for her, and who never had the slightest misgiving as to her love,
applauded at once her arguments and her resolutions.
"To Manon I had committed the care of our finances, and the house-hold
arrangements. In a short time, I observed that our style of living was
improved, and that she had treated herself to more expensive dresses.
As I calculated that we could hardly have at this period more than
fifteen or twenty crowns remaining, I did not conceal my surprise at
this mysterious augmentation of our wealth. She begged of me, with a
smile, to give myself no trouble on that head. 'Did I not promise
you,' said she, 'that I would find resources?' I loved her too purely
to experience the slightest suspicion.
"One day, having gone out in the afternoon, and told her that I should
not be at home so early as usual, I was astonished, on my return, at
being detained several minutes at the door. Our only servant was a
young girl about our own age. On her letting me in at last, I asked
why she had detained me so long? She replied in an embarrassed tone,
that she did not hear me knock. 'I only knocked once,' said I; 'so if
you did not hear me, why come to open the door at all?' This query
disconcerted her so visibly, that losing her presence of mind, she
began to cry, assuring me that it was not her fault; and that her
mistress had desired her not to open the door until M. de B---- had had
time to go down by the back staircase. I was so confounded by this
information as to be utterly unable to proceed to our apartment; and
was obliged to leave the house, under the pretext of an appointment. I
desired the girl, therefore, to let her mistress know that I should
return in a few minutes, but on no account to say that she had spoken
to me of M. de B----.
"My horror was so great, that I shed tears as I went along, hardly
knowing from what feeling they flowed. I entered a coffee-house close
by, and placing myself at a table, I buried my face between my hands,
as though I would turn my eyes inward to ascertain what was passing in
my heart. Still, I dared not recall what I had heard the moment
before. I strove to look upon it as a dream; and was more than once on
the point of returning to my lodgings, determined to attach no
importance to what I had heard.
"It appeared to me so impossible that Manon could have been unfaithful,
that I feared even to wrong her by a suspicion. I adored her--that was
too certain; I had not on my part given her more proofs of my love than
I had received of hers; why then should I charge her with being less
sincere and constant than myself? What reason could she have to
deceive me? Not three hours before, she had lavished upon me the most
tender caresses, and had received mine with transport: I knew her heart
as thoroughly as my own. 'No, no!' I said, 'it is not possible that
Manon can have deceived me. She well knows that I live but for her;
that I adore her: upon that point I can have no reason to be unhappy.'
"Notwithstanding these reflections, the visit of M. de B----, and his
secret departure, gave me some uneasiness. I remembered, too, the
little purchases she had lately made, which seemed beyond our present
means. This looked like the liberality of a new lover. And the
confidence with which she had foretold resources which were to me
unknown? I had some difficulty in solving these mysteries in as
favourable a manner as my heart desired.
"On the other hand, she had been hardly out of my sight since we
entered Paris. However occupied, in our walks, in all our amusements,
she was ever at my side. Heavens! even a momentary separation would
have been too painful. I could not therefore imagine how Manon could,
to any other person, have devoted a single instant.
"At last I thought I had discovered a clue to the mystery. 'M. de
B----' said I to myself, 'is a man extensively engaged in commercial
affairs; and Manon's relations have no doubt remitted her money through
his house. She has probably already received some from him, and he is
come today to bring her more. She wishes, perhaps, to derive amusement
by and by, from an agreeable surprise, by keeping me at present in the
dark. She would doubtless have at once told me all, if I had gone in
as usual, instead of coming here to distress myself: at all events, she
will not conceal it from me when I broach the subject myself.'
"I cherished this idea so willingly, that it considerably lightened my
grief. I immediately returned to my lodgings, and embraced Manon as
tenderly as ever. She received me as usual. At first I was tempted to
mention my conjectures, which I now, more than ever, looked upon as
certain; but I restrained myself in the hope that she might render it
unnecessary by informing me of all that had passed.
"Supper was served. Assuming an air of gaiety, I took my seat at
table; but by the light of the candles which were between us, I fancied
I perceived an air of melancholy about the eyes and countenance of my
beloved mistress. The very thought soon damped my gaiety. I remarked
that her looks wore an unusual expression, and although nothing could
be more soft or languishing, I was at a loss to discover whether they
conveyed more of love than of compassion. I gazed at her with equal
earnestness, and she perhaps had no less difficulty in comprehending
from my countenance what was passing in my heart. We neither spoke nor
ate. At length I saw tears starting from her beauteous
eyes--perfidious tears! 'Oh heavens!' I cried, 'my dearest Manon, why
allow your sorrows to afflict you to this degree without imparting
their cause to me?' She answered me only with sighs, which increased
my misery. I arose trembling from my seat: I conjured her, with all
the urgent earnestness of love, to let me know the cause of her grief:
I wept in endeavouring to soothe her sorrows: I was more dead than
alive. A barbarian would have pitied my sufferings as I stood
trembling with grief and apprehension.
"While my attention was thus confined to her, I heard people coming
upstairs. They tapped gently at the door. Manon gave me a kiss, and
escaping from my arms, quickly entered the boudoir, turning the key
after her. I imagined that, not being dressed to receive strangers,
she was unwilling to meet the persons who had knocked; I went to let
them in.
"I had hardly opened the door, when I found myself seized by three men,
whom I recognised as my father's servants. They offered not the least
violence, but two of them taking me by the arms, the third examined my
pockets, and took out a small knife, the only weapon I had about me.
They begged pardon for the necessity they were under of treating me
with apparent disrespect; telling me frankly that they were acting by
the orders of my father, and that my eldest brother was in a carriage
below waiting to receive me. My feelings were so overpowered, that I
allowed myself to be led away without making either reply or
resistance. I found my brother waiting for me as they had stated.
They placed me by his side, and the coachman immediately drove, by his
orders, towards St. Denis.
"My brother embraced me most affectionately, but during our ride, he
uttered not a word, so that, as I was not inclined for conversation, I
had as much leisure as I could desire to reflect upon my misfortunes."
III
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites.
SHAKESPEARE.
"The whole affair was so involved in obscurity that I could not see my
way even to a reasonable conjecture. I was cruelly betrayed--that was
certain; but by whom? Tiberge first occurred to me. 'Tiberge!' said
I, 'it is as much as thy life is worth, if my suspicions turn out to be
well founded.' However, I recollected that he could not by possibility
know my abode; and therefore, he could not have furnished the
information. To accuse Manon was more than my heart was capable of.
The unusual melancholy with which she had lately seemed weighed down,
her tears, the tender kiss she gave me in parting, made it all as yet a
mystery to me. I could only look upon her recent melancholy as a
presentiment of our common misfortune; and while I was deploring the
event which tore me from her, I was credulous enough to consider her
fate as much deserving of pity as my own.
"The result of my reflections was, that I had been seen and followed in
the streets of Paris by some persons of my acquaintance, who had
conveyed the information to my father. This idea comforted me. I made
up my mind to encounter some reproaches, or perhaps harsh treatment,
for having outraged the paternal authority. I resolved, however, to
suffer with patience, and to promise all that might be required of me,
in order to facilitate my speedy return to Paris, that I might restore
life and happiness to my dear Manon.
"We soon arrived at St. Denis. My brother, surprised at my long
silence, thought it the effect of fear. He assured me that I had
nothing to apprehend from my father's severity, provided I showed a
disposition to return quietly to the path of duty, and prove myself
worthy of his affection. He made me pass the night at St. Denis,
merely taking the precaution of putting the three lackeys to sleep in
my room. It cost me a pang to find myself in the same inn where I had
stopped with Manon on our way from Amiens to Paris. The innkeeper and
his servants recognised me, and guessed at once the truth of my
history. I overheard them say, 'Ah! that's the handsome young
gentleman who travelled this road about a month ago, with the beautiful
girl he appeared so much in love with! How pretty she was! The poor
young things, how they caressed each other! Pity if they have been
separated!' I pretended not to hear, and kept as much out of sight as
possible.
"At St. Denis my brother had a chariot waiting for us, in which we
started early the next morning, and arrived at home before night.
"He saw my father first, in order to make a favourable impression by
telling him how quietly I had allowed myself to be brought away, so
that his reception of me was less austere than I had expected. He
merely rebuked me in general terms for the offence I had committed, by
absenting myself without his permission. As for my mistress, he said I
richly deserved what had happened to me, for abandoning myself to a
person utterly unknown; that he had entertained a better opinion of my
discretion; but that he hoped this little adventure would make me
wiser. I took the whole lecture only in the sense that accorded with
my own notions. I thanked my father for his indulgence, and promised
that I would in future observe a better regulated and more obedient
course of conduct. I felt that I had secured a triumph; for, from the
present aspect of affairs,
|
obscurity
|
How many times does the word 'obscurity' appear in the text?
| 0
|
the Backwoodsman when we thought the paper wanted
one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first and see thatâs
sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. Weâll take one of your
cigars apiece, and you shall see us light.â I watched the test. The
men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid peg.
âWell and good,â said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth
from his mustache. âLet me talk now, Dan. We have been all over
India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers,
petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isnât
big enough for such as us.â
They certainly were too big for the office. Dravotâs beard seemed to
fill half the room and Carnehanâs shoulders the other half, as they
sat on the big table. Carnehan continued:ââThe country isnât half
worked out because they that governs it wonât let you touch it. They
spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you canât lift a
spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that
without all the Government sayingââLeave it alone and let us
govern.â Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away
to some other place where a man isnât crowded and can come to his
own. We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of
except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that. Therefore, we are
going away to be Kings.â
âKings in our own right,â muttered Dravot.
âYes, of course,â I said. âYouâve been tramping in the sun, and
itâs a very warm night, and hadnât you better sleep over the
notion? Come to-morrow.â
âNeither drunk nor sunstruck,â said Dravot. âWe have slept over
the notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we
have decided that there is only one place now in the world that two
strong men can Sar-a-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning
its the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three
hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols
there, and weâll be the thirty-third. Itâs a mountainous country,
and the women of those parts are very beautiful.â
âBut that is provided against in the Contrack,â said Carnehan.
âNeither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.â
âAnd thatâs all we know, except that no one has gone there, and
they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to
drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to
any King we findââDâ you want to vanquish your foes?â and we
will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything
else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish
a Dy-nasty.â
âYouâll be cut to pieces before youâre fifty miles across the
Border,â I said. âYou have to travel through Afghanistan to get to
that country. Itâs one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and
no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and
even if you reached them you couldnât do anything.â
âThatâs more like,â said Carnehan. âIf you could think us a
little more mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know
about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We
want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.â He
turned to the book-cases.
âAre you at all in earnest?â I said.
âA little,â said Dravot, sweetly. âAs big a map as you have got,
even if itâs all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books youâve
got. We can read, though we arenât very educated.â
I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two
smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of the Encyclopædia
Britannica, and the men consulted them.
âSee here!â said Dravot, his thumb on the map. âUp to Jagdallak,
Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Robertsâs Army.
Weâll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann
territory. Then we get among the hillsâfourteen thousand
feetâfifteen thousandâit will be cold work there, but it donât
look very far on the map.â
I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the
Encyclopædia.
âTheyâre a mixed lot,â said Dravot, reflectively; âand it
wonât help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the
more theyâll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang.
Hâmm!â
âBut all the information about the country is as sketchy and
inaccurate as can be,â I protested. âNo one knows anything about it
really. Hereâs the file of the United Servicesâ Institute. Read
what Bellew says.â
âBlow Bellew!â said Carnehan. âDan, theyâre an all-fired lot of
heathens, but this book here says they think theyâre related to us
English.â
I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps and the
Encyclopædia.
âThere is no use your waiting,â said Dravot, politely. âItâs
about four oâclock now. Weâll go before six oâclock if you want
to sleep, and we wonât steal any of the papers. Donât you sit up.
Weâre two harmless lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down
to the Serai weâll say good-by to you.â
âYou are two fools,â I answered. âYouâll be turned back at the
Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want
any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the
chance of work next week.â
âNext week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you,â said
Dravot. âIt isnât so easy being a King as it looks. When weâve
got our Kingdom in going order weâll let you know, and you can come
up and help us to govern it.â
âWould two lunatics make a Contrack like that!â said Carnehan, with
subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which
was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a
curiosity:â
This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of
GodâAmen and so forth.
(One) That me and you will settle this matter together:
i.e., to be Kings of Kafiristan.
(Two) That you and me will not while this matter is
being settled, look at any Liquor, nor any
Woman black, white or brown, so as to get
mixed up with one or the other harmful.
(Three) That we conduct ourselves with Dignity and
Discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble
the other will stay by him.
Signed by you and me this day.
Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.
Daniel Dravot.
Both Gentlemen at Large.
âThere was no need for the last article,â said Carnehan, blushing
modestly; âbut it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that
loafers areâwe are loafers, Dan, until we get out of Indiaâand do
you think that we could sign a Contrack like that unless we was in
earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth
having.â
âYou wonât enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try
this idiotic adventure. Donât set the office on fire,â I said,
âand go away before nine oâclock.â
I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of
the âContrack.â âBe sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,â
were their parting words.
The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the
strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the
nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk
of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and
try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian
pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen
Serai, and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went
down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or
were lying about drunk.
A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me,
gravely twisting a childâs paper whirligig. Behind him was his
servant, bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were
loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them
with shrieks of laughter.
âThe priest is mad,â said a horse-dealer to me. âHe is going up
to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honor or
have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been
behaving madly ever since.â
âThe witless are under the protection of God,â stammered a
flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. âThey foretell future events.â
âWould they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut
up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!â grunted the
Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been
feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the
Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar.
âOhé, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?â
âFrom Roum have I come,â shouted the priest, waving his whirligig;
âfrom Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O
thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and
perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell
charms that are never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the
sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while
they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will
assist me to slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a
silver heel? The protection of Pir Kahn be upon his labors!â He
spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines
of tethered horses.
âThere starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days,
Huzrut,â said the Eusufzai trader. âMy camels go therewith. Do thou
also go and bring us good luck.â
âI will go even now!â shouted the priest. âI will depart upon my
winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan,â he
yelled to his servant âdrive out the camels, but let me first mount
my own.â
He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and turning round to
me, cried:â
âCome thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee
a charmâan amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan.â
Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the
Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.
âWhat dâ you think oâ that?â said he in English. âCarnehan
canât talk their patter, so Iâve made him my servant. He makes a
handsome servant. âTisnât for nothing that Iâve been knocking
about the country for fourteen years. Didnât I do that talk neat?
Weâll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and
then weâll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into
Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the
camel-bags and tell me what you feel.â
I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.
âTwenty of âem,â said Dravot, placidly.
âTwenty of âem, and ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs
and the mud dolls.â
âHeaven help you if you are caught with those things!â I said. âA
Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans.â
âFifteen hundred rupees of capitalâevery rupee we could beg,
borrow, or stealâare invested on these two camels,â said Dravot.
âWe wonât get caught. Weâre going through the Khaiber with a
regular caravan. Whoâd touch a poor mad priest?â
âHave you got everything you want?â I asked, overcome with
astonishment.
âNot yet, but we shall soon. Give us a momento of your kindness,
Brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar. Half
my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is.â I slipped a small charm
compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.
âGood-by,â said Dravot, giving me his hand cautiously. âItâs
the last time weâll shake hands with an Englishman these many days.
Shake hands with him, Carnehan,â he cried, as the second camel passed
me.
Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along
the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no
failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai attested that they
were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore,
that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to
|
nationalities
|
How many times does the word 'nationalities' appear in the text?
| 0
|
looks at his watch.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> The car should be here, may I use--
<b> (THE PHONE)
</b>
<b> PAMELA
</b>
<b> (OVER)
</b> I cancelled it.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You--?
<b> (PANICKED)
</b> What? Pamela!
<b> PAMELA
</b> Mrs Travers.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> Mrs Travers, please, why--
(sugaring his tone)
Why would you cancel the car?
<b> PAMELA
</b> I shan't be going.
Diarmuid buries his face in his hands.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> We've been through this--
<b> PAMELA
</b> I've changed my mind.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You can't.
<b> PAMELA
</b> With all due respect Mr Russell I
am on very good terms with my own
faculty and exceedingly confident
in its decision making
capabilities.
Diarmuid's shoulders visibly sag, he lets out a long
frustrated breath.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You made an agreement. Do you
understand? A verbal agreement.
<b> PAMELA
</b> Why in the world are you speaking
to me as if I am a neonate?
<b> DIARMUID
</b>
<b> HE'LL--
</b>
<b> PAMELA
</b> He'll what? Sue? He is most welcome
to every penny I don't have.
<b> DIARMUID
</b>
<b> LOOK--
</b>
<b> (HE SIGHS)
</b> --I've represented you for a long
time. I like to think of you as a
<b> FRIEND--
</b> Pamela snorts.
<b> DIARMUID (CONT'D)
</b> I like to think of it, believe me I
know it's not reciprocated.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> I would never suggest you do
something that would cause you
anguish but there's no more money
Pamela-- Mrs Travers. Simply no
more. Sales have dried up, no more
royalties. You refuse to write
further books so--
<b> (BEAT)
</b> Do you understand? I'm frightened
that you don't understand what that
means.
Pamela looks out of the window, the cherry blossom her focus.
<b> PAMELA
</b> I know what he's going to do to her-
- she'll be cavorting and
twinkling! Careening towards a
happy ending like a kamikaze--
<b> DIARMUID
</b> --We've been trying to do this deal
for twenty years! He's agreed to
both your stipulations. No
animation, script approval-- I--
<b> PAMELA
</b> Use her to pay my bills? If I
believed in a hell I'd be sitting
in its waiting room--
<b> DIARMUID
</b>
<b> (OVER)
</b> --script approval! He's never
granted anything like that before!
I don't know what else to--
He looks around.
<b> DIARMUID (CONT'D)
</b> Where is Polly?
<b> PAMELA
</b> I fired her.
Diarmuid shakes his head, sighs.
<b> PAMELA (CONT'D)
</b> It's just as well. It seems I can't
afford her anymore anyway!
Pamela looks to the ceiling, breathes.
<b> PAMELA (CONT'D)
</b>
<b> (MOMENTARILY SOFT)
</b> You don't know how much she means
to me.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> Polly?
<b> PAMELA
</b> Of course not Polly!
Pamela huffs, digs her heel into the rug.
<b> PAMELA (CONT'D)
</b> (it's a filthy word)
Los Angeles.
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You have only to go there and work
for two weeks. Collaborate. That's
it. You haven't signed the rights
over, yet.
<b> PAMELA
</b> Yet!
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You must make it work Mrs Travers--
<b> PAMELA
</b> Oh I must, must I?
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You need the money. I don't want
you to see you-- (broke).
<b> PAMELA
</b>
<b> (OVER)
</b> Stop saying money! It's a filthy,
disgusting word!
<b> DIARMUID
</b> I am picking up the telephone Mrs
<b> TRAVERS--
</b> Diarmuid gets up.
<b> PAMELA
</b> I have final say?
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You do.
<b> PAMELA
</b>
<b> (TO HERSELF)
</b> I have final say.
<b> (TO DIARMUID)
</b>
<b> (MORE)
</b>
<b> PAMELA (CONT'D)
</b> And if I don't like what they are
doing to her?
<b> DIARMUID
</b> You don't sign the papers. He
cannot make the film unless you
grant the rights.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> It's an exploratory trip--
Pamela looks at the cherry blossom again, a piece floats away
from the tree and sticks to her living room window.
<b> DIARMUID (CONT'D)
</b> What do you say?
<b> PAMELA
</b>
<b> (TO HERSELF)
</b> I want to keep my house.
<b> EXT. MARYBOROUGH PARK - DAY
</b>
A large hand taps Ginty on the shoulder, she looks up and
smiles. TRAVERS GOFF (35) is handsome and rugged, a wild
poetic look, like Ted Hughes or Dylan Thomas.
<b> TRAVERS
</b> Excuse me ma'am, have you seen my
daughter? I was quite sure I had
left her around here somewhere!
Ginty giggles.
<b> TRAVERS (CONT'D)
</b> Her name is Helen, no, Shirley, erm-
- goodness! I've quite forgotten!
Could it be Prunella?
<b> GINTY
</b> No!
<b> TRAVERS
</b> Pamela?
<b> GINTY
</b> No.
<b>
|
room
|
How many times does the word 'room' appear in the text?
| 1
|
He
stops center of the ring, but Helmut keeps walking and doesn't
see the post in front of him as he walks around the post,
still holding the tails and goes on his butt, pulling Gustav
down as well. The audience screams with laughter, believing
this all part of the act, as we:
<b> DISSOLVE TO:
</b>
<b> INT. CLOWN ALLEY - NIGHT
</b>
All the clowns are sitting around their respective trunks
and there is a sense of gloom permeating the air, as Gustav
and MR. SCHMIDT pace back and forth behind Helmut, both going
at him unmercifully.
<b> MR SCHMIDT
</b> (in the middle of his
tirade)
Not to mention how unprofessional
that was...
<b> HELMUT
</b> But it was an accident...
<b> GUSTAV
</b> Oh, sure it was... A very well planned
and calculated accident!
<b> HELMUT
</b> I swear to you... it was an accident!
Gustav stops and grabs Schmidt's arm, and with a threatening,
pointing finger...
<b> GUSTAV
</b> I don't want to hear any more...
You will get me another stooge. I
don't want this man!!
<b> SCHMIDT
</b> Don't get excited, Gustav, you shall
have it.
<b> GUSTAV
</b> You bet I will, or you shall have no
show.
Gustav walks away, sits at his trunk, starts taking his make-
up off.
<b> SCHMIDT
</b> (moving to Helmut's
trunk, leaning over
into Helmut's ear)
You will run with the other clowns
and that's all you will do... is
that clear?
Helmut, shattered, nods his head yes.
<b> SCHMIDT
</b> (continuing)
And if there is another one of your
cute tricks... I promise you will do
your bits for the "Cats" while
cleaning their cages!
Schmidt walks away... leaving Helmut stunned and shocked.
Helmut lifts his trunk cover, which opens on a hinge and
stays upright, as we SLOWLY CRAB AROUND to REVEAL the "One
Sheets" glued to the inside of the trunk lid... as Helmut
reaches for a towel to clean his face, we read:
<b> RINGLING BROS. & BARNUM AND BAILEY
</b>
<b> PRESENTS
</b>
<b> THE WORLD'S GREATEST CLOWN "HELMUT"
</b>
<b> SCHMIDT
</b>
From Germany
The one sheets are battered and torn and certainly appear to
be many years old. As we PAN the "Lid" to see them all,
Helmut's face is reflected in the mirror as we see the tears
rolling down his face. As we FREEZE FRAME, MUSIC hits for:
<b> MAIN TITLES:
</b>
<b> THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED
</b>
<b> FOLLOWING CREDITS:
</b>
<b> EXT. DESERTED STREET AND BISTRO - NIGHT
</b>
Helmut, dejected and as sad as any man could be, strolls
down the deserted street, alone.
<b> INT. BISTRO
</b>
He comes to a small bistro and walks in... stands at the
bar.
<b> HELMUT
</b> Clause... give me a double whiskey
with beer chaser.
<b> CLAUSE
</b> (who knows him)
You won't get "Funny" out of a bottle.
<b> HELMUT
</b> And you won't make a dime sticking
your nose in other people's business.
Clause pours the whiskey, and places the beer next to it; as
Helmut gulps the drink down and chases it with the beer from
the bottle... we:
<b> STRAIGHT CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT. THE APARTMENT - NIGHT
</b>
Standing at the window looking out is a beautiful WOMAN,
simply dressed, no make-up and clean; she has the look of a
woman who has just bathed and one could almost smell the
fragrance of bath oil on her body. She is tense and
concerned.
She sees something and moves toward the door and opens it.
There is a beat and finally the o.s. SOUNDS of feet scuffling
get to the door. It is Helmut, fairly crocked at this point.
<b> ADA
</b> Helmut, darling, are you all right?
<b> HELMUT
</b> (nastily)
Do I look like I'm not all right?
<b> ADA
</b> I was so worried about you... Your
dinner is cold and I couldn't imagine
what happened to you...
<b> HELMUT
</b> Were you really worried about me or
your stupid dinner was getting cold?
Ada is hurt by this, but knows something is really chewing
away at him... and deals with it even more tenderly, which
only digs in deeper on Helmut.
<b> ADA
</b> Sweetheart, I care about you... I
love you... I worry about you... I
can't help those feelings...
During the above Helmut is at the small bar in the living
room pouring another "blast" and gulps it down... he hears
the words but tries to ignore them.
<b> HELMUT
</b> If there is anything I don't need
right now... it's your super-
sentimentality...
He flops down in the armchair and stares straight ahead...
Again, Ada is hurt by his blasting her, but she's wise enough
to know this isn't the man she loves... she has to get what's
eating him out of there.
<b> ADA
</b> Helmut... what's tormenting your
soul? Please let me help you...
talk to me... I don't care what it
is... I love you... I'm your
friend... you can trust me to
understand...
<b> HELMUT
</b> I can't trust anybody... I don't
know how to trust anybody...
<b> ADA
</b> I'm not anybody! I'm your wife!
Helmut, hearing these words, looks up at her and sees the
beauty in her eyes, and he is affected by this. He stands
up and takes her in his arms... almost breaking her in two.
<b> HELMUT
</b> I'm sorry, my love... I'm so sorry...
You're right! You're not anybody.
You're my wife and I love you, too...
So very much I just have no one to
fight back at... I'm lost and alone,
I can't handle the disgrace of
failure... the pain of being a has-
been is more than I can bear...
Ada knows now what's happened.
<b> ADA
</b> Schmidt again? Gustav again? When
will you learn they fear you and
they know how vulnerable you are
now... if they can beat you down
then they needn't worry about you
coming back to haunt them.
<b> HELMUT
</b> They worry about me? Don't be
ridiculous... they just took the
last comic bit away from me... because
of a silly accident... I'm now down
at the bottom, just a stooge assisting
a not-so-funny clown.
<b> ADA
</b> But they can't take your talent
away... That's your strongest force!
Walking away from her, getting angry again...
<b> HELMUT
</b> What the hell are you talking about?
What talent? And if I had any it's
being suffocated into nothing...
And that's just what I am now...
nothing... No one... just empty...
a prop to be used and mis-used...
how does my great talent stand up to
those odds?
<b> ADA
</b> By not quitting... You must fight!
Creative survival is even more
difficult than human survival...
You must fight!!!
Helmut gets quiet and listens, and it makes sense... Ada
knows she's got him now.
<b> ADA
</b> (continuing)
Go to Schmidt... Force a
confrontation... Don't let Gustav
win... make Schmidt see what an
injustice they are imposing on you...
Please, my love, fight! Make your
world better by fighting for it...
You can do it... I know you can...
Helmut hears it all and it sounds so good and right.
<b> HELMUT
</b> I will go now and see Schmidt...
I will tell him I won't take any
more degradation... I will tell him
I am a "clown" not a stooge... A
"clown"... A special person... A
special clown...
Ada happily gets his hat.
<b> ADA
</b> (placing the hat on
his head)
Go, my love... Go and fight for what
you know is right... I will warm
your dinner and wait for you to come
home.
She kisses him, opens the door for him and he goes.
<b> DISSOLVE TO:
</b>
<b> INT. THE EMPTY CIRCUS - NIGHT
</b>
The low key light and the silence of the circus is almost
ominous and a little frightening for Helmut as he walks across
the empty arena... with a small light burning from up high.
All the equipment is tied off. Slight ANIMAL SOUNDS in the
deep background... and the faintest SOUND of circus music is
heard. Helmut is now center of the main ring and stops and
looks around.
<b> HIS POV - THE EMPTY STANDS
</b>
<b> CLOSE SHOT - HELMUT
</b>
His face tense, then eases as he looks around.
<b> HIS POV
</b>
The stands are full, the lights come up, and the audience is
standing, applauding thunderously!
<b> MED. CLOSE - HELMUT
</b>
In his clown outfit bowing and acknowledging the ovation.
<b> HIS POV - THE AUDIENCE
</b>
as they stop applauding and sit down.
<b> WIDE SHOT
</b>
Helmut -- the chair and the trombone --
<b> THE TROMBONE PANTOMIME
</b>
As the completion of the "Trombone Pantomime" Helmut walks
away from the position he was in with the trombone and bows
and milks the crowd for reactions and as he bows the second
time... WE SHIMMER:
<b> BACK TO:
</b>
<b> CLOSE - HELMUT
</b>
In bowing position as he looks at the crowd.
<b> HIS POV - THE EMPTY STANDS
</b>
<b> CLOSE - HELMUT
</b>
His face shows signs of utter despair and dejection... the
dream is gone and the memory of what was really hurts deep
down. He looks around making sure he hasn't been noticed by
anyone and takes that deep sigh and strolls towards the back
of the circus tent area on his way to find Schmidt.
<b> WIDE ANGLE
</b>
TRUCK WITH HIM, HOLDING the many empty seats in the b.g. as
he walks... trying to muster up the courage he's going to
have to call... something that has now become totally foreign
to him.
<b> HIGH SHOT - THE EMPTY CIRCUS
</b>
We see Helmut as the tiny figure he feels like, walking out
of the tent area and into the backstage section.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> BACKSTAGE OFFICE AREA - NIGHT
</b>
Helmut enters the section of the circus where Schmidt has
his "Temp" office quarters. It is a tent-like arrangement
with the canvas flap as his door and we see light streaming
from the half open canvas flap.
<b> HIS POV - THE TENT OFFICE
</b>
Helmut looks and sees a shadow of a body moving around in
the tent office area and starts for it.
<b> INT. TENT OFFICE - NIGHT
</b>
Schmidt pacing up and down... thinking, as we PULL BACK to
see Gustav seated in one of the fold-up chairs with a "I am
waiting" look on his face.
<b> SCHMIDT
</b> Naturally, I agree... Doork is a
nuisance, but to just let him go
seems a little unfair.
<b> GUSTAV
</b> Schmidt! Don't make me put it on a
"either him or me basis".
<b> SCHMIDT
</b> All right... all right... I'll give
him --
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> OUTSIDE OFFICE TENT - HELMUT - NIGHT
</b>
listening.
<b> SCHMIDT (V.O.)
</b> -- his two weeks notice tomorrow.
Will that satisfy you?
<b> GUSTAV (V.O.)
</b> Perfectly!! Let's have a drink...
Helmut drops his head, completely discouraged and saddened
by what he knows is a losing battle. As he starts to walk
away we can HEAR the tinkling of glasses and the slight
laughter of the two men as we watch Helmut slowly scuff his
way towards the backstage circus exit, as we:
DISSOLVE (12-ft) HOLDING his walk over his limp body at bar.
<b> INT. THE BAR - NIGHT
</b>
Helmut has had more than a few and really looks beaten and
shoddy -- he waves for the bartender to bring another.
<b> CLAUSE
</b> (pouring still another
blast)
It's your funeral.
<b> HELMUT
</b> (not too clearly)
A funeral is usually in order when
someone dies.
Up to now, we have no idea, whatever, as to the time (in
history) we are indeed in Germany, but as Helmut downs another
blast we SLOWLY CREEP our CAMERA to include more of the bar
than we have seen before and it includes pictures, framed,
of soldiers, arms interlocked (looking somewhat like summer
camp stills), the German flag (1933 vintage / crisscrossed
with the Swastika), a large banner marked "Deutchland" Ober
Aliss... and finally, the larger than life photograph of
"Hitler". Helmut slowly CROSSES CAMERA as he takes another
drink and starts spouting again.
<b> HELMUT
</b> The trouble
|
bottle
|
How many times does the word 'bottle' appear in the text?
| 1
|
PREW
</b><b> (SHRUGS)
</b> That's what the orders say.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> You made a bad mistake. This outfit
they can give back to Custer.
Prew smiles slightly, starts toward door.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> The Captain ain't in yet.
Prew puts down his barracks bags.
<b> PREY
</b> I'll look around.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> (smiles for first time)
Maybe we borrow some money from a
twenty per cent man and take a real
trip to town some night.
<b> PHEW
</b> Maybe.
<b> TRUCKING SHOT ALONG COMPANY STREET
</b> Prew walks slowly down the raised porch alongside the street.
He takes the mouthpiece of a bugle from his pocket, jiggles
it idly, a habit of his. He comes to the Dayroom, glances
through the screen door, goes in.
<b> INT. DAYROOM - DAY
</b>
<b> MEDIUM SHOT
</b> The Dayroom has a pool table, ping-pong table, a radio, etc.
Moth-eaten, upholstered chairs line both walls. The place is
empty as Prew enters. He looks around casually, sees the pool
table in an alcove. He moves over to it, puts the bugle
mouthpiece in his pocket, picks a cue from the rack on the
wall. He switches on the light, chalks the cue.
<b> MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT
</b> The triangle of balls is already racked on the table. Prew
addresses the cue ball, shoots and breaks the rack solidly.
He watches the balls hurry around the table.
<b> 3.
</b>
<b> WARDEN'S VOICE (O. S.)
</b> What're you think you're doing!?
Why ain't you out in the field with
the Compny? What's your name?
The voice is brawling, brash, vigorous. Prew turns slowly.
CAMERA ANGLE WIDENS to INCLUDE FIRST SERGEANT MILTON WARDEN,
almost at Prew's elbow. He is thirty-four, big and powerful,
has a neatly-trimmed moustache.
<b> PREW
</b> Prewitt. Transfer from Shafter.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Yeah. I heard about you.
<b> PREW
</b> I heard about you, too, Warden.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Well, put up that cue and come
along. This here's a rifle outfit,
Prewitt. You ain't suppose to enjoy
yourself before sundown. The Man's
very particlar about little things
like that.
Warden goes out of the Dayroom. Prew puts up the cue and
follows him.
<b> EXT. COMPANY STREET
</b>
<b> TRUCKING SHOT
</b> as Prew and Warden walk along the porch, Warden a few paces
ahead. They go into the Orderly Room.
<b> INT. ORDERLY ROOM - DAY
</b>
<b> MEDIUM SHOT
</b> as Prew and Warden enter. Maggio is sweeping the room.
MAZZIOLI, a bespectacled, intellectual-looking Private First
Class, is at the clerk's desk, opening it, taking out papers,
etc. Prew sits on a bench as Warden goes over to Mazzioli.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Mazzioli! Grant went to the
hospital yesterday. Did you make up
his sick record? Did you make a
note for the morning report?!
You're the Compny Clerk. The lousy
Sickbook is your job!
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> MAZZIOLI
</b> Those medics didn't get the
Sickbook back till late yesterday --
I'll tend to it right now --
<b> WARDEN
</b> Thanks. I already done it for you.
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b> Maggio has swept his way over to Prew. He stops sweeping now,
stares at the other man as if still incredulous.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> But you the beat bugler they got
over at Shatter. You probly the
best on this whole Rock.
In b.g., Warden has turned from Mazzioli and is looking at
Prew. Prew looks back coolly, answers Maggio thoughtfully.
<b> PREW
</b> That's true.
Maggio wags his head, bends over to pick up wastepaper
basket.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> Well, friend, I feel for you. But
from my position I can't quite
reach you.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Ten-sh-HUT!
Prewitt, Mazzioli and Maggio spring to attention. The screen
door bangs and CAPTAIN DANA HOLMES enters shot. He wears
cavalry boots and spurs. He is about forty, unsure of
himself, therefore always too certain with his men. He nods
pleasantly.
<b> HOLMES
</b> At ease. Good morning, men.
Anything special this morning,
Sergeant Warden? I've only a few
minutes.
<b> WARDEN
</b> New man here, sir.
<b> HOLMES
</b> Oh, yes. Bring him in.
<b> 5.
</b>
Holmes goes into his office. Warden jerks his thumb toward
the door. Prewitt goes into the office. Warden follows him.
<b> INT. CAPTAIN'S OFFICE - DAY
</b>
Holmes is seated at his desk as Prewitt and Warden enter. A
placard on it reads: CAPTAIN HOLMES. A smaller desk nearby
has a placard' reading: 1ST SERGEANT WARDEN. Warden seats
himself at this desk. On the walls are framed photographs of
prizefighters as well as one of a large golden trophy. On
Holmes' desk is a small framed photograph of a very
attractive blonde woman. Prewitt comes to attention in front
of Holmes' desk.
<b> PREWITT
</b> Sir, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt
reporting to the Compny Commander
as ordered.
<b> HOLMES
</b> At ease
|
office
|
How many times does the word 'office' appear in the text?
| 2
|
be nearly the same as the question whether a
man in a fit of illness can show more strength than in a healthy
condition; and this may be directly denied, since the want of
health, which consists in the proper balance of all the bodily
forces of the man, is a weakness in the system of these forces, by
which system alone we can estimate absolute health.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 30}
III. Of the Reason for conceiving an End which is also a Duty
An end is an object of the free elective will, the idea of which
determines this will to an action by which the object is produced.
Accordingly every action has its end, and as no one can have an end
without himself making the object of his elective will his end,
hence to have some end of actions is an act of the freedom of the
agent, not an affect of physical nature. Now, since this act which
determines an end is a practical principle which commands not the
means (therefore not conditionally) but the end itself (therefore
unconditionally), hence it is a categorical imperative of pure
practical reason and one, therefore, which combines a concept of
duty with that of an end in general.
Now there must be such an end and a categorical imperative
corresponding to it. For since there are free actions, there must also
be ends to which as an object those actions are directed. Amongst
these ends there must also be some which are at the same time (that
is, by their very notion) duties. For if there were none such, then
since no actions can be without an end, all ends which practical
reason might have would be valid only as means to other ends, and a
categorical imperative would be impossible; a supposition which
destroys all moral philosophy.
Here, therefore, we treat not of ends which man actually makes to
himself in accordance with the sensible impulses of his nature, but of
objects of the free elective will under its own laws- objects which he
ought to make his end. We may call the former technical
(subjective), properly pragmatical, including the rules of prudence in
the choice of its ends; but the latter we must call the moral
(objective) doctrine of ends. This distinction is, however,
superfluous here, since moral philosophy already by its very notion is
clearly separated from the doctrine of physical nature (in the present
instance, anthropology). The latter resting on empirical principles,
whereas the moral doctrine of ends which treats of duties rests on
principles given a priori in pure practical reason.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 35}
IV. What are the Ends which are also Duties?
They are: A. OUR OWN PERFECTION, B. HAPPINESS OF OTHERS.
We cannot invert these and make on one side our own happiness, and
on the other the perfection of others, ends which should be in
themselves duties for the same person.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 40}
For one's own happiness is, no doubt, an end that all men have (by
virtue of the impulse of their nature), but this end cannot without
contradiction be regarded as a duty. What a man of himself
inevitably wills does not come under the notion of duty, for this is a
constraint to an end reluctantly adopted. It is, therefore, a
contradiction to say that a man is in duty bound to advance his own
happiness with all his power.
It is likewise a contradiction to make the perfection of another
my end, and to regard myself as in duty bound to promote it. For it is
just in this that the perfection of another man as a person
consists, namely, that he is able of himself to set before him his own
end according to his own notions of duty; and it is a contradiction to
require (to make it a duty for me) that I should do something which no
other but himself can do.
V. Explanation of these two Notions
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 45}
A. OUR OWN PERFECTION
The word perfection is liable to many misconceptions. It is
sometimes understood as a notion belonging to transcendental
philosophy; viz., the notion of the totality of the manifold which
taken together constitutes a thing; sometimes, again, it is understood
as belonging to teleology, so that it signifies the correspondence
of the properties of a thing to an end. Perfection in the former sense
might be called quantitative (material), in the latter qualitative
(formal) perfection. The former can be one only, for the whole of what
belongs to the one thing is one. But of the latter there may be
several in one thing; and it is of the latter property that we here
treat.
When it is said of the perfection that belongs to man generally
(properly speaking, to humanity), that it is in itself a duty to
make this our end, it must be placed in that which may be the effect
of one's deed, not in that which is merely an endowment for which we
have to thank nature; for otherwise it would not be duty.
Consequently, it can be nothing else than the cultivation of one's
power (or natural capacity) and also of one's will (moral disposition)
to satisfy the requirement of duty in general. The supreme element
in the former (the power) is the understanding, it being the faculty
of concepts, and, therefore, also of those concepts which refer to
duty. First it is his duty to labour to raise himself out of the
rudeness of his nature, out of his animal nature more and more to
humanity, by which alone he is capable of setting before him ends to
supply the defects of his ignorance by instruction, and to correct his
errors; he is not merely counselled to do this by reason as
technically practical, with a view to his purposes of other kinds
(as art), but reason, as morally practical, absolutely commands him to
do it, and makes this end his duty, in order that he may be worthy
of the humanity that dwells in him. Secondly, to carry the cultivation
of his will up to the purest virtuous disposition, that, namely, in
which the law is also the spring of his dutiful actions, and to obey
it from duty, for this is internal morally practical perfection.
This is called the moral sense (as it were a special sense, sensus
moralis), because it is a feeling of the effect which the
legislative will within himself exercises on the faculty of acting
accordingly. This is, indeed, often misused fanatically, as though
(like the genius of Socrates) it preceded reason, or even could
dispense with judgement of reason; but still it is a moral perfection,
making every special end, which is also a duty, one's own end.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 50}
B. HAPPINESS OF OTHERS
It is inevitable for human nature that man a should wish and seek for
happiness, that is, satisfaction with his condition, with certainty of
the continuance of this satisfaction. But for this very reason it is
not an end that is also a duty. Some writers still make a
distinction between moral and physical happiness (the former
consisting in satisfaction with one's person and moral behaviour, that
is, with what one does; the other in satisfaction with that which
nature confers, consequently with what one enjoys as a foreign
gift). Without at present censuring the misuse of the word (which even
involves a contradiction), it must be observed that the feeling of the
former belongs solely to the preceding head, namely, perfection. For
he who is to feel himself happy in the mere consciousness of his
uprightness already possesses that perfection which in the previous
section was defined as that end which is also duty.
If happiness, then, is in question, which it is to be my duty to
promote as my end, it must be the happiness of other men whose
(permitted) end I hereby make also mine. It still remains left to
themselves to decide what they shall reckon as belonging to their
happiness; only that it is in my power to decline many things which
they so reckon, but which I do not so regard, supposing that they have
no right to demand it from me as their own. A plausible objection
often advanced against the division of duties above adopted consists
in setting over against that end a supposed obligation to study my own
(physical) happiness, and thus making this, which is my natural and
merely subjective end, my duty (and objective end). This requires to
be cleared up.
Adversity, pain, and want are great temptations to transgression
of one's duty; accordingly it would seem that strength, health, a
competence, and welfare generally, which are opposed to that
influence, may also be regarded as ends that are also duties; that is,
that it is a duty to promote our own happiness not merely to make that
of others our end. But in that case the end is not happiness but the
morality of the agent; and happiness is only the means of removing the
hindrances to morality; permitted means, since no one has a right to
demand from me the sacrifice of my not immoral ends. It is not
directly a duty to seek a competence for one's self; but indirectly it
may be so; namely, in order to guard against poverty which is a
great temptation to vice. But then it is not my happiness but my
morality, to maintain which in its integrity is at once my end and
my duty.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 55}
VI. Ethics does not supply Laws for Actions (which is done by
Jurisprudence), but only for the Maxims of Action
The notion of duty stands in immediate relation to a law (even
though I abstract from every end which is the matter of the law); as
is shown by the formal principle of duty in the categorical
imperative: "Act so that the maxims of thy action might become a
universal law." But in ethics this is conceived as the law of thy
own will, not of will in general, which might be that of others; for
in the latter case it would give rise to a judicial duty which does
not belong to the domain of ethics. In ethics, maxims are regarded
as those subjective laws which merely have the specific character of
universal legislation, which is only a negative principle (not to
contradict a law in general). How, then, can there be further a law
for the maxims of actions?
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 60}
It is the notion of an end which is also a duty, a notion peculiar
to ethics, that alone is the foundation of a law for the maxims of
actions; by making the subjective end (that which every one has)
subordinate to the objective end (that which every one ought to make
his own). The imperative: "Thou shalt make this or that thy end (e.
g., the happiness of others)" applies to the matter of the elective
will (an object). Now since no free action is possible, without the
agent having in view in it some end (as matter of his elective
will), it follows that, if there is an end which is also a duty, the
maxims of actions which are means to ends must contain only the
condition of fitness for a possible universal legislation: on the
other hand, the end which is also a duty can make it a law that we
should have such a maxim, whilst for the maxim itself the
possibility of agreeing with a universal legislation is sufficient.
For maxims of actions may be arbitrary, and are only limited by
the condition of fitness for a universal legislation, which is the
formal principle of actions. But a law abolishes the arbitrary
character of actions, and is by this distinguished from recommendation
(in which one only desires to know the best means to an end).
VII. Ethical Duties are of indeterminate, Juridical Duties of
strict, Obligation
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 65}
This proposition is a consequence of the foregoing; for if the law
can only command the maxim of the actions, not the actions themselves,
this is a sign that it leaves in the observance of it a latitude
(latitudo) for the elective will; that is, it cannot definitely assign
how and how much we should do by the action towards the end which is
also duty. But by an indeterminate duty is not meant a permission to
make exceptions from the maxim of the actions, but only the permission
to limit one maxim of duty by another (e. g., the general love of
our neighbour by the love of parents); and this in fact enlarges the
field for the practice of virtue. The more indeterminate the duty, and
the more imperfect accordingly the obligation of the man to the
action, and the closer he nevertheless brings this maxim of
obedience thereto (in his own mind) to the strict duty (of justice),
so much the more perfect is his virtuous action.
Hence it is only imperfect duties that are duties of virtue. The
fulfilment of them is merit (meritum) = + a; but their transgression
is not necessarily demerit (demeritum) = - a, but only moral unworth
= o, unless the agent made it a principle not to conform to those
duties. The strength of purpose in the former case is alone properly
called virtue [Tugend] (virtus); the weakness in the latter case is
not vice (vitium), but rather only lack of virtue [Untugend], a want
of moral strength (defectus moralis). (As the word Tugend is derived
from taugen [to be good for something], Untugend by its etymology
signifies good for nothing.) Every action contrary to duty is called
transgression (peccatum). Deliberate transgression which has become
a principle is what properly constitutes what is called vice (vitium).
Although the conformity of actions to justice (i.e., to be an
upright man) is nothing meritorious, yet the conformity of the maxim
of such actions regarded as duties, that is, reverence for justice
is meritorious. For by this the man makes the right of humanity or
of men his own end, and thereby enlarges his notion of duty beyond
that of indebtedness (officium debiti), since although another man
by virtue of his rights can demand that my actions shall conform to
the law, he cannot demand that the law shall also contain the spring
of these actions. The same thing is true of the general ethical
command, "Act dutifully from a sense of duty." To fix this disposition
firmly in one's mind and to quicken it is, as in the former case,
meritorious, because it goes beyond the law of duty in actions and
makes the law in itself the spring.
But just for or reason, those duties also must be reckoned as of
indeterminate obligation, in respect of which there exists a
subjective principle which ethically rewards them; or to bring them as
near as possible to the notion of a strict obligation, a principle
of susceptibility of this reward according to the law of virtue;
namely, a moral pleasure which goes beyond mere satisfaction with
oneself (which may be merely negative), and of which it is proudly
said that in this consciousness virtue is its own reward.
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 70}
When this merit is a merit of the man in respect of other men of
promoting their natural ends, which are recognized as such by all
men (making their happiness his own), we might call it the sweet
merit, the consciousness of which creates a moral enjoyment in which
men are by sympathy inclined to revel; whereas the bitter merit of
promoting the true welfare of other men, even though they should not
recognize it as such (in the case of the unthankful and ungrateful),
has commonly no such reaction, but only produces a satisfaction with
one's self, although in the latter case this would be even greater.
VIII. Exposition of the Duties of Virtue as Intermediate Duties
(1) OUR OWN PERFECTION as an end which is also a duty
{INTRODUCTION ^paragraph 75}
(a) Physical perfection; that is, cultivation of all our faculties
generally for the promotion of the ends set before us by reason.
That this is a duty, and therefore an end in itself, and that the
effort to effect this even without regard to the advantage that it
secures us, is based, not on a conditional (pragmatic), but an
unconditional (moral) imperative, may be seen from the following
consideration. The power of proposing to ourselves an end is the
characteristic of humanity (as distinguished from the brutes). With
the end of humanity in our own person is therefore combined the
rational will, and consequently the duty of deserving well of humanity
by culture generally, by acquiring or advancing the power to carry out
all sorts of possible ends, so far as this power is to be found in
man; that is, it is a duty to cultivate the crude capacities of our
nature, since it is by that cultivation that the animal is raised to
man, therefore it is a duty in itself.
This duty, however, is merely ethical, that is, of indeterminate
obligation. No principle of reason prescribes how far one must
|
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How many times does the word 'true' appear in the text?
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MOCO
</b> (into phone)
Just hang in there my friend. I won't
forget that you have been a big part of
our success. What's wrong.
<b>EXT. JAIL - DAY
</b>
A large truck drives up to the jail, parking beside the
police car. Two tall, well-dressed MEN step out. They reach
into the cab and pull out machine guns. They walk briskly
towards the jail.
<b>INT. AZUL IN JAIL CELL - DAY
</b>
Azul walks to his toilet and stands on it to see out his
barred window.
<b> AZUL
</b> (into phone)
There's something going on outside. Is
this a double surprise? Are you getting
me out today, Moco?
There is no response from Moco.
<b>INT. JAIL - DAY
</b>
The Guard reading the magazine stands when he sees someone
approaching the door.
<b>EXT. JAIL - DAY
</b>
Close tracking shot of guns as Tall Men open the door and
enter the jail.
<b>INT. AZUL IN JAIL CELL - DAY
</b>
Azul looks out of the jail cell suspiciously. Peering down
the hall, he sees the guys with the guns. He hides behind the
wall, peering out to see what happens next.
<b>
</b><b> 4.
</b>
<b>INT. JAIL LOBBY - DAY
</b>
The Tall Men walk right up to the guard, and hand him a huge
wad of money. The Guard tosses the money to his partner
(still eating), then turns to unlock the block entrance bars.
<b>INT. AZUL IN JAIL CELL - DAY
</b>
Azul puts the receiver back up to his mouth.
<b> AZUL
</b> (into phone)
There are two men here with guns. Did you
send them?
<b>EXT. EL MOCO'S RANCH - DAY
</b>
Moco, glancing at his watch, hangs up.
<b>INT. AZUL IN JAIL CELL - DAY
</b>
Azul hangs up the phone and kicks his Bodyguard awake. The
Bodyguard gets up and peers out the bars as Azul hides in a
corner.
<b>INT. TALL MEN IN HALL - DAY
</b>
The Tall Men walk steady and alert, ready to kill. They enter
Azul's block and scope out the cells.
The Bodyguard, seeing the tall men, retrieves his shotgun
from under his mattress and grabs his machete from under the
sink. He stands ready to fight.
The Tall Men move slowly towards the big cell, somewhat
cautious. They see the Bodyguard a second too late, for he
sticks the shotgun between the bars, and shoots one of them
before they can react. The shot one stumbles back into his
buddy's arms. Azul's Bodyguard, amused by all this, opens his
cell door effortlessly, and walks out as if to greet them.
The Tall Men hear the sound of the other cells opening, so
they turn around. The other prisoners on the block begin
exiting their cells, carrying guns and Molotov cocktails. The
Tall Man drops his gun. Finally, Azul exits his cell carrying
his phone. The Bodyguard forces the Tall Men into an empty
cell, closing and locking the door.
Azul presses the #-button on his phone. Moco's phone number
is automatically redialed.
Moco answers.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 5.
</b><b>CONTINUED:
</b>
<b> AZUL
</b> (into phone)
I'm still here, Moco. And so are your
little friends. But not for long. They
have something they want to scream to
you. Listen close, because you're going
to repeat it to me when I come to visit
you.
<b>INT. TALL MEN IN CELL - DAY
</b>
The cellmates throw their Molotov cocktails into the cell.
Moco hears the men screaming as they burn to death. Azul is
holding the phone at arm's length into the cell.
<b>INT. JAIL LOBBY - DAY
</b>
The Guards exchange glances when they hear the screaming,
they smile and shrug, then go back to what they were doing.
As Azul and his Bodyguards exit the block, the Guard with the
magazine stands up as if to stop them, but Azul tosses him a
wad of money and the guard sits back down to count it.
<b>EXT. JAIL - DAY
</b>
A blue truck races towards the jail.
Azul exits the jail carrying a shotgun. His Bodyguards get
inside the Tall Men's truck and start it. Azul waits
patiently for his blue truck.
As the blue truck pulls up, two little rat-like VATOS exit
the blue truck, one handing Azul a guitar case. Azul tosses
it onto the hood. The Bodyguards wave as they drive away.
Azul waves back. He opens the case, revealing an arsenal of
weaponry. Azul notices one piece is missing. One Rat quickly
pulls the missing weapon from his jacket and replaces it in
the case. Azul is unamused. He grabs his MAC-10 machine gun
from the guitar case and aims it at the thieving Rat's head.
Suddenly, the Guard bolts out the jail waving the wad of
money, as if complaining.
Azul turns his MAC-10 onto the Guard instead. A few blasts
later Azul and his rats pack up and go as the Guard twitches
helplessly on the ground, still clutching the money in his
bloody hand.
<b>CREDIT SEQUENCE EXT. AZUL / MARIACHI ON HIGHWAY - DAY
</b>
The blue truck barels down the highway and the camera pans
with the truck as it passes a hitchhiker, MARIACHI, standing
in the sun with a thumb in the air.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 6.
</b><b>CONTINUED:
</b>
The truck passes him up so he continues walking. Mariachi is
carrying a guitar case in one hand and a black jacket in the
other. He is wearing a white T-shirt, black pants. The camera
pans to a sign that reads "ACUÑA 18 miles".
<b>EXT. MAIN STREET - DAY
</b>
Mariachi is walking around downtown Acuña. He notices a bar
across the street and, liking the way it looks, he puts on
his jacket and crosses over to it. He stops to read a sign on
the building that says "MEMBERS AND NON-MEMBERS ONLY". He
prays silently to himself before confidently walking inside.
<b>INT. CORONA CLUB - DAY
</b>
Mariachi enters the club, greeting the PATRONS as ge makes
his way to the bar. No one seems to greet him back. He sits
on a barstool near some OTHER DRINKERS, laying his guitar
case down lovingly beneath his stool. He looks around the
place, as if sizing it up.
<b> BARTENDER
</b> What do you want to drink?
<b> MARIACHI
</b> Refresco.
The other drinkers stare at him.
Glancing around the room, Mariachi notices a small, table-
shaped object draped with a cloth in one corner of the room.
Sitting directly behind him are four mean-looking dudes.
Mariachi is served his drink.
<b> MARIACHI (CONT'D)
</b> No hay musica?
<b> BARTENDER
</b> (cleaning a glass)
Why?
<b> MARIACHI
</b> I'm a mariachi. A good one. I play
beautiful ballads, old classic ballads,
on an old-fashioned guitar.
<b> BARTENDER
</b> So what?
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 7.
</b><b>CONTINUED:
</b>
<b> MARIACHI
</b> I could add a little class to this place.
I work for fairly cheap, I live mostly
off tips. But I need steady work, and I
can guarantee bringing in more customers.
<b> BARTENDER
</b> (nodding)
Tell me, why would I need one little
guitar player when I've already got a
full band?
Mariachi gives him a silent "what" look.
The BARTENDER motions to a YOUNG MAN sitting near the small
draped table.
The Young Man removes the drape revealing a keyboard. Puts on
his mariachi hat, dips his fingers into his shot glass and
rubs his fingers together (as if warming up for the big
show). He hits a few switches in EXTREME CLOSEUP as...
... Mariachi adjusts himself to the seat.
The Young Men gently taps one switch and the keyboard sounds
like an accordion, pulsing out a beat. He then presses
another switch and a horn section swells to a crescendo and
waltzes the familiar riffs. He adds the string and horns
accents by banging on the keys. He sounds awful.
Mariachi grimaces slightly then turns back to the Bartender
who seems to enjoy it.
The Keyboard Mariachi finishes his song, sits back down.
<b> BARTENDER (CONT'D)
</b> (nodding with satisfaction)
There you see? Either I can pay one guy
to sound like a full mariachi band...
Mariachi picks up his guitar and lays some money next to his
full drink. He looks disappointed.
<b> BARTENDER (CONT'D)
</b> ... or I could spend the same money only
get one little guitar player...
Understand?
<b> MARIACHI
</b> (walking away)
Thank you, sir.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 8.
</b><b>CONTINUED: (2)
</b>
<b> BARTENDER
</b> You want to earn a living? Get a real
musical instrument.
The Bartender picks up the bottle of soda pop Mariachis left
behind and offers it to the other men on the table. They say
no, pay, and leave. The Bartender offers it to the MEAN DUDES
at the table.
They all shake their heads no.
The Bartender shrugs and dumps it.
<b>EXT. CORONA CLUB - DAY
</b>
Mariachi walks out and looks up and down the street. He
decides to walk south.
As he walks down the sidewalk, the camera pans into a CLOSEUP
of another guitar case that is moving towards the Corona
Club. The camera falls back a little revealing the backside
of Azul, dressed also in black. Azul walks into the bar.
<b>INT. CORONA CLUB - DAY
</b>
Azul enters the bar, notices to his left the table with the
four mean-looking Dudes, drinking and eating chips and salsa.
The oldest one, with his back to Azul, takes a sip from his
mixed drink, then stands and excuses himself to the restroom.
<b>INT. BATHROOM - OLD MEAN DUDE - DAY
</b>
The Old Mean Dude walks into the first stall and sits down.
<b>INT. CORONA CLUB - AZUL - DAY
</b>
The three remaining Dudes notice Azul's guitar case. So does
the Bartender. They all look at each other and laugh.
<b> BARTENDER
</b> (laughing and rolling his eyes)
What the hell is this, mariachi day?
There is no work for you here!
Azul walks the mean Dude's table. Their laughing quiets down
a bit as Azul stands before them. The Bartender stops
smiling.
<b> AZUL
</b> Bartender... one beer.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b>
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|
How many times does the word 'sounds' appear in the text?
| 1
|
</b> Tell me about it.
Club Member #1 turns to Martin.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> P.P.P. Personal Pan Power. All the
secrets of your universe are divided
up into eight easily digestible
slices.
Club Member #1 pulls a laminated card from his wallet and
hands it over to Martin. In the distance, sirens begin to
wail.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> See, see. It's in the accessible and
everyday shape of a pan pizza. Each
day you have a little slice of
peace...
<b> INSERT - WALLET-SIZE P.P.P. CARD
</b>
A pizza-shaped diagram showing six "sections".
<b> MARTIN
</b> Oh I see. You got your individual
slices of hope, dignity, confidence,
self-love, justice, and harmony.
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> You open 'em up and there's the
sayings, stories, little bites of
insight. It's the P.P.P. Six Day
Week.
<b> MARTIN
</b> So you eat-- read it everyday?
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> Yes.
<b> MARTIN
</b> And these pan pizzas have opened up
the doors to heaven?
<b> CLUB MEMBER #1
</b> Correct.
(re: the card)
That's for you. Keep it.
Sirens are getting louder, closer to the club.
<b> EXT. COUNTRY CLUB - DAY
</b>
The source of the sirens are almost upon us. Martin walks
toward his rented Town Car as the VALET pulls it up. He meets
the Valet by the trunk, where he trades tip for keys.
<b> MARTIN AT CAR
</b> He fishes out the laminated "Personal
Pan Power" card, looks at it, and
tosses it onto the ground. Police
cars, now visible in the distance,
wind into the long club driveway.
Martin gets into his car and pulls
away.
<b> LAMINATED CARD
</b>
As it lays on the asphalt. The wheel of a police car rolls
to a stop on it.
<b> INT. AIRLINER - DAY
</b>
Martin sits in a first class seat, the tray table flipped
down. On the left side of the tray is a stack of magazines
of all kinds - Sports Illustrated, Mademoiselle, Wired,
Rolling Stone, National Review, Spin, National Geographic,
and on. He draws one off the top, and flips through it,
impassively taking in images and reading nothing. When he is
done with one, he discards it into the empty seat next to
him and draws another-- Martin's way of instantly and
massively uploading the world around him:
Toothless hockey player in triumph, Sony product parade,
crouched starving child with vulture in the background,
supermodel in suede, Tic Tacs, living former Presidents, arm
in arm, smiling, etc.
<b> INT. HIRED CAR, NEW YORK - DAY
</b>
The livery weaves out of the arrival lanes at Kennedy airport.
Martin reclines in the back seat, a conversation having
already begun.
<b> DRIVER
</b> How was your day, today, sir?
<b> MARTIN
</b> Effective. But to tell you the truth,
I've lost my passion for work.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Do you like the people you work with?
<b> MARTIN
</b> I work alone.
<b> DRIVER
</b> That's it then. That's it. I've always
been alone. That's why I'm a good
driver. I can handle it. See, I can
think on my feet. I survive, I'm a
thinker. And I can sit there in front
of your house for two hours and it
don't bother me. Some people can't
do it! Some people are ranting and
raving, "Tell them fuckin' people to
get out here and get in this car, I
can't-- I want a go!" Where you gonna
go? You're gonna wind up back in
your garage at seven o'clock at night.
You ain't going nowhere. You leave
your house in the morning you get
back to your house in the evening.
What's the big deal, right?
<b> MARTIN
</b> You understand the psychology of the
job.
<b> DRIVER
</b> I do. Some guys can't adjust to it;
they can't handle it.
<b> INT. CAR - MANHATTAN STREETS - LATER
</b>
The car cuts through the upper east side. Martin and the
Driver exchange looks through the rear-view mirror.
<b> DRIVER
</b> You look like you're far away. Far
away and thinking about other things.
I'm right about that, aren't I?
<b> MARTIN
</b> No.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Well, let's just say that sometimes
I'm right. Sometimes you are.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Sometimes I am. Sometimes. It's only
natural.
<b> DRIVER
</b> (laughs to himself at
this great truth)
It's only natural....
The Driver pauses for dramatic emphasis
<b> DRIVER
</b> I been looking at you, and I've
decided that I want to share something
with you.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Okay.
<b> DRIVER
</b> Because your problem is you're bored.
And you have a very big mind.
(beat)
I am part of what I call a brain
syndicate.
No reaction from Martin.
<b> DRIVER
</b> I am part of a network of minds, a
group of five people who are all
connected, over hundreds, even
thousands of miles, through the mind.
We can think with each other, think
for each other. I can be driving
somewhere, sleeping with a woman--
whatever it is-- and at the same
time be thinking a thought in someone
else's mind, far away. Running someone
else's brain.
<b> MARTIN
</b> (indicates)
Up on the right.
<b> DRIVER
</b> And when you think of it, it's not
so surprising that a small group of
people control the whole world, is
it?
<b> INT. HOTEL ROOM, NEW YORK CITY - DAY
</b>
A sedate and well-appointed four-star suite on the Upper
East Side. Martin stands in front of one of the open windows
watching the canopied entrance of an elegant high-rise across
the street. He lifts an eye rinse cup to his eye and tilts
it back. A cellular phone RINGS, interrupting him. He moves
to the desk and draws one of three phones from his briefcase,
depresses a scrambler module, flips it open, and listens for
a moment.
<b> MARTIN
</b> If it's not there, I can't proceed.
Tell them.
Martin hangs up. Picks up another phone and dials. As he
waits for an answer, he goes to a Fed Ex blueprint tube lying
on the bed.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Tom. I've been waiting for an answer.
I'm only in town tonight.
He breaks the shipping seal and pulls out a series of finished
metal parts including a long thin barrel, a scope, and a
silencer.
<b> MARTIN
</b> What's different this time than the
last time? I have to be down front...
<b> INT. HOTEL ROOM - SAME
</b>
Martin stands in front of the window, phone in one hand, the
scope in the other. Next to him, the assembled rifle rests
across the arm of a chair.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...I don't bother to call anyone
else because you always take care of
me.
He glances over to a second window to his left, which offers
a view further down the street. He goes to it. He raises the
scope and sees
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE- WINDOW #2
</b>
A few blocks down, small even through the high-powered scope,
is your average BICYCLE MESSENGER dressed in lycra racing
gear, weaving through traffic toward us. Slung low across
his right hip is a black canvas bag. The Messenger's hand is
hidden in it. The other phone begins to RING.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Hold on a second, Tom. I got my hands
full here.
He sets down the phone and answers the other, still watching
the messenger.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Good. Account number 3649367, transfer
to account number 96-546-38739-47825.
Ask for Mr. Sanchez, tell him it's
Mr. Duckman. If there are any
problems, access file 673594638-IO-
98, and look at it.
Martin drops the phone and moves away from Window #2 to the
rifle. He mounts the scope and he looks out Window #1 at the
high-rise.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE - WINDOW #1
</b>
Of a DOORMAN opening the door for a group of five men in
suits. Four BODYGUARDS form a perimeter around the fifth
man, a mall, avuncular figure in his forties dressed in
Saville Row finery.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
Takes a step back into the shadows of the room, and raises
the rifle toward Window #2.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE - WINDOW #2
</b>
of an empty street. The bicycle messenger flashes past.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
concentrating, tracks the path of the Messenger, leading him
left to right across the blind spot of the hotel room wall
between Window #2 and Window #1.
<b> STREET
</b>
the bicycle Messenger bears down on the group of men, drawing
a Mac-10 submachine gun from his bag. The group see him--
just as Martin's sniper FIRE explodes the Messenger's chest.
Two of the Bodyguards collapse onto their boss. The other
two open fire on the Messenger as he wipes out horribly into
a parked car in front of them.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
withdraws from the window, and picks up the phone again and
begins to break down the rifle.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Sorry Tom. But look, I know it's the
playoffs. That's why I'm offering a
thousand dollars for one seat...
Martin listens patiently as he works.
<b> EXT. STREET - SAME - INTERCUT
</b>
<b> DOORMAN'S HANDS
</b>
unbuttoning his double-breasted long coat.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
just finishes packing.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...Well let me ask you, Tom. What do
I have to do to get courtside tickets
for the Knicks...?
<b> STREET
</b>
The two bodyguards kick at the Messenger's body. The other
two begin to move off of their boss, who rises cowering. The
Doorman stands behind it all, unbuttoning his coat.
<b> DOORMAN
</b>
a tall, dark, sharp-featured man in his forties, wearing a
handlebar moustache. He moves toward the group of men as he
flips open his coat back over two huge chrome .44 Magnum
Charthouse Bulldog revolvers and OPENS FIRE on them.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
is closing his bag when he hears the gun-thunder.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Never mind. I gotta go.
Martin drops the phone, grabs his scope, and spins to the
window.
<b> MARTIN'S P.O.V./SCOPE
</b>
of the Doorman kicking through the pile of dead bodyguards.
He gets to the man at the bottom-- their boss. The Doorman
FIRES both guns.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
reacts, surprised to see a second shooter. He pulls himself
from the window, puts away his scope, and accelerates his
exit.
<b> HIGH-RISE FOYER
</b>
Outside, we see the doorman drop both guns on the pile of
bodies. He walks back toward us through the glass doors and
makes his way through the building toward the service exit.
He sheds his uniform and stuffs it into a plastic bag.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
his two parcels in hand, exits out the side door of the hotel
and walks down the street.
<b> DOORMAN
</b>
now wearing rich man's sweats, hops off the loading dock,
walks to a Lincoln Town Car, and drives off.
<b> INT. MARTIN'S AND GROCERS CARS - DAY
</b>
Martin rolls down FDR Drive in a Lincoln Town Car once again
on the cellular.
<b> MARTIN
</b> ...Tell them that's not my problem.
I was paid for one job-- the cyclist--
not two. See you tomorrow, Marcella.
<b> MARCELLA
</b> Wait. I have Mr. Grocer for you.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Patch him through....
Martin notices another Town Car appears in the next lane. We
recognize the Doorman behind the wheel, phone in hand. He is
<b> GROCER.
</b>
<b> MARTIN
</b> What do you want?
<b> GROCER
</b> I'm setting up a concern that would
enable those of us in our rarefied
profession to consolidate our efforts.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Like a union?
<b> GROCER
</b> Like a club. Work less, make more.
<b> MARTIN
</b> Thank you, no.
<b> GROCER
</b> We could be working together, making
big money, killing important people...
I'm willing to let you in on the
ground floor.
<b> MARTIN
</b> And you could be... sort of like...
a father figure to me....
Grocer ignores this.
<b> GROCER
</b> It's a free-market evolution. You'll
wake up to it... c'mon Kid. We used
to run together when you were a
rookie. I don't want to run against
you. This thing's real. Everybody's
in.
<b> MARTIN
</b>
|
coat
|
How many times does the word 'coat' appear in the text?
| 2
|
about.
<b>CLOSE OR DOLL HOUSE DETAILS
</b>
It's 3 x 6 and two feet high. Miniature room sets are
inside. Cerrito's thick fingers close the door. He picks
it up. WIDEN. He crosses to a counter and MIDDLE-AGED
<b>CLERK.
</b>
<b> CERRITO
</b> Wrap this here up.
<b> CLERK
</b> Yessir. You're going to have a
happy little girl.
<b> CERRITO
</b> Two. I got two girls.
<b> CLERK
</b> That's nice.
<b> CERRITO
</b> Yeah. And gimme those three
masks there.
Clerk takes down Clark Gable, Three-eyed Monster, and
Beautiful Lady, full-head rubber masks.
<b> CERRITO
</b> (continuing)
Gimme Donald Duck, too
<b> CLERK
</b> (does and laughs)
A little early for Halloween?
<b> CERRITO
</b> Yeah. Halloween's coming early
this year. What do I owe you?
<b> CUT TO:
</b><b>
</b> Converted to PDF by www.screentalk.org 4.
<b>INT. CONDOMINIUM - A HAND - MORNING
</b>
Slides across the back of JUSTINE'S thigh.
<b>JUSTINE'S AND HANNA'S FACES
</b>
She is 29, auburn, languorous, her eyes are closed and she
makes love with her husband, VINCENT HANNA. Pressing her
face to his, their hair intertwined... It's morning. We
are in an expensive condominium.
<b>WIDE
</b>
The two bodies locked into the rhythms of their love-making,
twisted in white sheets. OFF SCREEN a shower runs.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>INT. SHOWER - HANNA
</b>
Is in it. The water streams off his body. The glass is
misted. He turns off only the hot and breathes fast in
the cold spray. OFF SCREEN a cigarette lighter CLICKS.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>BEDROOM - JUSTINE
</b>
smoking, still under the white sheets, watches Hanna dress.
<b> JUSTINE
</b> ... taking me out to breakfast?
<b> HANNA
</b> (looks at watch)
Can't. Bosko's waiting..
<b> LAUREN
</b> (passing door)
Hi Vincent. Mom, where's my
barrettes?
LAUREN, Justine's daughter, is 15 and tall and anxious.
<b> HANNA
</b> Hi, sweetie.
<b> JUSTINE
</b> I saw them on the kitchen
(to Hanna)
Want me to make coffee?
<b> HANNA
</b> (to Lauren in other
room)
No school today?
<b>
</b> Converted to PDF by www.screentalk.org 5.
<b> LAUREN (O.S.)
</b> Daddy's picking me up! We're
going to see the new site and
then shopping and lunch.
(beat)
They're not on the table.
<b> JUSTINE
</b> Then I don't know...
(to Hanna)
He's already half an hour late.
<b> HANNA
</b> He gonna show? Or the son of a
bitch gonna stand her up like
last time?
Hanna clips a 2" .38 in his waistband. Justine shrugs and
shakes her head.
<b> JUSTINE
</b> (starting out of
bed)
Want the coffee?
<b> HANNA
</b> I'm out of time...
He leaves.
<b> JUSTINE
</b> Falls back on the pillow,
disappointed. It's as if she'd
been stood-up. The bed sheet
falls half off of her. She's
exposed, vulnerable. She looks
out the window, occluded by light
muslin, away from us and exhales.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>INT. MACARTHUR PARK, MEN'S ROOM - ON WAINGRO - DAY
</b>
Bare-chested washing at a sink. WAINGRO'S 27. He sports
prison tattoos including an Aryan Brotherhood swastika
covering his abdomen. He's a graduate of the "gladiator
academies," Chino and Tracy.
He's dressed in Army and Navy Store gray workman's clothes.
He combs his long hair straight back off his round forehead.
Now he tucks his shirt in and puts on wrap around shades.
<b> CUT TO:
</b><b>
</b> Converted to PDF by www.screentalk.org 6.
<b>EXT. MACARTHUR PARK - WAINGRO
</b>
Waits. His shell jacket is in a tight roll under his arm.
Then a garbage truck - a Dempsey Dumpster (the kind with a
power forklift on the front) - pulls up.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>INT. TRUCK - WIDE - DAY
</b>
Michael Cerrito is the driver.
<b> CERRITO
</b> You Waingro?
<b> WAINGRO
</b> Yeah.
He climbs in. Cerrito pulls out. Waingro - delayed -
offers his hand. Cerrito has to wait until he finishes
his gear change to shake it. The timing's a little weird.
<b> WAINGRO
</b> (continuing loud)
You're Cerrito huh?
(pause)
What kinda guy is this Neil?
<b> CERRITO
</b> (loud)
Okay.
Just do like he says. Exactly... like ... he ... says.
They have to talk loudly over the clapped-out ENGINE'S
<b>NOISE.
</b>
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>EXT. ALLEY - ON GARBAGE TRUCK - DAY
</b>
It's ABRUPTLY QUIET. The truck's parked. The two men sit
idly. Waingro finishes take-out coffee and tosses the
empty.
<b>INT. TRUCK - CERRITO
</b>
Lights a cigarette. Belatedly, he offers one to Waingro.
Waingro lights up. The two men relax under the swirls of
blue smoke.
<b> WAINGRO
</b> You guys always work together?
<b> CERRITO
</b> All the time.
<b>
</b> Converted to PDF by www.screentalk.org 7.
<b> WAINGRO
</b> Real tight crew, huh?
<b> CERRITO
</b> That's right.
Awkward pause.
<b> WAINGRO
</b> This works good, maybe I could
go again?
Cerrito looks at Waingro. He wants to protect his
concentration.
<b> CERRITO
</b> Yeah. Stop talking, slick...
It ends the conversation. Waingro drums his fingernails
on the dash. He's anxious.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>CHEVY TOWTRUCK - ON TOWNER - DAY
</b>
TOWNER'S a sloppy, nondescript man in his 40's. He slouches
behind the wheel. A Bearcat 210 Scanner is under the dash
and a walkie-talkie on the seat. As in the garbage truck,
it's quiet and he waits. Then:
<b> NEIL (V.O.)
</b> (radio filter)
You ready if I need you?
<b> TOWNER
</b> (into radio; low)
Yeah.
<b> NEIL (V.O.)
</b> (radio filter)
Got their air?
<b> TOWNER
</b> Yeah.
At a low level we HEAR POLICE CALLS.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>INT. AMBULANCE - TWO SHOT - DAY
</b>
Chris and Neil are sitting in the front seat of the
ambulance Neil drove away from the hospital.
<b>
</b> Converted to PDF by www.screentalk.org 8.
<b> RADIO ANNOUNCER
</b> (radio filter)
...Daddio's jazz patio on KDCA.
Brought to you this fine day,
which is A-okay, by Twister.
Hey, mister, go out and buy a
bottle of that
Twister...Wiiiiiine...
<b> NEIL
</b> Turn it off.
Chris turns it OFF
|
turns
|
How many times does the word 'turns' appear in the text?
| 1
|
How are you today?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Okay, I guess.
<b> MARY
</b> (at Mierzwiak's office)
Here we are.
Mierzwiak steps out from behind his desk.
<b> MIERZWIAK
</b> Ms. Kruczynski, please come in.
Clementine enters the office. Mary smiles at Mierzwiak and
closes the door, leaving them alone.
<b>INT. OFFICE - CONTINUOUS
</b>
Mierzwiak directs Clementine to a chair next to a coffee
table and a conspicuously placed box of tissues. Mierzwiak
sits across from her. He smiles.
<b> MIERZWIAK
</b> How are you today?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Okay, I guess.
<b> MIERZWIAK
</b> (nodding sympathetically)
Well, why don't you tell me what's going
on? Do you mind if I turn this on?
He indicates a tape recorder.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> I don't care.
He turns it on, smiles at her, gestures for her to begin.
<b> CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
</b> Well, I've been having a bad time of it
with um, my boyfriend, I guess.
<b> MIERZWIAK
</b> You guess he's your boyfriend? Or you
guess you're having a bad time with hm?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> What? No. I don't like the term
boyfriend. It's so gay.
Mierzwiak nods. He's attentive, pleasant, and neutral
throughout.
<b> CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
</b> Maybe gay isn't the right word. But,
anyway, it's been rough with him...
whatever the fuck he is. Heheh. My
significant other... heh heh. And I
guess on a certain level, I want to break
it off, but I feel... y'know... it's like
this constant questioning and re
questioning. Do I end it? Should I give
it more time? I'm not happy, but what do
I expect? Relationships require work.
You know the drill. The thing that I
keep coming back to is, I'm not getting
any younger, I want to have a baby... at
some point... maybe... right? So then I
think I should settle -- which is not
necessarily the best word -- I mean, he's
a good guy. It's not really settling.
Then I think maybe I'm just a victim of
movies, y'know? That I have some
completely unrealistic notion of what a
relationship can be. But then I think,
no, this is what I really want, so I
should allow myself the freedom to go out
and fucking find it. You know? Agreed?
But then I think he is a good guy and...
It's complicated. Y'know?
<b> MIERZWIAK
</b> I think I know. I think we can help. Why
don't you start by telling me about your
relationship. Everything you can think
of. Everything about him. Everything
about you. And we'll take it from there.
She nods, thinks.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Um, well, he's a fucking tidy one --
<b>EXT. COMMUTER TRAIN STATION
</b>
<b>SUBTITLE: TWO WEEKS LATER
</b>
The platform is crowded with business commuters. Joel is
among them. He is in his 30's, gaunt, and holding a
briefcase. The platform across the tracks from him is empty.
Suddenly he turns and makes his way through the crowd. He
climbs the stairs, crosses the overpass to the empty
platform. Soon an almost empty train pulls up to that
platform. Joel gets on and watches the business commuters
through the dirty window as his train pulls out of the
station.
<b>EXT. MONTAUK TRAIN STATION - LATER
</b>
Joel talks on a phone. The wind howls around him. He tries
to shield the mouthpiece as he talks.
<b> JOEL
</b> Hi, Cindy. Joel. Listen, I'm not
feeling well this morning. No. Food
poisoning, I think. Sorry it took me so
long to call in, but I've been vomiting.
<b>EXT. BEACH - DAY
</b>
Joel wanders the windy, empty beach, with his briefcase. He
passes an old man with a metal detector. They nod at each
other.
Later: Joel looks out at the ocean.
Later: Joel sits on a rock and pulls out a notebook. He
opens it and writes with a gloved hand.
<b> JOEL
</b> January 13th, 2006. Today I skipped work
and took the train out to Montauk.
(thinks)
It's cold.
(thinks some more)
The sky is gray.
(thinks some more)
I don't know what else to say. Nothing
happens. Nothing changes. I saw Naomi
last night. We had sex. It was weird to
fall into our old familiar sex life so
easily. Like no time has passed. After
two years apart suddenly we're talking
about getting together again. I guess
that's good.
He has no other thoughts. He glances up, spots a female
figure in the distance, walking in his direction. She stands
out against the gray in a fluorescent orange hooded
sweatshirt. It's Clementine. He watches her for a bit, then
as she nears, he goes back to his writing, or at least
pretends to. Once she passed, he watches her walk away. She
stops and stares out at the ocean. Joel writes.
<b> JOEL (V.O.) (CONT'D)
</b> If I'm constitutionally incapable of
making eye-contact with a woman I don't
know. I guess I'd better get back to
Naomi.
Later: Joel walks up near the beach houses closed for the
season. He peeks cautiously in a dark window.
Later: Joel digs into the sand with a stick.
<b>INT. DINER - DAY
</b>
It's a local tourist place, but off-season empty. Joel sits
in a booth and eats a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of
tomato soup. An elderly couple drink coffee at the counter.
Clementine enters, looks around, takes off her hood. Joel
glances at her bright blue hair. She picks an empty booth
and sits. Joel studies her discreetly. The waitress
approaches her with a coffee pot.
<b> WAITRESS
</b> Coffee?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> God, yes. You've saved my life!
The waitress pours the coffee.
<b> WAITRESS
</b> You know what you want yet?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> (laughing)
Ain't that the question of the century.
The waitress is not amused.
<b> CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
</b> You got grilled cheese and tomato soup?
<b> WAITRESS
</b> Yeah. We're having a run on it.
The waitress heads to the grill. Clementine fishes in her
bag, brings the coffee cup under the table for a moment,
pours something in, then brings the cup back up.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> (calling)
And some cream, please.
Clementine looks around the place. Her eyes meet Joel's
before he is able to look away. She smiles vaguely. He
looks embarrassed, then down at his journal. Clementine
pulls a book from her purse and starts to read. Joel glances
up, tries to see the cover. It's blue. He can't read the
title.
<b>EXT. BEACH - DAY
</b>
Joel stares out at the ocean. Far down the beach Clementine
stares at it, too. Joel glances sideways at her then back at
the ocean.
<b>EXT. MONTAUK TRAIN STATION PLATFORM - LATE AFTERNOON
</b>
Joel sits on the bench waiting for a train. Clementine
enters the platform, sees Joel, the only other person there.
She waves, sort of goofily enthusiastic, playing as if
they're old friends. He waves back, embarrassed. She takes
a seat on a bench far down the platform. Joel stares at his
hands, pulls out his journal and tries to write in order to
conceal his awkwardness.
<b>INT. TRAIN - A BIT LATER
</b>
Joel sits at the far end of the empty car and watches the
slowly passing desolate terrain. After a moment the door
between cars opens and Clementine enters. Joel looks up.
Clementine is not looking at him; she busies herself deciding
where to sit. She settles on a seat at the opposite end of
the car. Joel looks out the window. He feels her watching
him. The train is picking up speed. Finally:
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> (calling over the rumble)
Hi!
Joel looks over.
<b> JOEL
</b> I'm sorry.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Why?
<b> JOEL
</b> Why what?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Why are you sorry? I just said hi.
<b> JOEL
</b> No, I didn't know if you were talking to
me, so...
She looks around the empty car.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Really?
<b> JOEL
</b> (embarrassed)
Well, I didn't want to assume.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Aw, c'mon, live dangerously. Take the
leap and assume someone is talking to you
in an otherwise empty car.
<b> JOEL
</b> Anyway. Sorry. Hi.
Clementine makes her way down the aisle towards Joel.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> It's okay if I sit closer? So I don't
have to scream. Not that I don't need to
scream sometimes, believe me.
(pause)
But I don't want to bug you if you're
trying to write or something.
<b> JOEL
</b> No, I mean, I don't know. I can't really
think of much to say probably.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Oh. So...
She hesitates in the middle of the car, looks back where she
came from.
<b> JOEL
</b> I mean, it's okay if you want to sit down
here. I didn't mean to --
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> No, I don't want to bug you if you're
trying to --
<b> JOEL
</b> It's okay, really.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Just, you know, to chat a little, maybe.
I have a long trip ahead of me.
(sits across aisle from Joel)
How far are you going? On the train, I
mean, of course.
<b> JOEL
</b> Rockville Center.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Get out! Me too! What are the odds?
<b> JOEL
</b> The weirder part is I think actually I
recognize you. I thought that earlier in
the diner. That's why I was looking at
you. You work at Borders, right?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Ucch, really? You're kidding. God.
Bizarre small world, huh? Yeah, that's
me: book slave there for, like, five
years now.
<b> JOEL
</b> Really? Because --
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Jesus, is it five years? I gotta quit
right now.
<b> JOEL
</b> -- because I go there all the time. I
don't think I ever saw you before.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Well, I'm there. I hide in the back as
much as is humanly possible. You have a
cell phone? I need to quit right this
minute. I'll call in dead.
<b> JOEL
</b> I don't have one.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> I'll go on the dole. Like my daddy
before me.
<b> JOEL
</b> I noticed your hair. I guess it made an
impression on me, that's why I was pretty
sure I recognized you.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Ah, the hair.
(pulls a strand in front of her
eyes, studies it)
Blue, right? It's called Blue Ruin. The
color. Snappy name, huh?
<b> JOEL
</b> I like it.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Blue ruin is cheap gin in case you were
wondering.
<b> JOEL
</b> Yeah. Tom Waits says it in --
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Exactly! Tom Waits. Which song?
<b> JOEL
</b> I can't remember.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Anyway, this company makes a whole line
of colors with equally snappy names. Red
Menace, Yellow Fever, Green Revolution.
That'd be a job, coming up with those
names. How do you get a job like that?
That's what I'll do. Fuck the dole.
<b> JOEL
</b> I don't really know how --
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Purple Haze, Pink Eraser.
<b> JOEL
</b> You think that could possibly be a full
time job? How many hair colors could
there be?
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> (pissy)
Someone's got that job.
(excited)
Agent Orange! I came up with that one.
Anyway, there are endless color
possibilities and I'd be great at it.
<b> JOEL
</b> I'm sure you would.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> My writing career! Your hair written by
Clementine Kruczynski.
(thought)
The Tom Waits album is Rain Dogs.
<b> JOEL
</b> You sure? That doesn't sound --
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> I think. Anyway, I've tried all their
colors. More than once. I'm getting too
old for this. But it keeps me from
having to develop an actual personality.
I apply my personality in a paste. You?
<b> JOEL
</b> Oh, I doubt that's the case.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Well, you don't know me, so... you don't
know, do you?
<b> JOEL
</b> Sorry. I was just trying to be nice.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Yeah, I got it.
There's a silence.
<b> CLEMENTINE (CONT'D)
</b> My name's Clementine, by the way.
<b> JOEL
</b> I'm Joel.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> No jokes about my name? Oh, you wouldn't
do that; you're trying to be nice.
<b> JOEL
</b> I don't know any jokes about your name.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Huckleberry Hound?
<b> JOEL
</b> I don't know what that means.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> Huckleberry Hound! What, are you nuts?
<b> JOEL
</b> I'm nut nuts.
<b> CLEMENTINE
</b> (singing)
Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my
darlin' Clementine? No?
<b> JOEL
</b> Sorry. It's a pretty name, though. It
means "merciful", right?
<b>
|
color
|
How many times does the word 'color' appear in the text?
| 1
|
itor.
In short, dear reader, they were very like you and me. I could fill a
hundred pages with the tale of our imbecilities and still leave much
untold; but what I have set down here haphazard is enough to condemn the
system that produced us. The corner stone of that system was the family
and the institution of marriage as we have it to-day in England.
HEARTH AND HOME
There is no shirking it: if marriage cannot be made to produce something
better than we are, marriage will have to go, or else the nation
will have to go. It is no use talking of honor, virtue, purity, and
wholesome, sweet, clean, English home lives when what is meant is simply
the habits I have described. The flat fact is that English home life
to-day is neither honorable, virtuous, wholesome, sweet, clean, nor
in any creditable way distinctively English. It is in many respects
conspicuously the reverse; and the result of withdrawing children from
it completely at an early age, and sending them to a public school and
then to a university, does, in spite of the fact that these institutions
are class warped and in some respects quite abominably corrupt, produce
sociabler men. Women, too, are improved by the escape from home provided
by women's colleges; but as very few of them are fortunate enough to
enjoy this advantage, most women are so thoroughly home-bred as to
be unfit for human society. So little is expected of them that in
Sheridan's School for Scandal we hardly notice that the heroine is a
female cad, as detestable and dishonorable in her repentance as she is
vulgar and silly in her naughtiness. It was left to an abnormal critic
like George Gissing to point out the glaring fact that in the remarkable
set of life studies of XIXth century women to be found in the novels of
Dickens, the most convincingly real ones are either vilely unamiable
or comically contemptible; whilst his attempts to manufacture admirable
heroines by idealizations of home-bred womanhood are not only absurd but
not even pleasantly absurd: one has no patience with them.
As all this is corrigible by reducing home life and domestic sentiment
to something like reasonable proportions in the life of the individual,
the danger of it does not lie in human nature. Home life as we
understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a
cockatoo. Its grave danger to the nation lies in its narrow views, its
unnaturally sustained and spitefully jealous concupiscences, its
petty tyrannies, its false social pretences, its endless grudges and
squabbles, its sacrifice of the boy's future by setting him to earn
money to help the family when he should be in training for his adult
life (remember the boy Dickens and the blacking factory), and of the
girl's chances by making her a slave to sick or selfish parents, its
unnatural packing into little brick boxes of little parcels of humanity
of ill-assorted ages, with the old scolding or beating the young for
behaving like young people, and the young hating and thwarting the old
for behaving like old people, and all the other ills, mentionable and
unmentionable, that arise from excessive segregation. It sets these
evils up as benefits and blessings representing the highest attainable
degree of honor and virtue, whilst any criticism of or revolt against
them is savagely persecuted as the extremity of vice. The revolt, driven
under ground and exacerbated, produces debauchery veiled by hypocrisy,
an overwhelming demand for licentious theatrical entertainments which no
censorship can stem, and, worst of all, a confusion of virtue with
the mere morality that steals its name until the real thing is loathed
because the imposture is loathsome. Literary traditions spring up in
which the libertine and profligate--Tom Jones and Charles Surface
are the heroes, and decorous, law-abiding persons--Blifil and Joseph
Surface--are the villains and butts. People like to believe that Nell
Gwynne has every amiable quality and the Bishop's wife every odious one.
Poor Mr. Pecksniff, who is generally no worse than a humbug with a turn
for pompous talking, is represented as a criminal instead of as a very
typical English paterfamilias keeping a roof over the head of himself
and his daughters by inducing people to pay him more for his services
than they are worth. In the extreme instances of reaction against
convention, female murderers get sheaves of offers of marriage; and when
Nature throws up that rare phenomenon, an unscrupulous libertine, his
success among "well brought-up" girls is so easy, and the devotion
he inspires so extravagant, that it is impossible not to see that
the revolt against conventional respectability has transfigured
a commonplace rascal into a sort of Anarchist Saviour. As to the
respectable voluptuary, who joins Omar Khayyam clubs and vibrates to
Swinburne's invocation of Dolores to "come down and redeem us from
virtue," he is to be found in every suburb.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
We must be reasonable in our domestic ideals. I do not think that life
at a public school is altogether good for a boy any more than barrack
life is altogether good for a soldier. But neither is home life
altogether good. Such good as it does, I should say, is due to its
freedom from the very atmosphere it professes to supply. That atmosphere
is usually described as an atmosphere of love; and this definition
should be sufficient to put any sane person on guard against it. The
people who talk and write as if the highest attainable state is that of
a family stewing in love continuously from the cradle to the grave, can
hardly have given five minutes serious consideration to so outrageous a
proposition. They cannot have even made up their minds as to what they
mean by love; for when they expatiate on their thesis they are sometimes
talking about kindness, and sometimes about mere appetite. In either
sense they are equally far from the realities of life. No healthy man
or animal is occupied with love in any sense for more than a very small
fraction indeed of the time he devotes to business and to recreations
wholly unconnected with love. A wife entirely preoccupied with her
affection for her husband, a mother entirely preoccupied with her
affection for her children, may be all very well in a book (for people
who like that kind of book); but in actual life she is a nuisance.
Husbands may escape from her when their business compels them to be
away from home all day; but young children may be, and quite often are,
killed by her cuddling and coddling and doctoring and preaching: above
all, by her continuous attempts to excite precocious sentimentality,
a practice as objectionable, and possibly as mischievous, as the worst
tricks of the worst nursemaids.
LARGE AND SMALL FAMILIES
In most healthy families there is a revolt against this tendency. The
exchanging of presents on birthdays and the like is barred by general
consent, and the relations of the parties are placed by express treaty
on an unsentimental footing.
Unfortunately this mitigation of family sentimentality is much more
characteristic of large families than small ones. It used to be said
that members of large families get on in the world; and it is certainly
true that for purposes of social training a household of twenty
surpasses a household of five as an Oxford College surpasses an
eight-roomed house in a cheap street. Ten children, with the necessary
adults, make a community in which an excess of sentimentality is
impossible. Two children make a doll's house, in which both parents and
children become morbid if they keep to themselves. What is more, when
large families were the fashion, they were organized as tyrannies much
more than as "atmospheres of love." Francis Place tells us that he kept
out of his father's way because his father never passed a child within
his reach without striking it; and though the case was an extreme
one, it was an extreme that illustrated a tendency. Sir Walter Scott's
father, when his son incautiously expressed some relish for his
porridge, dashed a handful of salt into it with an instinctive sense
that it was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself.
Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not
by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or
was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque
safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways,
had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not
debauched by it, as he would have been by transports of sentimentality.
But nowadays we cannot depend on these safeguards, such as they were.
We no longer have large families: all the families are too small to give
the children the necessary social training. The Roman father is out of
fashion; and the whip and the cane are becoming discredited, not so much
by the old arguments against corporal punishment (sound as these were)
as by the gradual wearing away of the veil from the fact that flogging
is a form of debauchery. The advocate of flogging as a punishment is now
exposed to very disagreeable suspicions; and ever since Rousseau rose
to the effort of making a certain very ridiculous confession on the
subject, there has been a growing perception that child whipping, even
for the children themselves, is not always the innocent and high-minded
practice it professes to be. At all events there is no getting away
from the facts that families are smaller than they used to be, and
that passions which formerly took effect in tyranny have been largely
diverted into sentimentality. And though a little sentimentality may be
a very good thing, chronic sentimentality is a horror, more dangerous,
because more possible, than the erotomania which we all condemn when we
are not thoughtlessly glorifying it as the ideal married state.
THE GOSPEL OF LAODICEA
Let us try to get at the root error of these false domestic doctrines.
Why was it that the late Samuel Butler, with a conviction that increased
with his experience of life, preached the gospel of Laodicea, urging
people to be temperate in what they called goodness as in everything
else? Why is it that I, when I hear some well-meaning person exhort
young people to make it a rule to do at least one kind action every
day, feel very much as I should if I heard them persuade children to
get drunk at least once every day? Apart from the initial absurdity of
accepting as permanent a state of things in which there would be in this
country misery enough to supply occasion for several thousand million
kind actions per annum, the effect on the character of the doers of the
actions would be so appalling, that one month of any serious attempt
to carry out such counsels would probably bring about more stringent
legislation against actions going beyond the strict letter of the law
in the way of kindness than we have now against excess in the opposite
direction.
There is no more dangerous mistake than the mistake of supposing that we
cannot have too much of a good thing. The truth is, an immoderately good
man is very much more dangerous than an immoderately bad man: that is
why Savonarola was burnt and John of Leyden torn to pieces with red-hot
pincers whilst multitudes of unredeemed rascals were being let off with
clipped ears, burnt palms, a flogging, or a few years in the galleys.
That is why Christianity never got any grip of the world until it
virtually reduced its claims on the ordinary citizen's attention to a
couple of hours every seventh day, and let him alone on week-days. If
the fanatics who are preoccupied day in and day out with their salvation
were healthy, virtuous, and wise, the Laodiceanism of the ordinary man
might be regarded as a deplorable shortcoming; but, as a matter of fact,
no more frightful misfortune could threaten us than a general spread of
fanaticism. What people call goodness has to be kept in check just as
carefully as what they call badness; for the human constitution will not
stand very much of either without serious psychological mischief, ending
in insanity or crime. The fact that the insanity may be privileged,
as Savonarola's was up to the point of wrecking the social life of
Florence, does not alter the case. We always hesitate to treat a
dangerously good man as a lunatic because he may turn out to be a
prophet in the true sense: that is, a man of exceptional sanity who is
in the right when we are in the wrong. However necessary it may have
been to get rid of Savonarola, it was foolish to poison Socrates and
burn St. Joan of Arc. But it is none the less necessary to take a firm
stand against the monstrous proposition that because certain attitudes
and sentiments may be heroic and admirable at some momentous crisis,
they should or can be maintained at the same pitch continuously through
life. A life spent in prayer and alms giving is really as insane as a
life spent in cursing and picking pockets: the effect of everybody doing
it would be equally disastrous. The superstitious tolerance so long
accorded to monks and nuns is inevitably giving way to a very general
and very natural practice of confiscating their retreats and expelling
them from their country, with the result that they come to England and
Ireland, where they are partly unnoticed and partly encouraged because
they conduct technical schools and teach our girls softer speech and
gentler manners than our comparatively ruffianly elementary teachers.
But they are still full of the notion that because it is possible for
men to attain the summit of Mont Blanc and stay there for an hour, it is
possible for them to live there. Children are punished and scolded for
not living there; and adults take serious offence if it is not assumed
that they live there.
As a matter of fact, ethical strain is just as bad for us as physical
strain. It is desirable that the normal pitch of conduct at which men
are not conscious of being particularly virtuous, although they feel
mean when they fall below it, should be raised as high as possible; but
it is not desirable that they should attempt to live above this pitch
any more than that they should habitually walk at the rate of five
miles an hour or carry a hundredweight continually on their backs. Their
normal condition should be in nowise difficult or remarkable; and it
is a perfectly sound instinct that leads us to mistrust the good man
as much as the bad man, and to object to the clergyman who is pious
extra-professionally as much as to the professional pugilist who is
quarrelsome and violent in private life. We do not want good men and bad
men any more than we want giants and dwarfs. What we do want is a high
quality for our normal: that is, people who can be much better than what
we now call respectable without self-sacrifice. Conscious goodness,
like conscious muscular effort, may be of use in emergencies; but for
everyday national use it is negligible; and its effect on the character
of the individual may easily be disastrous.
FOR BETTER FOR WORSE
It would be hard to find any document in practical daily use in which
these obvious truths seem so stupidly overlooked as they are in the
marriage service. As we have seen, the stupidity is only apparent:
the service was really only an honest attempt to make the best of a
commercial contract of property and slavery by subjecting it to some
religious restraint and elevating it by some touch of poetry. But the
actual result is that when two people are under the influence of
the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of
passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that
excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do
them part. And though of course nobody expects them to do anything
so impossible and so unwholesome, yet the law that regulates their
relations, and the public opinion that regulates that law, is actually
founded on the assumption that the marriage vow is not only feasible but
beautiful and holy, and that if they are false to it, they deserve no
sympathy and no relief. If all married people really lived together, no
doubt the mere force of facts would make an end to this inhuman nonsense
in a month, if not sooner; but it is very seldom brought to that test.
The typical British husband sees much less of his wife than he does of
his business partner, his fellow clerk, or whoever works beside him
day by day. Man and wife do not as a rule, live together: they only
breakfast together, dine together, and sleep in the same room. In most
cases the woman knows nothing of the man's working life and he
knows nothing of her working life (he calls it her home life). It is
remarkable that the very people who romance most absurdly about the
closeness and sacredness of the marriage tie are also those who are most
convinced that the man's sphere and the woman's sphere are so entirely
separate that only in their leisure moments can they ever be together. A
man as intimate with his own wife as a magistrate is with his clerk,
or a Prime Minister with the leader of the Opposition, is a man in ten
thousand. The majority of married couples never get to know one another
at all: they only get accustomed to having the same house, the same
children, and the same income, which is quite a different matter. The
comparatively few men who work at home--writers, artists, and to some
extent clergymen--have to effect some sort of segregation within
the house or else run a heavy risk of overstraining their domestic
relations. When the pair is so poor that it can afford only a single
room, the strain is intolerable: violent quarrelling is the result.
Very few couples can live in a single-roomed tenement without exchanging
blows quite frequently. In the leisured classes there is often no real
family life at all. The boys are at a public school; the girls are in
the schoolroom in charge of a governess; the husband is at his club or
in a set which is not his wife's; and the institution of marriage enjoys
the credit of a domestic peace which is hardly more intimate than the
relations of prisoners in the same gaol or guests at the same garden
party. Taking these two cases of the single room and the unearned income
as the extremes, we might perhaps locate at a guess whereabout on the
scale between them any particular family stands. But it is clear enough
that the one-roomed end, though its conditions enable the marriage vow
to be carried out with the utmost attainable exactitude, is far less
endurable in practice, and far more mischievous in its effect on the
parties concerned, and through them on the community, than the other
end. Thus we see that the revolt against marriage is by no means only a
revolt against its sordidness as a survival of sex slavery. It may even
plausibly be maintained that this is precisely the part of it that
works most smoothly in practice. The revolt is also against its
sentimentality, its romance, its Amorism, even against its enervating
happiness.
WANTED: AN IMMORAL STATESMAN
We now see that the statesman who undertakes to deal with marriage will
have to face an amazingly complicated public opinion. In fact, he will
have to leave opinion
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single
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How many times does the word 'single' appear in the text?
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had
seen him in his own room weeping like a child for very joy, they would
have been more astonished still.
The meal was served, and the ten brothers were surprised when the
Egyptian ruler set them at a table all in the order of their ages; but
even yet they did not know who he was. Joseph sat at a table by
himself, with a beautiful silver wine-cup before him, and he sent
plates of choice food to each of his brothers; but he sent to Benjamin
five times as much as to any of the rest.
Next morning they were sent home with their asses laden with
well-filled corn-sacks. They were very glad to get away so quickly,
and they wondered as they went why the great Egyptian had been so kind
to them. But even yet the thought that he might be none other than
Joseph had not entered their minds.
III.
Now Joseph had told his overseer that as he filled the brothers'
corn-sacks he was to put their money into them again, and also to take
his own beautiful silver cup and put it into the mouth of Benjamin's
sack. This was done for a purpose, as we shall see.
Next day, when the brothers had set out on their journey, the overseer
was sent for by his young master, who ordered him to put horses into
his chariot, to ride after the ten Hebrews, and to ask them why they
had stolen his master's silver cup.
Cracking his whip as he went, the Egyptian drove along the road, and
soon overtook the returning travellers. Checking his horses, he
stepped out of his red chariot and sternly asked why they had returned
evil for good by stealing his master's precious silver cup; and he
smiled when he saw the fear in the faces of the dusky Hebrews, and
laughed when they all said that they knew nothing of the cup.
He did not believe them, he said, and would search for the cup himself;
and he laughed again when they said he could search at once, and if he
found it with any one of them, he could put that man to death and make
all the rest of them the slaves of his master.
Of course the silver cup was found in Benjamin's sack; and pointing his
finger at him, the Egyptian said that he would take him back to be his
master's slave, but as for the rest of the men, they could go on their
journey to their homes.
The brothers wrung their hands at these words, and their hearts sank
within them. Judah had promised his father that he would bring
Benjamin back again safe and sound, and now the lad was to become the
slave of this terrible young ruler! After all, the man's kindness of
the day before was only intended to make them feel the pain all the
more when he seized their young brother to be his slave. They could
not return to their old father without him. They would go back to the
Egyptian city, they said, and all go to prison together rather than
part with Benjamin.
In those days, when Hebrews were overcome with grief they tore their
clothes, that all might see how sorrowful they were; and Judah was the
first to seize his tunic and tear it down the front from neck to hem,
and the others did the same. In a mournful procession they followed
the Egyptian's chariot back to the city; and the people gazed at them
as they passed, and laughed.
When they reached Joseph's house and entered the courtyard, they sent
in a very humble message, begging that he would see them. And when
they came into his presence they knelt before him with bowed heads,
till their brows touched the coloured pavement.
"What is this that you have done?" he asked. "Do you not know that
such a man as I can find out secret things?"
Joseph wished to frighten them, but in his heart he was glad that his
brothers had not gone away, leaving Benjamin behind in slavery. They
were kinder now than on that day so long ago when they sold him to the
dark merchantmen in the far-off Vale of Dothan.
In a pleading voice Judah told the terrible Egyptian that all of them
were now his slaves. But Joseph replied that he only wanted the man
who stole his silver cup; the rest could return to their father.
Then Judah had more to say. Holding up his hands for mercy, he told
the story of how they had begged their old father to let Benjamin come;
adding that if they returned without him, the old man would die of
grief. And to Joseph's surprise, he begged that he would let him stay
behind and be his slave for ever in place of his young brother, and let
Benjamin go home to his father.
At times while Judah was speaking Joseph looked at Benjamin, and
sometimes he turned away his head lest they should see the tears in his
eyes. And when his older brother offered to be his slave for ever, the
young Egyptian suddenly ordered every one to leave the room but the
Hebrews; and he remained silent, with his head turned away, while his
Egyptian friends and servants went slowly out.
As soon as they were all gone he sprang to his feet, and held out his
hands to his brothers, calling to them in Hebrew,--
"I am Joseph! Is my father indeed alive?"
The men gazed at him in amazement. What would this terrible Egyptian
do next? Who was this who knew about their brother whom they had sold
into slavery? They were dumb with wonder.
"Come nearer to me, I beg of you," he pleaded. It was the voice of
Joseph that rang in their ears. They came nearer, and gazed up at the
great man. These cheeks were too ruddy for an Egyptian, and these
brown eyes--were they not the eyes of Joseph!
"I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt!" he cried. They
could no longer doubt that he spoke the truth to them; and as they came
forward he clasped them in his arms one by one, weeping for very joy.
Then seeing in their eyes the deep sorrow for their past unkindness, he
added,--
"Be not grieved nor angry that you sold me into Egypt, for it was God
who sent me hither to save many lives in the years of famine. I am
lord of the king's palace and ruler of all Egypt."
Then he took his wondering brothers home with him to stay in his fine
house, where his Egyptian wife and their little children lived; and
after a time he sent them away, laden with presents, and with wagons to
bring down their children and their old father Jacob into Egypt. For
they were all to come down, he said, and live in the golden and
fruitful land of Goshen, and he would watch over them there.
THE CHILD MOSES.
I.
Jacob and his sons stayed in Egypt until the old man died. Then Joseph
carried his body back to Hebron in a great funeral procession, and
having buried him beside his wife, who had been dead for a long time,
came back again to Egypt.
The Hebrews expected to return to Canaan soon, but that was not to be.
In course of time Joseph and his brothers died, but still the Hebrews,
or Israelites, as they were also called, stayed on in Egypt, and in
time grew into a great nation. Then a new king came to the throne, who
was afraid of their numbers, and made slaves of them all, forcing them
to make bricks and build for him great walls, forts, and buildings of
all kinds.
They were taken in gangs, guarded by soldiers, to the place where the
brown river clay was thick; there they dug it out with spades, trod it
with their feet, and worked it with their hands until it was wet and
soft. Then they shaped it with little square boxes into brown bricks
for building. Other workers placed the bricks in baskets and carried
them away to the boats in the river, for the boatmen to take up to the
great cities where the walls were being built.
Some of the Israelites toiled at building these high brick walls,
storehouses, forts, and even cities for the great king; and it is not
unlikely that some of the Pyramids, which we now see standing on the
banks of the Nile, were built by these poor slaves in the days now long
gone by.
Others, again, were driven out to the fields to drag wooden ploughs up
and down like cattle, to dig with small wooden spades, and to clear the
land of stones; and when the harvest came, they cut down the crops and
threshed out the grain, and carried it off to their master's
storehouses.
Others had to stand on the bank of the river all day long, filling
buckets with water and emptying them into little drains that ran away
into the fields. And over all these slaves were slave-drivers, who
stood beside them with long whips to lash them if they did not work
hard enough. So the poor Israelites were very unhappy, and often
prayed to God that they might be set free again; for they were the
lowest labourers in the land, toiling for those who gave them no money
for their work.
But for all this they increased more and more in numbers, until the
king was afraid that they might some day side with his enemies and
fight against him, and then he would be in great danger; so he treated
them more cruelly still, and at last ordered all the boy children that
were born to the Israelites to be thrown into the river.
[Illustration: The babe among the bulrushes.]
There was great weeping and sorrow amongst the Hebrew mothers when they
heard of the king's cruel order. And they did many strange and brave
things to save their little ones, and did indeed save many of them; but
many others perished, so that there was grief instead of joy in the
poor Hebrew huts whenever a baby boy was born.
Now, Jochebed, one of those Hebrew mothers, lived in the city of the
great king, so close to the side of the blue Nile that the white walls
of the royal palace were reflected in the water. She had a little baby
boy, so beautiful that she told her husband he must not be thrown into
the river where the crocodiles were, for she herself would save him
alive.
She had two other children--Miriam, a girl of fifteen, and Aaron, a
little boy of three--and she told them that they were not to tell any
one they had a little baby brother in the house lest the king's
soldiers should come and take him away and throw him into the river.
And she kept her little baby carefully hidden in the house, running to
him every time he cried lest he should be heard outside, and trembling
each time a soldier passed her door.
For three months she was able to keep her child hidden from the
slave-drivers. Often did she pray to God that he might never be found;
and she loved her baby all the more because of the danger he was in.
But at last a day came when his mother could keep him hidden no longer.
With a sorrowful heart she saw that she must get him away, although at
the moment she could not tell how to do so. Then she weighed him in
her arms, measured him with her hands, and made up a plan to save him
such as only a mother's heart could devise.
She had seen a fair Egyptian princess coming down from the palace every
morning to bathe in the river at a place not far from her hut; and she
thought that if this princess could only see her lovely baby boy she
would save him.
So this Hebrew mother went down to the river and gathered an armful of
strong reeds. With these she wove a stout basket long enough and wide
enough to hold her baby boy. Then she painted it inside and out with
black bitumen, until not a drop of water could get in. She lined it
next with soft cloth of red and green, as mothers line their cradles,
and then it was ready to be placed on the water and save the life of
her little boy.
II.
The morning sun shone brightly on the broad surface of the Nile,
turning the Pyramids on the banks into dull gold, and lighting up the
palaces of the city; and while the white-robed priests went up to the
temple roof to beat the brass gong and chant their hymn to the morning,
the poor Hebrews flocked in thousands out of their little yellow huts,
to do their heavy tasks amongst the wet, brown clay by the riverside.
Taking Miriam with her, Jochebed, the Hebrew mother, stole out of her
hut, carrying a little black basket shaped like a boat, with something
asleep in it, hidden under her wide blue cloak. Crossing the fields,
she went down to the riverside and along the path until she came to the
beach of golden sand where the red-feathered hoopoes strutted in the
sun--the place where the princess came to bathe, not far from the
lilies of white and yellow.
As they went she told Miriam what she was to do when the princess came,
and then stepping down to the water's edge at a place where the lilies
grew thick, she opened the basket, kissed something in it, and covered
it over again. Stepping into the water, she gently put down the little
basket to float among the water-flags, where the princess could not
help but see it as she came along the path on the bank above.
With tears running down her cheeks, this Hebrew mother turned away,
praying, as she went, that all would be well with her little child;
while Miriam, going a short way off, sat down on the sand to watch
until the lovely princess came.
Slaves in red tunics, with swords at their sides, bowed low down to the
earth as they opened the palace gates to let out a bright throng of
girls, laughing and singing as they went on their way down to the
river; and the wind blew aside their thin robes of white and pink and
soft blue, showing bare feet thrust into little slippers of red and
yellow leather. Foremost of the band walked the young princess,
holding a white bud of the lotus lily and smelling it as she went,
while slave girls kept the hot rays of the sun from her head with fans
of peacock feathers. She, too, had red slippers on her feet, and her
neck and arms shone like pale copper; but she wore no chains or rings,
for she was going to bathe, and her brown eyes looked with pleasure
upon the cool waters of the broad river.
She did not notice the Hebrew girl sitting on the sand as she walked
along the river's bank; but in a few moments she saw a strange little
black object floating among the green flags, and at once sent some of
her maidens to bring the strange thing to her.
Running down to the water, the girls lifted out the little dripping
basket, wondering what was in it that made it feel so heavy; but soon a
little cry from within told them, and they went quickly with their
burden to the princess, to ask what they should do with it.
The dark eyes of the Hebrew girl were watching them as she sat playing
at odd and even with round stones from the river--a favourite game of
the children of Egypt. She saw them bring the basket to the princess.
She saw her smile, and noticed her pleased cry when they opened the
lid; and she heard her speaking kindly to the little child, which was
crying loudly. The girls were crowding round the open basket, looking
in at the child; and when they placed the basket upon the ground and
looked about them in doubt, Miriam knew that her time had come, and
went timidly forward.
"This is one of the Hebrew children," the gentle princess said, with
pity in her voice, as she looked at the baby's red cheeks, so different
from the brown cheeks of the Egyptian babies. The little boy still
wept loudly, and the princess's heart was touched, for he would not
stop crying. What was to be done?
Running with bare feet upon the hot sand, Miriam, clad in the rough red
and blue of a Hebrew slave girl, drew near to the princess, and
kneeling down at a little distance, said,--
"Shall I run and call a nurse from among the Hebrew women, that she may
nurse the child for thee?"
The princess knew that such baby boys were to be thrown into the river;
but perhaps the meaning of it all dawned upon her as she talked with
her maidens, for she turned with a smile to the kneeling girl, and said
simply, "Go."
With light feet and a beating heart Miriam sped away to the spot where
her mother was hiding, calling to her in Hebrew as she went to come
quickly. The princess and her maidens looked with amusement at the
Hebrew woman as she came swiftly forward and knelt before them; and the
whole of the mother's little plot was clearly seen in her blushing
cheeks and tear-filled eyes. This clever little slave girl had found a
Hebrew nurse very, very quickly!
"Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give you your
wages," the princess said to the kneeling woman; and she smiled again
when the little child ceased weeping and held up his little chubby arms
as soon as this Hebrew woman's face bent over him. She was indeed the
mother, but the princess would tell no one, for thenceforth the boy was
to be as her own child.
When the little child grew up this good princess took him into her
lovely palace to be her son; and she called him Moses, because that
name meant that he was taken out of the water. And there is a pretty
story told about this same princess by an old Jewish writer, though it
is not to be found in our Bible.
He says that the princess was so proud of the boy that one day she
brought the little fellow to her father the king, that he might see how
beautiful he was. The king took off his golden crown and put it on the
child's curly head; but the little boy took it off again, and putting
it upon the ground, tried to stand upon it, which amused the king and
his courtiers very much. The old Jewish writer says that this showed
how the little boy would one day force this king to set free the
Hebrews, which indeed he did, as the Bible tells us. For Moses became,
when he grew up, the great leader of the Israelites, who led them out
of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan, where in time, after much
fighting, they founded a kingdom of their own.
RUTH THE GLEANER.
In the days before there was a king in Israel a woman called Naomi,
whose name means "the pleasant," lived in the little village of
Bethlehem; and when at one time food was scarce, she left the place
with her husband and two sons, and went over into the land of Moab,
where there was plenty of food to eat.
For ten years she lived in that land, and there her sons married
Moabite girls. Then heavy trouble came upon Naomi, for she lost not
only her
|
kneeling
|
How many times does the word 'kneeling' appear in the text?
| 2
|
as she
greeted him.
"Mr. Burckhardt." The voice was like distant tomtoms. "It's wonderful
of you to let me see you, after this morning."
He cleared his throat. "Not at all. Won't you sit down, Miss--"
"April Horn," she murmured, sitting down--beside him, not where he had
pointed on the other side of the table. "Call me April, won't you?"
She was wearing some kind of perfume, Burckhardt noted with what
little of his mind was functioning at all. It didn't seem fair that
she should be using perfume as well as everything else. He came to
with a start and realized that the waiter was leaving with an order
for _filets mignon_ for two.
"Hey!" he objected.
"Please, Mr. Burckhardt." Her shoulder was against his, her face was
turned to him, her breath was warm, her expression was tender and
solicitous. "This is all on the Feckle Corporation. Please let
them--it's the _least_ they can do."
He felt her hand burrowing into his pocket.
"I put the price of the meal into your pocket," she whispered
conspiratorially. "Please do that for me, won't you? I mean I'd
appreciate it if you'd pay the waiter--I'm old-fashioned about things
like that."
She smiled meltingly, then became mock-businesslike. "But you must
take the money," she insisted. "Why, you're letting Feckle off lightly
if you do! You could sue them for every nickel they've got, disturbing
your sleep like that."
* * * * *
With a dizzy feeling, as though he had just seen someone make a rabbit
disappear into a top hat, he said, "Why, it really wasn't so bad, uh,
April. A little noisy, maybe, but--"
"Oh, Mr. Burckhardt!" The blue eyes were wide and admiring. "I knew
you'd understand. It's just that--well, it's such a _wonderful_
freezer that some of the outside men get carried away, so to speak. As
soon as the main office found out about what happened, they sent
representatives around to every house on the block to apologize. Your
wife told us where we could phone you--and I'm so very pleased that
you were willing to let me have lunch with you, so that I could
apologize, too. Because truly, Mr. Burckhardt, it is a _fine_ freezer.
"I shouldn't tell you this, but--" the blue eyes were shyly
lowered--"I'd do almost anything for Feckle Freezers. It's more than a
job to me." She looked up. She was enchanting. "I bet you think I'm
silly, don't you?"
Burckhardt coughed. "Well, I--"
"Oh, you don't want to be unkind!" She shook her head. "No, don't
pretend. You think it's silly. But really, Mr. Burckhardt, you
wouldn't think so if you knew more about the Feckle. Let me show you
this little booklet--"
Burckhardt got back from lunch a full hour late. It wasn't only the
girl who delayed him. There had been a curious interview with a little
man named Swanson, whom he barely knew, who had stopped him with
desperate urgency on the street--and then left him cold.
But it didn't matter much. Mr. Barth, for the first time since
Burckhardt had worked there, was out for the day--leaving Burckhardt
stuck with the quarterly tax returns.
What did matter, though, was that somehow he had signed a purchase
order for a twelve-cubic-foot Feckle Freezer, upright model,
self-defrosting, list price $625, with a ten per cent "courtesy"
discount--"Because of that _horrid_ affair this morning, Mr.
Burckhardt," she had said.
And he wasn't sure how he could explain it to his wife.
* * * * *
He needn't have worried. As he walked in the front door, his wife said
almost immediately, "I wonder if we can't afford a new freezer, dear.
There was a man here to apologize about that noise and--well, we got
to talking and--"
She had signed a purchase order, too.
It had been the damnedest day, Burckhardt thought later, on his way up
to bed. But the day wasn't done with him yet. At the head of the
stairs, the weakened spring in the electric light switch refused to
click at all. He snapped it back and forth angrily and, of course,
succeeded in jarring the tumbler out of its pins. The wires shorted
and every light in the house went out.
"Damn!" said Guy Burckhardt.
"Fuse?" His wife shrugged sleepily. "Let it go till the morning,
dear."
Burckhardt shook his head. "You go back to bed. I'll be right along."
It wasn't so much that he cared about fixing the fuse, but he was too
restless for sleep. He disconnected the bad switch with a screwdriver,
stumbled down into the black kitchen, found the flashlight and climbed
gingerly down the cellar stairs. He located a spare fuse, pushed an
empty trunk over to the fuse box to stand on and twisted out the old
fuse.
When the new one was in, he heard the starting click and steady drone
of the refrigerator in the kitchen overhead.
He headed back to the steps, and stopped.
Where the old trunk had been, the cellar floor gleamed oddly bright.
He inspected it in the flashlight beam. It was metal!
"Son of a gun," said Guy Burckhardt. He shook his head unbelievingly.
He peered closer, rubbed the edges of the metallic patch with his
thumb and acquired an annoying cut--the edges were _sharp_.
The stained cement floor of the cellar was a thin shell. He found a
hammer and cracked it off in a dozen spots--everywhere was metal.
The whole cellar was a copper box. Even the cement-brick walls were
false fronts over a metal sheath!
* * * * *
Baffled, he attacked one of the foundation beams. That, at least, was
real wood. The glass in the cellar windows was real glass.
He sucked his bleeding thumb and tried the base of the cellar stairs.
Real wood. He chipped at the bricks under the oil burner. Real bricks.
The retaining walls, the floor--they were faked.
It was as though someone had shored up the house with a frame of metal
and then laboriously concealed the evidence.
The biggest surprise was the upside-down boat hull that blocked the
rear half of the cellar, relic of a brief home workshop period that
Burckhardt had gone through a couple of years before. From above, it
looked perfectly normal. Inside, though, where there should have been
thwarts and seats and lockers, there was a mere tangle of braces,
rough and unfinished.
"But I _built_ that!" Burckhardt exclaimed, forgetting his thumb. He
leaned against the hull dizzily, trying to think this thing through.
For reasons beyond his comprehension, someone had taken his boat and
his cellar away, maybe his whole house, and replaced them with a
clever mock-up of the real thing.
"That's crazy," he said to the empty cellar. He stared around in the
light of the flash. He whispered, "What in the name of Heaven would
anybody do that for?"
Reason refused an answer; there wasn't any reasonable answer. For long
minutes, Burckhardt contemplated the uncertain picture of his own
sanity.
He peered under the boat again, hoping to reassure himself that it was
a mistake, just his imagination. But the sloppy, unfinished bracing
was unchanged. He crawled under for a better look, feeling the rough
wood incredulously. Utterly impossible!
He switched off the flashlight and started to wriggle out. But he
didn't make it. In the moment between the command to his legs to move
and the crawling out, he felt a sudden draining weariness flooding
through him.
Consciousness went--not easily, but as though it were being taken
away, and Guy Burckhardt was asleep.
III
On the morning of June 16th, Guy Burckhardt woke up in a cramped
position huddled under the hull of the boat in his basement--and raced
upstairs to find it was June 15th.
The first thing he had done was to make a frantic, hasty inspection of
the boat hull, the faked cellar floor, the imitation stone. They were
all as he had remembered them--all completely unbelievable.
The kitchen was its placid, unexciting self. The electric clock was
purring soberly around the dial. Almost six o'clock, it said. His wife
would be waking at any moment.
Burckhardt flung open the front door and stared out into the quiet
street. The morning paper was tossed carelessly against the steps--and
as he retrieved it, he noticed that this was the 15th day of June.
But that was impossible. _Yesterday_ was the 15th of June. It was not
a date one would forget--it was quarterly tax-return day.
He went back into the hall and picked up the telephone; he dialed for
Weather Information, and got a well-modulated chant: "--and cooler,
some showers. Barometric pressure thirty point zero four, rising ...
United States Weather Bureau forecast for June 15th. Warm and sunny,
with high around--"
He hung the phone up. June 15th.
"Holy heaven!" Burckhardt said prayerfully. Things were very odd
indeed. He heard the ring of his wife's alarm and bounded up the
stairs.
Mary Burckhardt was sitting upright in bed with the terrified,
uncomprehending stare of someone just waking out of a nightmare.
"Oh!" she gasped, as her husband came in the room. "Darling, I just
had the most _terrible_ dream! It was like an explosion and--"
"Again?" Burckhardt asked, not very sympathetically. "Mary,
something's funny! I _knew_ there was something wrong all day
yesterday and--"
He went on to tell her about the copper box that was the cellar, and
the odd mock-up someone had made of his boat. Mary looked astonished,
then alarmed, then placatory and uneasy.
She said, "Dear, are you _sure_? Because I was cleaning that old trunk
out just last week and I didn't notice anything."
"Positive!" said Guy Burckhardt. "I dragged it over to the wall to
step on it to put a new fuse in after we blew the lights out and--"
"After we what?" Mary was looking more than merely alarmed.
"After we blew the lights out. You know, when the switch at the head
of the stairs stuck. I went down to the cellar and--"
Mary sat up in bed. "Guy, the switch didn't stick. I turned out the
lights myself last night."
Burckhardt glared at his wife. "Now I _know_ you didn't! Come here and
take a look!"
He stalked out to the landing and dramatically pointed to the bad
switch, the one that he had unscrewed and left hanging the night
before....
Only it wasn't. It was as it had always been. Unbelieving, Burckhardt
pressed it and the lights sprang up in both halls.
* * * * *
Mary, looking pale and worried, left him to go down to the kitchen and
start breakfast. Burckhardt stood staring at the switch for a long
time. His mental processes were gone beyond the point of disbelief and
shock; they simply were not functioning.
He shaved and dressed and ate his breakfast in a state of numb
introspection. Mary didn't disturb him; she was apprehensive and
soothing. She kissed him good-by as he hurried out to the bus without
another word.
Miss Mitkin, at the reception desk, greeted him with a yawn.
"Morning," she said drowsily. "Mr. Barth won't be in today."
Burckhardt started to say something, but checked himself. She would
not know that Barth hadn't been in yesterday, either, because she was
tearing a June 14th pad off her calendar to make way for the "new"
June 15th sheet.
He staggered to his own desk and stared unseeingly at the morning's
mail. It had not even been opened yet, but he knew that the Factory
Distributors envelope contained an order for twenty thousand feet of
the new acoustic tile, and the one from Finebeck & Sons was a
complaint.
After a long while, he forced himself to open them. They were.
By lunchtime, driven by a desperate sense of urgency, Burckhardt made Miss
Mitkin take her lunch hour first--the June-fifteenth-that-was-yesterday,
_he_ had gone first. She went, looking vaguely worried about his strained
insistence, but it made no difference to Burckhardt's mood.
The phone rang and Burckhardt picked it up abstractedly. "Contro
Chemicals Downtown, Burckhardt speaking."
The voice said, "This is Swanson," and stopped.
Burckhardt waited expectantly, but that was all. He said, "Hello?"
Again the pause. Then Swanson asked in sad resignation, "Still
nothing, eh?"
"Nothing what? Swanson, is there something you want? You came up to me
yesterday and went through this routine. You--"
The voice crackled: "Burckhardt! Oh, my good heavens, _you remember_!
Stay right there--I'll be down in half an hour!"
"What's this all about?"
"Never mind," the little man said exultantly. "Tell you about it when
I see you. Don't say any more over the phone--somebody may be
listening. Just wait there. Say, hold on a minute. Will you be alone
in the office?"
"Well, no. Miss Mitkin will probably--"
"Hell. Look, Burckhardt, where do you eat lunch? Is it good and
noisy?"
"Why, I suppose so. The Crystal Cafe. It's just about a block--"
"I know where it is. Meet you in half an hour!" And the receiver
clicked.
* * * * *
The Crystal Cafe was no longer painted red, but the temperature was
still up. And they had added piped-in music interspersed with
commercials. The advertisements were for Frosty-Flip, Marlin
Cigarettes--"They're sanitized," the announcer purred--and something
called Choco-Bite candy bars that Burckhardt couldn't remember ever
having heard of before. But he heard more about them quickly enough.
While he was waiting for Swanson to show up, a girl in the cellophane
skirt of a nightclub cigarette vendor came through the restaurant with
a tray of tiny scarlet-wrapped candies.
"Choco-Bites are _tangy_," she was murmuring as she came close to his
table. "Choco-Bites are _tangier_ than tangy!"
Burckhardt, intent on watching for the strange little man who had
phoned him, paid little attention. But as she scattered a handful of
the confections over the table next to his, smiling at the occupants,
he caught a glimpse of her and turned to stare.
"Why, Miss Horn!" he said.
The girl dropped her tray of candies.
Burckhardt rose, concerned over the girl. "Is something wrong?"
But she fled.
The manager of the restaurant was staring suspiciously at Burckhardt,
who sank back in his seat and tried to look inconspicuous. He hadn't
insulted the girl! Maybe she was just a very strictly reared young
lady, he thought--in spite of the long bare legs under the cellophane
skirt--and when he addressed her, she thought he was a masher.
Ridiculous idea. Burckhardt scowled uneasily and picked up his menu.
"Burckhardt!" It was a shrill whisper.
Burckhardt looked up over the top of his menu, startled. In the seat
across from him, the little man named Swanson was sitting, tensely
poised.
"Burckhardt!" the little man whispered again. "Let's get out of here!
They're on to you now. If you want to stay alive, come on!"
There was no arguing with the man. Burckhardt gave the hovering
manager a sick, apologetic smile and followed Swanson out. The little
man seemed to know where he was going. In the street, he clutched
Burckhardt by the elbow and hurried him off down the block.
"Did you see her?" he demanded. "That Horn woman, in the phone booth?
She'll have them here in five minutes, believe me, so hurry it up!"
* * * * *
Although the street was full of people and cars, nobody was paying any
attention to Burckhardt and Swanson. The air had a nip in it--more
like October than June, Burckhardt thought, in spite of the weather
bureau. And he felt like a fool, following this mad little man down
the street, running away from some "them" toward--toward what? The
little man might be crazy, but he was afraid. And the fear was
infectious.
"In here!" panted the little man.
It was another restaurant--more of a bar, really, and a sort of
second-rate place that Burckhardt had never patronized.
"Right straight through," Swanson whispered; and Burckhardt, like a
biddable boy, side-stepped through the mass of tables to the far end
of the restaurant.
It was "L"-shaped, with a front on two streets at right angles to each
other. They came out on the side street, Swanson staring coldly back
at the question-looking cashier, and crossed to the opposite sidewalk.
They were under the marquee of a movie theater. Swanson's expression
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front
|
How many times does the word 'front' appear in the text?
| 2
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are
restoring on the common? It is quite a gem--in the purest style of the
fourteenth century. It was in a most filthy condition, a mere cow-house;
but we have made a subscription, and set it to rights."
"We are bound for Oxley," Sheffield answered; "you would be taking us
out of our way."
"Not a bit of it," said Bateman; "it's not a stone's throw from the
road; you must not refuse me. I'm sure you'll like it."
He proceeded to give the history of the chapel--all it had been, all it
might have been, all it was not, all it was to be.
"It is to be a real specimen of a Catholic chapel," he said; "we mean to
make the attempt of getting the Bishop to dedicate it to the Royal
Martyr--why should not we have our St. Charles as well as the
Romanists?--and it will be quite sweet to hear the vesper-bell tolling
over the sullen moor every evening, in all weathers, and amid all the
changes and chances of this mortal life."
Sheffield asked what congregation they expected to collect at that hour.
"That's a low view," answered Bateman; "it does not signify at all. In
real Catholic churches the number of the congregation is nothing to the
purpose; service is for those who come, not for those who stay away."
"Well," said Sheffield, "I understand what that means when a Roman
Catholic says it; for a priest is supposed to offer sacrifice, which he
can do without a congregation as well as with one. And, again, Catholic
chapels often stand over the bodies of martyrs, or on some place of
miracle, as a record; but our service is 'Common Prayer,' and how can
you have that without a congregation?"
Bateman replied that, even if members of the University did not drop in,
which he expected, at least the bell would be a memento far and near.
"Ah, I see," retorted Sheffield, "the use will be the reverse of what
you said just now; it is not for those that come, but for those who stay
away. The congregation is outside, not inside; it's an outside concern.
I once saw a tall church-tower--so it appeared from the road; but on the
sides you saw it was but a thin wall, made to look like a tower, in
order to give the church an imposing effect. Do run up such a bit of a
wall, and put the bell in it."
"There's another reason," answered Bateman, "for restoring the chapel,
quite independent of the service. It has been a chapel from time
immemorial, and was consecrated by our Catholic forefathers."
Sheffield argued that this would be as good a reason for keeping up the
Mass as for keeping up the chapel.
"We do keep up the Mass," said Bateman; "we offer our Mass every Sunday,
according to the rite of the English Cyprian, as honest Peter Heylin
calls him; what would you have more?"
Whether Sheffield understood this or no, at least it was beyond Charles.
Was the Common Prayer the English Mass, or the Communion-service, or the
Litany, or the sermon, or any part of these? or were Bateman's words
really a confession that there were clergymen who actually said the
Popish Mass once a week? Bateman's precise meaning, however, is lost to
posterity; for they had by this time arrived at the door of the chapel.
It had once been the chapel of an almshouse; a small farmhouse stood
near; but, for population, it was plain no "church accommodation" was
wanted. Before entering, Charles hung back, and whispered to his friend
that he did not know Bateman. An introduction, in consequence, took
place. "Reding of St. Saviour's--Bateman of Nun's Hall;" after which
ceremony, in place of holy water, they managed to enter the chapel in
company.
It was as pretty a building as Bateman had led them to expect, and very
prettily done up. There was a stone altar in the best style, a credence
table, a piscina, what looked like a tabernacle, and a couple of
handsome brass candlesticks. Charles asked the use of the piscina--he
did not know its name--and was told that there was always a piscina in
the old churches in England, and that there could be no proper
restoration without it. Next he asked the meaning of the beautifully
wrought closet or recess above the altar; and received for answer, that
"our sister churches of the Roman obedience always had a tabernacle for
reserving the consecrated bread." Here Charles was brought to a stand:
on which Sheffield asked the use of the niches; and was told by Bateman
that images of saints were forbidden by the canon, but that his friends,
in all these matters, did what they could. Lastly, he asked the meaning
of the candlesticks; and was told that, Catholicly-minded as their
Bishop was, they had some fear lest he would object to altar lights in
service--at least at first: but it was plain that the _use_ of the
candlesticks was to hold candles. Having had their fill of gazing and
admiring, they turned to proceed on their walk, but could not get off an
invitation to breakfast, in a few days, at Bateman's lodgings in the
Turl.
CHAPTER III.
Neither of the friends had what are called _views_ in religion; by which
expression we do not here signify that neither had taken up a certain
line of opinion, though this was the case also; but that neither of
them--how could they at their age?--had placed his religion on an
intellectual basis. It may be as well to state more distinctly what a
"view" is, what it is to be "viewy," and what is the state of those who
have no "views." When, then; men for the first time look upon the world
of politics or religion, all that they find there meets their mind's eye
as a landscape addresses itself for the first time to a person who has
just gained his bodily sight. One thing is as far off as another; there
is no perspective. The connection of fact with fact, truth with truth,
the bearing of fact upon truth, and truth upon fact, what leads to what,
what are points primary and what secondary,--all this they have yet to
learn. It is all a new science to them, and they do not even know their
ignorance of it. Moreover, the world of to-day has no connection in
their minds with the world of yesterday; time is not a stream, but
stands before them round and full, like the moon. They do not know what
happened ten years ago, much less the annals of a century; the past does
not live to them in the present; they do not understand the worth of
contested points; names have no associations for them, and persons
kindle no recollections. They hear of men, and things, and projects, and
struggles, and principles; but everything comes and goes like the wind,
nothing makes an impression, nothing penetrates, nothing has its place
in their minds. They locate nothing; they have no system. They hear and
they forget; or they just recollect what they have once heard, they
can't tell where. Thus they have no consistency in their arguments; that
is, they argue one way to-day, and not exactly the other way to-morrow,
but indirectly the other way, at random. Their lines of argument
diverge; nothing comes to a point; there is no one centre in which their
mind sits, on which their judgment of men and things proceeds. This is
the state of many men all through life; and miserable politicians or
Churchmen they make, unless by good luck they are in safe hands, and
ruled by others, or are pledged to a course. Else they are at the mercy
of the winds and waves; and, without being Radical, Whig, Tory, or
Conservative, High Church or Low Church, they do Whig acts, Tory acts,
Catholic acts, and heretical acts, as the fit takes them, or as events
or parties drive them. And sometimes, when their self-importance is
hurt, they take refuge in the idea that all this is a proof that they
are unfettered, moderate, dispassionate, that they observe the mean,
that they are "no party men;" when they are, in fact, the most helpless
of slaves; for our strength in this world is, to be the subjects of the
reason, and our liberty, to be captives of the truth.
Now Charles Reding, a youth of twenty, could not be supposed to have
much of a view in religion or politics; but no clever man allows himself
to judge of things simply at hap-hazard; he is obliged, from a sort of
self-respect, to have some rule or other, true or false; and Charles was
very fond of the maxim, which he has already enunciated, that we must
measure people by what they are, and not by what they are not. He had a
great notion of loving every one--of looking kindly on every one; he was
pierced with the sentiment which he had seen in a popular volume of
poetry, that--
"Christian souls, ...
Though worn and soil'd with sinful clay,
Are yet, to eyes that see them true,
All glistening with baptismal dew."
He liked, as he walked along the road, and met labourer or horseman,
gentleman or beggar, to say to himself, "He is a Christian." And when he
came to Oxford, he came there with an enthusiasm so simple and warm as
to be almost childish. He reverenced even the velvet of the Pro.; nay,
the cocked hat which preceded the Preacher had its claim on his
deferential regard. Without being himself a poet, he was in the season
of poetry, in the sweet spring-time, when the year is most beautiful,
because it is new. Novelty was beauty to a heart so open and cheerful as
his; not only because it was novelty, and had its proper charm as such,
but because when we first see things, we see them in a "gay confusion,"
which is a principal element of the poetical. As time goes on, and we
number and sort and measure things--as we gain views--we advance towards
philosophy and truth, but we recede from poetry.
When we ourselves were young, we once on a time walked on a hot
summer-day from Oxford to Newington--a dull road, as any one who has
gone it knows; yet it was new to us; and we protest to you, reader,
believe it or not, laugh or not, as you will, to us it seemed on that
occasion quite touchingly beautiful; and a soft melancholy came over us,
of which the shadows fall even now, when we look back on that dusty,
weary journey. And why? because every object which met us was unknown
and full of mystery. A tree or two in the distance seemed the beginning
of a great wood, or park, stretching endlessly; a hill implied a vale
beyond, with that vale's history; the bye-lanes, with their green
hedges, wound and vanished, yet were not lost to the imagination. Such
was our first journey; but when we had gone it several times, the mind
refused to act, the scene ceased to enchant, stern reality alone
remained; and we thought it one of the most tiresome, odious roads we
ever had occasion to traverse.
But to return to our story. Such was Reding. But Sheffield, on the other
hand, without possessing any real view of things more than Charles, was,
at this time, fonder of hunting for views, and more in danger of taking
up false ones. That is, he was "viewy," in a bad sense of the word. He
was not satisfied intellectually with things as they are; he was
critical, impatient to reduce things to system, pushed principles too
far, was fond of argument, partly from pleasure in the exercise, partly
because he was perplexed, though he did not lay anything very much to
heart.
They neither of them felt any special interest in the controversy going
on in the University and country about High and Low Church. Sheffield
had a sort of contempt for it; and Reding felt it to be bad taste to be
unusual or prominent in anything. An Eton acquaintance had asked him to
go and hear one of the principal preachers of the Catholic party, and
offered to introduce him; but he had declined it. He did not like, he
said, mixing himself up with party; he had come to Oxford to get his
degree, and not to take up opinions; he thought his father would not
relish it; and, moreover, he felt some little repugnance to such
opinions and such people, under the notion that the authorities of the
University were opposed to the whole movement. He could not help looking
at its leaders as demagogues; and towards demagogues he felt an
unmeasured aversion and contempt. He did not see why clergymen, however
respectable, should be collecting undergraduates about them; and he
heard stories of their way of going on which did not please him.
Moreover, he did not like the specimens of their followers whom he fell
in with; they were forward, or they "talked strong," as it was called;
did ridiculous, extravagant acts; and sometimes neglected their college
duties for things which did not concern them. He was unfortunate,
certainly: for this is a very unfair account of the most exemplary men
of that day, who doubtless are still, as clergymen or laymen, the
strength of the Anglican Church; but in all collections of men, the
straw and rubbish (as Lord Bacon says) float on the top, while gold and
jewels sink and are hidden. Or, what is more apposite still, many men,
or most men, are a compound of precious and worthless together, and
their worthless swims, and their precious lies at the bottom.
CHAPTER IV.
Bateman was one of these composite characters: he had much good and much
cleverness in him; but he was absurd, and he afforded a subject of
conversation to the two friends as they proceeded on their walk. "I wish
there was less of fudge and humbug everywhere," said Sheffield; "one
might shovel off cartloads from this place, and not miss it."
"If you had your way," answered Charles, "you would scrape off the roads
till there was nothing to walk on. We are forced to walk on what you
call humbug; we put it under our feet, but we use it."
"I cannot think that; it's like doing evil that good may come. I see
shams everywhere. I go into St. Mary's, and I hear men spouting out
commonplaces in a deep or a shrill voice, or with slow, clear, quiet
emphasis and significant eyes--as that Bampton preacher not long ago,
who assured us, apropos of the resurrection of the body, that 'all
attempts to resuscitate the inanimate corpse by natural methods had
hitherto been experimentally abortive.' I go into the place where
degrees are given--the Convocation, I think--and there one hears a deal
of unmeaning Latin for hours, graces, dispensations, and proctors
walking up and down for nothing; all in order to keep up a sort of ghost
of things passed away for centuries, while the real work might be done
in a quarter of an hour. I fall in with this Bateman, and he talks to me
of rood-lofts without roods, and piscinæ without water, and niches
without images, and candlesticks without lights, and masses without
Popery; till I feel, with Shakespeare, that 'all the world's a stage.'
Well, I go to Shaw, Turner, and Brown, very different men, pupils of Dr.
Gloucester--you know whom I mean--and they tell us that we ought to put
up crucifixes by the wayside, in order to excite religious feeling."
"Well, I really think you are hard on all these people," said Charles;
"it is all very much like declamation; you would destroy externals of
every kind. You are like the man in one of Miss Edgeworth's novels, who
shut his ears to the music that he might laugh at the dancers."
"What is the music to which I close my ears?" asked Sheffield.
"To the meaning of those various acts," answered Charles; "the pious
feeling which accompanies the sight of the image is the music."
"To those who have the pious feeling, certainly," said Sheffield; "but
to put up images in England in order to create the feeling is like
dancing to create music."
"I think you are hard upon England," replied Charles; "we are a
religious people."
"Well, I will put it differently: do _you_ like music?"
"You ought to know," said Charles, "whom I have frightened so often with
my fiddle."
"Do you like dancing?"
"To tell the truth," said Charles, "I don't."
"Nor do I," said Sheffield; "it makes me laugh to think what I have
done, when a boy, to escape dancing; there is something so absurd in it;
and one had to be civil and to duck to young girls who were either prim
or pert. I have behaved quite rudely to them sometimes, and then have
been annoyed at my ungentlemanlikeness, and not known how to get out of
the scrape."
"Well, I didn't know we were so like each other in anything," said
Charles; "oh, the misery I have endured, in having to stand up to dance,
and to walk about with a partner!--everybody looking at me, and I so
awkward. It has been a torture to me days before and after."
They had by this time come up to the foot of the rough rising ground
which leads to the sort of table-land on the edge of which Oxley is
placed; and they stood still awhile to see some equestrians take the
hurdles. They then mounted the hill, and looked back upon Oxford.
"Perhaps you call those beautiful spires and towers a sham," said
Charles, "because you see their tops and not their bottoms?"
"Whereabouts were we in our argument?" said the other, reminded that
they had been wandering from it for the last ten minutes. "Oh, I
recollect; I know what I was at. I was saying that you liked music, but
didn't like dancing; music leads another person to dance, but not you;
and dancing does not increase but diminishes the intensity of the
pleasure you find in music. In like manner, it is a mere piece of
pedantry to make a religious nation, like the English, more religious by
placing images in the streets; this is not the English way, and only
offends us. If it were our way, it would come naturally without any one
telling us. As music incites to dancing, so religion would lead to
images; but as dancing does not
|
hard
|
How many times does the word 'hard' appear in the text?
| 1
|
Are you really going to shave
your legs?
<b> DAVE
</b> Certo. All the Italians do it.
<b> MIKE
</b> That's some country. The women
don't shave theirs.
<b> CYRIL
</b>
<b> STOP!
</b> (pauses as if
<b> THUNDERSTRUCK;
</b> hand on heart)
It was somewhere along here that
I lost all interest in life. Ah,
right over there. I.saw
Dolores Reineke and fat Marvin.
Why? Why Dolores?
<b> MOOCHER
</b> They're married now.
Coat.
<b> 567
</b>
<b> REVISED - "BAMBINO" - 6/16/78 3
</b>
<b> X
</b> 1 Cont.1
<b> MIRE
</b> You see what I saved you from,
Cyril. Had I not told you about
the two of them you never would
have followed them out here.
<b> CYRIL-
</b> Thank you, Mike. You made me
lose all interest in life and
I'm grateful.
<b> MIKE
</b> My brother says he saw you and
Nancy. Moocher.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> When?
<b> MIKE
</b> Last Friday?
<b> MOOCHER
</b> Wasn't me. I'm not seeing her
anymore.
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b> They are now standing above a huge pool of water with sheer
cliffs on three sides. Abandoned derricks loom in the
distance. Dave is now humming softly a Neapolitan song.
They begin the descent.
<b> CYRIL
</b> I kind of miss school. You know.
This will be the first time nobody's
going to ask us to write a theme
about how we spent our summer.
<b> MIKE
</b> Remember the Tomb of the
Unknown Substitute Teacher.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> She believed us too.
<b> MIKE
</b>
<b> (TEACHER'S VOICE)
</b> Sex spelled backwards x-es.
<b> CYRIL
</b> When you're sixteen they call it
sweet sixteen. When you're eighteen
you get to drink, see dirty movies
and vote. But what the hell do you
do when you're nineteen.
<b> 567
</b> Cont.
<b> REVISED - "BAMBINO" - 6/16/78 3-A
</b>
<b> X
</b> 1 Cont.2
<b> MIKE
</b> You leave home.
<b> CYRIL
</b> My dad says Jesus never went
further than fifty miles from
his home.
Mike is skipping down the rocks toward the water, taking
clothes off as he does. The rest follow.
<b> MIKE
</b> And look what happened to him.
Mike jumps into the water. Moocher and Cyril follow. Dave
looks on.
<b> FADE THROUGH TO:
</b>
<b> DAVE'S P.O.V. 1-A
</b> The guys are swimming. Dave is holding his trophy casually,
enjoying the beautiful day. He pulls out a little
Italian Phrase Book. Finds what he wants.
<b> DAVE
</b> Oggi fa bello,-non e vero?
<b> MIKE
</b> Sure thing, partner.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> C'mon in.
<b> DAVE
</b> I read where this Italian coach
said you should never swim after
a race.
<b> CYRIL
</b> Who's swimming? I'm taking a
leak.
Moocher and Mike splash water at him and swim away.
<b> FADE THROUGH TO:
</b>
<b> 567
</b>
<b> REVISED - "BAMBINO" - 6/16/78 4
</b>
<b> ROCKS BY THE WATER 1-B
</b> All four guys are sunbathing looking at the water. Deep X
down, at the bottom of the quarry hole we see an old icebox.
Mike is staring at it. The mood is one of total relaxation.
<b> MIRE
</b> Aren't you glad we got fired from
The A and P. Right now we'd be X
working.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> We didn't get fired. You got-
fired. We quit.
<b> MIKE
</b> One for all and all for one.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> There aren't many places, you
know, that'll hire all four of
<b> USE
</b>
<b> CYRIL
</b> You know what I'd like to be?
<b> MIKE
</b> Smart.
<b> CYRIL
</b> A cartoon of some kind. Man, X
that'd be great. Like when they
get hit on their head with a
frying pan and their head looks
like a frying pan-with a handle
and everything. And then they go
b-r-r-r.
(shakes his head)
And their head comes back to
normal. That'd be great..
<b> MIKE
</b> How come you're so stupid, Cyril.
<b> CYRIL
</b> I don't know. I think I have
a dumb heredity. What's your
excuse, Mike?
Mike hits him hard on the arm. Cyril winces. Mike stands up.
He makes sure they're all watching and dives in. The guys
talk as they follow his progress.
<b> DAVE
</b> You hear from your folks, Moocher?
567 Cont.
<b> REVISED - "BAMBINO" - 8/12/78 5
</b> 1-B Coat.
<b> MOOCHER ..
</b> Yeah, my Dad called. He says
there's a lot more jobs in'Chicago.
He hasn't got anything yet.
Mike has reached the icebox. He opens the door. Goes in.
Shuts the door.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> He wanted to know if the house
was sold. They could use the
money.
<b> DAVE
</b> You can come and live with me
when it's sold. In Italy
everybody lives together.
All three of them are getting concerned about Mike.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> Ever since you won that Italian X
bike you've been acting weird. You
really think you are Italian.
<b> CYRIL
</b> I .wouldn't mind thinking I was
s omebody myself.
All three of them stand up.
<b> MOOCHER
</b> Maybe the door is stuck. God
|
great
|
How many times does the word 'great' appear in the text?
| 1
|
ing
the flower on the piano]. It is that play that has done all the
mischief. I'm very sorry I ever saw it: it ought to be stopped.
HE [amazed] Aurora!
SHE. Yes: I mean it.
HE. That divinest love poem! the poem that gave us courage to speak to
one another! that revealed to us what we really felt for one another!
That--
SHE. Just so. It put a lot of stuff into my head that I should never
have dreamt of for myself. I imagined myself just like Candida.
HE [catching her hands and looking earnestly at her] You were right. You
are like Candida.
SHE [snatching her hands away] Oh, stuff! And I thought you were just
like Eugene. [Looking critically at him] Now that I come to look at you,
you are rather like him, too. [She throws herself discontentedly into
the nearest seat, which happens to be the bench at the piano. He goes to
her].
HE [very earnestly] Aurora: if Candida had loved Eugene she would have
gone out into the night with him without a moment's hesitation.
SHE [with equal earnestness] Henry: do you know what's wanting in that
play?
HE. There is nothing wanting in it.
SHE. Yes there is. There's a Georgina wanting in it. If Georgina had
been there to make trouble, that play would have been a true-to-life
tragedy. Now I'll tell you something about it that I have never told you
before.
HE. What is that?
SHE. I took Teddy to it. I thought it would do him good; and so it would
if I could only have kept him awake. Georgina came too; and you should
have heard the way she went on about it. She said it was downright
immoral, and that she knew the sort of woman that encourages boys to sit
on the hearthrug and make love to her. She was just preparing Teddy's
mind to poison it about me.
HE. Let us be just to Georgina, dearest
SHE. Let her deserve it first. Just to Georgina, indeed!
HE. She really sees the world in that way. That is her punishment.
SHE. How can it be her punishment when she likes it? It'll be my
punishment when she brings that budget of poems to Teddy. I wish you'd
have some sense, and sympathize with my position a little.
HE. [going away from the piano and beginning to walk about rather
testily] My dear: I really don't care about Georgina or about Teddy. All
these squabbles belong to a plane on which I am, as you say, no use. I
have counted the cost; and I do not fear the consequences. After all,
what is there to fear? Where is the difficulty? What can Georgina do?
What can your husband do? What can anybody do?
SHE. Do you mean to say that you propose that we should walk right bang
up to Teddy and tell him we're going away together?
HE. Yes. What can be simpler?
SHE. And do you think for a moment he'd stand it, like that half-baked
clergyman in the play? He'd just kill you.
HE [coming to a sudden stop and speaking with considerable confidence]
You don't understand these things, my darling, how could you? In one
respect I am unlike the poet in the play. I have followed the Greek
ideal and not neglected the culture of my body. Your husband would make
a tolerable second-rate heavy weight if he were in training and ten
years younger. As it is, he could, if strung up to a great effort by
a burst of passion, give a good account of himself for perhaps fifteen
seconds. But I am active enough to keep out of his reach for fifteen
seconds; and after that I should be simply all over him.
SHE [rising and coming to him in consternation] What do you mean by all
over him?
HE [gently] Don't ask me, dearest. At all events, I swear to you that
you need not be anxious about me.
SHE. And what about Teddy? Do you mean to tell me that you are going to
beat Teddy before my face like a brutal prizefighter?
HE. All this alarm is needless, dearest. Believe me, nothing will
happen. Your husband knows that I am capable of defending myself. Under
such circumstances nothing ever does happen. And of course I shall do
nothing. The man who once loved you is sacred to me.
SHE [suspiciously] Doesn't he love me still? Has he told you anything?
HE. No, no. [He takes her tenderly in his arms]. Dearest, dearest: how
agitated you are! how unlike yourself! All these worries belong to
the lower plane. Come up with me to the higher one. The heights, the
solitudes, the soul world!
SHE [avoiding his gaze] No: stop: it's no use, Mr Apjohn.
HE [recoiling] Mr Apjohn!!!
SHE. Excuse me: I meant Henry, of course.
HE. How could you even think of me as Mr Apjohn? I never think of you as
Mrs Bompas: it is always Cand-- I mean Aurora, Aurora, Auro--
SHE. Yes, yes: that's all very well, Mr Apjohn [He is about to interrupt
again: but she won't have it] no: it's no use: I've suddenly begun to
think of you as Mr Apjohn; and it's ridiculous to go on calling you
Henry. I thought you were only a boy, a child, a dreamer. I thought you
would be too much afraid to do anything. And now you want to beat Teddy
and to break up my home and disgrace me and make a horrible scandal in
the papers. It's cruel, unmanly, cowardly.
HE [with grave wonder] Are you afraid?
SHE. Oh, of course I'm afraid. So would you be if you had any common
sense. [She goes to the hearth, turning her back to him, and puts one
tapping foot on the fender].
HE [watching her with great gravity] Perfect love casteth out fear. That
is why I am not afraid. Mrs Bompas: you do not love me.
SHE [turning to him with a gasp of relief] Oh, thank you, thank you! You
really can be very nice, Henry.
HE. Why do you thank me?
SHE [coming prettily to him from the fireplace] For calling me Mrs
Bompas again. I feel now that you are going to be reasonable and behave
like a gentleman. [He drops on the stool; covers his face with his hand;
and groans]. What's the matter?
HE. Once or twice in my life I have dreamed that I was exquisitely happy
and blessed. But oh! the misgiving at the first stir of consciousness!
the stab of reality! the prison walls of the bedroom! the bitter, bitter
disappointment of waking! And this time! oh, this time I thought I was
awake.
SHE. Listen to me, Henry: we really haven't time for all that sort of
flapdoodle now. [He starts to his feet as if she had pulled a trigger
and straightened him by the release of a powerful spring, and goes past
her with set teeth to the little table]. Oh, take care: you nearly hit
me in the chin with the top of your head.
HE [with fierce politeness] I beg your pardon. What is it you want me to
do? I am at your service. I am ready to behave like a gentleman if you
will be kind enough to explain exactly how.
SHE [a little frightened] Thank you, Henry: I was sure you would. You're
not angry with me, are you?
HE. Go on. Go on quickly. Give me something to think about, or I will--I
will--[he suddenly snatches up her fan and it about to break it in his
clenched fists].
SHE [running forward and catching at the fan, with loud lamentation]
Don't break my fan--no, don't. [He slowly relaxes his grip of it as she
draws it anxiously out of his hands]. No, really, that's a stupid trick.
I don't like that. You've no right to do that. [She opens the fan,
and finds that the sticks are disconnected]. Oh, how could you be so
inconsiderate?
HE. I beg your pardon. I will buy you a new one.
SHE [querulously] You will never be able to match it. And it was a
particular favorite of mine.
HE [shortly] Then you will have to do without it: that's all.
SHE. That's not a very nice thing to say after breaking my pet fan, I
think.
HE. If you knew how near I was to breaking Teddy's pet wife and
presenting him with the pieces, you would be thankful that you are alive
instead of--of--of howling about five shillings worth of ivory. Damn
your fan!
SHE. Oh! Don't you dare swear in my presence. One would think you were
my husband.
HE [again collapsing on the stool] This is some horrible dream. What has
become of you? You are not my Aurora.
SHE. Oh, well, if you come to that, what has become of you? Do you think
I would ever have encouraged you if I had known you were such a little
devil?
HE. Don't drag me down--don't--don't. Help me to find the way back to
the heights.
SHE [kneeling beside him and pleading] If you would only be reasonable,
Henry. If you would only remember that I am on the brink of ruin, and
not go on calmly saying it's all quite simple.
HE. It seems so to me.
SHE [jumping up distractedly] If you say that again I shall do something
I'll be sorry for. Here we are, standing on the edge of a frightful
precipice. No doubt it's quite simple to go over and have done with it.
But can't you suggest anything more agreeable?
HE. I can suggest nothing now. A chill black darkness has fallen: I can
see nothing but the ruins of our dream. [He rises with a deep sigh].
SHE. Can't you? Well, I can. I can see Georgina rubbing those poems into
Teddy. [Facing him determinedly] And I tell you, Henry Apjohn, that you
got me into this mess; and you must get me out of it again.
HE [polite and hopeless] All I can say is that I am entirely at your
service. What do you wish me to do?
SHE. Do you know anybody else named Aurora?
HE. No.
SHE. There's no use in saying No in that frozen pigheaded way. You must
know some Aurora or other somewhere.
HE. You said you were the only Aurora in the world. And [lifting his
clasped fists with a sudden return of his emotion] oh God! you were
the only Aurora in the world to me. [He turns away from her, hiding his
face].
SHE [petting him] Yes, yes, dear: of course. It's very nice of you; and
I appreciate it: indeed I do; but it's not reasonable just at present.
Now just listen to me. I suppose you know all those poems by heart.
HE. Yes, by heart. [Raising his head and looking at her, with a sudden
suspicion] Don't you?
SHE. Well, I never can remember verses; and besides, I've been so busy
that I've not had time to read them all; though I intend to the very
first moment I can get: I promise you that most faithfully, Henry. But
now try and remember very particularly. Does the name of Bompas occur in
any of the poems?
HE [indignantly] No.
SHE. You're quite sure?
HE. Of course I am quite sure. How could I use such a name in a poem?
SHE. Well, I don't see why not. It rhymes to rumpus, which seems
appropriate enough at present, goodness knows! However, you're a poet,
and you ought to know.
HE. What does it matter--now?
SHE. It matters a lot, I can tell you. If there's nothing about Bompas
in the poems, we can say that they were written to some other Aurora,
and that you showed them to me because my name was Aurora too. So you've
got to invent another Aurora for the occasion.
HE [very coldly] Oh, if you wish me to tell a lie--
SHE. Surely, as a man of honor--as a gentleman, you wouldn't tell the
truth, would you?
HE. Very well. You have broken my spirit and desecrated my dreams.
I will lie and protest and stand on my honor: oh, I will play the
gentleman, never fear.
SHE. Yes, put it all on me, of course. Don't be mean, Henry.
HE [rousing himself with an effort] You are quite right, Mrs Bompas: I
beg your pardon. You must excuse my temper. I have got growing pains, I
think.
SHE. Growing pains!
HE. The process of growing from romantic boyhood into cynical maturity
usually takes fifteen years. When it is compressed into fifteen minutes,
the pace is too fast; and growing pains are the result.
SHE. Oh, is this a time for cleverness? It's settled, isn't it, that
you're going to be nice and good, and that you'll brazen it out to Teddy
that you have some other Aurora?
HE. Yes: I'm capable of anything now. I should not have told him the
truth by halves; and now I will not lie by halves. I'll wallow in the
honor of a gentleman.
SHE. Dearest boy, I knew you would. I--Sh! [she rushes to the door, and
holds it ajar, listening breathlessly].
HE. What is it?
SHE [white with apprehension] It's Teddy: I hear him tapping the new
barometer. He can't have anything serious on his mind or he wouldn't
do that. Perhaps Georgina hasn't said anything. [She steals back to the
hearth]. Try and look as if there was nothing the matter. Give me my
gloves, quick. [He hands them to her. She pulls on one hastily and
begins buttoning it with ostentatious unconcern]. Go further away from
me, quick. [He walks doggedly away from her until the piano prevents his
going farther]. If I button my glove, and you were to hum a tune, don't
you think that--
HE. The tableau would be complete in its guiltiness. For Heaven's sake,
Mrs Bompas, let that glove alone: you look like a pickpocket.
Her husband comes in: a robust, thicknecked, well groomed city man,
with a strong chin but a blithering eye and credulous mouth. He has a
momentous air, but shows no sign of displeasure: rather the contrary.
HER HUSBAND. Hallo! I thought you two were at the theatre.
SHE. I felt anxious about you, Teddy. Why didn't you come home to
dinner?
HER HUSBAND. I got a message from Georgina. She wanted me to go to her.
SHE. Poor dear Georgina! I'm sorry I haven't been able to call on her
this last week. I hope there's nothing the matter with her.
HER HUSBAND. Nothing, except anxiety for my welfare and yours. [She
steals a terrified look at Henry]. By, the way, Apjohn, I should like a
word with you this evening, if Aurora can spare you for a moment.
HE [formally] I am at your service.
HER HUSBAND. No hurry. After the theatre will do.
HE. We have decided not to go.
HER HUSBAND. Indeed! Well, then, shall we adjourn to my snuggery?
SHE. You needn't move. I shall go and lock up my diamonds since I'm not
going to the theatre. Give me my things.
HER HUSBAND [as he hands her the cloud and the mirror] Well, we shall
have more room here.
HE [looking about him and shaking his shoulders loose] I think I should
prefer plenty of room.
HER HUSBAND. So, if it's not disturbing you, Rory--?
SHE. Not at all. [She goes out].
When the two men are alone together, Bompas deliberately takes the poems
from his breast pocket; looks at them reflectively; then looks at Henry,
mutely inviting his attention. Henry refuses to understand, doing his
best to look unconcerned.
HER HUSBAND. Do these manuscripts seem at all familiar to you, may I
ask?
HE. Manuscripts?
HER HUSBAND. Yes. Would you like to look at them a little closer? [He
proffers them under Henry's nose].
HE [as with a sudden illumination of glad surprise] Why, these are my
poems.
HER HUSBAND. So I gather.
HE. What a shame! Mrs Bompas has shown them to you! You must think me an
utter ass. I wrote them years ago after reading Swinburne's Songs Before
Sunrise. Nothing would do me then but I must reel off a set of Songs
to the Sunrise. Aurora, you know: the rosy fingered Aurora. They're all
about Aurora. When Mrs Bompas told me her name was Aurora, I couldn't
resist the temptation to lend them to her to read. But I didn't bargain
for your unsympathetic eyes.
HER HUSBAND [grinning] Apjohn: that's really very ready of you. You are
cut out for literature; and the day will come when Rory and I will be
proud to have you about the house. I have heard far thinner stories from
much older men.
HE [with an air of great surprise] Do you mean to imply that you don't
believe me?
HER HUSBAND. Do you expect me to believe you?
HE. Why not? I don't understand.
HER HUSBAND. Come! Don't underrate your own cleverness, Apjohn. I think
you understand pretty well.
HE. I assure you I am quite at a loss. Can you not be a little more
explicit?
HER HUSBAND. Don't overdo it, old chap. However, I will just be so far
explicit as to say that if you think these poems read as if they were
addressed, not to a live woman, but to a shivering cold time of day at
which you were never out of bed in your life
|
stuff
|
How many times does the word 'stuff' appear in the text?
| 1
|
OUS (V.O.)
</b> Plus she say who wanna see me
dancing anyway. I goes to I.S. 111.
In Harlem. New York. Today I was
almost late. That'd a been a
problem.
Precious scurries behind them donning the red scarf and
lugging her book bag.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 3.
</b>
<b>3 INT. CLASSROOM DAY 3
</b>
Precious sits in the last row behind 26 children half her
size, 3 years younger and mostly African American. Noise and
projectiles fill the air.
MR. WICHER -A FRAIL MAN IN A BOW TIE AND TWEED COAT, stands
at the head of the class trying to establish order.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Class, would you please turn to
page 122 ...Class! 122!
Precious' book stays closed as the other students find the
page.
TWO BOYS in front of Precious giggle boisterously at some
private joke.
Mr. Wicher looks annoyed but accustomed to this.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> I like maff but I don't say nuffin'
-don't open my book even. Just sit
there.
The giggling boys continue their shenanigans.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Boys?
The boys finally open their books.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Page 122 please.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> Everyday I tell myself something
gonna happen, like I'm gonna break
through or somebody gonna break
through to me -I'm gonna learn,
catch up, be normal, sit in the
front ...someday.
The giggling flares up again. Precious sneers at the boys.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Today we are going to review
Monday's assignment. Would anyone
like to begin?
The boys get louder.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 4.
</b><b>3 CONTINUED: 3
</b> Mr. Wicher looks at them helplessly.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Boys! ! !
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> I like Mr. Wicher. I pretend he my
husband and we live in Weschesser,
whereever that is. I can see by his
eyes Mr. Wicher like me too. I wish
I could tell him all the pages in
my book look the same to me, but I
can't..
<b> BOY# 1
</b> Excuse you?!
The entire class cries, "OOOOOH". Mr. Wicher looks scared.
<b> BOY # 1
</b> Nobody 'spect us to learn nuffin no
way. Now I'm tryin' to have a
motherfuckin' conversation back
here if you don't mind Mr. Bitcher,
I mean, Mr. Wicher.
The boys fallout slapping hands.
The class turns to Mr. Wicher in unison to see what he will
do.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> I want to see you boys after class.
<b> BOY# 2
</b> Sorry Mr. Wicher but you ain't my
type. Grow some tits.
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> Just be quiet.
Mr. Wicher tries to carry on throughout the boys' unrelenting
defiance. Other students are continually distracted by the
boys. Precious looks bothered the most as Mr. Wicher's soft
voice loses the battle.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> I feels sorry for Mr. Wicher. He do
his best but he ain't got no voice.
He scared too. I feels sorry for
him.
The boys break out in RIOTOUS LAUGHTER until ...
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 5.
</b><b>3 CONTINUED: (2) 3
</b> CRASH! A desk slams against the floor. The boys whirl around
to see two large hands take hold of them and snatch them out
of their chairs.
Precious has had enough.
<b> PRECIOUS
</b> Shut up motherfuckers, I'm trying
to learn something! Hard enuff
wiffout you stupid clowns carryin'
on!
<b> BOY# 1
</b> (trembling)
...sorry Precious.
<b> BOY# 2
</b> (trembling)
We cool.
Precious shoves them down in their seats and huffs.
<b> PRECIOUS
</b> Stupid asses... Go on 'bout cha
lesson Mr. Wicher. They ain' gonna
give you no more trouble today.
Precious turns her desk upright and sits back down. Mr.
Wicher looks grateful.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> I'm like the polices for Mr.
Wicher. Tha's why I can't be late
to maff.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Someone is outside the classroom.
Mr. Wicher waves her inside.
<b> MRS. LICHENSTEIN, A SKINNY WOMAN IN HER THIRTIES WEARING A
</b> DARK SKIRT SUIT enters, squints to find Precious, points
briefly and then whispers something to Mr. Wicher. Precious
rolls her eyes.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> Now dis ...
Mrs. Lichenstein sends Precious an oversized grin and beckons
to her.
<b> MRS. LICHENSTEIN
</b> Claireece ...
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> 6.
</b><b>3 CONTINUED: (3) 3
</b> Precious sighs.
<b> PRECIOUS (V.O.)
</b> What this bitch want? Claireece ...
Only motherfuckers I hate call me
Claireece.
Precious gathers her belongings. The other children watch
every move in silence. When she reaches the front of the
class ...
<b> PRECIOUS
</b> You gonna be okay Mr. Wicher?
<b> MR. WICHER
</b> (forcing a smile)
Of course Precious. Thank you.
An unconvinced Precious grins sadly as Mrs. Lichenstein
motions for Precious to step out ahead of her.
Mr. Wicher looks abandoned. The door closing behind Precious
might as well be to a prison cell block. Noise inside the
classroom returns immediately.
<b>R4 INT. SCHOOL CORRIDOR - DAY R4
</b>
Precious heads off down the wide hallway in silence.
<b>R5 INT. MRS. LICHENSTEIN'S OFFICE DAY R5
</b>
Precious waits among plants, plaques, pictures and file
cabinets while Mrs. Lichenstein sits across from her reading
from a file.
Mrs. Lichenstein closes the file and sets it on the desk
between them.
<b> MRS. LICHENSTEIN
</b> Are you pregnant? You're sixteen,
still in junior high school and
pregnant with your second child.
Correct Claireece? Claireece are
you pregnant again?
Precious stares at the file without responding.
<b> MRS. LICHENSTEIN
</b> Do you have any thoughts about your
situation?
Precious shrugs her shoulders.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
|
inside
|
How many times does the word 'inside' appear in the text?
| 1
|
udra-pála, who entered into
his body by miraculous means. The usurper reigned 24 years and 2
months, and the throne of Delhi continued in the hands of his sixteen
successors, who reigned 641 years and three months. Vikrama-pála, the
last, was slain in battle by Tilaka-chandra, King of Vaharannah.[14]
[14] Lieut. Wilford supports the theory that there were eight
Vikramadityas, the last of whom established the era. For
further particulars, the curious reader will consult Lassenâs
_Anthologia_, and Professor H. H. Wilsonâs _Essay on Vikram_,
(New) As. Res. ix. 117.
It is not pretended that the words of these Hindu tales are
preserved to the letter. The question about the metamorphosis of
cats into tigers, for instance, proceeded from a Gem of Learning
in a university much nearer home than Gaur. Similarly the learned
and still living Mgr. Gaume (_Traité du Saint-Esprit_, p. 81) joins
Camerarius in the belief that serpents bite women rather than men.
And he quotes (p. 192) Cornelius à Lapide, who informs us that the
leopard is the produce of a lioness with a hyæna or a pard.
The merit of the old stories lies in their suggestiveness and their
general applicability. I have ventured to remedy the conciseness of
their language, and to clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. 1
_THE VAMPIREâS FIRST STORY._
IN WHICH A MAN DECEIVES A WOMAN. 54
_THE VAMPIREâS SECOND STORY._
OF THE RELATIVE VILLANY OF MEN AND WOMEN. 97
_THE VAMPIREâS THIRD STORY._
OF A HIGH-MINDED FAMILY. 140
_THE VAMPIREâS FOURTH STORY._
OF A WOMAN WHO TOLD THE TRUTH. 156
_THE VAMPIREâS FIFTH STORY._
OF THE THIEF WHO LAUGHED AND WEPT. 167
_THE VAMPIREâS SIXTH STORY._
IN WHICH THREE MEN DISPUTE ABOUT A WOMAN. 190
_THE VAMPIREâS SEVENTH STORY._
SHOWING THE EXCEEDING FOLLY OF MANY WISE FOOLS. 209
_THE VAMPIREâS EIGHTH STORY._
OF THE USE AND MISUSE OF MAGIC PILLS. 238
_THE VAMPIREâS NINTH STORY._
SHOWING THAT A MANâS WIFE BELONGS NOT TO HIS BODY BUT TO
HIS HEAD. 267
_THE VAMPIREâS TENTH STORY._
OF THE MARVELLOUS DELICACY OF THREE QUEENS. 285
_THE VAMPIREâS ELEVENTH STORY._
WHICH PUZZLES RAJA VIKRAM. 290
CONCLUSION. 307
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
DURING THE THREE HOURS OF RETURN HARDLY A WORD PASSED
BETWEEN THE PAIR. _Frontispiece_
HE WAS PLAYING UPON A HUMAN SKULL WITH TWO SHANK BONES._p._ 43
HE ONCE MORE SEIZED THE BAITALâS HAIR. 48
WENT UP TO HER WITH POLITE SALUTATIONS. _To face_ 65
HAVING SAID THIS, HE THREW ONE OF THE SWEETMEATS TO THE
DOG. _To face_ 85
MOUNTING THEIR HORSES, FOLLOWED THE PARTY. 93
HE DISMISSED THE PALANQUIN-BEARERS. 117
HE SET OUT ALONE WITH HIS ILL-GOTTEN WEALTH. _To face_ 118
THE KING, PUFFING WITH FURY, FOLLOWED HIM AT THE TOP OF
HIS SPEED, AND CAUGHT HIM BY HIS TAIL. _To face_ 139
IN THE MEANTIME A TRAVELLER, A RAJPUT, BY NAME BIRBAL. 143
THE BAITAL DISAPPEARED THROUGH THE DARKNESS. _To face_ 165
AS, HOWEVER, HE PASSED THROUGH A BACK STREET. _To face_ 170
AFTER A FEW MINUTES THE SIGNAL WAS ANSWERED. 173
THE TWO THEN RAISED, BY THEIR UNITED EFFORTS, A HEAVY
TRAP-DOOR. _To face_ 174
TREADING WITH THE FOOT OF A TIGER-CAT. 177
THE KING WAS CUNNING AT FENCE, AND SO WAS THE THIEF.
_To face_ 179
PRESENTLY THE DEMON WAS TRUSSED UP AS USUAL. 188
BAMAN, THE SECOND SUITOR, TIED UP A BUNDLE AND FOLLOWED. 198
MEANWHILE MADHUSADAN, THE THIRD, BECAME A JOGI. 199
THE HOUSEHOLDERâS WIFE CAME TO SERVE UP THE FOOD, RICE
AND SPLIT PEAS. _To face_ 203
MADHUSADAN PROCEEDED TO MAKE HIS INCANTATIONS, DESPITE
TERRIBLE SIGHTS IN THE AIR. _To face_ 205
VIKRAM PLACED HIS BUNDLE UPON THE GROUND, AND SEATED
HIMSELF CROSS-LEGGED BEFORE IT. _To face_ 207
THEY TRIED TO LIVE WITHOUT A MONTHLY ALLOWANCE, AND
NOTABLY THEY FAILED. 223
AN EDIFYING SPECTACLE, INDEED, FOR THE WORLD TO SEE: A
CROSS OLD MAN SITTING AMONGST HIS GALLIPOTS AND
CRUCIBLES. _To face_ 228
THE BONE THEREUPON STOOD UPRIGHT, AND HOPPED ABOUT. 230
THEY PREPARED FOR THEIR TASK. 234
WITH A ROAR LIKE THUNDER. _To face_ 235
BUT THEIR EYES HAD MET. 241
AS THEY EMERGED UPON THE PLAIN, THEY WERE ATTACKED BY
THE KIRATAS. _To face_ 277
THEN A HORRID THOUGHT FLASHED ACROSS HER MIND; SHE
PERCEIVED HER FATAL MISTAKE. _To face_ 279
THERE HE FOUND THE JOGI. 310
AS HE BENT HIM DOWN TO SALUTE THE GODDESS. 317
TAILPIECE. 319
VIKRAM AND THE VAMPIRE.
INTRODUCTION.
The sage BhavabhutiâEastern teller of these talesâafter making
his initiatory and propitiatory congé to Ganesha, Lord of Incepts,
informs the reader that this book is a string of fine pearls to be
hung round the neck of human intelligence; a fragrant flower to be
borne on the turban of mental wisdom; a jewel of pure gold, which
becomes the brow of all supreme minds; and a handful of powdered
rubies, whose tonic effects will appear palpably upon the mental
digestion of every patient. Finally, that by aid of the lessons
inculcated in the following pages, man will pass happily through this
world into the state of absorption, where fables will be no longer
required.
He then teaches us how Vikramaditya the Brave became King of Ujjayani.
Some nineteen centuries ago, the renowned city of Ujjayani
witnessed the birth of a prince to whom was given the gigantic name
Vikramaditya. Even the Sanskrit-speaking people, who are not usually
pressed for time, shortened it to âVikram,â and a little further West
it would infallibly have been docked down to âVik.â
Vikram was the second son of an old king Gandharba-Sena, concerning
whom little favourable has reached posterity, except that he became
an ass, married four queens, and had by them six sons, each of
whom was more learned and powerful than the other. It so happened
that in course of time the father died. Thereupon his eldest heir,
who was known as Shank, succeeded to the carpet of Rajaship, and
was instantly murdered by Vikram, his âscorpion,â the hero of the
following pages.[15]
[15] History tells us another tale. The god Indra and the King
of Dhara gave the kingdom to Bhartari-hari, another son of
Gandharba-Sena, by a handmaiden. For some time, the brothers
lived together; but presently they quarrelled. Vikram being
dismissed from court, wandered from place to place in abject
poverty, and at one time hired himself as a servant to a merchant
living in Guzerat. At length, Bhartari-hari, disgusted with the
world on account of the infidelity of his wife, to whom he was
ardently attached, became a religious devotee, and left the
kingdom to its fate. In the course of his travels, Vikram came to
Ujjayani, and finding it without a head, assumed the sovereignty.
He reigned with great splendour, conquering by his arms Utkala,
Vanga, Kuch-behar, Guzerat, Somnat, Delhi, and other places;
until, in his turn, he was conquered and slain by Shalivaban.
By this act of vigour and manly decision, which all younger-brother
princes should devoutly imitate, Vikram having obtained the title of
Bir, or the Brave, made himself Raja. He began to rule well, and
the gods so favoured him that day by day his dominions increased. At
length he became lord of all India, and having firmly established
his government, he instituted an eraâan uncommon feat for a mere
monarch, especially when hereditary.
The steps,[16] says the historian, which he took to arrive at that
pinnacle of grandeur, were these:
[16] The words are found, says Mr. Ward, in the _Hindu History_
compiled by Mrityungaya.
The old King calling his two grandsons Bhartari-hari and
Vikramaditya, gave them good counsel respecting their future
learning. They were told to master everything, a certain way not
to succeed in anything. They were diligently to learn grammar, the
scriptures, and all the religious sciences. They were to become
familiar with military tactics, international law, and music, the
riding of horses and elephantsâespecially the latterâthe driving of
chariots, and the use of the broadsword, the bow, and the mogdars or
Indian clubs. They were ordered to be skilful in all kinds of games,
in leaping and running, in besieging forts, in forming and breaking
bodies of troops; they were to endeavour to excel in every princely
quality, to be cunning in ascertaining the power of an enemy, how to
make war, to perform journeys, to sit in the presence of the nobles,
to separate the different sides of a question, to form alliances,
to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, to assign
proper punishments to the wicked, to exercise authority with perfect
justice, and to be liberal. The boys were then sent to school, and
were placed under the care of excellent teachers, where they became
truly famous. Whilst under pupilage, the eldest was allowed all the
power necessary to obtain a knowledge of royal affairs, and he was
not invested with the regal office till in these preparatory steps
he had given full satisfaction to his subjects, who expressed high
approval of his conduct.
The two brothers often conversed on the duties of kings, when the
great Vikramaditya gave the great Bhartari-hari the following
valuable advice:[17]
[17] These duties of kings are thus laid down in the
_Rajtarangini_. It is evident, as Professor H. H. Wilson says,
that the royal status was by no means a sinecure. But the rules
are evidently the closet work of some pedantic, dogmatic Brahman,
teaching kingcraft to kings. He directs his instructions, not
to subordinate judges, but to the Raja as the chief magistrate,
and through him to all appointed for the administration of his
justice.
âAs Indra, during the four rainy months, fills the earth with water,
so a king should replenish his treasury with money. As Surya the sun,
in warming the earth eight months, does not scorch it, so a king, in
drawing revenues from his people, ought not to oppress them. As Vayu,
the wind, surrounds and fills
|
raja
|
How many times does the word 'raja' appear in the text?
| 2
|
kill every teenager from the area.
(beat)
And every now and then, the murders
start up again.
The boat lurches slightly, tugging at the anchor cable.
She's scared: he's frightened himself a little, too.
<b> JIM
</b> Forget about it, Suzy. They're just
stories.
He brushes her hair back, kissing her cheek gently,
finding the nape of her neck again. She closes her eyes,
trying to dismiss what he's dredged up. But she can't.
Suzy begins to rationalize.
<b> SUZY
</b> We're the last graduating class,
right?
Jim's kissing her body, putting Jason behind him.
<b> JIM
</b> Right.
<b> SUZY
</b> I mean, Lakeview High just closed its
doors for good, right?
<b> JIM
</b> Right.
<b> SUZY
</b> So there's no reason for him to come
back because there won't be any of us
around...right?
Jim stops, looking her squarely in the eyes.
<b> JIM
</b> Right. Except that Jason isn't real
so none of it matters anyway.
She starts to relax, returning his kisses.
<b> EXT. UNDERWATER - NIGHT (TANK)
</b>
as the anchor drifts along the lake floor, tugging hard
on the power cable. Camera TRACKS along the cable,
coming to a RUSTY SET OF CHAINS TANGLED AROUND IT.
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
as Jim slides on top of Suzy. Thoughts of Jason are
starting to slip away along with their clothes.
<b> EXT. UNDERWATER - NIGHT (TANK)
</b>
as the chains emit a dull tinkle due to movement from the
tugging anchor. Camera continues to TRACK again...and we
find to our horror that the waterlogged, fish-eaten body
of JASON IS SECURED BY THESE SAME CHAINS. (NOTE: Jason's
face is obscured.)
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
Teenagers in love, lost in not-so-innocent passion. At
the same moment:
<b> EXT. UNDERWATER - NIGHT (TANK)
</b>
The anchor tugs one last time and RIPS THROUGH THE CABLE.
SPARKS INSTANTLY FLY, chasing along the cable, finding
the chain which secures Jason and ENGULFING HIM IN
<b> ELECTRICITY.
</b>
<b> EXT. HOUSEBOAT - ON LAKE SURFACE (EFX)
</b>
as BRIGHT FLASHES OF BLUE LIGHT strobe-under the surface.
ARCING CURRENT chases up the anchor cable, sparking
across the hoist.
<b> EXT. CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE - WIDE SHOT FROM WATER
</b>
as the electricity feeding the streetlights is abruptly
extinguished, plunging the campsite into darkness.
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
as Suzy's eyes flash open.
<b> SUZY
</b> Did you hear that?
<b> JIM
</b> Hear what?
He pulls her back down.
<b> SUZY
</b> C'mon, I'm serious.
He knows the mood is broken.
<b> JIM
</b> All right, I'll check it out.
He slips on his jeans, exiting the cabin. She pulls the
sheet up around her fearfully.
<b> EXT. UNDERWATER - NIGHT (TANK)
</b>
as the cable smolders, void of electricity now. TRACK to
find the chains again...but they're dangling loosely.
<b> JASON IS GONE.
</b>
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
Suzy is tensely kneeling on the bed now. The black void
of night is all she sees out the cabin door, which Jim
has left open. An uncomfortable amount of time passes.
<b> SUZY
</b> Jimmy...?
No answer. Her heart starts to pound.
<b> SUZY
</b> Jim...?
Again, nothing. She wraps herself in the sheet, moving
towards the open door. The ship creaks again.
<b> SUZY'S POINT OF VIEW
</b>
as she grows closer to the doorway, nothing but pitch-
black beyond it.
<b> SUZY
</b> Stop screwing around, Jim. I mean
it...
...And just as she reaches the door:
<b> A HOCKEY MASKED MONSTER
</b>
leaps out, clutching a HUGE KNIFE. Suzy barely has time
to scream before JASON PLUNGES THE KNIFE INTO HER CHEST.
<b> SUZY
</b>
stands there in speechless shock, looking down at her
mortal wound. But there's no blood.
<b> THE MONSTER
</b>
pulls the knife back out, pushing the blade in and out
with his hand. It's a retractable rubber knife. JIM
pulls off the hockey mask with a huge grin, tossing it
aside.
<b> JIM
</b> Gotcha good, baby cakes.
She doesn't know whether to hug him with relief or kick
him in the balls. He pulls her back onto the bed,
laughing.
<b> EXT. HOUSEBOAT - CLOSE ON HOCKEY MASK
</b>
sitting dormant on the deck, where Jim tossed it. A
SHADOW FALLS ACROSS IT...followed by a SLIMY, DECOMPOSING
HAND. The hand grabs it like it's an old friend, pulling
it away.
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
as Jim holds his angry girlfriend down on the bed, trying
unsuccessfully to kiss her.
<b> JIM
</b> All right, all right -- I'm a major
ass.
<b> SUZY
</b> And you'll never do it again.
<b> JIM
</b> And I'll never do it again. Forgive
me?
<b> SUZY
</b> No.
She's resisting only for effect. Her legs curl around
him, finally giving in.
<b> EXT. HOUSEBOAT - NIGHT
</b>
A deadly-sharp SPEAR GUN rests in its rack outside the
cabin. JASON'S HAND REMOVES IT.
<b> INT. HOUSEBOAT - CONTINUOUS
</b>
The sheets begin to roll like waves as they work each
other. Thoughts of Jason are nonexistent now.
<b> ANGLE - CABIN DOOR
</b>
Nothing there for a moment...then a pair of moss-covered
<b> BARE FEET SLOSH INTO FRAME.
</b>
<b> SUZY
</b>
closes her eyes with pleasure...
<b> ANGLE - CABIN DOOR
</b>
...and camera RISES from the mossy feet, up the bloodless
legs and torso to ultimately reveal the hockey-masked
face of our anti-hero: JASON VOORHEES.
<b> SUZY
</b>
lets out a broad smile, her eyelids fluttering. They stay
open long enough to regard the visitor in the doorway.
She tries to choke out a warning to Jim, who's just
collapsed himself.
<b> SUZY
</b> JJJJJJJJason...
He doesn't follow her glance, smiling instead.
<b> JIM
</b> Uh-huh. You must really think I'm an
ass.
But she continues to stare in horror as:
<b> JASON
</b>
raises the spear, taking aim.
<b> ANGLE - SUZY AND JIM
</b>
Hs starts to kiss her but she bolts up with a blood-
curdling SCREAM. A second later, JASON FIRES THE SPEAR,
<b> PIERCING HER NECK, PINNING HER TO THE HEAD BOARD.
</b>
Jim stares point-blank at his dead girlfriend, not able
to assimilate it quickly enough. He spins around to see
the monster himself.
<b> JIM
</b> Ohmygod...
Jim springs off the bed, looking around for anything to
defend himself with, grabbing the bedside lamp. He
SMASHES IT OVER JASON'S HEAD which has little effect. Jim
scrambles to get past him, but Jason LIFTS JIM IN THE
<b> AIR, SLAMMING HIM DOWN ON ONE OF THE SPIKED BEDPOSTS.
</b>
<b> EXT. CRYSTAL LAKE - NIGHT
</b>
as the HOUSEBOAT silently drifts onward. The lone
silhouette of Jason emerges from within, taking the helm.
He's back.
<b> FADE OUT/MAIN CREDITS.
</b>
<b> FADE IN:
</b>
<b> EXT. HARBOR - ESTABLISHING - DAY
</b>
Only the faintest sign of daylight can be seen through a
thick blanket of gray fog. In the distance, speckled
lights outlining a smaller LUXURY CRUISE SHIP
intermittently appear.
<b> EXT. DOCKSIDE - DAY
</b>
Standing at the boarding ramp is CHARLES MCCULLOCH,
clipboard in hand. He's just finished checking off a pair
of new-agey SENIOR GIRLS. McCulloch is approaching fifty,
wearing a tie and unwrinkled clothes, as well as the
disposition of a stern puritan.
<b> MCCULLOCH
</b> Remember girls, the shuffleboard
tournament will start at six p.m.
sharp. A non-attendance will restrict
your time in port, understood?
They nod for his benefit, exchanging derogatory whispers
as they head up the ramp. Camera ADJUSTS to find a small
parking lot adjacent to the docks, where several cars are
just now arriving -- parents dropping off their high
school seniors, hugging them bon voyage.
<b> CLOSER ANGLE PARKING LOT
</b>
as SEAN ROBERTSON walks toward the ship with pal MILES
WOLFE. Sean's a tall, nice looking, somewhat serious guy;
Miles is shorter, athletic and more extroverted.
<b> MILES
</b> You're telling me this boat has a pool
with a three meter board?
<b> SEAN
</b> It's a ship and that's right. Plus a
disco, gym, game room and a lot more.
<b> MILES
</b> I think I'm gonna blow off New York
and just stay on this thing.
<b> MCCULLOCH
</b> You'll do no such thing, Mr. Wolfe...
Camera ADJUSTS to reveal McCulloch, holding his list,
checking off their names.
<b> MCCULLOCH
</b> Your itinerary has been carefully
planned and make no mistake, it will
be executed accordingly.
<b> MILES
</b> (under his breath)
Of course...wouldn't want to risk
enjoying this trip.
McCulloch gives him a frown. Sean steps up to him
tentatively.
<b> SEAN
</b> Which cabin is Rennie in, Mr.
McCulloch?
<b> MCCULLOCH
</b> Rennie's not coming.
He's devastated.
<b> SEAN
</b> But I thought...
<b> MCCULLOCH
</b> She changed her mind.
(eyeing list)
Let's see...Mr. Wolfe is in stateroom
one-eleven and you, Mr. Robertson, are
in two-twenty-five.
A booming VOICE from above interrupts them:
<b> ADMIRAL ROBERTSON (O.S.)
</b> Sean -- where the hell have you been?
We're already into early departure
protocol...
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
Standing on the upper deck is a no-nonsense, uniformed
Navy man, ADMIRAL ROBERTSON. The captain of the ship. And
Sean's father. Sean's sadness about Rennie's absence is
immediately replaced with anxiety.
<b> SEAN
</b> Be right up, Dad.
He and Miles head up the gangway, both boys giving
McCulloch one last glare.
<b> INT. '76 BMW 2002 - DAY
</b>
Behind the wheel is MISS COLLEEN VAN DEUSEN, thirties,
attractive, a progressive attitude. RENNIE WICKHAM sits
next to her -- she's seventeen, pretty, slightly
withdrawn. Rennie's dog TOBY, a border collie, rides in
the back seat.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> I'm glad you decided to come after
all.
<b> RENNIE
</b> Me too. But I'm not sure Uncle Charles
will be.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> You let me worry about him, okay?
(pause)
Personal experiences are what fuel the
minds of great writers, Rennie. You
made the right decision.
<b> RENNIE
</b> What about not-so-great writers?
Rennie smiles self-deprecatingly, Miss Van Deusen
grinning back. But Rennie's smiles are few and far
between, this one disappearing as she glances out the
window.
<b> RENNIE'S POINT OF VIEW (SECOND UNIT)
</b>
as the countless gallons of harbor and lake water spread
out before her, eery in the bog. A small ROWBOAT grazes
across it occupied by two indistinguishable people.
<b> RETURN TO SHOT
</b>
Rennie's eyes show a hidden terror. She quickly turns
away, shivering briefly. Miss Van Deusen notices. She
turns a corner, heading into the parking lot.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> Everything okay?
<b> RENNIE
</b> Just felt a little chill.
Rennie rubs her arms, faking coldness.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> Did you know that I'm giving up
teaching?
<b> RENNIE
</b> Really?
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> Since the school is closing anyway,
I'm going to write that novel I've
been threatening on everybody.
<b> RENNIE
</b> That's wonderful, Miss Van
Deusen...what's it about?
She parks the car, turning off the ignition.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> A senior class cruise to Manhattan,
laced with romance, adventure and
murder.
(beat)
Or a Gothic cook book. I haven't
decided which.
She's coaxed the smile out of Rennie again. Miss Van
Deusen pulls a small wrapped box from her glove
compartment, handing it to Rennie, who seems utterly
surprised.
<b> MISS VAN DEUSEN
</b> Go on, open it.
Rennie pops off the lid, revealing an antique ink
|
black
|
How many times does the word 'black' appear in the text?
| 1
|
lasers converge on the Attack Ship barely meters ahead,
the ROARING craft EXPLODING directly before him.
<b>INT.-WEST'S BUBBLE FIGHTER
</b>
(OVER) WEST SCREAMS as he shoots through the sudden conflagration of
flame and debris, everywhere and then gone, giving way to the
blackness of space and the starfield beyond.
<b> WEST
</b>
Show's over.
Below, the second Attack Ship ROARS past, lasers FIRING, locked in a
pinwheel battle with Jeb's Bubble Fighter.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
JEB'S BUBBLE FIGHTER banks, avoiding the high energy volley. Almost. A
laser BURST grazes his Bubble Fighter, the surface of his craft
sparking, suddenly scored with flames.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
The Attack ship is right behind him.
<b> JEB
</b>
Weapons are off line. Jettisoning main
drive core.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
The thruster core of Jeb's Bubble Fighter BLOWS off in a bolus of
flame, soaring back into the pursuit craft. The Raider EXPLODES.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
Controls are sparking. Displays flicker. (OVER) An ALARM sounds.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Warning. Failure in redundant drive systems.
JEB-POV. The surface of Mars is rushing up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact on in 90 seconds.
<b> JEB
</b>
Mars Control. . .
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
Jeb's ship is barreling toward the planet.
<b> JEB (OVER)
</b>
. . .this is Ranger One.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
<b> JEB (ON RADIO)
</b>
...Engines will not respond. Require
assistance. Repeat...
<b> BASE (ON RADIO)
</b>
Ranger One this is Grissom Base.
Rescue craft have been dispatched.
<b>EXT.- MARS MINING COLONY
</b>
Three small rescue craft race skyward.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 60 seconds.
Mars fills the view screen.
<b>INT.-WEST'S CRAFT
</b>
The rescue craft are speeding toward Jeb's fighter below.
<b> WEST
</b>
Grissom, this is Eagle One. Those Pugs
Will never reach him in time.
<b> BASE (ON RADIO)
</b>
Eagle one clear this frequency and
return to base.
DON takes a beat. Then he spins his chair towards Mars, begins working
the controls.
<b> WEST
</b>
This is Eagle One. I'm going after
him.
<b> BASE (OVER)
</b>
Negative Eagle one, your craft is not
equipped
West hits his thrusters.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
West's craft dives toward Jeb's ship and Mars below.
<b>INT.-JEB'S FIGHTER
</b>
Mars is coming up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 30 seconds.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Jeb, do you have navigational
thrusters?
<b> JEB
</b>
Don?
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
It's a yes or no question.
Mars fills the windscreen. Jeb checks his status display.
<b> JEB
</b>
Marginal. But in the green.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 15 seconds.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Head towards the canals.
<b> JEB
</b>
What are you doing?
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Saving your ass. Read towards the
canals. Now!
The canal streaked face of the Mars is all Jeb can see. He grabs his
throttle, engages his navigational thrusters and pulls.
<b>EXT.-JEB'S SHIP
</b>
A tiny directional thruster FIRES, angling Jeb's craft so that it
scrapes the surface of Mars and dives into a giant canal, rocky walls
rushing up fast.
<b>INT.-WEST'S SHIP
</b>
West is accelerating toward Jeb.
<b> BASE (OVER)
</b>
Major West, your ship is not equipped
for rescue. You are not authorized to
jeopardize this asset. That is
a direct order. Acknowledge!
West slams a switch, deactivating his radio.
<b> WEST
</b>
Never liked that station, anyway.
He BLASTS into the canal, walls rushing up on either side of him.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
Jeb's tiny craft is plunging toward the rocky crater floor below.
Overhead West's fighter appears, under full thrusters, roaring towards
the crater floor faster and at a sharper angle.
<b>INT.-3EB'S FIGHTER
</b>
The canal floor is rushing up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in five seconds.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
Don is blasting toward the canal floor, almost as if trying to beat
Jeb's ship to a fiery impact below.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Warning. Proximity alert.
<b> WEST
</b>
Jeb, I'm going to give you a little
kiss. Don't take it the wrong way.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
West angles his ship directly under Jeb.
<b>INT.-JEB'S FIGHTER
</b>
The expanding surface of Mars, visible beneath his feet, is suddenly
obscured by Don's fighter, swooping under his ship.
<b> JEB
</b>
Don, abort. Abort.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
Jeb's fighter is visible overhead.
West going up. Don angles the throttle.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
Don's ship, sandwiched between the surface of Mars and Jeb's fighter,
angles up and, like a cue ball hitting it's target, Knocks Jeb's ship
spinning toward the safety of space beyond. West's ship actually
scrapes the surface of the planet, sending up a plume of Martian dust.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
<b> JEB (OVER)
</b>
Does this mean we're going steady?
West pulls his throttle all the way back.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
West shoots up and out towards the dark of space.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
You weren't getting out of buying
those beers that easy.
The rescue craft converge on Jeb's ship as Don heads for base.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
CHAPTER 2: Mission Objectives
<b>-----------------------------
</b>
IMAGES-CLOSE. A Sallow field. (OVER) a heroic, stringy anthem.
<b> VO
</b>
Imagine an end to world hunger. What
if ample food and clean drinking water
were the birthright of all our
planet's children?
INSERT IMAGE-A dashing hero, wind in his hair. JOHN ROBINSON.
<b> VO
</b>
This man, professor John Robinson,
inventor of the faster than light
hyperdrive can make that timeless
dream a reality.
INSERT IMAGES -Airbrushed faces of a perfect family. THE ROBINSONS.
<b> VO
</b>
John Robinson and his family have been
extensively trained to take a ten year
journey across the galaxy in the
world's most advanced spacecraft,
The Jupiter.
INSERT IMAGE-A towering launch dome glints in the morning sun.
<b> VO
</b>
From a distant world, the Robinsons,
Will bring back a miracle...
INSERT IMAGE-A satellite photo of a planet. Closer on continental
patches, enhanced to show deposits of a diamond like powder.
<b> VO
</b>
Dimondium can turn even worthless sand
to fertile soil. Earth WILL be a
garden. What kind of - future can our
children look forward to?
INSERT IMAGES - Sun dappled, swaying wheat. (OVER) Music crescendos.
<b> V0
</b>
A future without hunger. A future
without suffering. Heaven on Earth.
INSERT CORPORATE LOGO.-A Coke bottle hurling towards the stars.
<b> V0
</b>
This mission sponsored by the US Army
and the Coca-Cola corporation.
<b>PULL BACK TO REVEAL
</b>
WILL ROBINSON (10) hides in a small space, watching the commercial on
a jury-rigged, palm-sized computer. He mimics the Naylrator.
<b> WILL
</b>
Coke. Saving the world for our
children.
(a beat)
Give me a hi-test break.
WILL-POV. Spying through the open slats of his biding place into...
<b>INT:-LIVING ROOM-AFTERNOON
</b>
Basic twenty first century modern. MAUREEN ROBINSON stands, talking
with a PRINCIPAL who in less than happy.
<b> PRINCIPAL
</b>
He hacked our main power grid to run
his experiment. The school was in
chaos. We didn't even have lights.
The room lights suddenly dim. The Principal flickers, revealed as a
holograph, her head now sitting on Schwartzenegger body.
Maureen LAUGHS, then realizes the Principal has no idea her image is
being distorted. Maureen begins moving about the room, surreptitiously
glancing behind couches, into cabinets.
<b> PRINCIPAL (OVER)
</b>
This is no laughing matter, Mrs.
Robinson. Will is terribly gifted. His
little time machines, though pure
fancy, are the products of a truly
brilliant mind.
The Principal's body has become Twiggy's. Now that of an ape. Maureen
pulls open a closet. Will sits inside. Grins.
<b> WILL
</b>
The changing shape of education.
<b> MAUREEN
</b>
No more monkey business.
Will shrugs, adjusts his deck. The Principal returns to normal.
<b> PRINCIPAL
</b>
The boy is starved for attention. Was
there no way his father could have
attended the science fair?
<b>EXT.-HOUSTON - DAY
</b>
Probably Austin and Dallas too. Texas has become a giant urban sprawl
spreading into Mexico and beyond. Immense industrial air purifiers
hang in
|
rushing
|
How many times does the word 'rushing' appear in the text?
| 3
|
At the door, Daniel hands the ski mask back to Maya.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> You might want to put this on.
<b> 3.
</b>
<b> MAYA
</b> You're not wearing one. Is he ever
getting out?
<b> DANIEL
</b> Never.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> INT. INTERROGATION ROOM - LATER
</b>
<b> SUPERIMPOSE: CIA BLACK SITE - UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
</b> Ammar, bruised from the beating, is restrained with ropes.
Maya stands a few feet behind Daniel, attentive, wary of
what is to come. This is her first interrogation and she is
on the verge of vomiting from the stench in the room. She
looks around at the sound-proofed walls, the puddles of water
on the floor.
<b> DANIEL
</b> Right now, this is about you coming
to terms with your situation. It's
you and me, bro. I want you to
understand that I know you, that
I've been studying you for a very
long time. I could have had you
killed Karachi. But I let you live
so you and I could talk.
<b> AMMAR
</b>
<b> (RESISTANT)
</b> You beat me when my hands are tied.
I won't talk to you.
<b> DANIEL
</b> Life isn't always fair, my friend.
Did you really think that when we
got you, I'd be a nice fucking guy?
<b> AMMAR
</b> You're a mid-level guy. You're a
garbage man in a corporation. Why
should I respect you?
<b> DANIEL
</b> And you're a money man. A paperboy!
Daniel paces around Ammar, anger rising.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> A disgrace to humanity!
<b> (MORE)
</b>
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> You and your uncle murdered three
thousand innocent people. I have
your name on a five-thousand dollar
transfer via Western Union to a 9/11
hijacker.
He leans into Ammar's ear. Uncomfortably close.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> And you got popped with 150 kilograms
of high explosives in your house!
<b> AND THEN YOU DARE QUESTION ME?!
</b> And then Daniel smiles, laughs. Mercurial.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> I'm just fucking with you.
Beat. He laughs again.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> I don't want to talk about 9/11.
What I want to focus on is the Saudi
group.
Daniel shows him a photo.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> That there is Hazem al-Kashmiri.
And I know this dude is up to some
serious shit, and what I want from
you is his Saudi email.
<b> (PAUSE)
</b> Feel free to jump in.
<b> (PAUSE)
</b> Ammar, bro, I know that you know
this dude, just give me his
email...and I will give you a blanket.
I will give you a blanket and some
solid food.
No response from Ammar. Daniel starts putting on his gloves.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> I know that you know him.
<b> AMMAR
</b> I told you before, I won't talk to
you.
<b> DANIEL
</b> Have it your way.
<b> (MORE)
</b>
<b> 5.
</b>
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> (to the masks)
Let's go.
It all happens in a flash: in one swift motion, Daniel pushes
Ammar to the floor, the guards pin his limbs, and Daniel
smothers Ammar's face with a towel.
Ammar thrashes. Daniel considers his next move.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b>
<b> (TO MAYA)
</b> Grab the bucket.
Maya follows Daniel's gesture to the corner of the room,
where there's an ICE CHEST filled with WATER and a PLASTIC
<b> PITCHER.
</b>
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> Put some water in it.
She dips the pitcher in the water, hands shaking.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> C'mon, let's go.
The stress and strain on her face is enormous as she brings
the bucket back to Daniel.
Daniel starts pouring the water on Ammar's face, which is
now covered by a towel. Ammar thrashes with rising panic.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> Hazem was a friend of Ramzi Yousef,
you guys met in Tunisia back in the
70s.
<b> AMMAR
</b> (gasping for breath)
I don't know, you asshole.
Maya shakes her head "no."
<b> MAYA
</b> That's not credible.
<b> AMMAR
</b>
<b> (SCREAMING)
</b> Why are you doing this to me?
<b> DANIEL
</b> You're a terrorist, that's why I'm
doing it to you.
<b> 6.
</b>
<b> AMMAR
</b> Fuck you.
Daniel pours water over the towel so it hits Ammar's nose.
<b> DANIEL
</b> I want emails of the rest of the
Saudi group. Give me emails of the
rest of the Saudi group! Give me
one email, and I will stop this!
Ammar doesn't speak. He can't.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> Who's in the Saudi group, and what's
the target? Where was the last time
you saw bin Laden? WHERE WAS THE
<b> LAST TIME YOU SAW BIN LADEN?
</b> Daniel throws the pitcher, rips the rag off Ammar's mouth:
and water spurts out - Ammar nearly drowned. He gasps for
air.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> This is what defeat looks like, bro.
Your jihad is over.
Daniel stands.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> Get him up.
The guards bring Ammar to his feet.
Daniel, shifting his persona yet again, touches Ammar's face
and speaks to him with the comforting tenor of a therapist.
<b> DANIEL (CONT'D)
</b> Try to understand the concept here.
I have time, you don't. I have other
things to do, you don't.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> It's cool that you're strong. I
respect it, I do. But in the end,
everybody breaks, bro. It's biology.
Dan and Maya exit.
They've learned nothing.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> EXT. ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - MORNING
</b>
<b> SUPERIMPOSE: ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
</b>
|
thrashes
|
How many times does the word 'thrashes' appear in the text?
| 1
|
some for their horses, and some for another flask of
wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed
minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took
horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above
them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course
which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach
her own home.
"They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the
night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to
him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as
the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could
scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen
the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But
I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville
passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind
him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at
my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd
and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for
there came a galloping across the moor, and the black
mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing
bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close
together, for a great fear was on them, but they still
followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone,
would have been right glad to have turned his horse's
head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last
upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour
and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the
head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the
moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles
and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them.
"The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you
may guess, than when they started. The most of them
would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest,
or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal.
Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of
those great stones, still to be seen there, which were
set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old.
The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there
in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen,
dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight
of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo
Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon
the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it
was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat,
there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped
like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal
eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing
tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it
turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the
three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still
screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that
very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were
but broken men for the rest of their days.
"Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound
which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever
since. If I have set it down it is because that which
is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but
hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many
of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which
have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we
shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence,
which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that
third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy
Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend
you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from
crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of
evil are exalted.
"[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John,
with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their
sister Elizabeth.]"
When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed
his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock
Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the
fire.
"Well?" said he.
"Do you not find it interesting?"
"To a collector of fairy tales."
Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket.
"Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This
is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short
account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville
which occurred a few days before that date."
My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our
visitor readjusted his glasses and began:
"The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose
name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate
for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over
the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville
Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of
character and extreme generosity had won the affection
and respect of all who had been brought into contact with
him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing
to find a case where the scion of an old county family
which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own
fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the
fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known,
made large sums of money in South African speculation.
More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns
against them, he realized his gains and returned to England
with them. It is only two years since he took up his
residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how
large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement
which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself
childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the
whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit
by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons
for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations
to local and county charities have been frequently
chronicled in these columns.
"The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles
cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the
inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of
those rumours to which local superstition has given rise.
There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to
imagine that death could be from any but natural causes.
Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to
have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind.
In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his
personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville
Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the
husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper.
Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends,
tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time
been impaired, and points especially to some affection
of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour,
breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression.
Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of
the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect.
"The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville
was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking
down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence
of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom.
On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention
of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore
to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual
for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in
the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At
twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open,
became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search
of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's
footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down
this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor.
There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some
little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and
it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered.
One fact which has not been explained is the statement
of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their
character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and
that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking
upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on
the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears
by his own confession to have been the worse for drink.
He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state
from what direction they came. No signs of violence were
to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though
the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible
facial distortion--so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at
first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient
who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom
which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from
cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by
the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing
organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a
verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is
well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost
importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the
Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly
interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not
finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been
whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been
difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is
understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville,
if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's
younger brother. The young man when last heard of was
in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a
view to informing him of his good fortune."
Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. "Those
are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir
Charles Baskerville."
"I must thank you," said Sherlock Holmes, "for calling my attention to a
case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed
some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied
by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige
the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This
article, you say, contains all the public facts?"
"It does."
"Then let me have the private ones." He leaned back, put his finger-tips
together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.
"In doing so," said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some
strong emotion, "I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone.
My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of
science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming
to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that
Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted
if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation.
For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather
less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with
you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank.
"The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other
are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of
Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter
Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of
education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the
chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests
in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information
from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together
discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot.
"Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that
Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had
taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much
so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce
him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to
you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung
his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of
his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence
constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me
whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange
creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put
to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with
excitement.
"I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three
weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had
descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw
his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an
expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just
time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black
calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he
that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been
and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared
to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the
evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he
had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to
you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes
some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was
convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his
excitement had no justification.
"It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His
heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived,
|
ever
|
How many times does the word 'ever' appear in the text?
| 3
|
</b>
Come on, you remember the union regulations,
Sal.
<b>
</b><b> SAL
</b>
(angrily) You know what your problem
is?
<b>
</b> Sal stops on one side of the street while Ray continues walking.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
(joking) I can think of a couple of
women who'd be happy to tell you.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. RAY'S CAR - DRIVEWAY - DAWN
</b>
Ray gets out and takes the last can of trash to the street as
Tim (in his 30s, wearing expensive clothes, slicked sharp hair,
extremely well groomed, looks like (and is) rich) and Ray's ex-wife
Mary Ann (in her 30s, pregnant with maternity clothes on, hair
hanging loose and rather unkempt) stand at their new car. Robbie
(15, ragged, tough look, long hair, partially groomed, worn clothes
(but looks in style), hip side pack with misc. objects in it.)
and Rachel (10, still dressed in Barbie color scheme clothing,
long unkempt hair in pigtails) are in the car.
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
Is it 8:30? We say that?
<b> MARY ANN
</b>
We said 8:00.
<b> RAY
</b>
(changing subject) Hey, this is one
safe looking vehicle you got yourself
here Tim. Congratulations.
<b>
</b><b> TIM
</b>
Thank You.
<b> RAY
</b>
8 o'clock huh?
<b> MARY ANN
</b>
Um-Huh. We'll be back by 9:30 on Sunday,
depending on the traffic.
<b>
</b> Robbie gets out of the car, carelessly banging the door on the
electrical pole. He is listening to his MP3 player at a loud
enough volume for the camera (10' away to hear).
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
There he is! You got a hug?
Robbie ignores him as if he was not there and heads up to the
front door of the house.
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
(continues) Confusing handshake? (joking)
Kick in the teeth? The door's locked.
(to Mary Ann): Still working on those
manners?
<b>
</b> Mary Ann nods "yes" as Rachel gets out of the car.
<b> RACHEL
</b>
Hello dad.
<b> RAY
</b>
Hello, Rachel!
Rachel gives him a hug and goes back to the car to retrieve her
bag. She struggles and Mary Ann, Tim, and Ray try to help which
results in a small bicker argument. (Ray, Tim, and Mary Ann add
lib.)
<b>
</b><b> ROBBIE
</b>
(during bickering, at the front door)
The door's locked.
<b>
</b><b> MARY ANN
</b>
(suit case in hand) I'll just get it
in the door.
<b>
</b><b> RACHEL
</b>
It's got rollers, just roll it.
<b> MARY ANN
</b>
Well we can't roll it up the stairs
now can we?
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
Really, I got it from here, okay?
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. RAY'S HOUSE - KITCHEN - DAWN
</b>
Mary Ann, Rachel, Ray, and Tim walk into the kitchen as Robbie
heads straight upstairs to his room. Mary Ann sees a car engine
next to the kitchen table and looks at Ray in disgust.
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
(to Tim) It's a 302 V8. It's gonna be
out of here next week.
<b>
</b> Mary Ann walks over to the refrigerator to check for the basic
food supplies. Ray gets frustrated that she is going through
HIS stuff.
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
(trying to get her to leave) You better
get going if you want to beat the traffic,
don't you think?
<b>
</b> Mary Ann ignores his comment as she opens the refrigerator which
is almost empty.
<b>
</b><b> MARY ANN
</b>
You're out of milk. (smells it) And
everything else.
<b>
</b> Shot of Rachel, intensely listening from the stairs.
<b> RAY
</b>
(mad) Would you close the door please?
Now that that's my refrigerator.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> TIM
</b>
I'm gonna go wait outside. (to Rachel)
I love you sweetheart (hugs her) see
you in a few days.
<b>
</b><b> RACHEL
</b>
Bye Tim.
<b> MARY ANN
</b>
I'd better get this upstairs.
Ray tries to further rid of her but she continues.
<b> RACHEL
</b>
(trying to get her bag form Mary Ann)
Mom, Mom!
<b>
</b><b> RAY
</b>
Mary Ann, let me get this.
<b> MARY ANN
</b>
I can get it.
<b> RAY
</b>
(rushes to close his bedroom door, as
if hiding something) Excuse me.
<b>
</b> Ray gets his door closed as Mary Ann goes into Rachel and Robbie's
room.
<b>
</b><b> INT. RAY'S HOUSE - RACHEL AND ROBBIE'S ROOM - DAWN
</b>
Mary Ann and Ray go into the room where Robbie is laying on his
bed listening to his MP3 player. Rachel sits down on her bed.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
|
refrigerator
|
How many times does the word 'refrigerator' appear in the text?
| 2
|
over these lawns, by that stream, along these tangled paths, many a
grand-dame of his had merrily strolled when a girl; vividly recalling
these things, Pierre deemed all that part of the earth a love-token; so
that his very horizon was to him as a memorial ring.
The monarchical world very generally imagines, that in demagoguical
America the sacred Past hath no fixed statues erected to it, but all
things irreverently seethe and boil in the vulgar caldron of an
everlasting uncrystalizing Present. This conceit would seem peculiarly
applicable to the social condition. With no chartered aristocracy, and
no law of entail, how can any family in America imposingly perpetuate
itself? Certainly that common saying among us, which declares, that be a
family conspicuous as it may, a single half-century shall see it abased;
that maxim undoubtedly holds true with the commonalty. In our cities
families rise and burst like bubbles in a vat. For indeed the democratic
element operates as a subtile acid among us; forever producing new
things by corroding the old; as in the south of France verdigris, the
primitive material of one kind of green paint, is produced by
grape-vinegar poured upon copper plates. Now in general nothing can be
more significant of decay than the idea of corrosion; yet on the other
hand, nothing can more vividly suggest luxuriance of life, than the idea
of green as a color; for green is the peculiar signet of all-fertile
Nature herself. Herein by apt analogy we behold the marked anomalousness
of America; whose character abroad, we need not be surprised, is
misconceived, when we consider how strangely she contradicts all prior
notions of human things; and how wonderfully to her, Death itself
becomes transmuted into Life. So that political institutions, which in
other lands seem above all things intensely artificial, with America
seem to possess the divine virtue of a natural law; for the most mighty
of nature's laws is this, that out of Death she brings Life.
Still, are there things in the visible world, over which ever-shifting
Nature hath not so unbounded a sway. The grass is annually changed; but
the limbs of the oak, for a long term of years, defy that annual decree.
And if in America the vast mass of families be as the blades of grass,
yet some few there are that stand as the oak; which, instead of
decaying, annually puts forth new branches; whereby Time, instead of
subtracting, is made to capitulate into a multiple virtue.
In this matter we will--not superciliously, but in fair spirit--compare
pedigrees with England, and strange as it may seem at the first blush,
not without some claim to equality. I dare say, that in this thing the
Peerage Book is a good statistical standard whereby to judge her; since
the compilers of that work can not be entirely insensible on whose
patronage they most rely; and the common intelligence of our own people
shall suffice to judge us. But the magnificence of names must not
mislead us as to the humility of things. For as the breath in all our
lungs is hereditary, and my present breath at this moment, is further
descended than the body of the present High Priest of the Jews, so far
as he can assuredly trace it; so mere names, which are also but air, do
likewise revel in this endless descendedness. But if Richmond, and St.
Albans, and Grafton, and Portland, and Buccleugh, be names almost old as
England herself, the present Dukes of those names stop in their own
genuine pedigrees at Charles II., and there find no very fine fountain;
since what we would deem the least glorious parentage under the sun, is
precisely the parentage of a Buccleugh, for example; whose ancestress
could not well avoid being a mother, it is true, but had accidentally
omitted the preliminary rite. Yet a king was the sire. Then only so much
the worse; for if it be small insult to be struck by a pauper, but
mortal offense to receive a blow from a gentleman, then of all things
the bye-blows of kings must be signally unflattering. In England the
Peerage is kept alive by incessant restorations and creations. One man,
George III., manufactured five hundred and twenty-two peers. An earldom,
in abeyance for five centuries, has suddenly been assumed by some
commoner, to whom it had not so much descended, as through the art of
the lawyers been made flexibly to bend in that direction. For not Thames
is so sinuous in his natural course, not the Bridgewater Canal more
artificially conducted, than blood in the veins of that winding or
manufactured nobility. Perishable as stubble, and fungous as the fungi,
those grafted families successively live and die on the eternal soil of
a name. In England this day, twenty-five hundred peerages are extinct;
but the names survive. So that the empty air of a name is more
endurable than a man, or than dynasties of men; the air fills man's
lungs and puts life into a man, but man fills not the air, nor puts life
into that.
All honor to the names then, and all courtesy to the men; but if St.
Albans tell me he is all-honorable and all-eternal, I must still
politely refer him to Nell Gwynne.
Beyond Charles II. very few indeed--hardly worthy of note--are the
present titled English families which can trace any thing like a direct
unvitiated blood-descent from the thief knights of the Norman. Beyond
Charles II. their direct genealogies seem vain as though some Jew
clothesman, with a tea-canister on his head, turned over the first
chapter of St. Matthew to make out his unmingled participation in the
blood of King Saul, who had long died ere the career of the Cæsar began.
Now, not preliminarily to enlarge upon the fact that, while in England
an immense mass of state-masonry is brought to bear as a buttress in
upholding the hereditary existence of certain houses, while with us
nothing of that kind can possibly be admitted; and to omit all mention
of the hundreds of unobtrusive families in New England who,
nevertheless, might easily trace their uninterrupted English lineage to
a time before Charles the Blade: not to speak of the old and
oriental-like English planter families of Virginia and the South; the
Randolphs for example, one of whose ancestors, in King James' time,
married Pocahontas the Indian Princess, and in whose blood therefore an
underived aboriginal royalty was flowing over two hundred years ago;
consider those most ancient and magnificent Dutch Manors at the North,
whose perches are miles--whose meadows overspread adjacent
countries--and whose haughty rent-deeds are held by their thousand
farmer tenants, so long as grass grows and water runs; which hints of a
surprising eternity for a deed, and seem to make lawyer's ink
unobliterable as the sea. Some of those manors are two centuries old;
and their present patrons or lords will show you stakes and stones on
their estates put there--the stones at least--before Nell Gwynne the
Duke-mother was born, and genealogies which, like their own river,
Hudson, flow somewhat farther and straighter than the Serpentine
brooklet in Hyde Park.
These far-descended Dutch meadows lie steeped in a Hindooish haze; an
eastern patriarchalness sways its mild crook over pastures, whose tenant
flocks shall there feed, long as their own grass grows, long as their
own water shall run. Such estates seem to defy Time's tooth, and by
conditions which take hold of the indestructible earth seem to
contemporize their fee-simples with eternity. Unimaginable audacity of a
worm that but crawls through the soil he so imperially claims!
In midland counties of England they boast of old oaken dining-halls
where three hundred men-at-arms could exercise of a rainy afternoon, in
the reign of the Plantagenets. But our lords, the Patroons, appeal not
to the past, but they point to the present. One will show you that the
public census of a county is but part of the roll of his tenants. Ranges
of mountains, high as Ben Nevis or Snowdon, are their walls; and regular
armies, with staffs of officers, crossing rivers with artillery, and
marching through primeval woods, and threading vast rocky defiles, have
been sent out to distrain upon three thousand farmer-tenants of one
landlord, at a blow. A fact most suggestive two ways; both whereof shall
be nameless here.
But whatever one may think of the existence of such mighty lordships in
the heart of a republic, and however we may wonder at their thus
surviving, like Indian mounds, the Revolutionary flood; yet survive and
exist they do, and are now owned by their present proprietors, by as
good nominal title as any peasant owns his father's old hat, or any duke
his great-uncle's old coronet.
For all this, then, we shall not err very widely if we humbly conceive,
that--should she choose to glorify herself in that inconsiderable
way--our America will make out a good general case with England in this
short little matter of large estates, and long pedigrees--pedigrees I
mean, wherein is no flaw.
IV.
In general terms we have been thus decided in asserting the great
genealogical and real-estate dignity of some families in America,
because in so doing we poetically establish the richly aristocratic
condition of Master Pierre Glendinning, for whom we have before claimed
some special family distinction. And to the observant reader the sequel
will not fail to show, how important is this circumstance, considered
with reference to the singularly developed character and most singular
life-career of our hero. Nor will any man dream that the last chapter
was merely intended for a foolish bravado, and not with a solid purpose
in view.
Now Pierre stands on this noble pedestal; we shall see if he keeps that
fine footing; we shall see if Fate hath not just a little bit of a small
word or two to say in this world. But it is not laid down here that the
Glendinnings dated back beyond Pharaoh, or the deeds of Saddle-Meadows
to the Three Magi in the Gospels. Nevertheless, those deeds, as before
hinted, did indeed date back to three kings--Indian kings--only so much
the finer for that.
But if Pierre did not date back to the Pharaohs, and if the English
farmer Hampdens were somewhat the seniors of even the oldest
Glendinning; and if some American manors boasted a few additional years
and square miles over his, yet think you that it is at all possible,
that a youth of nineteen should--merely by way of trial of the
thing--strew his ancestral kitchen hearth-stone with wheat in the stalk,
and there standing in the chimney thresh out that grain with a flail,
whose aerial evolutions had free play among all that masonry; were it
not impossible for such a flailer so to thresh wheat in his own
ancestral kitchen chimney without feeling just a little twinge or two of
what one might call family pride? I should say not.
Or how think you it would be with this youthful Pierre, if every day
descending to breakfast, he caught sight of an old tattered British
banner or two, hanging over an arched window in his hall; and those
banners captured by his grandfather, the general, in fair fight? Or how
think you it would be if every time he heard the band of the military
company of the village, he should distinctly recognize the peculiar tap
of a British kettle-drum also captured by his grandfather in fair fight,
and afterwards suitably inscribed on the brass and bestowed upon the
Saddle-Meadows Artillery Corps? Or how think you it would be, if
sometimes of a mild meditative Fourth of July morning in the country, he
carried out with him into the garden by way of ceremonial cane, a long,
majestic, silver-tipped staff, a Major-General's baton, once wielded on
the plume-nodding and musket-flashing review by the same grandfather
several times here-in-before mentioned? I should say that considering
Pierre was quite young and very unphilosophical as yet, and withal
rather high-blooded; and sometimes read the History of the Revolutionary
War, and possessed a mother who very frequently made remote social
allusions to the epaulettes of the Major-General his grandfather;--I
should say that upon all of these occasions, the way it must have been
with him, was a very proud, elated sort of way. And if this seem but too
fond and foolish in Pierre; and if you tell me that this sort of thing
in him showed him no sterling Democrat, and that a truly noble man
should never brag of any arm but his own; then I beg you to consider
again that this Pierre was but a youngster as yet. And believe me you
will pronounce Pierre a thoroughgoing Democrat in time; perhaps a little
too Radical altogether to your fancy.
In conclusion, do not blame me if I here make repetition, and do
verbally quote my own words in saying that _it had been the choice fate
of Pierre to have been born and bred in the country_. For to a noble
American youth this indeed--more than in any other land--this indeed is
a most rare and choice lot. For it is to be observed, that while in
other countries, the finest families boast of the country as their home;
the more prominent among us, proudly cite the city as their seat. Too
often the American that himself makes his fortune, builds him a great
metropolitan house, in the most metropolitan street of the most
metropolitan town. Whereas a European of the same sort would thereupon
migrate into the country. That herein the European hath the better of
it, no poet, no philosopher, and no aristocrat will deny. For the
country is not only the most poetical and philosophical, but it is the
most aristocratic part of this earth, for it is the most venerable, and
numerous bards have ennobled it by many fine titles. Whereas the town is
the more plebeian portion: which, besides many other things, is plainly
evinced by the dirty unwashed face perpetually worn by the town; but the
country, like any Queen, is ever attended by scrupulous lady's maids in
the guise of the seasons, and the town hath but one dress of brick
turned up with stone; but the country hath a brave dress for every week
in the year; sometimes she changes her dress twenty-four times in the
twenty-four hours; and the country weareth her sun by day as a diamond
on a Queen's brow; and the stars by night as necklaces of gold beads;
whereas the town's sun is smoky paste, and no diamond, and the town's
stars are pinchbeck and not gold.
In the country then Nature planted our Pierre; because Nature intended a
rare and original development in Pierre. Never mind if hereby she proved
ambiguous to him in the end; nevertheless, in the beginning she did
bravely. She blew her wind-clarion from the blue hills, and Pierre
neighed out lyrical thoughts, as at the trumpet-blast, a war-horse paws
himself into a lyric of foam. She whispered through her deep groves at
eve, and gentle whispers of humanness, and sweet whispers of love, ran
through Pierre's thought-veins, musical as water over pebbles. She
lifted her spangled crest of a thickly-starred night, and forth at that
glimpse of their divine Captain and Lord, ten thousand mailed thoughts
of heroicness started up in Pierre's soul, and glared round for some
insulted good cause to defend.
So the country was a glorious benediction to young Pierre; we shall see
if that blessing pass from him as did the divine blessing from the
Hebrews; we shall yet see again, I say, whether Fate hath not just a
little bit of a word or two to say in this world; we shall see whether
this wee little bit scrap of latinity be very far out of the way--_Nemo
contra Deum nisi Deus ipse._
V.
"Sister Mary," said Pierre, returned from his sunrise stroll, and
tapping at his mother's chamber door:--"do you know, sister Mary, that
the trees which have been up all night, are all abroad again this
morning before you?--Do you not smell something like coffee, my sister?"
A light step moved from within toward the door; which opened, showing
Mrs. Glendinning, in a resplendently cheerful morning robe, and holding
a gay wide ribbon in her hand.
"Good morning, madam," said Pierre, slowly, and with a bow, whose
genuine and spontaneous reverence amusingly contrasted with the sportive
manner that had preceded it. For thus sweetly and religiously was the
familiarity of his affections bottomed on the profoundest filial
respect.
"Good afternoon to you, Pierre, for I suppose it is afternoon. But come,
you shall finish my toilette;--here, brother--" reaching the
ribbon--"now acquit yourself bravely--" and seating herself away from
the glass, she awaited the good offices of Pierre.
"First Lady in waiting to the Dowager Duchess Glendinning," laughed
Pierre, as bowing over before his mother, he gracefully passed the
ribbon round her neck, simply crossing the ends in front.
"Well, what is to hold it there, Pierre?"
"I am going to try and tack it with a kiss, sister,--there!--oh, what a
pity that sort of fastening won't always hold!--where's the cameo with
the fawns, I gave you last night?--Ah! on the slab--you were going to
wear it then?--Thank you, my considerate and most politic
sister--there!--but stop--here's a ringlet gone romping--so now, dear
sister, give that Assyrian toss to your head."
The haughtily happy mother rose to her feet, and as she stood before the
mirror to criticize her son's adornings, Pierre, noticing the straggling
tie of her slipper, knelt down and secured it. "And now for the urn," he
cried, "madam!" and with a humorous gallantry, offering his arm to his
mother, the pair descended to breakfast.
With Mrs. Glendinning it was one of those spontaneous maxims, which
women sometimes act upon without ever thinking of, never to appear in
the presence of her son in any dishabille that was not eminently
becoming. Her own independent observation of things, had revealed to her
many very common maxims, which often become operatively lifeless from a
vicarious reception of them. She was vividly aware how immense was that
influence, which, even in the closest ties of the heart, the merest
appearances make upon the mind. And as in the admiring love and
graceful
|
consider
|
How many times does the word 'consider' appear in the text?
| 2
|
a just
reliance on me own powers. But Phinny is a different sort of man.
Phinny can stick to a desk from twelve to seven, and wish to come
back again after dinner. He's had money left him, too, and 'd like to
spend some of it on an English borough."
"You never can quite trust him," said Bonteen. Now Mr. Bonteen had
never loved Mr. Finn.
"At any rate we'll try him again," said Barrington Erle, making a
little note to that effect. And they did try him again.
Phineas Finn, when last seen by the public, was departing from
parliamentary life in London to the enjoyment of a modest place
under Government in his own country, with something of a shattered
ambition. After various turmoils he had achieved a competency, and
had married the girl of his heart. But now his wife was dead, and he
was again alone in the world. One of his friends had declared that
money had been left to him. That was true, but the money had not been
much. Phineas Finn had lost his father as well as his wife, and had
inherited about four thousand pounds. He was not at this time much
over thirty; and it must be acknowledged in regard to him that, since
the day on which he had accepted place and retired from London, his
very soul had sighed for the lost glories of Westminster and Downing
Street.
There are certain modes of life which, if once adopted, make
contentment in any other circumstances almost an impossibility. In
old age a man may retire without repining, though it is often beyond
the power even of the old man to do so; but in youth, with all the
faculties still perfect, with the body still strong, with the hopes
still buoyant, such a change as that which had been made by Phineas
Finn was more than he, or than most men, could bear with equanimity.
He had revelled in the gas-light, and could not lie quiet on a sunny
bank. To the palate accustomed to high cookery, bread and milk is
almost painfully insipid. When Phineas Finn found himself discharging
in Dublin the routine duties of his office,--as to which there was
no public comment, no feeling that such duties were done in the face
of the country,--he became sick at heart and discontented. Like
the warhorse out at grass he remembered the sound of the battle
and the noise of trumpets. After five years spent in the heat and
full excitement of London society, life in Ireland was tame to
him, and cold, and dull. He did not analyse the difference between
metropolitan and quasi-metropolitan manners; but he found that men
and women in Dublin were different from those to whom he had been
accustomed in London. He had lived among lords, and the sons and
daughters of lords; and though the official secretaries and assistant
commissioners among whom his lot now threw him were for the most part
clever fellows, fond of society, and perhaps more than his equals in
the kind of conversation which he found to be prevalent, still they
were not the same as the men he had left behind him,--men alive with
the excitement of parliamentary life in London. When in London he had
often told himself that he was sick of it, and that he would better
love some country quiet life. Now Dublin was his Tibur, and the
fickle one found that he could not be happy unless he were back again
at Rome. When, therefore, he received the following letter from
his friend, Barrington Erle, he neighed like the old warhorse, and
already found himself shouting "Ha, ha," among the trumpets.
---- Street, 9th July, 18--.
MY DEAR FINN,
Although you are not now immediately concerned in such
trifling matters you have no doubt heard that we are
all to be sent back at once to our constituents, and
that there will be a general election about the end of
September. We are sure that we shall have such a majority
as we never had before; but we are determined to make it
as strong as possible, and to get in all the good men that
are to be had. Have you a mind to try again? After all,
there is nothing like it.
Perhaps you may have some Irish seat in your eye for
which you would be safe. To tell the truth we know very
little of the Irish seats--not so much as, I think,
we ought to do. But if you are not so lucky I would
suggest Tankerville in Durham. Of course there would
be a contest, and a little money will be wanted; but the
money would not be much. Browborough has sat for the place
now for three Parliaments, and seems to think it all his
own. I am told that nothing could be easier than to turn
him out. You will remember the man--a great, hulking,
heavy, speechless fellow, who always used to sit just over
Lord Macaw's shoulder. I have made inquiry, and I am told
that he must walk if anybody would go down who could talk
to the colliers every night for a week or so. It would
just be the work for you. Of course, you should have all
the assistance we could give you, and Molescroft would put
you into the hands of an agent who wouldn't spend money
for you. £500 would do it all.
I am very sorry to hear of your great loss, as also was
Lady Laura, who, as you are aware, is still abroad with
her father. We have all thought that the loneliness of
your present life might perhaps make you willing to come
back among us. I write instead of Ratler, because I
am helping him in the Northern Counties. But you will
understand all about that.
Yours, ever faithfully,
BARRINGTON ERLE.
Of course Tankerville has been dirty. Browborough has
spent a fortune there. But I do not think that that need
dishearten you. You will go there with clean hands. It
must be understood that there shall not be as much as a
glass of beer. I am told that the fellows won't vote for
Browborough unless he spends money, and I fancy he will be
afraid to do it heavily after all that has come and gone.
If he does you'll have him out on a petition. Let us have
an answer as soon as possible.
He at once resolved that he would go over and see; but, before he
replied to Erle's letter, he walked half-a-dozen times the length
of the pier at Kingston meditating on his answer. He had no one
belonging to him. He had been deprived of his young bride, and left
desolate. He could ruin no one but himself. Where could there be a
man in all the world who had a more perfect right to play a trick
with his own prospects? If he threw up his place and spent all his
money, who could blame him? Nevertheless, he did tell himself that,
when he should have thrown up his place and spent all his money,
there would remain to him his own self to be disposed of in a manner
that might be very awkward to him. A man owes it to his country, to
his friends, even to his acquaintance, that he shall not be known to
be going about wanting a dinner, with never a coin in his pocket. It
is very well for a man to boast that he is lord of himself, and that
having no ties he may do as he pleases with that possession. But it
is a possession of which, unfortunately, he cannot rid himself when
he finds that there is nothing advantageous to be done with it.
Doubtless there is a way of riddance. There is the bare bodkin. Or a
man may fall overboard between Holyhead and Kingston in the dark, and
may do it in such a cunning fashion that his friends shall think that
it was an accident. But against these modes of riddance there is a
canon set, which some men still fear to disobey.
The thing that he was asked to do was perilous. Standing in his
present niche of vantage he was at least safe. And added to his
safety there were material comforts. He had more than enough for his
wants. His work was light; he lived among men and women with whom he
was popular. The very fact of his past parliamentary life had caused
him to be regarded as a man of some note among the notables of the
Irish capital. Lord Lieutenants were gracious to him, and the wives
of judges smiled upon him at their tables. He was encouraged to talk
of those wars of the gods at which he had been present, and was so
treated as to make him feel that he was somebody in the world of
Dublin. Now he was invited to give all this up; and for what?
He answered that question to himself with enthusiastic eloquence.
The reward offered to him was the thing which in all the world he
liked best. It was suggested to him that he should again have within
his reach that parliamentary renown which had once been the very
breath of his nostrils. We all know those arguments and quotations,
antagonistic to prudence, with which a man fortifies himself in
rashness. "None but the brave deserve the fair." "Where there's a
will there's a way." "Nothing venture nothing have." "The sword is
to him who can use it." "Fortune favours the bold." But on the other
side there is just as much to be said. "A bird in the hand is worth
two in the bush." "Look before you leap." "Thrust not out your hand
further than you can draw it back again." All which maxims of life
Phineas Finn revolved within his own heart, if not carefully, at
least frequently, as he walked up and down the long pier of Kingston
Harbour.
But what matter such revolvings? A man placed as was our Phineas
always does that which most pleases him at the moment, being but poor
at argument if he cannot carry the weight to that side which best
satisfies his own feelings. Had not his success been very great when
he before made the attempt? Was he not well aware at every moment
of his life that, after having so thoroughly learned his lesson in
London, he was throwing away his hours amidst his present pursuits
in Dublin? Did he not owe himself to his country? And then, again,
what might not London do for him? Men who had begun as he begun had
lived to rule over Cabinets, and to sway the Empire. He had been
happy for a short twelvemonth with his young bride,--for a short
twelvemonth,--and then she had been taken from him. Had she been
spared to him he would never have longed for more than Fate had given
him. He would never have sighed again for the glories of Westminster
had his Mary not gone from him. Now he was alone in the world; and,
though he could look forward to possible and not improbable events
which would make that future disposition of himself a most difficult
question for him, still he would dare to try.
As the first result of Erle's letter Phineas was over in London early
in August. If he went on with this matter, he must, of course, resign
the office for holding which he was now paid a thousand a year. He
could retain that as long as he chose to earn the money, but the
earning of it would not be compatible with a seat in Parliament. He
had a few thousand pounds with which he could pay for the contest at
Tankerville, for the consequent petition which had been so generously
suggested to him, and maintain himself in London for a session or two
should he be so fortunate as to carry his election. Then he would be
penniless, with the world before him as a closed oyster to be again
opened, and he knew,--no one better,--that this oyster becomes harder
and harder in the opening as the man who has to open it becomes
older. It is an oyster that will close to again with a snap, after
you have got your knife well into it, if you withdraw your point but
for a moment. He had had a rough tussle with the oyster already, and
had reached the fish within the shell. Nevertheless, the oyster which
he had got was not the oyster which he wanted. So he told himself
now, and here had come to him the chance of trying again.
Early in August he went over to England, saw Mr. Molescroft, and
made his first visit to Tankerville. He did not like the look of
Tankerville; but nevertheless he resigned his place before the
month was over. That was the one great step, or rather the leap in
the dark,--and that he took. Things had been so arranged that the
election at Tankerville was to take place on the 20th of October.
When the dissolution had been notified to all the world by Mr.
Daubeny an earlier day was suggested; but Mr. Daubeny saw reasons for
postponing it for a fortnight. Mr. Daubeny's enemies were again very
ferocious. It was all a trick. Mr. Daubeny had no right to continue
Prime Minister a day after the decided expression of opinion as to
unfitness which had been pronounced by the House of Commons. Men
were waxing very wrath. Nevertheless, so much power remained in Mr.
Daubeny's hand, and the election was delayed. That for Tankerville
would not be held till the 20th of October. The whole House could not
be chosen till the end of the month,--hardly by that time--and yet
there was to be an autumn Session. The Ratlers and Bonteens were at
any rate clear about the autumn Session. It was absolutely impossible
that Mr. Daubeny should be allowed to remain in power over Christmas,
and up to February.
Mr. Molescroft, whom Phineas saw in London, was not a comfortable
counsellor. "So you are going down to Tankerville?" he said.
"They seem to think I might as well try."
"Quite right;--quite right. Somebody ought to try it, no doubt. It
would be a disgrace to the whole party if Browborough were allowed
to walk over. There isn't a borough in England more sure to return a
Liberal than Tankerville if left to itself. And yet that lump of a
legislator has sat there as a Tory for the last dozen years by dint
of money and brass."
"You think we can unseat him?"
"I don't say that. He hasn't come to the end of his money, and as to
his brass that is positively without end."
"But surely he'll have some fear of consequences after what has been
done?"
"None in the least. What has been done? Can you name a single
Parliamentary aspirant who has been made to suffer?"
"They have suffered in character," said Phineas. "I should not like
to have the things said of me that have been said of them."
"I don't know a man of them who stands in a worse position among his
own friends than he occupied before. And men of that sort don't want
a good position among their enemies. They know they're safe. When the
seat is in dispute everybody is savage enough; but when it is merely
a question of punishing a man, what is the use of being savage? Who
knows whose turn it may be next?"
"He'll play the old game, then?"
"Of course he'll play the old game," said Mr. Molescroft. "He doesn't
know any other game. All the purists in England wouldn't teach him to
think that a poor man ought not to sell his vote, and that a rich man
oughtn't to buy it. You mean to go in for purity?"
"Certainly I do."
"Browborough will think just as badly of you as you will of him.
He'll hate you because he'll think you are trying to rob him of what
he has honestly bought; but he'll hate you quite as much because
you try to rob the borough. He'd tell you if you asked him that he
doesn't want his seat for nothing, any more than he wants his house
or his carriage-horses for nothing. To him you'll be a mean, low
interloper. But you won't care about that."
"Not in the least, if I can get the seat."
"But I'm afraid you won't. He will be elected. You'll petition. He'll
lose his seat. There will be a commission. And then the borough will
be disfranchised. It's a fine career, but expensive; and then there
is no reward beyond the self-satisfaction arising from a good action.
However, Ruddles will do the best he can for you, and it certainly
is possible that you may creep through." This was very disheartening,
but Barrington Erle assured our hero that such was Mr. Molescroft's
usual way with candidates, and that it really meant little or
nothing. At any rate, Phineas Finn was pledged to stand.
CHAPTER II.
HARRINGTON HALL.
Phineas, on his first arrival in London, found a few of his old
friends, men who were still delayed by business though the Session
was over. He arrived on the 10th of August, which may be considered
as the great day of the annual exodus, and he remembered how he,
too, in former times had gone to Scotland to shoot grouse, and what
he had done there besides shooting. He had been a welcome guest at
Loughlinter, the magnificent seat of Mr. Kennedy, and indeed there
had been that between him and Mr. Kennedy which ought to make him a
welcome guest there still. But of Mr. Kennedy he had heard nothing
directly since he had left London. From Mr. Kennedy's wife, Lady
Laura, who had been his great friend, he had heard occasionally; but
she was separated from her husband, and was living abroad with her
father, the Earl of Brentford. Has it not been written in a former
book how this Lady Laura had been unhappy in her marriage, having
wedded herself to a man whom she had never loved, because he was rich
and powerful, and how this very Phineas had asked her to be his bride
after she had accepted the rich man's hand? Thence had come great
trouble, but nevertheless there had been that between Mr. Kennedy and
our hero which made Phineas feel that he ought still to be welcomed
as a guest should he show himself at the door of Loughlinter Castle.
The idea came upon him simply because he found that almost every man
for whom he inquired had just started, or was just starting, for the
North; and he would have liked to go where others went. He asked a
few questions as to Mr. Kennedy from Barrington Erle and others, who
had known him, and was told that the man now lived quite alone. He
still kept his seat in Parliament, but had hardly appeared during
the last Session, and it was thought that he would not come forward
again. Of his life
|
father
|
How many times does the word 'father' appear in the text?
| 2
|
Boos as we FIND...
JIMMY LEACH, 18, grumge look, long hair. He sits with a clique
of white trashy types, or at least what passes for such at Blue
Bay School. Jimmy appears a bit more genuine, as does...
SUZlE TOLLER, a boyish brunette, seated nearby, but with just
enough space between her and everyone else to mark her as a
loner. She studies Sam Lombardo with a dark, sullen stare.
<b> SAM
</b> Thank you, Jimmy.
<b> JIMMY
</b> Hey, man, at least in study hail I could
meditate.
<b> KIRK (O.S.)
</b> He means masturbate...
This remark is greeted by a chorus of laughter as we FIND...
KIRK, one of the golden boys, seated with Kelly and Nicole.
<b> SAM
</b> Something Kirk with which I'm sure you
have hands-on experience.
Loud laughter. Sam quiets them again, then turns to the
blackboard, where he begins to write, in big letters -- S-E-X.
The kids start to cheer.
Sam writes another word -- C-R-I-M-E-S.
The cheering fades into silence.
<b> SAM (CONT'D)
</b> We've all heard the words, date rape,
sexual harassment. We've talked about
some of these things in this room.
(beat)
Our speakers today head up the Blue Bay
Police Sex Crimes Unit -- Detectives Ray
Duquette and Gloria Perez.
(beat)
They're here to give you what we hope
will be a fresh perspective on these
subjects, and to answer any questions
you night have.
Sam turns to the wings, his hand out to welcome the visitors...
RAY DUQUETTE, mid-thirties, with the lanky build of a light
heavyweight, walks out onto the stage. He's dressed in a dark
suit, dark hair combed straight back above steel-rimmed glasses.
GLORIA PEREZ walks at his side. She's a good six inches shorter
than Ray, with a sweet face. Attractive but no stunner.
About five kids applaud. Ray takes the podium.
<b> RAY
</b> Thank you for having us. We'll each
talk for ten or fifteen minutes, then
open it up to your questions...
<b> IN THE AUDIENCE
</b>
Suzie Toller suddenly gets to her feet. As she passes behind
Jimmy, we HEAR her VOICE, beneath her breath.
<b> SUZIE
</b> I'm not going to listen to this
jack-off.
She marches down the aisle and bangs out the rear door..
Ray pauses, a dark look on his face, then goes on...
<b> RAY
</b> Let's begin with a question. What is a
sex crime?
A moment.
<b> JIMMY
</b> Not getting any.
This draws a few laughs from the kids, a couple of thin smiles
from Sam and Gloria. And none at all from Ray Duquette.
<b> EXT. AUDITORIUM - DAY
</b>
The kids change classes. Sam, Ray and Gloria CROSS the grass.
The kids swarm past. A pair of girls flash by.
<b> CAROLE
</b> Have a nice weekend, Mr. Lombardo.
<b> SAM
</b>
Hey, Carole, you too. And be good.
<b> CAROLE
</b> (beneath a pouty look)
I hate to be good.
The three adults ENTER an old wooden building.
<b> INT. BUILDING - DAY
</b>
<b> SAM
</b> This is one of the original buildings.
We have the offices here now.
The walls are paneled in wood, decorated with framed photographs.
Gloria stops before one of the photos.
<b> ANGLE ON PHOTOGRAPH
</b>
An old black-and-white, with that sepia caste harkening back to
another age.
A handsome young man of perhaps 14 stands at the helm of a boat
under sail. His hair is swept back, his eyes fixed upon an
unseen horizon. There is something in this boy's pose, in the
line of his jaw, in the clarity of his gaze, as if what he has
fixed upon is the future itself.
<b> GLORIA
</b> Anybody in particular?
When no one answers, she turns to find Sam at her side. He
stares at the picture, then looks at Gloria.
<b> SAM
</b> Sam Lombardo. The first. Class of
'Forty-Two
(beat)
My father.
Gloria does a slow double-take, looking from Sam to the photo and
back again.
<b> VOICE (0.S.)
</b> Can't seem to get rid of the Lombardos
around here.
Sam and the detectives turn as a professorial-looking guy in a
baggy brown suit (ART MADDOX) arrives on the scene.
<b> SAM
</b> Art. Say hello to Detectives Perez and
Duquette.
(to the cops)
Art Maddox. A fellow guidance counselor.
Art and the detectives shake hands.
<b> ART
</b> So, did you set 'em all straight on the
ugly facts of life?
<b> SAM
</b> I have the feeling, they got it down
already. They're a step ahead of us,
Artie.
Gloria seems to find this amusing. Ray stands at her side, looks
at Sam. Sam feels it, makes eye contact with Ray -- a beat -- at
which point, Ray puts a hand on Gloria's back.
<b> RAY
</b> I've got that two o'clock in town.
<b> GLORIA
</b> (nodding)
Back to the land of grownups.
The detectives shake hands once more with San and Art.
<b> SAM
</b> (to Gloria)
If old pictures interest you, come back
some time, there's quite a collection
down in the pagoda. I'll see you get a
proper tour.
<b> GLORIA
</b> (smiling)
I'd like that.
Ray opens a door for her. The detectives pass through it.
Art claps Sam on the shoulder, then walks off down the hallway.
Sam remains near the doors, watching as...
<b> ANGLE ON THE DRIVE LEADING TO THE SCHOOL
</b>
Ray and Gloria walk past half a dozen expensive cars -- Range
Rovers, Beamers and Mercedes, to a plain, white Ford Taurus,
which they get into and drive away.
<b> EXT. BLUE BAY SCHOOL - LATER
</b>
Cheerleaders perform a sensual dance on the porch of a wooden
pagoda. A rugby team runs drills on the grass, as out on the
bay, six tiny racing sloops tack toward the docks.
<b> ANGLE ON DOCKS
</b>
As the sloops enter the narrow channel between the slips one
student from each boat jumps onto the dock where he or she sets
about tying off the boat.
Sam is on one of the boats. Jimmy Leach is at the rudder.
<b> SAM
</b> (loud enough to be heard
by his class)
Okay, you guys. Good work. Now coil
those dock lines and I'll see you all on
Monday.
He watches his class clamber up the docks. His eye falls upon
the pagoda, the dancing cheerleaders -- Kelly Van Ryan in
work-out tights -- bare arms reaching for the sky.
<b> EXT. SCHOOL DOCKS - SAM & JIMMY - LATER
</b>
hosing down boats, stowing sails. They look up as...
A HUGE POWER BOAT glides past. The docks rock in its wake.
<b> JIMMY
</b> All right. I could party on that.
Sam just laughs at him.
<b> SAM
</b> That's about all it's good for.
(beat)
That's the one to have.
He points to a beautiful triple-masted schooner headed out of the
bay, under sail.
<b> SAM
</b>
|
onto
|
How many times does the word 'onto' appear in the text?
| 1
|
CHANTING has MIXED back DOWN AGAIN TO leave only the
WIND. Still TRACKING IN TOWARD the top of the skyscraper, we
begin to hear the TICK of its enormous CLOCK. The clock reads
a minute to twelve. Above it, in neon, a company's name:
"HUDSUCKER INDUSTRIES." Below it, in neon, the company's
motto: "THE FUTURE IS NOW."
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...to be able to say -- 'Right now!
This is it! I got it!' 'Course by
then it'll be past.
(more cheerfully)
But they all happy, evvybody havin'
a good time.
We are MOVING IN ON a darkened penthouse window next to the
clock. The window starts to open.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...Well, almost evvybody. They's a
few lost souls floatin' 'round out
there...
A young man is crawling out of the window onto the ledge.
With the opening of the window, "AULD LANG SYNE" filters out
with greater volume.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...This one's Norville Barnes.
The man gingerly straightens up on the ledge. He is perhaps
in his late twenties. He wears a leather apron. Printed on
the apron: "HUDSUCKER MAIL ROOM/The Future is Now."
He looks with nervous determination into the void.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...Let's move in for a closer look.
The CAMERA obliges. We TRACK IN SLOWLY, ENDING VERY CLOSE.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...That office he jes stepped out of
is the office of the president of
Hudsucker Industries. It's his
office...
Norville sways in anguish as the TICKING of the CLOCK grows
louder and the WIND blows in his face.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...How'd he get so high? An' why is
he feelin' so low? Is he really gonna
do it -- is Norville really gonna
jelly up the sidewalk?
Norville is tensing his body, peering out over the ledge,
preparing to make a swan dive into oblivion -- but the
CAMERA'S continued MOVEMENT is LOSING him FROM FRAME.
We are MOVING IN ON the enormous CLOCK, whose MECHANICAL
THRUM becomes very loud indeed.
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...Well the future, that's something
you can't never tell about...
The second hand of the clock is nearing the twelve -- bare
seconds to midnight. Distant CHANTING from Times Square MIXES
UP: "Nine! Eight! Seven!"
<b> NARRATOR (V.O.)
</b> ...But the past... That's another
story...
<b> OVER BLACK
</b>
The HUM of the CLOCK SINKS UNDER the HISS of an AIRBRAKE and
GRINDING GEARS as we...
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> DESTINATION DISPLAY
</b>
On the front of a bus just rocking to a halt. The display
says "MUNCIE-NEW YORK."
<b> LINE OF BAGS
</b>
is being set out on the pavement. A man with the cuffs of a
redcap uniform swings one into the f.g.:
It has a sticker on it: CLASS OF '58, and below an
illustration of crossed right and left hands, their thumbs
hooked and fingers spread like wings: MUNCIE COLLEGE OF
<b> BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION.
</b>
After a beat the hand of its claimant ENTERS to pick it up.
<b> DISSOLVE TO:
</b>
<b> STREET
</b>
FOLLOWING the bag as its owner carries it down the street.
He pauses, sets it down.
<b> YOUNG MAN
</b>
Fresh-faced, eager -- NORVILLE BARNES. He is gazing off at:
<b> WESSELS EMPLOYMENT AGENCY
</b>
The sign is over a ground floor office; an exterior clock
shows 9:00. A curtain is just being pulled open in its picture
window to reveal a great job board. It is like the departures
board in a great train station, with each of its individual
entries flipping over occasionally to reveal a new
opportunity. On offer are jobs like: PASTRY CHEF, STEAMFITTER,
LAY-OUT MAN, GRAVEDIGGER, etc.
<b> REVERSE
</b>
On the small crowd gathered to, like Norville, watch the
board -- men in search of jobs, of various classes and
vocations, but alike in their intent gaze, their hands dug
into their pockets, their hats pushed back on their heads,
bobbing occasionally to get a better view of the chattering
board. Men occasionally head for the office as they see a
prospect they like.
Norville stands pat, watching.
<b> HIS POV
</b>
An entry flips over to reveal EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT.
<b> NORVILLE
</b>
He brightens.
<b> BOARD
</b>
We PAN ALONG the executive entry to EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.
<b> NORVILLE
</b>
He frowns.
Around him, the crowd is thinning out as men trot in to apply
for their respective jobs.
We see other entries: JUNIOR EXECUTIVE. PAN TO EXPERIENCE
<b> ONLY. EXECUTIVE MANAGER... MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE.
</b><b> BUSINESSMAN... EXPERIENCED.
</b>
The CROSS-CUTTING ENDS in a wash of SUPER-IMPOSITIONS PANNING
OVER Norviille, now alone on the sidewalk:
<b> EXPERIENCED ONLY... EXPERIENCED... EXPERIENCED...
</b><b> EXPERIENCED...
</b>
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> CLOSE SHOT - EXECUTIVE
</b>
A middle-aged, mousy-looking man in a conservative suit and
wire-rimmed spectacles is addressing his remarks to someone
O.S. Behind the Executive we see only the skyline of New
York City.
<b> EXECUTIVE
</b> -- So in the third quarter we saw no
signs of weakening. We're up 18
percent over last year's third quarter
gross and, needless to say, that's a
new record...
<b> TRACKING
</b>
DOWN the LENGTH OF the board room table. Executives line
either side. We are APPROACHING the man at the far end of
the table, to whom the report is being directed.
He is late middle-aged, dressed expensively but
conservatively, his attention smilingly fixed on the Executive
who drones on.
<b> EXECUTIVE
</b> ...The competition continues to flag
and we continue to take up the slack.
Market share in most divisions is
increasing and we've opened seven
new regional
|
great
|
How many times does the word 'great' appear in the text?
| 1
|
Polish cops, gangsters and girls and entrepreneurs, thrown
together by the circumstance of war.
Oskar Schindler, drinking alone, slowly scans the room, the
faces, stripping away all thats unimportant to him, settling
only on details that are: the rank of this man, the higher
rank of that one, money being slipped into a hand.
<b> WAITER SETS DOWN DRINKS
</b>
in front of the SS officer who took the money. A lieutenant,
hes at a table with his girlfriend and a lower-ranking
officer.
<b> WAITER
</b> From the gentleman.
The waiter is gesturing to a table across the room where
Schindler, seemingly unaware of the SS men, drinks with the
best-looking woman in the place.
<b> LIEUTENANT
</b> Do I know him?
His sergeant doesnt. His girlfriend doesn't.
<b> LIEUTENANT
</b> Find out who he is.
The sergeant makes his way over to Schindler's table.
There's a handshake and introductions before -- and the
lieutenant, watching, can't believe it -- his guy accepts
the chair Schindler's dragging over.
The lieutenant waits, but his man doesn't come back; he's
forgotten already he went there for a reason. Finally, and
it irritates the SS man, he has to get up and go over there.
<b> LIEUTENANT
</b> Stay here.
His girlfriend watches him cross toward Schindler's table.
Before he even arrives, Schindler is up and berating him for
leaving his date way over there across the room, waving at
the girl to come join them, motioning to waiter to slide
some tables together.
<b> WAITERS ARRIVE WITH PLATES OF CAVIAR
</b>
and another round of drinks. The lieutenant makes a
halfhearted move for his wallet.
<b> LIEUTENANT
</b> Let me get this one.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> No, put it away, put it away.
Schindler's already got his money out. Even as he's paying,
his eyes are working the room, settling on a table where a
girl is declining the advances of two more high-ranking SS
men.
<b> A TABLECLOTH BILLOWS
</b>
as a waiter lays it down on another table that's been added
to the others. Schindler seats the SS officers on either
side of his own "date" --
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> What are you drinking, gin?
He motions to a waiter to refill the men's drinks, and,
returning to the head of the table(s), sweeps the room again
with his eyes.
<b> ROAR OF LAUGHTER
</b>
erupts from Schindler's party in the corner. Nobody's having
a better time than those people over there. His guests have
swelled to ten or twelve -- SS men, Polish cops, girls --
and he moves among them like the great entertainer he is,
making sure everybody's got enough to eat and drink.
Here, closer, at this table across the room, an SS officer
gestures to one of the SS men who an hour ago couldn't get
the girl to sit at his table. The guy comes over.
<b> SS OFFICER 1
</b> Who is that?
<b> SS OFFICER 2
</b> (like everyone knows)
That's Oskar Schindler. He's an old
friend of... I don't know, somebody's.
<b> GIRL WITH A BIG CAMERA
</b>
screws in a flashbulb. She lifts the unwieldy thing to her
face and focuses.
As the bulb flashes, the noise of the club suddenly drops
out, and the moment is caught in BLACK and WHITE: Oskar
Schindler, surrounded by his many new friends, smiling
urbanely.
<b> EXT. SQUARE - CRACOW - DAY
</b>
A photograph of a face on a work card, BLACK and WHITE. A
typed name, black and white. A hand affixes a sticker to the
card and it saturates with COLOR, DEEP BLUE.
People in long lines, waiting. Others near idling trucks,
waiting. Others against sides of buildings, waiting. Clerks
with clipboards move through the crowds, calling out names.
<b> CLERKS
</b> Groder... Gemeinerowa... Libeskind...
<b> INT. APARTMENT BUILDING - CRACOW - DAY
</b>
The party pin in his lapel catches the light in the hallway.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> Stern?
Behind Schindler, the door to another apartment closes softly.
A radio, somewhere, is suddenly silenced.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> Are you Itzhak Stern?
At the door of this apartment, a man with the face and manner
of a Talmudic scholar, finally nods in resignation, like his
number has just come up.
<b> STERN
</b> I am.
Schindler offers a hand. Confused, Stern tentatively reaches
for it, and finds his own grasped firmly.
<b> INT. STERN'S APARTMENT - DAY
</b>
Settled into an overstuffed chair in a simple apartment,
Schindler pours a shot of cognac from a flask.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> There's a company you did the books
for on Lipowa Street, made what,
pots and pans?
Stern stares at the cognac Schindler's offering him. He
doesn't know who this man is, or what he wants.
<b> STERN
</b> (pause)
By law, I have to tell you, sir, I'm
a Jew.
Schindler looks puzzled, then shrugs, dismissing it.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> All right, you've done it -- good
company, you think?
He keeps holding out the drink. Stern declines it with a
slow shake of his head.
<b> STERN
</b> It did all right.
Schindler nods, takes out a cigarette case.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> I don't know anything about
enamelware, do you?
He offers Stern a cigarette. Stern declines again.
<b> STERN
</b> I was just the accountant.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> Simple engineering, though, wouldn't
you think? Change the machines around,
whatever you do, you could make other
things, couldn't you?
Schindler lowers his voice as if there could possibly be
someone else listening in somewhere.
<b> SCHINDLER
</b> Field kits, mess kits...
He waits for a reaction, and misinterprets Stern's silence
for a lack of understanding.
<b>
|
could
|
How many times does the word 'could' appear in the text?
| 3
|
10
came, and spoke with much eloquence. [Footnote: The speech seems to contain
a parody of Augustus's style and sayings.] "I call you to witness, my lords
and gentlemen," said he, "that since the day I was made a god I have never
uttered one word. I always mind my own business. But now I can keep on the
mask no longer, nor conceal the sorrow which shame makes all the greater.
Is it for this I have made peace by land and sea? For this have I calmed
intestine wars? For this, laid a firm foundation of law for Rome, adorned
it with buildings, and all that--my lords, words fail me; there are none
can rise to the height of my indignation. I must borrow that saying of the
eloquent Messala Corvinus, I am ashamed of my authority. [Footnote: M.
Valerius Messala Corvinus, appointed praefectus urbi, resigned within a
week.] This man, my lords, who looks as though he could not hurt a fly,
used to chop off heads as easily as a dog sits down. But why should I speak
of all those men, and such men? There is no time to lament for public
disasters, when one has so many private sorrows to think of. I leave that,
therefore, and say only this; for even if my sister knows no Greek, I do:
The knee is nearer than the shin. [Footnote: A proverb, like "Charity
begins at home." The reading of the passage is uncertain; "sister" is only
a conjecture, and it is hard to see why his sister should be mentioned.]
This man you see, who for so many years has been masquerading under my
name, has done me the favour of murdering two Julias, great-granddaughters
of mine, one by cold steel and one by starvation; and one great grandson,
L. Silanus--see, Jupiter, whether he had a case against him (at least it is
your own if you will be fair.) Come tell me, blessed Claudius, why of all
those you killed, both men and women, without a hearing, why you did not
hear their side of the case first, before putting them to death? Where do
we find that custom? It is not done in heaven.
Look at Jupiter: all these years he has been 11
king, and never did more than once to break Vulcan's leg,
'Whom seizing by the foot he cast from the threshold of the sky,'
[Sidenote: Illiad i, 591]
and once he fell in a rage with his wife and strung her up: did he do any
killing? You killed Messalina, whose great-uncle I was no less than yours.
'I don't know,' did you say? Curse you! that is just it: not to know was
worse than to kill. Caligula he went on persecuting even when he was dead.
Caligula murdered his father-in-law, Claudius his son-in-law to boot.
Caligula would not have Crassus' son called Great; Claudius gave him his
name back, and took away his head. In one family he destroyed Crassus,
Magnus, Scribonia, the Tristionias, Assario, noble though they were;
Crassus indeed such a fool that he might have been emperor. Is this he you
want now to make a god? Look at his body, born under the wrath of heaven!
In fine, let him say the three words [Footnote: Some formula such as _ais
esse meum_.] quickly, and he may have me for a slave. God! who will worship
this god, who will believe in him? While you make gods of such as he, no
one will believe you to be gods. To be brief, my lords: if I have lived
honourably among you, if I have never given plain speech to any, avenge my
wrongs. This is my motion": then he read out his amendment, which he had
committed to writing: "Inasmuch as the blessed Claudius murdered his
father-in-law Appius Silanus, his two sons-in-law, Pompeius Magnus and L.
Silanus, Crassus Frugi his daughter's father-in-law, as like him as two
eggs in a basket, Scribonia his daughter's mother-in-law, his wife
Messalina, and others too numerous to mention; I propose that strong
measures be taken against him, that he be allowed no delay of process, that
immediate sentence of banishment be passed on him, that he be deported from
heaven within thirty days, and from Olympus within thirty hours."
This motion was passed without further debate. Not a moment was lost:
Mercury screwed his neck and haled him to the lower regions, to that bourne
"from which they say no traveller returns." [Footnote: Catullus iii, 12.]
As they passed downwards along the Sacred Way, Mercury asked what was that
great concourse of men? could it be Claudius' funeral? It was certainly a
most gorgeous spectacle, got up regardless of expense, clear it was that a
god was being borne to the grave: tootling of flutes, roaring of horns, an
immense brass band of all sorts, such a din that even Claudius could hear
it. Joy and rejoicing on every side, the Roman people walking about like
free men. Agatho and a few pettifoggers were weeping for grief, and for
once in a way they meant it. The Barristers were crawling out of their
dark corners, pale and thin, with hardly a breath in their bodies, as
though just coming to life again. One of them when he saw the pettifoggers
putting their heads together, and lamenting their sad lot, up comes he and
says: "Did not I tell you the Saturnalia could not last for ever?"
When Claudius saw his own funeral train, he understood that he was dead.
For they were chanting his dirge in anapaests, with much mopping and
mouthing:
"Pour forth your laments, your sorrow declare,
Let the sounds of grief rise high in the air:
For he that is dead had a wit most keen,
Was bravest of all that on earth have been.
Racehorses are nothing to his swift feet:
Rebellious Parthians he did defeat;
Swift after the Persians his light shafts go:
For he well knew how to fit arrow to bow,
Swiftly the striped barbarians fled:
With one little wound he shot them dead.
And the Britons beyond in their unknown seas,
Blue-shielded Brigantians too, all these
He chained by the neck as the Romans' slaves.
He spake, and the Ocean with trembling waves
Accepted the axe of the Roman law.
O weep for the man! This world never saw
One quicker a troublesome suit to decide,
When only one part of the case had been tried,
(He could do it indeed and not hear either side).
Who'll now sit in judgment the whole year round?
Now he that is judge of the shades underground
Once ruler of fivescore cities in Crete,
Must yield to his better and take a back seat.
Mourn, mourn, pettifoggers, ye venal crew,
And you, minor poets, woe, woe is to you!
And you above all, who get rich quick
By the rattle of dice and the three card trick."
Claudius was charmed to hear his own praises sung, 13
and would have stayed longer to see the show. But the Talthybius
[Footnote: Talthybius was a herald, and _nuntius_ is obviously a gloss on
this. He means Mercury.] of the gods laid a hand on him, and led him across
the Campus Martius, first wrapping his head up close that no one might know
him, until betwixt Tiber and the Subway he went down to the lower regions.
[Footnote: By the Cloaca?] His freedman Narcissus had gone down before him
by a short cut, ready to welcome his master. Out he comes to meet him,
smooth and shining (he had just left the bath), and says he: "What make the
gods among mortals?" "Look alive," says Mercury, "go and tell them we are
coming." Away he flew, quicker than tongue can tell. It is easy going by
that road, all down hill. So although he had a touch of the gout, in a
trice they were come to Dis's door. There lay Cerberus, or, as Horace puts
it, the hundred-headed monster. [Sidenote: Odes ii, 13, 35] Claudius was a
trifle perturbed (it was a little white bitch he used to keep for a pet)
when he spied this black shag-haired hound, not at all the kind of thing
you could wish to meet in the dark. In a loud voice he cried, "Claudius is
coming!" All marched before him singing, "The lost is found, O let us
rejoice together!" [Footnote: With a slight change, a cry used in the
worship of Osiris.] Here were found C. Silius consul elect, Juncus the
ex-praetor, Sextus Traulus, M. Helvius, Trogus, Cotta, Vettius Valens,
Fabius, Roman Knights whom Narcissus had ordered for execution. In the
midst of this chanting company was Mnester the mime, whom Claudius for
honour's sake had made shorter by a head. The news was soon blown about
that Claudius had come: to Messalina they throng: first his freedmen,
Polybius, Myron, Harpocras, Amphaeus, Pheronactus, all sent before him by
Claudius that he might not be unattended anywhere; next two prefects,
Justus Catonius and Rufrius Pollio; then his friends, Saturninus, Lusius
and Pedo Pompeius and Lupus and Celer Asinius, these of consular rank; last
came his brother's daughter, his sister's daughter, sons-in-law, fathers
and mothers-in-law, the whole family in fact. In a body they came to meet
Claudius; and when Claudius saw them, he exclaimed, "Friends everywhere, on
my word! How came you all here?" To this Pedo Pompeius answered, "What,
cruel man? How came we here? Who but you sent us, you, the murderer of all
the friends that ever you had? To court with you! I'll show you where their
lordships sit."
Pedo brings him before the judgement seat of 14
Aeacus, who was holding court under the Lex Cornelia to try cases of murder
and assassination. Pedo requests the judge to take the prisoner's name, and
produces a summons with this charge: Senators killed, 35; Roman Knights,
221; others as the sands of the sea-shore for multitude. [Sidenote: Il. ix,
385] Claudius finds no counsel. At length out steps P. Petronius, an old
chum of his, a finished scholar in the Claudian tongue and claims a remand.
Not granted. Pedo Pompeius prosecutes with loud outcry. The counsel for the
defence tries to reply; but Aeacus, who is the soul of justice, will not
have it. Aeacus hears the case against Claudius, refuses to hear the other
side and passes sentence against him, quoting the line:
"As he did, so be he done by, this is justice undefiled."
[Footnote: A proverbial line.]
A great silence fell. Not a soul but was stupefied at this new way of
managing matters; they had never known anything like it before. It was no
new thing to Claudius, yet he thought it unfair. There was a long
discussion as to the punishment he ought to endure. Some said that Sisyphus
had done his job of porterage long enough; Tantalus would be dying of
thirst, if he were not relieved; the drag must be put at last on wretched
Ixion's wheel. But it was determined not to let off any of the old stagers,
lest Claudius should dare to hope for any such relief. It was agreed that
some new punishment must be devised: they must devise some new task,
something senseless, to suggest some craving without result. Then Aeacus
decreed he should rattle dice for ever in a box with no bottom. At once the
poor wretch began his fruitless task of hunting for the dice, which for
ever slipped from his fingers.
"For when he rattled with the box, and thought he now had got 'em. 15
The little cubes would vanish thro' the perforated bottom.
Then he would pick 'em up again, and once more set a-trying:
The dice but served him the same trick: away they went a-flying.
So still he tries, and still he fails; still searching long he lingers;
And every time the tricksy things go slipping thro' his fingers.
Just so when Sisyphus at last once gets there with his boulder,
He finds the labour all in vain--it rolls down off his shoulder."
All on a sudden who should turn up but Caligula, and claims the man for a
slave: brings witnesses, who said they had seen him being flogged, caned,
fisticuffed by him. He is handed over to Caligula, and Caligula makes him
a present to Aeacus. Aeacus delivers him to his freedman Menander, to be
his law-clerk.
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1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to,
|
other
|
How many times does the word 'other' appear in the text?
| 2
|
TWO BABIES sleep next to each other in an old broken
crib. A teenage girl sleeps on the floor next to the
crib.
People are strewn all over the house sleeping. Suddenly,
a figure passes quickly through frame.
<b> EXT. FARM HOUSE - CONTINUOUS
</b>
Martha walks out the front door, across the porch, and up
the driveway. She carries a small bag.
Her pace becomes increasingly faster. She looks back to
see a teenage girl, SARAH, standing in the window
watching.
Martha turns and walks faster, heading straight for the
woods. As she gets to the edge of the trees she begins
to run.
<b> SLOW ZOOM: MARTHA DISAPPEARS INTO THE THICK WOODS.
</b>
Off screen, the house DOOR SLAMS SHUT. A MAN urgently
yells out: "MARCY MAY"
The camera holds on the trees shaking gently in the wind.
For a moment everything is quiet.
<b> 3.
</b>
Suddenly, A MAN and TWO WOMEN enter frame and run into
the woods, chasing after Martha.
<b> EXT. WOODS - CONTINUOUS
</b>
The woods are dark. Martha runs as fast as she can. She
hears the MAN's voice calling her from a distance. A man
and two women are chasing her.
Martha arrives at a steep heavily wooded hill. She keeps
running at full speed, then slips, falls, and rolls.
Martha ducks behind a fallen tree and looks back to see
the group arrive at the ridge to survey the woods and
begin their descent.
Martha holds still, listening as the people chasing her
pass by.
<b> EXT. DINER PARKING LOT - DAY
</b>
Martha uses a pay phone at a diner. She dials and waits.
She is struck by the voice that answers, she transforms
from being a zombie to being flooded with emotion.
<b> LUCY
</b> Hello. Hello?
<b> MARTHA
</b> Hi!
<b> LUCY
</b> Martha?
<b> MARTHA
</b> Yeah.
<b> LUCY
</b> Oh my god! Where are you?
<b> MARTHA
</b> I'm not sure. Upstate I think.
<b> LUCY
</b> You're in New York?
<b> MARTHA
</b> I think. Yeah.
<b> LUCY
</b> When did you get back?
<b> 4.
</b>
Martha doesn't know what to say, she bursts into tears.
<b> LUCY (CONT'D)
</b> Martha? What's wrong? What's happened?
<b> MARTHA
</b> I don't know. I should go back.
<b> LUCY
</b> Go back where?
<b> MARTHA
</b> I have to go, I can't stay gone.
<b> LUCY
</b> No, no, no. Don't go. What are you
talking about?
<b> MARTHA
</b> Sorry for calling.
<b> LUCY
</b> Martha! Don't hang up. Please! Do not
hang up.
<b> (BEAT)
</b> Do you want me to come get you?
<b> MARTHA
</b> I can't wait that long.
<b> LUCY
</b> What do you mean? Tell me where you are
and I'll come right now.
<b> MARTHA
</b> It's okay, you don't have to-
<b> LUCY
</b> I want to see you Martha. Please.
Martha thinks for a moment.
<b> LUCY (CONT'D)
</b> Martha!
<b> INT. DINER - DAY
</b>
Martha sits alone in a booth hunched over a grilled
cheese sandwich and french fries. She devours the food
like she hasn't eaten in days.
<b> 5.
</b>
The entrance bell rings. Martha turns around and
cautiously peers over the booth. A FAMILY walks in. They
are seated. Martha returns to eating.
<b> MAN'S VOICE (O.S.)
</b> Marcy May?
It is Watts. His voice paralyzes her.
<b> WATTS
</b> What are you doin'?
Martha stops eating. He slides into the booth and sits
across from her.
Watts reaches over and takes some french fries. He eats
them slowly, enjoying every bite. She can't look at him.
<b> WATTS (CONT'D)
</b> We were worried about you.
<b> MARTHA
</b> I'm fine.
<b> WATTS
</b> Patrick's worried about you.
<b> MARTHA
</b> I just wanted to come into town.
<b> WATTS
</b> I could've brought you.
<b> MARTHA
</b> I wanted to walk.
<b> WATTS
</b> Through the woods?
|
pace
|
How many times does the word 'pace' appear in the text?
| 0
|
Where they've been.
The black woman stares at Forrest as he looks down at his
own shoes.
<b> FORREST
</b> I've worn lots of shoes. I bet if I
think about it real hard I could
remember my first pair of shoes.
Forrest closes his eyes tightly.
<b> FORREST
</b> Momma said they'd take my anywhere.
<b> INT. COUNTRY DOCTOR'S OFFICE - GREENBOW, ALABAMA - DAY
</b><b> (1951)
</b>
A little boy closes his eyes tightly. It is young Forrest as
he sits in a doctor's office.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> She said they was my magic shoes.
Forrest has been fitted with orthopedic shoes and metal leg
braces.
<b> DOCTOR
</b> All right, Forrest, you can open
your eyes now. Let's take a little
walk around.
The doctor sets Forrest down on its feet. Forrest walks around
stiffly. Forrest's mother, MRS. GUMP, watches him as he clanks
around the room awkwardly.
<b> DOCTOR
</b> How do those feel? His legs are
strong, Mrs. Gump. As strong as I've
ever seen. But his back is as crooked
as a politician.
Forrest walks foreground past the doctor and Mrs. Gump.
<b> DOCTOR
</b> But we're gonna straighten him right
up now, won't we, Forrest?
A loud thud is heard as, outside, Forrest falls.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Forrest!
<b> EXT. GREENBOW, ALABAMA
</b>
Mrs. Gump and young Forrest walk across the street. Forrest
walks stiffly next to his mother.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> Now, when I was a baby, Momma named
me after the great Civil War hero,
General Nathan Bedford Forrest...
<b> EXT. RURAL ALABAMA
</b>
A black and white photo of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The photo turns into live action as the General dons a hooded
sheet over his head.
The General is in full Ku Klux Klan garb, including his horse.
The General rides off, followed by a large group of Klan
members dressed in full uniform.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> She said we was related to him in
some way. And, what he did was, he
started up this club called the Ku
Klux Klan. They'd all dress up in
their robes and their bedsheets and
act like a bunch of ghosts or spooks
or something. They'd even put
bedsheets on their horses and ride
around. And anyway, that's how I got
my name. Forrest Gump.
<b> EXT. GREENBOW
</b>
Mrs. Gump and Forrest walk across the street.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> Momma said that the Forrest part was
to remind me that sometimes we all
do things that, well, just don't
make no sense.
Forrest stops suddenly as his brace gets stuck. Forrest's
brace is caught in a gutter grate. Mrs. Gump bends down and
tries to free Forrest. Two old cronies sit in front of a
barber shop and watch.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Just wait, let me get it.
Mrs. Gump struggles to pull the stuck brace from the grate.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Let me get it. Wait, get it this
way. Hold on.
Forrest pulls his foot out of the grate.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> All right.
Mrs. Gump helps Forrest up onto the sidewalk. She looks up
and notices the two old man.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Oooh. All right. What are you all
staring at? Haven't you ever seen a
little boy with braces on his legs
before?
Mrs. Gump and Forrest walk along the sidewalk past the two
old men. Mrs. Gump holds tightly onto Forrest's hand.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Don't ever let anybody tell you
they're better than you, Forrest. If
God intended everybody to be the
same, he'd have given us all braces
on our legs.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> Momma always had a way of explaining
things so I could understand them.
<b> EXT. OAK ALLEY/THE GUMP BOARDING HOUSE
</b>
Mrs. Gump and Forrest walk along a dirt road. A row of
mailboxes stands left.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> We lived about a quarter mile of
Route 17, about a half mile from the
town of Greenbow, Alabama. That's in
the county of Greenbow. Our house
had been in Momma's family since her
grandpa's grandpa's grandpa had come
across the ocean about a thousand
years ago. Something like that.
Mrs. Gump and Forrest walk along the Gump Boarding House
driveway.
<b> FORREST (V.O.)
</b> Since it was just me and Momma and
we had all these empty rooms, Momma
decided to let those rooms out. Mostly
to people passing through. Like from,
oh, Mobile, Montgomery, place like
that. That's how me and Mommy got
money. Mommy was a real smart lady.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Remember what I told you, Forrest.
You're no different than anybody
else is.
Mrs. Gump heads Forrest to the porch. She bends down to look
Forrest in the eye.
<b> MRS. GUMP
</b> Did you hear what I said, Forrest?
You're
|
bedsheets
|
How many times does the word 'bedsheets' appear in the text?
| 1
|
may be published in a different and a better form
would give me the greatest possible pleasure.
One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing to
give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of him
to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the benefit of
a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him in tastes and
ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation
appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to
suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior
enlightenment and schooling--a rude country bumpkin whose life,
throughout, has been passed in retirement--a bumpkin to whom it is
necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting
to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step
there were a danger of employing terms beyond his understanding. Should
these precautions be kept constantly in view by any reader undertaking
to annotate my book, that reader's remarks will exceed in weight
and interest even his own expectations, and will bring me very real
advantage.
Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and
that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire, the
following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit their
notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name, let
them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to the
Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor Shevirev of
the University of Moscow, according as the one or the other of those two
cities may be the nearer to the sender.
Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their
previously published criticisms of my book--criticisms which, in spite
of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all
humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my
heart--I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews. For
in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be pleased
to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received by me with
naught but gratitude.
DEAD SOULS
PART I
CHAPTER I
To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart
britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors,
retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of
about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen
of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a
gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not
over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was
not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was
accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants
who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few
comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual
who was seated in it. "Look at that carriage," one of them said to the
other. "Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?" "I think it will,"
replied his companion. "But not as far as Kazan, eh?" "No, not as far as
Kazan." With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was
approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short,
very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and
a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man
turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively;
after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being
removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the
inn door, its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi,
or waiter, of the establishment--an individual of such nimble and
brisk movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was
impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form
clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed
back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden
gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the
gentleman's reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary
appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all
provincial towns--the species wherein, for two roubles a day, travellers
may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and communicating by a
doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the doorway may be blocked
up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all probability, there will be
standing a silent, motionless neighbour whose ears are burning to learn
every possible detail concerning the latest arrival. The inn's exterior
corresponded with its interior. Long, and consisting only of two
storeys, the building had its lower half destitute of stucco; with the
result that the dark-red bricks, originally more or less dingy, had
grown yet dingier under the influence of atmospheric changes. As for the
upper half of the building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint
of unfading yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number
of benches heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the
window-seat accommodated a sbitentshik [4], cheek by jowl with a samovar
[5]--the latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but
for the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar
and the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair.
During the traveller's inspection of his room his luggage was brought
into the apartment. First came a portmanteau of white leather whose
raggedness indicated that the receptacle had made several previous
journeys. The bearers of the same were the gentleman's coachman,
Selifan (a little man in a large overcoat), and the gentleman's
valet, Petrushka--the latter a fellow of about thirty, clad in a worn,
over-ample jacket which formerly had graced his master's shoulders, and
possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness communicated to
his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the portmanteau came a
small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch bark, a boot-case,
and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of which having been
deposited, the coachman departed to look after his horses, and the valet
to establish himself in the little dark anteroom or kennel where already
he had stored a cloak, a bagful of livery, and his own peculiar smell.
Pressing the narrow bedstead back against the wall, he covered it with
the tiny remnant of mattress--a remnant as thin and flat (perhaps also
as greasy) as a pancake--which he had managed to beg of the landlord of
the establishment.
While the attendants had been thus setting things straight the gentleman
had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common parlours of
the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they have varnished
walls which, grown black in their upper portions with tobacco smoke,
are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of customers'
backs--more especially with that of the backs of such local tradesmen
as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort to
the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind
invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a
number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter
scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the
glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a
selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which
one sees in every inn. In the present case the only outstanding feature
of the room was the fact that in one of the paintings a nymph was
portrayed as possessing breasts of a size such as the reader can never
in his life have beheld. A similar caricaturing of nature is to be noted
in the historical pictures (of unknown origin, period, and creation)
which reach us--sometimes through the instrumentality of Russian
magnates who profess to be connoisseurs of art--from Italy; owing to
the said magnates having made such purchases solely on the advice of the
couriers who have escorted them.
To resume, however--our traveller removed his cap, and divested his neck
of a parti-coloured woollen scarf of the kind which a wife makes for
her husband with her own hands, while accompanying the gift with
interminable injunctions as to how best such a garment ought to be
folded. True, bachelors also wear similar gauds, but, in their case,
God alone knows who may have manufactured the articles! For my part,
I cannot endure them. Having unfolded the scarf, the gentleman ordered
dinner, and whilst the various dishes were being got ready--cabbage
soup, a pie several weeks old, a dish of marrow and peas, a dish of
sausages and cabbage, a roast fowl, some salted cucumber, and the sweet
tart which stands perpetually ready for use in such establishments;
whilst, I say, these things were either being warmed up or brought in
cold, the gentleman induced the waiter to retail certain fragments of
tittle-tattle concerning the late landlord of the hostelry, the amount
of income which the hostelry produced, and the character of its present
proprietor. To the last-mentioned inquiry the waiter returned the answer
invariably given in such cases--namely, "My master is a terribly hard
man, sir." Curious that in enlightened Russia so many people cannot even
take a meal at an inn without chattering to the attendant and making
free with him! Nevertheless not ALL the questions which the gentleman
asked were aimless ones, for he inquired who was Governor of the town,
who President of the Local Council, and who Public Prosecutor. In short,
he omitted no single official of note, while asking also (though with an
air of detachment) the most exact particulars concerning the landowners
of the neighbourhood. Which of them, he inquired, possessed serfs, and
how many of them? How far from the town did those landowners reside?
What was the character of each landowner, and was he in the habit of
paying frequent visits to the town? The gentleman also made searching
inquiries concerning the hygienic condition of the countryside. Was
there, he asked, much sickness about--whether sporadic fever, fatal
forms of ague, smallpox, or what not? Yet, though his solicitude
concerning these matters showed more than ordinary curiosity, his
bearing retained its gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he
blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he
accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though
that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity,
he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the
waiter's undivided respect--so much so that, whenever the sounds of
the nose reached that menial's ears, he would shake back his locks,
straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire
afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether the gentleman happened
to require anything further. After dinner the guest consumed a cup of
coffee, and then, seating himself upon the sofa, with, behind him,
one of those wool-covered cushions which, in Russian taverns,
resemble nothing so much as a cobblestone or a brick, fell to snoring;
whereafter, returning with a start to consciousness, he ordered himself
to be conducted to his room, flung himself at full length upon the bed,
and once more slept soundly for a couple of hours. Aroused, eventually,
by the waiter, he, at the latter's request, inscribed a fragment of
paper with his name, his surname, and his rank (for communication, in
accordance with the law, to the police): and on that paper the waiter,
leaning forward from the corridor, read, syllable by syllable: "Paul
Ivanovitch Chichikov, Collegiate Councillor--Landowner--Travelling
on Private Affairs." The waiter had just time to accomplish this
feat before Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov set forth to inspect the town.
Apparently the place succeeded in satisfying him, and, to tell the
truth, it was at least up to the usual standard of our provincial
capitals. Where the staring yellow of stone edifices did not greet his
eye he found himself confronted with the more modest grey of wooden
ones; which, consisting, for the most part, of one or two storeys (added
to the range of attics which provincial architects love so well), looked
almost lost amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of
broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of
more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded
together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon
boots of cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed "Arshavski, Tailor,"
and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps
was written "Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner"; while, at another spot, a
signboard portrayed a billiard table and two players--the latter clad
in frockcoats of the kind usually affected by actors whose part it is
to enter the stage during the closing act of a piece, even though, with
arms sharply crooked and legs slightly bent, the said billiard players
were taking the most careful aim, but succeeding only in making abortive
strokes in the air. Each emporium of the sort had written over it: "This
is the best establishment of its kind in the town." Also, al fresco in
the streets there stood tables heaped with nuts, soap, and gingerbread
(the latter but little distinguishable from the soap), and at an
eating-house there was displayed the sign of a plump fish transfixed
with a gaff. But the sign most frequently to be discerned was the
insignia of the State, the double-headed eagle (now replaced, in this
connection, with the laconic inscription "Dramshop"). As for the paving
of the town, it was uniformly bad.
The gentleman peered also into the municipal gardens, which contained
only a few sorry trees that were poorly selected, requiring to be
propped with oil-painted, triangular green supports, and able to boast
of a height no greater than that of an ordinary walking-stick. Yet
recently the local paper had said (apropos of a gala) that, "Thanks to
the efforts of our Civil Governor, the town has become enriched with a
pleasaunce full of umbrageous, spaciously-branching trees. Even on the
most sultry day they afford agreeable shade, and indeed gratifying
was it to see the hearts of our citizens panting with an impulse of
gratitude as their eyes shed tears in recognition of all that their
Governor has done for them!"
Next, after inquiring of a gendarme as to the best ways and means of
finding the local council, the local law-courts, and the local Governor,
should he (Chichikov) have need of them, the gentleman went on to
inspect the river which ran through the town. En route he tore off a
notice affixed to a post, in order that he might the more conveniently
read it after his return to the inn. Also, he bestowed upon a lady
of pleasant exterior who, escorted by a footman laden with a bundle,
happened to be passing along a wooden sidewalk a prolonged stare.
Lastly, he threw around him a comprehensive glance (as though to fix in
his mind the general topography of the place) and betook himself
home. There, gently aided by the waiter, he ascended the stairs to his
bedroom, drank a glass of tea, and, seating himself at the table, called
for a candle; which having been brought him, he produced from his pocket
the notice, held it close to the flame, and conned its tenour--slightly
contracting his right eye as he did so. Yet there was little in the
notice to call for remark. All that it said was that shortly one of
Kotzebue's [6] plays would be given, and that one of the parts in the
play was to be taken by a certain Monsieur Poplevin, and another by
a certain Mademoiselle Ziablova, while the remaining parts were to
be filled by a number of less important personages. Nevertheless the
gentleman perused the notice with careful attention, and even jotted
down the prices to be asked for seats for the performance. Also, he
remarked that the bill had been printed in the press of the Provincial
Government. Next, he turned over the paper, in order to see if anything
further was to be read on the reverse side; but, finding nothing there,
he refolded the document, placed it in the box which served him as a
receptacle for odds and ends, and brought the day to a close with a
portion of cold veal, a bottle of pickles, and a sound sleep.
The following day he devoted to paying calls upon the various municipal
officials--a first, and a very respectful, visit being paid to the
Governor. This personage turned out to resemble Chichikov himself in
that he was neither fat nor thin. Also, he wore the riband of the order
of Saint Anna about his neck, and was reported to have been recommended
also for the star. For the rest, he was large and good-natured, and had
a habit of amusing himself with occasional spells of knitting. Next,
Chichikov repaired to the Vice-Governor's, and thence to the house of
the Public Prosecutor, to that of the President of the Local Council, to
that of the Chief of Police, to that of the Commissioner of Taxes, and
to that of the local Director of State Factories. True, the task of
remembering every big-wig in this world of ours is not a very easy one;
but at least our visitor displayed the greatest activity in his work of
paying calls, seeing that he went so far as to pay his respects also to
the Inspector of the Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City
Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka--plunged
in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit.
However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation
with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For
instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving
in his, the Governor's province, would conceive that he had reached
Paradise, so velvety were the roads. "Governors who appoint capable
subordinates," had said Chichikov, "are deserving of the most ample meed
of praise." Again, to the Chief of Police our hero had passed a most
gratifying remark on the subject of the local gendar
|
true
|
How many times does the word 'true' appear in the text?
| 2
|
Would they do that?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Who knows? That's why I filed it
down.
Dignan nods.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Now that window can never be locked.
It's impossible.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> See, your mind is very good with
the more mechanical details.
Whereas my strength would be --
A good-looking WOMAN about forty-five years old interrupts
them.
<b> WOMAN
</b> Can I use your Tabasco?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Sure.
Anthony hands her a bottle of Tabasco off the counter. She
walks away. Down the counter.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> You don't see many women who like
Tabasco.
They watch her for a minute. Dignan looks away.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> She's really kind of hot.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> (looks back at her, nods)
She's an attractive older woman.
<b>EXT. BOB'S HOUSE. DAY
</b>
A huge house with a wide lawn. BOB, who's about twenty-six,
wearing black jeans and a V-neck T-shirt, is spraying down a
battered 1972 Mercedes with a garden hose. He's got his
shirt off and a towel around his neck. Dignan has an
expression of intense concentration as he looks at the car.
<b> BOB
</b> Well, what do you think?
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I don't know, Bob. What about one
of those?
Dignan points to a new BMW and a Lexus in front of the garage.
<b> BOB
</b> I'm not allowed to drive those.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Not even for emergencies?
<b> BOB
</b> (a little angry)
No.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I thought your parents were in Italy.
<b> BOB
</b> They are.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> So who's going to know?
<b> BOB
</b> My brother.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Future Man.
<b> BOB
</b> Who?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Futute Man. You know. Cause he
looks like he's from the future.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> He looks like he was designed by
scientists. For desert warfare.
<b> BOB
</b> That never would of --
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Let's cut the bullshit.
Silence. They all look at the car. Pause.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> It's got a V-8, Dignan.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> What do you think the cops have?
<b>INT. BOB'S HOUSE. DAY
</b>
They're sitting at the coffee table in Bob's great big
living room. It's got high ceilings and two Persian rugs.
They're eating sandwiches and chips.
<b> BOB
</b> If you're that worried, maybe we
should just steal one.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> What are you talking about, Bob?
<b> BOB
</b> Can you use a coaster.
Bob slides a coaster under Dignan's glass.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Did you ever steal a car bdfore?
<b> BOB
</b> Yeah. I've stolen two cars before.
One Jaguar. And one Trans-Am. With
T-Tops. That Trans-Am was fun to
drive.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> You stole a Trans-Am.
<b> BOB
</b> Yes. I did.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> OK, Bob.
<b> BOB
</b> It's true, Dignan.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Well. What do you want to do? You
want to steal one or just drive
your car?
<b> BOB
</b> (thinks for a minute)
I'll just drive my car.
<b>INT. DELI. DAY
</b>
Anthony's playing pinball at a machine in the back of a
little grocery store. Dignan's watching.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Anthony, we'll get two hundred for
the coin collection alone. That's
less than what it's appraised at.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> But Dignan, do you really know that
much about rare coins?
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I know about money, Anthony. I know
the value of money. Plus the
earrings are worth three times that.
Anthony looks at Dignan. Dignan points at the pinball machine.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Your ball.
Dignan tries to hit the flipper.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> I told you not to take the earrings.
Anthony keeps looking at Dignan. Dignan doesn't look up from
the machine. Anthony turns and walks away.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> You got another ball.
Dignan watches him go.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I'm playing your game.
<b>EXT. SIDEWALK. DAY
</b>
They're walking fast down the sidewalk.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> The list, Dignan. I know you
remember the list because you
signed it. "Things Dignan was not
supposed to touch."
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Every valuable item in the house
was on that list.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> That doesn't make any difference. I
bought those earrings for my mother
on her birthday. They have a very
special value for her.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Yeah, but I can't be sorting
through that shit in the middle of
a burglary. There's just not time
for it.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Then you shouldn't of gone in
there, Dignan. Maybe we should of
robbed your house. Did you ever
think of that?
Dignan stops walking. Anthony looks back at him. Pause.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> What?
Dignan turns and starts walking the other way.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Where are you going?
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I don't appreciate you ridiculing me.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> How was I ridiculing you?
<b> DIGNAN
</b> You're making fun of my family. You
know there's nothing to steal from
my mom and Craig. You know exactly
what you're saying.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> That's not what I meant, Dignan.
They both see something. They keep walking. Dignan looks
back down the sidewalk.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> Did you see that?
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Yeah, I saw it.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I'm lookout.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> Dignan, it's got an alarm.
<b> DIGNAN
</b> I don't think so. Just reach on in.
<b> ANTHONY
</b> That sets it off.
<b> DIGNAN
|
special
|
How many times does the word 'special' appear in the text?
| 0
|
him to my home,
And since that day, all seems to prosper here.
He censures everything, and for my sake
He even takes great interest in my wife;
He lets me know who ogles her, and seems
Six times as jealous as I am myself.
You'd not believe how far his zeal can go:
He calls himself a sinner just for trifles;
The merest nothing is enough to shock him;
So much so, that the other day I heard him
Accuse himself for having, while at prayer,
In too much anger caught and killed a flea.
CLEANTE
Zounds, brother, you are mad, I think! Or else
You're making sport of me, with such a speech.
What are you driving at with all this nonsense ... ?
ORGON
Brother, your language smacks of atheism;
And I suspect your soul's a little tainted
Therewith. I've preached to you a score of times
That you'll draw down some judgment on your head.
CLEANTE
That is the usual strain of all your kind;
They must have every one as blind as they.
They call you atheist if you have good eyes;
And if you don't adore their vain grimaces,
You've neither faith nor care for sacred things.
No, no; such talk can't frighten me; I know
What I am saying; heaven sees my heart.
We're not the dupes of all your canting mummers;
There are false heroes--and false devotees;
And as true heroes never are the ones
Who make much noise about their deeds of honour,
Just so true devotees, whom we should follow,
Are not the ones who make so much vain show.
What! Will you find no difference between
Hypocrisy and genuine devoutness?
And will you treat them both alike, and pay
The self-same honour both to masks and faces
Set artifice beside sincerity,
Confuse the semblance with reality,
Esteem a phantom like a living person,
And counterfeit as good as honest coin?
Men, for the most part, are strange creatures, truly!
You never find them keep the golden mean;
The limits of good sense, too narrow for them,
Must always be passed by, in each direction;
They often spoil the noblest things, because
They go too far, and push them to extremes.
I merely say this by the way, good brother.
ORGON
You are the sole expounder of the doctrine;
Wisdom shall die with you, no doubt, good brother,
You are the only wise, the sole enlightened,
The oracle, the Cato, of our age.
All men, compared to you, are downright fools.
CLEANTE
I'm not the sole expounder of the doctrine,
And wisdom shall not die with me, good brother.
But this I know, though it be all my knowledge,
That there's a difference 'twixt false and true.
And as I find no kind of hero more
To be admired than men of true religion,
Nothing more noble or more beautiful
Than is the holy zeal of true devoutness;
Just so I think there's naught more odious
Than whited sepulchres of outward unction,
Those barefaced charlatans, those hireling zealots,
Whose sacrilegious, treacherous pretence
Deceives at will, and with impunity
Makes mockery of all that men hold sacred;
Men who, enslaved to selfish interests,
Make trade and merchandise of godliness,
And try to purchase influence and office
With false eye-rollings and affected raptures;
Those men, I say, who with uncommon zeal
Seek their own fortunes on the road to heaven;
Who, skilled in prayer, have always much to ask,
And live at court to preach retirement;
Who reconcile religion with their vices,
Are quick to anger, vengeful, faithless, tricky,
And, to destroy a man, will have the boldness
To call their private grudge the cause of heaven;
All the more dangerous, since in their anger
They use against us weapons men revere,
And since they make the world applaud their passion,
And seek to stab us with a sacred sword.
There are too many of this canting kind.
Still, the sincere are easy to distinguish;
And many splendid patterns may be found,
In our own time, before our very eyes
Look at Ariston, Periandre, Oronte,
Alcidamas, Clitandre, and Polydore;
No one denies their claim to true religion;
Yet they're no braggadocios of virtue,
They do not make insufferable display,
And their religion's human, tractable;
They are not always judging all our actions,
They'd think such judgment savoured of presumption;
And, leaving pride of words to other men,
'Tis by their deeds alone they censure ours.
Evil appearances find little credit
With them; they even incline to think the best
Of others. No caballers, no intriguers,
They mind the business of their own right living.
They don't attack a sinner tooth and nail,
For sin's the only object of their hatred;
Nor are they over-zealous to attempt
Far more in heaven's behalf than heaven would have 'em.
That is my kind of man, that is true living,
That is the pattern we should set ourselves.
Your fellow was not fashioned on this model;
You're quite sincere in boasting of his zeal;
But you're deceived, I think, by false pretences.
ORGON
My dear good brother-in-law, have you quite done?
CLEANTE
Yes.
ORGON
I'm your humble servant.
(Starts to go.)
CLEANTE
Just a word.
We'll drop that other subject. But you know
Valere has had the promise of your daughter.
ORGON
Yes.
CLEANTE
You had named the happy day.
ORGON
'Tis true.
CLEANTE
Then why put off the celebration of it?
ORGON
I can't say.
CLEANTE
Can you have some other plan
In mind?
ORGON
Perhaps.
CLEANTE
You mean to break your word?
ORGON
I don't say that.
CLEANTE
I hope no obstacle
Can keep you from performing what you've promised.
ORGON
Well, that depends.
CLEANTE
Why must you beat about?
Valere has sent me here to settle matters.
ORGON
Heaven be praised!
CLEANTE
What answer shall I take him?
ORGON
Why, anything you please.
CLEANTE
But we must know
Your plans. What are they?
ORGON
I shall do the will
Of Heaven.
CLEANTE
Come, be serious. You've given
Your promise to Valere. Now will you keep it?
ORGON
Good-bye.
CLEANTE (alone)
His love, methinks, has much to fear;
I must go let him know what's happening here.
ACT II
SCENE I
ORGON, MARIANE
ORGON
Now, Mariane.
MARIANE
Yes, father?
ORGON
Come; I'll tell you
A secret.
MARIANE
Yes ... What are you looking for?
ORGON (looking into a small closet-room)
To see there's no one there to spy upon us;
That little closet's mighty fit to hide in.
There! We're all right now. Mariane, in you
I've always found a daughter dutiful
And gentle. So I've always love you dearly.
MARIANE
I'm grateful for your fatherly affection.
ORGON
Well spoken, daughter. Now, prove you deserve it
By doing as I wish in all respects.
MARIANE
To do so is the height of my ambition.
ORGON
Excellent well. What say you of--Tartuffe?
MARIANE
Who? I?
ORGON
Yes, you. Look to it how you answer.
MARIANE
Why! I'll say of him--anything you please.
SCENE II
ORGON, MARIANE, DORINE (coming in quietly and standing behind
Orgon, so that he does not see her)
ORGON
Well spoken. A good girl. Say then, my daughter,
That all his person shines with noble merit,
That he has won your heart, and you would like
To have him, by my choice, become your husband.
Eh?
MARIANE
Eh?
ORGON
What say you?
MARIANE
Please, what did you say?
ORGON
What?
MARIANE
Surely I mistook you, sir?
ORGON
How now?
MARIANE
Who is it, father, you would have me say
Has won my heart, and I would like to have
Become my husband, by your choice?
ORGON
Tartuffe.
MARIANE
But, father, I protest it isn't true!
Why should you make me tell this dreadful lie?
ORGON
Because I mean to have it be the truth.
Let this suffice for you: I've settled it.
MARIANE
What, father, you would ... ?
ORGON
Yes, child, I'm resolved
To graft Tartuffe into my family.
So he must be your husband. That I've settled.
And since your duty ..
(Seeing Dorine)
What are you doing there?
Your curiosity is keen, my girl,
To make you come eavesdropping on us so.
DORINE
Upon my word, I don't know how the rumour
Got started--if 'twas guess-work or mere chance
But I had heard already of this match,
And treated it as utter stuff and nonsense.
ORGON
What! Is the thing incredible?
DORINE
So much so
I don't believe it even from yourself, sir.
ORGON
I know a way to make you credit it.
DORINE
No, no, you're telling us a fairly tale!
ORGON
I'm telling you just what will happen shortly.
DORINE
Stuff!
ORGON
Daughter, what I say is in good earnest.
DORINE
There, there, don't take your father seriously;
He's fooling.
ORGON
But I tell you ...
DORINE
No. No use.
They won't believe you.
ORGON
If I let my anger ...
DORINE
Well, then, we do believe you; and the worse
For you it is. What! Can a grown-up man
With that expanse of beard across his face
Be mad enough to want ...?
ORGON
You hark me:
You've taken on yourself here in this house
A sort of free familiarity
That I don't like, I tell you frankly, girl.
DORINE
There, there, let's not get angry, sir, I beg you.
But are you making game of everybody?
Your daughter's not cut out for bigot's meat;
And he has more important things to think of.
Besides, what can you gain by such a match?
How can a man of wealth, like you, go choose
A wretched vagabond for son-in-law?
ORGON
You hold your tongue. And know, the less he has,
The better cause have we to honour him.
His poverty is honest poverty;
It should exalt him more than worldly grandeur,
For he has let himself be robbed of all,
Through careless disregard of temporal things
And fixed attachment to the things eternal.
My help may set him on his feet again,
Win back his property--a fair estate
He has at home, so I'm informed--and prove him
For what he is, a true-born gentleman.
DORINE
Yes, so he says himself. Such vanity
But ill accords with pious living, sir.
The man who cares for holiness alone
Should not so loudly boast his name and birth;
The humble ways of genuine devoutness
Brook not so much display of earthly pride.
Why should he be so vain? ... But I offend you:
Let's leave his rank, then,--take the man himself:
Can you without compunction give a man
Like him possession of a girl like her?
Think what a scandal's sure to come of it!
Virtue is at the mercy of the fates,
When a girl's married to a man she hates;
The best intent to live an honest woman
Depends upon the husband's being human,
And men whose brows are pointed at afar
May thank themselves their wives are what they are.
For to be true is more than woman can,
With husbands built upon a certain plan;
And he who weds his child against her will
Owes heaven account for it, if she do ill.
Think then what perils wait on your design.
ORGON (to Mariane)
So! I must learn what's what from her, you see!
DORINE
You might do worse than follow my advice.
ORGON
Daughter, we can't waste time upon this nonsense;
I know what's good for you, and I'm your father.
True, I had promised you to young Valere;
But, first, they tell me he's inclined to gamble,
And then, I fear his faith is not quite sound.
I haven't noticed that he's regular
At church.
DORINE
You'd have him run there just when you do.
Like those who go on purpose to be seen?
ORGON
I don't ask your opinion on the matter.
In short, the other is in Heaven's best graces,
And that is riches quite beyond compare.
This match will bring you every joy you long for;
'Twill be all steeped in sweetness and delight.
You'll live together, in your faithful loves,
Like two sweet children, like two turtle-doves;
You'll never fail to quarrel, scold, or tease,
And you may do with him whate'er you please.
DORINE
With him? Do naught but give him horns, I'll warrant.
ORGON
Out on thee, wench!
DORINE
I tell you he's cut out for't;
However great your daughter's virtue, sir,
His destiny is sure to prove the stronger.
ORGON
Have done with interrupting. Hold your tongue.
Don't poke your nose in other people's business.
DORINE (She keeps interrupting him, just as he turns and starts
to speak to his daughter).
If I make bold, sir, 'tis for your own good.
ORGON
You're too officious; pray you, hold your tongue.
DORINE
'Tis love of you ...
ORGON
I want none of your love.
DORINE
Then I will love you in your own despite.
ORGON
You will, eh?
DORINE
Yes, your honour's dear to me;
I can't endure to see you made the butt
Of all men's ridicule.
ORGON
Won't you be still?
DORINE
'Twould be a sin to let you make this match.
ORGON
Won't you be still, I say, you impudent viper!
DORINE
What! you are pious, and you lose your temper?
ORGON
I'm all wrought up, with your confounded nonsense;
Now, once for all, I tell you hold your tongue.
DORINE
Then mum's the word; I'll take it out in thinking.
ORGON
Think all you please; but not a syllable
To me about it, or ... you understand!
(Turning to his daughter.)
As a wise father, I've considered all
With due deliberation.
DORINE
I'll go mad
If I can't speak.
(She stops the instant he turns his head.)
ORGON
Though he's no lady's man,
Tartuffe is well enough ...
DORINE
A pretty phiz!
ORGON
So that, although you may not care at all
For his best qualities ...
DORINE
A handsome dowry!
(Orgon turns and stands in front of her, with arms folded, eyeing
her.)
Were I in her place, any man should rue it
Who married me by force, that's mighty certain;
I'd let him know, and that within a week,
A woman's vengeance isn't far to seek.
ORGON (to Dorine)
So--nothing that I say has any weight?
DORINE
Eh? What's wrong now? I didn't speak to you.
ORGON
What were you doing?
DORINE
Talking to myself.
ORGON
Oh! Very well. (Aside.) Her monstrous impudence
Must be chastised with one good slap in the face.
(He stands ready to strike her, and, each time he speaks to his
daughter, he glances toward her; but she stands still and says not a
word.) [3]
[Footnote 3: As given at the Comedie francaise, the action is as
follows: While Orgon says, "You must approve of my design," Dorine is
making signs to Mariane to resist his orders; Orgon turns around
suddenly; but Dorine quickly changes her gesture and with the hand
which she had lifted calmly arranges her hair and her cap. Orgon goes
|
seek
|
How many times does the word 'seek' appear in the text?
| 2
|
lasers converge on the Attack Ship barely meters ahead,
the ROARING craft EXPLODING directly before him.
<b>INT.-WEST'S BUBBLE FIGHTER
</b>
(OVER) WEST SCREAMS as he shoots through the sudden conflagration of
flame and debris, everywhere and then gone, giving way to the
blackness of space and the starfield beyond.
<b> WEST
</b>
Show's over.
Below, the second Attack Ship ROARS past, lasers FIRING, locked in a
pinwheel battle with Jeb's Bubble Fighter.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
JEB'S BUBBLE FIGHTER banks, avoiding the high energy volley. Almost. A
laser BURST grazes his Bubble Fighter, the surface of his craft
sparking, suddenly scored with flames.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
The Attack ship is right behind him.
<b> JEB
</b>
Weapons are off line. Jettisoning main
drive core.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
The thruster core of Jeb's Bubble Fighter BLOWS off in a bolus of
flame, soaring back into the pursuit craft. The Raider EXPLODES.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
Controls are sparking. Displays flicker. (OVER) An ALARM sounds.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Warning. Failure in redundant drive systems.
JEB-POV. The surface of Mars is rushing up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact on in 90 seconds.
<b> JEB
</b>
Mars Control. . .
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
Jeb's ship is barreling toward the planet.
<b> JEB (OVER)
</b>
. . .this is Ranger One.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
<b> JEB (ON RADIO)
</b>
...Engines will not respond. Require
assistance. Repeat...
<b> BASE (ON RADIO)
</b>
Ranger One this is Grissom Base.
Rescue craft have been dispatched.
<b>EXT.- MARS MINING COLONY
</b>
Three small rescue craft race skyward.
<b>INT.-JEB'S CRAFT
</b>
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 60 seconds.
Mars fills the view screen.
<b>INT.-WEST'S CRAFT
</b>
The rescue craft are speeding toward Jeb's fighter below.
<b> WEST
</b>
Grissom, this is Eagle One. Those Pugs
Will never reach him in time.
<b> BASE (ON RADIO)
</b>
Eagle one clear this frequency and
return to base.
DON takes a beat. Then he spins his chair towards Mars, begins working
the controls.
<b> WEST
</b>
This is Eagle One. I'm going after
him.
<b> BASE (OVER)
</b>
Negative Eagle one, your craft is not
equipped
West hits his thrusters.
<b>EXT.-SPACE
</b>
West's craft dives toward Jeb's ship and Mars below.
<b>INT.-JEB'S FIGHTER
</b>
Mars is coming up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 30 seconds.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Jeb, do you have navigational
thrusters?
<b> JEB
</b>
Don?
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
It's a yes or no question.
Mars fills the windscreen. Jeb checks his status display.
<b> JEB
</b>
Marginal. But in the green.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in 15 seconds.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Head towards the canals.
<b> JEB
</b>
What are you doing?
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
Saving your ass. Read towards the
canals. Now!
The canal streaked face of the Mars is all Jeb can see. He grabs his
throttle, engages his navigational thrusters and pulls.
<b>EXT.-JEB'S SHIP
</b>
A tiny directional thruster FIRES, angling Jeb's craft so that it
scrapes the surface of Mars and dives into a giant canal, rocky walls
rushing up fast.
<b>INT.-WEST'S SHIP
</b>
West is accelerating toward Jeb.
<b> BASE (OVER)
</b>
Major West, your ship is not equipped
for rescue. You are not authorized to
jeopardize this asset. That is
a direct order. Acknowledge!
West slams a switch, deactivating his radio.
<b> WEST
</b>
Never liked that station, anyway.
He BLASTS into the canal, walls rushing up on either side of him.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
Jeb's tiny craft is plunging toward the rocky crater floor below.
Overhead West's fighter appears, under full thrusters, roaring towards
the crater floor faster and at a sharper angle.
<b>INT.-3EB'S FIGHTER
</b>
The canal floor is rushing up fast.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Impact in five seconds.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
Don is blasting toward the canal floor, almost as if trying to beat
Jeb's ship to a fiery impact below.
<b> COMPUTER
</b>
Warning. Proximity alert.
<b> WEST
</b>
Jeb, I'm going to give you a little
kiss. Don't take it the wrong way.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
West angles his ship directly under Jeb.
<b>INT.-JEB'S FIGHTER
</b>
The expanding surface of Mars, visible beneath his feet, is suddenly
obscured by Don's fighter, swooping under his ship.
<b> JEB
</b>
Don, abort. Abort.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
Jeb's fighter is visible overhead.
West going up. Don angles the throttle.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
Don's ship, sandwiched between the surface of Mars and Jeb's fighter,
angles up and, like a cue ball hitting it's target, Knocks Jeb's ship
spinning toward the safety of space beyond. West's ship actually
scrapes the surface of the planet, sending up a plume of Martian dust.
<b>INT.-WEST'S FIGHTER
</b>
<b> JEB (OVER)
</b>
Does this mean we're going steady?
West pulls his throttle all the way back.
<b>EXT.-MARTIAN CANAL
</b>
West shoots up and out towards the dark of space.
<b> WEST (OVER)
</b>
You weren't getting out of buying
those beers that easy.
The rescue craft converge on Jeb's ship as Don heads for base.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
CHAPTER 2: Mission Objectives
<b>-----------------------------
</b>
IMAGES-CLOSE. A Sallow field. (OVER) a heroic, stringy anthem.
<b> VO
</b>
Imagine an end to world hunger. What
if ample food and clean drinking water
were the birthright of all our
planet's children?
INSERT IMAGE-A dashing hero, wind in his hair. JOHN ROBINSON.
<b> VO
</b>
This man, professor John Robinson,
inventor of the faster than light
hyperdrive can make that timeless
dream a reality.
INSERT IMAGES -Airbrushed faces of a perfect family. THE ROBINSONS.
<b> VO
</b>
John Robinson and his family have been
extensively trained to take a ten year
journey across the galaxy in the
world's most advanced spacecraft,
The Jupiter.
INSERT IMAGE-A towering launch dome glints in the morning sun.
<b> VO
</b>
From a distant world, the Robinsons,
Will bring back a miracle...
INSERT IMAGE-A satellite photo of a planet. Closer on continental
patches, enhanced to show deposits of a diamond like powder.
<b> VO
</b>
Dimondium can turn even worthless sand
to fertile soil. Earth WILL be a
garden. What kind of - future can our
children look forward to?
INSERT IMAGES - Sun dappled, swaying wheat. (OVER) Music crescendos.
<b> V0
</b>
A future without hunger. A future
without suffering. Heaven on Earth.
INSERT CORPORATE LOGO.-A Coke bottle hurling towards the stars.
<b> V0
</b>
This mission sponsored by the US Army
and the Coca-Cola corporation.
<b>PULL BACK TO REVEAL
</b>
WILL ROBINSON (10) hides in a small space, watching the commercial on
a jury-rigged, palm-sized computer. He mimics the Naylrator.
<b> WILL
</b>
Coke. Saving the world for our
children.
(a beat)
Give me a hi-test break.
WILL-POV. Spying through the open slats of his biding place into...
<b>INT:-LIVING ROOM-AFTERNOON
</b>
Basic twenty first century modern. MAUREEN ROBINSON stands, talking
with a PRINCIPAL who in less than happy.
<b> PRINCIPAL
</b>
He hacked our main power grid to run
his experiment. The school was in
chaos. We didn't even have lights.
The room lights suddenly dim. The Principal flickers, revealed as a
holograph, her head now sitting on Schwartzenegger body.
Maureen LAUGHS, then realizes the Principal has no idea her image is
being distorted. Maureen begins moving about the room, surreptitiously
glancing behind couches, into cabinets.
<b> PRINCIPAL (OVER)
</b>
This is no laughing matter, Mrs.
Robinson. Will is terribly gifted. His
little time machines, though pure
fancy, are the products of a truly
brilliant mind.
The Principal's body has become Twiggy's. Now that of an ape. Maureen
pulls open a closet. Will sits inside. Grins.
<b> WILL
</b>
The changing shape of education.
<b> MAUREEN
</b>
No more monkey business.
Will shrugs, adjusts his deck. The Principal returns to normal.
<b> PRINCIPAL
</b>
The boy is starved for attention. Was
there no way his father could have
attended the science fair?
<b>EXT.-HOUSTON - DAY
</b>
Probably Austin and Dallas too. Texas has become a giant urban sprawl
spreading into Mexico and beyond. Immense industrial air purifiers
hang in
|
roaring
|
How many times does the word 'roaring' appear in the text?
| 1
|
(to Kym)
That them?
<b> KYM
</b> Yes. Finally.
<b>
</b> Rosa takes two of Kym's several bags. They are oddly matched.
A Coach tote, a fake Prada, a Gristedes bag, and a World
Wildlife Fund tote bag.
<b>
</b>
<b> WALTER
</b> You're not letting her get behind
the wheel are you? Are you?
<b> ROSA
</b> Walter, you are only responsible
for yourself. (To Kym) This is all
your stuff?
<b> KYM
</b> You know you never gave me your
cell number.
<b> ROSA
</b> (sotto)
It was a mistake. I'm lucky I
didn't get fired. We've discussed
this. (She offers her hand) Good
luck.
<b>
</b> Kym doesn't appear to have heard her but she shakes the hand
barely... so very, very faintly.
Kym's dad, PAUL BUCHMAN, a tired, prosperous man in his late
50's steps around the car and trots up the porch steps. He is
wearing a big smile and his glasses are foggy. They hug. Kym
talks rapidly over his shoulder...
<b>
</b>
<b> KYM
</b> Oh my god. Here you are. I thought
you were going to abandon me in
rehab. It's 12:30. You guys are
half an hour late. I've been
standing here with these lunatics.
You look so great.
Paul offers his hand to Rosa.
<b>
</b>
<b> PAUL
</b> Hello. I'm Paul Buchman.
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> 3.
</b>
<b> 1 CONTINUED: 1
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> ROSA
</b> I'm Rosa. We met last time you came
up.
<b> PAUL
</b> (doesn't remember)
Of course, of course.
<b>
</b>
<b> KYM
</b> Let's go, let's go. Where is
everybody?
CAROL, a handsome woman in her 40's, waves from the car.
<b>
</b>
<b> KYM
</b> (loudly)
Hey Carol. How are ya?
<b> CAROL
</b> Hello Kym.
<b> KYM
</b> So where's Rachel? Carol, where's
Rachel?
Kym slides into the back seat as Paul loads the car.
<b> CAROL
</b> Getting everything ready at the
house.
<b> PAUL
</b> There is so much going on at the
house I can't tell you. You know
your sister's doing all of it
herself.
<b> KYM
</b> (eyeing the rearview
mirror as she arranges
her bangs)
My sister is bending the
environment to her will? Really?
<b>
</b>
<b> PAUL
</b> No wedding planners or anything
like that. Just her and Sidney and
a lot of their friends. She is so
thrilled you're here. Is that
everything, sweetheart?
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> 1 CONTINUED: 1
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> KYM
</b> (distractedly, rifling
through her bag)
Yah. Can we go?
<b>
</b>
<b> CAROL
</b> Is there anyone you want to say
goodbye to?
<b> KYM
</b> God no.
<b>
</b>
<b> 2 EXT./INT. TRANSITIONAL SHOTS. DAY 2
</b> The station wagon travels through a constantly changing
series of environments as they journey out of New York City
on their drive to suburban Connecticut.
<b>
</b> Right away though, Kym lights up a cigarette and Paul and
Carol crank their windows.
<b>
</b>
<b> KYM
</b> So are all these busy young wedding
helpers staying at the house?
Because after eight months of
constantly revolving cell mates and
crazy people...
<b>
</b>
<b>
|
remember
|
How many times does the word 'remember' appear in the text?
| 0
|
but he ignored Jandron and spoke to
Krell. "You said one of your passengers had escaped the explosion?"
To Kent's amazement a girl stepped from behind the group of men, a slim
girl with pale face and steady, dark eyes. "I'm the passenger," she told
him. "My name's Marta Mallen."
Kent and Liggett stared, astounded. "Good Lord!" Kent exclaimed. "A girl
like you on this ship!"
"Miss Mallen happened to be on the upper-deck at the time of the
explosion and, so, escaped when the other passengers were killed," Krell
explained smoothly. "Isn't that so, Miss Mallen?"
The girl's eyes had not left Kent's, but at Krell's words she nodded.
"Yes, that is so," she said mechanically.
Kent collected his whirling thoughts. "But wouldn't you rather go back
to the _Pallas_ with us?" he asked. "I'm sure you'd be more comfortable
there."
"She doesn't go," grunted Jandron. Kent turned in quick wrath toward
him, but Krell intervened.
"Jandron only means that Miss Mallen is much more comfortable on this
passenger-ship than she'd be in your freighter." He shot a glance at the
girl as he spoke, and Kent saw her wince.
"I'm afraid that's so," she said; "but I thank you for the offer, Mr.
Kent."
Kent could have sworn that there was an appeal in her eyes, and he stood
for a moment, indecisive, Jandron's stare upon him. After a moment's
thought he turned to Krell.
"You were going to show me the damage the exploding tubes did," he said,
and Krell nodded quickly.
"Of course; you can see from the head of the stair back in the
after-deck."
He led the way along a corridor, Jandron and the girl and two of the
men coming with them. Kent's thoughts were still chaotic as he walked
between Krell and Liggett. What was this girl doing amid the men of the
_Martian Queen_? What had her eyes tried to tell him?
Liggett nudged his side in the dim corridor, and Kent, looking down, saw
dark splotches on its metal floor. Blood-stains! His suspicions
strengthened. They might be from the bleeding of those wounded in the
tube-explosions. But were they?
* * * * *
They reached the after-deck whose stair's head gave a view of the
wrecked tube-rooms beneath. The lower decks had been smashed by terrific
forces. Kent's practiced eyes ran rapidly over the shattered
rocket-tubes.
"They've back-blasted from being fired too fast," he said. "Who was
controlling the ship when this happened?"
"Galling, our second-officer," answered Krell. "He had found us routed
too close to the dead-area's edge and was trying to get away from it in
a hurry, when he used the tubes too fast, and half of them
back-blasted."
"If Galling was at the controls in the pilot-house, how did the
explosion kill him?" asked Liggett skeptically. Krell turned quickly.
"The shock threw him against the pilot-house wall and fractured his
skull--he died in an hour," he said. Liggett was silent.
"Well, this ship will never move again," Kent said. "It's too bad that
the explosion blew out your tanks, but we ought to find fuel somewhere
in the wreck-pack for the _Pallas_. And now we'd best get back."
As they returned up the dim corridor Kent managed to walk beside Marta
Mallen, and, without being seen, he contrived to detach his
suit-phone--the compact little radiophone case inside his space-suit's
neck--and slip it into the girl's grasp. He dared utter no word of
explanation, but apparently she understood, for she had concealed the
suit-phone by the time they reached the upper-deck.
Kent and Liggett prepared to don their space-helmets, and before
entering the airlock, Kent turned to Krell.
"We'll expect you at the _Pallas_ first hour to-morrow, and we'll start
searching the wreck-pack with a dozen of our men," he said.
He then extended his hand to the girl. "Good-by, Miss Mallen. I hope we
can have a talk soon."
He had said the words with double meaning, and saw understanding in her
eyes. "I hope we can, too," she said.
Kent's nod to Jandron went unanswered, and he and Liggett adjusted their
helmets and entered the airlock.
Once out of it, they kicked rapidly away from the _Martian Queen_,
floating along with the wreck-pack's huge mass to their right, and only
the star-flecked emptiness of infinity to their left. In a few minutes
they reached the airlock of the _Pallas_.
* * * * *
They found Captain Crain awaiting them anxiously. Briefly Kent reported
everything.
"I'm certain there has been foul play aboard the _Martian Queen_," he
said. "Krell you saw for yourself, Jandron is pure brute, and their men
seem capable of anything.
"I gave the suit-phone to the girl, however, and if she can call us with
it, we can get the truth from her. She dared not tell me anything there
in the presence of Krell and Jandron."
Crain nodded, his face grave. "We'll see whether or not she calls," he
said.
Kent took a suit-phone from one of their space-suits and rapidly, tuned
it to match the one he had left with Marta Mallen. Almost at once they
heard her voice from it, and Kent answered rapidly.
"I'm so glad I got you!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Kent, I dared not tell you
the truth about this ship when you were here, or Krell and the rest
would have killed you at once."
"I thought that was it, and that's why I left the suit-phone for you,"
Kent said. "Just what is the truth?"
"Krell and Jandron and these men of theirs are the ones who killed the
officers and passengers of the _Martian Queen_! What they told you about
the explosion was true enough, for the explosion did happen that way,
and because of it, the ship drifted into the dead-area. But the only
ones killed by it were some of the tube-men and three passengers.
"Then, while the ship was drifting into the dead-area, Krell told the
men that the fewer aboard, the longer they could live on the ship's food
and air. Krell and Jandron led the men in a surprise attack and killed
all the officers and passengers, and threw their bodies out into space.
I was the only passenger they spared, because both Krell and
Jandron--want me!"
* * * * *
There was a silence, and Kent felt a red anger rising in him. "Have they
dared harm you?" he asked after a moment.
"No, for Krell and Jandron are too jealous of each other to permit the
other to touch me. But it's been terrible living with them in this awful
place."
"Ask her if she knows what their plans are in regard to us," Crain told
Kent.
Marta had apparently overheard the question. "I don't know that, for
they shut me in my cabin as soon as you left," she said. "I've heard
them talking and arguing excitedly, though. I know that if you do find
fuel, they'll try to kill you all and escape from here in your ship."
"Pleasant prospect," Kent commented. "Do you think they plan an attack
on us now?"
"No; I think that they'll wait until you've refueled your ship, if you
are able to do that, and then try treachery."
"Well, they'll find us ready. Miss Mallen, you have the suit-phone: keep
it hidden in your cabin and I'll call you first thing to-morrow. We're
going to get you out of there, but we don't want to break with Krell
until we're ready. Will you be all right until then?"
"Of course I will," she answered. "There's another thing, though. My
name isn't Miss Mallen--it's Marta."
"Mine's Rance," said Kent, smiling. "Good-by until to-morrow, then,
Marta."
"Good-by, Rance."
Kent rose from the instrument with the smile still in his eyes, but with
his lips compressed. "Damn it, there's the bravest and finest girl in
the solar system!" he exclaimed. "Over there with those brutes!"
"We'll have her out, never fear," Crain reassured him. "The main thing
is to determine our course toward Krell and Jandron."
Kent thought. "As I see it, Krell can help us immeasurably in our search
through the wreck-pack for fuel," he said. "I think it would be best to
keep on good terms with him until we've found fuel and have it in our
tanks. Then we can turn the tables on them before they can do anything."
Crain nodded thoughtfully. "I think you're right. Then you and Liggett
and Krell can head our search-party to-morrow."
Crain established watches on a new schedule, and Kent and Liggett and
the dozen men chosen for the exploring party of the next day ate a
scanty meal and turned in for some sleep.
* * * * *
When Kent woke and glimpsed the massed wrecks through the window he was
for the moment amazed, but rapidly remembered. He and Liggett were
finishing their morning ration when Crain pointed to a window.
"There comes Krell now," he said, indicating the single space-suited
figure approaching along the wreck-pack's edge.
"I'll call Marta before he gets here," said Kent hastily.
The girl answered on the suit-phone immediately, and it occurred to Kent
that she must have spent the night without sleeping. "Krell left a few
minutes ago," she said.
"Yes, he's coming now. You heard nothing of their plans?"
"No; they've kept me shut in my cabin. However, I did hear Krell giving
Jandron and the rest directions. I'm sure they're plotting something."
"We're prepared for them," Kent assured her. "If all goes well, before
you realize it, you'll be sailing out of here with us in the _Pallas_."
"I hope so," she said. "Rance, be careful with Krell in the wreck-pack.
He's dangerous."
"I'll be watching him," he promised. "Good-by, Marta."
Kent reached the lower-deck just as Krell entered from the airlock, his
swarthy face smiling as he removed his helmet. He carried a pointed
steel bar. Liggett and the others were donning their suits.
"All ready to go, Kent?" Krell asked.
Kent nodded. "All ready," he said shortly. Since hearing Marta's story
he found it hard to dissimulate with Krell.
"You'll want bars like mine," Krell continued, "for they're damned
handy when you get jammed between wreckage masses. Exploring this
wreck-pack is no soft job: I can tell you from experience."
Liggett and the rest had their suits adjusted, and with bars in their
grasp, followed Krell into the airlock. Kent hung back for a last word
with Crain, who, with his half-dozen remaining men, was watching.
"Marta just told me that Krell and Jandron have been plotting
something," he told the captain; "so I'd keep a close watch outside."
"Don't worry, Kent. We'll let no one inside the _Pallas_ until you and
Liggett and the men get back."
* * * * *
In a few minutes they were out of the ship, with Krell and Kent and
Liggett leading, and the twelve members of the _Pallas'_ crew following
closely.
The three leaders climbed up on the Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship that
lay beside the _Pallas_, the others moving on and exploring the
neighboring wrecks in parties of two and three. From the top of the
passenger-ship, when they gained it, Kent and his two companions could
look far out over the wreck-pack. It was an extraordinary spectacle,
this stupendous mass of dead ships floating motionless in the depths of
space, with the burning stars above and below them.
His companions and the other men clambering over the neighboring wrecks
seemed weird figures in their bulky suits and transparent helmets. Kent
looked back at the _Pallas_, and then along the wreck-pack's edge to
where he could glimpse the silvery side of the _Martian Queen_. But now
Krell and Liggett were descending into the ship's interior through the
great opening smashed in its bows, and Kent followed.
They found themselves in the liner's upper navigation-rooms. Officers
and men lay about, frozen to death at the instant the meteor-struck
vessel's air had rushed out, and the cold of space had entered. Krell
led the way on, down into the ship's lower decks, where they found the
bodies of the crew and passengers lying in the same silent death.
The salons held beautifully-dressed women, distinguished-looking men,
lying about as the meteor's shock had hurled them. One group lay around
a card-table, their game interrupted. A woman still held a small child,
both seemingly asleep. Kent tried to shake off the oppression he felt as
he and Krell and Liggett continued down to the tank-rooms.
They found their quest there useless, for the tanks had been strained by
the meteor's shock, and were empty. Kent felt Liggett grasp his hand and
heard him speak, the sound-vibrations coming through their contacting
suits.
"Nothing here; and we'll find it much the same through all these wrecks,
if I'm not wrong. Tanks always give at a shock."
"There must be some ships with fuel still in them among all these," Kent
answered.
* * * * *
They climbed back, up to the ship's top, and leapt off it toward a
Jupiter freighter lying a little farther inside the pack. As they
floated toward it, Kent saw their men moving on with them from ship to
ship, progressing inward into the pack. Both Kent and Liggett kept Krell
always ahead of them, knowing that a blow from his bar, shattering their
glassite helmets, meant instant death. But Krell seemed quite intent on
the search for fuel.
The big Jupiter freighter seemed intact from above, but, when they
penetrated into it, they found its whole under-side blown away,
apparently by an explosion of its tanks. They moved on to the next ship,
a private space-yacht, small in size, but luxurious in fittings. It had
been abandoned in space, its rocket-tubes burst and tanks strained.
They went on, working deeper into the wreck-pack. Kent almost forgot the
paramount importance of their search in the fascination of it. They
explored almost every known type of ship--freighters, liners,
cold-storage boats, and grain-boats. Once Kent's hopes ran high at sight
of a fuel-ship, but it proved to be in ballast, its cargo-tanks empty
and its own tanks and tubes apparently blown simultaneously.
Kent's muscles ached from the arduous work of climbing over and
exploring the wrecks. He and Liggett had become accustomed to the sight
of frozen, motionless bodies.
As they worked deeper into the pack, they noticed that the ships were of
increasingly older types, and at last Krell signalled a halt. "We're
almost a mile in," he told them, gripping their hands. "We'd better work
back out, taking a different section of the pack as we do."
Kent nodded. "It may change our luck," he said.
It did; for when they had gone not more than a half-mile back, they
glimpsed one of their men waving excitedly from the top of a Pluto
liner.
They hastened at once toward him, the other men gathering also; and when
Kent grasped the man's hand he heard his excited voice.
"Fuel-tanks here are more than half-full, sir!"
* * * * *
They descended quickly into the liner, finding that though its whole
stern had been sheared away by a meteor, its tanks had remained
miraculously unstrained.
"Enough fuel here to take the _Pallas_ to Neptune!" Kent exclaimed.
"How will you get it over to your ship?" Krell asked. Kent pointed to
great reels of flexible metal tubing hanging near the tanks.
"We'll pump it over. The _Pallas_ has tubing like this ship's, for
taking on fuel in space, and, by joining its tubing to this, we'll have
a tube-line between the two ships. It's hardly more than a
quarter-mile."
"Let's get back and let them know about it," Liggett urged, and they
climbed back out of the liner.
They worked their way out of the wreck-pack with much greater speed than
that with which they had entered, needing only an occasional brace
against a ship's side to send them floating over the wrecks. They came
to the wreck-pack's edge at a little distance from the _Pallas_, and
hastened toward it.
They found the outer door of the _Pallas'_ airlock open, and entered,
Krell remaining with them. As the outer door closed and air hissed into
the lock, Kent and the rest removed their helmets. The inner door slid
open as they were doing this, and from inside almost a score of men
leapt upon them!
Kent, stunned for a moment, saw Jandron
|
thought
|
How many times does the word 'thought' appear in the text?
| 2
|
PREW
</b><b> (SHRUGS)
</b> That's what the orders say.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> You made a bad mistake. This outfit
they can give back to Custer.
Prew smiles slightly, starts toward door.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> The Captain ain't in yet.
Prew puts down his barracks bags.
<b> PREY
</b> I'll look around.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> (smiles for first time)
Maybe we borrow some money from a
twenty per cent man and take a real
trip to town some night.
<b> PHEW
</b> Maybe.
<b> TRUCKING SHOT ALONG COMPANY STREET
</b> Prew walks slowly down the raised porch alongside the street.
He takes the mouthpiece of a bugle from his pocket, jiggles
it idly, a habit of his. He comes to the Dayroom, glances
through the screen door, goes in.
<b> INT. DAYROOM - DAY
</b>
<b> MEDIUM SHOT
</b> The Dayroom has a pool table, ping-pong table, a radio, etc.
Moth-eaten, upholstered chairs line both walls. The place is
empty as Prew enters. He looks around casually, sees the pool
table in an alcove. He moves over to it, puts the bugle
mouthpiece in his pocket, picks a cue from the rack on the
wall. He switches on the light, chalks the cue.
<b> MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT
</b> The triangle of balls is already racked on the table. Prew
addresses the cue ball, shoots and breaks the rack solidly.
He watches the balls hurry around the table.
<b> 3.
</b>
<b> WARDEN'S VOICE (O. S.)
</b> What're you think you're doing!?
Why ain't you out in the field with
the Compny? What's your name?
The voice is brawling, brash, vigorous. Prew turns slowly.
CAMERA ANGLE WIDENS to INCLUDE FIRST SERGEANT MILTON WARDEN,
almost at Prew's elbow. He is thirty-four, big and powerful,
has a neatly-trimmed moustache.
<b> PREW
</b> Prewitt. Transfer from Shafter.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Yeah. I heard about you.
<b> PREW
</b> I heard about you, too, Warden.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Well, put up that cue and come
along. This here's a rifle outfit,
Prewitt. You ain't suppose to enjoy
yourself before sundown. The Man's
very particlar about little things
like that.
Warden goes out of the Dayroom. Prew puts up the cue and
follows him.
<b> EXT. COMPANY STREET
</b>
<b> TRUCKING SHOT
</b> as Prew and Warden walk along the porch, Warden a few paces
ahead. They go into the Orderly Room.
<b> INT. ORDERLY ROOM - DAY
</b>
<b> MEDIUM SHOT
</b> as Prew and Warden enter. Maggio is sweeping the room.
MAZZIOLI, a bespectacled, intellectual-looking Private First
Class, is at the clerk's desk, opening it, taking out papers,
etc. Prew sits on a bench as Warden goes over to Mazzioli.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Mazzioli! Grant went to the
hospital yesterday. Did you make up
his sick record? Did you make a
note for the morning report?!
You're the Compny Clerk. The lousy
Sickbook is your job!
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> MAZZIOLI
</b> Those medics didn't get the
Sickbook back till late yesterday --
I'll tend to it right now --
<b> WARDEN
</b> Thanks. I already done it for you.
<b> ANOTHER ANGLE
</b> Maggio has swept his way over to Prew. He stops sweeping now,
stares at the other man as if still incredulous.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> But you the beat bugler they got
over at Shatter. You probly the
best on this whole Rock.
In b.g., Warden has turned from Mazzioli and is looking at
Prew. Prew looks back coolly, answers Maggio thoughtfully.
<b> PREW
</b> That's true.
Maggio wags his head, bends over to pick up wastepaper
basket.
<b> MAGGIO
</b> Well, friend, I feel for you. But
from my position I can't quite
reach you.
<b> WARDEN
</b> Ten-sh-HUT!
Prewitt, Mazzioli and Maggio spring to attention. The screen
door bangs and CAPTAIN DANA HOLMES enters shot. He wears
cavalry boots and spurs. He is about forty, unsure of
himself, therefore always too certain with his men. He nods
pleasantly.
<b> HOLMES
</b> At ease. Good morning, men.
Anything special this morning,
Sergeant Warden? I've only a few
minutes.
<b> WARDEN
</b> New man here, sir.
<b> HOLMES
</b> Oh, yes. Bring him in.
<b> 5.
</b>
Holmes goes into his office. Warden jerks his thumb toward
the door. Prewitt goes into the office. Warden follows him.
<b> INT. CAPTAIN'S OFFICE - DAY
</b>
Holmes is seated at his desk as Prewitt and Warden enter. A
placard on it reads: CAPTAIN HOLMES. A smaller desk nearby
has a placard' reading: 1ST SERGEANT WARDEN. Warden seats
himself at this desk. On the walls are framed photographs of
prizefighters as well as one of a large golden trophy. On
Holmes' desk is a small framed photograph of a very
attractive blonde woman. Prewitt comes to attention in front
of Holmes' desk.
<b> PREWITT
</b> Sir, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt
reporting to the Compny Commander
as ordered.
<b> HOLMES
</b> At ease
|
mouthpiece
|
How many times does the word 'mouthpiece' appear in the text?
| 1
|
(CONTINUED)
</b> Goldenrod (7/19/2012) 4.
<b>2 CONTINUED: 2
</b>
<b> OSCAR (O.S.)
</b> You gonna give me a reason to?
Sophina doesn't answer. The phone rings again. Oscar's hand
quickly picks it up and flips it open. We follow the phone to
his face and we see him for the first time, a 22 year old
Black man with a warm smile.
<b> OSCAR (CONT'D)
</b> (into phone)
Aye bruh it's bad tonight. I gotta
catch you tomorrow.
He closes it before the guy on the other end can respond. He
takes the phone with him as he climbs back into bed with
SOPHINA MESA, a curvy 24 year old Mexican American woman.
<b> OSCAR (CONT'D)
</b> Look, I'm not going out, you happy
now?
Sophina nods. Oscar moves closer to her and kisses her on her
neck. She kisses him back a bit, then scoots away.
Oscar kisses her again. Puts his hand in her hair.
<b> SOPHINA
</b> Osc. Osc, hold up.
Oscar stops. Sophina scoots away even further.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b> Pink (6/25/2012) 5.
<b>2 CONTINUED: 2
</b>
<b> OSCAR
</b> Man, wussup? I been home hella
long...
<b> SOPHINA
</b> I don't know...Every time you touch
me, I can't help to think about how
you was touchin that Bitch.
Oscar shakes his head at this, sighs.
<b> SOPHINA (CONT'D)
</b> You know what? You right, go.
<b> OSCAR
</b> What I gotta do? I'm here, right
now. I fucked up one time, alright?
<b> SOPHINA
</b> No, you fucking got caught, one
time. You gonna sit here and tell
me that was the first time you
kicked it with that Bitch. Never
seen her before that huh?
<b> OSCAR
</b> Look I'm done with that shit. All I
want is you and T, forever.
Sophina looks at him, searching for the truth in his eyes.
<b> SOPHINA
</b> What you mean, forever?
<b> OSCAR
</b> Let me show you.
Oscar kisses her, moves in. Sophina scoots away from him.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Oscar and Sophina look over at the door.
<b> CHILD'S VOICE (O.S.)
</b> Daddy.
Oscar looks at Sophina.
<b> SOPHINA
</b> What? She's askin for you.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b> Green (7/5/2012) 6.
<b>2 CONTINUED: 2
</b>
<b> OSCAR
</b> (to child)
Hold on, T.
Oscar jumps up and grabs the bag of weed off of the dresser
and hides it in the closet.
He rushes over and opens the door where we see TATIANA GRANT,
a cute 4 year old girl, standing wearing footie pajamas.
<b> TATIANA
</b> I can't sleep...
Before Tatiana can even finish, Oscar has her in his arms. He
brings her over to the bed and places her next to Sophina.
<b> OSCAR
</b> You want to sleep in here with
Mommy and Daddy?
Tatiana nods.
<b> SOPHINA
</b> You know better than that T.
(to Oscar)
What time is it?
Oscar picks up his phone and looks at it.
<b> OSCAR
</b> Damn, it's after midnight.
He opens his phone up. Presses compose text message (as he
types the message, the words appear as graphics across the
screen like Sub Titles)
<b> TO MOM:
</b><b> HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! LOVE YOU!!!
</b>
Oscar sends the text off. He hooks his phone up to the
charger and hits the light switch, leaving us in darkness.
<b> TATIANA
</b> Daddy.
<b> OSCAR
</b> Wussup, baby?
<b> TATIANA
</b> I don't want to move to Livermore.
Oscar and Sophina laugh at this.
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b> Goldenrod (7/19/2012) 7.
<b>2 CONTINUED: 2
</b>
<b> SOPHINA
</b> Hella nosy...
<b> OSCAR
</b> Don't worry T, aint nobody's moving
right now. Go to sleep.
<b>3 INT. OSCAR'S APARTMENT- BATHROOM- DAY 3
</b>
Oscar stands in the shower, letting the water run over his
head. There looks to be a lot on his mind.
<b>4 INT. OSCAR'S APARTMENT- KITCHEN- DAY 4
</b>
Sophina and Oscar move around the small kitchen like a well
oiled machine. Sophina, wearing a WalMart uniform, makes two
lunches. Oscar wipes milk from Tatiana's face and fixes her
hair.
<b> TATIANA
</b> Mommy can I have two of the fruit
snacks today?
<b> SOPHINA
</b> No, T. You can take an extra apple
if you want.
<b> TATIANA
</b> But mommy I-
<b> SOPHINA
</b> Don't argue T.
Tatiana pouts. Sophina downs a cup full of orange juice,
grabs both lunch bags, Tatiana, and heads for the door.
<b> SOPHINA (CONT'D)
</b> Com'on Osc. We gotta stop and get
gas too.
<b> OSCAR
</b> We got enough to get yall there.
Sophina shoots Oscar a look.
<b> OSCAR (CONT'D)
</b> Go start the car up. You got your
keys?
<b> (CONTINUED)
</b> Pink (6/25/2012) 8.
<b>4 CONTINUED: 4
</b>
Sophina nods.
<b> OSCAR (CONT'D)
</b> Go. I gotta grab my beanie.
Sophina and Tatiana leave.
|
scoots
|
How many times does the word 'scoots' appear in the text?
| 2
|
doctor, and you don't conceal it. Your sincerity
does you credit. [He goes into the house.]
LVOFF. [Alone] What a confoundedly disagreeable character! I have let
another opportunity slip without speaking to him as I meant to, but I
simply cannot talk calmly to that man. The moment I open my mouth to
speak I feel such a commotion and suffocation here [He puts his hand on
his breast] that my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. Oh, I loathe
that Tartuffe, that unmitigated rascal, with all my heart! There he is,
preparing to go driving in spite of the entreaties of his unfortunate
wife, who adores him and whose only happiness is his presence. She
implores him to spend at least one evening with her, and he cannot even
do that. Why, he might shoot himself in despair if he had to stay at
home! Poor fellow, what he wants are new fields for his villainous
schemes. Oh, I know why you go to Lebedieff's every evening, Ivanoff! I
know.
Enter IVANOFF, in hat and coat, ANNA and SHABELSKI
SHABELSKI. Look here, Nicholas, this is simply barbarous You go away
every evening and leave us here alone, and we get so bored that we have
to go to bed at eight o'clock. It is a scandal, and no decent way of
living. Why can you go driving if we can't? Why?
ANNA. Leave him alone, Count. Let him go if he wants to.
IVANOFF. How can a sick woman like you go anywhere? You know you have a
cough and must not go out after sunset. Ask the doctor here. You are no
child, Annie, you must be reasonable. And as for you, what would you do
with yourself over there?
SHABELSKI. I am ready to go anywhere: into the jaws of a crocodile, or
even into the jaws of hell, so long as I don't have to stay here. I am
horribly bored. I am stupefied by this dullness. Every one here is tired
of me. You leave me at home to entertain Anna, but I feel more like
scratching and biting her.
ANNA. Leave him alone, Count. Leave him alone. Let him go if he enjoys
himself there.
IVANOFF. What does this mean, Annie? You know I am not going for
pleasure. I must see Lebedieff about the money I owe him.
ANNA. I don't see why you need justify yourself to me. Go ahead! Who is
keeping you?
IVANOFF. Heavens! Don't let us bite one another's heads off. Is that
really unavoidable?
SHABELSKI. [Tearfully] Nicholas, my dear boy, do please take me with
you. I might possibly be amused a little by the sight of all the fools
and scoundrels I should see there. You know I haven't been off this
place since Easter.
IVANOFF. [Exasperated] Oh, very well! Come along then! How tiresome you
all are!
SHABELSKI. I may go? Oh, thank you! [Takes him gaily by the arm and
leads him aside] May I wear your straw hat?
IVANOFF. You may, only hurry, please.
SHABELSKI runs into the house.
IVANOFF. How tired I am of you all! But no, what am I saying? Annie, my
manner to you is insufferable, and it never used to be. Well, good-bye,
Annie. I shall be back by one.
ANNA. Nicholas! My dear husband, stay at home to-night!
IVANOFF. [Excitedly] Darling, sweetheart, my dear, unhappy one, I
implore you to let me leave home in the evenings. I know it is cruel and
unjust to ask this, but let me do you this injustice. It is such torture
for me to stay. As soon as the sun goes down my soul is overwhelmed by
the most horrible despair. Don't ask me why; I don't know; I swear I
don't. This dreadful melancholy torments me here, it drives me to the
Lebedieff's and there it grows worse than ever. I rush home; it still
pursues me; and so I am tortured all through the night. It is breaking
my heart.
ANNA. Nicholas, won't you stay? We will talk together as we used to.
We will have supper together and read afterward. The old grumbler and I
have learned so many duets to play to you. [She kisses him. Then, after
a pause] I can't understand you any more. This has been going on for a
year now. What has changed you so?
IVANOFF. I don't know.
ANNA. And why don't you want me to go driving with you in the evening?
IVANOFF. As you insist on knowing, I shall have to tell you. It is a
little cruel, but you had best understand. When this melancholy fit is
on me I begin to dislike you, Annie, and at such times I must escape
from you. In short, I simply have to leave this house.
ANNA. Oh, you are sad, are you? I can understand that! Nicholas, let
me tell you something: won't you try to sing and laugh and scold as you
used to? Stay here, and we will drink some liqueur together, and laugh,
and chase away this sadness of yours in no time. Shall I sing to you? Or
shall we sit in your study in the twilight as we used to, while you tell
me about your sadness? I can read such suffering in your eyes! Let
me look into them and weep, and our hearts will both be lighter. [She
laughs and cries at once] Or is it really true that the flowers return
with every spring, but lost happiness never returns? Oh, is it? Well, go
then, go!
IVANOFF. Pray for me, Annie! [He goes; then stops and thinks for a
moment] No, I can't do it. [IVANOFF goes out.]
ANNA. Yes, go, go--[Sits down at the table.]
LVOFF. [Walking up and down] Make this a rule, Madam: as soon as the sun
goes down you must go indoors and not come out again until morning. The
damp evening air is bad for you.
ANNA. Yes, sir!
LVOFF. What do you mean by "Yes, sir"? I am speaking seriously.
ANNA. But I don't want to be serious. [She coughs.]
LVOFF. There now, you see, you are coughing already.
SHABELSKI comes out of the house in his hat and coat.
SHABELSKI. Where is Nicholas? Is the carriage here yet? [Goes quickly
to ANNA and kisses her hand] Good-night, my darling! [Makes a face and
speaks with a Jewish accent] I beg your bardon! [He goes quickly out.]
LVOFF. Idiot!
A pause; the sounds of a concertina are heard in the distance.
ANNA. Oh, how lonely it is! The coachman and the cook are having a
little ball in there by themselves, and I--I am, as it were, abandoned.
Why are you walking about, Doctor? Come and sit down here.
LVOFF. I can't sit down.
[A pause.]
ANNA. They are playing "The Sparrow" in the kitchen. [She sings]
"Sparrow, Sparrow, where are you?
On the mountain drinking dew."
[A pause] Are your father and mother living, Doctor?
LVOFF. My mother is living; my father is dead.
ANNA. Do you miss your mother very much?
LVOFF. I am too busy to miss any one.
ANNA. [Laughing] The flowers return with every spring, but lost
happiness never returns. I wonder who taught me that? I think it was
Nicholas himself. [Listens] The owl is hooting again.
LVOFF. Well, let it hoot.
ANNA. I have begun to think, Doctor, that fate has cheated me. Other
people who, perhaps, are no better than I am are happy and have not had
to pay for their happiness. But I have paid for it all, every moment of
it, and such a price! Why should I have to pay so terribly? Dear friend,
you are all too considerate and gentle with me to tell me the truth; but
do you think I don't know what is the matter with me? I know perfectly
well. However, this isn't a pleasant subject--[With a Jewish accent] "I
beg your bardon!" Can you tell funny stories?
LVOFF. No, I can't.
ANNA. Nicholas can. I am beginning to be surprised, too, at the
injustice of people. Why do they return hatred for love, and answer
truth with lies? Can you tell me how much longer I shall be hated by my
mother and father? They live fifty miles away, and yet I can feel their
hatred day and night, even in my sleep. And how do you account for the
sadness of Nicholas? He says that he only dislikes me in the evening,
when the fit is on him. I understand that, and can tolerate it, but
what if he should come to dislike me altogether? Of course that is
impossible, and yet--no, no, I mustn't even imagine such a thing.
[Sings]
"Sparrow, Sparrow, where are you?"
[She shudders] What fearful thoughts I have! You are not married,
Doctor; there are many things that you cannot understand.
LVOFF. You say you are surprised, but--but it is you who surprise me.
Tell me, explain to me how you, an honest and intelligent woman, almost
a saint, could allow yourself to be so basely deceived and dragged into
this den of bears? Why are you here? What have you in common with such a
cold and heartless--but enough of your husband! What have you in common
with these wicked and vulgar surroundings? With that eternal grumbler,
the crazy and decrepit Count? With that swindler, that prince of
rascals, Misha, with his fool's face? Tell me, I say, how did you get
here?
ANNA. [laughing] That is what he used to say, long ago, oh, exactly!
Only his eyes are larger than yours, and when he was excited they used
to shine like coals--go on, go on!
LVOFF. [Gets up and waves his hand] There is nothing more to say. Go
into the house.
ANNA. You say that Nicholas is not what he should be, that his faults
are so and so. How can you possibly understand him? How can you learn
to know any one in six months? He is a wonderful man, Doctor, and I am
sorry you could not have known him as he was two or three years ago. He
is depressed and silent now, and broods all day without doing anything,
but he was splendid then. I fell in love with him at first sight.
[Laughing] I gave one look and was caught like a mouse in a trap! So
when he asked me to go with him I cut every tie that bound me to my
old life as one snips the withered leaves from a plant. But things are
different now. Now he goes to the Lebedieff's to amuse himself with
other women, and I sit here in the garden and listen to the owls. [The
WATCHMAN'S rattle is heard] Tell me, Doctor, have you any brothers and
sisters?
LVOFF. No.
ANNA sobs.
LVOFF. What is it? What is the matter?
ANNA. I can't stand it, Doctor, I must go.
LVOFF. Where?
ANNA. To him. I am going. Have the horses harnessed. [She runs into the
house.]
LVOFF. No, I certainly cannot go on treating any one under these
conditions. I not only have to do it for nothing, but I am forced to
endure this agony of mind besides. No, no, I can't stand it. I have had
enough of it. [He goes into the house.]
The curtain falls.
ACT II
The drawing-room of LEBEDIEFFÃS house. In the centre is a door leading
into a garden. Doors open out of the room to the right and left. The
room is furnished with valuable old furniture, which is carefully
protected by linen covers. The walls are hung with pictures. The room is
lighted by candelabra. ZINAIDA is sitting on a sofa; the elderly guests
are sitting in arm-chairs on either hand. The young guests are sitting
about the room on small chairs. KOSICH, AVDOTIA NAZAROVNA, GEORGE, and
others are playing cards in the background. GABRIEL is standing near
the door on the right. The maid is passing sweetmeats about on a tray.
During the entire act guests come and go from the garden, through the
room, out of the door on the left, and back again. Enter MARTHA through
the door on the right. She goes toward ZINAIDA.
ZINAIDA. [Gaily] My dearest Martha!
MARTHA. How do you do, Zinaida? Let me congratulate you on your
daughter's birthday.
ZINAIDA. Thank you, my dear; I am delighted to see you. How are you?
MARTHA. Very well indeed, thank you. [She sits down on the sofa] Good
evening, young people!
The younger guests get up and bow.
FIRST GUEST. [Laughing] Young people indeed! Do you call yourself an old
person?
MARTHA. [Sighing] How can I make any pretense to youth now?
FIRST GUEST. What nonsense! The fact that you are a widow means nothing.
You could beat any pretty girl you chose at a canter.
GABRIEL brings MARTHA some tea.
ZINAIDA. Why do you bring the tea in like that? Go and fetch some jam to
eat with it!
MARTHA. No thank you; none for me, don't trouble yourself. [A pause.]
FIRST GUEST. [To MARTHA] Did you come through Mushkine on your way here?
MARTHA. No, I came by way of Spassk. The road is better that way.
FIRST GUEST. Yes, so it is.
KOSICH. Two in spades.
GEORGE. Pass.
AVDOTIA. Pass.
SECOND GUEST. Pass.
MARTHA. The price of lottery tickets has gone up again, my dear. I have
never known such a state of affairs. The first issue is already worth
two hundred and seventy and the second nearly two hundred and fifty.
This has never happened before.
ZINAIDA. How fortunate for those who have a great many tickets!
MARTHA. Don't say that, dear; even when the price of tickets is high it
does not pay to put one's capital into them.
ZINAIDA. Quite true, and yet, my dear, one never can tell what may
happen. Providence is sometimes kind.
THIRD GUEST. My impression is, ladies, that at present capital
is exceedingly unproductive. Shares pay very small dividends, and
speculating is exceedingly dangerous. As I understand it, the capitalist
now finds himself in a more critical position than the man who----
MARTHA. Quite right.
FIRST GUEST yawns.
MARTHA. How dare you yawn in the presence of ladies?
FIRST GUEST. I beg your pardon! It was quite an accident.
ZINAIDA gets up and goes out through the door on the right.
GEORGE. Two in hearts.
SECOND GUEST. Pass.
KOSICH. Pass.
MARTHA. [Aside] Heavens! This is deadly! I shall die of ennui.
Enter ZINAIDA and LEBEDIEFF through the door on the right.
ZINAIDA. Why do you go off by yourself like a prima donna? Come and sit
with our guests!
[She sits down in her former place.]
LEBEDIEFF. [Yawning] Oh, dear, our sins are heavy! [He catches sight of
MARTHA] Why, there is my little sugar-plum! How is your most esteemed
highness?
MARTHA. Very well, thank you.
LEBEDIEFF. Splendid, splendid! [He sits down in an armchair] Quite
right--Oh, Gabriel!
GABRIEL brings him a glass of vodka and a tumbler of water. He empties
the glass of vodka and sips the water.
FIRST GUEST. Good health to you!
LEBEDIEFF. Good health is too much to ask. I am content to keep death
from the door. [To his wife] Where is the heroine of this occasion,
Zuzu?
KOSICH. [In a plaintive voice] Look here, why haven't we taken any
tricks yet? [He jumps up] Yes, why have we lost this game entirely,
confound it?
AVDOTIA. [Jumps up angrily] Because, friend, you don't know how to play
it, and have no right to be sitting here at all. What right had you to
lead from another suit? Haven't you the ace left? [They both leave the
table and run forward.]
KOSICH. [In a tearful voice] Ladies and gentlemen, let me explain! I had
the ace, king, queen, and eight of diamonds, the ace of spades and one,
just one, little heart, do you understand? Well, she, bad luck to her,
she couldn't make a little slam. I said one in no-trumps---- *
* The game played is vint, the national card-game of Russia
and the direct ancestor of auction bridge, with which it is
almost identical. [translator's note]
AVDOTIA. [Interrupting him] No, I said one in no-trumps; you said two in
no-trumps----
KOSICH. This is unbearable! Allow me--you had--I had--you had--[To
LEBEDIEFF] But you shall decide it, Paul: I had the ace, king, queen,
and eight of diamonds----
LEBEDIEFF. [Puts his fingers into his ears] Stop, for heaven's sake,
stop!
AVDOTIA. [Yelling] I said no-trumps, and not he!
KOSICH
|
sits
|
How many times does the word 'sits' appear in the text?
| 3
|
CONTINUE.
<b> ALVAREZ (TEAM LEADER)
</b> Four Toby Jug beer steins - $2.69!
<b> TEAM LEADER #3
</b> MP3 Player the size of a bottle
cap! Something and 69 cents!
<b> TEAM LEADER #4
</b> Duck Blind print sheets for a queen
size bed. $7.69.
<b> ALL
</b> Shop UniMart! Where United, you
save!
Larry Crowne leads the High Fives.
<b> MENSWEAR DEPT - LATER
</b>
Larry controlling the aisles like an Admiral at a Battle
Map... stacking a mountain of tube socks... stocking those
briefs ... hanging "Metallica" Speedos on little hangers...
helping CUBBY - a very skinny and disinterested Janitor -
clean up some baby up-chuck as the baby up-chucks again.
<b> 3.
</b>
<b> MOMMY
</b> Too much mac & cheese for this
little pickle bug!
<b> LARRY CROWNE
</b> They do love the comfort food.
Don't you, Li'l Pickle Bug...
Imagine any duty and see how Larry gets it done...
<b> EXT. UNIMART PARKING LOT - LATER
</b>
Larry is collecting loose shopping carts, steering them into
pairs, triplets, sextuplets, then riding them into the cart
pen like a Trail Boss...
<b> LATER
</b>
That same up-chucking baby was riding on the coin-pony and up-
chucked again. Larry is cleaning it all up.
A beat-up CAR with a BIG STORK PIZZA sign stuck on its roof
pulls right up to the front of the store, parking in the
Handicapped Space.
<b> LARRY CROWNE
</b>
Buddy. Park there and you'll get a
ticket.
<b> PIZZA KID
</b> Call a cop, doof. I'm gone in
sixty seconds.
(a dozen pizza boxes)
You guys having a party?
<b> INT. MEETING ROOM 2 - UNIMART - LATER
</b>
The BIG STORK PIZZA BOXES have been raided for slices.
A RETIREMENT PARTY is going on. A SIGN reads "Good Luck
Dorothy Genkos!" The name has been printed over the last
person to retire. People are cutting loose as best they can
at a NO-ALCOHOL Corporate Fete.
None more than Larry. Who is organizing a MOSH PIT for
DOROTHY GENKOS, an old lady. This is a fun group.
Over in the corner, though, is the Front Office Staff: COX,
STRANG, ANDREWS and HURLEY (Female).
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> STRANG
</b> Finally. Dotty G. and her forty-two-
K a year are history. Who else
would do us that favor?
<b> ANDREWS
</b> Wish they'd all sail off like her.
Save us some grief.
<b> STRANG
</b> The "R" Bomb is going to do some
collateral damage to this place.
Hurley is shocked!
<b> HURLEY
</b> "R-Bomb"? Oh my god! Restructuring?
<b> COX
</b> Separating the chaff from the
wheat. Chaff is the bad stuff,
right?
<b> HURLEY
</b>
Chaff is the waste matter, correct.
When are we restructuring?
<b> COX
</b> Before E.O.Q. Them's our orders.
Hurley looks sick. She hates this.
<b> STRANG
</b> What say we drop a brick in the
pond to warn the herd?
<b> ANDREWS
</b> How?
<b> STRANG
</b> Firing someone.
<b> COX
</b> Someone they'd never expect to be
let go. To look fair. I like it.
<b> STRANG
</b> Like a Team Leader.
<b> HURLEY
</b> Team Leader?
<b> STRANG
</b>
<b> 5.
</b>
<b> COX
</b> Suggestions on who it should be?
<b> STRANG
</b> I say Crowne.
<b> HURLEY
</b> Larry Crowne?
Strang rolls his eyes.
<b> STRANG
</b> Who else? Avery won't retire. We
fire him, it's a law suit.
AVERY - Old. Black. Happy.
<b> STRANG (CONT'D)
</b> Alvarez is about to drop a kid.
She'll go part time in a week.
ALVAREZ - Heavy with child.
<b> STRANG (CONT'D)
</b>
Crowne's pink slip will save 'da
"U" big green backwash.
<b> COX
</b> What Salary Tier is Crowne at?
<b> ANDREWS
</b> Top of the pyramid with a C.O.L.
bump at the first of the year.
<b> COX
</b> Sweet. We'll need Actionable
Cause, of course.
They all agree: "Yeah. Sure. Of course..."
<b> COX (CONT'D)
</b> How's his review record?
<b> HURLEY
</b> He's a candidate for Employee of
the Month. His 22nd time.
<b> COX
</b> Okay. So. Sluggers, gimme a
reason...
Larry has organized a Limbo Contest.
<b> 6.
</b>
<b> HURLEY
</b> We could use the Limited Horizons
strategy.
<b> (EXPLAINING)
</b> Larry will always be passed over
for Management. He never went to
college.
<b> COX
</b> You're that familiar with his
record?
<b> STRANG
</b> She was his squeeze for a few
weeks, weren't you, Vick?
<b>
|
organizing
|
How many times does the word 'organizing' appear in the text?
| 0
|
life; I thought I could be a great
actor; I dreamed of endless triumphs and loves, knowing nothing of the
disillusion hidden behind the curtain, as everywhere else--for every
stage has its reverse behind the scenes. I have gone out sometimes, my
heart boiling, carried away by an impulse to rush hunting through Paris,
to attach myself to some handsome woman I might meet, to follow her
to her door, watch her, write to her, throw myself on her mercy, and
conquer her by sheer force of passion. My poor uncle, a heart consumed
by charity, a child of seventy years, as clear-sighted as God, as
guileless as a man of genius, no doubt read the tumult of my soul; for
when he felt the tether by which he held me strained too tightly and
ready to break, he would never fail to say, 'Here, Maurice, you too
are poor! Here are twenty francs; go and amuse yourself, you are not a
priest!' And if you could have seen the dancing light that gilded his
gray eyes, the smile that relaxed his fine lips, puckering the corners
of his mouth, the adorable expression of that august face, whose native
ugliness was redeemed by the spirit of an apostle, you would understand
the feeling which made me answer the Cure of White Friars only with a
kiss, as if he had been my mother.
"'In Comte Octave you will find not a master, but a friend,' said my
uncle on the way to the Rue Payenne. 'But he is distrustful, or to be
more exact, he is cautious. The statesman's friendship can be won only
with time; for in spite of his deep insight and his habit of gauging
men, he was deceived by the man you are succeeding, and nearly became a
victim to his abuse of confidence. This is enough to guide you in your
behavior to him.'
"When we knocked at the enormous outer door of a house as large as the
Hotel Carnavalet, with a courtyard in front and a garden behind, the
sound rang as in a desert. While my uncle inquired of an old porter in
livery if the Count were at home, I cast my eyes, seeing everything
at once, over the courtyard where the cobblestones were hidden in the
grass, the blackened walls where little gardens were flourishing above
the decorations of the elegant architecture, and on the roof, as high as
that of the Tuileries. The balustrade of the upper balconies was eaten
away. Through a magnificent colonnade I could see a second court on one
side, where were the offices; the door was rotting. An old coachman
was there cleaning an old carriage. The indifferent air of this servant
allowed me to assume that the handsome stables, where of old so many
horses had whinnied, now sheltered two at most. The handsome facade of
the house seemed to me gloomy, like that of a mansion belonging to the
State or the Crown, and given up to some public office. A bell rang as
we walked across, my uncle and I, from the porter's lodge--_Inquire of
the Porter_ was still written over the door--towards the outside steps,
where a footman came out in a livery like that of Labranche at the
Theatre Francais in the old stock plays. A visitor was so rare that the
servant was putting his coat on when he opened a glass door with small
panes, on each side of which the smoke of a lamp had traced patterns on
the walls.
"A hall so magnificent as to be worthy of Versailles ended in a
staircase such as will never again be built in France, taking up as much
space as the whole of a modern house. As we went up the marble steps, as
cold as tombstones, and wide enough for eight persons to walk abreast,
our tread echoed under sonorous vaulting. The banister charmed the eye
by its miraculous workmanship--goldsmith's work in iron--wrought by the
fancy of an artist of the time of Henri III. Chilled as by an icy mantle
that fell on our shoulders, we went through ante-rooms, drawing-rooms
opening one out of the other, with carpetless parquet floors, and
furnished with such splendid antiquities as from thence would find their
way to the curiosity dealers. At last we reached a large study in a
cross wing, with all the windows looking into an immense garden.
"'Monsieur le Cure of the White Friars, and his nephew, Monsieur de
l'Hostal,' said Labranche, to whose care the other theatrical servant
had consigned us in the first ante-chamber.
"Comte Octave, dressed in long trousers and a gray flannel morning coat,
rose from his seat by a huge writing-table, came to the fireplace,
and signed to me to sit down, while he went forward to take my uncle's
hands, which he pressed.
"'Though I am in the parish of Saint-Paul,' said he, 'I could scarcely
have failed to hear of the Cure of the White Friars, and I am happy to
make his acquaintance.'
"'Your Excellency is most kind,' replied my uncle. 'I have brought to
you my only remaining relation. While I believe that I am offering a
good gift to your Excellency, I hope at the same time to give my nephew
a second father.'
"'As to that, I can only reply, Monsieur l'Abbe, when we shall have
tried each other,' said Comte Octave. 'Your name?' he added to me.
"'Maurice.'
"'He has taken his doctor's degree in law,' my uncle observed.
"'Very good, very good!' said the Count, looking at me from head to
foot. 'Monsieur l'Abbe, I hope that for your nephew's sake in the first
instance, and then for mine, you will do me the honor of dining here
every Monday. That will be our family dinner, our family party.'
"My uncle and the Count then began to talk of religion from the
political point of view, of charitable institutes, the repression of
crime, and I could at my leisure study the man on whom my fate would
henceforth depend. The Count was of middle height; it was impossible to
judge of his build on account of his dress, but he seemed to me to
be lean and spare. His face was harsh and hollow; the features were
refined. His mouth, which was rather large, expressed both irony and
kindliness. His forehead perhaps too spacious, was as intimidating as
that of a madman, all the more so from the contrast of the lower part of
the face, which ended squarely in a short chin very near the lower lip.
Small eyes, of turquoise blue, were as keen and bright as those of the
Prince de Talleyrand--which I admired at a later time--and endowed, like
the Prince's, with the faculty of becoming expressionless to the verge
of gloom; and they added to the singularity of a face that was not pale
but yellow. This complexion seemed to bespeak an irritable temper and
violent passions. His hair, already silvered, and carefully dressed,
seemed to furrow his head with streaks of black and white alternately.
The trimness of this head spoiled the resemblance I had remarked in the
Count to the wonderful monk described by Lewis after Schedoni in
the _Confessional of the Black Penitents (The Italian)_, a superior
creation, as it seems to me, to _The Monk_.
"The Count was already shaved, having to attend early at the law courts.
Two candelabra with four lights, screened by lamp-shades, were still
burning at the opposite ends of the writing-table, and showed plainly
that the magistrate rose long before daylight. His hands, which I saw
when he took hold of the bell-pull to summon his servant, were extremely
fine, and as white as a woman's.
"As I tell you this story," said the Consul-General, interrupting
himself, "I am altering the titles and the social position of this
gentleman, while placing him in circumstances analogous to what his
really were. His profession, rank, luxury, fortune, and style of living
were the same; all these details are true, but I would not be false to
my benefactor, nor to my usual habits of discretion.
"Instead of feeling--as I really was, socially speaking--an insect in
the presence of an eagle," the narrator went on after a pause, "I felt I
know not what indefinable impression from the Count's appearance,
which, however, I can now account for. Artists of genius" (and he
bowed gracefully to the Ambassador, the distinguished lady, and the
two Frenchmen), "real statesmen, poets, a general who has commanded
armies--in short, all really great minds are simple, and their
simplicity places you on a level with themselves.--You who are all of
superior minds," he said, addressing his guests, "have perhaps observed
how feeling can bridge over the distances created by society. If we
are inferior to you in intellect, we can be your equals in devoted
friendship. By the temperature--allow me the word--of our hearts I felt
myself as near my patron as I was far below him in rank. In short, the
soul has its clairvoyance; it has presentiments of suffering, grief,
joy, antagonism, or hatred in others.
"I vaguely discerned the symptoms of a mystery, from recognizing in the
Count the same effects of physiognomy as I had observed in my uncle.
The exercise of virtue, serenity of conscience, and purity of mind had
transfigured my uncle, who from being ugly had become quite beautiful.
I detected a metamorphosis of a reverse kind in the Count's face; at the
first glance I thought he was about fifty-five, but after an attentive
examination I found youth entombed under the ice of a great sorrow,
under the fatigue of persistent study, under the glowing hues of some
suppressed passion. At a word from my uncle the Count's eyes recovered
for a moment the softness of the periwinkle flower, and he had an
admiring smile, which revealed what I believed to be his real age, about
forty. These observations I made, not then but afterwards, as I recalled
the circumstances of my visit.
"The man-servant came in carrying a tray with his master's breakfast on
it.
"'I did not ask for breakfast,' remarked the Count; 'but leave it, and
show monsieur to his rooms.'
"I followed the servant, who led the way to a complete set of pretty
rooms, under a terrace, between the great courtyard and the servants'
quarters, over a corridor of communication between the kitchens and
the grand staircase. When I returned to the Count's study, I overheard,
before opening the door, my uncle pronouncing this judgment on me:
"'He may do wrong, for he has strong feelings, and we are all liable to
honorable mistakes; but he has no vices.'
"'Well,' said the Count, with a kindly look, 'do you like yourself
there? Tell me. There are so many rooms in this barrack that, if you
were not comfortable, I could put you elsewhere.'
"'At my uncle's I had but one room,' replied I.
"'Well, you can settle yourself this evening,' said the Count, 'for your
possessions, no doubt, are such as all students own, and a hackney coach
will be enough to convey them. To-day we will all three dine together,'
and he looked at my uncle.
"A splendid library opened from the Count's study, and he took us in
there, showing me a pretty little recess decorated with paintings, which
had formerly served, no doubt, as an oratory.
"'This is your cell,' said he. 'You will sit there when you have to work
with me, for you will not be tethered by a chain;' and he explained in
detail the kind and duration of my employment with him. As I listened I
felt that he was a great political teacher.
"It took me about a month to familiarize myself with people and things,
to learn the duties of my new office, and accustom myself to the Count's
methods. A secretary necessarily watches the man who makes use of him.
That man's tastes, passions, temper, and manias become the subject of
involuntary study. The union of their two minds is at once more and less
than a marriage.
"During these months the Count and I reciprocally studied each other. I
learned with astonishment that Comte Octave was but thirty-seven years
old. The merely superficial peacefulness of his life and the propriety
of his conduct were the outcome not solely of a deep sense of duty and
of stoical reflection; in my constant intercourse with this man--an
extraordinary man to those who knew him well--I felt vast depths beneath
his toil, beneath his acts of politeness, his mask of benignity, his
assumption of resignation, which so closely resembled calmness that it
is easy to mistake it. Just as when walking through forest-lands certain
soils give forth under our feet a sound which enables us to guess
whether they are dense masses of stone or a void; so intense egoism,
though hidden under the flowers of politeness, and subterranean caverns
eaten out by sorrow sound hollow under the constant touch of familiar
life. It was sorrow and not despondency that dwelt in that really great
soul. The Count had understood that actions, deeds, are the supreme law
of social man. And he went on his way in spite of secret wounds, looking
to the future with a tranquil eye, like a martyr full of faith.
"His concealed sadness, the bitter disenchantment from which he
suffered, had not led him into philosophical deserts of incredulity;
this brave statesman was religious, without ostentation; he always
attended the earliest mass at Saint-Paul's for pious workmen and
servants. Not one of his friends, no one at Court, knew that he so
punctually fulfilled the practice of religion. He was addicted to God as
some men are addicted to a vice, with the greatest mystery. Thus one day
I came to find the Count at the summit of an Alp of woe much higher than
that on which many are who think themselves the most tried; who laugh at
the passions and the beliefs of others because they have conquered their
own; who play variations in every key of irony and disdain. He did not
mock at those who still follow hope into the swamps whither she leads,
nor those who climb a peak to be alone, nor those who persist in the
fight, reddening the arena with their blood and strewing it with their
illusions. He looked on the world as a whole; he mastered its beliefs;
he listened to its complaining; he was doubtful of affection, and yet
more of self-sacrifice; but this great and stern judge pitied them,
or admired them, not with transient enthusiasm, but with silence,
concentration, and the communion of a deeply-touched soul. He was a sort
of catholic Manfred, and unstained by crime, carrying his choiceness
into his faith, melting the snows by the fires of a sealed volcano,
holding converse with a star seen by himself alone!
"I detected many dark riddles in his ordinary life. He evaded my gaze
not like a traveler who, following a path, disappears from time to time
in dells or ravines according to the formation of the soil, but like a
sharpshooter who is being watched, who wants to hide himself, and seeks
a cover. I could not account for his frequent absences at the times when
he was working the hardest, and of which he made no secret from me, for
he would say, 'Go on with this for me,' and trust me with the work in
hand.
"This man, wrapped in the threefold duties of the statesman, the judge,
and the orator, charmed me by a taste for flowers, which shows an
elegant mind, and which is shared by almost all persons of refinement.
His garden and his study were full of the rarest plants, but he always
bought them half-withered. Perhaps it pleased him to see such an image
of his own fate! He was faded like these dying flowers, whose almost
decaying fragrance mounted strangely to his brain. The Count loved his
country; he devoted himself to public interests with the frenzy of a
heart that seeks to cheat some other passion; but the studies and
work into which he threw himself were not enough for him; there were
frightful struggles in his mind, of which some echoes reached me.
Finally, he would give utterance to harrowing aspirations for happiness,
and it seemed to me he ought yet to be happy; but what was the obstacle?
Was there a woman he loved? This was a question I asked myself. You may
imagine the extent of the circles of torment that my mind had searched
before coming to so simple and so terrible a question. Notwithstanding
his efforts, my patron did not succeed in stifling the movements of his
heart. Under his austere manner, under the reserve of the magistrate, a
passion rebelled, though coerced with such force that no one but I
who lived with him ever guessed the secret. His motto seemed to be,
'I suffer, and am silent.' The escort of respect and admiration
which attended him; the friendship of workers as valiant as
himself--Grandville and Serizy, both presiding judges--had no hold over
the Count: either he told them nothing, or they knew all. Impassible and
lofty in public, the Count betrayed the man only on rare intervals when,
alone in his garden or his study, he supposed himself unobserved; but
then he was a child again, he gave course to the tears hidden beneath
the toga, to the excitement which, if wrongly interpreted, might have
damaged his credit for perspicacity as a statesman.
"When all this had become to me a matter of certainty, Comte Octave had
all the attractions of a problem, and won on my affection as much as
though he had been my own father. Can you enter into the feeling of
curiosity, tempered by respect? What catastrophe had blasted this
learned man, who, like Pitt, had devoted himself from the age of
eighteen to the studies indispensable to power, while he had no
ambition; this judge, who thoroughly knew the law of nations, political
law, civil and criminal law, and who could find in these a weapon
against every anxiety, against every mistake; this profound legislator,
this serious writer, this pious celibate whose life sufficiently proved
that he was open to no reproach? A criminal could not have been more
hardly punished by God than was my master; sorrow had robbed him of half
his slumbers; he never slept more than four hours. What struggle was
it that went on in the depths of these hours apparently so calm, so
studious, passing without a sound or a murmur, during which I often
detected him, when the pen had dropped from his fingers, with his head
resting on one hand, his eyes like two fixed stars, and sometimes wet
with tears? How could the waters of that living spring flow over the
burning strand without being dried up by the subterranean fire? Was
there below it, as there is under the sea, between it and the central
fires of the globe, a bed of granite? And would the
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|
How many times does the word 'respect' appear in the text?
| 1
|
I think they were all Nazis. And
let's face it, their leaders, those
bastards now on trial in Nuremberg,
couldn't have done it alone. It's
these people, they gave all the
help that was needed. Willingly.
The film changes with a scratchy music soundtrack - Wagner.
SHOTS of high-ranking Nazis in an audience including Josef
Goebbels, listening. And they're listening to and watching
Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. At the appropriate moment:
<b>
</b><b> THE MAN'S VOICE
</b> That's him. Furtwängler. Wilhelm
Furtwängler.
The Nazis applaud. Goebbels shakes hands with Furtwängler.
The film ends.
Sitting in the ruined cinema are two men: GENERAL WALLACE,
with files on the table, and, beside him, MAJOR STEVE
ARNOLD. A PROJECTIONIST is standing in the door of the
projection room.
<b> WALLACE
</b> So, you never heard of him.
<b> STEVE
</b> Nope.
<b> WALLACE
</b> Do you know who Arturo Toscanini
is?
<b> STEVE
</b> Sure.
<b> WALLACE
</b> He's as big as Toscanini, maybe
even bigger. In this neck of the
woods, he's probably Bob Hope and
Betty Grable rolled into one.
<b> STEVE
</b> Jeez, and I never heard of him.
Wallace glances at the file.
<b> WALLACE
</b> You were in insurance before the
war.
<b> STEVE
</b> Right. Claims assessor.
<b> WALLACE
</b> Conscientious, determined, dogged.
<b> STEVE
</b> (amused)
They said I was dogged?
<b> WALLACE
</b> Well, they say here that when you
went on a case, you stayed on it.
(looks up at Steve.)
Now we can't take every Nazi in
this country to trial, although I
would like to; it's an
impossibility. So we're going for
the big boys in industry, education,
law, culture.
<b> STEVE
</b> Like this bandleader.
<b> WALLACE
</b> (a smile)
Well, he's more than just a
bandleader, Steve. He's a great
conductor, a gifted artist. But we
believe that he sold himself to
the devil. Your number one priority
from this moment on is to connect
him to the Nazi Party. Don't be
impressed by him. I want the folks
back home to understand why we
fought this war. Find Wilhelm
Furtwängler guilty. He represents
everything that was rotten in
Germany.
Steve wants to rise, but Wallace puts a hand on his shoulder
to make him sit again.
<b> WALLACE
</b> Stay put, Steve. There is some
other stuff that I'd like for you
to see here. Background.
He nods to the projectionist, then starts to go, but stops.
<b> WALLACE
</b> Oh, one thing that may be a problem.
Our Occupation Authorities in
Wiesbaden have a duty to help these
poor unfortunates with their
defence. They keep repeating: 'We
must be just, we must be seen to
be just.' Well, I've only one thing
to say to the liberals in Wiesbaden:
fuck 'em.
(as he goes)
You answer to no one but me. Is
that understood?
(to the projectionist
in the door)
Show him the film.
<b> PROJECTIONIST
</b> Yes, sir. Roll it.
Wallace goes. The projectionist starts the next reel.
ON THE SCREEN: a Berlin sequence. Bombs falling. Ruins, a
city devastated, empty. Flags of the four allied nations.
Posters of Truman, Stalin, Churchill.
<b> ARCHIVE FILM VOICE
</b> That is the hand that dropped the
bombs on defenceless Rotterdam,
Brussels, Belgrade. That is the
hand that destroyed the cities,
villages and homes of Russia. That
is the hand that held the whip
over the Polish, Yugoslav, French
and Norwegian slaves. That is the
hand that took their food.
Steve watches expressionless.
<b> WALLACE
</b> Next reel, please.
ON THE SCREEN: SHOTS of camp survivors. Then SHOTS of
emaciated corpses being bulldozed into mass graves.
<b> ARCHIVE FILM
</b> Sanitary conditions were so
appalling that heavy equipment had
to be brought in to speed the work
of cleaning up. This was Bergen
Belsen.
The moment this appears, Steve rises and goes quickly.
ON THE SCREEN: piles of cadavers.
<b> INT. MAJOR STEVE ARNOLD'S BEDROOM (I945) - NIGHT
</b>
Steve having a nightmare, twisting, turning, moaning. He
wakes with a cry. He is sweating. He turns on the light,
looks at a clock, reaches for a cigarette, lights it. He
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|
How many times does the word 'moment' appear in the text?
| 2
|
-saving people."
"None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the
wreck," said the oiler, in a low voice. "Else the life-boat would be
out hunting us."
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came
again. It had veered from the north-east to the south-east. Finally,
a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was the low
thunder of the surf on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the
lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north,
Billie," said he.
"'A little more north,' sir," said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and
all but the oarsman watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this
expansion doubt and direful apprehension was leaving the minds of the
men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it could
not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be
ashore.
Their backbones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat,
and they now rode this wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The
correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the skin, but
happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight
cigars. Four of them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly
scatheless. After a search, somebody produced three dry matches, and
thereupon the four waifs rode impudently in their little boat, and with
an assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at
the big cigars and judged well and ill of all men. Everybody took a
drink of water.
IV
"Cook," remarked the captain, "there don't seem to be any signs of life
about your house of refuge."
"No," replied the cook. "Funny they don't see us!"
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was
of dunes topped with dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain,
and sometimes they could see the white lip of a wave as it spun up the
beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim lighthouse lifted its little grey length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. "Funny they
don't see us," said the men.
The surf's roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless,
thunderous and mighty. As the boat swam over the great rollers, the men
sat listening to this roar. "We'll swamp sure," said everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within
twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact,
and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning
the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the
dingey and surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
"Funny they don't see us."
The light-heartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their
sharpened minds it was easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of
incompetency and blindness and, indeed, cowardice. There was the shore
of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it
came no sign.
"Well," said the captain, ultimately, "I suppose we'll have to make a
try for ourselves. If we stay out here too long, we'll none of us have
strength left to swim after the boat swamps."
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for
the shore. There was a sudden tightening of muscles. There was some
thinking.
"If we don't all get ashore--" said the captain. "If we don't all get
ashore, I suppose you fellows know where to send news of my finish?"
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As
for the reflections of the men, there was a great deal of rage in
them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be
drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why,
in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to
come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely
to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese
of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do
better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men's
fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has
decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save
me all this trouble? The whole affair is absurd.... But no, she cannot
mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not
after all this work." Afterward the man might have had an impulse to
shake his fist at the clouds: "Just you drown me, now, and then hear
what I call you!"
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed
always just about to break and roll over the little boat in a turmoil
of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the speech of them.
No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could
ascend these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler
was a wily surfman. "Boys," he said swiftly, "she won't live three
minutes more, and we're too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea
again, captain?"
"Yes! Go ahead!" said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady
oarsmanship, turned the boat in the middle of the surf and took her
safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed
sea to deeper water. Then somebody in gloom spoke. "Well, anyhow, they
must have seen us from the shore by now."
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the grey desolate
east. A squall, marked by dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like
smoke from a burning building, appeared from the south-east.
"What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain't they peaches?"
"Funny they haven't seen us."
"Maybe they think we're out here for sport! Maybe they think we're
fishin'. Maybe they think we're damned fools."
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward,
but wind and wave said northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and
sky formed their mighty angle, there were little dots which seemed to
indicate a city on the shore.
"St. Augustine?"
The captain shook his head. "Too near Mosquito Inlet."
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler
rowed. It was a weary business. The human back can become the seat of
more aches and pains than are registered in books for the composite
anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the
theatre of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots,
and other comforts.
"Did you ever like to row, Billie?" asked the correspondent.
"No," said the oiler. "Hang it."
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the
boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless
of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold
sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His
head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave
crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board
and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It
is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled
comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure that it was a great
soft mattress.
"Look! There's a man on the shore!"
"Where?"
"There! See 'im? See 'im?"
"Yes, sure! He's walking along."
"Now he's stopped. Look! He's facing us!"
"He's waving at us!"
"So he is! By thunder!"
"Ah, now we're all right! Now we're all right! There'll be a boat out
here for us in half-an-hour."
"He's going on. He's running. He's going up to that house there."
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching
glance to discern the little black figure. The captain saw a floating
stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some weird chance in
the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The
oarsman did not dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
"What's he doing now?"
"He's standing still again. He's looking, I think.... There he goes
again. Towards the house.... Now he's stopped again."
"Is he waving at us?"
"No, not now! he was, though."
"Look! There comes another man!"
"He's running."
"Look at him go, would you."
"Why, he's on a bicycle. Now he's met the other man. They're both
waving at us. Look!"
"There comes something up the beach."
"What the devil is that thing?"
"Why, it looks like a boat."
"Why, certainly it's a boat."
"No, it's on wheels."
"Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along
shore on a wagon."
"That's the life-boat, sure."
"No, by ----, it's--it's an omnibus."
"I tell you it's a life-boat."
"It is not! It's an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big
hotel omnibuses."
"By thunder, you're right. It's an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you
suppose they are doing with an omnibus? Maybe they are going around
collecting the life-crew, hey?"
"That's it, likely. Look! There's a fellow waving a little black flag.
He's standing on the steps of the omnibus. There come those other two
fellows. Now they're all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain't waving it."
"That ain't a flag, is it? That's his coat. Why certainly, that's his
coat."
"So it is. It's his coat. He's taken it off and is waving it around his
head. But would you look at him swing it."
"Oh, say, there isn't any life-saving station there. That's just a
winter resort hotel omnibus that has brought over some of the boarders
to see us drown."
"What's that idiot with the coat mean? What's he signaling, anyhow?"
"It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a
life-saving station up there."
"No! He thinks we're fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah,
there, Willie."
"Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you
suppose he means?"
"He don't mean anything. He's just playing."
"Well, if he'd just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea
and wait, or go north, or go south, or go to hell--there would be some
reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his coat
revolving like a wheel. The ass!"
"There come more people."
"Now there's quite a mob. Look! Isn't that a boat?"
"Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that's no boat."
"That fellow is still waving his coat."
"He must think we like to see him do that. Why don't he quit it? It
don't mean anything."
"I don't know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be
that there's a life-saving station there somewhere."
"Say, he ain't tired yet. Look at 'im wave."
"Wonder how long he can keep that up. He's been revolving his coat ever
since he caught sight of us. He's an idiot. Why aren't they getting men
to bring a boat out? A fishing boat--one of those big yawls--could come
out here all right. Why don't he do something?"
"Oh, it's all right, now."
"They'll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that
they've seen us."
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on
the sea slowly deepened. The wind bore coldness with it, and the men
began to shiver.
"Holy smoke!" said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood,
"if we keep on monkeying out here! If we've got to flounder out here
all night!"
"Oh, we'll never have to stay here all night! Don't you worry. They've
seen us now, and it won't be long before they'll come chasing out after
us."
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this
gloom, and it swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of
people. The spray, when it dashed uproariously over the side, made the
voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.
"I'd like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking
him one, just for luck."
"Why? What did he do?"
"Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful."
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and
then the oiler rowed. Grey-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically,
turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form of the lighthouse had
vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared,
just lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed
before the all-merging darkness, and the sea to the east was black. The
land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear thunder
of the surf.
"If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am
going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule
the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and
trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was
about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?"
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged
to speak to the oarsman.
"Keep her head up! Keep her head up!"
"'Keep her head up,' sir." The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and
listlessly in the boat's bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable
of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in a most sinister
silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook's head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the
water under his nose. He was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke.
"Billie," he murmured, dreamfully, "what kind of pie do you like best?"
V
"Pie," said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. "Don't talk
about those things, blast you!"
"Well," said the cook, "I was just thinking about ham sandwiches,
and----"
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled
finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south,
changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared, a
small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the
furniture of the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in
the dingey that the rower was enabled to keep his feet partly warmed
by thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed extended
far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain
forward. Sometimes, despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave
came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night, and the chilling
water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and
groan, and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat
gurgled about them as the craft rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he
lost the ability, and then arouse the other from his sea-water couch in
the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the
overpowering sleep blinded him. And he rowed yet afterward. Then he
touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his name. "Will you
spell me for a little while?" he said, meekly.
"Sure, Billie," said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself
to a sitting position. They exchanged places carefully, and the oiler,
cuddling down in the sea-water at the cook's side, seemed to go to
sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without
snarling. The obligation of the man at the oars was to keep the boat
headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her, and to
preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves
were silent and hard to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost
upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure
that the captain was awake, although this iron man seemed to be always
awake. "Captain, shall I keep her making for that light north, sir?"
The same steady voice answered him. "Yes. Keep it about two points off
the port bow."
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the
warmth which this clumsy cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed
almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth invariably chattered wildly
as soon as he ceased his labour, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at
|
drink
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How many times does the word 'drink' appear in the text?
| 0
|
very worthy assistant-secretaries, and especially by its late most
respectable chief clerk, that it may be said to stand quite alone as
a high model for all other public offices whatever. It is exactly
antipodistic of the Circumlocution Office, and as such is always
referred to in the House of Commons by the gentleman representing the
Government when any attack on the Civil Service, generally, is being
made.
And when it is remembered how great are the interests entrusted to the
care of this board, and of these secretaries and of that chief clerk, it
must be admitted that nothing short of superlative excellence ought to
suffice the nation. All material intercourse between man and man must be
regulated, either justly or unjustly, by weights and measures; and as we
of all people depend most on such material intercourse, our weights and
measures should to us be a source of never-ending concern. And then that
question of the decimal coinage! is it not in these days of paramount
importance? Are we not disgraced by the twelve pennies in our
shilling, by the four farthings in our penny? One of the worthy
assistant-secretaries, the worthier probably of the two, has already
grown pale beneath the weight of this question. But he has sworn within
himself, with all the heroism of a Nelson, that he will either do or
die. He will destroy the shilling or the shilling shall destroy him.
In his more ardent moods he thinks that he hears the noise of battle
booming round him, and talks to his wife of Westminster Abbey or a
peerage. Then what statistical work of the present age has shown half
the erudition contained in that essay lately published by the secretary
on _The Market Price of Coined Metals_? What other living man could have
compiled that chronological table which is appended to it, showing the
comparative value of the metallic currency for the last three hundred
years? Compile it indeed! What other secretary or assistant-secretary
belonging to any public office of the present day, could even read it
and live? It completely silenced Mr. Muntz for a session, and even _The
Times_ was afraid to review it.
Such a state of official excellence has not, however, been obtained
without its drawbacks, at any rate in the eyes of the unambitious tyros
and unfledged novitiates of the establishment. It is a very fine thing
to be pointed out by envying fathers as a promising clerk in the
Weights and Measures, and to receive civil speeches from mammas with
marriageable daughters. But a clerk in the Weights and Measures is soon
made to understand that it is not for him to--
Sport with Amaryllis in the shade.
It behoves him that his life should be grave and his pursuits laborious,
if he intends to live up to the tone of those around him. And as,
sitting there at his early desk, his eyes already dim with figures, he
sees a jaunty dandy saunter round the opposite corner to the Council
Office at eleven o'clock, he cannot but yearn after the pleasures of
idleness.
Were it not better done, as others use?
he says or sighs. But then comes Phoebus in the guise of the chief
clerk, and touches his trembling ears--
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame, in Downing Street--expect the meed.
And so the high tone of the office is maintained.
Such is the character of the Weights and Measures at this present period
of which we are now treating. The exoteric crowd of the Civil Service,
that is, the great body of clerks attached to other offices, regard
their brethren of the Weights as prigs and pedants, and look on them
much as a master's favourite is apt to be regarded by other boys at
school. But this judgement is an unfair one. Prigs and pedants, and
hypocrites too, there are among them, no doubt--but there are also among
them many stirred by an honourable ambition to do well for their country
and themselves, and to two such men the reader is now requested to
permit himself to be introduced.
Henry Norman, the senior of the two, is the second son of a gentleman
of small property in the north of England. He was educated at a public
school, and thence sent to Oxford; but before he had finished his
first year at Brasenose his father was obliged to withdraw him from it,
finding himself unable to bear the expense of a university education for
his two sons. His elder son at Cambridge was extravagant; and as, at
the critical moment when decision became necessary, a nomination in
the Weights and Measures was placed at his disposal, old Mr. Norman
committed the not uncommon injustice of preferring the interests of his
elder but faulty son to those of the younger with whom no fault had been
found, and deprived his child of the chance of combining the glories and
happiness of a double first, a fellow, a college tutor, and a don.
Whether Harry Norman gained or lost most by the change we need not now
consider, but at the age of nineteen he left Oxford and entered on his
new duties. It must not, however, be supposed that this was a step which
he took without difficulty and without pause. It is true that the grand
modern scheme for competitive examinations had not as yet been composed.
Had this been done, and had it been carried out, how awful must have
been the cramming necessary to get a lad into the Weights and Measures!
But, even as things were then, it was no easy matter for a young man to
convince the chief clerk that he had all the acquirements necessary for
the high position to which he aspired.
Indeed, that chief clerk was insatiable, and generally succeeded in
making every candidate conceive the very lowest opinion of himself and
his own capacities before the examination was over. Some, of course,
were sent away at once with ignominy, as evidently incapable. Many
retired in the middle of it with a conviction that they must seek their
fortunes at the bar, or in medical pursuits, or some other comparatively
easy walk of life. Others were rejected on the fifth or sixth day as
being deficient in conic sections, or ignorant of the exact principles
of hydraulic pressure. And even those who were retained were so
retained, as it were, by an act of grace. The Weights and Measures was,
and indeed is, like heaven--no man can deserve it. No candidate can
claim as his right to be admitted to the fruition of the appointment
which has been given to him. Henry Norman, however, was found, at the
close of his examination, to be the least undeserving of the young men
then under notice, and was duly installed in his clerkship.
It need hardly be explained, that to secure so high a level of
information as that required at the Weights and Measures, a scale
of salaries equally exalted has been found necessary. Young men
consequently enter at £100 a year. We are speaking, of course, of that
more respectable branch of the establishment called the Secretary's
Department. At none other of our public offices do men commence with
more than £90--except, of course, at those in which political confidence
is required. Political confidence is indeed as expensive as hydraulic
pressure, though generally found to be less difficult of attainment.
Henry Norman, therefore, entered on his labours under good auspices,
having £10 per annum more for the business and pleasures of life in
London than most of his young brethren of the Civil Service. Whether
this would have sufficed of itself to enable him to live up to that tone
of society to which he had been accustomed cannot now be surmised, as
very shortly after his appointment an aunt died, from whom he inherited
some £150 or £200 a year. He was, therefore, placed above all want, and
soon became a shining light even in that bright gallery of spiritualized
stars which formed the corps of clerks in the Secretary's Office at the
Weights and Measures.
Young Norman was a good-looking lad when he entered the public service,
and in a few years he grew up to be a handsome man. He was tall and thin
and dark, muscular in his proportions, and athletic in his habits. From
the date of his first enjoyment of his aunt's legacy he had a wherry on
the Thames, and was soon known as a man whom it was hard for an amateur
to beat. He had a racket in a racket-court at St. John's Wood Road,
and as soon as fortune and merit increased his salary by another £100
a year, he usually had a nag for the season. This, however, was not
attained till he was able to count five years' service in the Weights
and Measures. He was, as a boy, somewhat shy and reserved in his
manners, and as he became older he did not shake off the fault. He
showed it, however, rather among men than with women, and, indeed, in
spite of his love of exercise, he preferred the society of ladies to
any of the bachelor gaieties of his unmarried acquaintance. He was,
nevertheless, frank and confident in those he trusted, and true in his
friendships, though, considering his age, too slow in making a friend.
Such was Henry Norman at the time at which our tale begins. What were
the faults in his character it must be the business of the tale to show.
The other young clerk in this office to whom we alluded is Alaric Tudor.
He is a year older than Henry Norman, though he began his official
career a year later, and therefore at the age of twenty-one. How it
happened that he contrived to pass the scrutinizing instinct and deep
powers of examination possessed by the chief clerk, was a great wonder
to his friends, though apparently none at all to himself. He took the
whole proceeding very easily; while another youth alongside of him,
who for a year had been reading up for his promised nomination, was so
awe-struck by the severity of the proceedings as to lose his powers of
memory and forget the very essence of the differential calculus.
Of hydraulic pressure and the differential calculus young Tudor knew
nothing, and pretended to know nothing. He told the chief clerk that
he was utterly ignorant of all such matters, that his only acquirements
were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with
a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary
rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been
able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, in a
small German university.
The chief clerk raised his eyebrows and said he feared it would not
do. A clerk, however, was wanting. It was very clear that the young
gentleman who had only showed that he had forgotten his conic sections
could not be supposed to have passed. The austerity of the last few
years had deterred more young men from coming forward than the extra £10
had induced to do so. One unfortunate, on the failure of all his hopes,
had thrown himself into the Thames from the neighbouring boat-stairs;
and though he had been hooked out uninjured by the man who always
attends there with two wooden legs, the effect on his parents' minds had
been distressing. Shortly after this occurrence the chief clerk had been
invited to attend the Board, and the Chairman of the Commissioners, who,
on the occasion, was of course prompted by the Secretary, recommended
Mr. Hardlines to be a _leetle_ more lenient. In doing so the quantity of
butter which he poured over Mr. Hardlines' head and shoulders with the
view of alleviating the misery which such a communication would be sure
to inflict, was very great. But, nevertheless, Mr. Hardlines came out
from the Board a crestfallen and unhappy man. 'The service,' he said,
'would go to the dogs, and might do for anything he cared, and he did
not mind how soon. If the Board chose to make the Weights and Measures a
hospital for idiots, it might do so. He had done what little lay in his
power to make the office respectable; and now, because mammas complained
when their cubs of sons were not allowed to come in there and rob
the public and destroy the office books, he was to be thwarted and
reprimanded! He had been,' he said, 'eight-and-twenty years in office,
and was still in his prime--but he should,' he thought, 'take advantage
of the advice of his medical friends, and retire. He would never remain
there to see the Weights and Measures become a hospital for incurables!'
It was thus that Mr. Hardlines, the chief clerk, expressed himself.
He did not, however, send in a medical certificate, nor apply for a
pension; and the first apparent effect of the little lecture which he
had received from the Chairman, was the admission into the service
of Alaric Tudor. Mr. Hardlines was soon forced to admit that the
appointment was not a bad one, as before his second year was over, young
Tudor had produced a very smart paper on the merits--or demerits--of the
strike bushel.
Alaric Tudor when he entered the office was by no means so handsome a
youth as Harry Norman; but yet there was that in his face which was more
expressive, and perhaps more attractive. He was a much slighter man,
though equally tall. He could boast no adventitious capillary graces,
whereas young Norman had a pair of black curling whiskers, which
almost surrounded his face, and had been the delight and wonder of the
maidservants in his mother's house, when he returned home for his first
official holiday. Tudor wore no whiskers, and his light-brown hair was
usually cut so short as to give him something of the appearance of a
clean Puritan. But in manners he was no Puritan; nor yet in his mode of
life. He was fond of society, and at an early period of his age strove
hard to shine in it. He was ambitious; and lived with the steady aim of
making the most of such advantages as fate and fortune had put in his
way. Tudor was perhaps not superior to Norman in point of intellect; but
he was infinitely his superior in having early acquired a knowledge how
best to use such intellect as he had.
His education had been very miscellaneous, and disturbed by many causes,
but yet not ineffective or deficient. His father had been an officer in
a cavalry regiment, with a fair fortune, which he had nearly squandered
in early life. He had taken Alaric when little more than an infant, and
a daughter, his only other child, to reside in Brussels. Mrs. Tudor was
then dead, and the remainder of the household had consisted of a French
governess, a _bonne_, and a man-cook. Here Alaric remained till he
had perfectly acquired the French pronunciation, and very nearly as
perfectly forgotten the English. He was then sent to a private school
in England, where he remained till he was sixteen, returning home to
Brussels but once during those years, when he was invited to be present
at his sister's marriage with a Belgian banker. At the age of sixteen he
lost his father, who, on dying, did not leave behind him enough of the
world's wealth to pay for his own burial. His half-pay of course died
with him, and young Tudor was literally destitute.
His brother-in-law, the banker, paid for his half-year's schooling
in England, and then removed him to a German academy, at which it was
bargained that he should teach English without remuneration, and learn
German without expense. Whether he taught much English may be doubtful,
but he did learn German thoroughly; and in that, as in most other
transactions of his early life, certainly got the best of the bargain
which had been made for him.
At the age of twenty he was taken to the Brussels bank as a clerk; but
here he soon gave visible signs of disliking the drudgery which was
exacted from him. Not that he disliked banking. He would gladly have
been a partner with ever so small a share, and would have trusted to
himself to increase his stake. But there is a limit to the good nature
of brothers-in-law, even in Belgium; and Alaric was quite aware that no
such good luck as this could befall him, at any rate until he had gone
through many years of servile labour. His sister also, though sisterly
enough in her disposition to him, did not quite like having a brother
employed as a clerk in her husband's office. They therefore put their
heads together, and, as the Tudors had good family connexions in
England, a nomination in the Weights and Measures was procured.
The nomination was procured; but when it was ascertained how very short
a way this went towards the attainment of the desired object, and how
much more difficult it was to obtain Mr. Hardlines' approval than the
Board's favour, young Tudor's friends despaired, and recommended him to
abandon the idea, as, should he throw himself into the Thames, he might
perhaps fall beyond the reach of the waterman's hook. Alaric himself,
however, had no such fears. He could not bring himself to conceive that
he could fail in being fit for a clerkship in a public office, and the
result of his examination proved at any rate that he had been right to
try.
The close of his first year's life in London found him living in
lodgings with Henry Norman. At that time Norman's income was nearly
three times as good as his own. To say that Tudor selected his companion
because of his income would be to ascribe unjustly to him vile motives
and a mean instinct. He had not done so. The two young men had been
thrown together by circumstances. They worked at the same desk, liked
each other's society, and each being alone in the world, thereby not
unnaturally came together. But it may probably be said that had Norman
been as poor as Tudor, Tudor might probably have shrunk from rowing in
the same boat with him.
As it was they lived together and were fast allies; not the less so
that they did not agree as to many of their avocations. Tudor, at his
friend's solicitation, had occasionally attempted to pull an oar from
Searle's slip to Battersea bridge. But his failure in this line was so
complete, and he had to encounter so much of Norman's raillery, which
was endurable, and of his instruction, which was unendurable, that he
very soon gave up the pursuit. He was not more successful with a racket;
and keeping a horse was of course out of the question.
They had a bond of union in certain common friends whom they much loved,
and with whom they much associated. At least these friends soon became
common to them. The acquaintance originally belonged to Norman, and he
had first cemented his friendship with Tudor by introducing him at the
house of Mrs. Woodward. Since he had done so, the one young man was
there nearly as much as the other.
Who and what the Woodwards were shall be told in a subsequent chapter.
As they have to play as important a part in the tale about to be told as
our two friends of the Weights and Measures, it would not be becoming to
introduce them at the end of this.
As regards Alaric Tudor
|
fears
|
How many times does the word 'fears' appear in the text?
| 0
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upon the other, but of necessity and by the teeth; forasmuch
as he who wants bread is his servant that will feed him, if a man thus
feeds a whole people, they are under his empire.
Empire is of two kinds, domestic and national, or foreign and
provincial.
Domestic empire is founded upon dominion. Dominion is property, real or
personal; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods.
Lands, or the parts and parcels of a territory, are held by the
proprietor or proprietors, lord or lords of it, in some proportion;
and such (except it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose
revenue is in trade) as is the proportion or balance of dominion or
property in land, such is the nature of the empire.
If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people,
for example, three parts in four, he is grand seignior; for so the Turk
is called from his property, and his empire is absolute monarchy.
If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy, be landlords,
or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic
balance (to be shown at large in the second part of this discourse),
and the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and late of
Oceana.
And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among
them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or
aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of
force) is a commonwealth.
If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame
the government to the foundation, or the foundation to the government;
or holding the government not according to the balance, it is not
natural, but violent; and therefore if it be at the devotion of a
prince, it is tyranny; if at the devotion of the few, oligarchy; or
if in the power of the people, anarchy: Each of which confusions, the
balance standing otherwise, is but of short continuance, because against
the nature of the balance, which, not destroyed, destroys that which
opposes it.
But there be certain other confusions, which, being rooted in the
balance, are of longer continuance, and of worse consequence; as, first,
where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and
the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance
there is no remedy but the one must eat out the other, as the people did
the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly,
when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other
half (which was the case of the Roman emperors, planted partly upon
their military colonies and partly upon the Senate and the people), the
government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people.
Somewhat of this nature are certain governments at this day, which are
said to subsist by confusion. In this case, to fix the balance is to
entail misery; but in the three former, not to fix it is to lose the
government. Wherefore it being unlawful in Turkey that any should
possess land but the Grand Seignior, the balance is fixed by the law,
and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often sell was the throne
of Oceana known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the
pillars, by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While
Lacedaemon held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was
immovable; but, breaking that, could stand no longer. This kind of law
fixing the balance in lands is called agrarian, and was first introduced
by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lots,
and is of such virtue that wherever it has held, that government has
not altered, except by consent; as in that unparalleled example of the
people of Israel, when being in liberty they would needs choose a
king. But without an agrarian law, government, whether monarchical,
aristocratical, or popular, has no long lease.
As for dominion, personal or in money, it may now and then stir up a
Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided with
some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has been
seldom or never successful; because to property producing empire, it
is required that it should have some certain root or foothold, which,
except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise as it were upon the
wing.
Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and have little
or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal
to that of land in the cases mentioned.
But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity, following his
furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the public sword, to which
he reduces all manner and matter of government; as, where he affirms
this opinion (that any monarch receives his power by covenant; that is
to say, upon conditions) "to proceed from the not understanding this
easy truth, that covenants being but words and breath, have no power to
oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they have from
the public sword." But as he said of the law, that without this sword
it is but paper, so he might have thought of this sword, that without a
hand it is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia
of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field,
or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a
great belly, and must be fed: wherefore this will come to what pastures
you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of
property, without which the public sword is but a name or mere spitfrog.
Wherefore, to set that which Leviathan says of arms and of contracts a
little straighter, he that can graze this beast with the great belly,
as the Turk does his Timariots, may well deride him that imagines he
received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such toy. It being
in this case only that covenants are but words and breath. But if the
property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be
the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master's crib; and it is
impossible for a king in such a constitution to reign otherwise than by
covenant; or if he break it, it is words that come to blows.
"But," says he, "when an assembly of men is made sovereign, then no man
imagines any such covenant to have part in the institution." But what
was that by Publicola of appeal to the people, or that whereby the
people had their tribunes? "Fie," says he, "nobody is so dull as to say
that the people of Rome made a covenant with the Romans, to hold the
sovereignty on such or such conditions, which, not performed, the Romans
might depose the Roman people." In which there be several remarkable
things; for he holds the Commonwealth of Rome to have consisted of one
assembly, whereas it consisted of the Senate and the people; that they
were not upon covenant, whereas every law enacted by them was a covenant
between them; that the one assembly was made sovereign, whereas the
people, who only were sovereign, were such from the beginning, as
appears by the ancient style of their covenants or laws--"The Senate has
resolved, the people have decreed," that a council being made sovereign,
cannot be made such upon conditions, whereas the Decemvirs being a
council that was made sovereign, was made such upon conditions; that all
conditions or covenants making a sovereign being made, are void; whence
it must follow that, the Decemviri being made, were ever after the
lawful government of Rome, and that it was unlawful for the Commonwealth
of Rome to depose the Decemvirs; as also that Cicero, if he wrote
otherwise out of his commonwealth, did not write out of nature. But to
come to others that see more of this balance.
You have Aristotle full of it in divers places, especially where he
says, that "immoderate wealth, as where one man or the few have greater
possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will
bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends for the greater part in
monarchy and that for this cause the ostracism has been received in
divers places, as in Argos and Athens. But that it were better to
prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek
the remedy of such an evil."
Machiavel has missed it very narrowly and more dangerously for not fully
perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry it is by their
overbalance, he speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments,
and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry; and makes us
believe that the people in such are so enraged against them, that where
they meet a gentleman they kill him: which can never be proved by any
one example, unless in civil war, seeing that even in Switzerland the
gentry are not only safe, but in honor. But the balance, as I have laid
it down, though unseen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, and
that which he confirms by his judgment in many others as well as in
this place, where he concludes, "That he who will go about to make a
commonwealth where there be many gentlemen, unless he first destroys
them, undertakes an impossibility. And that he who goes about to
introduce monarchy where the condition of the people is equal, shall
never bring it to pass, unless he cull out such of them as are the most
turbulent and ambitious, and make them gentlemen or noblemen, not in
name but in effect; that is, by enriching them with lands, castles, and
treasures, that may gain them power among the rest, and bring in the
rest to dependence upon themselves, to the end that, they maintaining
their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by
them."
Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility
or gentry, overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and
destruction of it; so I shall show in another, that a nobility or
gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the very life
and soul of it.
By what has been said, it should seem that we may lay aside further
disputes of the public sword, or of the right of the militia; which, be
the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable
from the overbalance in dominion: nor, if otherwise stated by the law
or custom (as in the Commonwealth of Rome, where the people having the
sword, the nobility came to have the overbalance), avails it to
any other end than destruction. For as a building swaying from the
foundation must fall, so it fares with the law swaying from reason, and
the militia from the balance of dominion. And thus much for the balance
of national or domestic empire, which is in dominion.
The balance of foreign or provincial empire is of a contrary nature. A
man may as well say that it is unlawful for him who has made a fair and
honest purchase to have tenants, as for a government that has made a
just progress and enlargement of itself to have provinces. But how a
province may be justly acquired appertains to another place. In this
I am to show no more than how or upon what kind of balance it is to be
held; in order whereto I shall first show upon what kind of balance
it is not to be held. It has been said, that national or independent
empire, of what kind soever, is to be exercised by them that have
the proper balance of dominion in the nation; wherefore provincial or
dependent empire is not to be exercised by them that have the balance of
dominion in the province, because that would bring the government
from provincial and dependent, to national and independent. Absolute
monarchy, as that of the Turks, neither plants its people at home nor
abroad, otherwise than as tenants for life or at will; wherefore its
national and provincial government is all one. But in governments that
admit the citizen or subject to dominion in lands, the richest are they
that share most of the power at home; whereas the richest among
the provincials, though native subjects, or citizens that have been
transplanted, are least admitted to the government abroad; for men, like
flowers or roots being transplanted, take after the soil wherein they
grow. Wherefore the Commonwealth of Rome, by planting colonies of its
citizens within the bounds of Italy, took the best way of propagating
itself, and naturalizing the country; whereas if it had planted such
colonies without the bounds of Italy it would have alienated the
citizens, and given a root to liberty abroad, that might have sprung up
foreign or savage, and hostile to her: wherefore it never made any such
dispersion of itself and its strength, till it was under the yoke of
the Emperors, who, disburdening themselves of the people, as having less
apprehension of what they could do abroad than at home, took a contrary
course.
The Mamelukes (which, till any man show me the contrary, I shall presume
to have been a commonwealth consisting of an army, whereof the common
soldier was the people, the commissioned officer the Senate, and the
general the prince) were foreigners, and by nation Circassians, that
governed Egypt; wherefore these never durst plant themselves upon
dominion, which growing naturally up into the national interest, must
have dissolved the foreign yoke in that province.
The like in some sort may be said of Venice, the government whereof is
usually mistaken; for Venice, though it does not take in the people,
never excluded them. This commonwealth, the orders whereof are the
most democratical or popular of all others, in regard of the exquisite
rotation of the Senate, at the first institution took in the whole
people; they that now live under the government without participation of
it, are such as have since either voluntarily chosen so to do, or
were subdued by arms. Wherefore the subject of Venice is governed by
provinces, and the balance of dominion not standing, as has been said,
with provincial government; as the Mamelukes durst not cast their
government upon this balance in their provinces, lest the national
interest should have rooted out the foreign, so neither dare the
Venetians take in their subjects upon this balance, lest the foreign
interest should root out the national (which is that of the 3,000
now governing), and by diffusing the commonwealth throughout her
territories, lose the advantage of her situation, by which in great
part it subsists. And such also is the government of the Spaniard in the
Indies, to which he deputes natives of his own country, not admitting
the creoles to the government of those provinces, though descended from
Spaniards.
But if a prince or a commonwealth may hold a territory that is foreign
in this, it may be asked why he may not hold one that is native in
the like manner? To which I answer, because he can hold a foreign by a
native territory, but not a native by a foreign; and as hitherto I
have shown what is not the provincial balance, so by this answer it may
appear what it is, namely, the overbalance of a native territory to
a foreign; for as one country balances itself by the distribution
of property according to the proportion of the same, so one country
overbalances another by advantage of divers kinds. For example, the
Commonwealth of Rome overbalanced her provinces by the vigor of a
more excellent government opposed to a crazier. Or by a more exquisite
militia opposed to one inferior in courage or discipline. The like was
that of the Mamelukes, being a hardy people, to the Egyptians, that were
a soft one. And the balance of situation is in this kind of wonderful
effect; seeing the King of Denmark, being none of the most potent
princes, is able at the Sound to take toll of the greatest; and as
this King, by the advantage of the land, can make the sea tributary, so
Venice, by the advantage of the sea, in whose arms she is impregnable,
can make the land to feed her gulf. For the colonies in the Indies,
they are yet babes that cannot live without sucking the breasts of their
mother cities, but such as I mistake if when they come of age they do
not wean themselves; which causes me to wonder at princes that delight
to be exhausted in that way. And so much for the principles of power,
whether national or provincial, domestic or foreign; being such as are
external, and founded in the goods of fortune.
I come to the principles of authority, which are internal, and founded
upon the goods of the mind. These the legislator that can unite in his
government with those of fortune, comes nearest to the work of God,
whose government consists of heaven and earth; which was said by Plato,
though in different words, as, when princes should be philosophers, or
philosophers princes, the world would be happy. And says Solomon: "There
is an evil which I have seen under the sun, which proceeds from the
ruler (enimvero neque nobilem, neque ingenuum, nec libertinum quidem
armis praeponere, regia utilitas est). Folly is set in great dignity,
and the rich (either in virtue and wisdom, in the goods of the mind,
or those of fortune upon that balance which gives them a sense of the
national interest) sit in low places. I have seen servants upon horses,
and princes walking as servants upon the earth." Sad complaints, that
the principles of power and of authority, the goods of the mind and
of fortune, do not meet and twine in the wreath or crown of empire!
Wherefore, if we have anything of piety or of prudence, let us raise
ourselves out of the mire of private interest to the contemplation of
virtue, and put a hand to the removal of "this evil from under the sun;"
this evil against which no government that is not secured can be good;
this evil from which the government that is secure must be perfect.
Solomon tells us that the cause of it is from the ruler, from those
principles of power, which, balanced upon earthly trash, exclude the
heavenly treasures of virtue, and that influence of it upon government
which is authority. We have wandered the earth to find out the balance
of power; but to find out that of authority we must ascend, as I said,
nearer heaven, or to the image of God, which is the soul of man.
The soul of man (whose life or motion is perpetual contemplation or
thought) is the mistress of two potent rivals, the one reason, the other
passion, that are in continual suit; and, according as she gives up her
will to these or either of them, is the felicity or misery which man
partakes in this mortal life.
For, as whatever was passion in the contemplation of a man, being
brought forth by his will into action, is vice and the bondage of sin;
so whatever was reason in the contemplation of a man, being brought
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Alice, who live with me, already there. Louisa
keeps the district school, and with her salary, besides the little
which my brother left her, gets along very comfortably. I have a
small sum in bank, besides my house, and we have plenty to live on,
even if we don't have much to spare.
Louisa was full of excitement over the false alarm of fire, and had
heard a reason for it which we never fairly knew to be true, though
nearly all the village believed it. It seems that the little Jameson
boy, so the story ran, had peeped into the kitchen and had seen it
full of smoke from Caroline's smoky chimney when she was kindling the
fire; then had run out into the yard, and seeing the smoke out there
too, and being of such an exceedingly timid temperament, had run out
to the head of the lane calling fire, and had there met Tommy Gregg,
who had spread the alarm and been the means of calling out the fire
department.
Indeed, the story purported to come from Tommy Gregg, who declared
that the boy at Liscom's had "hollered" fire, and when he was asked
where it was had told him at Liscom's. However that may have been, I
looked around at our humble little home, at the lounge which I had
covered myself, at the threadbare carpet on the sitting-room floor,
at the wallpaper which was put on the year before my husband died, at
the vases on the shelf, which had belonged to my mother, and I was
very thankful that I did not care for "extra things" or new furniture
and carpets enough to take boarders who made one feel as if one were
simply a colonist of their superior state, and the Republic was over
and gone.
II
WE BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THEM
It was certainly rather unfortunate, as far as the social standing of
the Jamesons among us was concerned, that they brought Grandma Cobb
with them.
Everybody spoke of her as Grandma Cobb before she had been a week in
the village. Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson always called her Madam Cobb,
but that made no difference. People in our village had not been
accustomed to address old ladies as madam, and they did not take
kindly to it. Grandma Cobb was of a very sociable disposition, and
she soon developed the habit of dropping into the village houses at
all hours of the day and evening. She was an early riser, and all the
rest of her family slept late, and she probably found it lonesome.
She often made a call as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and
she came as late as ten o'clock in the evening. When she came in the
morning she talked, and when she came in the evening she sat in her
chair and nodded. She often kept the whole family up, and it was less
exasperating when she came in the morning, though it was unfortunate
for the Jamesons.
If a bulletin devoted to the biography of the Jameson family had been
posted every week on the wall of the town house it could have been no
more explicit than was Grandma Cobb. Whether we would or not we soon
knew all about them; the knowledge was fairly forced upon us. We knew
that Mr. H. Boardman Jameson had been very wealthy, but had lost most
of his money the year before through the failure of a bank. We knew
that his wealth had all been inherited, and that he would never have
been, in Grandma Cobb's opinion, capable of earning it himself. We
knew that he had obtained, through the influence of friends, a
position in the custom-house, and we knew the precise amount of his
salary. We knew that the Jamesons had been obliged to give up their
palatial apartments in New York and take a humble flat in a less
fashionable part of the city. We knew that they had always spent
their summers at their own place at the seashore, and that this was
the first season of their sojourn in a little country village in a
plain house. We knew how hard a struggle it had been for them to
come here; we knew just how much they paid for their board, how Mrs.
Jameson never wanted anything for breakfast but an egg and a hygienic
biscuit, and had health food in the middle of the forenoon and
afternoon.
We also knew just how old they all were, and how the H. in Mr.
Jameson's name stood for Hiram. We knew that Mrs. Jameson had never
liked the name--might, in fact, have refused to marry on that score
had not Grandma Cobb reasoned with her and told her that he was a
worthy man with money, and she not as young as she had been; and how
she compromised by always using the abbreviation, both in writing and
speaking. "She always calls him H," said Grandma Cobb, "and I tell
her sometimes it doesn't look quite respectful to speak to her
husband as if he were part of the alphabet." Grandma Cobb, if the
truth had been told, was always in a state of covert rebellion
against her daughter.
Grandma Cobb was always dressed in a black silk gown which seemed
sumptuous to the women of our village. They could scarcely reconcile
it with the statement that the Jamesons had lost their money. Black
silk of a morning was stupendous to them, when they reflected how
they had, at the utmost, but one black silk, and that guarded as if
it were cloth of gold, worn only upon the grandest occasions, and
designed, as they knew in their secret hearts, though they did not
proclaim it, for their last garment of earth. Grandma Cobb always
wore a fine lace cap also, which should, according to the opinions of
the other old ladies of the village, have been kept sacred for other
women's weddings or her own funeral. She used her best gold-bowed
spectacles every day, and was always leaving them behind her in the
village houses, and little Tommy or Annie had to run after her with
a charge not to lose them, for nobody knew how much they cost.
Grandma Cobb always carried about with her a paper-covered novel and
a box of cream peppermints. She ate the peppermints and freely
bestowed them upon others; the novel she never read. She said quite
openly that she only carried it about to please her daughter, who had
literary tastes. "She belongs to a Shakespeare Club, and a Browning
Club, and a Current Literature Club," said Grandma Cobb.
We concluded that she had, feeling altogether incapable of even
carrying about Shakespeare and Browning, compromised with peppermints
and current literature.
"That book must be current literature," said Mrs. Ketchum one day,
"but I looked into it when she was at our house, and I should not
want Adeline to read it."
After a while people looked upon Grandma Cobb's book with suspicion;
but since she always carried it, thereby keeping it from her
grandchildren, and never read it, we agreed that it could not do
much harm.
The very first time that I saw Grandma Cobb, at Caroline Liscom's,
she had that book. I knew it by the red cover and a baking-powder
advertisement on the back; and the next time also--that was at the
seventeenth-of-June picnic.
The whole Jameson family went to the picnic, rather to our surprise.
I think people had a fancy that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would be
above our little rural picnic. We had yet to understand Mrs. Jameson,
and learn that, however much she really held herself above and aloof,
she had not the slightest intention of letting us alone, perhaps
because she thoroughly believed in her own nonmixable quality. Of
course it would always be quite safe for oil to go to a picnic with
water, no matter how exclusive it might be.
The picnic was in Leonard's grove, and young and old were asked. The
seventeenth-of-June picnic is a regular institution in our village. I
went with Louisa, and little Alice in her new white muslin dress; the
child had been counting on it for weeks. We were nearly all assembled
when the Jamesons arrived. Half a dozen of us had begun to lay the
table for luncheon, though we were not to have it for an hour or two.
We always thought it a good plan to make all our preparations in
season. We were collecting the baskets and boxes, and it did look as
if we were to have an unusual feast that year. Those which we peeped
into appeared especially tempting. Mrs. Nathan Butters had brought a
great loaf of her rich fruit cake, a kind for which she is famous in
the village, and Mrs. Sim White had brought two of her whipped-cream
pies. Mrs. Ketchum had brought six mince pies, which were a real
rarity in June, and Flora Clark had brought a six-quart pail full of
those jumbles she makes, so rich that if you drop one it crumbles to
pieces. Then there were two great pinky hams and a number of
chickens. Louisa and I had brought a chicken; we had one of ours
killed, and I had roasted it the day before.
I remarked to Mrs. Ketchum that we should have an unusually nice
dinner; and so we should have had if it had not been for Mrs. H.
Boardman Jameson.
The Jamesons came driving into the grove in the Liscom carryall and
their buggy. Mr. Jacob Liscom was in charge of the carryall, and the
Jameson boy was on the front seat with him; on the back seat were
Grandma, or Madam Cobb, and the younger daughter. Harry Liscom drove
the bay horse in the buggy, and Mrs. Jameson and Harriet were with
him, he sitting between them, very uncomfortably, as it appeared--his
knees were touching the dasher, as he is a tall young man.
Caroline Liscom did not come, and I did not wonder at it for one.
She must have thought it a good chance to rest one day from taking
boarders. We were surprised that Mrs. Jameson, since she is such a
stout woman, did not go in the carryall, and let either her younger
daughter or the boy go with Harry and Harriet in the buggy. We heard
afterward that she thought it necessary that she should go with them
as a chaperon. That seemed a little strange to us, since our village
girls were all so well conducted that we thought nothing of their
going buggy-riding with a good young man like Harry Liscom; he is a
church member and prominent in the Sunday-school, and this was in
broad daylight and the road full of other carriages. So people stared
and smiled a little to see Harry driving in with his knees braced
against the dasher, and the buggy canting to one side with the weight
of Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson. He looked rather shamefaced, I thought,
though he is a handsome, brave young fellow, and commonly carries
himself boldly enough. Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her
costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite appropriate. However,
I suppose that she was not to blame, poor child, and it may easily
be more embarrassing to have old fine clothes than old poor ones.
Really, Harriet Jameson would have looked better dressed that day in
an old calico gown than the old silk one which she wore. Her waist
was blue silk with some limp chiffon at the neck and sleeves, and her
skirt was old brown silk all frayed at the bottom and very shiny.
There were a good many spots on it, too, and some mud stains, though
it had not rained for two weeks.
However, the girl looked pretty, and her hair was done with a stylish
air, and she wore her old Leghorn hat, with its wreath of faded
French flowers, in a way which was really beyond our girls.
And as for Harry Liscom, it was plain enough to be seen that, aside
from his discomfiture at the close attendance of Mrs. H. Boardman
Jameson, he was blissfully satisfied and admiring. I was rather sorry
to see it on his account, though I had nothing against the girl. I
think, on general principles, that it is better usually for a young
man of our village to marry one of his own sort; that he has a better
chance of contentment and happiness. However, in this case it seemed
quite likely that there would be no chance of married happiness at
all. It did not look probable that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would
smile upon her eldest daughter's marriage with the son of "a good
woman," and I was not quite sure as to what Caroline Liscom would
say.
Mr. Jacob Liscom is a pleasant-faced, mild-eyed man, very tall and
slender. He lifted out the Jameson boy, who did not jump out over the
wheel, as boys generally do when arriving at a picnic, and then he
tipped over the front seat and helped out Madam Cobb, and the younger
daughter, whose name was Sarah. We had not thought much of such
old-fashioned names as Harriet and Sarah for some years past in our
village, and it seemed rather odd taste in these city people. We
considered Hattie and Sadie much prettier. Generally the Harriets and
Sarahs endured only in the seclusion of the family Bible and the
baptismal records. Quite a number of the ladies had met Mrs. Jameson,
having either called at Mrs. Liscom's and seen her there, or having
spoken to her at church; and as for Grandma Cobb, she had had time to
visit nearly every house in the village, as I knew, though she had
not been to mine. Grandma Cobb got out, all smiling, and Jacob Liscom
handed her the box of peppermints and the paper-covered novel, and
then Harry Liscom helped out Harriet and her mother.
Mrs. Jameson walked straight up to us who were laying the table, and
Harry followed her with a curiously abashed expression, carrying a
great tin cracker-box in one hand and a large basket in the other. We
said good-morning as politely as we knew how to Mrs. Jameson, and she
returned it with a brisk air which rather took our breaths away, it
was so indicative of urgent and very pressing business. Then, to our
utter astonishment, up she marched to the nearest basket on the
table and deliberately took off the cover and began taking out the
contents. It happened to be Mrs. Nathan Butters' basket. Mrs. Jameson
lifted out the great loaf of fruit cake and set it on the table
with a contemptuous thud, as it seemed to us; then she took out a
cranberry pie and a frosted apple pie, and set them beside it. She
opened Mrs. Peter Jones' basket next, and Mrs. Jones stood there
all full of nervous twitches and saw her take out a pile of ham
sandwiches and a loaf of chocolate cake and a bottle of pickles. She
went on opening the baskets and boxes one after another, and we stood
watching her. Finally she came to the pail full of jumbles, and her
hand slipped and the most of them fell to the ground and were a mass
of crumbles.
Then Mrs. Jameson spoke; she had not before said a word. "These are
enough to poison the whole village," said she, and she sniffed with
a proud uplifting of her nose.
I am sure that a little sound, something between a groan and a gasp,
came from us, but no one spoke. I felt that it was fortunate, and
yet I was almost sorry that Flora Clark, who made those jumbles, was
not there; she had gone to pick wild flowers with her Sunday-school
class. Flora is very high-spirited and very proud of her jumbles, and
I knew that she would not have stood it for a minute to hear them
called poison. There would certainly have been words then and there,
for Flora is afraid of nobody. She is a smart, handsome woman, and
would have been married long ago if it had not been for her temper.
Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to gather up the jumbles; she just went
on after that remark of hers, opening the rest of the things; there
were only one or two more. Then she took the cracker-box which Harry
had brought; he had stolen away to put up his horse, and it looked to
me very much as if Harriet had stolen away with him, for I could not
see her anywhere.
Mrs. Jameson lifted this cracker-box on to the table and opened it.
It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. She
laid them in a pile beside the other things; then she took up the
basket and opened that. There was another kind of a cracker in that,
and two large papers of something. When everything was taken out she
pointed at the piles of eatables on the table, and addressed us:
"Ladies, attention!" rapping slightly with a spoon at the same time.
Her voice was very sweet, with a curious kind of forced sweetness:
"Ladies, attention! I wish you to carefully observe the food upon
the table before us. I wish you to consider it from the standpoint
of wives and mothers of families. There is the food which you have
brought, unwholesome, indigestible; there is mine, approved of by the
foremost physicians and men of science of the day. For ten years I
have had serious trouble with the alimentary canal, and this food
has kept me in strength and vigor. Had I attempted to live upon your
fresh biscuits, your frosted cakes, your rich pastry, I should be in
my grave. One of those biscuits which you see there before you is
equal in nourishment to six of your indigestible pies, or every cake
upon the table. The great cause of the insanity and dyspepsia so
prevalent among the rural classes is rich pie and cake. I feel it my
duty to warn you. I hope, ladies, that you will consider carefully
what I have said."
With that, Mrs. Jameson withdrew herself a little way and sat down
under a tree on a cushion which had been brought in the carryall. We
looked at one another, but we did not say anything for a few minutes.
Finally, Mrs. White, who is very good-natured, remarked that she
supposed that she meant well, and she had better put her pies back in
the basket or they would dry up. We all began putting back the things
which Mrs. Jameson had taken out, except the broken jumbles, and
were very quiet. However, we could not help feeling astonished and
aggrieved at what Mrs. Jameson had said about the insanity and
dyspepsia in our village, since we could scarcely remember one case
of insanity, and very few of us had to be in the least careful as
to what we ate. Mrs. Peter Jones did say in a whisper that if Mrs.
Jameson had had dyspepsia ten years on those hard biscuits it
was more than any of us had had on our cake and pie. We left the
biscuits, and the two paper packages which Mrs. Jameson had brought,
in a heap on the table just where she had put them.
After
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How many times does the word 'hand' appear in the text?
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|
chuck. "He will know what
to do with her."
Chapter VI
Twinkle is Taken to the Judge
AT this the woodchuck children all hooted with joy, crying: "Take her,
Daddy! Take her to old Stoneyheart! Oh, my! won't he give it to her,
though!"
"Who is Judge Stoneyheart?" asked Twinkle, a little uneasily.
"A highly respected and aged woodchuck who is cousin to my wife's
grandfather," was the reply. "We consider him the wisest and most
intelligent of our race; but, while he is very just in all things, the
judge never shows any mercy to evil-doers."
"I haven't done anything wrong," said the girl.
"But your father has, and much wrong is done us by the other farmers
around here. They fight my people without mercy, and kill every
woodchuck they can possibly catch."
Twinkle was silent, for she knew this to be true.
"For my part," continued Mister Woodchuck, "I'm very soft-hearted, and
wouldn't even step on an ant if I could help it. Also I am sure you have
a kind disposition. But you are a human, and I am a woodchuck; so I
think I will take you to old Stoneyheart and let him decide your fate."
"Hooray!" yelled the young woodchucks, and away they ran through the
paths of the garden, followed slowly by their fat mother, who held the
lace parasol over her head as if she feared she would be sunstruck.
Twinkle was glad to see them go. She didn't care much for the woodchuck
children, they were so wild and ill-mannered, and their mother was even
more disagreeable than they were. As for Mister Woodchuck, she did not
object to him so much; in fact, she rather liked to talk to him, for his
words were polite and his eyes pleasant and kindly.
"Now, my dear," he said, "as we are about to leave this garden, where
you have been quite secure, I must try to prevent your running away when
we are outside the wall. I hope it won't hurt your feelings to become a
real prisoner for a few minutes."
Then Mister Woodchuck drew from his pocket a leather collar, very much
like a dog-collar, Twinkle thought, and proceeded to buckle it around
the girl's neck. To the collar was attached a fine chain about six feet
long, and the other end of the chain Mister Woodchuck held in his hand.
"Now, then," said he, "please come along quietly, and don't make a
fuss."
He led her to the end of the garden and opened a wooden gate in the
wall, through which they passed. Outside the garden the ground was
nothing but hard, baked earth, without any grass or other green thing
growing upon it, or any tree or shrub to shade it from the hot sun. And
not far away stood a round mound, also of baked earth, which Twinkle at
once decided to be a house, because it had a door and some windows in
it.
There was no living thing in sight--not even a woodchuck--and Twinkle
didn't care much for the baked-clay scenery.
Mister Woodchuck, holding fast to the chain, led his prisoner across the
barren space to the round mound, where he paused to rap softly upon the
door.
Chapter VII
Twinkle is Condemned
"COME in!" called a voice.
Mister Woodchuck pushed open the door and entered, drawing Tinkle after
him by the chain.
In the middle of the room sat a woodchuck whose hair was grizzled with
old age. He wore big spectacles upon his nose, and a round knitted cap,
with a tassel dangling from the top, upon his head. His only garment was
an old and faded dressing-gown.
When they entered, the old woodchuck was busy playing a game with a
number of baked-clay dominoes, which he shuffled and arranged upon a
baked-mud table; nor did he look up for a long time, but continued to
match the dominoes and to study their arrangement with intense interest.
Finally, however, he finished the game, and then he raised his head and
looked sharply at his visitors.
"Good afternoon, Judge," said Mister Woodchuck, taking off his silk hat
and bowing respectfully.
The judge did not answer him, but continued to stare at Twinkle.
"I have called to ask your advice," continued Mister Woodchuck. "By good
chance I have been able to capture one of those fierce humans that are
the greatest enemies of peaceful woodchucks."
The judge nodded his gray head wisely, but still answered nothing.
"But now that I've captured the creature, I don't know what to do with
her," went on Mister Woodchuck; "although I believe, of course, she
should be punished in some way, and made to feel as unhappy as her
people have made us feel. Yet I realize that it's a dreadful thing to
hurt any living creature, and as far as I'm concerned I'm quite willing
to forgive her." With these words he wiped his face with a red silk
handkerchief, as if really distressed.
"She's dreaming," said the judge, in a sharp, quick voice.
"Am I?" asked Twinkle.
"Of course. You were probably lying on the wrong side when you went to
sleep."
"Oh!" she said. "I wondered what made it."
"Very disagreeable dream, isn't it?" continued the judge.
"Not so very," she answered. "It's interesting to see and hear
woodchucks in their own homes, and Mister Woodchuck has shown me how
cruel it is for us to set traps for you."
"Good!" said the judge. "But some dreams are easily forgotten, so I'll
teach you a lesson you'll be likely to remember. You shall be caught in
a trap yourself."
"Me!" cried Twinkle, in dismay.
"Yes, you. When you find how dreadfully it hurts you'll bear the traps
in mind forever afterward. People don't remember dreams unless the
dreams are unusually horrible. But I guess you'll remember this one."
He got up and opened a mud cupboard, from which he took a big steel
trap. Twinkle could see that it was just like the trap papa had set to
catch the woodchucks, only it seemed much bigger and stronger.
The judge got a mallet and with it pounded a stake into the mud floor.
Then he fastened the chain of the trap to the stake, and afterward
opened the iron jaws of the cruel-looking thing and set them with a
lever, so that the slightest touch would spring the trap and make the
strong jaws snap together.
"Now, little girl," said he, "you must step in the trap and get caught."
"Why, it would break my leg!" cried Twinkle.
"Did your father care whether a woodchuck got its leg broken or not?"
asked the judge.
"No," she answered, beginning to be greatly frightened.
"Step!" cried the judge, sternly.
"It will hurt awfully," said Mister Woodchuck; "but that can't be
helped. Traps are cruel things, at the best."
Twinkle was now trembling with nervousness and fear.
"Step!" called the judge, again.
"Dear me!" said Mister Woodchuck, just then, as he looked earnestly into
Twinkle's face, "I believe she's going to wake up!"
"That's too bad," said the judge.
"No, I'm glad of it," replied Mister Woodchuck.
And just then the girl gave a start and opened her eyes.
She was lying in the clover, and before her was the opening of the
woodchuck's hole, with the trap still set before it.
Chapter VIII
Twinkle Remembers
"PAPA," said Twinkle, when supper was over and she was nestled snugly in
his lap, "I wish you wouldn't set any more traps for the woodchucks."
"Why not, my darling?" he asked in surprise.
"They're cruel," she answered. "It must hurt the poor animals dreadfully
to be caught in them."
"I suppose it does," said her father, thoughtfully. "But if I don't trap
the woodchucks they eat our clover and vegetables."
"Never mind that," said Twinkle, earnestly. "Let's divide with them. God
made the woodchucks, you know, just as He made us, and they can't plant
and grow things as we do; so they have to take what they can get, or
starve to death. And surely, papa, there's enough to eat in this big and
beautiful world, for all of God's creatures."
Papa whistled softly, although his face was grave; and then he bent down
and kissed his little girl's forehead.
"I won't set any more traps, dear," he said.
And that evening, after Twinkle had been tucked snugly away in bed, her
father walked slowly through the sweet-smelling fields to the
woodchuck's hole; there lay the trap, showing plainly in the bright
moonlight. He picked it up and carried it back to the barn. It was never
used again.
THE END
BANDIT JIM CROW
BANDIT JIM CROW
List of Chapters
PAGE
I Jim Crow Becomes a Pet.....................73
II Jim Crow Runs Away.........................81
III Jim Crow Finds a New Home..................86
IV Jim Crow Becomes a Robber..................97
V Jim Crow Meets Policeman Blue Jay.........105
VI Jim Crow Fools the Policeman..............113
VII Jim Crow is Punished......................121
VIII Jim Crow has Time to Repent His Sins......129
Chapter I
Jim Crow Becomes a Pet
ONE day, when Twinkle's father was in the corn-field, he shot his gun at
a flock of crows that were busy digging up, with their long bills, the
kernels of corn he had planted. But Twinkle's father didn't aim very
straight, for the birds screamed at the bang of the gun and quickly flew
away--all except one young crow that fluttered its wings, but couldn't
rise into the air, and so began to run along the ground in an effort to
escape.
The man chased the young crow, and caught it; and then he found that one
of the little lead bullets had broken the right wing, although the bird
seemed not to be hurt in any other way.
It struggled hard, and tried to peck the hands that held it; but it was
too young to hurt any one, so Twinkle's father decided he would carry it
home to his little girl.
"Here's a pet for you, Twinkle," he said, as he came into the house. "It
can't fly, because its wing is broken; but don't let it get too near
your eyes, or it may peck at them. It's very wild and fierce, you know."
Twinkle was delighted with her pet, and at once got her mother to
bandage the broken wing, so that it would heal quickly.
The crow had jet black feathers, but there was a pretty purplish and
violet gloss, or sheen, on its back and wings, and its eyes were bright
and had a knowing look in them. They were hazel-brown in color, and the
bird had a queer way of turning his head on one side to look at Twinkle
with his right eye, and then twisting it the other side that he might
see her with his left eye. She often wondered if she looked the same to
both eyes, or if each one made her seem different.
She named her pet "Jim Crow" because papa said that all crows were
called Jim, although he never could find out the reason. But the name
seemed to fit her pet as well as any, so Twinkle never bothered about
the reason.
Having no cage to keep him in, and fearing he would run away, the girl
tied a strong cord around one of Jim Crow's legs, and the other end of
the cord she fastened to the round of a chair--or to the table-leg--when
they were in the house. The crow would run all around, as far as the
string would let him go; but he couldn't get away. And when they went
out of doors Twinkle held the end of the cord in her hand, as one leads
a dog, and Jim Crow would run along in front of her, and then stop and
wait. And when she came near he'd run on again, screaming "Caw! Caw!" at
the top of his shrill little voice.
He soon came to know he belonged to Twinkle, and would often lie in her
lap or perch upon her shoulder. And whenever she entered the room where
he was he would say, "Caw--caw!" to her, in pleading tones, until she
picked him up or took some notice of him.
It was wonderful how quickly a bird that had always lived wild and free
seemed to become tame and gentle. Twinkle's father said that was because
he was so young, and because his broken wing kept him from flying in the
air and rejoining his fellows. But Jim Crow wasn't as tame as he seemed,
and he had a very wicked and ungrateful disposition, as you will
presently learn.
For a few weeks, however, he was as nice a pet as any little girl could
wish for. He got into mischief occasionally, and caused mamma some
annoyance when he waded into a pan of milk or jumped upon the dinner
table and ate up papa's pumpkin pie before Twinkle could stop him. But
all pets are more or less trouble, at times, so Jim Crow escaped with a
few severe scoldings from mamma, which never seemed to worry him in the
least or make him a bit unhappy.
Chapter II
Jim Crow Runs Away
AT last Jim got so tame that Twinkle took the cord off his leg and let
him go free, wherever he pleased. So he wandered all over the house and
out into the yard, where he chased the ducks and bothered the pigs and
made himself generally disliked. He had a way of perching upon the back
of old Tom, papa's favorite horse, and chattering away in Tom's ear
until the horse plunged and pranced in his stall to get rid of his
unwelcome visitor.
Twinkle always kept the bandage on the wounded wing, for she didn't know
whether it was well yet, or not, and she thought it was better to be on
the safe side. But the truth was, that Jim Crow's wing had healed long
ago, and was now as strong as ever; and, as the weeks passed by, and he
grew big and fat, a great longing came into his wild heart to fly again--
far, far up into the air and away to the lands where there were forests
of trees and brooks of running water.
He didn't ever expect to rejoin his family again. They were far enough
away by this time. And he didn't care much to associate with other
crows. All he wanted was to be free, and do exactly as he pleased, and
not have some one cuffing him a dozen times a day because he was doing
wrong.
So one morning, before Twinkle was up, or even awake, Jim Crow pecked at
the bandage on his wing until he got the end unfastened, and then it
wasn't long before the entire strip of cloth was loosened and fell to
the ground.
Now Jim fluttered his feathers, and pruned them with his long bill where
they had been pressed together, and presently he knew that the wing
which had been injured was exactly as strong and well as the other one.
He could fly away whenever he pleased.
The crow had been well fed by Twinkle and her mamma, and was in splendid
health. But he was not at all grateful. With the knowledge of his
freedom a fierce, cruel joy crept into his heart, and he resumed the
wild nature that crows are born with and never lay aside as long as they
live.
Having forgotten in an instant that he had ever been tame, and the pet
of a gentle little girl, Jim Crow had no thought of saying good-bye to
Twinkle. Instead, he decided he would do something that would make these
foolish humans remember him for a long time. So he dashed into a group
of young chickens that had only been hatched a day or two before, and
killed seven of them with his strong, curved claws and his wicked black
beak. When the mother hen flew at him he pecked at her eyes; and then,
screaming a defiance to all the world, Jim Crow flew into the air and
sailed away to a new life in another part of the world.
Chapter III
Jim Crow Finds a New Home
I'LL not try to tell you of all the awful things this bad crow did
during the next few days, on his long journey toward the South.
Twinkle almost cried when she found her pet gone; and she really did cry
when she saw the poor murdered chickens. But mamma said she was very
glad to have Jim Crow run away, and papa scowled angrily and declared he
was sorry he had not killed the cruel bird when he shot at it in the
corn-field.
In the mean time the runaway crow flew through the country, and when he
was hungry he would stop at a farm-house and rob a hen's nest and eat
the eggs. It was his knowledge of farm-houses that made him so bold; but
the farmers shot at the thieving bird once or twice, and this frightened
Jim Crow so badly that he decided to keep away from the farms and find a
living in some less dangerous way.
And one day he came to a fine forest, where there were big and little
trees of all kinds, with several streams of water running through the
woods.
"Here," said Jim Crow, "I will make my home; for surely this is the
finest place I am ever likely to find."
There were plenty of birds in this forest, for Jim could hear them
singing and twittering everywhere among the trees; and their nests hung
suspended from branches, or nestled in a fork made by two limbs, in
almost every direction he might look. And the birds were of many kinds,
too: robins, thrushes, bullfinches, mocking-birds, wrens, yellowtails
and skylarks. Even tiny humming-birds fluttered around the wild
flowers that grew in the glades; and in the waters of the brooks waded
long-legged herons, while kingfishers sat upon overhanging branches and
waited patiently to seize any careless fish
|
start
|
How many times does the word 'start' appear in the text?
| 0
|
b>
</b>
<b> 3.
</b>
<b>A LONG STRETCH OF PRISTINE COUNTRY ROAD - THE HAMPTONS - DAY
</b>
A Silver Mercedes convertible bursts into FRAME. Harry's
behind the wheel, shades, smoking a cigar, livin' large. Next
to him sits a thoroughbred of a girl. An "IT" Girl. Smart,
sexy and built for fun. She has perfected flirting to an art.
Her hand rests on Harry's neck. There's a good thirty year
age difference between them. Her name is MARIN. She SINGS
along with Ja Rule, now coming from a CD.
<b> MARIN
</b>
( singing)
To all my thugs that be livin' it
up, we say, what I do. To all my...
(stops)
Oh! This is it. Make a right.
<b> HARRY
</b>
(admiring the
neighborhood)
So baby, you're rich... .
<b> MARIN
</b>
Well, my mother is, sort of. Not
really...
<b> HARRY
</b>
If she lives within a mile of here, she's
rich.
<b> MARIN
</b>
I guess a hit play will buy you a house
in The Hamptons.
<b> HARRY
</b>
I'd like to meet your mother.
<b> MARIN
</b>
No you wouldn't. I mean, she's
great. She's totally brilliant, but
she's not your type.
<b> HARRY
</b>
You're overlooking one of the great
things about me. I don't have a type.
<b> MARIN
</b>
(very directly)
She's over thirty.
Harry looks to Marin, feigning hurt.
<b> MARIN
</b>
Oh, what?! Like you don't know you
have a slight reputation for...
<b>
</b>
<b> 4.
</b>
Just then the CAR PHONE RINGS. Harry keeps looking at Marin.
<b> HARRY
</b>
-- For what?
Harry waits. RINGGG!
He doesn't look away.
<b> MARIN
</b>
For never dating anyone over 30.
Don't look at me like that.
<b> HARRY
</b>
It's just not true.
<b> MARIN
</b>
Okay. Sorry. Over 31?
<b> HARRY
</b>
Oh, so you wait 'til we get out to The
Hamptons to let me know you're a wise
ass.
(answers phone)
Hold on. . .
(then to Marin)
It just so happens, my dear, that women
of a certain age, don't date me. You ever
think of it that way? No, it's always me.
You dames are all alike.
(then into phone)
Hey...
<b> MARIN
</b>
(amused, to herself)
Dames...
Marin continues singing along with Ja Rule as Harry
confidently slips his hand onto her thigh.
<b> BARRY
</b>
(into phone)
Vh-huh.. .I'll call back Monday. Who
else? Monday... Monday... Say you couldn't
find me. Who?
(glances at Marin, she's
not listening)
I'll call her later. No, I have it.
Harry hangs up, doesn't look in Marin's direction to see if'
she caught that. This brand of cool is about not playing that
card. Marin turns toward him, she has been listening. They've
reached the end of the road, sand dunes, long lilting grass
and the ocean stretch before them.
<b>
</b>
<b> 5.
</b>
<b> MARIN
</b>
(all business)
Make a right, left at the second
fence.
Marin turns up the CD, getting herself out of whatever just
came over her, looks out the window.
<b> HARRY
</b>
Have I mentioned how gorgeous your
breasts look in this sweater?
<b> MARIN
</b>
(blushing)
Yes you have actually.
<b> HARRY
</b>
So it would be too much to mention it
again. . .
Marin laughs, softening, as Harry turns down a dirt driveway,
driving toward a DREAM BEACH HOUSE.
<b> HARRY
</b>
Wow. It's the perfect beach house.
<b> MARIN
</b>
I know. My mother doesn't know how
to do things that aren't perfect.
<b> HARRY
</b>
Which explains you.
That got her. Harry parks. She looks over at him but he's
grabbing some cigars for his shirt pocket, then looks up at
her with an innocent look that suggests he did not just say
such a lovely thought.
<b> MARIN
</b>
(trying to keep up with
him)
Yeah, okay, right...
They both grab their H
overnight bags and step out of the car.
<b> ARRY
</b>
So, what are we gonna do out here,
just the two of us, for two whole
days?
Marin sets her bag down, walks to Harry, wraps her arms
around his neck.
<b> MARIN
</b>
Tell me the truth, are you at all
glad we waited?
<b>
</b>
<b> 6.
</b>
<b> HARRY
</b>
I'm incredibly glad we're finally
going to do it.
(she's a bit disappointed)
If that's the same as being glad we
waited, then baby doll, I'm ecstatic.
Marin smiles then kisses him. He's one of those guys that
lets you kiss them.
<b> HARRY
</b>
(slaps her tush)
Let's go for a swim, how long will
it take you to change?
<b> MARIN
</b>
Two minutes.
Marin starts UNBUTTONING HER SWEATER as she dances
seductively toward the front door, then notices Harry's
cigars.
<b> MARIN
</b>
Oh Har... No smoking in the house. My
Mom doesn't allow it.
<b> HARRY
</b>
But she allows you to strip in the
front yard and bring men you're
dating here to...
<b> MARIN
</b>
She doesn't know everything I do...Or
when I do it.. or where I do it.
She SLIPS OFF her sweater and DROPS IT ON HARRY'S HEAD.
<b>INT. HOUSE
</b>
It's one of those great Beach Houses. Light filled and warm
with spectacular views of the sandy landscape wrapping around
the rear of the house. Marin, now in a tight tank, tight
pants, gives Harry the grand tour as she continues to
undress.
<b> MARIN
</b>
(TAKING OFF her belt)
The fabulous living room, perfect for
entertaining an intimate group of friends
or that special someone.
(DROPS her belt then
UNBUTTONS Harry's shirt)
Behind me, the requisite Hampton's deck
complete with pool and ocean view.
<b>
</b>
<b> 7.
</b>
<b> MARIN (CONT'D)
</b>
(UNBUCKLES Harry's belt)
Your pants, please...
<b> HARRY
</b>
Ladies first.
Marin provocatively UNZIPS her pants and wriggles out of
them. She's now in a TINY TANK AND BIKINI PANTIES.
<b> MARIN
</b>
Gourmet kitchen's to your left
where tonight I will whip you up a
culinary feast of Mac and Cheese.
Marin HEARS Harry's ZIPPER UNZIP. She turns, her EYES
WIDENING as Harry's PANTS land on a chair. Harry is now down
to his Boxers, an Open Shirt and a fearless smile.
<b> MARIN
</b>
(smiling)
.. O-kay, going quickly now...
Master bedroom is that away...
They arrive in a warmly decorated GUEST BEDROOM.
<b> M
</b>
<b> ARIN
</b>
And this as they say on 'Cribs',
your favorite show, is where the
magic happens. Do we like it? Going
once, going twice ...
<b> HARRY
</b>
Sold.
Harry takes Marin's hand and pulls her OUT OF FRAME and ONTO
THE BED. She playfully rolls on top of him. His hands cup her
ass.
<b>
|
those
|
How many times does the word 'those' appear in the text?
| 1
|
and more menacing note in their challenge. The noisy
but usually harmless confrontation lasts only a few seconds
before the invasion begins.
In an uncertainly-moving horde, the Others cross the river,
shieking threats and hunched for the attack. They are led
by a big-toothed hominid of Moonwatcher's own size and age.
Startled and frightened, the tribe retreats before the first
advance, throwing nothing more substantial than imprecations
at the invaders. Moonwatcher moves with them, his mind a
mist of rage and confusion. To be driven from their own
territory is a great badness, but to lose the river is death.
He does not know what to do; it is a situation beyond his
experience.
Then he becomes dimly aware that the Others are slowing
a10
<b>A8
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
down, and advancing with obvious reluctance. The further they
move from their own side, the more uncertain and unhappy
they become. Only Big-Tooth still retains any of his original
drive, and he is rapidly being seperated from his followers.
As he sees this, Moonwatcher's own morale immediately
revives. He slows down his retreat, and begins to make
reassuring noises to his companions. Novel sensations fill
his dim mind - the first faint precursors of bravery and
leadership.
Before he realizes it, he is face to face with Big-Tooth, and
the two tribes come to a halt many paces away.
The disorganized and unscientific conflict could have ended
quickly if either had used his fist as a club, but this
innovation still lay hundreds of thousands of years in the
future. Instead, the slowly weakening fighters claw and
scratch and try to bite each other.
Rolling over and over, they come to a patch of stony ground,
and when they reach it Moonwatcher is on top. By chance,
a11
<b>A8
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
he chooses this moment to grab the hair on Big-Tooth's scalp,
and bang his head on the ground. The resulting CRACK is
so satisfactory, and produces such an immediate weakening
In Big - Tooth's resistance, that he quickly repeats it.
Even when Big-Tooth ceases to move for some time, Moon-
watcher keeps up the exhilirating game.
With shrieks of panic, the Others retreat back, across the
stream. The defenders cautiously pursue them as far as
The water's edge.
a12
<b>EXT CAVE - NEW SOUND
</b>
Dozing fitfully and weakened by his stuggle, Moonwatcher is
startled by a sound.
He sits up in the fetid darkness of the cave, straining his
senses out into the night, and fear creeps slowly into his soul.
Never in his life - already twice as long as most members of
his species could expect - has he heard a sound like this. The
great cats approached in silence, and the only thing that
betrayed them was a rare slide of earth, or the occasional
cracking of a twig. Yet this is a continuing crunching noise
that grows steadily louder. It seemed that some enormous
beast was moving through the night, making no attempt at
concealment, and ignoring all obstacles.
And then there came a sound which Moonwatcher could not
possibly have identified, for it had never been heard before
in the history of this planet.
a13
<b>A10
</b><b>EXT CAVE - NEW ROCK
</b>
Moonwatcher comes face to face with the New Rock when he
leads the tribe down to the river in the first light of morning.
He had almost forgotten the terror of the night, because nothing
had happened after that initial noise, so he does not even
associate this strange thing with danger or with fear. There
is nothing in the least alarming about it.
It is a cube about fifteen feet on a side, and it is made of
some completely transparent material; indeed, it is not easy
to see except when the light of the sun glints on its edges.
There are no natural objects to which Moonwatcher can
compare this apparition. Though he is wisely cautious
of most new things, he does not hesitate to walk up to it.
As nothing happens, he puts out his hand, and feels a warm,
hard surface.
After several minutes of intense thought, he arrives at a
brilliant explanation. It is a rock, of course, and it
must have grown during the night. There are many plants
that do this - white, pulpy things shaped like pebbles, that
seem to shoot up in the hours of darkness. It is true that
they are small and round, whereas this is large and square;
a14
<b>A10
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
but greater and later philosophers than Moonwatcher would be
prepared to overlook equally striking exceptions to their laws.
This really superb piece of abstract thinking leads Moonwatcher
to a deduction which he immediately puts to the test. The white,
round pebble-plants are very tasty (though there were a few
that made one violently sick); perhaps this square one...?
A few licks and attempted nibbles quickly disillusion him.
There is no nourishment here; so like a sensible hominid, he
continues on his way to the river and forgets all about the Cube.
a15
<b>A11
</b><b>EXT CUBE - FIRST LESSON
</b>
They are still a hundred yards from the New Rock when the
sound begins.
It is quite soft, and it stops them in their tracks, so that they
stand paralyzed on the trail with their jaws hanging. A simple,
maddeningly repetitious rhythm pulses out of the crystal cube
and hypnotises all who come within its spell. For the first
time - and the last, for two million year - the sound of
drumming is heard in Africa.
The throbbing grows louder, more insistent. Presently the
hominids begin to move forward like sleep-walkers, towards
the source of that magnetic sound. Sometimes they take little
dancing steps, as their blood responds to the rhythms that
their descendants will not create for ages yet.
Totally entranced, they gather around the Cube, forgetting
the hardships of the day, the perils of the approaching dusk,
and the hunger in their bellies.
Now, spinning wheels of light begin to merge, and the spokes
fuse into luminous bars that slowly recede into the distance,
a16
<b>A11
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
rotating on their axes as they do; and the hominids watch, wide-
eyed, mesmerized captives of the Crystal Cube.
Then by some magic - though it was no more magical than all
that had gone on before - a perfectly normal scene appears. It
is as if a cubical block had been carved out of the day and
shifted into the night. Inside that block is a group of four
hominids, who might have been members of Moonwatcher's
own tribe, eating chunks of meat. The carcass of a wart-hog
lies near them.
This little family of male and female and two children is gorged
and replete, with sleek and glossy pelts - and this was a
condition of life that Moonwatcher had never imagined. From
time to time they stir lazily, as they loll at ease near the
entrance of their cave, apparently at peace with the world.
The spectacle of domestic bliss merges into a totally
different scene.
The family is no longer reposing peacefully outside its cave;
it is foraging, searching for food like any normal hominids.
a17
<b>A11
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
A small wart-hog ambles past the group of browsing humanoids
without giving them more than a glance, for they had never been
the slightest danger to its species.
But that happy state of affairs is about to end. The big male
suddenly bends down, picks up a heavy stone lying at his feet -
and hurls it upon the unfortunate pig. The stone descends upon
its skull, making exactly the same noise that Moonwatcher had
produced in his now almost forgotten encounter with Big-Tooth.
And the result, too, is much the same - the warthog gives one
amazed, indignant squeal, and collapses in a motionless heap.
Then the whole sequence begins again, but this time it unfolds
itself with incredible slowness. Every detail of the movement
can be followed; the stone arches leisurely through the air, the
pig crumples up and sinks to the ground. There the scene
freezes for long moments, the slayer standing motionless
above the slain, the first of all weapons in his hand.
The scene suddenly fades out. The cube is no more than a
glimmering outline in the darkness; the hominids stir, as if
a18
<b>A11
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
awakening from a dream, realise where they are, and scuttle
back to their caves.
They have no concious memory of what they had seen; but that
night, as he sits brooding at the entrance of his lair, his ears
attuned to the noises of the world around him, Moonwatcher
feels the first faint twinges of a new and potent emotion - the urge
to kill. He had taken his first step towards humanity.
a19
<b>A12
</b>EXT cave AND PLAINS - Utopia
Babies were born and sometimes lived; feeble, toothless thirty-
year-olds died; the lion took its toll in the night; the Others
threatened daily across the river - and the trib prospered.
In the course of a single year, Moonwatcher and his companions
had changed almost beyond recognition.
They had become as plump as the family in the Cave, who no
longer haunted their dreams. They had learned their lessons
well; now they could handle all the stone tools and weapons that
the Cube had revealed to them.
They were no longer half-numbed with starvation, and they
had time both for leisure and for the first rudiments of thought.
Their new way of life was casually accepted, and they did
not associate it in any way with the crystal cube still standing
outside their cave.
But no Utopia is perfect, and this one had two blemishes. The
first was the marauding lion, whose passion for hominids
seemed to have grown even stronger now that they were better
nourished. The second was the tribe across the river; for
a20
<b>A12
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
somehow the Others had survived, and had stubbornly refused to
die of starvation.
a21
<b>A13
</b><b>EXT CAVES - KILLING THE LION
</b>
With the partly devoured carcass of a warthog laid out on the
ground at the point he hope the boulder would impact, Moon-
watcher and three of his bravest companions wait for two
consecutive nights. On the third the lion comes,
betraying his presences by a small pebble slide.
When they can here the lion below, softly tearing at the meat,
they strain themselves against the massive boulder. The sound
of the lion stops; he is listening. Again they silently heave
against the enormous stone, exerting the final limits of their
strength. The rock begin to tip to a new balance point.
The lion twitches alert to this sound, but having no fear of these
creatures, he makes the first of two mistakes which will cost
him his life; he goes back to his meal.
The rock moves slowly over the ledge, picking up speed with
amazing suddeness. It strikes a projection in the cliff about
fifteen feet above the ground, which deflects its path outward.
Just at this instant, the lion reacts instinctively and leaps
away from the face of the cliff directly into the path of the
a22
<b>A13
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
onrushing boulder. He has combined the errors of over-
confidence and bad luck.
The next morning they find the lion in front of the cave. They
also find one of their tribe who had incautiously peeped out to
see what was happening, and was apparently killed by a small
rock torn loose by the boulder; but this was a small price to
pay for such a great victory.
<b> * * * * * * * *
</b>
And then one night the crystal cube was gone, and not even
Moonwatcher ever thought of it again. He was still wholly
unaware of all that it had done.
a23
<b>A14
</b><b>EXT STREAM - MASTER OF THE WORLD
</b>
From their side of the stream, in the never violated safety of
their own territory, the Others see Moonwatcher and fourteen
males of his tribe appear from behind a small hillock over-
looking the stream, silhouetted against the dawn sky.
The Others begin to scream their daily challenge. But today
something is different, though the Others do not immediatly
recognize this fact.
Instead of joining the verbal onslaught, as they had always done,
Moonwatcher and his small band decended from the rise, and
begin to move forward to the stream with a quiet purposefulness
never befor seen.
As the Others watch the figures silently approaching in the
morning mist, they become aware of the terrible strangness
of this encounter, and their rage gradually subsides down to
an uneasy silence.
At the water's edge, Moonwatcher and his band stop. They
carry their bone clubs and bone knives.
a24
<b>A14
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
Led by One-ear, the Others half-heartly resume the battle-
chant. But they are suddenly confrunted with a vision that cuts
the sound from their throats, and strikes terror into their
hearts.
Moonwatcher, who had been partly concealed by two males who
walked before him, thrusts his arm high into the air. In his
hand he holds a stoud tree branch. Mounted atop the branch is
the bloody head of the lion, its mouth jammed open with a stick,
displaying its frightful fangs.
The Others gape in fearful disbelief at this display of power.
Moonwatchers stands motionless, thrusting the lion's head high.
Then with majestic deliberation, still carrying his mangled
standard above his head, he begins to cross the stream, followed
by his band.
The Others fade back from the stream, seeming to lack even
the ability to flee.
Moonwatcher steps ashore and walks to One-Ear, who stands
a25
<b>A14
</b><b>CONTINUED
</b>
unsurely in front of his band.
Though he is a veteran of numerous combats at the water's edge,
One-Ear has never been attacked by an enemy who had not first
displayed his fighting rage; and he had never before been attacked
with a weapon. One-Ear, merely looks up at the raised club
until the heavey thigh bone of an antelope brings the darkness
down around him.
The Others stare in wonder at Moonwatcher's power.
Moonwatcher surveys the scene. Now he was master of the
world, and he was not sure what to do next. But he would
think of something.
a26
<b> A SECTION TIMING
</b>
<b> A1 00.30
</b><b> A2 00.45
</b><b> A3 01.30
</b><b> A4 00.30
</b><b> A5 01.00
</b><b> A6 01.00
</b><b> A7 01.00
</b><b> A8 03.00
</b><b> A9 00.45
</b><b> A10 02.00
</b><b> A11 04.00
</b><b> A12 02.00
</b><b> A13 02.30
</b><b> A14 02.30
</b>
<b> A SECTION TOTAL: @23 MIN. 00 SECS
</b><b>
</b><b> TITLE PART II
</b>
<b> YEAR 2001
</b>
a26a
<b>
</b><b>B1
</b><b>EARTH FROM 200 MILES UP NARRATOR
</b> By the year 2001, overpopulation has
B1a replaced the problem of starvation
THOUSAND MEGATON but this was ominously offset by the
NUCLEAR BOMB IN ORBIT absolute and utter perfection of the
ABOVE THE EARTH, weapon.
<b>RUSSIAN INSIGNIA AND
</b><b>CCCP MARKINGS
</b>
B1b NARRATOR
AMERICAN THOUSAND Hundreds of giant bombs had been
MEGATON BOMB IN ORBIT placed in perpetual orbit above the
ABOVE THE EARTH. Earth. They were capable of
|
warthog
|
How many times does the word 'warthog' appear in the text?
| 1
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The idiot pile of sleepy dragons. Reflected in the muddy water -
the lighted window.
<b> THE LAGOON (MINIATURE)
</b>
The boat landing sags. An old newspaper floats on the surface
of the water - a copy of the New York Enquirer." As it moves
across the frame, it discloses again the reflection of the
window in the castle, closer than before.
<b> THE GREAT SWIMMING POOL (MINIATURE)
</b>
It is empty. A newspaper blows across the cracked floor of
the tank.
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
<b> THE COTTAGES (MINIATURE)
</b>
In the shadows, literally the shadows, of the castle. As we
move by, we see that their doors and windows are boarded up
and locked, with heavy bars as further protection and sealing.
<b> DISSOLVE OUT:
</b>
<b> DISSOLVE IN:
</b>
<b> A DRAWBRIDGE (MINIATURE)
</b>
Over a wide moat, now stagnant and choked with weeds. We move
across it and through a huge solid gateway into a formal garden,
perhaps thirty yards wide and one hundred yards deep, which
extends right up to the very wall of the castle. The
landscaping surrounding it has been sloppy and causal for a
long time, but this particular garden has been kept up in
perfect shape. As the camera makes its way through it, towards
the lighted window of the castle, there are revealed rare and
exotic blooms of all kinds. The dominating note is one of
almost exaggerated tropical lushness, hanging limp and
despairing. Moss, moss, moss. Ankor Wat, the night the last
King died.
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
<b> THE WINDOW (MINIATURE)
</b>
Camera moves in until the frame of the window fills the frame
of the screen. Suddenly, the light within goes out. This
stops the action of the camera and cuts the music which has
been accompanying the sequence. In the glass panes of the
window, we see reflected the ripe, dreary landscape of Mr.
Kane's estate behind and the dawn sky.
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
<b> INT. KANE'S BEDROOM - FAINT DAWN -
</b>
A very long shot of Kane's enormous bed, silhouetted against
the enormous window.
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
<b> INT. KANE'S BEDROOM - FAINT DAWN - SNOW SCENE.
</b>
An incredible one. Big, impossible flakes of snow, a too
picturesque farmhouse and a snow man. The jingling of sleigh
bells in the musical score now makes an ironic reference to
Indian Temple bells - the music freezes -
<b>
</b>
<b> KANE'S OLD OLD VOICE
</b> Rosebud...
The camera pulls back, showing the whole scene to be contained
in one of those glass balls which are sold in novelty stores
all over the world. A hand - Kane's hand, which has been
holding the ball, relaxes. The ball falls out of his hand and
bounds down two carpeted steps leading to the bed, the camera
following. The ball falls off the last step onto the marble
floor where it breaks, the fragments glittering in the first
rays of the morning sun. This ray cuts an angular pattern
across the floor, suddenly crossed with a thousand bars of
light as the blinds are pulled across the window.
The foot of Kane's bed. The camera very close. Outlined
against the shuttered window, we can see a form - the form of
a nurse, as she pulls the sheet up over his head. The camera
follows this action up the length of the bed and arrives at
the face after the sheet has covered it.
<b> FADE OUT:
</b>
<b> FADE IN:
</b>
<b> INT. OF A MOTION PICTURE PROJECTION ROOM
</b>
On the screen as the camera moves in are the words:
<b> "MAIN TITLE"
</b>
Stirring, brassy music is heard on the soundtrack (which, of
course, sounds more like a soundtrack than ours.)
The screen in the projection room fills our screen as the second
title appears:
<b> "CREDITS"
</b>
NOTE: Here follows a typical news digest short, one of the
regular monthly or bi-monthly features, based on public events
or personalities. These are distinguished from ordinary
newsreels and short subjects in that they have a fully developed
editorial or storyline. Some of the more obvious
characteristics of the "March of Time," for example, as well
as other documentary shorts, will be combined to give an
authentic impression of this now familiar type of short subject.
As is the accepted procedure in these short subjects, a narrator
is used as well as explanatory titles.
<b> FADE OUT:
</b>
<b> NEWS DIGEST NARRATOR
</b> Legendary was the Xanadu where
Kubla Kahn decreed his stately
pleasure dome -
(with quotes in his
voice)
"Where twice five miles of fertile
ground, with walls and towers were
girdled 'round."
<b> (DROPPING THE QUOTES)
</b> Today, almost as legendary is
Florida's XANADU - world's largest
private pleasure ground. Here, on
the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a
private mountain was commissioned,
successfully built for its landlord.
Here in a private valley, as in
the Coleridge poem, "blossoms many
an incense-bearing tree." Verily,
"a miracle of rare device."
<b> U.S.A.
</b>
<b> CHARLES FOSTER KANE
</b>
Opening shot of great desolate expanse of Florida coastline
<b> (1940 - DAY)
</b>
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
Series of shots showing various aspects of Xanadu, all as they
might be photographed by an ordinary newsreel cameraman - nicely
photographed, but not atmospheric to the extreme extent of the
Prologue (1940).
<b> NARRATOR
</b> (dropping the quotes)
Here, for Xanadu's landlord, will
be held 1940's biggest, strangest
funeral; here this week is laid to
rest a potent figure of our Century -
America's Kubla Kahn - Charles
Foster Kane. In journalism's
history, other names are honored
more than Charles Foster Kane's,
more justly revered. Among
publishers, second only to James
Gordon Bennet the First: his
dashing, expatriate son; England's
Northcliffe and Beaverbrook;
Chicago's Patterson and McCormick;
<b> TITLE:
</b>
<b> TO FORTY-FOUR MILLION U.S. NEWS BUYERS, MORE NEWSWORTHY THAN
</b><b> THE NAMES IN HIS OWN HEADLINES, WAS KANE HIMSELF, GREATEST
</b><b> NEWSPAPER TYCOON OF THIS OR ANY OTHER GENERATION.
</b>
Shot of a huge, screen-filling picture of Kane. Pull back to
show that it is a picture on the front page of the "Enquirer,"
surrounded by the reversed rules of mourning, with masthead
and headlines. (1940)
<b> DISSOLVE:
</b>
A great number of headlines, set in different types and
different styles, obviously from different papers, all
announcing Kane's death, all appearing over photographs of
|
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|
How many times does the word 'fully' appear in the text?
| 0
|
the meanwhile?--Only good mulled wine? That would present no
difficulty either. Five minutes for it to get really hot, as Annette had
made some the previous day for her father who had been on a tiring
errand up to La Mure and had come home cold and starved--and it was
specially good--all the better for having been hotted up once or twice
and the cloves and nutmeg having soaked in for nearly four and twenty
hours.
Where would the gentlemen have it--Outside in the sunshine? . . . Well!
it was very cold, and the wind biting . . . but the gentlemen had
mantles, and she, Annette, would see that the wine was piping hot. . . .
Five minutes and everything would be ready. . . .
What? . . . the tall, fair-skinned gentleman wanted to wash? . . . what
a funny idea! . . . hadn't he washed this morning when he got up? . . .
He had? Well, then, why should he want to wash again? . . . She,
Annette, managed to keep herself quite clean all day, and didn't need
to wash more than once a day. . . . But there! strangers had funny ways
with them . . . she had guessed at once that Monsieur was a stranger, he
had such a fair skin and light brown hair. Well! so long as Monsieur
wasn't English--for the English, she detested!
Why did she detest the English? . . . Because they made war against
France. Well! against the Emperor anyhow, and she, Annette, firmly
believed that if the English could get hold of the Emperor they would
kill him--oh, yes! they would put him on an island peopled by cannibals
and let him be eaten, bones, marrow and all.
And Annette's dark eyes grew very round and very big as she gave forth
her opinion upon the barbarous hatred of the English for "l'Empereur!"
She prattled on very gaily and very volubly, while she dragged a couple
of chairs out into the open, and placed them well in the lee of the wind
and brought a couple of pewter mugs which she set on the table.
She was very much interested in the tall gentleman who had availed
himself of her suggestion to use the pump at the back of the house,
since he was so bent on washing himself; and she asked many questions
about him from his friend.
Ten minutes later the steaming wine was on the table in a huge china
bowl and the Englishman was ladling it out with a long-handled spoon and
filling the two mugs with the deliciously scented cordial. Annette had
disappeared into the house in response to a peremptory call from her
father. The chapel bell had ceased to ring long ago, and she would miss
hearing Mass altogether to-day; and M. le curé, who came on alternate
Sundays all the way from La Motte to celebrate divine service, would be
very angry indeed with her.
Well! that couldn't be helped! Annette would have loved to go to Mass,
but the two distinguished gentlemen expected their friend to arrive at
noon, and the _déjeuner_ to be ready quite by then; so she comforted her
conscience with a few prayers said on her knees before the picture of
the Holy Virgin which hung above her bed, after which she went back to
her housewifely duty with a light heart; but not before she had decided
an important point in her mind--namely, which of those two handsome
gentlemen she liked the best: the dark one with the fiery eyes that
expressed such bold admiration of her young charms, or the tall one with
the earnest grey eyes who looked as if he could pick her up like a
feather and carry her running all the way to the summit of Taillefer.
Annette had indeed made up her mind that the giant with the soft brown
hair and winning smile was, on the whole, the more attractive of the
two.
III
The two friends, with mantles wrapped closely round them, sat outside
the "Grand Dauphin" all unconscious of the problem which had been
disturbing Annette's busy little brain.
The steaming wine had put plenty of warmth into their bones, and though
both had been silent while they sipped their first mug-full, it was
obvious that each was busy with his own thoughts.
Then suddenly the young Frenchman put his mug down and leaned with both
elbows upon the rough deal table, because he wanted to talk
confidentially with his friend, and there was never any knowing what
prying ears might be about.
"I suppose," he said, even as a deep frown told of puzzling thoughts
within the mind, "I suppose that when England hears the news, she will
up and at him again, attacking him, snarling at him even before he has
had time to settle down upon his reconquered throne."
"That throne is not reconquered yet, my friend," retorted the Englishman
drily, "nor has the news of this mad adventure reached England so far,
but . . ."
"But when it does," broke in de Marmont sombrely, "your Castlereagh will
rave and your Wellington will gather up his armies to try and crush the
hero whom France loves and acclaims."
"Will France acclaim the hero, there's the question?"
"The army will--the people will----"
Clyffurde shrugged his shoulders.
"The army, yes," he said slowly, "but the people . . . what people?--the
peasantry of Provence and the Dauphiné, perhaps--what about the town
folk?--your mayors and _préfets_?--your tradespeople? your shopkeepers
who have been ruined by the wars which your hero has made to further his
own ambition. . . ."
"Don't say that, Clyffurde," once more broke in de Marmont, and this
time more vehemently than before. "When you speak like that I could
almost forget our friendship."
"Whether I say it or not, my good de Marmont," rejoined Clyffurde with
his good-humoured smile, "you will anyhow--within the next few
months--days, perhaps--bury our friendship beneath the ashes of your
patriotism. No one, believe me," he added more earnestly, "has a greater
admiration for the genius of Napoleon than I have; his love of France is
sublime, his desire for her glory superb. But underlying his love of
country, there is the love of self, the mad desire to rule, to conquer,
to humiliate. It led him to Moscow and thence to Elba, it has brought
him back to France. It will lead him once again to the Capitol, no
doubt, but as surely too it will lead him on to the Tarpeian Rock whence
he will be hurled down this time, not only bruised, but shattered, a
fallen hero--and you will--a broken idol, for posterity to deal with in
after time as it lists."
"And England would like to be the one to give the hero the final push,"
said de Marmont, not without a sneer.
"The people of England, my friend, hate and fear Bonaparte as they have
never hated and feared any one before in the whole course of their
history--and tell me, have we not cause enough to hate him? For fifteen
years has he not tried to ruin us, to bring us to our knees? tried to
throttle our commerce? break our might upon the sea? He wanted to make a
slave of Britain, and Britain proved unconquerable. Believe me, we hate
your hero less than he hates us."
He had spoken with a good deal of earnestness, but now he added more
lightly, as if in answer to de Marmont's glowering look:
"At the same time," he said, "I doubt if there is a single English
gentleman living at the present moment--let alone the army--who would
refuse ungrudging admiration to Napoleon himself and to his genius. But
as a nation England has her interests to safeguard. She has suffered
enough--and through him--in her commerce and her prosperity in the past
twenty years--she must have peace now at any cost."
"Ah! I know," sighed the other, "a nation of shopkeepers. . . ."
"Yes. We are that, I suppose. We are shopkeepers . . . most of us.
. . ."
"I didn't mean to use the word in any derogatory sense," protested
Victor de Marmont with the ready politeness peculiar to his race. "Why,
even you . . ."
"I don't see why you should say 'even you,'" broke in Clyffurde quietly.
"I am a shopkeeper--nothing more. . . . I buy goods and sell them again.
. . . I buy the gloves which our friend M. Dumoulin manufactures at
Grenoble and sell them to any London draper who chooses to buy them
. . . a very mean and ungentlemanly occupation, is it not?"
He spoke French with perfect fluency, and only with the merest suspicion
of a drawl in the intonation of the vowels, which suggested rather than
proclaimed his nationality; and just now there was not the slightest
tone of bitterness apparent in his deep-toned and mellow voice. Once
more his friend would have protested, but he put up a restraining hand.
"Oh!" he said with a smile, "I don't imagine for a moment that you have
the same prejudices as our mutual friend M. le Comte de Cambray, who
must have made a very violent sacrifice to his feelings when he admitted
me as a guest to his own table. I am sure he must often think that the
servants' hall is the proper place for me."
"The Comte de Cambray," retorted de Marmont with a sneer, "is full up to
his eyes with the prejudices and arrogance of his caste. It is men of
his type--and not Marat or Robespierre--who made the revolution, who
goaded the people of France into becoming something worse than
man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober
them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America
teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor
had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for
revolution--more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, if
possible, than the last."
Then as Clyffurde made no comment on this peroration, the younger man
resumed more lightly:
"And--knowing the Comte de Cambray's prejudices as I do, imagine my
surprise--after I had met you in his house as an honoured guest and on
what appeared to be intimate terms of friendship--to learn that you
. . . in fact . . ."
"That I was nothing more than a shopkeeper," broke in Clyffurde with a
short laugh, "nothing better than our mutual friend M. Dumoulin,
glovemaker, of Grenoble--a highly worthy man whom M. le Comte de Cambray
esteems somewhat lower than his butler. It certainly must have surprised
you very much."
"Well, you know, old de Cambray has a horror of anything that pertains
to trade, and an avowed contempt for everything that he calls
'bourgeois.'"
"There's no doubt about that," assented Clyffurde fervently.
"Perhaps he does not know of your connection with . . ."
"Gloves?"
"With business people in Grenoble generally."
"Oh, yes, he does!" replied the Englishman quietly.
"Well, then?" queried de Marmont.
Then as his friend sat there silent with that quiet, good-humoured smile
lingering round his lips, he added apologetically:
"Perhaps I am indiscreet . . . but I never could understand it . . . and
you English are so reserved . . ."
"That I never told you how M. le Comte de Cambray, Commander of the
Order of the Holy Ghost, Grand Cross of the Order du Lys, Hereditary
Grand Chamberlain of France, etc., etc., came to sit at the same table
as a vendor and buyer of gloves," said Clyffurde gaily. "There's no
secret about it. I owe the Comte's exalted condescension to certain
letters of recommendation which he could not very well disregard."
"Oh! as to that . . ." quoth de Marmont with a shrug of the shoulders,
"people like the de Cambrays have their own codes of courtesy and of
friendship."
"In this case, my good de Marmont, it was the code of ordinary gratitude
that imposed its dictum even upon the autocratic and aristocratic Comte
de Cambray."
"Gratitude?" sneered de Marmont, "in a de Cambray?"
"M. le Comte de Cambray," said Clyffurde with slow emphasis, "his
mother, his sister, his brother-in-law and two of their faithful
servants, were rescued from the very foot of the guillotine by a band of
heroes--known in those days as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"I knew that!" said de Marmont quietly.
"Then perhaps you also knew that their leader was Sir Percy Blakeney--a
prince among gallant English gentlemen and my dead father's friend. When
my business affairs sent me to Grenoble, Sir Percy warmly recommended me
to the man whose life he had saved. What could M. le Comte de Cambray do
but receive me as a friend? You see, my credentials were exceptional and
unimpeachable."
"Of course," assented de Marmont, "now I understand. But you will admit
that I have had grounds for surprise. You--who were the friend of
Dumoulin, a tradesman, and avowed Bonapartist--two unpardonable crimes
in the eyes of M. le Comte de Cambray," he added with a return to his
former bitterness, "you to be seated at his table and to shake him by
the hand. Why, man! if he knew that I have remained faithful to the
Emperor . . ."
He paused abruptly, and his somewhat full, sensitive lips were pressed
tightly together as if to suppress an insistent outburst of passion.
But Clyffurde frowned, and when he turned away from de Marmont it was in
order to hide a harsh look of contempt.
"Surely," he said, "you have never led the Comte to suppose that you are
a royalist!"
"I have never led him to suppose anything. But he has taken my political
convictions for granted," rejoined de Marmont.
Then suddenly a look of bitter resentment darkened his face, making it
appear hard and lined and considerably older.
"My uncle, Marshal de Marmont, Duc de Raguse, was an abominable
traitor," he went on with ill-repressed vehemence. "He betrayed his
Emperor, his benefactor and his friend. It was the vilest treachery that
has ever disgraced an honourable name. Paris could have held out easily
for another four and twenty hours, and by that time the Emperor would
have been back. But de Marmont gave her over wilfully, scurvily to the
allies. But for his abominable act of cowardice the Emperor never would
have had to endure the shame of his temporary exile at Elba, and Louis
de Bourbon would never have had the chance of wallowing for twelve
months upon the throne of France. But that which is a source of
irreparable shame to me is a virtue in the eyes of all these royalists.
De Marmont's treachery against the Emperor has placed all his kindred in
the forefront of those who now lick the boots of that infamous Bourbon
dynasty, and it did not suit the plans of the Bonapartist party that
we--in the provinces--should proclaim our faith too openly until such
time as the Emperor returned."
"And if the Comte de Cambray had known that you are just an ardent
Bonapartist? . . ." suggested Clyffurde calmly.
"He would long before now have had me kicked out by his lacqueys," broke
in de Marmont with ever-increasing bitterness as he brought his clenched
fist crashing down upon the table, while his dark eyes glowed with a
fierce and passionate resentment. "For men like de Cambray there is only
one caste--the _noblesse_, one religion--the Catholic, one
creed--adherence to the Bourbons. All else is scum, trash, beneath
contempt, hardly human! Oh! if you knew how I loathe these people!" he
continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed
excitement. "They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I
tell you! the terrible reprisals of the revolution which culminated in
that appalling Reign of Terror have taught them absolutely nothing! They
have not learnt the great lesson of the revolution, that the people will
no longer endure their arrogance and their pretensions, that the old
regime is dead--dead! the regime of oppression and pride and
intolerance! They have learnt nothing!" he reiterated with ever-growing
excitement, "nothing! 'humanity begins with the _noblesse_' is still
their watchword to-day as it was before the irate people sent hundreds
of them to perish miserably on the guillotine--the rest of mankind, to
them, is only cattle made to toil for the well-being of their class. Oh!
I loathe them, I tell you! I loathe them from the bottom of my soul!"
"And yet you and your kind are rapidly becoming at one with them," said
Clyffurde, his quiet voice in strange contrast to the other man's
violent agitation.
"No, we are not," protested de Marmont emphatically. "The men whom
Napoleon created marshals and peers of France have been openly snubbed
at the Court of Louis XVIII. Ney, who is prince of Moskowa and next to
Napoleon himself the greatest soldier of France, has seen his wife
treated little better than a chambermaid by the Duchesse d'Angoulême and
the ladies of the old _noblesse_. My uncle is marshal of France, and Duc
de Raguse and I am the heir to his millions, but the Comte de Cambray
will always consider it a mesalliance for his daughter to marry me."
The note of bitter resentment, of wounded
|
dead
|
How many times does the word 'dead' appear in the text?
| 2
|
to talk to your mother!
SARAH (mumbles to herself): She's not my mother.
SARAH takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She can hear footsteps
and SOMEONE comes to the other side of the door.
SARAH ignores her STEPMOTHER and kicks off her running shoes.
With a practiced gesture SARAH removes her jeans while leaving her
gown in place.
STEPMOTHER (VO): _Sarah_, when I tell you to be home at five, I
expect you to be home at five.
SARAH quickly shifts to her STEPMOTHER's attitude -- hands on hips,
and silently mimes her words.
SARAH: Yes, Madame!
<b>7A INT: UPSTAIRS HALLWAY
</b>
STEPMOTHER: And don't "Yes Madame" me!
FATHER: Is she all right?
STEPMOTHER (frustrated): Of course she's all right! I left the
Bernsteins' number on the kitchen table ... Freddie might be coming
down with a cold so call us if he seems even the least bit
uncomfortable ...
SARAH (VO) (sighs): Yes, Mother.
STEPMOTHER: Oh! I give up!
She hurries down the stairs.
FATHER: We'll see you later, baby. And remember ...
<b>7B INT: SARAH'S ROOM - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH speaks along with him, mimicking.
SARAH & FATHER (VO): Don't open the door to strangers.
We hear him leave. SARAH waits a beat and then turns and opens her
bedroom door.
SARAH: And don't call me baby! (she slams the door shut; mimicking
her parents) Precious little Freddie might be coming down with a cold
<b>...
</b>
She sighs and looks around. This is really her world, her retreat,
and she knows and controls every inch of it. The shelves are filled
with an orderly array of childhood dolls and toys. The books are
lined up neatly in the bookcase and if we could see them up close we
would see that they were placed in alphabetical order -- and
according to the year they were acquired. She walks over to her
dresser. She checks herself out in the mirror above the chest of
drawers and adjusts the golden circlet which has been knocked askew
by her run. She then stops for a moment and looks at the photographs
on the dresser. One of her FATHER, her MOTHER and herself as a LITTLE
GIRL. Another picture of her MOTHER in a newspaper clipping is taped
to the mirror. The headline says, "Linda Williams a Smash in New
Play." A cover of a Playbill is also tacked on to the mirror. It says
_Best of Both Worlds_ starring Linda Williams. SARAH then reverently
opens a music box -- the kind with a twirling dancer inside -- and to
the strains of an unbearably tinny version of "Greensleeves" she
begins to rehearse.
SARAH: Do not be swayed by my pleasure at the sight of you, my Lord
<b>...
</b>
Suddenly, something stops her cold.
SARAH (yelling angrily): Someone has been in my room!
Through the mirror WE SEE what she sees: an empty space on one of the
shelves. She swirls around and rushes out the door.
<b>8 INT: THE HALLWAY - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH bursts out of her room.
SARAH: Where's Lancelot?
She stomps down the hallway.
SARAH: Where's my bear?!!
<b>9 INT: NURSERY - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH enters FREDDIE's room. She searches the nursery.
SARAH: Nobody listens to a thing I say.
She opens a toy box and rifles through it.
SARAH: How many times have I told them to stay out of my room ...
She gets to the crib and looks down. FREDDIE is wide awake, gurgling
at Lancelot, SARAH's tattered old teddy bear.
SARAH: And you, you can just give me back my bear!
She yanks it out of the crib and leaves. FREDDIE looks hurt and his
face starts to cloud up.
<b>10 INT: SARAH 'S ROOM - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH is curled up on her bed, cuddling her bear. MERLIN sits beside
her. She looks at the DOG.
SARAH: You're the only one who understands me, Merlin.
He licks her face. She gets up and holds the bear out in front of her.
SARAH: Do not be swayed by my pleasure at the sight of you, my lord
<b>...
</b>
She is interrupted by FREDDIE's cries.
SARAH: Go to sleep, Freddie!
The cries get louder. SARAH sighs and repeats her favorite litany.
SARAH: Why does everything have to happen to me?
<b>11 INT: NURSERY - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH enters and approaches the howling INFANT.
SARAH: I don't need this.
She pulls the blanket up over him and attempts to tuck him in.
SARAH: There, isn't that nice ...
But FREDDIE doesn't think so. He pushes the blanket off and howls
even louder. SARAH sees one of his toys on the floor and picks it up
and gives it to him. She speaks through gritted teeth.
SARAH: Want your nice toy?
But FREDDIE doesn't. He flings the toy across the room. SARAH bends
over the crib and speaks softly.
SARAH: You know, Freddie, I heard that the only thing to do with a
baby who won't stop crying is to get some goblins to come over and
teach him a lesson ...
FREDDIE lowers his screams to a whimper, but a loud whimper.
SARAH: How would you like that, kid? A nasty evil goblin ...
FREDDIE is quiet for a moment, almost as if he is considering. Then
he really howls. SARAH sighs and picks him up. She begins to pace
back and forth, and starts to hum. FREDDIE goes back to a mere
whimper.
SARAH: Oh, you like that, do you?
She begins to hum even louder and more melodically as she places the
BABY back into the crib. She then begins one of the moat macabre
lullabies you could ever imagine. She sings of how scary the dark is,
how "the shadows on the wall like to eat you when you're small" and
how "a baby doesn't stand a chance when the Goblins start their
dance." She throws herself into her performance; adding to it a wild
dance that has her whirling around the room, leaping into the air,
making strange shadows on the wall. Finally, the dance ends when too
many crazed pirouettes result in her stumbling against FREDDIE's
dresser. She staggers a bit and then the lights blink as a crack of
thunder is heard, followed by a flash of lightning.
<b>ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
Little FREDDIE is wailing. He hasn't understood a thing that SARAH
has sung but he can sense that something is wrong.
SARAH: Ah, c'mon, Freddie. It was just a song.
They are interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. SARAH reacts with
a gasp of surprise. FREDDIE, for some inexplicable reason, is
suddenly quiet.
<b>12 INT: FOYER - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH approaches the front door with some trepidation. She starts to
open it, then realizes what she is doing. She fastens the chain and
only then opens the door.
<b>13 EXT: HOUSE - NIGHT
</b><b>SARAH'S POV
</b>
Through the door opening SARAH can see a very elegantly dressed,
quite good-looking MAN of an indeterminate age. He has a worldly air,
or is it other-worldly? Before he can speak a flash of lightning
illuminates his face. He is a mesmerizing sight and SARAH can't help
but gawk.
MAN: Excuse me, is this the home of Sarah Williams ... Sarah
Williams, the actress?
SARAH's jaw drops.
SARAH: That's me.
MAN: Allow me to introduce myself ... (he holds out his hand) I'm
Robin Zaker.
SARAH squeals with delight.
SARAH: You wrote the play!
He smiles.
SARAH: Just a second.
<b>14 INT: FOYER - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH's hand hesitates over the chain for just a moment, and then she
unfastens it and opens the door. ZAKAR enters and extends his hand.
ZAKAR: It is an honour, Miss Williams. I understand you make a
delightful Queen Meander.
SARAH: Well, we've just started rehearsal, but how did you know?
ZAKAR: I was passing through this part of the country and heard that
it was going to be done here. This is the first amateur production of
the play, which of course is delightful for me.
SARAH: You know we were supposed to open tonight, but we got delayed.
The firemen had to use the hall.
ZAKAR: Yes, I know, that's why I wanted to stop by to see you.
They are interrupted by a particularly loud crash from upstairs. And
then FREDDIE begins to howl.
SARAH: That's my brother ...
There is another crash and SARAH starts up the stairs.
SARAH: I'll be right back!
ZAKAR watches her run up the stairs. He glances around and then walks
right to the liquor cabinet and takes out a bottle.
<b>15 INT: NURSERY - NIGHT
</b>
FREDDIE in standing in his crib crying his eyes out. SARAH rushes in
and sees that the storm has blown open the basement window and it is
crashing against the wall. She rushes to close it. FREDDIE's screams
are piteous.
SARAH: Oh, Freddie ...
There is more thunder, and then lightning flashes across the darkened
room.
ZAKAR (VO): Perhaps I can soothe him ...
SARAH gasps and whirls around. ZAKAR is framed in the doorway. He has
a drink in his hand. SARAH holds the BABY close.
SARAH: You shouldn't be up here!
ZAKAR (smoothly): I just wanted to help ...
SARAH rushes by him, still clutching the BABY.
<b>16 INT: HALLWAY - NIGHT
</b>
SARAH comes out of the nursery and hurries down the stairs. ZAKAR
follows. FREDDIE is still crying.
SARAH: Maybe you'd better leave ...
She gets to the bottom of the stairs. FREDDIE whimpers. ZAKAR is
making her very nervous.
SARAH: ... I, uh, don't think I care to talk to you about the play.
He is right behind her, almost too close.
ZAKAR: Neither do I.
SARAH is shocked and disturbed by this.
SARAH: What!
ZAKAR reaches over and smoothes FREDDIE's hair.
ZAKAR: I'm more concerned about the baby, of course.
SARAH pulls FREDDIE out of his reach.
SARAH: Freddie's just fine.
But he isn't. He's still crying. ZAKAR reaches into his pocket and
pulls out a coin. Be runs it over his fingers right in front of
FREDDIE's face. The BABY stops crying.
ZAKAR: There, isn't that better?
SARAH (nervously): Uh, sure ... but you really have to leave ...
ZAKAR ignores her and heads into the living room.
ZAKAR: I'm not just a playwright, as you can see ... bring him in
here and I'll do some other tricks for him ...
SARAH: No! You've got to ...
But he is already in the living room. She follows, still holding the
<b>BABY.
</b>
<b>17 INT: LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
</b>
ZAKAR is sitting on the sofa, looking very comfortable. SARAH stands
in the doorway, not sure what to do. Reluctantly, she goes and sits
down across from him.
ZAKAR: Now watch this, Freddie ...
He reaches into his breast pocket and tugs on the handkerchief there.
It comes out followed by many others, all different colours. SARAH
rolls her eyes. This is not that exciting a trick. FREDDIE isn't
impressed, either. In fact he starts to cry again.
ZAKAR: So you're going to be like that, are you, Freddie? Well, you
know what that means?
He leans across the table and SARAH pulls the BABY closer.
ZAKAR: It's time to call the goblins!
SARAH: What?!!
SARAH is surprised to hear this, to say the least. It echoes her
silly threat to FREDDIE earlier.
ZAKAR: Yes. That's what we do with bad babies ... we send for the
goblins!!
And with that he reaches into yet another pocket and pulls out a
poorly made, very silly-looking goblin hand puppet. SARAH laughs
with relief. ZAKAR, his hand in the puppet, talks in a high-pitched,
unconvincing goblin voice.
ZAKAR: You like goblins, don't'cha, Freddie? (singsong) but I bet
your sister doesn't ...
SARAH rolls her eyes at this, and then gasps. Because for one very
strange moment, the puppet keeps bouncing, but both of ZAKAR's hands
are visible! And then the puppet seems to move away from the table,
and disappear! FREDDIE claps his hands with delight. SARAH jumps out
of her chair.
SARAH: Where is it?!!!
ZAKAR points to a large cabinet against the wall.
ZAKAR: It's in there.
SARAH: Impossible!
ZAKAR: See for yourself.
SARAH hesitates for a moment, and then places FREDDIE carefully on
the rug. She then marches over to the cabinet and throws open the
door.
<b>ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
the puppet, grinning wildly from inside the cabinet.
<b>ANOTHER ANGLE
</b>
SARAH gasps and involuntarily slams the door. She whirls around to
face ZAKAR.
SARAH: How did you do that?!!
ZAKAR leans back into the sofa.
ZAKAR: Magic.
SARAH: Oh sure ...
She nods, skeptically. She can't see -- but WE CAN DEFINITELY SEE --
the cabinet door slowly open behind her, and out of it comes a tiny,
fierce-looking GOBLIN! This is not a puppet, but a living creature
that moves quickly out of sight with an exaggerated tiptoe. SARAH is
busy with another problem. She doesn't see FREDDIE!
SARAH: Where's Freddie?!!
ZAKAR shrugs. In a panic, SARAH begins to look around this room. She
calls for FREDDIE and, as she passes in front of the living room
doorway, WE CAN SEE something scurry across the hallway. SARAH stops
and listens.
SARAH: Freddie?
But it wasn't a BABY she heard. Behind her there is more scurrying as
CREATURES begin to appear from various parts of the room. We hear
faint snickering. She turns to ZAKAR, terrified.
SARAH: Where is he?!!
ZAKAR points to the chair SARAH was sitting in. She is behind the
chair and can't see anything. But when she comes around in front of
it she sees FREDDIE comfortably ensconced in the cushions. And he's
playing with the goblin puppet! SARAH reaches over and grabs the
puppet out of his hands. She flings it across the room and scoops up
the BABY.
SARAH: Who are you?!!!
ZAKAR throws back his head and laughs, then suddenly leaps off the
sofa and lands very close to her.
ZAKAR: I've been known by many names ... but the one I prefer is
_Jareth, King of the Goblins_!!!
SARAH holds FREDDIE close and backs away.
SARAH: I don't believe this!
Amidst thunder and lightning JARETH flings his arms up into the air,
and he is suddenly dressed in strange, medieval garb, a cloak
swirling around him. And what's worse, much, much worse, is that
suddenly GOBLINS are everywhere! Popping out of drawers, from under
chairs, swinging off the chandeliers. SARAH turns and runs out of the
room.
<b>18 INT: FOYER - NIGHT
</b>
It's worse in here! The GOBLINS are pouring down the stairs, SOME
slide down the bannister! SARAH tries running into another room, but
is soon back, followed by a DOZEN MORE! She barely makes it to the
front door and struggles to open it with the BABY in her arms. The
GOBLINS pull her back and laugh wildly. They fling her right into
JARETH's arms. He scoops FREDDIE up and whirls away from her. SARAH
tries to grab the BABY back but the GOBLINS get between them.
SARAH (hysterical): Give him back, you monster! Give him back!
JARETH only laughs and starts to swirl gracefully. FREDDIE laughs
with delight and SARAH struggles to reach him. With a superhuman
effort she pushes through the MASS OF CREATURES and grabs onto
JARETH's fluttering cloak. It's like being caught up in a whirlwind
of incredible force.
SARAH (screaming): I ... won't ... let ... you ... take ... him!
But it's too late. SARAH's feet leave the ground and she is pulled
with them and the whole MASS OF
|
five
|
How many times does the word 'five' appear in the text?
| 1
|
watch.
It is the key-stone of the world's wide arch,
The one sustaining and sustained by all,
Which, if it fail, brings all in ruin down.
(Answers of SENATORS giving assent to DEMETRIUS.)
DEMETRIUS.
Oh, look on me, renowned Sigismund!
Great king, on thine own bosom turn thine eyes.
And in my destiny behold thine own.
Thou, too, hast known the rude assaults of fate;
Within a prison camest thou to the world;
Thy earliest glances fell on dungeon walls.
Thou, too, hadst need of friends to set thee free,
And raise thee from a prison to a throne.
These didst thou find. That noble kindness thou
Didst reap from them, oh, testify to me.
And you, ye grave and honored councillors,
Most reverend bishops, pillars of the church,
Ye palatines and castellans of fame,
The moment has arrived, by one high deed,
To reconcile two nations long estranged.
Yours be the glorious boast, that Poland's power
Hath given the Muscovites their Czar, and in
The neighbor who oppressed you as a foe
Secure an ever-grateful friend. And you,
The deputies of the august republic,
Saddle your steeds of fire! Leap to your seats!
To you expand high fortune's golden gates;
I will divide the foeman's spoil with you.
Moscow is rich in plunder; measureless
In gold and gems, the treasures of the Czar;
I can give royal guerdons to my friends,
And I will give them, too. When I, as Czar,
Set foot within the Kremlin, then, I swear,
The poorest of you all, that follows me,
Shall robe himself in velvet and in sables;
With costly pearls his housings shall he deck,
And silver be the metal of least worth,
That he shall shoe his horses' hoofs withal.
[Great commotion among the DEPUTIES. KORELA, Hetman
of the Cossacks, declares himself ready to put himself
at the head of an army.
ODOWALSKY.
How! shall we leave the Cossack to despoil us
At once of glory and of booty both?
We've made a truce with Tartar and with Turk,
And from the Swedish power have naught to fear.
Our martial spirit has been wasting long
In slothful peace; our swords are red with rust.
Up! and invade the kingdom of the Czar,
And win a grateful and true-hearted friend,
Whilst we augment our country's might and glory.
MANY DEPUTIES.
War! War with Moscow!
OTHERS.
Be it so resolved!
On to the votes at once!
SAPIEHA (rises).
Grand marshal, please
To order silence! I desire to speak.
A CROWD OF VOICES.
War! War with Moscow!
SAPIEHA.
Nay, I will be heard.
Ho, marshal, do your duty!
[Great tumult within and outside the hall.
GRAND MARSHAL.
'Tis, you see,
Quite fruitless.
SAPIEHA.
What? The marshal's self suborned?
Is this our Diet, then, no longer free?
Throw down your staff, and bid this brawling cease;
I charge you, on your office, to obey!
[The GRAND MARSHAL casts his baton into the centre
of the hall; the tumult abates.
What whirling thoughts, what mad resolves are these?
Stand we not now at peace with Moscow's Czar?
Myself, as your imperial envoy, made
A treaty to endure for twenty years;
I raised this right hand, that you see, aloft
In solemn pledge, within the Kremlin's walls;
And fairly hath the Czar maintained his word.
What is sworn faith? what compacts, treaties, when
A solemn Diet tramples on them all?
DEMETRIUS.
Prince Leo Sapieha! You concluded
A bond of peace, you say, with Moscow's Czar?
That did you not; for I, I am that Czar.
In me is Moscow's majesty; I am
The son of Ivan, and his rightful heir.
Would the Poles treat with Russia for a peace,
Then must they treat with me! Your compact's null,
As being made with one whose's title's null.
ODOWALSKY.
What reck we of your treaty? So we willed
When it was made--our wills are changed to-day.
SAPIEHA.
Is it, then, come to this? If none beside
Will stand for justice, then, at least, will I.
I'll rend the woof of cunning into shreds,
And lay its falsehoods open to the day.
Most reverend primate! art thou, canst thou be
So simple-souled, or canst thou so dissemble?
Are ye so credulous, my lords? My liege,
Art thou so weak? Ye know not--will not know,
Ye are the puppets of the wily Waywode
Of Sendomir, who reared this spurious Czar,
Whose measureless ambition, while we speak,
Clutches in thought the spoils of Moscow's wealth.
Is't left for me to tell you that even now
The league is made and sworn betwixt the twain,--
The pledge the Waywode's youngest daughter's hand?
And shall our great republic blindly rush
Into the perils of an unjust war,
To aggrandize the Waywode, and to crown
His daughter as the empress of the Czar?
There's not a man he has not bribed and bought.
He means to rule the Diet, well I know;
I see his faction rampant in this hall,
And, as 'twere not enough that he controlled
The Seym Walmy by a majority,
He's girt the Diet with three thousand horse,
And all Cracow is swarming like a hive
With his sworn feudal vassals. Even now
They throng the halls and chambers where we sit,
To hold our liberty of speech in awe.
Yet stirs no fear in my undaunted heart;
And while the blood keeps current in my veins,
I will maintain the freedom of my voice!
Let those who think like men come stand by me
Whilst I have life shall no resolve be passed
That is at war with justice and with reason.
'Twas I that ratified the peace with Moscow,
And I will hazard life to see it kept.
ODOWALSKY.
Give him no further hearing! Take the votes!
[The BISHOP OF CRACOW and WILNA rise, and descend
each to his own side, to collect the votes.
MANY.
War, war with Moscow!
ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN (to SAPIEHA).
Noble sir, give way!
You see the mass are hostile to your views;
Then do not force a profitless division!
IMPERIAL HIGH CHANCELLOR (descends from the throne to SAPIEHA).
The king entreats you will not press the point,
Sir Waywode, to division in the Diet.
DOORKEEPER (aside to ODOWALSKY).
Keep a bold front, and fearless--summon those
That wait without. All Cracow stands by you.
IMPERIAL GRAND MARSHAL (to SAPIEHA).
Such excellent decrees have passed before;
Oh, cease, and for their sake, so fraught with good,
Unite your voice with the majority!
BISHOP OF CRACOW (has collected the votes on his side).
On this right bench are all unanimous.
SAPIEHA.
And let them to a man! Yet I say no!
I urge my veto--I break up the Diet.
Stay further progress! Null and void fire all
The resolutions passed----
[General commotion; the KING descends from the throne,
the barriers are broken down, and there arises a tumultuous
uproar. DEPUTIES draw their swords, and threaten SAPIEHA
with them. The BISHOPS interpose, and protect him with
their stoles.
Majority?
What is it? The majority is madness;
Reason has still ranked only with the few.
What cares he for the general weal that's poor?
Has the lean beggar choice, or liberty?
To the great lords of earth, that hold the purse,
He must for bread and raiment sell his voice.
'Twere meet that voices should be weighed, not counted.
Sooner or later must the state be wrecked,
Where numbers sway and ignorance decides.
ODOWALSKY.
Hark to the traitor!----
DEPUTIES.
Hew him into shreds!
Down with him!
ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN (snatches the crucifix out of his chaplain's hand
and interposes).
Peace, peace
Shall native blood be in the Diet shed?
Prince Sapieha! be advised!
[To the BISHOPS.
Bring him away,
And interpose your bosoms as his shield!
Through this side door remove him quietly,
Or the wild mob will tear him limb from limb!
[SAPIEHA, still casting looks of defiance, is forced
away by the BISHOPS, whilst the ARCHBISHOPS OF GNESEN
and LEMBERG keep the DEPUTIES at bay. Amidst violent
tumult and clashing of arms, the hall is emptied of all
but DEMETRIUS, MEISCHEK, ODOWALSKY, and the Hetman of
the Cossacks.
ODOWALSKY.
That point miscarried,--
Yet shall you not lack aid because of this:
If the republic holds the peace with Moscow,
At our own charges we shall push your claims.
KORELA.
Who ever could have dreamed, that he alone
Would hold his ground against the assembled Diet?
MEISCHEK.
The king! the king!
[Enter KING SIGISMUND, attended by the LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR,
the GRAND MARSHAL, and several BISHOPS.
KING.
Let me embrace you, prince!
At length the high republic does you justice;
My heart has done so long, and many a day.
Your fate doth move me deeply, as, indeed,
What monarch's heart but must be moved by it?
DEMETRIUS.
The past, with all its sorrows, is forgot;
Here on your breast I feel new life begin.
KING.
I love not many words; yet what a king
May offer, who has vassals richer far
Than his poor self, that do I offer you.
You have been witness of an untoward scene,
But deem not ill of Poland's realm because
A tempest jars the vessel of the state.
MEISCHEK.
When winds are wild the steersman backs his helm,
And makes for port with all the speed he may.
KING.
The Diet is dissolved. Although I wished,
I could not break the treaty with the Czar.
But you have powerful friends; and if the Pole,
At his own risk, take arms on your behalf,
Or if the Cossack choose to venture war,
They are free men, I cannot say them nay.
MEISCHEK.
The whole Rocoss is under arms already.
Please it but you, my liege, the angry stream
That raved against your sovereignty may turn
Its wrath on Moscow, leaving you unscathed.
KING.
The best of weapons Russia's self will give thee;
Thy surest buckler is the people's heart.
By Russia only Russia will be vanquished.
Even as the Diet heard thee speak to-day,
Speak thou at Moscow to thy subjects, prince.
So chain their hearts, and thou wilt be their king.
In Sweden I by right of birth ascended
The throne of my inheritance in peace;
Yet did I lose the kingdom of my sires
Because my people's hearts were not with me.
Enter MARINA.
MEISCHEK.
My gracious liege, here, kneeling at your feet,
Behold Marina, youngest of my daughters;
The prince of Moscow offers her his heart.
Thou art the stay and pillar of our house,
And only from thy royal hand 'tis meet
That she receive her spouse and sovereign.
[MARINA kneels to the KING.
KING.
Well, if you wish it, cousin, gladly I
Will do the father's office to the Czar.
[To DEMETRIUS, giving him MARINA'S hand.
Thus do I bring you, in this lovely pledge,
High fortune's blooming goddess; and may these
Old eyes be spared to see this gracious pair
Sit in imperial state on Moscow's throne.
MARINA.
My liege, I humbly thank your grace, and shall
Esteem me still your slave where'er I be.
KING.
Rise up, Czaritza! This is not a place
For you, the plighted bridesmaid of the Czar;
For you, the daughter of my foremost Waywode.
You are the youngest of your sisters; yet
Your spirit wings a high and glorious course,
And nobly grasps the top of sovereignty.
DEMETRIUS.
Be thou, great monarch, witness of my oath,
As, prince to prince, I pledge it here to you!
This noble lady's hand I do accept
As fortune's dearest pledge, and swear that, soon
As on my father's throne I take my seat,
I'll lead her home in triumph as my bride,
With all the state that fits a mighty queen.
And, for a dowry, to my bride I give
The principalities Pleskow and Great Neugart,
With all towns, hamlets, and in-dwellers there,
With all the rights and powers of sovereignty,
In absolute possession evermore;
And this, my gift, will I as Czar confirm
In my free city, Moscow. Furthermore,
As compensation to her noble sire
For present charges, I engage to pay
A million ducats, Polish currency.
So help me God, and all his saints, as I
Have truly sworn this oath, and shall fulfil it.
KING.
You will do so; you never will forget
For what you are the noble Waywode's debtor;
Who, for your wishes, perils his sure wealth,
And, for your hopes, a child his heart adores,
A friend so rare is to be rarely prized!
Then when your hopes are crowned forget not ever
The steps by which you mounted to the throne,
Nor with your garments let your heart be changed!
Think, that in Poland first you knew yourself,
That this land gave you birth a second time.
DEMETRIUS.
I have been nurtured in adversity;
And learned to reverence the beauteous bond
Which links mankind with sympathies of love.
KING.
But now you enter on a realm where all--
Use, custom, morals--are untried and strange,
In Poland here reigns freedom absolute;
The king himself, although in pomp supreme,
Must ofttime be the serf of his noblesse;
But there the father's sacred power prevails,
And in the subject finds a passive slave.
DEMETRIUS.
That glorious freedom which surrounds me here
I will transplant into my native land,
And turn these bond-serfs into glad-souled men;
Not o'er the souls of slaves will I bear rule.
KING.
|
follows
|
How many times does the word 'follows' appear in the text?
| 0
|
a stool before the easel. She broadly
smiles, revealing the worst dental work of her epoch.
Da Vinci shakes his head and moves out onto a
<b> EXT. CASTLE TERRACE
</b>
A FLYING APPRENTICE sails past Leonardo in a bat winged
glider, enthusiastically shouting. Da Vinci grins back
until he touches his pocket. He pulls out the crystal
and, after a beat, angrily twists it apart into two
separate, geometric pieces revealing a small intricate
mirror. He quickly folds the surprisingly shapable
geometric pieces.
Calming down, Da Vinci looks from the three components of
the crystal to each of the three unfinished works on the
table in his workshop. He ponders then looks back out to
the Vinci vista.
The bat winged glider DISSOLVES into:
<b> A HAWK
</b>
who is revealed to be flying over Sing Sing prison.
<b> INT. A SING SING PRISON CELL
</b>
The shadow of the hawk passes through a cell window, over
the face of EDDIE HUDSON HAWKINS causing him to break out
of an eye-closed trance.
Before the viewer can get a good look at him, Hudson
Hawk turns to an oddball version of the "Mona Lisa" that
has his face and tears it off the cell back-wall.
<b> INT. PRISON BLOCK WALKWAY
</b>
TWO PRISON GUARDS, One WISE and BLACK, the other YOUNG
and GREEN march down a cell block. The Former is smoking
a pipe which the Young Guard lights with a lighter.
<b> WISE GUARD
</b> We're losing our biggest celebrity
today.
<b> YOUNG GUARD
</b> You're kidding, Petey the Paint
Thinner Killer is getting paroled?
<b> WISE GUARD
</b> Not that slime, you Fizzhead.
Hudson Hawk. The last of the
great cat burglars.
<b> INT. PRISON CELL WALL
</b>
A hand tears down a picture of a happy Hudson Hawk and
a LITTLE MONKEY, identically dressed in black cat
burglar gear.
<b> THE BLOCK
</b>
The Wise Guard and the Young Guard rumble forward.
<b> WISE GUARD
</b> As a thief, Hawk was a poem.
Iambic fucking pentameter. You
know, Crime used to have a little
class. A hundred reporters were
here when he came in, now they're
probably out covering some tired
crack gang war...
The Guards approach Hawk's cell. Hawk, with his back
turned, hefts on a nifty blazer.
<b> HAWK
</b> Remind me to fire my publicist.
The Wise Guard chuckles as the Young Guard fumbles with
his key-ring.
<b> YOUNG GUARD
</b> Darn, these are for L-block...
Hawk's hand reaches through the bars and grabs a pipe
cleaner from the Wise Guard's pocket. Then the lighter
from the Young Guard's pocket--BURNS OFF the fabric fuzz
with the lighter beside it--bends the now blackened
wire--and with a quick turn of the wrist uses it to
UNLOCK the door.
<b> YOUNG GUARD
</b> - go back down to security and-
He stops, dumbfounded, as the door clunks open. The
Guards double-take as Hawk, finally in full view, struts
past them, down the hall. The Guards hustle to catch
up. The wise guard puts his finger in the air and
sarcastically pretends to be stung by the heat emanating
from Hawk.
<b> WISE GUARD
</b> Guess this means, Hawk, you'll
be able to let yourself back in...
<b> HAWK
</b> Never happen. Bet. Ten bucks.
Hawk and the Wise Guard hit fists, half-smiling. Hawk
unfolds the painting.
<b> HAWK
</b> Oh, give this back to Petey in A
block. Tell him it was a sweet
gift, but I think he got some
wrong ideas about our friendship.
<b> YOUNG GUARD
</b> The Paint Thinner Killer did
this? I think you picked a good
day to get out...
The trio comes to the final checkpoint. Hawk takes a
deep breath.
<b> WISE GUARD
</b> Hope I lose the bet. Have that
cappuccino on me.
<b> HAWK
</b> (flipping him the
pipe cleaner)
You got it. A double.
<b> EXT. OUTSIDE THE PRISON--DAY
</b>
Hawk strides to the Massive Sliding Concrete Door/Wall
between him and freedom. As music crescendos and
Hawk glows his first smile, the door opens to reveal two
Mafioso brothers, CESAR and ANTONY MARIO, the latter
sitting upon the hood of a tinted window Lincoln
Continental. Cesar is of cool, hair-slicked-back
attitude, his scumbag brother is not.
<b> ANTONY
</b> Welcome back, buddy ol' pal.
We've got a proposition...
<b> HAWK
</b> Answer's no, not even if you
bathe. Cesar Mario, Antony Mario,
how's the "Family?" Kill any
monkeys lately?
<b> CESAR
</b> How many times do I have to say
it? I didn't put the hit on
Little Eddie... Never had anything
against that kooky chimp. I
actually found him, "endearing."
<b> HAWK
</b> Sure. Face down. Two endearing
shots to the back of the head.
That's your mark, man. What did
Little Eddie ever do to...
Smouldering, Hawk struts off. Cesar takes a black
canvas bag from a SCARFACED DRIVER and hustles up to
Hawk. The Lincoln rumbles behind them, Antony riding
on the hood.
<b> CESAR
</b> You're hitting Rutherford's
Auction House. Easy as my
brother's wife. Directions are
in the bag. Just open the seventh
floor safe and take out the
thingie...
<b> HAWK
</b> Or you cut off my thingie.
Directions even your brother
would understand.
<b>
</b><b> ANTONY
</b> (defensively)
Yeah, directions even I could
understand.
The car squeals to a stop. Antony bounds off. Cesar
shove-throws the canvas bag into Hawk's unwilling
hands.
<b> CESAR
</b> Hawk, you're a great thief. Got
set up, did some time, nothing to
be ashamed of. Don't give me a
sonata about you always just
really wanted to settle down,
open a hardware Store and sell
spatulas...
<b> HAWK
</b> If the Mario brothers weren't
Jersey's third largest family,
I'd say kiss my ass. But
considering your status, I'll
say slurp my butt.
Hawk fiercely push-shoves the canvas bag back into
Cesar's hands.
<b> CESAR
</b> What's your favorite sport, Hawk?
<b> HAWK
</b> Baseball, why?
Antony opens the back door of the Lincoln and says
"Baseball." He is handed a baseball bat. Hawk backs
up as Antony moves threateningly toward him.
<b> HAWK
</b> I meant, ping pong. Listen, I'd
rather go back in than whore for
you...
(stopping)
Oh, I need to borrow ten dollars.
A PRISON GUARD from above turns as not to be a witness.
Hawk feebly calls up to him.
<b> HAWK
</b> Help? Police?
Antony swings at Hawk, who pretends not to notice until
the last second. Hawk ducks and slam-kicks his calf.
Antony crumples, using the bat as a crutch. Hawk boots
up the bat for a two-handed catch then savagely pivots
it across Antony's face, knocking him into the backseat
of the car.
<b> CESAR
</b> (unfazed)
You need some time to think.
That's cool, but next time, I'm
not going to say "Please."
Cesar floats into the backseat. The Lincoln takes off.
Hawk seethes...
<b> HAWK
</b> I
|
hand
|
How many times does the word 'hand' appear in the text?
| 1
|
Headline: "TOO MUCH TRASH!! Earth Covered!!"
The deck: "BNL CEO Declares Global Emergency!"
A photo of the BNL CEO giving a weak smile.
<b>
</b> Wall-E's old treads are threadbare.
Practically falling apart.
Cause a bumpy ride for his cockroach.
He passes the remains of other RUSTED WALL-E UNITS.
Fancies one with NEWER TREADS than his own...
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. DESERTED STREET - MOMENTS LATER
</b><b>
</b> Wall-E now sports the newer treads.
Rolls past a SERIES OF HOLOGRAPHIC BILLBOARDS.
The solar-powered ads still activate when he passes them.
<b>
</b><b> 3.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> BILLBOARD ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
</b> (Ad #1: BNL logo over trash)
Too much garbage in your face?
(Ad #2: starliner in space)
There's plenty of space out in space!
(Ad #3: starliners take off
from Earth)
BNL starliners leaving each day.
(Ad #4: WALL-E units wave
goodbye)
We'll clean up the mess while you're
away.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. EDGE OF THE CITY
</b><b>
</b> Wall-E drives down a deserted overpass.
Activates an even LARGER HOLOGRAPHIC BILLBOARD.
<b>
</b><b> CLOSE ON BILLBOARD AD
</b><b>
</b> Shows off a CITY-SIZED LUXURY STARLINER.
Depicts passengers enjoying all its amenities.
<b>
</b><b> BILLBOARD ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
</b> The jewel of the BNL fleet: "The Axiom".
Spend your five year cruise in style.
Waited on 24 hours a day by our fully
automated crew, while your Captain and
Autopilot chart a course for non-stop
entertainment, fine dining. And with our
all-access hover chairs, even Grandma can
join the fun! There's no need to walk!
"The Axiom". Putting the "star" in
Executive Starliner.
<b>
</b> The BNL CEO appears at the end.
Waves goodbye as the Axiom takes off.
<b>
</b><b> BUY N LARGE CEO
</b> Because, at BNL, space is the final "fun"-
tier.
<b>
</b> The holographic billboard powers off.
Reveals the AXIOM'S DESERTED LAUNCHPAD in the distance.
The mammoth structure sits across the bay.
Now empty and dry. A polluted, dead valley.
<b>
</b><b> ON COLLAPSED BRIDGE RAMP
</b><b>
</b> Near its edge rests a WALL-E UNIT TRANSPORT TRUCK.
A giant child's Tonka Truck left to weather the elements.
A "Buy N Large" logo on its side.
Wall-E approaches the rear of the truck.
<b>
</b><b> 4.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b> Pulls on a lever.
The back lowers.
Wall-E motors up the ramp.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. TRUCK - CONTINUOUS
</b><b>
</b> Open racks for storing WALL-Es line both walls.
KNICKKNACKS OF FOUND JUNK littered everywhere.
The tired robot removes his newfound treads.
Ahh... Home.
<b>
</b> Wall-E motors down the center aisle.
Flicks on an ancient BETAMAX PLAYER.
Jury-rigged to an iPod.
Pushes in a cassette labeled, "Hello Dolly!"
The image is very poor quality.
Actors sing and dance to Put On Your Sunday Clothes (POYSC).
The same song Wall-E worked to.
<b>
</b><b> WALL-E
</b> [Hums POYSC]
<b>
</b> Wall-E opens his cooler.
Newfound knickknacks.
Pulls out the hubcap from his chest.
Looks back at the TV.
Mimics the dancers on the screen.
Pretends the hubcap is a hat.
<b>
</b> Continues to unpack:
A spork.
A Rubik's Cube (unsolved).
A Zippo Lighter.
<b>
</b> He presses a BUTTON by the rack of shelves.
They rotate until an empty space appears.
His new items are lovingly added to the shelf.
The Zippo joins a pre-existing LIGHTER COLLECTION.
<b>
</b> A new song, It Only Takes A Moment, plays on the video.
Wall-E is drawn to it.
Presses his "Record" button.
<b>
</b><b> ON TV SCREEN
</b><b>
</b> Two lovers sing gently to one another.
They kiss...hold hands...
<b>
</b> Wall-E tilts his head as he watches.
Curious.
Holds his own hands.
<b>
</b><b> 5.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. TRUCK - NIGHT
</b><b>
</b> Wall-E motors outside.
Turns over his Igloo cooler to clean it out.
Pauses to take in the night sky.
STARS struggle to be seen through the polluted haze.
Wall-E presses the "Play" button on his chest.
The newly sampled It Only Takes A Moment (IOTAM) plays.
<b>
</b> The wind picks up.
A WARNING LIGHT sounds on Wall-E's chest.
He looks out into the night.
A RAGING SANDSTORM approaches off the bay...
<b>
</b> Unfazed, Wall-E heads back in the truck.
IOTAM still gently playing.
<b>
</b> ...The massive wave of sand roars closer...
<b>
</b> Wall-E raises the door.
Pauses.
WHISTLES for his cockroach to come inside.
The door shuts just as the storm hits.
Obliterates everything in view.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. TRUCK - SAME
</b><b>
</b> Wall-E alone in the center of his shelter.
Unwraps a BNL SPONGECAKE (think Twinkie).
Lays it out for the cockroach to sleep in.
It happily dives in.
<b>
</b> Wall-E collapses himself into a storable cube.
Backs into an empty shelf space.
Rocks it like a cradle...
...and shuts down for the night.
Outside the wind howls like the Hounds of Hell.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. WALL-E'S TRUCK - NEXT MORNING
</b><b>
</b> Wall-E's CHARGE METER flashes "WARNING".
He wakes. Unboxes.
Groggy and lifeless.
Stumbles outside.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b> EXT. ROOF OF WALL-E'S TRUCK
</b><b>
</b> The morning sun.
Wall-E fully exposed in its light.
His front panel splayed out like a tanning shield.
A solar collector.
<b>
</b><b> 6.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b>
|
treads
|
How many times does the word 'treads' appear in the text?
| 3
|
why,
Pina," (thus he abridged his sister's name), "there's as much danger, I
should think, in pushing through a tub of soap-suds."
"Come, Dom," returned the girl, "explain it to me; for if you don't
point out where the danger really lies, if you leave me in this state of
partial ignorance, I shall be filled with alarm instead of bliss from
this moment till we reach the shore."
"Well, well, sister," said Dominick, when thus urged; "if you must have
it, I will explain."
He went on to show that when the boat came near the shore the waves
would grasp it, instead of letting it slip back; would carry it swiftly
in on their crests, so that the great difficulty in such a case would be
to keep the boat's head pointing to the land, and if he failed to do so,
they would infallibly be overturned and have to swim ashore.
"Well, that would be unpleasant, Dom," said the ignorant, as well as
innocent, Pauline, "but it would not matter much, for we can all swim--
thanks to you for insisting on teaching us long ago."
"We will try our best," said Dominick, who thereupon relapsed into
silence, wisely resolving to let his sister retain all the "bliss" of
"ignorance" that was possible under the circumstances.
Indeed, there was not much more time for conversation, for the power of
the waves was beginning to be felt by the little craft, and the clumsy
oar did not act with as much precision or force as was desirable, while
Dominick's weakness rendered the steering difficult. Pauline now began
to realise the danger somewhat more clearly from experience, and even
Otto showed symptoms of surprise that amounted very nearly to alarm, as
the boat at one point made a sudden rush on a wave-top as if it meant to
try a race with it, and then as suddenly slipped back into the hollow
behind, as if it had been disheartened, feeling that there was no
chance.
At last they reached the point of greatest danger. The huge waves, as
we have said, commenced out at sea in long, gentle undulations. Nearer
the shore they advanced in the shape of glassy walls, one after another,
like successive lines of indomitable infantry in time of war. Further
in, the tops of these waves began to gurgle and foam, and gather real,
instead of seeming, motion, as they rushed towards their fall. It was
here that the boat showed symptoms of becoming unmanageable.
"Why, the water's beginning to boil!" exclaimed Otto, in some anxiety.
"Hold on, boy, and keep quiet," said his brother.
As he spoke, the water gurgled up, so that it seemed as if about to pour
inboard all round. At the same time the boat made a rush shoreward as
if suddenly endowed with life. Dominick struggled manfully to keep the
stern to the sea. He succeeded, but in another moment the boat slipped
back. It had not been fairly caught, and the wave passed on to fall
with a roar like thunder a hundred yards or so ahead.
"The next will do it," said Dominick, with an anxious glance behind,
where a crystal wall was coming grandly on--unnaturally high, it seemed
to them, owing to their position in the hollow.
No need to tell Otto now to hold on! No need to explain difficulty or
danger to Pauline! As her brother stood at the oar, quivering as much
from weakness as exertion, she understood it all. But she was brave,
and she could swim. This latter fact lent her additional confidence.
Best of all, she had faith in God, and her spirit was calmed, for,
whether life or death lay before her, she knew that her soul was "safe."
As Dominick had prophesied, the next wave took them fairly in its grasp.
For a few moments the water hissed and gurgled round them. The
steersman seemed to lose control for a second or two, but quickly
recovered. Then there was a bound, as if the boat had been shot from a
catapult, and the billow fell. A tremendous roar, tumultuous foam all
round, increasing speed! The land appeared to be rushing at them, when
Dominick's oar snapped suddenly, and he went overboard. A shriek from
Pauline and a shout from Otto rose high above the din of raging water,
as the boat broached-to and hurled its remaining occupants into the sea.
Even in that trying moment Dominick did not lose presence of mind. He
could swim and dive like a water-rat. Pushing towards his brother and
sister, who were heading bravely for the shore, he shouted, "Dig your
fingers and toes deep into the sand, and hold on for life, if--" (he
corrected himself) "_when_ you gain the beach."
It was well they were forewarned, and that they were constitutionally
obedient. A few minutes later, and they were all swept up high on the
beach in a wilderness of foam. The return of that wilderness was like
the rushing of a millrace. Sand, stones, sticks, and seaweed went back
with it in dire confusion. Prone on their knees, with fingers and toes
fixed, and heads down, the brothers and sister met the rush. It was
almost too much for them. A moment more, and strength as well as breath
would have failed; but the danger passed, and Dominick sprang to his
feet.
"Up, up! and run!" he shouted, as he caught Pauline round the waist and
dragged her on. Otto needed no help. They were barely in time. The
succeeding wave roared after them as if maddened at having lost its
prey, and the foaming water was up with them, and almost round their
knees, ere its fury was quite spent.
"Safe!" exclaimed Dominick.
"Thank God!" murmured Pauline, as she sank exhausted on the sand.
Otto, who had never seen his sister in such a state before, ran to her,
and, kneeling down, anxiously seized one of her hands.
"Never fear, lad," said his brother in reassuring tones, "she'll soon
come round. Lend a hand to lift her."
They bore the fainting girl up the beach, and laid her on a grassy spot
under a bush. And now Dominick was glad to find that he had been
mistaken in supposing that the coral reef was a mere sandbank, destitute
of vegetation. Indeed, before landing, he had observed that there were
a few trees on the highest part of it. He now perceived that there was
quite a little grove of cocoa-nut palms, with a thicket of underwood
around them, which, if not extensive, was at all events comparatively
dense. He pointed out the fact to Otto, who was chafing his sister's
hands.
"Ay," responded Otto, "and the island on the other side must be a
goodish big one, for I got a glimpse of it through the trees as we came
rushing in on that monstrous wave."
In a short time Pauline recovered, and Dominick returned to the water's
edge with Otto.
"Our first care must be," he said, "to save our little boat if we can,
for it is the only means we have of escaping from this island."
"Escaping!" repeated Otto, in surprise. "I don't want to escape from
it, Dom."
"Indeed! why not?"
"Why, because I've dreamed about being cast on a desolate island
hundreds of times, and I've read about Robinson Crusoe, and all the
other Crusoes, and I've longed to be cast on one, and now I am cast on
one, so I don't want to escape. It'll be the greatest fun in the world.
I only hope I won't wake up, as usual, to find that it's all a dream!"
Dominick laughed (not scornfully, by any means) at the boy's enthusiasm;
nevertheless he had strong sympathy with him, for the period had not
passed so long ago when he himself entertained a very vivid impression
of the romance of such a situation, and he did not trouble his mind
about the stern realities.
"I sincerely hope it may come up to your expectations, Otto, my boy;
nevertheless we must secure the boat for fishing purposes, even though
we don't try to escape in it."
"For fishing! why, we have neither hooks nor lines."
"True, lad; but we have got fingers and brains. It strikes me that we
shall have occasion to use all our powers and possessions if we are not
to starve here, for the reef seems to have very little vegetation on it,
and there is sure to be a lagoon of water on the other side, separating
it from the island beyond."
"I wonder if there is fresh water on the reef," said Otto, with a very
sudden look of solemnity and pursing of the mouth.
"You may well ask that. I hope there is. We will go and settle the
point the moment we have secured the boat, if--"
He stopped, for he saw at that moment that the sea had taken good care
to secure the boat to itself as a plaything. Having dashed it into
small pieces, it was by that time busily engaged in tossing these about
among the foam, now hurling the splinters high upon the shore, anon
sending up long watery tongues to lick them back, and then casting them
under the incoming rollers, to be further reduced into what is usually
styled matchwood.
There was a small bay close at hand, where the sandy beach was strewn
with rocks, in which the sea appeared to play this game with unusual
vigour. It was a sort of hospital for marine incurables, into which the
sea cast its broken toys when tired of smashing them up, and left them
there to rot.
Regarding this spot with a thoughtful look, Dominick remarked that the
wreck which lay on the rocks off the tail of the island was by no means
the first that had taken place there.
"And won't be the last, I fancy," said Otto.
"Probably not. Indeed, from the appearance of this bay, and the fact
that an ocean current drifted us towards the spot, I should think that
the island is a particularly dangerous one for vessels. But come, we'll
go see how Pina gets on, and then proceed to examine our new home."
Returning to the place where Pauline had been left, they found the poor
girl wringing the water out of her dress. The news of the fate of the
little boat did not seem to affect her much, she did not fully
appreciate the loss, and was more taken up with the idea of thankfulness
for deliverance from death.
"May I not go with you?" she asked, on hearing that her brothers were
going to search for water.
"Certainly. I thought you might perhaps prefer to rest, and dry your
clothes in the sun," replied Dominick.
"Walking will dry them better," said Pina. "Besides, I have quite
recovered."
"You're a plucky little woman," said Otto, as they set off. "Isn't it
nice to be here all by ourselves, on a real uninhabited island, quite
fit for Robinson himself? Who knows but we may find Friday in the
bushes!"
"Wouldn't that spoil it as an uninhabited isle?"
"A little, but not much."
"The thicket is too small to contain anything with life, I fear," said
Dominick, whose anxiety as to food and drink prevented his sympathising
much with the small-talk of the other two. "Luckily the weather is
warm," he added, "and we won't require better shelter at present than
the bushes afford, unless a storm comes.--Ho what have we here?--a
path!"
They had reached the entrance to the thicket, and discovered what
appeared to be an opening into it, made apparently by the hand of man.
"Nothing more likely," said Pauline. "If so many wrecks have taken
place here--as you seem to think--some of the crews must have landed,
and perhaps lived here."
"Ay, and died here," returned Dominick, in a grave, low tone, as he
pointed to a skeleton lying on a spot which had once been cleared of
bushes, but so long ago that the vegetation had partially grown up
again. The man whose bleached bones lay before them had evidently
perished many years before. On examination, nothing was found to afford
any information about him, but when they had advanced a dozen yards
further they came upon six little mounds, which showed that a party--
probably a wrecked crew--had sojourned there for a time, and finally
perished: so far their story was clear enough. One by one they must
have sunk, until the last man had lain down to die and remain unburied.
Pushing past these sad evidences of former suffering, and feeling that
the same fate might await themselves, they came to a sight which tended
slightly to restore their spirits. It was a pool of water of
considerable size, whether a spring or a rain-pool they could not tell.
Neither did they care at that time, for the sudden feeling of relieved
anxiety was so great, that they ran forward, as if under one impulse,
and, lying down on their breasts, took a long refreshing draught. So
powerful was the influence of this refreshment and discovery on their
spirits that they became totally regardless and forgetful for the moment
about food--all the more that, having so recently had a good meal, they
were not hungry.
"I was sure we would find water," said Otto, as they continued to
explore the thicket, "and I've no doubt that we shall find yams and
plantains and breadfruits, and--aren't these the sort of things that
grow wild on coral islands, Dom?"
"Yes, but I fear not on such a little scrap of reef as this. However,
we shall not be quite destitute, for there are cocoa-nuts, you see--
though not many of them. Come, our prospects are brightening, and as
the sun is beginning to sink, we will look out for a suitable
camping-ground."
"As far away from the skeleton, please, as possible," said Otto.
"Surely you don't suppose it can hurt you?" said Pauline.
"N-no, of course not, but it would be unpleasant to have it for a
bedfellow, you know; so, the further away from it the better."
As he spoke they emerged from the thicket, at the end opposite to the
spot where they had entered, and had their spirits again powerfully
cheered by coming suddenly into a blaze of sunshine, for the bright orb
of day was descending at that side of the islet, and his red,
resplendent rays were glowing on the reef and on the palm-trees.
They also came in full view of the islet beyond, which, they now
perceived, was of considerable size, and covered with vegetation, but,
as Dominick had suspected, separated completely from the reef or outer
isle on which they stood by a deep lagoon.
"Splendid!" exclaimed Pauline.
"As I feared," muttered Dominick, "and no means of reaching it."
"Pooh! Didn't Robinson Crusoe make rafts?" said Otto; "at least if he
didn't, somebody else did, and anyhow _we_ can."
"Come, let us continue our walk," said Dominick. "You don't fully
appreciate the loss of our boat Otto. Don't you see that, even if we do
build a raft, it will at best be a clumsy thing to manage, and heavy to
pull, slow to sail, and bad to steer, and if we should chance to be on
it when a stiff breeze springs up from the land, we should probably be
driven out to sea and lost--or separated, if Pina should chance to have
been left on shore at the time."
"What a fellow you are, Dom, for supposing chances and difficulties, and
fancying they cannot be overcome," returned Otto, with the pert
self-sufficiency that characterised him. "For my part I rather enjoy
difficulties, because of the fun of overcoming them. Don't you see, we
three can make quite sure of never being separated by never going out on
our raft except together, so that we shall always enjoy ourselves
unitedly, or perish in company. Then we can easily get over the
difficulty of being blown out to sea, by never going on the sea at all,
but confining ourselves entirely to the lagoon, which is large enough
for any reasonable man, and may be larger than we think, for we can't
see the whole of it from where we stand. Then, as to sailing and rowing
slowly, we can overcome these difficulties by not being in a hurry,--
taking things easy, you know."
To this Dominick replied that there was one difficulty which his little
brother, with all his wisdom and capacity, would never overcome.
"And what may that be?" demanded Otto.
"The difficulty of being unable to talk common-sense."
"True, Dom, true, that is a great difficulty," retorted the boy, with
deep humility of aspect, "for a man's conversation is greatly affected
by the company he keeps, and with _you_ as my only male companion, I
have not much to hope for in the way of example. But even that may be
got the better of by holding intercourse chiefly with Pina."
"But what if I refuse to talk?" said Pauline, with a laugh.
"Then will you be all the more able to listen, sister mine, which is the
most common-sense thing that you can do, except when brother Dom
speaks," said the incorrigible boy.
They had seated themselves on a bank while thus conversing, and from
their position could see over a considerable portion of the lagoon.
Suddenly Dominick pointed to an object a long way off, which was half
concealed by the shadow of an island.
"Does it not look like a canoe?" he asked eagerly.
"Can't make it out at all," said Otto, shading his eyes with his hand.
"The sun on the water dazzles one so," observed Pauline, "that it is
difficult to look steadily."
In a few moments the object which had drawn their attention sailed out
from under the shade of the island, and, breaking up into fragments,
rose into the air, proving itself to be a flock of large aquatic birds
which had been swimming in a line.
"Things are not what they seem," observed Pauline, rising and following
her brothers through a little thicket.
"What a pity!" exclaimed Otto; "I was in hopes it was a canoeful of
savages. It would be such fun to have a real Friday to
|
slightly
|
How many times does the word 'slightly' appear in the text?
| 0
|
I had to miss cartoons this morning? If
it was to share in your half-assed obsessions with Hallmark moments, I'm
going to slug you.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(still looking OC)
You're never going to believe this: we're going home.
<b> LOKI
</b>
(off Bartleby's popcorn)
Let me have some?
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(pulls out envelope)
Look what somebody sent us in the mail.
(hands him a newspaper article and corn)
<b> LOKI
</b>
Did you say we're going home?
(reads)
"Cardinal Glick Cuts Ribbon on 'Catholicism - Wow!"
Campaign."
(to Bartleby)
And?
<b>BARTLEBY
</b>
Keep reading.
<b> LOKI
</b>
(reads)
"Updating the church... television spots... Papal consent...
rededication...
(to Bartleby)
Again - and?
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(snatches article) Give me this
(getting up; reading)
"The Re-dedication of Saint Michael's Church on it's hundredth anniversary
is the kickoff of a new campaign that seeks to bring the Catholic Church
back into the mainstream. With a papal sanction, the archway entrance to
the centuryold, Jersey shore house of worship will serve as a passageway of
pleanry indulgence, which - according to Catholic beliefs - offers all who
pass through it's arches a morally clean slate."
(looks at Loki)
You still don't get it, do you?
<b> LOKI
</b>
No, I don't get it. Are we leaving now?
They start walking.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
If you walk through the church's front door on the day of the Re-dedication
ceremony, your soul is wiped clean of any and all existing sin, moreso than
the sacrament of penance could ever offer. It's a plenary indulgence, man!
I don't know why I never thought of this before.
<b> LOKI
</b>
(spits out chewed popcorn into trash can)
Sounds thin. Sounds like someone made it up.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
It's rarely employed, but it's legitimate. It has a papal sanction for
God's sake.
<b> LOKI
</b>
So you're saying you and I can walk through this doorway and go back home?
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
No - by passing through the doors, our sins are
forgiven. Then all we have to do is die...
<b> LOKI
</b>
Wait. wait, wait - Die? I don't want to die.
(chews popcorn)
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(steps on conveyor belt)
You'd rather stay down here for a few more eons?
<b> LOKI
</b>
No, but we don't even know if we can die. And what if we can, but this
archway thing doesn't pan out? What then? Hell? Fuck that.
(spits out chewed popcorn into napkin)
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
Impossible. If we cut off our wings and transubstantiate to complete human
form then we become mortal. And if we die with clean souls, there's no way
to keep us out. They have to let us in.
<b>LOKI
</b>
(beat)
Who sent this thing?
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
I don't know. Somebody who's looking out for us,
I guess. Does it matter? All that matters is that
after all these years, we've found a loophole. He
can't keep us out anymore. And once we're back
in, I'm sure He'll just forgive and forget.
They pass the Nun. who leans against a wall, still dazed.
<b> LOKI
</b>
Yeah, but this plenary' indulgence thing is a church law, not Divine
Mandate. Church laws are fallible because they're created by man.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
One of the last sacred promises imparted to Peter the first Pope by the Son
of God before He left was "Whatever you hold true on earth..."
<b> LOKI
</b>
" ...I'll hold true in Heaven."
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
So if the Pope says it's so, God must adhere. It's dogmatic law.
<b> LOKI
</b>
(beat; extends hand)
Let it never be said that your anal retentive attention to detail never
yielded positive results.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(accepts hand)
You can't be anal retentive if you don't have an anus.
<b> LOKI
</b>
There's just one thing I think I should do before we leave - something
that'Il get us back on His good side.
<b>BARTLEBY
</b>
What's that?
Loki smiles and starts rifling through his pockets. He extracts a magazine
article.
<b> LOKI
</b>
This is something I've been dreaming about for five years now. Read.
The crumpled article displays a Barney-like gold-hued cow, alongside
various profit charts and text.
<b> OC BARTLEBY
</b>
(reading)
"Mooby the Golden Calf- Creating an Empire Out of Simplicity."
Loki wipes his mouth and nods to the article.
<b>LOKI
</b>
I want to hit them.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
Are you nuts?!
(crumples article)
We're mere days away from getting back, and you want to jeopardize it
because you have a soft spot for the good ol' days?!
<b> LOKI
</b>
What better way to show I've repented than by resuming the position I
denied... thanks to you.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
A killing spree is not going to make things better for us.
<b> LOKI
</b>
We're not talking about killing here. We're talking about Divine Justice.
We're talking about punishing the wicked, raining down fire and brimstone.
He's all about that. I just know he'd want this done.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
There hasn't been an Angel of Death since you quit. Doesn't that mean
anything to you? Besides, what if you're wrong?
<b> LOKI
</b>
If I'm wrong, it won't matter. Like you said - we pass through the arch and
we're forgiven anyway
They step up to an elevator and press the button.
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
(considering it)
Well... he does hate competition.
(reading article)
And this Mooby deninitely falls under that heading.
<b> LOKI
</b>
The church we have to go to is where?
<b> BARTLEBY
</b>
New ]ersey. The Rededication is in four days.
The doors open. They get on. Other people are inside as well.
<b> LOKI
</b>
Our last four days on earth. If I had a dick, I'd go get laid. But we can
do the next best thing.
<b>BARTLEBY
</b>
What's that?
<b>LOKI
</b>
Let's kill people.
A guy beside Loki reacts. Loki smiles at him as the elevator doors close.
<b>OPENING CREDITS
</b>
Between black cards with white credits there are shots of the OLD MAN from
the boardwalk being wheeled into a hospital on a gurney, being treated in
the emergeny room, being hooked up to life support system, and finally
resting in an intensive care wing.
<b>EXT ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH - DAY
</b>
The church sits on a grassy knoll in Mc Henry - a suburb of Chicago. Some
kids tear by on bikes and egg it.
<b> OC PRIEST
</b>
The greater Illinois chapter of the Right to Life foundation will be
holding it's bi-annual softball game against the Cook County Pro-Choice
league next Sunday at two.
<b>INT ST. STEPHEN'S PARISH - DAY
</b>
The PRIEST speaks from the lectern, addressing semi-filled rows of the
faithful.
<b> PRIEST
</b>
Those who find the weekly demonstration outside of
the Twelfth Street Planned Parenthood Clinic hard to make due to work
schedules are urged to show their support in the fight against the
thoughtless and wanton destruction of life by cheering on our boys on the
field. Refreshments. as always, will be served.
Dollying down the rows while the Priest rattles on. we pass the
parishoners. Some listen intently, others are nodding off. One
surreptitiously listens to a Walk-man; a man and a woman quietly argue
while their kid colors in a coloring book, going off the page and marking
the pew; two kids play cards; one guy leafs through a copy of Hustler
hidden by his hymnal book.
<b> OC PRIEST
</b>
Today's second collection will be donated to the John Doe Jersey Life Fund.
For those of you who haven't been following the news, an unidentified
homeless man who was accosted and severely beaten at the New Jersey shore
last Tuesday lies in critical but stable condition in one of that area's
hospitals. He lacks identification and police have had no luck in tracking
down any possible family. While he shows no signs of recovery, the
Arch-Bishop of the Trenton Diocese has disputed the state's decision to
remove the indigent man from life support systems, asking that Catholics
all over the country join in this protest against Euthanasia. And finally -
will whoever keeps parking in my spot, stop doing that. Thank you. Now,
please rise for the recession of faith. We believe in one God, the
father...
As the congregation flatly joins in the prayer, we stop on BETHANY - a
beautiful twenty-something woman who struggles to stay awake. She checks
her watch and exhales softly.
<b> OC VOICE
</b>
I don't really want to be here.
<b>ENT PLANNED PARENTHOOD CLINIC - DAY
</b>
A small gaggle of signcarrying RIght-to-Lifer's march in front of the
sterile looking building.
<b> OC VOICE
</b>
But then again, I guess nobody ever does... except maybe you.
<b>INT BETHANY'S OFFICE - DAY
</b>
The source of the voice - a GIRL - sits beside Bethany's desk, stretching
out her gum. Bethany offers her an understanding smile.
<b> GIRL
</b>
You know, I've done this three times now; and each time the counselor tells
me I should be more careful in the future, I should show' some
responsibility. Gotta tell you, though - this is the first time the
counselor wasn't some ugly as hell old bitch. It's kind of hard to take
abortion advice from a woman who's too gross to get laid in the first
place.
<b> BETHANY
</b>
I'm not here to lecture you - I'm here to make sure you really want to go
through with this.
<b> GIRL
</b>
I'd rather go back to that night when my idiot bovfriend swore up and down
he was sterile. Short of that, there aren't many choices left, now are
there?
<b> BETHANY
</b>
Ever think about having it?
<b>
|
well
|
How many times does the word 'well' appear in the text?
| 1
|
<b>CASPER
</b>Well, how was it?
<b>TELLY
</b>Oh my god, so good. That girl can fuck.
<b>CASPER
</b>She can fuck?
<b>TELLY
</b>Hell yeah. That bitch was bleeding. When I first put it in she screamed real loud. I saw her bite down on the pillow.
<b>CASPER
</b>Oh shit. How long did it take?
<b>TELLY
</b>Did what take?
<b>CASPER
</b>How long did you fuck her?
They cross the street, paying no attention to speeding cars. Casper is listening to every word that Telly says. Casper seems much happier than Telly. Telly is laid-back. Casper is hyper as he jumps up and down and claws Telly's arm.
<b>TELLY
</b>Well it took me longer than I thought it would take. It took like 15 minutes to talk her into it. But once it was on, we fucked for a good half an hour. I had to keep taking it out and putting it back in. It hurts the first time.
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah.
<b>TELLY
</b>But then when she got into it. She really got into it. It was good.
<b>CASPER
</b>How did she smell? Did her puss stink?
Telly puts his four fingers together and then puts his hand in front of Caper's nose.
<b>TELLY
</b>Take a whiff.
Casper takes a huge whiff, the snot in his nose makes a loud sound as he smells Telly's fingers.
<b>CASPER
</b>Oh man, it smells like butterscotch.
<b>TELLY
</b>Hell's yeah. She was so clean.
<b>CASPER
</b>Oh man, that's the best.
<b>TELLY
</b>You could tell she took care of herself. She had all these powders and creams in her bathroom.
<b>CASPER
</b>Let me smell it again.
Telly lifts his fingers once again, as Casper breathes in the odor.
<b>CASPER
</b>That's why virgins are the best. I love that smell.
As they walk down the street, joggers, men in business suits with briefcases, ambulances, and women with baby carriages all pass by.
<b>TELLY
</b>You know what else?
<b>CASPER
</b>What?
<b>TELLY
</b>I can tell that she had just entered puberty.
<b>CASPER
</b>How?
<b>TELLY
</b>Well, I was flipping through a picture book of her and her family, right.
<b>
</b><b>CASPER
</b>Right.
<b>TELLY
</b>And there was this picture of her painting Easter eggs or something. And I said, you were cut when you were little.
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah.
<b>TELLY
</b>And she goes, yeah that picture was taken less than a year ago. I look younger without my makeup.
Casper starts to crack up.
<b>TELLY
</b>And I looked at her, and thought to myself Oh my god, this girl is a baby.
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah.
<b>TELLY
</b>And for a second I felt a little bit guilty. You know, because she's young and all. And then I was like, oh shit, that turns me on. I wanna fuck this little baby girl.
They both laugh.
<b>CASPER
</b>Fuckin perverted bastard.
They continue to laugh and walk.
<b>TELLY
</b>I'm telling you Casper. I think I'm getting addicted to that shit.
<b>CASPER
</b>To what? Virgins?
<b>TELLY
</b>Yeah. It's like all I think about now. Not just that, it's like lately during sex, I start dreaming about these complex fantasies.
<b>CASPER
</b>What do you mean?
<b>TELLY
</b>I mean I'm dreaming about going all out, crazy shit.
<b>CASPER
</b>You mean like fucking two virgins at once.
<b>TELLY
</b>(laughing)
That would be good. But I mean more like. I don't know. Like when I was having sex with her, I kept thinking how much I would like to put it in her ass. Just to see what would happen.
<b>CASPER
</b>(laughing)
She's probably smash you in the fucking face.
<b>TELLY
</b>I don't know about that. She was pretty into it. But I wasn't gonna try. The whole thing is, you just gotta take it slow. Show 'em some respect.
<b>CASPER
</b>Did you tell her that you loved her?
<b>TELLY
</b>Like. Like. Never love. Love is for low-level virgin seduction guys.
They stop walking. Casper takes the last sip of his beer, then throws it toward an orange trash can. He misses the can and the bottle smashes in the middle of a busy street.
<b>CASPER
</b>Shit.
<b>TELLY
</b>What do you want?
<b>CASPER
</b>Get another forty.
(burps)
Smoke a blunt.
<b>TELLY
</b>Are you hungry?
<b>CASPER
</b>Hell yeah. Fuckin starvin. Wait up a sec.
Casper takes two steps away and starts urinating in someone's bushes. People walk by and stare.
<b>TELLY
</b>You wanna go to Paul's house?
<b>CASPER
</b>What for? That guys a dick.
<b>TELLY
</b>I'm sue he's got food. He's always got those microwave burrito things in his freezer.
<b>CASPER
</b>You think he's got any herb?
<b>TELLY
</b>I don't know, he quit dealin but I'll bet he'll smoke us out.
<b>CASPER
</b>You think?
<b>TELLY
</b>Probably.
<b>CASPER
</b>He lives on 76th?
<b>TELLY
</b>78th.
<b>CASPER
</b>Den less go Joe.
He zips up his pants.
They start walking again. Casper is carrying a folded up comic book in his hand.
<b>CASPER
</b>Telly.
<b>TELLY
</b>Yeah.
<b>CASPER
</b>Did she suck your dick?
<b>TELLY
</b>A little bit. But I didn't really want her to.
<b>CASPER
</b>Why?
<b>TELLY
</b>I don't know. That's too easy. I mean getting a virgin to suck your dick. That's so easy.
<b>CASPER
</b>It is right.
<b>TELLY
</b>I want to knock her guard down. I mean there's a whole philosophy behind it. Having a virgin suck your dick, that's basic because there's nothing lost.
<b>CASPER
</b>It's no big deal, right?
<b>TELLY
</b>Right. But when you deflower a girl, that's it. You did it. You were the one. No one else can ever do it.
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah. The way I see it. My outlook on the this situation is.
(they both start laughing)
It's like getting fame, you know what I'm saying. It's like, if you died tomorrow, and fifty years from now all the virgins you fucked are gonna remember you because you were their first.
<b>TELLY
</b>Yep.
<b>CASPER
</b>They're gonna tell their grand kids.
(mimicking an old lady)
That Telly. He sure was good in the sack!
The two of them are laughing, their conversation has gotten them very excited.
They walk in front of a Korean grocery. The grocery has a small outdoor produce section, juice, fruit, sodas, etc. A KOREAN GUY with flip-flops and headphones is sitting on a tall wooden stool.
<b>TELLY
</b>You thirsty?
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah, I feel dehydrated.
<b>TELLY
</b>You got any money?
<b>CASPER
</b>Three pennies and a ball of lint.
<b>TELLY
</b>You down with the boost?
<b>CASPER
</b>(whispers)
Unzip my pack, yo.
He turns around and Telly quickly unzips his backpack.
<b>INT. KOREAN GROCERY - DAY
</b>
The grocery is your basic traditional market with a lunch buffet. Behind the cash register is a middle-aged KOREAN MAN. He is watching a small black and white television set.
The two boys enter.
Casper walks straight to the back where they keep the beer.
Telly circles the buffet and then walks up to the cash register.
<b>TELLY
</b>Uh, let's see here, would you happen to have diss digg?
<b>KOREAN STORE OWNER
</b>Whah?
<b>TELLY
</b>Diss digg. I'm curious if you have it?
<b>KOREAN STORE OWNER
</b>Whah is dissdee?
Casper is going through the beer section. He pulls out two 40oz. bottles of and puts them on the floor.
<b>TELLY
</b>Diss digg, diss digg, diss digg.
<b>KOREAN STORE OWNER
</b>I no understand you. Maybe crazy.
A round mirror is reflecting Casper putting the bottles into his backpack.
<b>TELLY
</b>I'll ask you one last time. Do you have diss digg?
<b>KOREAN STORE OWNER
</b>Whah you say? Dissdee?
Casper runs up to the counter and grabs his crotch.
<b>CASPER
</b>He said This Dick, mutha fucka! Can't you understand English?
The two of them both run out the door.
Telly taps the Korean man who is sitting outside. The man looks in the opposite direction while Casper grabs two peaches and puts them into his pocket.
The two boys run off.
The Korean man gets off his stool. He pulls his headphones off his ears.
<b>KOREAN MAN
</b>Stupy fucky boys! Fucky!
He looks at his fruit stand and puts a peach in the spot that Casper previously stole from.
<b>EXT. UPPER EAST SIDE - APARTMENT - DAY
</b>
Casper and Telly are walking down the street. Casper is eating a peach and drinking his 40oz. beer. Telly is also drinking.
<b>CASPER
</b>You know like in "The Wonder Twins" they share everything.
<b>TELLY
</b>The cartoon?
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah. "The Wonder Twins". You know.
(mimics the cartoon)
Activate in the form of, a glass of water.
<b>TELLY
</b>Yeah.
<b>CASPER
</b>Well, those guys share everything, right?
<b>TELLY
</b>Right.
<b>CASPER
</b>And once I saw this episode where they pretended they were each other. Where they lived the other's life for a day. You know those guys share everything, right?
<b>TELLY
</b>Right.
<b>CASPER
</b>And it got me thinkin. How fun it would be to share each other's girl.
<b>TELLY
</b>(laughing)
Yeah, that would be fun but I don't like any of the girls you go out with. Like that one girl with two teeth and a clit ring.
<b>CASPER
</b>No, I'm serious man. I'm dead ass. Do you wanna try? We could be like the fuckin X-rated "Wonder Twins"!
<b>
</b>The two of them start laughing and jumping on each other. Telly spits out a mouthful of beer.
<b>CASPER
</b>(laughing)
Can you do it man?
<b>TELLY
</b>(laughing)
Can I do it? I just brooke her cherry. I imagine I can make her do anything. Bark like a dog, jump through a ring of fire.
Casper is jumping up and down on Telly's shoulder.
<b>CASPER
</b>Oh man. I fucking love this guy.
The two of them walk off laughing.
<b>EXT. PAUL'S APARTMENT BUILDING - DAY
</b>
A medium sized apartment building on the Upper East Side. Cars are speeding by the front of the building. Cabs drive by and beep their horns.
Telly and Casper are sitting on the front steps. Telly rings one of the buttons. The bottom switchboard is plastered with skateboarding stickers and "Legalize Marijuana" stickers. A Vespa scooter is parked on the outside in front of the building, it also has stickers on it.
Telly rings it again. It is a very hot day, both boys are wiping sweat from their bodies.
<b>PAUL
</b>(from box)
Hello?
<b>TELLY
</b>It's me. Telly.
<b>PAUL
</b>(from box)
Hello?
<b>TELLY
</b>(loudly)
Paul it's Telly. Open up.
A buzz is heard.
There is a little girl sitting on the bottom step, playing with a doll. Casper runs down and gives her a peach. Then he runs back up.
Telly and Casper enter the building.
The little girl tosses the peach to the ground.
<b>INT. PAUL'S APARTMENT BUILDING - DAY
</b>
There are about ten guys in the apartment. There is almost no furniture, just two white couches and a few plants in the corner. There is a big TV in the center of the floor. A Nintendo with several wires is hooked up to it. There are various games spread out. A couple of boys are huddled around the game, as they watch the guy play, they breathe in the wip-it's.
The boys are all young and spread out. There are people lying on the couch, on the floor, on the phone, in the kitchen smoking pot and doing wip-its. They are all colors and sizes.
Casper and Telly go to each person and greet them with a handshake. Some people they hug. They say "Was up," to everyone.
They both sit down on the floor and continue to drink their beers.
Paul sits down besides them.
<b>PAUL
</b>What are you guys doing?
<b>TELLY
</b>Nothing. We just wanted to come by and see what you were up to.
<b>PAUL
</b>You want a wip-it?
<b>TELLY
</b>Nah.
<b>CASPER
</b>Yeah.
Paul puts his hand on his big pocket and gives Casper a cartridge. Casper breathes in the wip-it and then smiles really big.
<b>CASPER
</b>I love these shits.
<b>PAUL
</b>They're good for you. Vitamin C for the new generation.
Paul hands Casper another cartridge.
<b>CASPER
</b>That's why I like 'em. They wake my brain up.
Casper does the wip-it.
STANLEY, a tall black kid with dreads, walks out of the kitchen. He has a cordless phone in his hand. Casper continues to do wip-it's. One after another.
<b>TELLY
</b>So, how many people live here now?
<b>PAUL
</b>I don't know, eight or nine.
<b>TELLY
</b>Where does everyone sleep?
<b>PAUL
</b>Everywhere. Fuckin flophouse. We're still short on the rent. If you want, you and Casper can move in. You guys can share the bathtub.
<b>STANLEY
</b>Yo Telly. Jennie says what's up.
<b>TELLY
</b>Jennie who?
<b>STANLEY
</b>Jennie. You know.
<b>CASPER
</b>That girl you boned last year. Remember?
<b>TELLY
</b>Man I haven't seen her in forever. What the fuck's she up to?
<b>INT. RUBY'S ROOM - DAY
</b>
Five girls are sitting in a small room. They are smoking. They're all in a circle laughing. The girls are all good friends. A few of them have rings in their lips and eyebrows. A big dirty fish tank is on one of the bookshelves.
Ruby is a nice looking girl, age 17. She is Spanish, her hair is slicked back, she chain-smokes.
Jennie is a 15 year old high school sophomore. She is white. She is very pretty, with an uncommon touch of innocence about her.
The next episode is going to jump-cut back and forth between Paul's apartment and
|
peach
|
How many times does the word 'peach' appear in the text?
| 3
|
mom. Not only is she a lush, but
she also hates me.
<b>
</b> Diane is beautiful, but there is an essential hardness to her
that comes from a life spent trading on her looks. The
blouse and mini-skirt she wears are inappropriately revealing
for the occasion of her daughter's birthday.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.)
</b> A few days before the party, I
overhear her on the phone ordering
me a male stripper. Nothing says "I
love you" like ten inches of man
meat in your face.
<b>
</b> Diane and the other mothers are talking about Mini's dancing.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.)
</b> And knowing dear old ma, she'll try
and nail him after the party...in
my bed.
<b>
</b> Mini's friend KAYLA, a little rounder, but also brash, comes
dancing over. She's swaying her hips provocatively at Mini,
almost challenging her.
<b>
</b> MIKE RUDELL, a tanned and trim man of 55, watches their
display, clearly enjoying the way it's jump-starting his
imagination.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 3.
</b><b> CONTINUED:
</b><b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.)
</b> That guy? Our neighbor Mike Rudell,
big shot TV producer and the guy my
mom screws whenever the batteries
run out.
<b>
</b> Kayla and Mini begin dancing together in a very explicit way,
clearly trying to make the adults uncomfortable.
<b> MINI
</b> Yo, bee-ach!
<b>
</b><b> KAYLA
</b> Yo, birthday bee-ach!
<b>
</b><b> MINI
</b> Is it on?
<b>
</b><b> KAYLA
</b> Oh, it's on!
<b>
</b><b> MINI
</b> That's my girl!
<b>
</b> Mini grabs Kayla and dips her low.
<b>
</b><b> INT. THE KITCHEN - LATER.
</b><b>
</b> Kayla instructs some CATERERS to start wheeling a giant
birthday cake into the living room. The caterers look
confused, but Kayla is insistent and the young men obey,
starting to wheel the cake down the long hall.
<b>
</b><b> INT. THE LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS
</b><b>
</b> The cake emerges from the hallway. The caterers begin singing
"Happy Birthday", as Diane turns to see it and her eyes flash
rage. As Diane comes storming over, we switch to SLOW MOTION.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.)
</b> See, to understand me, you need to
understand that life, in my
opinion, is all about new
experiences. "Firsts" is what I
call them.
<b>
</b> As she strides across the room, the look of vitriolic rage on
Diane's face grows stronger with every step.
<b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> (CONTINUED)
</b><b>
</b><b> 4.
</b><b> CONTINUED:
</b><b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.) (CONT'D)
</b> Somewhere around fourteen, when I
had my first...rhymes with duck, I
realized that the goal of life, any
life, should be to cram as many
"firsts" into it as possible.
<b>
</b> We switch back to real time.
<b>
</b><b> DIANE
</b> What the hell are you doing? I said
wait until-
(looking around)
She's not even here, you morons!
<b>
</b> A YOUNG CATERER'S face turns white.
<b>
</b><b> CATERER
</b> But, but her friend said--
<b>
</b> POP! Suddenly the lid to the cake flies off and from behind
we see A NUDE MINI rises out of it like Venus on the half
shell.
<b>
</b><b> MINI
</b><b> SURPRISE!
</b><b>
</b><b> MINI'S POV:
</b><b>
</b> A collection of reactions from the party goers: The mothers
are numb, the fathers pretend to be disturbed, while copping
looks, and her friends are in stitches. Some are even waving
dollar bills. M
<b> MINI (V.O.) (CONT'D)
</b> That was definitely a first, but
more importantly, it was the first
time I really understood my
potential...And that's when it all
started.
<b>
</b> Mini leans over and gives her STUNNED mom a big hug.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (CONT'D)
</b> (doing her best Donna
Reed)
Oh, Mom, this is the best birthday
ever!
<b>
</b><b> 5.
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b>
</b><b> INT. MINI'S BATHROOM - NIGHT
</b><b>
</b> Mini stands in a bathrobe with a towel around her head,
having just taken a shower. She removes the towel to reveal
she's just changed her hair color to FLAMING RED.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.)
</b> That little stunt got me grounded
for a week, but it was worth it.
<b>
</b><b> CUT TO:
</b><b>
</b> Mini blow drying her hair.
<b>
</b><b> MINI (V.O.) (CONT'D)
</b> See, I just don't understand people
who live their lives as one big
routine.
<b>
</b><b>
|
trading
|
How many times does the word 'trading' appear in the text?
| 0
|
own big farm, but rented a quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They
were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure,
Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a
bigger crop next year. Claude was always a little reserved with
Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of
the hap-hazard way in which things were done on the Wheeler
place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard
had not even gone through the Frankfort High School, and he was
already a more successful man than Claude was ever likely to be.
Leonard did think these things, but he was fond of Claude, all
the same.
At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road
across the level country that lay between Frankfort and the
rougher land along Lovely Creek. Leonard's attention was largely
given up to admiring the faultless behaviour of his engine.
Presently he chuckled to himself and turned to Claude.
"I wonder if you'd take it all right if I told you a joke on
Bayliss?"
"I expect I would." Claude's tone was not at all eager.
"You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye
a little off colour? Did he tell you how he got it?"
"No. I didn't ask him."
"Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said
he was hunting around his place for something in the dark and ran
into a reaper. Well, I'm the reaper!"
Claude looked interested. "You mean to say Bayliss was in a
fight?"
Leonard laughed. "Lord, no! Don't you know Bayliss? I went in
there to pay a bill yesterday, and Susie Gray and another girl
came in to sell tickets for the firemen's dinner. An advance man
for this circus was hanging around, and he began talking a little
smart,--nothing rough, but the way such fellows will. The girls
handed it back to him, and sold him three tickets and shut him
up. I couldn't see how Susie thought so quick what to say. The
minute the girls went out Bayliss started knocking them; said all
the country girls were getting too fresh and knew more than they
ought to about managing sporty men and right there I reached out
and handed him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap
him, not to give him a black eye. But you can't always regulate
things, and I was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at
me. I'm bigger than he is, and I wanted to give him satisfaction.
Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He stood there getting redder
and redder, and his eyes watered. I don't say he cried, but his
eyes watered. 'All right, Bayliss,' said I. 'Slow with your
fists, if that's your principle; but slow with your tongue,
too,--especially when the parties mentioned aren't present.'"
"Bayliss will never get over that," was Claude's only comment.
"He don't have to!" Leonard threw up his head. "I'm a good
customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of binding
twine goes down!"
For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to
get up a long, rough hill on high gear. Sometimes he could
make that hill, and sometimes he couldn't, and he was not able to
account for the difference. After he pulled the second lever with
some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he noticed
that his companion was disconcerted.
"I'll tell you what, Leonard," Claude spoke in a strained voice,
"I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the
road and give me a chance."
Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the
down side of the hill. "What the devil are you talking about,
boy?"
"You think you've got our measure all right, but you ought to
give me a chance first."
Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands,
lying on the wheel. "You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling
you all this for, if I didn't know you were another breed of
cats? I never thought you got on too well with Bayliss yourself."
"I don't, but I won't have you thinking you can slap the men in
my family whenever you feel like it." Claude knew that his
explanation sounded foolish, and his voice, in spite of all he
could do, was weak and angry.
Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy's feelings. "Lord,
Claude, I know you're a fighter. Bayliss never was. I went to
school with him."
The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn't let Leonard take him
home. He jumped out of the car with a curt goodnight, and ran
across the dusky fields toward the light that shone from the
house on the hill. At the little bridge over the creek, he
stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly
composed before he went in to see his mother.
"Ran against a reaper in the dark!" he muttered aloud, clenching
his fist.
Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant
barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew calmer.
Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that one had sometimes to
feel responsible for the behaviour of people whose natures were
wholly antipathetic to one's own.
III
The circus was on Saturday. The next morning Claude was standing
at his dresser, shaving. His beard was already strong, a shade
darker than his hair and not so red as his skin. His eyebrows and
long lashes were a pale corn-colour--made his blue eyes seem
lighter than they were, and, he thought, gave a look of shyness
and weakness to the upper part of his face. He was exactly the
sort of looking boy he didn't want to be. He especially hated his
head,--so big that he had trouble in buying his hats, and
uncompromisingly square in shape; a perfect block-head. His name
was another source of humiliation. Claude: it was a "chump" name,
like Elmer and Roy; a hayseed name trying to be fine. In country
schools there was always a red-headed, warty-handed, runny-nosed
little boy who was called Claude. His good physique he took for
granted; smooth, muscular arms and legs, and strong shoulders, a
farmer boy might be supposed to have. Unfortunately he had none
of his father's physical repose, and his strength often asserted
itself inharmoniously. The storms that went on in his mind
sometimes made him rise, or sit down, or lift something, more
violently than there was any apparent reason for his doing.
The household slept late on Sunday morning; even Mahailey did not
get up until seven. The general signal for breakfast was the
smell of doughnuts frying. This morning Ralph rolled out of bed
at the last minute and callously put on his clean underwear
without taking a bath. This cost him not one regret, though he
took time to polish his new ox-blood shoes tenderly with a pocket
handkerchief. He reached the table when all the others were half
through breakfast, and made his peace by genially asking his
mother if she didn't want him to drive her to church in the car.
"I'd like to go if I can get the work done in time," she said,
doubtfully glancing at the clock.
"Can't Mahailey tend to things for you this morning?"
Mrs. Wheeler hesitated. "Everything but the separator, she can.
But she can't fit all the parts together. It's a good deal of
work, you know."
"Now, Mother," said Ralph good-humouredly, as he emptied the
syrup pitcher over his cakes, "you're prejudiced. Nobody ever
thinks of skimming milk now-a-days. Every up-to-date farmer uses
a separator."
Mrs. Wheeler's pale eyes twinkled. "Mahailey and I will never be
quite up-to-date, Ralph. We're old-fashioned, and I don't know but
you'd better let us be. I could see the advantage of a separator
if we milked half-a-dozen cows. It's a very ingenious machine.
But it's a great deal more work to scald it and fit it together
than it was to take care of the milk in the old way."
"It won't be when you get used to it," Ralph assured her. He was
the chief mechanic of the Wheeler farm, and when the farm
implements and the automobiles did not give him enough to do, he
went to town and bought machines for the house. As soon as
Mahailey got used to a washing-machine or a churn, Ralph, to keep
up with the bristling march of invention, brought home a still
newer one. The mechanical dish-washer she had never been able to
use, and patent flat-irons and oil-stoves drove her wild.
Claude told his mother to go upstairs and dress; he would scald
the separator while Ralph got the car ready. He was still working
at it when his brother came in from the garage to wash his hands.
"You really oughtn't to load mother up with things like this,
Ralph," he exclaimed fretfully. "Did you ever try washing this
damned thing yourself?"
"Of course I have. If Mrs. Dawson can manage it, I should think
mother could."
"Mrs. Dawson is a younger woman. Anyhow, there's no point in
trying to make machinists of Mahailey and mother."
Ralph lifted his eyebrows to excuse Claude's bluntness. "See
here," he said persuasively, "don't you go encouraging her into
thinking she can't change her ways. Mother's entitled to all the
labour-saving devices we can get her."
Claude rattled the thirty-odd graduated metal funnels which he
was trying to fit together in their proper sequence. "Well, if
this is labour-saving"
The younger boy giggled and ran upstairs for his panama hat. He
never quarrelled. Mrs. Wheeler sometimes said it was wonderful,
how much Ralph would take from Claude.
After Ralph and his mother had gone off in the car, Mr. Wheeler
drove to see his German neighbour, Gus Yoeder, who had just
bought a blooded bull. Dan and Jerry were pitching horseshoes
down behind the barn. Claude told Mahailey he was going to the
cellar to put up the swinging shelf she had been wanting, so that
the rats couldn't get at her vegetables.
"Thank you, Mr. Claude. I don't know what does make the rats so
bad. The cats catches one most every day, too."
"I guess they come up from the barn. I've got a nice wide board
down at the garage for your shelf." The cellar was cemented, cool
and dry, with deep closets for canned fruit and flour and
groceries, bins for coal and cobs, and a dark-room full of
photographer's apparatus. Claude took his place at the
carpenter's bench under one of the square windows. Mysterious
objects stood about him in the grey twilight; electric batteries,
old bicycles and typewriters, a machine for making cement
fence-posts, a vulcanizer, a stereopticon with a broken lens. The
mechanical toys Ralph could not operate successfully, as well as
those he had got tired of, were stored away here. If they were
left in the barn, Mr. Wheeler saw them too often, and sometimes,
when they happened to be in his way, he made sarcastic comments.
Claude had begged his mother to let him pile this lumber into a
wagon and dump it into some washout hole along the creek; but
Mrs. Wheeler said he must not think of such a thing; it would
hurt Ralph's feelings. Nearly every time Claude went into the
cellar, he made a desperate resolve to clear the place out some
day, reflecting bitterly that the money this wreckage cost would
have put a boy through college decently.
While Claude was planing off the board he meant to suspend from
the joists, Mahailey left her work and came down to watch him.
She made some pretence of hunting for pickled onions, then seated
herself upon a cracker box; close at hand there was a plush
"spring-rocker" with one arm gone, but it wouldn't have been her
idea of good manners to sit there. Her eyes had a kind of sleepy
contentment in them as she followed Claude's motions. She watched
him as if he were a baby playing. Her hands lay comfortably in
her lap.
"Mr. Ernest ain't been over for a long time. He ain't mad about
nothin', is he?"
"Oh, no! He's awful busy this summer. I saw him in town
yesterday. We went to the circus together."
Mahailey smiled and nodded. "That's nice. I'm glad for you two
boys to have a good time. Mr. Ernest's a nice boy; I always liked
him first rate. He's a little feller, though. He ain't big like
you, is he? I guess he ain't as tall as Mr. Ralph, even."
"Not quite," said Claude between strokes. "He's strong, though,
and gets through a lot of work."
"Oh, I know! I know he is. I know he works hard. All them
foreigners works hard, don't they, Mr. Claude? I reckon he liked
the circus. Maybe they don't have circuses like our'n, over where
he come from."
Claude began to tell her about the clown elephant and the trained
dogs, and she sat listening to him with her pleased, foolish
smile; there was something wise and far-seeing about her smile,
too.
Mahailey had come to them long ago, when Claude was only a few
months old. She had been brought West by a shiftless Virginia
family which went to pieces and scattered under the rigours of
pioneer farm-life. When the mother of the family died, there was
nowhere for Mahailey to go, and Mrs. Wheeler took her in.
Mahailey had no one to take care of her, and Mrs. Wheeler had no
one to help her with the work; it had turned out very well.
Mahailey had had a hard life in her young days, married to a
savage mountaineer who often abused her and never provided for
her. She could remember times when she sat in the cabin, beside
an empty meal-barrel and a cold iron pot, waiting for "him" to
bring home a squirrel he had shot or a chicken he had stolen. Too
often he brought nothing but a jug of mountain whiskey and a pair
of brutal fists. She thought herself well off now, never to have
to beg for food or go off into the woods to gather firing, to be
sure of a warm bed and shoes and decent clothes. Mahailey was one
of eighteen children; most of them grew up lawless or
half-witted, and two of her brothers, like her husband, ended
their lives in jail. She had never been sent to school, and could
not read or write. Claude, when he was a little boy, tried to
teach her to read, but what she learned one night she had
forgotten by the next. She could count, and tell the time of day
by the clock, and she was very proud of knowing the alphabet and
of being able to spell out letters on the flour sacks and coffee
packages. "That's a big A." she would murmur, "and that there's a
little a."
Mahailey was shrewd in her estimate of people, and Claude thought
her judgment sound in a good many things. He knew she sensed all
the shades of personal feeling, the accords and antipathies in
the household, as keenly as he did, and he would have hated to
lose her good opinion. She consulted him in all her little
difficulties. If the leg of the kitchen table got wobbly, she
knew he would put in new screws for her. When she broke a handle
off her rolling pin, he put on another, and he fitted a haft to
her favourite butcher-knife after every one else said it must be
thrown away. These objects, after they had been mended, acquired
a new value in her eyes, and she liked to work with them. When
Claude helped her lift or carry anything, he never avoided
touching her, this she felt deeply. She suspected that Ralph was a
little ashamed of her, and would prefer to have some brisk young
thing about the kitchen.
On days like this, when other people were not about, Mahailey
liked to talk to Claude about the things they did together when
he was little; the Sundays when they used to wander along the
creek, hunting for wild grapes and watching the red squirrels; or
trailed across the high pastures to a wild-plum thicket at the
north end of the Wheeler farm. Claude could remember warm spring
days when the plum bushes were all in blossom and Mahailey used
to lie down under them and sing to herself, as if the honey-heavy
sweetness made her drowsy; songs without words, for the most
part, though he recalled one mountain dirge which said over and
over, "And they laid Jesse James in his grave."
IV
The time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling
denominational college on the outskirts of the state capital,
where he had already spent two dreary and unprofitable winters.
"Mother," he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak
to her alone, "I wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to
the State University."
She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.
"But why, Claude?"
"Well, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the
Temple aren't much good. Most of them are just preachers who
couldn't make a living at preaching."
The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into
his mother's face. "Son, don't say such things. I can't believe
but teachers are more interested in their students when they are
concerned for their spiritual development, as well as the mental.
Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State
University are not Christian men; they even boast of it, in some
cases."
"Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate
they know their subjects. These little pin-headed preachers like
Weldon do a lot of harm, running about the country talking. He's
sent around to pull in students for his own school. If he didn't
get them he'd lose his job. I wish he'd never got me. Most of the
fellows who flunk out at the State come to us, just as he did."
"But how can there be any serious study where they give so much
time to athletics and frivolity? They pay their football
|
minute
|
How many times does the word 'minute' appear in the text?
| 1
|
You think they're all telling the
truth? If they're so smart and
good looking, why are they beating
off into a cup?
<b> BOBBY
</b> Have you ever fucked a guy with red
hair and freckles?
<b> ZOE
</b> No, and I won't have to.
<b> BOBBY
</b> But what about your kid? No one's
going to want to fuck your kid.
(beat)
That came out wrong.
<b> ZOE
</b> Yeah...it's a good thing you're not
going to be the father.
<b>INT. WAVERLY INN - NIGHT
</b>
<b>TITLE UP: EIGHT WEEKS AGO
</b>
Bobby spits out a mouthful of Sauvignon Blanc.
<b> BOBBY
</b> What? I can't be the father!
<b> ZOE
</b> Come on, we don't have to have sex.
<b> BOBBY
</b> Oh, Jesus, I didn't even think
about that. Rewind, rewind,
rewind...
<b> ZOE
</b> You're one of my best friends.
Don't you want to help me?
<b> 4.
</b>
<b> BOBBY
</b> Yeah, but...that's too much. I'll
walk your dog, tell you when you
look fat, be honest about your
eyebrows...
<b> ZOE
</b> Just a few sperm. Big deal. You
waste billions of them every night.
<b> BOBBY
</b> You know I flee at the slightest
chance of intimacy. Do you see
these bags under my eyes? Ricardo
slept over last night, and he
wanted to hold me. I actually had
to fake a seizure.
<b> ZOE
</b> Forget it. Forget the whole thing.
Zoe sighs and puts her head in her hands.
<b> MONA (V.O.)
</b> Forget the whole thing. It's just
a phase...
<b>INT. MONA'S APARTMENT - NIGHT
</b>
<b>TITLE UP: TWELVE WEEKS AGO.
</b>
Zoe and MONA, Zoe's age but looks much older, sit at the
kitchen table.
<b> MONA
</b> You don't want kids. Trust me.
<b> ZOE
</b> Easy for you to say. You have
four.
<b> MONA
</b> Yeah, and it's awful.
Three CHILDREN run through the kitchen yelling and screaming.
A beat later, a TODDLER runs after them crying.
<b> MONA (CONT'D)
</b> They've ruined my life.
<b> ZOE
</b> Come on...
<b> 5.
</b>
<b> MONA
</b> Have you seen my vagina?
Zoe shakes her head.
<b> MONA (CONT'D)
</b> Do you want to?
Zoe shakes her head again.
<b> MONA (CONT'D)
</b> I would do that for you. To prove
to you that you don't want to have
kids, I will show you my vagina.
<b> ZOE
</b> I don't want to see your vagina. I
want a baby. My own baby.
<b> MONA
</b> Is it possible you're just a little
lonely? You know, you haven't met
the right guy and--
<b> ZOE
</b> It's not about a guy. I don't need
a guy. I don't even think I want a
guy at this point. I've dated a
hundred guys in the last five
years, and not one of them is even
close to being the one. How long
am I supposed to wait?
<b> MONA
</b> You never know. He could be right
around the corner.
<b> ZOE
</b> Well, then he's late. And I hate
people who are late. And what if
he's not right around the corner?
What if he's miles away?
Zoe shakes her head. She becomes very serious.
<b> ZOE (CONT'D)
</b> I want to have a baby. And time is
running out. I hear a clock
ticking every time I close my eyes.
I need it to stop.
We hear a loud DING.
<b> 6.
</b>
<b>INT. EXAM ROOM - DAY
</b>
Zoe opens her eyes. We're back in the exam room. She looks
at the timer, which just hit zero. She smiles.
<b> ZOE
</b> Ding.
Then a tear forms in the corner of her eye. She wipes it
away. She wipes a tear from the other eye. Happy tears.
Then she looks at her legs high above her on the table.
<b> ZOE (CONT'D)
</b> How the fuck am I supposed to get
down from here?
<b>INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE HALLWAY - LATER
</b>
Zoe walks down the hall with her legs pressed firmly
together, moving only from the knees down. Dr. Harris
passes.
<b> DR. HARRIS
</b> You don't have to walk like that.
<b> ZOE
</b> Oh. Okay.
Zoe separates her legs an inch. And then closes them.
<b> ZOE (CONT'D)
</b> Should we hug? We might have just
made a baby together.
<b>INT. WAITING ROOM - MOMENTS LATER
</b>
Zoe walks through the waiting room with her legs still
pressed together. She sees two PREGNANT WOMAN, touches her
own stomach and smiles. She finally feels part of this
exclusive baby club.
<b> ZOE
</b> Hi.
<b> PREGNANT WOMEN
</b> Hi.
<b>INT. ELEVATOR - DAY
</b>
Zoe enters the elevator where there is a WOMAN holding a
BABY. Zoe smiles at them. Another member of the club...
<b> 7.
</b>
<b> ZOE
</b> Hi.
<b> WOMAN
</b> Hi.
The elevator descends. Zoe continues to stare at the baby
with a big smile. She stares for an uncomfortably long time.
<b> WOMAN (CONT'D)
</b> You're starting to freak me out.
<b> ZOE
</b> Sorry.
Zoe looks down. After a beat, she sneaks another look.
<b> WOMAN
</b> Stop it.
<b>EXT. MADISON AVENUE - DAY
</b>
It's POURING outside. The kind of rain that turns umbrellas
inside out. NEW YORKERS run for cover with newspapers over
their heads.
Despite the rain, Zoe skips out of the building with her
hands in the air and twirls around. Realizing that she's
spread her legs too far apart, she snaps them back together.
A WOMAN pushing a baby stroller covered in plastic runs by.
<b> ZOE
</b> Hi!
Zoe looks uptown for a cab. Nope. Nothing. She starts to
walk, still keeping her legs firmly pressed together. She
rounds the corner towards the subway station and then,
miraculously, spies a cab.
<b> ZOE (CONT'D)
</b> Taxi!
She runs (little steps) across the street.
<b>INT. TAXI - MOMENTS LATER
</b>
Zoe closes the door behind her.
<b> ZOE
</b> Hallelujah!
<b> 8.
</b>
As soon as the word comes out of her mouth, she notices
someone entering the cab from the other side.
This is STAN, early 40s, but looks more like a college kid --
faded jeans, t-shirt, cute, messy hair.
<b> ZOE (CONT'D)
</b> Uh...excuse me. This is my cab.
<b> STAN
</b> You own it?
<b> ZOE
</b> No, but I'm about to rent it.
<b> STAN
</b> Actually, if we're being technical,
you kind of stole it.
<b> ZOE
</b> I don't think so.
<b> STAN
</b> If you see someone about to get in
a cab, you can't just run in from
the other side and say it's yours.
<b> ZOE
</b> I didn't see you.
<b> STAN
</b> I saw you see me.
<b> ZOE
</b> (to the cabbie)
Sir, who saw you first?
The CABBIE picks up his paper and starts to read.
<b>
|
later
|
How many times does the word 'later' appear in the text?
| 3
|
'No man living could throw that rock across this glade. It's a task for
siege engines. Yet here there are no mangonels or ballistas.'
'Perhaps it was thrown by some such engine from afar,' she suggested.
He shook his head. 'It didn't fall from above. It came from yonder
thicket. See how the twigs are broken? It was thrown as a man might
throw a pebble. But who? What? Come!'
She hesitantly followed him into the thicket. Inside the outer ring of
leafy brush, the undergrowth was less dense. Utter silence brooded over
all. The springy sward gave no sign of footprint. Yet from this
mysterious thicket had hurtled that boulder, swift and deadly. Conan
bent closer to the sward, where the grass was crushed down here and
there. He shook his head angrily. Even to his keen eyes it gave no clue
as to what had stood or trodden there. His gaze roved to the green roof
above their heads, a solid ceiling of thick leaves and interwoven
arches. And he froze suddenly.
Then rising, sword in hand, he began to back away, thrusting Olivia
behind him.
'Out of here, quick!' he urged in a whisper that congealed the girl's
blood.
'What is it? What do you see?'
'Nothing,' he answered guardedly, not halting his wary retreat.
'But what is it, then? What lurks in this thicket?'
'Death!' he answered, his gaze still fixed on the brooding jade arches
that shut out the sky.
Once out of the thicket, he took her hand and led her swiftly through
the thinning trees, until they mounted a grassy slope, sparsely treed,
and emerged upon a low plateau, where the grass grew taller and the
trees were few and scattered. And in the midst of that plateau rose a
long broad structure of crumbling greenish stone.
They gazed in wonder. No legends named such a building on any island of
Vilayet. They approached it warily, seeing that moss and lichen crawled
over the stones, and the broken roof gaped to the sky. On all sides lay
bits and shards of masonry, half hidden in the waving grass, giving the
impression that once many buildings rose there, perhaps a whole town.
But now only the long hall-like structure rose against the sky, and its
walls leaned drunkenly among the crawling vines.
Whatever doors had once guarded its portals had long rotted away. Conan
and his companion stood in the broad entrance and stared inside.
Sunlight streamed in through gaps in the walls and roof, making the
interior a dim weave of light and shadow. Grasping his sword firmly,
Conan entered, with the slouching gait of a hunting panther, sunken head
and noiseless feet. Olivia tiptoed after him.
Once within, Conan grunted in surprize, and Olivia stifled a scream.
'Look! Oh, look!'
'I see,' he answered. 'Nothing to fear. They are statues.'
'But how life-like--and how evil!' she whispered, drawing close to him.
They stood in a great hall, whose floor was of polished stone, littered
with dust and broken stones, which had fallen from the ceiling. Vines,
growing between the stones, masked the apertures. The lofty roof, flat
and undomed, was upheld by thick columns, marching in rows down the
sides of the walls. And in each space between these columns stood a
strange figure.
They were statues, apparently of iron, black and shining as if
continually polished. They were life-sized, depicting tall, lithely
powerful men, with cruel hawk-like faces. They were naked, and every
swell, depression and contour of joint and sinew was represented with
incredible realism. But the most life-like feature was their proud,
intolerant faces. These features were not cast in the same mold. Each
face possessed its own individual characteristics, though there was a
tribal likeness between them all. There was none of the monotonous
uniformity of decorative art, in the faces at least.
'They seem to be listening--and waiting!' whispered the girl uneasily.
Conan rang his hilt against one of the images.
'Iron,' he pronounced. 'But Crom! In what molds were they cast?'
He shook his head and shrugged his massive shoulders in puzzlement.
Olivia glanced timidly about the great silent hall. Only the ivy-grown
stones, the tendril-clasped pillars, with the dark figures brooding
between them, met her gaze. She shifted uneasily and wished to be gone,
but the images held a strange fascination for her companion. He examined
them in detail, and barbarian-like, tried to break off their limbs. But
their material resisted his best efforts. He could neither disfigure nor
dislodge from its niche a single image. At last he desisted, swearing in
his wonder.
'What manner of men were these copied from?' he inquired of the world at
large. 'These figures are black, yet they are not like negroes. I have
never seen their like.'
'Let us go into the sunlight,' urged Olivia, and he nodded, with a
baffled glance at the brooding shapes along the walls.
So they passed out of the dusky hall into the clear blaze of the summer
sun. She was surprized to note its position in the sky; they had spent
more time in the ruins than she had guessed.
'Let us take to the boat again,' she suggested. 'I am afraid here. It is
a strange evil place. We do not know when we may be attacked by whatever
cast the rock.'
'I think we're safe as long as we're not under the trees,' he answered.
'Come.'
The plateau, whose sides fell away toward the wooded shores on the east,
west and south, sloped upward toward the north to abut on a tangle of
rocky cliffs, the highest point of the island. Thither Conan took his
way, suiting his long stride to his companion's gait. From time to time
his glance rested inscrutably upon her, and she was aware of it.
They reached the northern extremity of the plateau, and stood gazing up
the steep pitch of the cliffs. Trees grew thickly along the rim of the
plateau east and west of the cliffs, and clung to the precipitous
incline. Conan glanced at these trees suspiciously, but he began the
ascent, helping his companion on the climb. The slope was not sheer, and
was broken by ledges and boulders. The Cimmerian, born in a hill
country, could have run up it like a cat, but Olivia found the going
difficult. Again and again she felt herself lifted lightly off her feet
and over some obstacle that would have taxed her strength to surmount,
and her wonder grew at the sheer physical power of the man. She no
longer found his touch repugnant. There was a promise of protection in
his iron clasp.
At last they stood on the ultimate pinnacle, their hair stirring in the
sea wind. From their feet the cliffs fell away sheerly three or four
hundred feet to a narrow tangle of woodlands bordering the beach.
Looking southward they saw the whole island lying like a great oval
mirror, its bevelled edges sloping down swiftly into a rim of green,
except where it broke in the pitch of the cliffs. As far as they could
see, on all sides stretched the blue waters, still, placid, fading into
dreamy hazes of distance.
'The sea is still,' sighed Olivia. 'Why should we not take up our
journey again?'
Conan, poised like a bronze statue on the cliffs, pointed northward.
Straining her eyes, Olivia saw a white fleck that seemed to hang
suspended in the aching haze.
'What is it?'
'A sail.'
'Hyrkanians?'
'Who can tell, at this distance?'
'They will anchor here--search the island for us!' she cried in quick
panic.
'I doubt it. They come from the north, so they can not be searching for
us. They may stop for some other reason, in which case we'll have to
hide as best we can. But I believe it's either pirate, or an Hyrkanian
galley returning from some northern raid. In the latter case they are
not likely to anchor here. But we can't put to sea until they've gone
out of sight, for they're coming from the direction in which we must go.
Doubtless they'll pass the island tonight, and at dawn we can go on our
way.'
'Then we must spend the night here?' she shivered.
'It's safest.'
'Then let us sleep here, on the crags,' she urged.
He shook his head, glancing at the stunted trees, at the marching woods
below, a green mass which seemed to send out tendrils straggling up the
sides of the cliffs.
'Here are too many trees. We'll sleep in the ruins.'
She cried out in protest.
'Nothing will harm you there,' he soothed. 'Whatever threw the stone at
us did not follow us out of the woods. There was nothing to show that
any wild thing lairs in the ruins. Besides, you are soft-skinned, and
used to shelter and dainties. I could sleep naked in the snow and feel
no discomfort, but the dew would give you cramps, were we to sleep in
the open.'
Olivia helplessly acquiesced, and they descended the cliffs, crossed the
plateau and once more approached the gloomy, age-haunted ruins. By this
time the sun was sinking below the plateau rim. They had found fruit in
the trees near the cliffs, and these formed their supper, both food and
drink.
The southern night swept down quickly, littering the dark blue sky with
great white stars, and Conan entered the shadowy ruins, drawing the
reluctant Olivia after him. She shivered at the sight of those tense
black shadows in their niches along the walls. In the darkness that the
starlight only faintly touched, she could not make out their outlines;
she could only sense their attitude of waiting--waiting as they had
waited for untold centuries.
Conan had brought a great armful of tender branches, well leafed. These
he heaped to make a couch for her, and she lay upon it, with a curious
sensation as of one lying down to sleep in a serpent's lair.
Whatever her forebodings, Conan did not share them. The Cimmerian sat
down near her, his back against a pillar, his sword across his knees.
His eyes gleamed like a panther's in the dusk.
'Sleep, girl,' said he. 'My slumber is light as a wolf's. Nothing can
enter this hall without awaking me.'
Olivia did not reply. From her bed of leaves she watched the immobile
figure, indistinct in the soft darkness. How strange, to move in
fellowship with a barbarian, to be cared for and protected by one of a
race, tales of which had frightened her as a child! He came of a people
bloody, grim and ferocious. His kinship to the wild was apparent in his
every action; it burned in his smoldering eyes. Yet he had not harmed
her, and her worst oppressor had been a man the world called civilized.
As a delicious languor stole over her relaxing limbs and she sank into
foamy billows of slumber, her last waking thought was a drowsy
recollection of the firm touch of Conan's fingers on her soft flesh.
2
Olivia dreamed, and through her dreams crawled a suggestion of lurking
evil, like a black serpent writhing through flower gardens. Her dreams
were fragmentary and colorful, exotic shards of a broken, unknown
pattern, until they crystalized into a scene of horror and madness,
etched against a background of cyclopean stones and pillars.
She saw a great hall, whose lofty ceiling was upheld by stone columns
marching in even rows along the massive walls. Among these pillars
fluttered great green and scarlet parrots, and the hall was thronged
with black-skinned, hawk-faced warriors. They were not negroes. Neither
they nor their garments nor weapons resembled anything of the world the
dreamer knew.
They were pressing about one bound to a pillar: a slender white-skinned
youth, with a cluster of golden curls about his alabaster brow. His
beauty was not altogether human--like the dream of a god, chiseled out
of living marble.
The black warriors laughed at him, jeered and taunted in a strange
tongue. The lithe naked form writhed beneath their cruel hands. Blood
trickled down the ivory thighs to spatter on the polished floor. The
screams of the victim echoed through the hall; then lifting his head
toward the ceiling and the skies beyond, he cried out a name in an awful
voice. A dagger in an ebon hand cut short his cry, and the golden head
rolled on the ivory breast.
As if in answer to that desperate cry, there was a rolling thunder as of
celestial chariot-wheels, and a figure stood before the slayers, as if
materialized out of empty air. The form was of a man, but no mortal man
ever wore such an aspect of inhuman beauty. There was an unmistakable
resemblance between him and the youth who dropped lifeless in his
chains, but the alloy of humanity that softened the godliness of the
youth was lacking in the features of the stranger, awful and immobile in
their beauty.
The blacks shrank back before him, their eyes slits of fire. Lifting a
hand, he spoke, and his tones echoed through the silent halls in deep
rich waves of sound. Like men in a trance the black warriors fell back
until they were ranged along the walls in regular lines. Then from the
stranger's chiseled lips rang a terrible invocation and command:
'_Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!_'
At the blast of that awful cry, the black figures stiffened and froze.
Over their limbs crept a curious rigidity, an unnatural petrification.
The stranger touched the limp body of the youth, and the chains fell
away from it. He lifted the corpse in his arms; then ere he turned away,
his tranquil gaze swept again over the silent rows of ebony figures, and
he pointed to the moon, which gleamed in through the casements. And they
understood, those tense, waiting statues that had been men....
Olivia awoke, starting up on her couch of branches, a cold sweat beading
her skin. Her heart pounded loud in the silence. She glanced wildly
about. Conan slept against his pillar, his head fallen upon his massive
breast. The silvery radiance of the late moon crept through the gaping
roof, throwing long white lines along the dusty floor. She could see the
images dimly, black, tense--waiting. Fighting down a rising hysteria,
she saw the moonbeams rest lightly on the pillars and the shapes
between.
What was that? A tremor among the shadows where the moonlight fell. A
paralysis of horror gripped her, for where there should have been the
immobility of death, there was movement: a slow twitching, a flexing and
writhing of ebon limbs--an awful scream burst from her lips as she broke
the bonds that held her mute and motionless. At her shriek Conan shot
erect, teeth gleaming, sword lifted.
'The statues! The statues!--_Oh my God, the statues are coming to
life!_'
And with the cry she sprang through a crevice in the wall, burst madly
through the hindering vines, and ran, ran, ran--blind, screaming,
witless--until a grasp on her arm brought her up short and she shrieked
and fought against the arms that caught her, until a familiar voice
penetrated the mists of her terror, and she saw Conan's face, a mask of
bewilderment in the moonlight.
'What in Crom's name, girl? Did you have a nightmare?' His voice sounded
strange and far away. With a sobbing gasp she threw her arms about his
thick neck and clung to him convulsively, crying in panting catches.
'Where are they? Did they follow us?'
'Nobody followed us,' he answered.
She sat up, still clinging to him, and looked fearfully about. Her blind
flight had carried her to the southern edge of the plateau. Just below
them was the slope, its foot masked in the thick shadows of the woods.
Behind them she saw the ruins looming in the high-swinging moon.
'Did you not see them?--The statues, moving, lifting their hands, their
eyes glaring in the shadows?'
'I saw nothing,' answered the barbarian uneasily. 'I slept more soundly
than usual, because it has been so long since I have slumbered the night
through; yet I don't think anything could have entered the hall without
waking me.'
'Nothing entered,' a laugh of hysteria escaped her. 'It was something
there already. Ah, Mitra, we lay down to sleep among them, like sheep
making their bed in the shambles!'
'What are you talking about?' he demanded. 'I woke at your cry, but
before I had time to look about me, I saw you rush out through the crack
in the wall. I pursued you, lest you come to harm. I thought you had a
nightmare.'
'So I did!' she shivered. 'But the reality was more grisly than the
dream. Listen!' And she narrated all that she had dreamed and thought
to see.
Conan listened attentively. The natural skepticism of the sophisticated
man was not his. His mythology contained ghouls, goblins, and
necromancers. After she had finished, he sat silent, absently toying
with his sword.
'The youth they tortured was like the tall man who came?' he asked at
last.
'As like as son to father,' she answered, and hesitantly: 'If the mind
could conceive of the offspring of a union of divinity with humanity, it
would picture that youth. The gods of old times mated sometimes with
mortal women, our legends tell us.'
'What gods?' he muttered.
'The nameless, forgotten ones. Who knows? They have gone back into the
still waters of the lakes, the quiet hearts of the hills, the gulfs
beyond the stars. Gods are no more stable than men.'
'But if these shapes were men, blasted into iron images by some god or
devil, how can they come to life?'
'There is witchcraft in the moon,' she shuddered. '_He_ pointed at the
moon; while the moon shines on them, they live. So I believe.'
'But we were not pursued,' muttered Conan, glancing toward the brooding
ruins. 'You might have dreamed they moved. I am of a mind to return and
see.'
'No, no!' she cried, clutching him desperately. 'Perhaps
|
hang
|
How many times does the word 'hang' appear in the text?
| 0
|
is obviously a smart and serious establishment. They stop in front of
the man whose uniform is covered in blood; he appears to be the head
chef. Meet Soap.
<b>TOM
</b>What have you come as?
<b>SOAP
</b>Cupid stupid! That's the last time I am getting any more fruit off you
Tom. Call that fresh? There was more small hairy armoured things in
your fruit than there was fruit. You should open a butcher's, not a
grocer's.
<b>TOM
</b>If you will order stuff that comes from Kat-Man-Fucking-Du don't be
surprised if your fruit picks up a few tourists en route. ~ Never mind
that, what about the money?
<b>SOAP
</b>Get your fingers out of my soup!
<b>SLOW MOTION
</b>
Soap pulls out a bag from under where he is sitting.
<b>TOM
</b>(voice-over)
Soap is called Soap because he likes to keep his hands clean of any
unlawful behaviour. He is proud of his job, and even more proud that
it's legal.
<b>BACON
</b>(voice-over)
He's a stroppy sod but he's got more balls than a golfer, only he
doesn't know it. ' * Cut from completed film.
<b>16
</b>
<b>RELEASE SLOW MOTION]
</b>
Ed looks in bag.
<b>EDDY
</b>Are you sure you can afford twenty-five?
<b>SOAP
</b>Well that depends on how you look at it. I can afford it as long as I
see it again, if that's what you mean. You got the rest from the fat
man and Bacon?
Tom looks on with suspicion.
<b>TOM
</b>Who's this fat man, then?
<b>EDDY
</b>Bacon, the fat man and myself, and it's time to make a call to Harry.
<b>INT. HATCHET HARRY'S OFFICE - DAY
</b>
A hard-looking man of about fifty is sat behind a large antique desk.
On this desk is a hatchet resting in a block of wood, poised like a
judge's hammer. Harry is obviously in the sex game. Cluttered up in a
hazardous way are a selection of dildos, spanking paddles, etc. A
cabinet of fine-looking shotguns is placed behind. We have a split
screen involving EDDY and his friends (listening in) and Hatchet with
one hand on the phone and the other on a shotgun.
<b>HATCHET
</b>You got it all?
<b>INT. KITCHEN - DAY.
</b>
<b>EDDY
</b>A hundred grand.
<b>FREEZE SHOT OF HATCHET
</b>
<b>TOM
</b>(voice-over)
You see it's not easy to take a seat at this table; the money involved
has to be a hundred grand upwards and there is no shortage of punters.
<b>EDDY
</b>(voice-over)
The man who decides if you can play is this man Harry, or Hatchet Harry
as some including himself like to call him.
<b>RELEASE FREEZE SHOT OF HATCHET
</b>
<b>HATCHET
</b>Well if you got it, you got it. Now, if you don't mind . . .
The phone is slammed down.
<b>SHOT OF HATCHET
</b>
<b>SOAP
</b>(voice-over)
When the old bastard is not playing cards he's chasing a thousand debts
that ill-fated individuals owe for an array of reasons.
<b>BACON
</b>(voice-over)
Sex and sleaze and antique shotguns are all deep and dear in Harry's
stone cold heart.
Cut from completed film.
<b>RELEASE FREEZE SHOT OF HATCHET
</b>
<b>HATCHET
</b>What's this EDDY like, then?
The camera spins round to reveal a massive monster of a man sitting
opposite Hatchet. Meet Barry the Baptist.
<b>FREEZE SHOT OF BARRY
</b>
<b>EDDY
</b>(voice-over)
Hatchet has a colleague, a monster of a man: Barry the Baptist.
<b>BACON
</b>(voice-over)
The Baptist got his name from drowning people for Hatchet.
<b>TOM
</b>(voice-over)
But he needs him, because he is good at making sure debts get settled
and jobs get done.
<b>RELEASE FREEZE SHOT OF BARRY
</b>
<b>BARRY
</b>EDDY been shaking the knees of a lot of good players. The boy has a
rare ability, he seems to make cards transparent, got bluffing dow . .
<b>.
</b>
<b>HATCHET
</b>(interrupts)
All right, all right, so we can say he is good.
<b>BARRY
</b>Better than good, he is a fucking liability.
<b>HATCHET
</b>Where did he get a hundred grand?
<b>20
</b>
<b>BARRY
</b>
He has got some adhesive mates, they have tossed up between them.
<b>HATCHET
</b>And JD is his dad, and owns the whole property?
<b>BARRY
</b>No mortgage, no debts; lock, stock, the sodding lot . . . don't worry,
I got it under control.
<b>HATCHET
</b>Good, you can get this under control now.
A glossy Christie's brochure displaying a pair of impressive antique
hammer-lock shotguns is shoved in Barry's face.
It seems Lord Appleton Smythe has run out of money, and these little
beauties are up for auction, but I am not paying quarter of a million
quid for 'em, if you know what I mean Barry. One of my associates has
given me an address and the location of these lovelies. Make sure we
get everything from inside the gun cabinet. I don't want to know who
you use, as long as they are not complete muppets; and don't tell them
what they're worth.
Changing the subject.
'Ere! Hold on, what do you think of these? We are selling hundreds.
Holds up one of the spanking paddles.
<b>BARRY
</b>Er, very nice Harry. What's it for?
<b>HATCHET
</b>Don't play innocent with me Bazza; spanking!
The paddle is brought down hard on the desk: slap.
<b>INT. TORTURE ROOM - DAY
</b>
Meet the Dog. Dog is horrible. He is large and intimidating.
Administering pain is Dog's forte. He is also the Guy we cut from the
last scene `slap' to the teeing of a golf ball. Wallop. Dog pulls a
sadistic and alarmingly pleasurable face.
<b>DOG
</b>It's a dog eat dog world, lads, and I got bigger teeth than you.
We see an individual hanging upside down tied up with gaffer tape but
otherwise naked. An orange is stuck in the man's mouth. Dog is standing
on another man's chest who has a tee stuck between his teeth from where
Dog fires golf balls at the other unfortunate figure. The tied-up man
is Gordon. The other is Slick. Gordon nods his head erratically
implying that he has reached a decision.
(to Plank)
I think your man is trying to say something.
Pause.
Perhaps not; maybe I should have another swing just to make sure.
Agonised muffled screaming from Gordon. Slick (who has a tee in his
mouth) shuts his eyes in horror as the golf ball thumps into Gordon.
Yes, Gordon, is there something you would like to tell us?
The orange is removed from Gordon's mouth.
<b>GORDON
</b>(rushing to get the words out)
In the kitchen, under the floor . . .
<b>SLICK
</b>(interrupts)
Shut it, you idiot . . .
Dog swings the golf club round Slick's jaw, knocking him unconscious.
<b>DOG
</b>You were saying?
<b>GORDON
</b>It's in the karzi, pull the fishing wire under the seat. Jesus, for
god's sake let me down.
<b>PLANK
</b>Oh, Dog! . . . I think you want to have a look at this!
Plank returns holding an assortment of drugs and cash. Gordon starts to
scream. Dog picks up a steel for sharpening knives and throws it across
the room. Thunk. Silence follows. Plank grimaces.
Oh, Dog!
<b>EXT. ED AND BACON'S HOUSE - EVENING
</b>
Ed, Bacon, Soap and Tom park outside their house. As they get out they
pass Plank and John who have also just parked. They ignore each other,
and go to their separate doors.
<b>INT. ED AND BACON'S HOUSE - NIGHT
</b>
BACON places a pile of money on a table. The rest are eating, Tom keeps
looking at his plate distastefully.
<b>BACON
</b>Twenty-five from me, Tom, Soap and yourself; a hundred grand to the
pound. You don't need to count it.
<b>EDDY
</b>I still will, if you don't mind.
<b>TOM
</b>(eating)
So, a reasonable return should be in the region of one hundred and
twenty, for twenty-five grand invested. That's going on previous
experiences.
<b>SOAP
</b>That's going on optimism.
<b>TOM
</b>Whatever it's going on, it's still enough to send you on a cooking
course.
<b>SOAP
</b>You're not funny Tom; you're fat and look as though you should be
funny, but you're not.
Tom is definitely not overweight, quite the opposite in fact. He
examines himself to see if something has developed.
<b>TOM
</b>Fat? Who are you calling fat? What are all these fat jokes about?
The light switch above Tom's head lets out a few sparks causing him to
cower in a sharp defensive action.
Jesus! It's good in here, ain't it! Trains overhead, walls exploding .
. . Why the hell did you move in?
<b>EDDY
</b>Because it's cheap like a budgie.
<b>BACON
</b>And nobody wants to live next door to the people that we live next to;
a bit anti-social, you know.
BACON beckons Tom to a cupboard built into the wall.
<b>TOM
</b>What do you mean?
<b>EDDY
</b>He means they're thieving dogs.
<b>BACON
</b>I mean when they are not picking peanuts out of poop, they're ripping
off unfortunate souls of their hard-earned drugs.
BACON opens the cupboard doors and puts his finger to his lips. The
noise from next door immediately gets louder.
Not exactly thick, these walls.
<b>DOG
</b>(off)
No you prat, that's for me.
<b>INT. DOG'S HOUSE - NIGHT
</b>
Dog has a small pile of money and pills that he is distributing to his
lads.
<b>DOG
</b>How many times do I have to explain this to you, Plank? You find a job
worth doing and you will find your share improving . . . Now do you
have a problem with that?
He obviously doesn't.
<b>INT. ED AIVD BACON'S HOUSE - NIGHT
</b>
Tom raises his eyebrows and frowns to Bacon.
EXT. BIG BOY'S GYM/SOLARiUM - NIGHT
Meet Big Chris and Little Chris (twelve years old).
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>How long has he been in there, son?
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>About twenty minutes.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Is he on his own?
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>Just carrying a bag.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Let's have a look, shall we?
<b>INT. GYM/SOLARIUM - NIGHT
</b>
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Son, have a look under that one.
Little Chris looks under one of the sunbeds.
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>It's not him, Dad.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Try that one.
Little Chris returns from a peek and nods in confirmation.
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>Sleeping like a baby.
Big Chris then approaches and raises the sunbed.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>This is one of those high-powered numbers, isn't it?
John O'Driscoll's eyes widen; Chris slams down the sunbed on top of him
as hard as he can.
Got some bad news for you, John.
<b>JOHN O'DRISCOLL
</b>What the fu-!
Big Chris slams down the sunbed on top of John.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Mind your language in front of my boy.
<b>JOHN O'DRISCOLL
</b>Jesus Christ!
Big Chris repeats the earlier treatment twice more.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>That includes blasphemy as well. Now tell me, John . . .
<b>JOHN'O'DRISCOLL
</b>Tell you what, Chris?
A man opens the sunbed mom door.
<b>SUNBED MAN
</b>I say, hold on.
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>I say shut it!
<b>SUNBED MAN
</b>You what?
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>He said shut it!
Chris pulls a mean face; the door is closed.]
Tell me John, how you can concentrate on improving a lovely tan, and it
is a lovely tan by the way, when you have more pressing priorities at
hand?
<b>JOHN O'DRISCOLL
</b>Tell Harry . . .
Bang as sunbed comes down again.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Did I say speak? And it's Mr Harry to you . . . Now don't disappoint me
and chose your words carefully. You may speak.
<b>JOHN O'DRISCOLL
</b>I'll have it for Mr Harry in a few days. I have been busy, and I am
nearly there.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Son, have a look in his locker.
<b>JOHN O'DRISCOLL
</b>No chance of you lifting this sunbed up is there?
* Cut from completed film.
<b>30
</b>
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Yeah, all right.
Big Chris lifts it, then smashes it down again. Now, you want me to
lift it up again?
Little Chris pipes up. Obviously familiar with counting money he has
flown through it.
<b>LITTLE CHRIS
</b>He's not poor. Five hundred and sixty pounds and that's just in his
wallet . . . Fuckin' 'ell John, you always walk around with that in
your pocket?
The expression on Big Chris's face changes.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Oi! Next time you use language like that, boy, you'll wish you hadn't!
<b>LITTLE CHRTS
</b>Sorry, Dad.
<b>BIG CHRIS
</b>Right, well, put the rest of the stuff in that, son. You can go home in
a plastic bag tonight, John. You owe what you owe arid before this tan
has faded, you want to have paid.
Chris punches John unconscious and turns the time dial up.
<b>INT. JD'S BAR - NIGHT
</b>
JD's bar is an impressive sort of uptown-downtown establishment with
pretty girls serving a laddish clientele. The boys are propped up at
the bar, looking straight ahead in silence. They look nervous. The
silence is broken by Ed.
<b>32
</b>
<b>EDDY
</b>I am going to the john.
He walks off.
<b>TOM
</b>What you telling us for? The only thing I care about is whether you get
your rest in.
<b>SOAP
</b>Tom, you're all heart.
<b>TOM
</b>Listen cooky, you want to make sure that man rests before he plays;
it's in all our interests.
<b>JD
</b>(the bar owner and Ed's father)
All right lads? How's things? How's it going, Soap? Cooking all right?
Where's that son of mine?
Each time a question is asked the lads try to answer but are just left
with their mouths open, which remain open as a gorgeous girl walks
through the bar (Daisy).
<b>INT. SLOANES' HOUSE LABORATORY - NIGHT
</b>
We cut to a small, humid, artificially lit, illegal forest being
cultivated for profit. Someone is smoking a joint and raising his
eyebrows at his friend. These two characters are J and
|
hand
|
How many times does the word 'hand' appear in the text?
| 1
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so popular that
it had obtained there at the plebiscite an overwhelming majority. But
since the disasters the town had become republican, the quarter St. Marc
had returned to its secret royalist intrigues, while the old quarter and
the new town had sent to the chamber a liberal representative, slightly
tinged with Orleanism, and ready to take sides with the republic, if
it should triumph. And, therefore, it was that Felicite, like the
intelligent woman she was, had withdrawn her attention from politics,
and consented to be nothing more than the dethroned queen of a fallen
government.
But this was still an exalted position, surrounded by a melancholy
poetry. For eighteen years she had reigned. The tradition of her two
_salons_, the yellow _salon_, in which the _coup dâetat_ had matured,
and the green _salon_, later the neutral ground on which the conquest
of Plassans was completed, embellished itself with the reflection of the
vanished past, and was for her a glorious history. And besides, she was
very rich. Then, too, she had shown herself dignified in her fall, never
uttering a regret or a complaint, parading, with her eighty years,
so long a succession of fierce appetites, of abominable maneuvers, of
inordinate gratifications, that she became august through them. Her only
happiness, now, was to enjoy in peace her large fortune and her past
royalty, and she had but one passion left--to defend her past, to extend
its fame, suppressing everything that might tarnish it later. Her pride,
which lived on the double exploit of which the inhabitants still
spoke, watched with jealous care, resolved to leave in existence only
creditable documents, those traditions which caused her to be saluted
like a fallen queen when she walked through the town.
She went to the door of the chamber and listened to the persistent noise
of the pestle, which did not cease. Then, with an anxious brow, she
returned to Clotilde.
âGood Heavens! What is he making? You know that he is doing himself the
greatest harm with his new drug. I was told, the other day, that he came
near killing one of his patients.â
âOh, grandmother!â cried the young girl.
But she was now launched.
âYes, exactly. The good wives say many other things, besides! Why, go
question them, in the faubourg! They will tell you that he grinds dead
menâs bones in infantsâ blood.â
This time, while even Martine protested, Clotilde, wounded in her
affection, grew angry.
âOh, grandmother, do not repeat such abominations! Master has so great a
heart that he thinks only of making every one happy!â
Then, when she saw that they were both angry, Felicite, comprehending
that she had gone too far, resumed her coaxing manner.
âBut, my kitten, it is not I who say those frightful things. I repeat
to you the stupid reports they spread, so that you may comprehend that
Pascal is wrong to pay no heed to public opinion. He thinks he has found
a new remedy--nothing could be better! and I will even admit that he
will be able to cure everybody, as he hopes. Only, why affect these
mysterious ways; why not speak of the matter openly; why, above all, try
it only on the rabble of the old quarter and of the country, instead of,
attempting among the well-to-do people of the town, striking cures which
would do him honor? No, my child, you see your uncle has never been able
to act like other people.â
She had assumed a grieved tone, lowering her voice, to display the
secret wound of her heart.
âGod be thanked! it is not men of worth who are wanting in our family;
my other sons have given me satisfaction enough. Is it not so? Your
Uncle Eugene rose high enough, minister for twelve years, almost
emperor! And your father himself handled many a million, and had a part
in many a one of the great works which have made Paris a new city. Not
to speak at all of your brother, Maxime, so rich, so distinguished, nor
of your cousin, Octave Mouret, one of the kings of the new commerce, nor
of our dear Abbe Mouret, who is a saint! Well, then, why does Pascal,
who might have followed in the footsteps of them all, persist in living
in his hole, like an eccentric old fool?â
And as the young girl was again going to protest, she closed her mouth,
with a caressing gesture of her hand.
âNo, no, let me finish. I know very well that Pascal is not a fool, that
he has written remarkable works, that his communications to the Academy
of Medicine have even won for him a reputation among _savants_. But what
does that count for, compared to what I have dreamed of for him?
Yes, all the best practice of the town, a large fortune, the
decoration--honors, in short, and a position worthy of the family. My
word! I used to say to him when he was a child: âBut where do you come
from? You are not one of us!â As for me, I have sacrificed everything
for the family; I would let myself be hacked to pieces, that the family
might always be great and glorious!â
She straightened her small figure, she seemed to grow tall with the
one passion that had formed the joy and pride of her life. But as she
resumed her walk, she was startled by suddenly perceiving on the floor
the copy of the _Temps_, which the doctor had thrown there, after
cutting out the article, to add it to the Saccard papers, and the light
from the open window, falling full upon the sheet, enlightened her, no
doubt, for she suddenly stopped walking, and threw herself into a chair,
as if she at last knew what she had come to learn.
âYour father has been appointed editor of the _Epoque_,â she said
abruptly.
âYes,â answered Clotilde tranquilly, âmaster told me so; it was in the
paper.â
With an anxious and attentive expression, Felicite looked at her,
for this appointment of Saccard, this rallying to the republic, was
something of vast significance. After the fall of the empire he had
dared return to France, notwithstanding his condemnation as director of
the Banque Universelle, the colossal fall of which had preceded that
of the government. New influences, some incredible intrigue must have
placed him on his feet again, for not only had he received his pardon,
but he was once more in a position to undertake affairs of considerable
importance, launched into journalism, having his share again of all the
good things going. And the recollection came to her of the quarrels of
other days between him and his brother Eugene Rougon, whom he had so
often compromised, and whom, by an ironical turn of events, he was
perhaps going to protect, now that the former minister of the Empire
was only a simple deputy, resigned to the single role of standing by
his fallen master with the obstinacy with which his mother stood by
her family. She still obeyed docilely the orders of her eldest son, the
genius, fallen though he was; but Saccard, whatever he might do, had
also a part in her heart, from his indomitable determination to succeed,
and she was also proud of Maxime, Clotildeâs brother, who had taken up
his quarters again, after the war, in his mansion in the Avenue of the
Bois de Boulogne, where he was consuming the fortune left him by his
wife, Louise de Mareuil, become prudent, with the wisdom of a man struck
in a vital part, and trying to cheat the paralysis which threatened him.
âEditor of the _Epoque_,â she repeated; âit is really the position of
a minister which your father has won. And I forgot to tell you, I have
written again to your brother, to persuade him to come and see us. That
would divert him, it would do him good. Then, there is that child, that
poor Charles--â
She did not continue. This was another of the wounds from which her
pride bled; a son whom Maxime had had when seventeen by a servant, and
who now, at the age of fifteen, weak of intellect, a half-idiot, lived
at Plassans, going from the house of one to that of another, a burden to
all.
She remained silent a moment longer, waiting for some remark from
Clotilde, some transition by which she might come to the subject she
wished to touch upon. When she saw that the young girl, occupied in
arranging the papers on her desk, was no longer listening, she came to
a sudden decision, after casting a glance at Martine, who continued
mending the chair, as if she were deaf and dumb.
âYour uncle cut the article out of the _Temps_, then?â
Clotilde smiled calmly.
âYes, master put it away among his papers. Ah! how many notes he buries
in there! Births, deaths, the smallest event in life, everything goes in
there. And the genealogical tree is there also, our famous genealogical
tree, which he keeps up to date!â
The eyes of old Mme. Rougon flamed. She looked fixedly at the young
girl.
âYou know them, those papers?â
âOh, no, grandmother; master has never spoken to me of them; and he has
forbidden me to touch them.â
But she did not believe her.
âCome! you have them under your hands, you must have read them.â
Very simple, with her calm rectitude, Clotilde answered, smilingly
again.
âNo, when master forbids me to do anything, it is because he has his
reasons, and I do not do it.â
âWell, my child,â cried Felicite vehemently, dominated by her passion,
âyou, whom Pascal loves tenderly, and whom he would listen to, perhaps,
you ought to entreat him to burn all that, for if he should chance to
die, and those frightful things which he has in there were to be found,
we should all be dishonored!â
Ah, those abominable papers! she saw them at night, in her nightmares,
revealing in letters of fire, the true histories, the physiological
blemishes of the family, all that wrong side of her glory which she
would have wished to bury forever with the ancestors already dead! She
knew how it was that the doctor had conceived the idea of collecting
these documents at the beginning of his great studies on heredity; how
he had found himself led to take his own family as an example, struck by
the typical cases which he saw in it, and which helped to support laws
discovered by him. Was it not a perfectly natural field of observation,
close at hand and with which he was thoroughly familiar? And with the
fine, careless justness of the scientist, he had been accumulating for
the last thirty years the most private data, collecting and classifying
everything, raising this genealogical tree of the Rougon-Macquarts,
of which the voluminous papers, crammed full of proofs, were only the
commentary.
âAh, yes,â continued Mme. Rougon hotly, âto the fire, to the fire with
all those papers that would tarnish our name!â
And as the servant rose to leave the room, seeing the turn the
conversation was taking, she stopped her by a quick gesture.
âNo, no, Martine; stay! You are not in the way, since you are now one of
the family.â
Then, in a hissing voice:
âA collection of falsehoods, of gossip, all the lies that our enemies,
enraged by our triumph, hurled against us in former days! Think a little
of that, my child. Against all of us, against your father, against your
mother, against your brother, all those horrors!â
âBut how do you know they are horrors, grandmother?â
She was disconcerted for a moment.
âOh, well; I suspect it! Where is the family that has not had
misfortunes which might be injuriously interpreted? Thus, the mother of
us all, that dear and venerable Aunt Dide, your great-grandmother,
has she not been for the past twenty-one years in the madhouse at the
Tulettes? If God has granted her the grace of allowing her to live to
the age of one hundred and four years, he has also cruelly afflicted her
in depriving her of her reason. Certainly, there is no shame in that;
only, what exasperates me--what must not be--is that they should say
afterward that we are all mad. And, then, regarding your grand-uncle
Macquart, too, deplorable rumors have been spread. Macquart had his
faults in past days, I do not seek to defend him. But to-day, is he not
living very reputably on his little property at the Tulettes, two steps
away from our unhappy mother, over whom he watches like a good son? And
listen! one last example. Your brother, Maxime, committed a great fault
when he had by a servant that poor little Charles, and it is certain,
besides, that the unhappy child is of unsound mind. No matter. Will
it please you if they tell you that your nephew is degenerate; that he
reproduces from four generations back, his great-great-grandmother the
dear woman to whom we sometimes take him, and with whom he likes so much
to be? No! there is no longer any family possible, if people begin to
lay bare everything--the nerves of this one, the muscles of that. It is
enough to disgust one with living!â
Clotilde, standing in her long black blouse, had listened to her
grandmother attentively. She had grown very serious; her arms hung by
her sides, her eyes were fixed upon the ground. There was silence for a
moment; then she said slowly:
âIt is science, grandmother.â
âScience!â cried Felicite, trotting about again. âA fine thing, their
science, that goes against all that is most sacred in the world! When
they shall have demolished everything they will have advanced greatly!
They kill respect, they kill the family, they kill the good God!â
âOh! donât say that, madame!â interrupted Martine, in a grieved voice,
her narrow devoutness wounded. âDo not say that M. Pascal kills the good
God!â
âYes, my poor girl, he kills him. And look you, it is a crime, from the
religious point of view, to let oneâs self be damned in that way. You do
not love him, on my word of honor! No, you do not love him, you two who
have the happiness of believing, since you do nothing to bring him back
to the right path. Ah! if I were in your place, I would split that press
open with a hatchet. I would make a famous bonfire with all the insults
to the good God which it contains!â
She had planted herself before the immense press and was measuring
it with her fiery glance, as if to take it by assault, to sack it, to
destroy it, in spite of the withered and fragile thinness of her eighty
years. Then, with a gesture of ironical disdain:
âIf, even with his science, he could know everything!â
Clotilde remained for a moment absorbed in thought, her gaze lost in
vacancy. Then she said in an undertone, as if speaking to herself:
âIt is true, he cannot know everything. There is always something else
below. That is what irritates me; that is what makes us quarrel: for I
cannot, like him, put the mystery aside. I am troubled by it, so much
so that I suffer cruelly. Below, what wills and acts in the shuddering
darkness, all the unknown forces--â
Her voice had gradually become lower and now dropped to an indistinct
murmur.
Then Martine, whose face for a moment past had worn a somber expression,
interrupted in her turn:
âIf it was true, however, mademoiselle, that monsieur would be damned on
account of those villainous papers, tell me, ought we to let it happen?
For my part, look you, if he were to tell me to throw myself down from
the terrace, I would shut my eyes and throw myself, because I know that
he is always right. But for his salvation! Oh! if I could, I would work
for that, in spite of him. In every way, yes! I would force him; it is
too cruel to me to think that he will not be in heaven with us.â
âYou are quite right, my girl,â said Felicite approvingly. âYou, at
least, love your master in an intelligent fashion.â
Between the two, Clotilde still seemed irresolute. In her, belief did
not bend to the strict rule of dogma; the religious sentiment did not
materialize in the hope of a paradise, of a place of delights, where she
was to meet her own again. It was in her simply a need of a beyond, a
certainty that the vast world does not stop short at sensation, that
there is a whole unknown world, besides, which must be taken into
account. But her grandmother, who was so old, this servant, who was so
devoted, shook her in her uneasy affection for her uncle. Did they not
love him better, in a
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, who, her husband had
taught her, was above all scruples, prejudices, and fears, and who,
though he respected law, despised opinion, made the victim yield. But
her sufferings were not long; the separation from her child, the bleak
clime, the strange faces around her, sharp memory, and the dull routine
of an unimpassioned life, all combined to wear out a constitution
originally frail, and since shattered by many sorrows. Mrs. Coningsby
died the same day that her father-in-law was made a Marquess. He
deserved his honours. The four votes he had inherited in the House of
Commons had been increased, by his intense volition and unsparing means,
to ten; and the very day he was raised to his Marquisate, he commenced
sapping fresh corporations, and was working for the strawberry leaf. His
honours were proclaimed in the London Gazette, and her decease was not
even noticed in the County Chronicle; but the altars of Nemesis are
beneath every outraged roof, and the death of this unhappy lady,
apparently without an earthly friend or an earthly hope, desolate and
deserted, and dying in obscure poverty, was not forgotten.
Coningsby was not more than nine years of age when he lost his last
parent; and he had then been separated from her for nearly three years.
But he remembered the sweetness of his nursery days. His mother,
too, had written to him frequently since he quitted her, and her fond
expressions had cherished the tenderness of his heart. He wept bitterly
when his schoolmaster broke to him the news of his mother's death. True
it was they had been long parted, and their prospect of again meeting
was vague and dim; but his mother seemed to him his only link to human
society. It was something to have a mother, even if he never saw her.
Other boys went to see their mothers! he, at least, could talk of his.
Now he was alone. His grandfather was to him only a name. Lord Monmouth
resided almost constantly abroad, and during his rare visits to England
had found no time or inclination to see the orphan, with whom he felt
no sympathy. Even the death of the boy's mother, and the consequent
arrangements, were notified to his master by a stranger. The letter
which brought the sad intelligence was from Mr. Rigby. It was the first
time that name had been known to Coningsby.
Mr. Rigby was member for one of Lord Monmouth's boroughs. He was the
manager of Lord Monmouth's parliamentary influence, and the auditor of
his vast estates. He was more; he was Lord Monmouth's companion when in
England, his correspondent when abroad; hardly his counsellor, for Lord
Monmouth never required advice; but Mr. Rigby could instruct him
in matters of detail, which Mr. Rigby made amusing. Rigby was not a
professional man; indeed, his origin, education, early pursuits, and
studies, were equally obscure; but he had contrived in good time to
squeeze himself into parliament, by means which no one could ever
comprehend, and then set up to be a perfect man of business. The world
took him at his word, for he was bold, acute, and voluble; with no
thought, but a good deal of desultory information; and though destitute
of all imagination and noble sentiment, was blessed with a vigorous,
mendacious fancy, fruitful in small expedients, and never happier than
when devising shifts for great men's scrapes.
They say that all of us have one chance in this life, and so it was with
Rigby. After a struggle of many years, after a long series of the
usual alternatives of small successes and small failures, after a
few cleverish speeches and a good many cleverish pamphlets, with a
considerable reputation, indeed, for pasquinades, most of which he
never wrote, and articles in reviews to which it was whispered he had
contributed, Rigby, who had already intrigued himself into a subordinate
office, met with Lord Monmouth.
He was just the animal that Lord Monmouth wanted, for Lord Monmouth
always looked upon human nature with the callous eye of a jockey. He
surveyed Rigby; and he determined to buy him. He bought him; with his
clear head, his indefatigable industry, his audacious tongue, and his
ready and unscrupulous pen; with all his dates, all his lampoons; all
his private memoirs, and all his political intrigues. It was a good
purchase. Rigby became a great personage, and Lord Monmouth's man.
Mr. Rigby, who liked to be doing a great many things at the same time,
and to astonish the Tadpoles and Tapers with his energetic versatility,
determined to superintend the education of Coningsby. It was a relation
which identified him with the noble house of his pupil, or, properly
speaking, his charge: for Mr. Rigby affected rather the graceful dignity
of the governor than the duties of a tutor. The boy was recalled
from his homely, rural school, where he had been well grounded by
a hard-working curate, and affectionately tended by the curate's
unsophisticated wife. He was sent to a fashionable school preparatory
to Eton, where he found about two hundred youths of noble families
and connections, lodged in a magnificent villa, that had once been
the retreat of a minister, superintended by a sycophantic Doctor of
Divinity, already well beneficed, and not despairing of a bishopric by
favouring the children of the great nobles. The doctor's lady, clothed
in cashmeres, sometimes inquired after their health, and occasionally
received a report as to their linen.
Mr. Rigby had a classical retreat, not distant from this establishment,
which he esteemed a Tusculum. There, surrounded by his busts and books,
he wrote his lampoons and articles; massacred a she liberal (it was
thought that no one could lash a woman like Rigby), cut up a rising
genius whose politics were different from his own, or scarified some
unhappy wretch who had brought his claims before parliament, proving,
by garbled extracts from official correspondence that no one could refer
to, that the malcontent instead of being a victim, was, on the contrary,
a defaulter. Tadpole and Taper would back Rigby for a 'slashing reply'
against the field. Here, too, at the end of a busy week, he found it
occasionally convenient to entertain a clever friend or two of equivocal
reputation, with whom he had become acquainted in former days of equal
brotherhood. No one was more faithful to his early friends than Mr.
Rigby, particularly if they could write a squib.
It was in this refined retirement that Mr. Rigby found time enough,
snatched from the toils of official life and parliamentary struggles,
to compose a letter on the study of History, addressed to Coningsby.
The style was as much like that of Lord Bolingbroke as if it had been
written by the authors of the 'Rejected Addresses,' and it began, 'My
dear young friend.' This polished composition, so full of good feeling
and comprehensive views, and all in the best taste, was not published.
It was only privately printed, and a few thousand copies were
distributed among select personages as an especial favour and mark
of high consideration. Each copy given away seemed to Rigby like a
certificate of character; a property which, like all men of dubious
repute, he thoroughly appreciated. Rigby intrigued very much that the
headmaster of Eton should adopt his discourse as a class-book. For this
purpose he dined with the Doctor, told him several anecdotes of the
King, which intimated personal influence at Windsor; but the headmaster
was inflexible, and so Mr. Rigby was obliged to be content with
having his Letter on History canonized as a classic in the Preparatory
Seminary, where the individual to whom it was addressed was a scholar.
This change in the life of Coningsby contributed to his happiness. The
various characters which a large school exhibited interested a young
mind whose active energies were beginning to stir. His previous
acquirements made his studies light; and he was fond of sports, in which
he was qualified to excel. He did not particularly like Mr. Rigby. There
was something jarring and grating in that gentleman's voice and modes,
from which the chords of the young heart shrank. He was not tender,
though perhaps he wished to be; scarcely kind: but he was good-natured,
at least to children. However, this connection was, on the whole, an
agreeable one for Coningsby. He seemed suddenly to have friends: he
never passed his holydays again at school. Mr. Rigby was so clever that
he contrived always to quarter Coningsby on the father of one of his
school-fellows, for Mr. Rigby knew all his school-fellows and all their
fathers. Mr. Rigby also called to see him, not unfrequently would give
him a dinner at the Star and Garter, or even have him up to town for
a week to Whitehall. Compared with his former forlorn existence, these
were happy days, when he was placed under the gallery as a member's son,
or went to the play with the butler!
When Coningsby had attained his twelfth year, an order was received from
Lord Monmouth, who was at Rome, that he should go at once to Eton.
This was the first great epoch of his life. There never was a youth
who entered into that wonderful little world with more eager zest than
Coningsby. Nor was it marvellous.
That delicious plain, studded with every creation of graceful
culture; hamlet and hall and grange; garden and grove and park; that
castle-palace, grey with glorious ages; those antique spires, hoar with
faith and wisdom, the chapel and the college; that river winding through
the shady meads; the sunny glade and the solemn avenue; the room in the
Dame's house where we first order our own breakfast and first feel we
are free; the stirring multitude, the energetic groups, the individual
mind that leads, conquers, controls; the emulation and the affection;
the noble strife and the tender sentiment; the daring exploit and the
dashing scrape; the passion that pervades our life, and breathes in
everything, from the aspiring study to the inspiring sport: oh! what
hereafter can spur the brain and touch the heart like this; can give us
a world so deeply and variously interesting; a life so full of quick and
bright excitement, passed in a scene so fair?
CHAPTER III.
Lord Monmouth, who detested popular tumults as much as he despised
public opinion, had remained during the agitating year of 1831 in his
luxurious retirement in Italy, contenting himself with opposing the
Reform Bill by proxy. But when his correspondent, Mr. Rigby, had
informed him, in the early part of the spring of 1832, of the
probability of a change in the tactics of the Tory party, and that
an opinion was becoming prevalent among their friends, that the great
scheme must be defeated in detail rather than again withstood on
principle, his Lordship, who was never wanting in energy when his own
interests were concerned, immediately crossed the Alps, and travelled
rapidly to England. He indulged a hope that the weight of his presence
and the influence of his strong character, which was at once shrewd and
courageous, might induce his friends to relinquish their half measure,
a course to which his nature was repugnant. At all events, if they
persisted in their intention, and the Bill went into committee, his
presence was indispensable, for in that stage of a parliamentary
proceeding proxies become ineffective.
The counsels of Lord Monmouth, though they coincided with those of the
Duke of Wellington, did not prevail with the Waverers. Several of these
high-minded personages had had their windows broken, and they were of
opinion that a man who lived at Naples was not a competent judge of the
state of public feeling in England. Besides, the days are gone by for
senates to have their beards plucked in the forum. We live in an age of
prudence. The leaders of the people, now, generally follow. The truth
is, the peers were in a fright. 'Twas a pity; there is scarcely a less
dignified entity than a patrician in a panic.
Among the most intimate companions of Coningsby at Eton, was Lord Henry
Sydney, his kinsman. Coningsby had frequently passed his holydays of
late at Beaumanoir, the seat of the Duke, Lord Henry's father. The
Duke sat next to Lord Monmouth during the debate on the enfranchising
question, and to while away the time, and from kindness of disposition,
spoke, and spoke with warmth and favour, of his grandson. The polished
Lord Monmouth bowed as if he were much gratified by this notice of one
so dear to him. He had too much tact to admit that he had never yet
seen his grandchild; but he asked some questions as to his progress
and pursuits, his tastes and habits, which intimated the interest of an
affectionate relative.
Nothing, however, was ever lost upon Lord Monmouth. No one had a more
retentive memory, or a more observant mind. And the next day, when he
received Mr. Rigby at his morning levee, Lord Monmouth performed this
ceremony in the high style of the old court, and welcomed his visitors
in bed, he said with imperturbable calmness, and as if he had been
talking of trying a new horse, 'Rigby, I should like to see the boy at
Eton.'
There might be some objection to grant leave to Coningsby at this
moment; but it was a rule with Mr. Rigby never to make difficulties, or
at least to persuade his patron that he, and he only, could remove
them. He immediately undertook that the boy should be forthcoming, and
notwithstanding the excitement of the moment, he went off next morning
to fetch him.
They arrived in town rather early; and Rigby, wishing to know how
affairs were going on, ordered the servant to drive immediately to the
head-quarters of the party; where a permanent committee watched every
phasis of the impending revolution; and where every member of the
Opposition, of note and trust, was instantly admitted to receive or to
impart intelligence.
It was certainly not without emotion that Coningsby contemplated his
first interview with his grandfather. All his experience of the ties of
relationship, however limited, was full of tenderness and rapture. His
memory often dwelt on his mother's sweet embrace; and ever and anon a
fitful phantom of some past passage of domestic love haunted his gushing
heart. The image of his father was less fresh in his mind; but still
it was associated with a vague sentiment of kindness and joy; and the
allusions to her husband in his mother's letters had cherished these
impressions. To notice lesser sources of influence in his estimate of
the domestic tie, he had witnessed under the roof of Beaumanoir the
existence of a family bound together by the most beautiful affections.
He could not forget how Henry Sydney was embraced by his sisters when he
returned home; what frank and fraternal love existed between his kinsman
and his elder brother; how affectionately the kind Duke had welcomed his
son once more to the house where they had both been born; and the dim
eyes, and saddened brows, and tones of tenderness, which rather looked
than said farewell, when they went back to Eton.
And these rapturous meetings and these mournful adieus were occasioned
only by a separation at the most of a few months, softened by constant
correspondence and the communication of mutual sympathy. But Coningsby
was to meet a relation, his near, almost his only, relation, for the
first time; the relation, too, to whom he owed maintenance, education;
it might be said, existence. It was a great incident for a great drama;
something tragical in the depth and stir of its emotions. Even the
imagination of the boy could not be insensible to its materials; and
Coningsby was picturing to himself a beneficent and venerable gentleman
pressing to his breast an agitated youth, when his reverie was broken by
the carriage stopping before the gates of Monmouth House.
The gates were opened by a gigantic Swiss, and the carriage rolled into
a huge court-yard. At its end Coningsby beheld a Palladian palace, with
wings and colonnades encircling the court.
A double flight of steps led into a circular and marble hall, adorned
with colossal busts of the Caesars; the staircase in fresco by Sir James
Thornhill, breathed with the loves and wars of gods and heroes. It led
into a vestibule, painted in arabesques, hung with Venetian girandoles,
and looking into gardens. Opening a door in this chamber, and proceeding
some little way down a corridor, Mr. Rigby and his companion arrived at
the base of a private staircase. Ascending a few steps, they reached a
landing-place hung with tapestry. Drawing this aside, Mr. Rigby opened a
door, and ushered Coningsby through an ante-chamber into a small saloon,
of beautiful proportions, and furnished in a brilliant and delicate
taste.
'You will find more to amuse you here than where you were before,' said
Mr. Rigby, 'and I shall not be nearly so long absent.' So saying, he
entered into an inner apartment.
The walls of the saloon, which were covered with light blue satin, held,
in silver panels, portraits of beautiful women, painted by Boucher.
Couches and easy chairs of every shape invited in every quarter to
luxurious repose; while amusement was afforded by tables covered with
caricatures, French novels, and endless miniatures of foreign dancers,
princesses, and sovereigns.
But Coningsby was so impressed with the impending interview with his
grandfather, that he neither sought nor required diversion. Now that the
crisis was at hand, he felt agitated and nervous, and wished that he was
again at Eton. The suspense was sickening, yet he dreaded still more the
summons. He was not long alone; the door opened; he started, grew pale;
he thought it was his grandfather; it was not even Mr. Rigby. It was
Lord Monmouth's valet.
'Monsieur Konigby?'
'My name is Coningsby,' said the boy.
'Milor is ready to receive you,' said the valet.
Coningsby sprang forward with that desperation which the scaffold
requires. His face was pale; his hand was moist; his heart beat with
tumult. He had occasionally been summoned by Dr. Keate; that, too,
was awful work, but compared with the present, a morning visit. Music,
artillery, the roar of cannon, and the blare of trumpets, may urge a man
on to a forlorn hope; ambition, one's constituents, the hell of previous
failure, may prevail on us to do a more desperate thing; speak in the
House of Commons; but there are some situations in
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Florence
Onaelia, niece to the Duke of Medina, mother of Sebastian
Juanna, maid to Onaelia
Ladies in waiting
Attendants, guards
THE PRINTER TO THE READER
Understanding reader, I present this to your view, which has received
applause in action. The poet might conceive a complete satisfaction
upon the stage's approbation; but the printer rests not there,
knowing that that which was acted and approved upon the stage, might
be no less acceptable in print. It is now communicated to you, whose
leisure and knowledge admits of reading and reason. Your judgement
now this Posthumous <1> assures himself will well attest his
predecessor's endeavours to give content to men of the ablest
quality, such as intelligent readers are here conceived to be. I
could have troubled you with a longer epistle, but I fear to stay you
from the book, which affords better words and matter than I can. So
the work modestly depending in the scale of your judgement, the
printer for his part craves your pardon, hoping by his promptness to
do you greater service, as convenience shall enable him to give you
more or better testimony of his entireness towards you.
N.V.
ACT 1 SCENE 1
Enter in magnificent state to the sound of loud music, the King and
Queen, as from church, attended by the Cardinal, Count Malateste,
Marquis Daenia, Roderigo, Valasco, Alba, Carlo, and ladies-in
waiting. The King and Queen with courtly compliments salute and part.
She [exits] with one half attending her. King, Cardinal and the other
half stay, the King seeming angry and desirous to be rid of them.
King, Cardinal, Daenia and others [remain].
KING
Give us what no man here is master of:
Breath. Leave us pray, my father Cardinal
Can by the physic of philosophy
Set all again in order. Leave us pray.
Exeunt [King and Cardinal remain].
CARDINAL
How is it with you, sir?
KING
As with a ship
Now beat with storms, now safe. The storms are vanished
And having you my Pilot, I not only
See shore, but harbour; I to you will open
The book of a black sin, deep printed in me.
Oh father, my disease lies in my soul.
CARDINAL
The old wound sir?
KING
Yes that, it festers inwards.
For though I have a beauty to my bed
That even creation envies at, as wanting
Stuff to make such another, yet on her pillow
I lie by her, but an adulterer,
And she as an adulteress. She is my queen
And wife, yet but my strumpet though the church
Set on the seal of marriage. Good Onaelia,
Niece to our Lord High Constable of Spain
Was precontracted mine.
CARDINAL
Yet when I stung
Your conscience with remembrance of the act
Your ears were deaf to counsel.
KING
I confess it.
CARDINAL
Now to untie the knot with your new Queen
Would shake your crown half from your head.
KING
Even Troy, though she has wept her eyes out,
Would find tears to wail my kingdom's ruins.
CARDINAL
What will you do then?
KING
She has that contract written, sealed by you,
And other churchmen witnesses unto it.
A kingdom should be given for that paper.
CARDINAL
I would not, for what lies beneath the moon,
Be made a wicked engine to break in pieces
That holy contract.
KING
'Tis my soul's aim
To tie it upon a faster knot.
CARDINAL
I do not see
How you can with safe conscience get it from her.
KING
Oh I know
I wrestle with a lioness. To imprison her
And force her to it, I dare not. Death! What King
Did ever say 'I dare not'? I must have it;
A bastard have I by her, and that cock
Will have, I fear, sharp spurs, if he crow after
Him that trod for him. Something must be done
Both to the hen and the chicken. Haste you therefore
To sad Onaelia, tell her I'm resolved
To give my new hawk bells, and let her fly.
My Queen, I'm weary of, and her will marry.
To this, our text, add you what gloss you please;
The secret drifts of kings are depthless seas.
Exeunt
ACT 1 SCENE 2
A table set out covered with black. Two waxen tapers. The King's
[defaced] picture at one end and a crucifix at the other. Onaelia
[dressed in black] walking discontentedly weeping to the crucifix.
A Song.
QUESTION
Oh sorrow, sorrow, say where do'st thou dwell?
ANSWER
In the lowest room of hell.
QUESTION
Art thou born of human race?
ANSWER
No, no. I have a fury's <2> face.
QUESTION
Art thou in city, town or court?
ANSWER
I to every place resort.
QUESTION
O why into the world is sorrow sent?
ANSWER
Men afflicted best repent.
QUESTION
What dost thou feed on?
ANSWER
Broken sleep.
QUESTION
What takest thou take pleasure in?
ANSWER
To weep,
To sigh, to sob, to pine, to groan,
To wring my hands, to sit alone.
QUESTION
Oh when, oh when, shall sorrow quiet have?
ANSWER
Never, never, never, never,
Never till she finds a grave.
Enter Cornego.
CORNEGO
No lesson Madam but Lacrymae's? <3> If you had buried nine husbands, so much
water as you might squeeze out of an onion had been tears enough to cast away upon
fellows that cannot thank you. Come, be jovial.
ONAELIA
Sorrow becomes me best.
CORNEGO
A suit of laugh and lie down would wear better.
ONAELIA
What should I do to be merry, Cornego?
CORNGO
Be not sad.
ONELIA
But what's the best mirth in the world?
CORNEGO
Marry this, to see much, say little, do little, get little, spend
little and want nothing.
ONELIA
Oh, but there is a mirth beyond all these;
This picture has so vexed me, I'm half mad,
To spite it therefore, I'll sing any song
Thyself shall tune. Say then, what mirth is best?
CORNEGO
Why then Madam, what I knock out now is the very marrowbone of mirth
and this it is.
ONELIA
Say on.
CORNEGO
The best mirth for a lawyer is to have fools to his clients; for
citizens to have noblemen pay for their debts; for tailors to have
store of satin brought in, for then how little soever their houses
are, they will be sure to have large yards. The best mirth for bawds
is to have fresh handsome whores, and for whores to have rich gulls
come aboard their pinnaces <4>, for then they are sure to build
galleasses <5>.
ONELIA
These to such souls are mirth, but to mine, none.
Away.
Exit Cornego, Enter Cardinal.
CARDINAL
Peace to you, Lady.
ONELIA
I will not sin so much as to hope for peace
And 'tis a mock ill suits your gravity.
CARDINAL
I come to knit the nerves of your lost strength,
To build your ruins up, to set you free
From this your voluntary banishment,
And give new being to your murdered fame.
ONELIA
What Aesculapius <6> can do this?
CARDINAL
'Tis from the King I come.
ONELIA
A name I hate.
Oh, I am deaf now to your embassy.
CARDINAL
Hear what I speak.
ONELIA
Your language breathed from him
Is death's sad doom upon a wretch condemned.
CARDINAL
Is it such poison?
ONELIA
Yes, and were you crystal,
What the King fills you with would make you break.
You should my Lord, be like these robes you wear,
Pure as the dye, and like that reverend shape
Nurse thoughts as full of honour, zeal and purity.
You should be the court-dial, and direct
The King with constant motion, be ever beating,
Like to clock-hammers, on his iron heart
To make it sound clear and to feel remorse.
You should unlock his soul, wake his dead conscience
Which, like a drowsy sentinel, gives leave
For sin's vast armies to beleaguer him.
His ruins will be asked for at your hands.
CARDINAL
I have raised up a scaffolding to save
Both him and you from falling. Do but hear me.
ONAELIA
Be dumb for ever.
CARDINAL
Let your fears thus die:
By all the sacred relics of the church
And by my holy orders, what I minister
Is even the spirit of health.
ONAELIA
I'll drink it down into my soul at once.
CARDINAL
You shall.
ONAELIA
But swear.
CARDINAL
What conjurations can more bind my oath?
ONAELIA
But did you swear in earnest?
CARDINAL
Come, you trifle.
ONAELIA
No marvel, for my hopes have been so drowned
I still despair, say on.
CARDINAL
The King repents.
ONAELIA
Pray, that again my Lord.
CARDINAL
The King repents.
ONAELIA
His wrongs to me?
CARDINAL
His wrongs to you. The sense of sin
Has pierced his soul.
ONAELIA
Blessed penitence!
CARDINAL
Has turned his eyes <7> into his leprous bosom
And like a king vows execution
On all his traitorous passions.
ONAELIA
God-like justice!
CARDINAL
Intends in person presently to beg
Forgiveness for his acts from heaven and you.
ONAELIA
Heaven pardon him. I shall.
CARDINAL
Will marry you.
ONAELIA
Umh! Marry me? Will he turn bigamist?
When? When?
CARDINAL
Before the morrow sun hath rode
Half his day's journey, will send home his Queen
As one that stains his bed, and can produce
Nothing but bastard issue to his crown.
Why, how now? Lost in wonder and amazement?
ONAELIA
I am so stored with joy that I can now
Strongly wear out more years of misery
Than I have lived.
Enter King.
CARDINAL
You need not: here is the King.
KING
Leave us.
Exit Cardinal.
ONAELIA
With pardon sir, I will prevent you
And charge upon you first.
KING
'Tis granted, do.
But stay, what mean these emblems of distress?
My picture so defaced, opposed against
A holy cross! Room hung in black, and you
Dressed like chief mourner at a funeral?
ONAELIA
Look back upon your guilt, dear Sir, and then
The cause that now seems strange explains itself.
This and the image of my living wrongs
Is still confronted by me to beget
Grief like my shame, whose length may outlive time.
This cross, the object of my wounded soul
To which I pray to keep me from despair;
That ever as the sight of one throws up
Mountains of sorrow on my accursed head.
Turning to that, mercy may check despair
And bind my hands from wilful violence.
KING
But who has played the tyrant with me thus,
And with such dangerous spite abused my picture?
ONAELIA
The guilt of that lays claim sir, to yourself
For being, by you, ransacked of all my fame,
Robbed of mine honour and dear chastity,
Made, by your act, the shame of all my house,
The hate of good men and the scorn of bad,
The song of broom-men and the murdering vulgar,
And left alone to bear up all these ills
By you begun, my breast was filled with fire
And wrapped in just disdain, and like a woman
On that dumb picture wreaked I my passions.
KING
And wished it had been I.
ONAELIA
Pardon me Sir,
My wrongs were great, and my revenge swelled high.
KING
I will descend and cease to be a King,
To leave my judging part, freely confessing
Thou canst not give thy wrongs too ill a name.
And here to make thy apprehension full,
And seat thy reason in a sound belief
I vow tomorrow, ere the rising sun
Begins his journey, with all ceremonies
Due to the Church, to seal our nuptials,
To prive <8> thy son with full consent of state,
Spain's heir apparent, born in wedlock's vows.
ONAELIA
And will you swear to this?
KING
By this I swear.
[Takes up Bible.]
ONAELIA
Oh, you have sworn false oaths upon that book!
KING
Why then, by this.
[Takes up crucifix.]
ONAELIA
Take heed you print it deeply:
How for your concubine, bride I cannot say,
She stains your bed with black adultery,
And though her fame masks in a fairer shape
Than <9> mine to the world's eye, yet King, you know
Mine honour is less strumpeted than hers,
However butchered in opinion.
KING
This way for her, the contract which thou hast,
By best advice of all our Cardinals,
Today shall be enlarged till it be made
Past all dissolving. Then to our council table
Shall she be called, that read aloud, she told
The church commands her quick return for Florence
With such a dower as Spain received with her,
And that they will not hazard heaven's dire curse
To yield to a match unlawful, which shall taint
The issue of the King with bastardy.
This done, in state majestic come you forth,
Our new crowned Queen in sight of all our peers.
Are you resolved?
OMAELIA
To doubt of this were treason
Because the King has sworn it.
KING
And will keep it.
Deliver up the contract then, that I
May make this day end with thy misery.
ONAELIA
Here as the dearest Jewel of my fame
Locked I this parchment from all viewing eyes.
This your indenture, held alone the life
Of my supposed dead honour; yet behold,
Into your hands I redeliver it.
Oh keep it Sir, as you should keep that vow,
To which, being signed by heaven, even angels bow.
[Onaelia passes the document to the King.]
KING
'Tis in the lion's paw, and who dares snatch it?
Now to your beads and crucifix again.
ONAELIA
Defend me heaven!
KING
Pray there may come Embassadors from France
Their followers are good customers.
ONAELIA
Save me from madness!
KING
'Twill raise the price, being the King's mistress.
ONAELIA
You do but counterfeit to mock my joys.
KING
Away bold strumpet!
ONAELIA
Are there eyes in heaven to see this?
KING
Call and try, here's a whore's curse
To fall in that belief, which her sins nurse.
Exit King, Enter Cornego.
CORNEGO
How now? What quarter of the moon has she cut out now? My Lord puts
me into a wise office to be a mad-woman's keeper. Why, Madam!
ONAELIA
Ha! Where is the King, thou slave?
[Clutches Cornego.]
CORNEGO
Let go your hold, or I'll fall upon you as I am a man.
ONAELIA
Thou treacherous caitiff <10>, where is the King?
CORNEGO
He's gone, but not so far as you are.
ONAELIA
Crack all in sunder, oh you battlements,
And grind me into powder
CORNEGO
What powder? Come, what powder? When did you ever see a woman grinded
into powder? I am sure some of your sex powder men, and pepper them
too.
ONAELIA
Is there a vengeance yet lacking to my ruin?
Let it fall, now let it fall upon me!
CORNEGO
No, there has been too much fallen upon you already.
ONAELIA
Thou villain, leave thy hold, I'll follow him
Like a raised ghost, I'll haunt him, break his sleep,
Fright him as he is embracing his new leman <11>,
Til want of rest bids him run mad and die,
For making oaths bawds to his perjury.
CORNEGO
Pray be more seasoned, if he make any bawds, he did ill, for there is
enough of that fly-blown flesh already.
ONAELIA
I'm left quite naked now; all gone, all, all.
CORNEGO
No Madam, not all, for you cannot be rid of me.
Here comes your Uncle.
Enter Medina.
ONAELIA
Attired in robes of vengeance, are you uncle?
MEDINA
More horrors yet?
ONAELIA
'Twas never full till now,
And in this torrent all my hopes lie drowned.
MEDINA
Instruct me in the cause.
ONAELIA
The King, the contract!
Exit Onaelia.
CORNEGO
That's cud enough for you to chew upon.
Exit Cornego.
MEDINA
What's this? A riddle. How? The King, the contract.
The mischief I divine which proving true,
Shall kindle fires in Spain to melt his crown
Even from his head. Here's the decree of fate:
A black deed must a black deed expiate.
Exit Medina.
ACT 2 SCENE 1
Enter Balthazar, [having been] slighted by the Dons.
BALTHAZAR
Thou god of good apparel, what strange fellows are bound to do thee
honour. Mercer's <12> books show men's devotions to thee. Heaven
cannot hold a saint so stately. Do not my dons know me because I'm
poor in clothes?
|
niece
|
How many times does the word 'niece' appear in the text?
| 1
|
him,
doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But
as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale
plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors. I stood gazing at him
awhile, as he went on with his own writing, and then reseated myself at
my desk. This is very strange, thought I. What had one best do? But
my business hurried me. I concluded to forget the matter for the
present, reserving it for my future leisure. So calling Nippers from
the other room, the paper was speedily examined.
A few days after this, Bartleby concluded four lengthy documents, being
quadruplicates of a week's testimony taken before me in my High Court of
Chancery. It became necessary to examine them. It was an important
suit, and great accuracy was imperative. Having all things arranged I
called Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut from the next room, meaning to
place the four copies in the hands of my four clerks, while I should
read from the original. Accordingly Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut had
taken their seats in a row, each with his document in hand, when I
called to Bartleby to join this interesting group.
"Bartleby! quick, I am waiting."
I heard a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and
soon he appeared standing at the entrance of his hermitage.
"What is wanted?" said he mildly.
"The copies, the copies," said I hurriedly. "We are going to examine
them. There"--and I held towards him the fourth quadruplicate.
"I would prefer not to," he said, and gently disappeared behind the
screen.
For a few moments I was turned into a pillar of salt, standing at the
head of my seated column of clerks. Recovering myself, I advanced
towards the screen, and demanded the reason for such extraordinary
conduct.
"_Why_ do you refuse?"
"I would prefer not to."
With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion,
scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my
presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only
strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and
disconcerted me. I began to reason with him.
"These are your own copies we are about to examine. It is labor saving
to you, because one examination will answer for your four papers. It is
common usage. Every copyist is bound to help examine his copy. Is it
not so? Will you not speak? Answer!"
"I prefer not to," he replied in a flute-like tone. It seemed to me
that while I had been addressing him, he carefully revolved every
statement that I made; fully comprehended the meaning; could not gainsay
the irresistible conclusions; but, at the same time, some paramount
consideration prevailed with him to reply as he did.
"You are decided, then, not to comply with my request--a request made
according to common usage and common sense?"
He briefly gave me to understand that on that point my judgment was
sound. Yes: his decision was irreversible.
It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some
unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in
his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that,
wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the
other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he
turns to them for some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.
"Turkey," said I, "what do you think of this? Am I not right?"
"With submission, sir," said Turkey, with his blandest tone, "I think
that you are."
"Nippers," said I, "what do _you_ think of it?"
"I think I should kick him out of the office."
(The reader of nice perceptions will here perceive that, it being
morning, Turkey's answer is couched in polite and tranquil terms, but
Nippers replies in ill-tempered ones. Or, to repeat a previous
sentence, Nippers' ugly mood was on duty and Turkey's off.)
"Ginger Nut," said I, willing to enlist the smallest suffrage in my
behalf, "what do you think of it?"
"I think, sir, he's a little _luny_," replied Ginger Nut with a grin.
"You hear what they say," said I, turning towards the screen, "come
forth and do your duty."
But he vouchsafed no reply. I pondered a moment in sore perplexity.
But once more business hurried me. I determined again to postpone the
consideration of this dilemma to my future leisure. With a little
trouble we made out to examine the papers without Bartleby, though at
every page or two, Turkey deferentially dropped his opinion that this
proceeding was quite out of the common; while Nippers, twitching in his
chair with a dyspeptic nervousness, ground out between his set teeth
occasional hissing maledictions against the stubborn oaf behind the
screen. And for his (Nippers') part, this was the first and the last
time he would do another man's business without pay.
Meanwhile Bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to every thing but
his own peculiar business there.
Some days passed, the scrivener being employed upon another lengthy
work. His late remarkable conduct led me to regard his ways narrowly.
I observed that he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any
where. As yet I had never of my personal knowledge known him to be
outside of my office. He was a perpetual sentry in the corner. At
about eleven o'clock though, in the morning, I noticed that Ginger Nut
would advance toward the opening in Bartleby's screen, as if silently
beckoned thither by a gesture invisible to me where I sat. The boy
would then leave the office jingling a few pence, and reappear with a
handful of ginger-nuts which he delivered in the hermitage, receiving
two of the cakes for his trouble.
He lives, then, on ginger-nuts, thought I; never eats a dinner, properly
speaking; he must be a vegetarian then; but no; he never eats even
vegetables, he eats nothing but ginger-nuts. My mind then ran on in
reveries concerning the probable effects upon the human constitution of
living entirely on ginger-nuts. Ginger-nuts are so called because they
contain ginger as one of their peculiar constituents, and the final
flavoring one. Now what was ginger? A hot, spicy thing. Was Bartleby
hot and spicy? Not at all. Ginger, then, had no effect upon Bartleby.
Probably he preferred it should have none.
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting
one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of
the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination
what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the
most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he
means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect
sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is
useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the
chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then
he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve.
Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To
befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me
little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove
a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with
me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt
strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some
angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well
have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor
soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the
following little scene ensued:
"Bartleby," said I, "when those papers are all copied, I will compare
them with you."
"I would prefer not to."
"How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?"
No answer.
I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and
Nippers, exclaimed in an excited manner--
"He says, a second time, he won't examine his papers. What do you think
of it, Turkey?"
It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass
boiler, his bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted
papers.
"Think of it?" roared Turkey; "I think I'll just step behind his screen,
and black his eyes for him!"
So saying, Turkey rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic
position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I
detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey's
combativeness after dinner.
"Sit down, Turkey," said I, "and hear what Nippers has to say. What do
you think of it, Nippers? Would I not be justified in immediately
dismissing Bartleby?"
"Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite
unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may
only be a passing whim."
"Ah," exclaimed I, "you have strangely changed your mind then--you speak
very gently of him now."
"All beer," cried Turkey; "gentleness is effects of beer--Nippers and I
dined together to-day. You see how gentle _I_ am, sir. Shall I go and
black his eyes?"
"You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey," I replied;
"pray, put up your fists."
I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt
additional incentives tempting me to my fate. I burned to be rebelled
against again. I remembered that Bartleby never left the office.
"Bartleby," said I, "Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post
Office, won't you? (it was but a three minute walk,) and see if there is
any thing for me."
"I would prefer not to."
"You _will_ not?"
"I _prefer_ not."
I staggered to my desk, and sat there in a deep study. My blind
inveteracy returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure
myself to be ignominiously repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?--my
hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly reasonable, that he
will be sure to refuse to do?
"Bartleby!"
No answer.
"Bartleby," in a louder tone.
No answer.
"Bartleby," I roared.
Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the
third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.
"Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me."
"I prefer not to," he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly
disappeared.
"Very good, Bartleby," said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe
self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible
retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something
of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my
dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the
day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind.
Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that
it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener,
by the name of Bartleby, and a desk there; that he copied for me at the
usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was
permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being
transferred to Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless to their
superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never on any account to
be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if
entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood
that he would prefer not to--in other words, that he would refuse
pointblank.
As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His
steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry
(except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his
screen), his great stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all
circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was
this,--_he was always there;_--first in the morning, continually
through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular confidence in
his honesty. I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his
hands. Sometimes to be sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid
falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding
difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities,
privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on
Bartleby's part under which he remained in my office. Now and then, in
the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently
summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the
incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing
some papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, "I
prefer not to," was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature
with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly
exclaiming upon such perverseness--such unreasonableness. However,
every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen
the probability of my repeating the inadvertence.
Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal
gentlemen occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there
were several keys to my door. One was kept by a woman residing in the
attic, which person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my
apartments. Another was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third
I sometimes carried in my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.
Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a
celebrated preacher, and finding myself rather early on the ground, I
thought I would walk around to my chambers for a while. Luckily I had
my key with me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by
something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when
to my consternation a key was turned from within; and thrusting his lean
visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the apparition of Bartleby
appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered
dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged
just then, and--preferred not admitting me at present. In a brief word
or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk round the
block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have
concluded his affairs.
Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my
law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly
_nonchalance_, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange
effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and
did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion
against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it
was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but
unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a
sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate
to him, and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore, I was
full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my
office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of
a Sunday morning. Was any thing amiss going on? Nay, that was out of
the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby
was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?--copying? Nay
again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently
decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in
any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was
something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by
any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day.
Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless
curiosity, at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted
my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked
round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he
was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an
indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my
office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat
of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean,
reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under
the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with
soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and
a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby
has been making his home here, keeping bachelor's hall all by himself.
Immediately then the thought came sweeping across me, What miserable
friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great;
but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street
is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day it is an emptiness.
This building too, which of week-
|
were
|
How many times does the word 'were' appear in the text?
| 2
|
VE as you move into the
main aisle of busy room in restaurant. Great activity of
waiters. The bustle and activity of fashionable lunchtime. A
string orchestra is playing.
Among other things, we pick up the smiling face of the pompous
Maitre d'hotel, he has apparently just shown someone important
to a table.
THE CAMERA watches his face and follows him. His face just
as CAMERA reaches service table. The pompous Maitre d'hotel
now becomes a thing of drama as he demands of a waiter:
<b> MAITRE D'HOTEL
</b> Where is that gentleman's soup?
The waiter, frightened and perspiring, doesn't bother to
argue -- he tears off quickly (CAMERA FOLLOWING HIM) to
another service table. The waiter seizes buss-boy's arm:
<b> WAITER
</b> Where's that soup?
Boy goes off at great rate of speed, CAMERA FOLLOWS HIM,
into service room of kitchen. Boy stops at soup chef's
counter. He is not the only waiter wanting soup at that
moment. He pushes his way to the front and puts his ticket
forward.
<b> BOY
</b> Quick -- come on -- come on...
The soup chef, used to impatient waiters, makes no exception
of the young man. He looks at him as much as to say: "I'll
slap you on the mouth." At the same time he is pulling over
a cauldron of soup.
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
CAULDRON OF SOUP being pulled over -- it dislodges a small
cauldron that is near the edge. We see the soup fall and
hear the scream of a woman before showing her agonized face --
She has been scalded. General steamy confusion. The chef has
filled the plate. WE PROCEED the buss-boy out. Half way down
the aisle, the waiter takes it from him.
THE CAMERA follows the waiter who places the soup before Mr.
Preysing. Preysing has been waiting, with his serviette
carefully tucked in his collar. His spoon is in his hand. A
horrible man, ready for action. The soup is in front of him,
he tastes it, pushes it away, frowns, we feel he is going to
tear the place down.
<b> WAITER
</b> (anxious voice)
Yes.
<b> PREYSING
</b> (grimly)
Cold.
<b> VOICE
</b> (near Preysing's elbow)
Mr. Preysing...
<b> PREYSING
</b> (in same voice)
Yes...
<b> BELLBOY
</b> Telephone -- from Fredersdorf --
Preysing rises, struts from restaurant. CAMERA FOLLOWS HIM --
He walks out through the door...
<b> DISSOLVE OUT AND INTO:
</b>
Between two operators heads. Odd effect at board. CAMERA
TILTS UP as Preysing's head looks right down at girl.
Bellboy is with Preysing.
<b> BELLBOY
</b> Mr. Preysing from Fredersdorf -- his
call.
<b> GIRL
</b> Yes, Mr. Preysing --
Preysing begins drumming his fingers on the top of
switchboard.
<b> GIRL
</b> (nervously)
They've gone -- Just a moment, sir...
<b> PREYSING
</b> (to boy)
You told me it was on -- you said
the call was through.
(he waits irritably)
<b> SECOND GIRL
</b> (to first)
Who's in number three?
<b> FIRST GIRL
</b> Senf -- the hall porter.
(Girl looks off at...)
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b> SENF IN TELEPHONE BOOTH
</b>
<b> SENF
</b> Yes, it's Senf, the head porter,
Grand Hotel... Are you at the
Clinic?,... How's my wife?,... Is
she in pain?,... Isn't the child
coming soon?,... Patience! It's easy
for you to talk... Get away?,... No,
I can't -- I'd lose my job. It's
like being in jail. Oh, I hope the
child comes along all right.
At the conclusion of Senf's speech, CAMERA MOVES TO NEXT
BOOTH. Thru the glass door we see Preysing approaching from
desk. He enters booth and commences conversation:
<b> PREYSING
</b> Hello! Long Distance?,... Get off
the wire... No... I was talking to
Fredersdorf... What?,... Oh...
Hello!... Is that you dear?... How
is everything at home?... What do
you hear from the factory?... No...
How are the children?... I left my
shaving set at home... Yes, is your
father there?... Hello, father?...
Our stock has gone down twenty-three
points. If our merger with the Saxonia
doesn't go through -- I don't know
what we can do... Hello, hello...
yes, papa. Rely on me -- everything
depends on Manchester... If they
refuse to come in -- well, we will
be in bad shape... no... Rely on me,
I'll make it go through -- I'll make
it go through... Waiting?... Yes,
I'm still speaking...
THE CAMERA THEN PANS TO Suzette. Suzette is already in the
booth and she is waiting for Mr. Meierheim to come on.
<b> SUZETTE
</b> (starting to speak)
Hello, Mr. Meierheim?... Is that,
Mr. Meierheim?... This is Suzette...
Suzette, Madam Grusinskaya's maid...
No... Madam Grusinskaya will not go
to the rehearsal... No... Madam is
|
tastes
|
How many times does the word 'tastes' appear in the text?
| 0
|
continues to hold BATTS's
arms.
JIMMY
(to Henry, while
pinning Batts's
arms)
Quick! Lock the door.
WE SEE TOMMY club BATTS to the ground with JIMMY holding
BATTS's arms.
CUT TO:
HENRY locking the door.
CUT TO:
BATTS'S INERT FORM -
on the floor.
WE SEE TOMMY unfold the package he had dropped near the
bar.
It is a plastic, flower-printed mattress cover.
TOMMY and JIMMY start putting BAITS's legs into the mattress
cover.
HENRY is standing over them as JIMMY and TOMMY struggle to
fit BAITS' s body into the mattress cover.
HENRY
What are we going to do with him?
We can't dump him in the street.
JIMMY
(to Henry)
Bring the car round back. I know a
place Upstate they'll never find
him.
TOMMY is looking brightly at HENRY, as he and JIMMY finally
zip BATTS in the mattress cover.
TOMMY
I didn't want to get blood on your
floor.
EXT. REAR DRIVEWAY - THE SUITE - NIGHT
Darkness. The open trunk of HENRY 's car. The mattress
cover is being shoved into the trunk by the THREE MEN. It
is heavy work.
HENRY
Batts's made. His whole crew is
going to be looking for him. This
is fucking bad.
TOMMY
There's a shovel at my mother's.
INT. TOMMY'S MOTHER'S HOUSE - KITCHEN - NIGHT
Darkness in the kitchen. We hear noise of doors opening
and tools being banged around in the dark.
TOMMY
SSHHH. You'll wake 'er up.
Suddenly the light in the entryway goes on, and WE SEE
TOMMY'S MOTHER, in housecoat, beaming at her SON and his
FRIENDS.
CUT TO:
where TOMMY'S MOTHER' hovers over the seated TOMMY, HENRY
and JIMMY. The table is filled with plates and coffee cops
and the debris of dirty dishes.
MOTHER
(to all)
Have some more. Yon hardly touched
anything. Did Tommy tell you about
my painting? Look.
WE SEE her reach next to the refrigerator and pull up a
couple of oil paintings she props on the edge of the table.
MOTHER (CONTD)
(proudly)
They want me to do a portrait next.
I'm gonna do the Moan Lisa.
CUT TO:
WINDOW
where WE SEE HENRY 's car with the body in the trunk, still
parked at the curb.
INT. HENRY'S CAR - NIGHT
Finally on their way, HENRY is driving. JIMMY, in the
passenger's seat, and TOMMY, in the rear seat, embracing
the shovel, are dozing off. The sleepy humming of the wheels
is suddenly interrupted by a thumping sound. At first,
HENRY thinks he has a flat, but the thumping is too
irregular. JIMMY awakens. His eyes are on HENRY. TOMMY
leans forward from the rear seat. Silence. Thump Silence.
EXT. MERRITT PARKWAY - NIGHT
Car pulls off the road onto the grass. HENRY, JIMMY and
TOMMY, still holding the shovel, get out of the car.
TOMMY
Jesus Christ! Miserable bastard!
HENRY opens the trunk and steps back. In the trunk light
WE SEE the mattress cover squirming around. We hear muffled
groans.
TOMMY
(raising the shovel)
Can you believe this no-good fuck?
The prick! He's still alive.
TOMMY suddenly smashes the shovel into the moving, bloody
mattress cover. He smashes it again and again and again.
Cursing BATTS with every swing.
TOMMY
Rat bastard.
(he swings shovel)
No-good, low-life fuck.
TOMMY swings shovel again and again.
Soon the mattress cover stops squirming and TOMMY stops
swinging the shovel. He is exhausted. TOMMY and JIMMY get
back in the car. HENRY is facing the open trunk.
TILT UP and FREEZE ON HENRY'S face slamming the trunk shut.
HENRY (V.O.)
As far back as I can remember, I
always wanted to be a gangster.
MAIN TITLE:
GOOD FELLAS
UNFREEZE and
DISSOLVE TO:
HENRY - AS A CHILD
looking out his bedroom window.
TITLE - EAST NEW YORK: BROOKLYN. 1955.
HENRY (V.O.)
To me, being a gangster was better
than being President of the United
States.
EXT. CABSTAND - NIGHT
HENRY'S POV - A GRIMY ONE-STORY CABSTAND
with faded "Pitkin Avenue Cabs" sign above the door. Its
after midnight. WE SEE A HALF-DOZEN, immaculately-dressed
HOODS wearing diamond pinky rings and silk shirts, lounging
around the cabstand talking and sipping coffee.
HENRY (V.O.)
Even before I first wandered into
the cabstand for an after-school
job, I knew I wanted to be a part
of them. It was there I belonged.
HENRY'S POV
WE SEE a Cadillac pull up to the cabstand. WEE SEE the
car rise slightly when TWO huge, dapper HOODS get out.
On HOOD #1 WE SEE large diamond pinky ring on a sausage-
thick finger.
On HOOD #2 WE SEE a broken-nosed hood's tie hanging loosely
across his monogrammed shirt like a silk bandolier.
HENRY (V.O.)
To me it meant being somebody in a
|
hear
|
How many times does the word 'hear' appear in the text?
| 1
|
The girl glanced in the direction of the bench where she had last seen
Djor Kantos. He was not in sight. She inclined her head in assent to
the claim of the Gatholian. Slaves were passing among the guests,
distributing small musical instruments of a single string. Upon each
instrument were characters which indicated the pitch and length of its
tone. The instruments were of skeel, the string of gut, and were shaped
to fit the left forearm of the dancer, to which it was strapped. There
was also a ring wound with gut which was worn between the first and
second joints of the index finger of the right hand and which, when
passed over the string of the instrument, elicited the single note
required of the dancer.
The guests had risen and were slowly making their way toward the
expanse of scarlet sward at the south end of the gardens where the
dance was to be held, when Djor Kantos came hurriedly toward Tara of
Helium. "I claim--" he exclaimed as he neared her; but she interrupted
him with a gesture.
"You are too late, Djor Kantos," she cried in mock anger. "No laggard
may claim Tara of Helium; but haste now lest thou lose also Olvia
Marthis, whom I have never seen wait long to be claimed for this or any
other dance."
"I have already lost her," admitted Djor Kantos ruefully.
"And you mean to say that you came for Tara of Helium only after having
lost Olvia Marthis?" demanded the girl, still simulating displeasure.
"Oh, Tara of Helium, you know better than that," insisted the young
man. "Was it not natural that I should assume that you would expect me,
who alone has claimed you for the Dance of Barsoom for at least twelve
times past?"
"And sit and play with my thumbs until you saw fit to come for me?" she
questioned. "Ah, no, Djor Kantos; Tara of Helium is for no laggard,"
and she threw him a sweet smile and passed on toward the assembling
dancers with Gahan, Jed of far Gathol.
The Dance of Barsoom bears a relation similar to the more formal
dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it
is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth
of either sex may attend an important social function where there is
dancing, he must have become proficient in at least three dances--The
Dance of Barsoom, his national dance, and the dance of his city. In
these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never
varies; nor do the steps or figures vary, having been handed down from
time immemorial. All Barsoomian dances are stately and beautiful, but
The Dance of Barsoom is a wondrous epic of motion and harmony--there is
no grotesque posturing, no vulgar or suggestive movements. It has been
described as the interpretation of the highest ideals of a world that
aspired to grace and beauty and chastity in woman, and strength and
dignity and loyalty in man.
Today, John Carter, Warlord of Mars, with Dejah Thoris, his mate, led
in the dancing, and if there was another couple that vied with them in
possession of the silent admiration of the guests it was the
resplendent Jed of Gathol and his beautiful partner. In the
ever-changing figures of the dance the man found himself now with the
girl's hand in his and again with an arm about the lithe body that the
jeweled harness but inadequately covered, and the girl, though she had
danced a thousand dances in the past, realized for the first time the
personal contact of a man's arm against her naked flesh. It troubled
her that she should notice it, and she looked up questioningly and
almost with displeasure at the man as though it was his fault. Their
eyes met and she saw in his that which she had never seen in the eyes
of Djor Kantos. It was at the very end of the dance and they both
stopped suddenly with the music and stood there looking straight into
each other's eyes. It was Gahan of Gathol who spoke first.
"Tara of Helium, I love you!" he said.
The girl drew herself to her full height. "The Jed of Gathol forgets
himself," she exclaimed haughtily.
"The Jed of Gathol would forget everything but you, Tara of Helium," he
replied. Fiercely he pressed the soft hand that he still retained from
the last position of the dance. "I love you, Tara of Helium," he
repeated. "Why should your ears refuse to hear what your eyes but just
now did not refuse to see--and answer?"
"What meanest thou?" she cried. "Are the men of Gathol such boors,
then?"
"They are neither boors nor fools," he replied, quietly. "They know
when they love a woman--and when she loves them."
Tara of Helium stamped her little foot in anger. "Go!" she said,
"before it is necessary to acquaint my father with the dishonor of his
guest."
She turned and walked away. "Wait!" cried the man. "Just another word."
"Of apology?" she asked.
"Of prophecy," he said.
"I do not care to hear it," replied Tara of Helium, and left him
standing there. She was strangely unstrung and shortly thereafter
returned to her own quarter of the palace, where she stood for a long
time by a window looking out beyond the scarlet tower of Greater Helium
toward the northwest.
Presently she turned angrily away. "I hate him!" she exclaimed aloud.
"Whom?" inquired the privileged Uthia.
Tara of Helium stamped her foot. "That ill-mannered boor, the Jed of
Gathol," she replied.
Uthia raised her slim brows.
At the stamping of the little foot, a great beast rose from the corner
of the room and crossed to Tara of Helium where it stood looking up
into her face. She placed her hand upon the ugly head. "Dear old
Woola," she said; "no love could be deeper than yours, yet it never
offends. Would that men might pattern themselves after you!"
CHAPTER II
AT THE GALE'S MERCY
Tara of Helium did not return to her father's guests, but awaited in
her own apartments the word from Djor Kantos which she knew must come,
begging her to return to the gardens. She would then refuse, haughtily.
But no appeal came from Djor Kantos. At first Tara of Helium was angry,
then she was hurt, and always she was puzzled. She could not
understand. Occasionally she thought of the Jed of Gathol and then she
would stamp her foot, for she was very angry indeed with Gahan. The
presumption of the man! He had insinuated that he read love for him in
her eyes. Never had she been so insulted and humiliated. Never had she
so thoroughly hated a man. Suddenly she turned toward Uthia.
"My flying leather!" she commanded.
"But the guests!" exclaimed the slave girl. "Your father, The Warlord,
will expect you to return."
"He will be disappointed," snapped Tara of Helium.
The slave hesitated. "He does not approve of your flying alone," she
reminded her mistress.
The young princess sprang to her feet and seized the unhappy slave by
the shoulders, shaking her. "You are becoming unbearable, Uthia," she
cried. "Soon there will be no alternative than to send you to the
public slave-market. Then possibly you will find a master to your
liking."
Tears came to the soft eyes of the slave girl. "It is because I love
you, my princess," she said softly. Tara of Helium melted. She took the
slave in her arms and kissed her.
"I have the disposition of a thoat, Uthia," she said. "Forgive me! I
love you and there is nothing that I would not do for you and nothing
would I do to harm you. Again, as I have so often in the past, I offer
you your freedom."
"I do not wish my freedom if it will separate me from you, Tara of
Helium," replied Uthia. "I am happy here with you--I think that I
should die without you."
Again the girls kissed. "And you will not fly alone, then?" questioned
the slave.
Tara of Helium laughed and pinched her companion. "You persistent
little pest," she cried. "Of course I shall fly--does not Tara of
Helium always do that which pleases her?"
Uthia shook her head sorrowfully. "Alas! she does," she admitted. "Iron
is the Warlord of Barsoom to the influences of all but two. In the
hands of Dejah Thoris and Tara of Helium he is as potters' clay."
"Then run and fetch my flying leather like the sweet slave you are,"
directed the mistress.
* * * * *
Far out across the ochre sea-bottoms beyond the twin cities of Helium
raced the swift flier of Tara of Helium. Thrilling to the speed and the
buoyancy and the obedience of the little craft the girl drove toward
the northwest. Why she should choose that direction she did not pause
to consider. Perhaps because in that direction lay the least known
areas of Barsoom, and, ergo, Romance, Mystery, and Adventure. In that
direction also lay far Gathol; but to that fact she gave no conscious
thought.
She did, however, think occasionally of the jed of that distant
kingdom, but the reaction to these thoughts was scarcely pleasurable.
They still brought a flush of shame to her cheeks and a surge of angry
blood to her heart. She was very angry with the Jed of Gathol, and
though she should never see him again she was quite sure that hate of
him would remain fresh in her memory forever. Mostly her thoughts
revolved about another--Djor Kantos. And when she thought of him she
thought also of Olvia Marthis of Hastor. Tara of Helium thought that
she was jealous of the fair Olvia and it made her very angry to think
that. She was angry with Djor Kantos and herself, but she was not angry
at all with Olvia Marthis, whom she loved, and so of course she was not
jealous really. The trouble was, that Tara of Helium had failed for
once to have her own way. Djor Kantos had not come running like a
willing slave when she had expected him, and, ah, here was the nub of
the whole thing! Gahan, Jed of Gathol, a stranger, had been a witness
to her humiliation. He had seen her unclaimed at the beginning of a
great function and he had had to come to her rescue to save her, as he
doubtless thought, from the inglorious fate of a wall-flower. At the
recurring thought, Tara of Helium could feel her whole body burning
with scarlet shame and then she went suddenly white and cold with rage;
whereupon she turned her flier about so abruptly that she was all but
torn from her lashings upon the flat, narrow deck. She reached home
just before dark. The guests had departed. Quiet had descended upon the
palace. An hour later she joined her father and mother at the evening
meal.
"You deserted us, Tara of Helium," said John Carter. "It is not what
the guests of John Carter should expect."
"They did not come to see me," replied Tara of Helium. "I did not ask
them."
"They were no less your guests," replied her father.
The girl rose, and came and stood beside him and put her arms about his
neck.
"My proper old Virginian," she cried, rumpling his shock of black hair.
"In Virginia you would be turned over your father's knee and spanked,"
said the man, smiling.
She crept into his lap and kissed him. "You do not love me any more,"
she announced. "No one loves me," but she could not compose her
features into a pout because bubbling laughter insisted upon breaking
through.
"The trouble is there are too many who love you," he said. "And now
there is another."
"Indeed!" she cried. "What do you mean?"
"Gahan of Gathol has asked permission to woo you."
The girl sat up very straight and tilted her chin in the air. "I would
not wed with a walking diamond-mine," she said. "I will not have him."
"I told him as much," replied her father, "and that you were as good as
betrothed to another. He was very courteous about it; but at the same
time he gave me to understand that he was accustomed to getting what he
wanted and that he wanted you very much. I suppose it will mean another
war. Your mother's beauty kept Helium at war for many years, and--well,
Tara of Helium, if I were a young man I should doubtless be willing to
set all Barsoom afire to win you, as I still would to keep your divine
mother," and he smiled across the sorapus table and its golden service
at the undimmed beauty of Mars' most beautiful woman.
"Our little girl should not yet be troubled with such matters," said
Dejah Thoris. "Remember, John Carter, that you are not dealing with an
Earth child, whose span of life would be more than half completed
before a daughter of Barsoom reached actual maturity."
"But do not the daughters of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as
twenty?" he insisted.
"Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of men after forty
generations of Earth folk have returned to dust--there is no hurry, at
least, upon Barsoom. We do not fade and decay here as you tell me those
of your planet do, though you, yourself, belie your own words. When the
time seems proper Tara of Helium shall wed with Djor Kantos, and until
then let us give the matter no further thought."
"No," said the girl, "the subject irks me, and I shall not marry Djor
Kantos, or another--I do not intend to wed."
Her father and mother looked at her and smiled. "When Gahan of Gathol
returns he may carry you off," said the former.
"He has gone?" asked the girl.
"His flier departs for Gathol in the morning," John Carter replied.
"I have seen the last of him then," remarked Tara of Helium with a sigh
of relief.
"He says not," returned John Carter.
The girl dismissed the subject with a shrug and the conversation passed
to other topics. A letter had arrived from Thuvia of Ptarth, who was
visiting at her father's court while Carthoris, her mate, hunted in
Okar. Word had been received that the Tharks and Warhoons were again at
war, or rather that there had been an engagement, for war was their
habitual state. In the memory of man there had been no peace between
these two savage green hordes--only a single temporary truce. Two new
battleships had been launched at Hastor. A little band of holy therns
was attempting to revive the ancient and discredited religion of Issus,
who they claimed still lived in spirit and had communicated with them.
There were rumors of war from Dusar. A scientist claimed to have
discovered human life on the further moon. A madman had attempted to
destroy the atmosphere plant. Seven people had been assassinated in
Greater Helium during the last ten zodes, (the equivalent of an Earth
day).
Following the meal Dejah Thoris and The Warlord played at jetan, the
Barsoomian game of chess, which is played upon a board of a hundred
alternate black and orange squares. One player has twenty black pieces,
the other, twenty orange pieces. A brief description of the game may
interest those Earth readers who care for chess, and will not be lost
upon those who pursue this narrative to its conclusion, since before
they are done they will find that a knowledge of jetan will add to the
interest and the thrills that are in store for them.
The men are placed upon the board as in chess upon the first two rows
next the players. In order from left to right on the line of squares
nearest the players, the jetan pieces are Warrior, Padwar, Dwar, Flier,
Chief, Princess, Flier, Dwar, Padwar, Warrior. In the next line all are
Panthans except the end pieces, which are called Thoats, and represent
mounted warriors.
The Panthans, which are represented as warriors with one feather, may
move one space in any direction except backward; the Thoats, mounted
warriors with three feathers, may move one straight and one diagonal,
and may jump intervening pieces; Warriors, foot soldiers with two
feathers, straight in any direction, or diagonally, two spaces;
Padwars, lieutenants wearing two feathers, two diagonal in any
direction, or combination; Dwars, captains wearing three feathers,
three spaces straight in any direction, or combination; Fliers,
represented by a propellor with three blades, three spaces in any
direction, or combination, diagonally, and may jump intervening pieces;
the Chief, indicated by a diadem with ten jewels, three spaces in any
direction, straight, or diagonal; Princess, diadem with a single jewel,
same as Chief, and can jump intervening pieces.
The game is won when a player places any of his pieces on the same
square with his opponent's Princess, or when a Chief takes a Chief. It
is drawn when a Chief is taken by any opposing piece other than the
opposing Chief; or when both sides have been reduced to three pieces,
or less, of equal value, and the game is not terminated in the
following ten moves, five apiece. This is but a general outline of the
game, briefly stated.
It was this game that Dejah Thoris and John Carter were playing when
Tara of Helium bid them good night, retiring to her own quarters and
her sleeping silks and furs. "Until morning, my beloved," she called
back to them as she passed from the apartment, nor little did she
guess, nor her parents, that this might indeed be the last time that
they would ever set eyes upon her.
The morning broke dull and gray. Ominous clouds billowed restlessly and
low. Beneath them torn fragments scudded toward the northwest. From her
window Tara of Helium looked out upon this unusual scene. Dense clouds
seldom overcast the Barsoomian sky. At this hour of the day it was her
custom to ride one of those small thoats that are the saddle animals of
the red Martians, but the sight of the billowing clouds lured her to a
new adventure. Uthia still slept and the girl did not disturb her.
Instead, she dressed quietly and went to the hangar upon the roof of
the palace directly above her quarters
|
head
|
How many times does the word 'head' appear in the text?
| 2
|
</b> Cut back to the landscape. Now we are at the gates, and the
creatures slip through and away into the mist. Only one, a beautiful,
ferocious female called Shuna Sassi remains, turning to look at us.
She beckons.
<b>
</b> SHUNA: Come...
<b>
</b> The camera retreats from her.
<b>
</b> SHUNA: Will you not come?
<b>
</b> Now the last of the creatures, the Drummer, takes her by the arm,
snatching her away through the gates. As she disappears, the camera
follows again, stopping at the gates themselves, which close with an
unearthly din.
<b>
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> CUT TO:
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> 2R. INT. LORI'S APARTMENT NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> C.U. on Boone, closed eyes. He is dreaming. His gaze roves beneath
his lids.
<b>
</b> Lori's lips come into shot kissing first his eyes and then traveling
down his face to his mouth.
<b>
</b> LORI: Boone...wake up.
<b>
</b> Boone's eyes flicker open.
<b>
</b> LORI: Hi. You OK?
<b>
</b> Boone: Yep.
<b>
</b> Now Boone's eyes are fully open. He sits up. Looks towards the open
window. Night beyond. She kisses him, distracting him from the sight
of the window.
<b>
</b> LORI: You want something to eat?
<b>
</b> BOONE: Sure. What time is it?
<b>
</b> LORI: Nine-thirty. I was letting you doze.
<b>
</b> BOONE: Thought you'd worn me out, huh?
<b>
</b> Lori smiles, and kisses him, then crosses the room to the kitchen
area, picks up some fruit, and a knife, carrying both back to where
Boone is lying on the bed. It is unmade. Both Lori and Boone are
lightly dressed, clothes casually thrown on after an afternoon
lovemaking.
<b>
</b> Lori: You know what?
<b>
</b> BOONE: What?
<b>
</b> LORI: We should get out of Calgary for a few days. Just take off.
<b>
</b> BOONE: Anywhere special?
<b>
</b> LORI: Somewhere we can be alone together.
<b>
</b> BOONE: More alone than this?
<b>
</b> LORI: Yeah. Just you and me. No work. No telephone calls. No...
<b>
</b> BOONE: Bad dreams.
<b>
</b> LORI: No bad dreams.
<b>
</b> BOONE: How did you know?
<b>
</b> LORI: I know. I always know. It's no big deal.
<b>
</b> BOONE: I'm going around in some crazy loop in my head.
<b>
</b> LORI: You're not crazy.
<b>
</b> BOONE: No.
<b>
</b> LORI: Say it like you mean it.
<b>
</b> BOONE: I believe it. I'm not crazy. But I want this damn dream out
of my head.
<b>
</b> He gets up and goes to the window.
<b>
</b> BOONE: Decker's started calling me again.
<b>
</b> LORI: When?
<b>
</b> BOONE: All last week. Every day.
<b>
</b> LORI: What does he want?
<b>
</b> BOONE: I don't know. I haven't called him back.
<b>
</b> LORI: If he can help, see him. Tell him it's all gone but the bad
dreams.
<b>
</b> BOONE: They're not bad. That's what's weird. The more I have them
the more I like them. Now I do sound like a crazy, right?
<b>
</b> LORI: No. You sound like the man I love. A little haunted, maybe,
but the sanest man I ever met.
<b>
</b> BOONE: Keep going.
<b>
</b> LORI: Will you see Decker?
<b>
</b> BOONE: You think I should?
<b>
</b> LORI: Where's the harm? You tell him from me, I'm the only thing you
should be dreaming about.
<b>
</b> BOONE: I don't think he'd get it. He never had a wet dream in his
life.
<b>
</b> LORI: I don't want to be competing with things I can't see, Boone.
Can't share I don't want to be always feeling that something's
pulling at you.
<b>
</b> BOONE: I'm not going anywhere, Lori. Except with you.
<b>
</b> LORI: I can't hear that often enough.
<b>
</b> BOONE: I'll never leave you. Not ever. I swear.
<b>
</b> He kisses her, passionately.
<b>
</b> BOONE: Can't remember a time when I didn't love you.
<b>
</b> LORI: How about before we met?
<b>
</b> BOONE: Even then.
<b>
</b> They kiss again. We move past them into the darkness outside the
window.
<b>
</b> Dissolve to the moon, clearing cloud.
<b>
</b>
<b> SCENES 3-15 DELETED
</b>
<b>
</b>
<b> 16. EXT. RICKMAN HOUSE NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> A pleasant house in a pleasant neighborhood. Lights burn inside.
<b>
</b>
<b> 17. INT. RICKMAN HOUSE NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> Melissa Rickman emerges from the lounge, with a Dagwood sandwich, a
work in progress. She is thirty-five, and going to seed in a gentle
way. Her husband, Lou Rickman, a similar type, is planted in front of
the television.
<b>
</b> MELISSA: Okay, you want ham, cheese, pickle, mustard?
<b>
</b> LOU: All of the above and a brewski, thank you.
<b>
</b> MELISSA: You're getting porky, Lou.
<b>
</b> LOU [amiable - tried to grab her]: I'm comfortable. I like myself
fat. I like you fat too...
<b>
</b> MELISSA [secretly amused - she hushes him]: Keep it down, Lou,
you'll wake the munchkins.
<b>
</b> She hears something upstairs, goes to the foot of the stairs, looks
up. Her eldest son, Lou Two, waddles into view. He's five.
<b>
</b> LOU TWO: Mommy...
<b>
</b> MELISSA: Sweetie, you're supposed to be beddy-bye.
<b>
</b> LOU TWO: I heard something.
<b>
</b> MELISSA: What did you hear?
<b>
</b> LOU TWO: Bad man.
<b>
</b> MELISSA: No, everything's okay. You go back to bed, munchkin, I'll
be up to see you in a minute.
<b>
</b> LOU [V.O.]: How's that sandwich coming?
<b>
</b> MELISSA: Coming...
<b>
</b> Melissa disappears from the bottom of the stairs.
<b>
</b>
<b> 18. INT. RICKMAN KITCHEN NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> Melissa enters, moves out of sight. We stay at the door. A figure
appears dressed in black, knives in both hands, and crosses to leave
the screen again. We do not see his face. But we hear his labours:
the sound of the blades slicing Melissa. She staggers into view,
grabbing hold of her slit throat. Blood bubbles between her fingers.
The figure appears behind her. She turns, as the knife descends.
<b>
</b>
<b> 19. INT. RICKMAN LOUNGE NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> Lou hears a sound, rises and moves towards the kitchen door.
<b>
</b> LOU: Melissa?
<b>
</b> At the top of the stairs, Lou Two watches wide-eyed.
<b>
</b>
<b> 20. INT. RICKMAN STAIRS NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> Lou Two's P.O.V. - We see blood running along the highway.
<b>
</b>
<b> 21. INT. RICKMAN KITCHEN NIGHT
</b>
<b>
</b> Lou reaches the kitchen door and sees Melissa laid out, dead, on the
kitchen table
<b>
</b> LOU: Oh God - GOD!
<b>
</b>
|
grabbing
|
How many times does the word 'grabbing' appear in the text?
| 0
|
groups of three, meanwhile he's really a grizzled old fire
marshall named EARL, freezing his nuts off.
Beside him sits MRS. CLAUS, about whom we notice two things:
First, she's the June in this June/December pair -- and
second, she's to kill for, an effortlessly beautiful woman.
For the record, meet SAMANTHA CAINE.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> How you holdin' up?
<b> EARL
</b> Freezing my nuts off.
Santa produces a bottle of Seagrams. Starts to open it.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> *Put that away*.
Earl complies, grumbling. Some teenage burnouts howl from a
street corner:
<b> BURNOUT
</b> Ow! Mrs. Claus is HOT!
Samantha squirms in her seat, scowling.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> I can't take it, Earl, this dumb
costume is giving me a wedgie. Driving
me crazy, but there's these *kids*
here --
<b> EARL
</b> Right, you don't wanna be rootin' --
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> In front of little Billy, age four,
yeah. "Look, Mommy, Mrs. Claus chooses
to go butt-mining."
<b> EARL
</b> This is little Billy talking?
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Age four, kid's unbelievable.
(sighs)
I'm too old for this, Earl.
<b> EARL
</b> Yeah, yeah. Spare me, I got a prostate
the size of a melon.
Samantha stares at him.
<b> EARL
</b> Seriously, half my life's a doctor's
hand up my ass, I should marry the
fucker.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Say that a little louder, there's a
kid in back didn't catch it.
<b> EARL
</b> It's not that fucking little Billy
again, is it?
<b> SERIES OF SHOTS:
</b>
Throughout the following NARRATION, we watch Sam: 1) Rallying
the varsity CHEERLEADERS; 2) Showing off a GERBIL to her
seventh graders; 3) Kneeling in church with her HUSBAND,
blessing herself; 4) Absently fingering a silver KEY which
she wears round her neck; and finally 5) Probing at a tiny
ridged SCAR under her hairline.
<b> SAMANTHA (V.O.)
</b> Eight years. I keep hiring detectives,
but they never find anything.
(beat)
I was born 3000 days ago on the beach
in New Jersey. I entered the world
fully grown, wearing clothes I don't
remember buying. Nothing in the
pockets but a single key, filed
smooth.
(beat)
I'm married now. Nice guy, early
forties. I stand naked in the mirror
and try to guess my age. Thirty-five,
maybe. I have lots of scars.
<b> EXT. SNOWY SUBURBAN STREET - AFTERNOON
</b>
Samantha walks with her husband HAL. Late thirties. Balding.
Coming out of St. Paul's Episcopal Church.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Hal, I gotta tell you, of all the
Christmas pageants I've seen, this
was by far the most recent.
<b> HAL
</b> Aw, honey, I had teenage girls playing
the wise men, what'd you expect?
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Teenage boys?
<b> HAL
</b> Well, I thought they did fine.
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Just fine? Come on, it was ground
breaking stuff. The first Nativity
where Joseph stares at the wise men's
tits all night.
She hugs him good-naturedly. As they near their house, an
eight year-old GIRL drops from a TREEHOUSE and comes running,
leaps into Mommy's arms --
<b> SAMANTHA
</b> Hey, you!
The kid leaps into her arms, as we HEAR:
<b> SAMANTHA (V.O.)
</b> Her name is Caitlin. She's my daughter
and when I woke up on that long-ago
day, she was two months grown in my
belly. I don't know who put her there.
I may never. I just know she's mine,
and she's about to turn eight.
The family troops up the driveway to their SUBURBAN HOME.
Chipper little A-frame. Christmas lights abound. Behind the
house, a vast frozen POND. It is idyllic.
<b> INT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL - NIGHT
</b>
PARTY in progress. Laughter. Mingling. In the corner, CAITLIN
puts pipe cleaner antlers on the gerbil. Samantha shepherds
her home room class past the punchbowl. She is radiant. EARL
surreptitiously nips from a silver flask.
<b> SAMANTHA (V.O.)
</b> 3000 days. I teach now, fifth grade.
I have the key, I wear it around my
neck for luck. Except for that, and
my name, all traces of my prior life
are lost.
(beat)
Was I in love ever...? Did someone
look in my eyes, did I say, "Darling,
I'll never forget you...?"
(beat)
Because fuck me, darling, I managed.
ACROSS THE ROOM -- Her daughter CAITLIN hangs with two young
girls. Shows off a plush TEDDY BEAR, says:
<b> CAITLIN
</b>
|
corner
|
How many times does the word 'corner' appear in the text?
| 1
|
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