 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Long Odds by H. Ryder Haggard Read by John Nicholson, Alexandria, Virginia, January 2007. The story, which is narrated in the following pages, came to me from the lips of my old friend Alan Quatermain, or Hunter Quatermain, as we used to call him in South Africa. He told it to me one evening when I was stopping with him at the place he bought in Yorkshire. Shortly after that, the death of his only son so unsettled him that he immediately left England, accompanied by two companions, his old fellow voyagers Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and has now utterly vanished into the dark heart of Africa. He has persuaded that a white people, of which he has heard rumors all his life, exists somewhere on the highlands in the vast still unexplored interior, and his great ambition is to find them before he dies. This is the wild quest upon which he and his companions have departed, and from which I shrewdly suspect they never will return. One letter only have I received from the old gentleman, dated from a mission station high up the tana, a river on the east coast, about 300 miles north of Zanzibar. In it he says that they have gone through many hardships and adventures, but are alive and well, and have found traces which go far towards making him hope that the results of their wild quest may be a magnificent and unexampled discovery. I greatly fear, however, that all he has discovered is death. For this letter came a long while ago, and nobody has heard a single word of the party since. They have totally vanished. It was on the last evening of my stay at his house that he told the ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual thing for him to do, for he was a most abstinious man, having conceived, as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects upon the class of colonists, hunters, transport writers, and others, amongst whom he had passed so many years of his life. Consequently the good wine took more effect on him than it would have done on most men, sending a little flesh into his wrinkled cheeks making him talk more freely than usual. Dear old man, I can see him now, as he went limping up and down the vestibule with his gray hair sticking up in scrubbing brush fashion, his shriveled yellow face, and his large dark eyes that were as keen as any hawks, and yet soft as a bucks. The room was hung with trophies of his numerous hunting expeditions, and he had some story about every one of them if only he could be got to tell it. Generally he would not, for he was not very fond of narrating his own adventures, but tonight the port wine made him more communicative. Ah, you brute! he said, stopping beneath an unusually large skull of a lion, which was fixed just over the mantelpiece beneath a long row of guns. Its jaws distended to their utmost width. Ah, you brute! you have given me a lot of trouble for the last dozen years. In will, I suppose, to my dying day. Tell us the yarn, quarter man, said good. You have often promised to tell me, and you never have. You had better not ask me to, he answered, for it is a longish one. All right, I said, the evening is young, and there is some more port. Thus adjured, he filled his pipe from a jar of coarse-cut boar tobacco that was always standing on the mantelpiece, and still walking up and down the room began. It was, I think, in the March of 69, that I was up in Sikokuni's country. It was just after old Sukwati's time, and Sikokuni had got into power. I forget how. Anyway, I was there. I had heard that the Bapiti people had brought down an enormous quantity of ivory from the interior, and so I started with a wagonload of goods and came straight away from Middleburg to try and trade some of it. It was a risky thing to go into the country so early on account of the fever. But I knew that there were one or two others after that lot of ivory, so I determined to have a try for it and take my chance of fever. I had become so tough from continual knocking about that I did not set it down at much. Well, I got on all right for a while. It is a wonderfully beautiful piece of bush veldt with great ranges of mountains running through it, and round granite copies starting up here and there, looking out like sentinels over the rolling waste of bush. But it is very hot. Hot as a stupan. And when I was there that March, which of course is autumn in this part of Africa, the whole place reaped of fever. Every morning, as I trekked along down by the Oliphant River, I used to creep from the wagon at dawn and look out. But there was no river to be seen, only a long line of billows of what looked like the finest cotton wool tossed up lightly with a pitchfork. It was the fever mist. Out from among the scrub, too, came little spirals of vapor, as though there were hundreds of tiny fires alight in it, reek rising from thousands of tons of rotting vegetation. It was a beautiful place, but the beauty was the beauty of death, and all those lines and blots of vapor wrote one great word across the surface of the country, and that word was fever. It was a dreadful year of illness, that. I came, I remember, to one little crowd of knob noses, and went up to see if I could get some moss or curdle buttermilk and a few melees. As I drew near, I was struck with the silence of the place. No children began to chatter, and no dogs barked, nor could I see any native sheep or cattle. The place, though it had evidently been inhabited of late, was as still as the bush round it, and some guinea fowl got up out of the prickly pear bushes right at the corral gate. I remember that I hesitated a little before going in. There was such an air of desolation about the spot. Nature never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her breast. She is only lonely. But when man has been, and has passed away, then she looks desolate. Well, I passed into the corral and went up to the principal hut. In front of the hut was something with an old sheepskin caress thrown over it. I stooped down and drew off the rug and then shrank back amazed. For under it was the body of a young woman, recently dead. For a moment I thought of turning back, but my curiosity overcame me. So going past the dead woman, I went down on my hands and knees and crept into the hut. It was so dark that I could not see anything, though I could smell a great deal. So I lit a match. It was a tan-sticker match, and burnt slowly and dimly. And as the light gradually increased, I made out what I took to be a family of people. Men, women, and children fast to sleep. Presently it burnt up brightly, and I saw that they too, five of them all together, were quite dead. One was a baby. I dropped the match in a hurry, and was making my way from the hut as quick as I could go, when I caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it was a wildcat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly a voice near the eyes first began to mutter, and then to send up a succession of awful yells. Hastily I lit another match, and perceived that the eyes belonged to an old woman, wrapped up in a greasy leather garment. Taking her by the arm, I dragged her out, for she could not, or would not, come by herself, and the stench was overpowering me. Such a sight as she was, a bag of bones covered over with black shriveled parchment. The only white thing about her was her wool, and she seemed to be pretty well dead, except for her eyes and her voice. She thought that I was a devil, come to take her, and that is why she yelled so. Well, I got her down to the wagon, and gave her a taut of caped smoke, and, as soon as it was ready, poured about a pint of beef tea down her throat, made from the flesh of a blue-villa beast I had killed the day before, and after that she brightened up wonderfully. She could talk zulu. Indeed, it turned out that she had run away from Zululand into Chaka's time, and she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When they had died, the other inhabitants of the crowd had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman who was helpless from age and infirmity to perish of starvation or disease as the case might be. She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found her. I took her on to the next crowd, and gave the headman a blanket to look after her, promising him another if I found her well when I came back. I remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two blankets for the sake of such a worthless old creature. Why did I not leave her in the bush? He asked. Those people carry the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to its extreme, you see. It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made of acquaintance with my friend Yonder, and he nodded towards the skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide mantel shelf. I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock, a long trek, but I wanted to get on and had turned the oxen out to graze, sending the vorluper to look after them, my intention being to in span again about six o'clock, and trek with the moon till ten. Then I got into the wagon and had a good sleep till half past two or so in the afternoon when I rose and cooked some meat and had my dinner, washing it down with a panicin of black coffee, for it was difficult to get preserved milk in those days. Just as I had finished and the driver, a man called Tom, was washing up the things, in comes the young scoundrel of a vorluper driving one ox before him. Where are the other oxen? I asked. Kus! he said. Kus! the other oxen have gone away. I turned to my back for a minute, and when I looked round again they were all gone except Captein here, who was rubbing his back against a tree. You mean that you have been asleep and let them stray, you villain? I will rub your back against a stick, I answered, feeling very angry, for it was not a pleasant prospect to be stuck up in that fever trap for a week or so while we were hunting for the oxen. Off you go, and you too, Tom, and mind you don't come back till you have found them. They have trekked back along the Middleburg Road and are a dozen miles off by now, I'll be bound. Now no words go, both of you. Tom, the driver, swore and caught the lad a hearty kick which he richly deserved. And then, having tied old Captein up to the dissel boom with a ring, they took their essay guys and sticks and started. I would have gone too, and I knew that somebody must look after the wagon and I did not like to leave either of the boys with it at night. I was in a very bad temper, indeed, although I was pretty well used to these sort of occurrences, and soothed myself by taking a rifle and going to kill something. For a couple of hours I poked about without seeing anything that I could get a shot at, but at last, just as I was again within 70 yards of the wagon, I put up an old Impala ram from behind a mimosa thorn. He ran straight for the wagon, and it was not till he was passing within a few feet of it that I could get a decent shot at him. Then I pulled and caught him halfway down the spine. Over he went, dead as a doornail. And a pretty shot it was, though I ought not to say it. This little incident put me into rather a better humor, especially as the buck had rolled right against the after part of the wagon, so I only had to gut him, fix a ram around his legs and haul him up. By the time I had done this the sun was down and the full moon was up and a beautiful moon it was. And then there came that wonderful hush which sometimes falls over the African bush in the early hours of the night. No beast was moving and no bird called. Not a breath of air stirred the quiet trees and the shadows did not even quiver. They only grew. It was very oppressive and very lonely for there was not a sign of the cattle or the boys. I was quite thankful for the society of ol' captain, who was lying down contentedly against the dissel boom, the cudd with a good conscience. Presently, however, captain began to get restless. First he snorted, then he got up and snorted again. I could not make it out, so like a fool I got down off the wagon box to have a look round, thinking it might be the lost oxen coming. Next instant I regretted it. For all of a sudden I heard a roar of something yellow flash past me and light on poor captain. Then came a bellow of agony from the ox and a crunch as the lion put his teeth through the poor brute's neck and I began to understand what had happened. My rifle was in the wagon and my first thought being to get hold of it I turned and made a bolt for the box. I got my foot up on the wheel and flung my body forward onto the wagon and there I stopped as if I were frozen. And no wonder, for as I was about to spring up I heard the lion behind me and next second I felt the brute. I as plainly as I can feel this table. I felt him, I say, sniffing at my left leg that was hanging down. My word, I did feel queer. I don't think that I ever felt so queer before. I dared not move for the life of me. And the odd thing was that I seemed to lose power over my leg which developed an insane sort of inclination to kick out of its own mere motion just as hysterical people want to laugh when they ought to be particularly solemn. Well the lion sniffed and sniffed beginning at my ankle and slowly nosing away up to my thigh. I thought that he was going to get hold then but he did not. He only growled softly and went back to the ox. Shifting my head a little I got a full view of him. He was about the biggest lion I ever saw and I have seen a great many. And he had a most tremendous black mane. What his teeth were like you can see. Look there, pretty big ones, ain't they? Altogether he was a magnificent animal and as I lay sprawling on the foretongue of the wagon it occurred to me that he would look uncommonly well in a cage. He stood there by the carcass of poor captain and deliberately disemboweled him as neatly as a butcher could have done. All this while I dared not move for he kept lifting his head and keeping an eye on me as he licked his bloody chops. When he had cleaned captain out he opened his mouth and roared and I am not exaggerating when I say that the sound shook the wagon. Instantly there came back an answering roar. Heavens, I thought, there is his mate. Hardly was the thought out of my head when I caught sight in the moonlight of the lioness bounding along through the long grass and after her a couple of cubs about the size of mastiffs. She stopped within a few feet of my head and stood, waved her tail and fixed me with her glowing yellow eyes. But just as I thought that it was all over she turned and began to feed on captain and so did the cubs. There were the four of them within eight feet of me growling and quarreling rending and tearing and crunching poor captain's bones and their eye lay shaking with terror and the cold perspiration pouring out of me feeling like another Daniel come to judgment in a new sense of the phrase. Presently the cubs had eaten their fill and began to get restless. One went round to the back of the wagon and pulled at the Impala buck that hung there and the other came round my way and commenced a sniffing game at my leg. Indeed he did more than that for my trouser being hitched up a little he began to lick the bear's skin with his rough tongue. The more he licked the more he liked it to judge from his increased vigor and the loud purring noise he made. Then I knew that the end had come for in another second his file-like tongue grasped through the skin of my leg which was luckily pretty tough and have drawn the blood and then there would be no chance for me. So I just lay there and thought of my sins and prayed to the Almighty and reflected that after all life was a very enjoyable thing. Then of a sudden I heard a crashing of bushes and the shouting and whistling of men and there were the two boys coming back with the cattle which they had found trekking along altogether. The lions lifted their heads and listened then bounded off without a sound and I fainted. The lions came back no more that night and by the next morning my nerves had got pretty straight again. But I was full of wrath when I thought of all that I had gone through the hands or rather noses of those four brutes and of the fate of my after-ox captain. He was a splendid ox and I was very fond of him. So wroth was I that like a fool I determined to attack the whole family of them. It was worthy of a greenhorn out on his first hunting trip but I did it nevertheless. Accordingly, after breakfast having rubbed some oil upon my leg which was very sore from the cub's tongue I took the driver, Tom who did not half like the business and having armed myself with an ordinary double number 12 smoothbore the first breech loader I ever have I started. I took the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well and my experience has been that a round ball smoothbore is quite as effective against a lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft and not a difficult animal to finish if you hit him anywhere in the body. A buck takes far more killing. Well, I started and the first thing I set to work to do was to try to discover whereabouts the brutes lay up for the day. About 300 yards from the wagon was the crest of a rise covered with single mimosa trees dotted about in a park-like fashion and beyond this lay a stretch of open plain running down to a dry pan or waterhole which covered about an acre of ground and was densely clothed with reeds now in the sear and yellow leaf. From the further edge of this pan the ground sloped up again to a great cleft or nula cut out by the action of the water and was pretty thickly sprinkled with bush amongst which grew some large trees I forget of what sort. It at once struck me that the dry pan would be a likely place to find my friends in as there is nothing a lion is fonder of than lying up in reeds through which he can see things without being seen himself. Suddenly thither I went and prospected. Before I had got half way around the pan I found the remains of a blue vill de beast that had evidently been killed within the last three or four days and partially devoured by lions and from other indications about I was soon assured that if the family were not in the pan that day they spent a good deal of their spare time there. But if there the question was how to get them out for it was clearly impossible to think of going in after them unless one was quite determined to commit suicide. Now there was a strong wind blowing from the direction of the wagon across the reedy pan towards the bush-clad cloof or dunga and this first gave me the idea of firing the reeds which as I think I told you were pretty dry. Accordingly Tom took some matches and began starting little fires to the left and I did the same to the right but the reeds were still green at the bottom and we should never have got them well alight had it not been for the wind which grew stronger and stronger as the sun climbed higher and forced the fire into them. At last after half an hour's trouble the flames got a hold and began to spread out like a fan whereupon I went round to the further side of the pan to wait for the lions standing well out in the open as we stood at the cops today where you shot the woodcock. It was a rather risky thing to do but I used to be so sure of my shooting in those days that I did not so much mind the risk. Scarcely had I got round when I heard the reeds parting before the onward rush of some animal. Now for it, said I. On it came, I could see that it was yellow and prepared for action when instead of a lion outbounded a beautiful reeked buck which had been lying in the shelter of the pan. It must by the way have been a reeked buck of a peculiarly confiding nature to lay itself down with the lion like the lamb of prophecy but I suppose the reeds were thick and that kept it a long way off. Well I let the reeked buck go and it went like the wind and kept my eyes fixed upon the reeds. The fire was burning like a furnace now the flames crackling and roaring as they bit into the reeds sending spouts of fire 20 feet and more into the air and making the hot air dance above in a way that was perfectly dazzling but the reeds were still half green and created an enormous quantity of smoke which came rolling towards me like a curtain lying very low on account of the wind. Presently above the crackling of the fire I heard a startled roar then another and another and the lions were at home. I was beginning to get excited now for as you fellows know there is nothing in experience to warm up your nerves like a lion at close quarters unless it is a wounded buffalo and I became still more so when I made out through the smoke that the lions were all moving about on the extreme edge of the reeds. Occasionally they would pop their heads out and grab it from a burrow and then catching sight of me standing about 50 yards away draw them back again. I knew that it must be getting pretty warm behind them and that they could not keep the game up for long and I was not mistaken for suddenly all four of them broke cover together the old black maned lion leading by a few yards. I never saw a more splendid sight in all my hunting experience than those four lions bounding across the belt overshadowed by the dense pall of smoke and backed by the fiery furnace of the burning reeds. I reckoned that they would pass on their way to the bushy cloof within about 5 and 20 yards of me so taking a long breath I got my gun well onto the lion's shoulder the black maned one so as to allow for an inch or two of motion and catch him through the heart. I was on, dead on and my finger was just beginning to tighten on the trigger when suddenly I went blind. A bit of reed ash had drifted into my right eye. I danced and rubbed and succeeding in clearing it more or less just in time to see the tail of the last lion vanishing round the bushes up the cloof. If ever a man was mad I was that man. It was too bad and such a shot in the open. However I was not going to be beaten so I just turned and marched for the cloof. Tom, the driver begged and implored me not to go but though as a general rule I never pretend to be very brave which I am not I was determined that I would either kill those lions or they should kill me. So I told Tom that he need not come unless he liked but I was going and being a plucky fellow a Swazid by birth he shrugged his shoulders muttered that I was mad or bewitched and followed doggedly in my tracks. We soon reached the cloof which was about 300 yards in length and but sparsely wooded and then the real fun began there might be a lion behind every bush there certainly were four lions somewhere the delicate question was where I peeped and poked and looked in every possible direction with my heart in my mouth and was at last rewarded by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind a bush at the same moment from another bush opposite me out burst one of the cubs and galloped back towards the burnt pan I whipped round and let drive a snapshot that tipped him head over heels breaking his back within two inches of the root of the tail and there he lay helpless but glaring Tom afterwards killed him with his essay guy I opened the breach of the gun and hurriedly pulled out the old case which to judge from what ensued must I suppose have burst and left a portion of its fabric sticking to the barrel at any rate when I tried to get in the new cartridge it would only enter halfway and would you believe it this was the moment that the lioness attracted no doubt by the outcry of her cub chose to put in an appearance there she stood as she paces her so from me lashing her tail and looking just as wicked as it is possible to conceive slowly I stepped backwards trying to push in the new case and as I did so she moved on in little runs dropping down after each run the danger was imminent and the case would not go in at the moment I oddly enough thought of the cartridge maker whose name I will not mention and earnestly hoped that if the lion got me some con-dined punishment would overtake him it would not go in so I tried to pull it out it would not come out either and my gun was useless if I could not shut it to use the other barrel I might as well have had no gun meanwhile I was walking backward keeping my eye on the lioness who was creeping forward on her belly without a sound but lashing her tail and keeping her eye on me and in it I saw that she was coming in a few seconds more I dashed my wrist and the palm of my hand against the brass rim of the cartridge till the blood poured from them look there are the scars of it to this day here quarter main held up his right hand to the light and showed us four or five white cicatresses just where the wrist is set into the hand but it was not of the slightest use he went on the cartridge would not move I only hope that no other man will ever be put in such an awful position the lioness gathered herself together and I gave myself up for lost when suddenly Tom shouted out from somewhere in my rear you are walking on to the wounded cub turn to the right I had the sense, dazed as I was to take the hint and slewing round at right angles but still keeping my eyes on the lioness I continued my backward walk to my intense relief with a low growl she straightened herself turned and bounded further up the cliff come on Makumazon said Tom let's get back to the wagon all right Tom I answered I will when I have killed those three other lions for by this time I was bent on shooting them as I never remember being bent on anything before or since you can go if you like or you can get up a tree he considered the position a little and then he very wisely got up a tree I wish that I had done the same meanwhile I had found my knife which had an extractor in it and succeeded after some difficulty in pulling out the cartridge which had so nearly been the cause of my death and removing the obstruction in the barrel it was very little thicker than a postage stamp certainly not thicker than a piece of writing paper this done I loaded the gun bound a handkerchief around my wrist and hand to staunch the flowing of the blood and started on again I had noticed that the lioness went into a thick green bush a rather cluster of bushes growing near the water about 50 yards higher up for there was a little stream running down the cliff and I walked towards this bush when I got there however I could see nothing so I took up a big stone and threw it into the bushes I believe that it hit the other cub for out it came with a rush giving me a broadside shot of which I promptly availed myself knocking it over dead out too came the lioness like a flash of light but quick as she went I managed to put the other bullet into her ribs so that she rolled right over three times like a shot rabbit I instantly got two more cartridges into the gun and as I did so the lioness rose again and came crawling towards me on her fore paws roaring and groaning and with such an expression of diabolical fury on her countenance as I have not often seen I shot her again through the chest and she fell over onto her side quite dead that was the first and last time that I ever killed a brace of lions right and left and what is more I never heard of anybody else doing it naturally I was considerably pleased with myself and having again loaded up I went on to look for the black mained beauty who had killed Captain slowly and with the greatest care I proceeded up the cliff searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went it was wonderfully exciting work for I was never sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me I took comfort however from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a man rarely I say sometimes he does as you will see unless he is cornered or wounded I must have been nearly an hour hunting after that lion once I thought I saw something move in a clump of tambuki grass but I could not be sure and when I trod out the grass I could not find him at last I worked up to the head of the cliff which made a cul-de-sac it was formed of a wall of rock about 50 feet high down this rock trickled a little waterfall and in front of it some 70 feet from its face rose a great piled up mass of boulders in their crevices and on the top of which grew ferns, grasses and stunted bushes this mass was about 25 feet high the sides of the cliff here were also very steep well I came to the top of the nula and looked all around no sign of the lion evidently I had either overlooked him further down or he had escaped right away it was very vexatious but still three lions were not a bad bag for one gun before dinner and I was famed to be content accordingly I departed back again making my way around the isolated pillar of boulders beginning to feel as I did so that I was pretty well done up with excitement and fatigue and should be more so before I had skinned those three lions when I had got as nearly as I could judge about 18 yards past the pillar or mass of boulders I turned to have another look around I have a pretty sharp eye but I could see nothing at all then on a sudden I saw something sufficiently alarming on the top of the mass of boulders opposite to me standing out clear against the rock beyond was the huge black mane lion he had been crouching there and now arose as though by magic there he stood lashing his tail just like a living reproduction of the animal on the gateway of Northumberland house that I have seen in a picture but he did not stand long before I could fire before I could do more than get the gun to my shoulder he sprang straight up and out from the rock and driven by the impetus of that one mighty bound came hurtling through the air towards me heavens how grand he looked and how awful high into the air he flew describing a great arch just as he touched the highest point of his spring I fired I did not dare to wait for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me without a sight almost without aim I fired as one would fire a snapshot at a snipe the bullet told for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air next second I was swept to the ground luckily I fell into a low creeper clad bush which broke the shock and the lion was on the top of me and the next those great white teeth of his had met in my thigh I heard them great against the bone I yelled out in agony for I did not feel in the least benumbed and happy like Dr. Livingston whom by the way I knew very well and gave myself up for dead but suddenly at that moment the lion's grip on my thigh loosened and he stood over me swaying to and fro his huge mouth from which the blood was gushing wide opened then he roared and the sound shook the rocks to and fro he swung and then the great head dropped on me knocking all the breath from my body and he was dead and all that had entered the center of his chest and passed out on the right side of the spine about half way down the back the pain of my wound kept me from fainting and as soon as I got my breath I managed to drag myself from under him thank heavens his great teeth had not crushed my thigh bone but I was losing a great deal of blood and had it not been for the timely arrival of Tom with this aid I loosened the handkerchief from my wrist and tied it round my leg twisting it tight with a stick I think that I should have bled to death well it was a just reward for my folly in trying to tackle a family of lions single handed the odds were too long I have been lame ever since and shall be to my dying day in the month of March the wound always troubles me a great deal and every three years it breaks out raw I need scarcely add that I never traded the lot of ivory at Sikokunis another man got it, a German and made five hundred pounds out of it after paying expenses I spent the next month on the broad of my back and it was a cripple for six months after that and now I've told you the yarn so I will have a drop of Hollins and go to bed goodnight to you all goodnight end of long odds by H. Ryder Haggard this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org Paul's Case, a study in temperament by Willa Cather read for LibriVox by Beth Beat at Reading UK it was Paul's afternoon to appear before the faculty of the Pittsburgh High School to account for his various misdemeanours he had been suspended a week ago and his father had called at the principal's office and confessed his perplexity about his son Paul entered the faculty room suave and smiling his clothes were a trifle outgrown and the tan velvet on the collar of his open overcoat was frayed and worn but for all that there was something of the dandy about him and he wore an opal pin in his neatly knotted black foreign hand and a red carnation in his buttonhole this latter adornment the faculty somehow felt was not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension his age and very thin with high cramp shoulders and a narrow chest his eyes were remarkable for a certain hysterical brilliancy and he continually used them in a conscious theatrical sort of way particularly offensive in a boy the pupils were abnormally large as though he were addicted to belladonna but there was a glassy glitter about them that the drug does not produce when questioned by the principal as to why he was there Paul stated politely enough that he wanted to come back to school this was a lie, but Paul was quite accustomed to lying found it indeed indispensable for overcoming friction his teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him which they did with such a rancour and aggrievedness as events that this was not a usual case disorder and appurtenance were among the offenses named yet each of his instructors felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the boys in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them and which he seemingly made not the least effort to conceal once when he'd been making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard his English teacher had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand Paul had started back with a shutter thrust his hands violently behind him the astonished woman could scarcely have been more hurt and embarrassed had he struck her the insult was so involuntary and definitely personalized to be unforgettable in one way and another he had made all his teachers, men and women alike conscious of the same feeling of physical aversion in one class he habitually sat with his hands shading his eyes in another he always looked out of the window during the recitation in another he made a running commentary in the lecture with humorous intention his teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower and they fell upon him without mercy his English teacher leading the pack he stood through it smiling his pale lips parted over his white teeth his lips were continually twitching and he had a habit of raising his eyebrows that was contemptuous and irritating to last degree older boys than Paul had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire but his set smile did not once desert him and his only sign of discomfort was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of his overcoat and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held his hat Paul was always smiling always glancing about him trying to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something this conscious expression since it was as far as possible from boyish mirthfulness was usually attributed to insolence or smartness as the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated an important remark of the boys and the principal asked him whether he thought that a courteous speech to have made a woman Paul struck his shoulders slightly and his eyebrows twitched I don't know he replied I didn't mean to be polite or impolite either I guess it's the sort of way I have the saying things regardless the principal who was a sympathetic man asked him whether he didn't think that a way would be well to get rid of Paul grinned and said he guessed so when he was told that he could go he bowed gracefully and went out his bow was but a repetition of the scandalous red carnation his teachers were in despair and his drawing master voiced the feeling of all of them when he declared there was something about the boy which none of them understood he added the smell of his comes all together from insolence there's something sort of haunted about it the boy is not strong for one thing I happen to know that he was born in Colorado only a few months before his mother died out there of a long illness there's something wrong about the fellow the drawing master had come to realize that in looking at Paul one saw only his white teeth in the forced animation of his eyes one warm afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing board and his master had noted with amazement what a white blue veined face it was drawn and wrinkled like an old man's about the eyes the lips twitching even in his sleep and stiff with the nervous tension that drew them back from his teeth his teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy he humiliated to have felt so vindictive toward a mere boy to have uttered this feeling in cutting terms and to have said each other on, as it were in the gruesome game of intemperate reproach some of them remembered having seen a miserable street cat sat at bay by a ring of tormentors as for Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the soldier's chorus from Faust, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of his teachers were not there to writhe under his light-heartedness as it was now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as I share at Carnegie Hall he decided he would not go home to supper when he reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open and as it was chilly outside he decided to go up into the picture gallery always deserted at this hour where there were some of Raffaele's gay studies and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that always exhilarated him he was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the old guard who sat in one corner a newspaper on his knee a black patch of a one eye on the other closed Paul possessed himself of the piece and walked confidently up and down whistling at his breath after a while he sat down before a blue rico and lost himself when he be thought him to look at his watch it was after seven o'clock and he rose with a start around downstairs looking a face at Augustus peering out from the cast room and an evil gesture at the Venus de Milo as he passed her on the stairway when Paul reached the auspicious dressing room half a dozen boys were there already and he began excitedly to tumble into his uniform it was one of the few that had all approached fitting and Paul thought it was very becoming though he knew that the tight straight coat accentuated his narrow chest about which he was exceedingly sensitive he was always considerably excited while he dressed in the shooting of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns and music room but tonight he seemed quite beside himself and he teased and plagued the boys until telling that he was crazy they put him down on the floor and sat on him somewhat calm by his suppression Paul dashed out to the front of the house to seat the early comers he was a model usher gracious and smiling he ran up and down the aisles nothing was too much trouble for him he carried messages and brought programs to the sections on him a charming boy feeling that he remembered and admired them as the house filled he grew more and more vivacious and animated and the color came to his cheeks and lips it was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul was the host just as the musicians came out to take their places his English teacher arrived with checks for the seats which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season she betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets and a hotura which subsequently made her feel very foolish Paul was startled for a moment and had the feeling of wanting to put her out what business had she here among all these fine people and gay colors he looked her over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be fooled to sit downstairs in such tugs the tickets had probably been sent her out of kindness he reflected as he put down a seat for her and she had about as much right to sit there as he had when the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh of relief and lost himself as he had done before the Rico it was not that symphonies as such meant anything in particular to Paul but the first sigh of the instrument seemed to freeze some hilarious and potent spirit within him something that struggled there like the genie in the bottle found by the Arab fishermen he felt a sudden zest of life the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor when the soprano soloist came on Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teachers being there and gave himself up to the particular stimulus which is always had for him the soloist's chance to be a German woman by no means in her first youth and the mother of many children but she wore an elaborate gown and a tiara and above all she had an indefinable air of achievement that world shined upon her which in Paul's eyes made her a veritable queen of romance after her concert was over Paul always felt irritable and wretched until he got to sleep and tonight he was even more than usually restless he had the feeling of not being able to let down of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all during the last never he withdrew and after hastily changing his clothes in the dressing room slipped out to the side door with soprano's carriage stood here he began pacing rapidly up and down the walk waiting to see her come out over yonder the chenley in its vacant stretch lived bacon square through the fine rain the windows of its 12 stories glowing like those of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree all the actors and singers of the better class stayed there when they were in the city and a number of the big manufacturers of the place lived there in the winter Paul had often hung about the hotel watching the people go in and out longing to enter and leave school masters and dull care behind him forever at last the singer came out accompanied by the conductor who helped her into her carriage and closed the door with a cordial of fetishane which set Paul to wondering whether she was not an old sweetheart of his Paul followed the carriage over to the hotel walking so rapidly as to not be far from the entrance when the singer alighted and disappeared behind the swinging glass doors that were opened by a negro in a tall hat and a long coat in the moment that the door was ajar it seemed to Paul that he too entered he seemed to feel himself go after her up the steps into the warm lighted building into an exotic tropical world of shiny glistening surfaces and basking ease he reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought into the dining room the green bottles and buckets of ice as he had seen them in the separate party pictures in the Sunday World Supplement a quick gust of wind brought the rain down with sudden vehemence and Paul was startled to find that he was still outside in the slush of the gravel driveway that his boots were letting in the water and his scanty overcoat was clinging wet about him that the lights in front of the concert hall were out and that the rain was driving in sheets between him and the orange glow of the windows above him there it was what he wanted tangibly before him like the fairy world of a Christmas pantomime but mocking spirits to guard at the doors and as the rain beat in his face Paul wondered whether he were destined always to shiver in the black night outside looking up at it he turned and walked reluctantly towards the car tracks the end had to come sometime his father in his night clothes at the top of the stairs explanations that had not explained he still improvised fictions that were forever tripping him up his upstairs room with his horrible yellow wallpaper the creaking burrow with a greasy plush collar box and over his painted wooden bed the pictures of George Washington and John Calvin and the framed motto feed my lambs which had been worked and read worsted by his mother half an hour later Paul alighted from his car and went slowly down one of the side streets off the main thoroughfare it was a highly respectable street where all the houses were exactly alike however it means begotten reared large families of children all of whom went to Sabbath school and learned a short of catechism and were interested in arithmetic all of whom were as exactly like as their homes and all of a peace with the monotony in which they lived Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing his home was next to the house of the Cumberland minister he approached it tonight with a nervous sense of defeat the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commoness that he always had when he came home the moment he turned to Cordelia Street he felt the waters close above his head after each of these orders of living he experienced all the physical depression which follows the debauch the loathing of respectable beds of common food of a house penetrated by kitchen odours a shattering repulsion for the flavourless colourless mass of everyday existence a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers the nearer he approached the house the more absolutely unequal Paul felt at the sight of it all his ugly sleeping chamber the cold bathroom with a grimy zinc tub the cracked mirror, the dripping spigots his father at the top of the stairs his hairy legs sticking out from his night shirt his feet thrust into carpet slippers he was so much later than usual that there would certainly be inquiries and reproaches Paul stopped short before the door he felt that he could not be accosted by his father tonight but he could not toss again on that miserable bed he would not go in he would tell his father that he had no car fare and it was raining so hard he had gone home with one of the boys and stayed all night meanwhile he was wet and cold he went around to the back of the house and tried one of the basement windows found it open, raised it cautiously and scrambled down the cellar wall to the floor there he stood holding his breath terrified by the noise he had made but the floor above him was silent and there was no creak on the stairs he found a soapbox and carried it over a pipe that streamed from the furnace door and sat down he was horribly afraid of rats so he did not try to sleep but sat looking distrustfully at the dark still terrified last night of waking to his father in such reactions after one of the experiences which made days and nights of the dreary blanks of the calendar when his senses were deadened Paul's head was always singular and it clear suppose his father had hurt him getting in the window and come down and shot him for a burglar then again suppose his father had come down pistol in hand and he had cried out in time to save himself and his father had been horrified to think how nearly he killed him then again suppose the day should come when his father would remember that night and wish there had been no warning cry to stay his hand with his last supposition Paul entertained himself until daybreak the following Sunday was fine the sudden November chill was broken by the last flash of a terminal summer in the morning Paul had to go to church in Sabbath school as always the seasonable Sunday afternoons the burgers of Cordelia Street always sat down on the front stoop and talked to their neighbours on the next stoop or called to those across the street in neighbourly fashion the men usually sat in gay cushions placed upon the steps that led down to the sidewalk while the women in their Sunday wastes sat in rockers on the cramped porches pretending to be greatly at their ease the children played in the streets there were so many of them that the place resembled the recreation grounds of a kindergarten the men on the steps all in their shirts leaves their vests have buttoned sat with their legs well apart their stomachs comfortably protruding and talked of the prices of things or told anecdotes of the sagacity of the various chiefs and overlords they occasionally looked over the multitude of squabbling children listened affectionately to their high pitched nasal voices smiling to see their own proclivities reproduced in their offspring and interspersed their legends of the Iron Kings with remarks about their son's progress at school the grades in arithmetic and the amounts they had saved in the toy banks on this last Sunday of November Paul sat all the afternoon on the lowest step of his stoop staring into the streets while his sisters and their rockers were talking to the minister's daughters next door about how many shirt wastes they had made in the last week and how many waffles and money had eaten at the last church supper when the weather was warm and his father was in a particularly jovial frame of mind the girls made lemonade which was always brought out in a red glass picture ornamented with forget-me-nots and blue enamel this the girls sat very fine and the neighbours always joked about the suspicious colour of the picture today Paul's father sat on the top step talking to a young man who shifted a restless baby from knee to knee he happened to be the young man who was daily held up to Paul as the model and after him it was his father's dearest hope that he would pattern this young man was of a ready complexion with a compressed red mouth and faded nearsighted eyes over which he wore thick spectacles with gold bows curved about his ears he was clerked to one of the magnets of a great steel corporation and was looked upon in Cordelia Street as a young man with a future there was a story that some five years ago he was now barely 26 he'd been a trifle dissipated but in order to curb his appetites and save the loss of time and strength that a sowing of wild oats might have entailed he had taken his chief's advice off reiterated to his employees and at 21 had married the first woman of his fortunes she happened to be an angular school mistress much older than he who also wore thick glasses and who now had bored him four children all nearsighted like herself the young man was relating how his chief now cruising in the Mediterranean kept in touch with all the details of the business arranging his office hours on his yacht just as though he were at home and knocking off work enough to keep two stenographers busy his father told, in turn the plan his corporation was considering an electric railway plant in Cairo Paul snapped his teeth he had an awful apprehension that they might spoil it all before he got there yet he rather liked to hear these legends of the Iron Kings that were told and retold on Sundays and holidays these stories of palaces in Venice yachts in the Mediterranean and how I play at Monte Carlo appealed to his fancy and he was interested in the triumphs of these cash boys who had become famous though he had no mind for the cash boy stage after supper was over he had helped to dry the dishes Paul nervously asked his father whether he could go to Georgia to get some help in his geometry and still more nervously asked for car fare this letter request he had to repeat as his father, unprincipled did not like to hear requests for money whether much or little he asked Paul whether he could not go to some boy who lived nearer and told him that he ought not to leave his schoolwork until Sunday but he gave him the dime he was not a poor man but he had worthy ambition to come up in the world the reason for allowing Paul to usher was that he thought a boy ought to be earning a little Paul bounded upstairs scrapped the greasy odor of the dish water from his hands with the ill-smelling soap he hated and then shook over his fingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his drawer he left the house with the geometry conspicuously under his arm and the moment he got out of Cordelia Street and boarded a downtown car he shook off the lethargy of two deadening days and began to live again leading juvenile the permanent stock company which played at one of the downtown theaters was an acquaintance of Paul's and the boy had been invited to drop in at the Sunday night rehearsals whenever he could for more than a year Paul had spent every available moment loitering about Charlie Edwards dressing room he had won a place among Edwards's following not only because young actor who could not afford to employ a dresser often found him useful but because he recognized in Paul something akin to what churchman term vocation he was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting this was Paul's fairy tale and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love the moment he inhaled the gassy, painty, dusty odor behind the scenes he breathed like a prisoner set free and felt within him the possibility of doing or saying splendid, brilliant poetic things the moment the cracked orchestra beat out the overture from Martha or jerked at the serenade from Rigoletto all stupid and ugly things slid from him and his senses were deliciously yet delicately fired perhaps it was because in Paul's world the natural nearly always were the same guise of ugliness that a certain element of artificiality seemed him necessary in beauty perhaps it was because his experience of life elsewhere was so full of Sabbath school picnics, petty economies wholesome advices to how to succeed in life and the inescapable odors of cooking that he found this existence so alluring these smartly clad men and women so attractive that he was so moved by these starry apple orchards that bloom perennially under the limelight it would be difficult to put it strongly enough how convincingly the stage entrance of that theatre was for Paul the actual portal of romance certainly none of the company ever suspected it least of all Charlie Edwards it was very like the old stories it used to float about London of fabulously rich Jews who had subterranean halls there with palms and fountains and soft lights in richly appareled women who never saw the disenchanting light of London day so in the midst of this smoke-pauled city enamoured of figures and grimy toil Paul had a secret temple his wishing carpet his bit of blue and white Mediterranean shore bathed in perpetual sunshine several of Paul's teachers had a theory that his imagination had been prefered by Garrosh fiction but the truth was that he scarcely ever read it all the books at home were not such as would attempt or corrupt a youthful mind and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him well he got what he wanted much more quickly for music any sort of music from an orchestra to a barrel organ he only needed the spark the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own it was equally true that he was not stage-druck not at any rate the usual acceptation of that expression he had no desire to become an actor any more than he had to become a musician he felt no necessity to do any of these things what he wanted was to see to be in the atmosphere float in the way of it to be carried out blue league after blue league away from everything after a night behind the scenes Paul found the school room more than ever repulsive the bare floors and naked walls the prosy men who never wore frock coats or violets in their buttonholes the women with their dull gowns the formal seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative he could not bear to have other people think for a moment that he took these people seriously he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial and was there only by way of a jest anyway he had autographed pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people of his acquaintance with the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall when these stories lost their effect and his audience grew listless he became desperate and would bid all the boys goodbye announcing that he was going to travel for a while going to Naples to Venice to Egypt then next Monday he would slip back conscious and nervously smiling his sister was ill and he should have to defer his voyage until spring matters went steadily worse with Paul at school and they itched to let his instructors know how heartily he despised them in their homilies and how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with theorems adding with the twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of that nervous bravado which so perplexed them that he was helping the people down at the stock company they were old friends of his the upshot of the matter was that the principal went to Paul's father and Paul was taken out of school and put to work the manager at Carnegie Hall was told to get another usher in his stead the doorkeeper of the theatre was warned not to admit him to the house and Charlie Edwards remorsefully promised the boy's father not to see him again the members of the stock company were vastly amused when some of Paul's stories reached them especially the women they were hard working women some of them supporting indigent husbands or brothers and they laughed rather bitterly at having stirred the board to such fervent and florid inventions they agreed with the faculty with his father that Paul's was a bad case the eastbound train was plowing through January snowstorm the doll down was beginning to show grey when the engine whistled a mile out of Newark Paul started up from the seat where he had laying curled and uneasy slumber rubbed the breath misted window glass with his hand and peered out the snow was swirling and curling eddies above the white bottom lands and the drifts lay already deep in the fields along the fences while here and there the long dead grass and dried weed stocks protruded black above it lights shone from the scattered houses and a gang of labourers on the side of the track waved their lanterns Paul had slept very little and he felt grimy and uncomfortable he had made the all night journey in a day coach partly because he was ashamed dressed as he was to go into a poleman and partly because he was afraid of being seen there by some Pittsburgh businessmen who might have noticed him in Denny and Carson's office when the whistle awoke him he clutched quickly in his breast pocket collapsing about him with an uncertain smile with the little clavy spattered Italians were still sleeping the slateringly women across the aisle were an open mouthed oblivion and even the crummy crying babies were for the nonce stilled Paul settled back to struggle with his impatience as best he could when he arrived at Josie city station he hurried through his breakfast manifestly ill at ease and keeping a sharp eye about him after he reached the 23rd street station he consulted a cab man and had himself driven to the men's furnishing establishment that was just opening for the day he spent upward of two hours there trying with endless reconsidering and great care his new street so he put on in the fitting room the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into the cab with his linen then he drove to a hadders and a shoe house his next errand was at Tiffany's where he selected his silver and a new scarf pin he would not wait to have a silver mark, he said lastly he stopped at a trunk shop on Broadway and had his purchases packed into various travelling bags it was a little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf after settling with the cab man went into the office he registered from Washington said his mother and father had been abroad and that he had come down to await the arrival of their steamer he told the story plausibly and in no trouble, since he had volunteered to pay for them in advance in engaging his rooms, a sleeping room, a sitting room and a bath not once, but a hundred times Paul had planned his entry into New York he had gone over every detail of it with Charlie Edwards and in his graphic at home there were pages of description about New York hotels from the Sunday papers when he was shown to a sitting room on the 8th floor he saw at a glance that everything was as it should be there was but one detail in his mental picture that the place did not realise so he rang for the bell boy and sent him now for flowers he moved about nervously until the boy returned putting away his new linen and fingering it delightedly as it did so when the flowers came he put them hastily into water and then tumbled into a hot bath presently he came out of his white bathroom resplendent in his new silk underwear and playing with the tassels of his red robe the snow was whirling so fiercely outside his windows that he could scarcely see across the street but within the air was deliciously soft and fragrant he put the violets and jangles on the tabaret beside the couch and threw himself down with a long sigh covering himself with a rum and blanket he was thoroughly tired and he had been in such haste he had stood up to such a strain covered so much ground in the last 24 hours that he wanted to think how it all came about lulled by the sound of the wind the warm air and the cool fragrance of the flowers he sank into deep drowsy retrospection it had been wonderfully simple when they had shut him out of the theatre and concert hall when they had taken away his bone the whole thing was virtually determined the rest was a mere matter of opportunity the only thing that had all surprised him was his own courage for he realised well enough that he had always been tormented by fear a sort of apprehensive dread that of late years as the measures of the lies he had told closed about him had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter until now he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading something even when he was a little boy it was always there behind him or before or on either side there had always been the shadow corner the dark place into which he dared not look but from which something seemed always to be watching him and Paul had done things that were not pretty to watch but now he had a curious sense of relief as though he had last thrown down the gauntlet to the thing in the corner yet it was but a day since he had been sulking in the choices but yesterday afternoon that he had been sent to the bank with Denny Carson's deposit as usual but this time he was instructed to leave the book to be balanced there was above $2,000 in checks and nearly a thousand in the banknotes which he had taken from the book and quietly transferred to his pocket at the bank he had made out a new deposit slip his nerves had been steady enough to permit of his returning to the office where he had finished his work and asked for a full day's holiday tomorrow Saturday giving a perfectly reasonable pretext the bank book he knew would not be returned before Monday or Tuesday and his father would be out of town for the next week from the time he slipped the banknotes into his pocket and nearly boarded the train for New York he had not known a moment's hesitation this was not the first time Paul had steered through treacherous waters how astonishingly easy it had all been here he was the thing done and this time there would be no awakening no figure at the top of the stairs he watched the snowflakes whirling by his window until he fell asleep when he awoke it was 3 o'clock in the afternoon he bounded up at the start half of one of his precious days gone already he spent more than an hour in dressing watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror everything was quite perfect he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be when he went downstairs Paul took a carriage and drove that 5th avenue toward the park the snow had somewhat abated carriages and tradesmen's wagons were soundlessly too in front of the winter twilight boys and woollen mufflers were shoveling off the doorsteps the avenue stages made fine spots of colour against the white street here on the corner stands under glass cases against the sides of which the snowflakes stack and melted violets, roses, carnations lilies of the valley somehow vastly more lovely and alluring but they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow the park itself was a wonderful stage of winter peace when he returned the paws of the twilight had ceased and the tune of the streets had changed the snow was falling faster like stream from the hotels that rear their dozen stories fearlessly up into the storm raging Atlantic winds a long black stream of carriages poured down the avenue intersecting here and there by other streams tending horizontally there were a score of cabs about the entrance of his hotel and his driver had to wait boys and livery were running in and out of the awnings stretched across the sidewalk up and down the red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street above, about, within it all was the rumble and roar the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings to recognize himself and on every side of him tower the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth the boy set his teeth and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of realization the plot of all dramas the text of all romances the nerve stuff of all sensations was whirling about him like snowflakes he burnt like a faggot in the tempest when Paul went down to dinner the music of the orchestra came floating up the elevator shaft to greet him his head he stepped into the thronged corridor and he sank back into one of the chairs against the wall to get his breath the lights, the chatter, the perfumes the bewildering medley of colour he had for a moment the feeling of not being able to stand it but only for a moment these were his own people he told himself he went slowly about the corridors through the writing rooms smoking rooms, reception rooms as though he were exploring the chambers of an enchanted palace built and peopled for him alone when he reached the dining room he sat down at a table near the window the flowers, the white linen the many coloured wine glasses the gay toilettes of the women the low popping of the corks the undulating repetitions of the blue danube from the orchestra all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance when the rosy attinge of his champagne was added that cold precious bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his glass Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all this was what all the world was fighting for he reflected, this was what the struggle was about he doubted the reality of his past had he ever known a place called Cordelia Street a place where fag looking businessmen got on the early car mere rivets in the machine they seemed to Paul sickening men with comings of children's hair always hanging to their coats and the smell of cooking in their clothes Cordelia Street all that belonged to another time in country had he not always been thus had he not sat here night after night from as far back as he could remember looking pensively over just that shimmering textures and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like this one between his thumb and middle finger he rather thought that he had he was not in the least abashed or lonely he had no special desire to meet or to know any of these people all he demanded was the right to look on and conjecture, to watch the pageant the mere stage properties were all he demanded for nor was he lonely later in the evening in his lodge at the Metropolitan he was now entirely rid of his nervous misgivings of his forced aggressiveness of the imperative desire to show himself different from his surroundings he felt now that his surroundings explained him nobody questioned the purple he had only to wear it passively he had only to glance down at his attire to reassure himself that he would be impossible for anyone to humiliate him he found it hard to leave his beautiful sitting room to go to bed that night and sat long watching the raging storm from his turret window when he went to sleep it was with the lights turned on in his bedroom partly because of his old timidity and partly so that if he should awake in the night there would be no wretched moment of doubt no horrible suspicion of yellow wallpaper or of Washington and Calvin above his bed Sunday morning and the city was practically snowbound Paul breakfasted late and in the afternoon he fell in with a wild San Francisco boy a freshman at Yale who said he had run down for a little flyer over Sunday the young man offered to show Paul the night side of the town and the two boys went out together after dinner not returning to the hotel until 7 o'clock the next morning the hit started out in the confiding warmth of a champagne friendship but their parting in the elevator was singularly cool the freshman pulled himself together to make his train and went to bed he awoke at 2 o'clock in the afternoon very thirsty and dizzy around for ice water, coffee and the Pittsburgh papers on the part of the hotel management Paul excited no suspicion there was this to be said for him that he wore his spoils with dignity and in no way made himself conspicuous even under the glow of his wine he was never boisterous though he found the stuff like a magician's wand for wonder building his chief greeted and slayed his ears his excesses were not offensive ones his dearest pleasures were in the grey winter toilets in his sitting room his quiet enjoyment of his flowers his clothes, his wide divan, his cigarette his sense of power he could not remember a time when he had felt so at peace with himself the mere release from the necessity of petty lying lying every day and every day restored his self-respect he had never lied for pleasure even at school but to be noticed and admired he discerned his difference from other Cordelia Street boys and he felt a good deal more manly more honest even now that he had no need for boastful pretensions now that he could, as his actor friends used to say dress the part it was characteristic that remorse did not occur to him his golden days went by without a shadow and he made each as perfect as he could on the eighth day after his arrival in New York he found the whole affair exploited in the Pittsburgh papers exploited with a wealth of detail which indicated that local news of a sensational nature was at low ebb the firm of Denny and Carson announced that the boys father had refunded the full amount of the theft and they had no intention of prosecuting the Cumberland minister had been interviewed and expressed his hope of yet reclaiming the motherless lad and a sabbous school teacher declared that she would spare no effort to that end the rumour had reached Pittsburgh that the boy had been seen in a New York hotel and his father had gone east to find him and bring him home Paul had just come in to dress for dinner he sank into a chair weak to the knees and clasped his head in his hands it was to be worse than jail even the tepid waters of Cordelia Street were to close over him finally and forever the grey monotony stretched before him in helpless, unrelieved years sabbous school young people's meetings the yellow papered room the damp dish towels it all rushed back upon him with a sickening vividness the old feeling that the orchestra had suddenly stopped the sinking sensation that the play was over the sweat broke out in his face and he sprang to his feet looked about him with his white conscious smile and winked at himself in the mirror with something the old childish belief in miracles with which he had so often gone to class with all his lessons unlearned Paul dressed and dashed whistling down the corridor to the elevator he had no sinner entered the dining room and caught the measure of the music then his remembrance was lighted by his old elastic power of claiming the moment mounting with it and finding it all sufficient the glare and glitter about him the mere scenic accessories had again for the last time their old potency he would show himself that he was game he would finish the things splendidly he doubted more than ever the existence of Cordelia Street and for the first time he drank his wine recklessly was he not after all one of those fortunate beings born to the purple was he not still himself and in his own place he drummed a nervous accompaniment to the pegliacci music and looked about him telling himself over and over that it had paid he reflected drowsily to the swell of the music and the chill sweetness of his wine he might have done it more wisely he might have caught an atbound steamer and been well out of the clutches before now but the other side of the world had seen too far away and too uncertain then he could not have waited for it his need had been too sharp if he had to choose over again he would do the same thing tomorrow he looked affectionately about the dining room now gilded with a soft mist it had paid indeed Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his head and feet he had thrown himself across the bed without undressing and had slept with his shoes on his limbs and hands were already heavy and his tongue and throat were parched and burnt there came upon him one of those fateful attacks of clear-headedness that never occurred except when he was physically exhausted and his nerves hang loose he lay still, closed his eyes and let the tide of things wash over him his father was in New York starving at some joint or other he told himself the memory of successive summers in the front stoop fell upon him like a weight of black water he'd not a hundred dollars left and he knew now more than ever that money was everything all that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted the thing was winding itself up he thought that on his first glorious day in New York and it even provided a way to snap the thread it lay on his dressing table now he got it out last night when it came blindly up from dinner but the shiny metal hurt his eyes and he disliked the looks of it he rose and moved about with a painful effort succumbing now and again to attacks of nausea it was the old depression exaggerated in the world to become Cordelia Street it somehow he was not afraid of anything was absolutely calm perhaps because he looked into that dark corner at last and knew it was bad enough what he saw there but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it had been he saw everything clearly now he had a feeling that he had made the best of it they had lived the sort of life he was meant to live and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver but he told himself that was not the way he went downstairs and took a cab to the ferry when Paul arrived in Newark he got off the train and took another cab directing the driver to follow the Pennsylvania tracks out of town the snow lay heavy on the roadways and it drifted deep in the open fields only here and there the dead grass or dried weed stocks projected singularly black above it once well into the country Paul dismissed the carriage and walked floundering along the tracks he seemed to hold in his brain an actual picture of everything he had seen that morning he remembered every feature of both his drivers of the toothless old woman from whom he had bought the red flowers and his coat the agent from whom he had got his ticket and all of his fellow passengers in the ferry his mind unable to cope with vital matters at hand worked feverishly and deftly at sorting and grouping these images they made for him a part of the ugliness of the world of the ache in his head after burning on his tongue he stooped and put a handful of snow into his mouth as he walked when he reached a little hillside where the tracks ran through a cut some twenty feet below him he stopped and sat down the carnations in his coat were drooping with the cold he noticed the red glory all over it occurred to him that all the flowers he had seen in the glass cases that first night must have gone the same way long before this it was only one splendid breath they had in spite of their brave mockery after outside the glass and it was a losing game in the end it seemed this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run Paul took one of the blossoms carefully from his coat and scooped a little hole in the snow where he covered it up then he dozed a while from his weak condition seeming insensible to the cold the sound of an approaching train awoke him and he started to his feet remembering only his resolution and afraid that he should be too late watching the approaching locomotive his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them in a frightened smile once or twice he glanced nervously sidewise as though he were being watched when the right moment came he jumped as he fell the folly of his haze occurred to him with merciless clearness the vastness of what he had left undone there flashed through his brain clearer than ever before the blue of the Adriatic water he felt something strike his chest and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air on and on immeasurably far and fast while his limbs were gently relaxed then because the picture-making mechanism was crushed the disturbing visions flashed into black and Paul dropped back into the immense design of things end of Paul's case by Willa Cather this is a LibriVax recording all LibriVax recordings are in the public domain for more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVax.org recorded by West Winds 12 The Snail and the Rose Tree by Hans Christian Andersen a hedge of hazelnut bushes encircled the garden without was field and meadow with cows and sheep but in the center of the garden stood a rose tree and the spirit sat a snail she had much within her she had herself wait until my time comes said she I shall accomplish something more than putting forth roses bearing nuts or giving milk like the cows and sheep I expect something fearfully grand said the rose tree may I ask when it will take place I shall take my time said the snail you are in too great a hurry and when this is the case how can one's expectations be fulfilled the next year the snail lay in about the same spot under the rose tree which put forth buds and developed roses ever fresh ever new the snail half crept forth stretched out its feelers and drew itself in again everything looks as it did a year ago no progress has been made the rose tree still bears roses it does not get along any further the summer faded away the autumn passed the rose tree constantly bore flowers and buds until the snow fell and the weather was raw and damp the rose tree bent itself towards the earth the snail crept in the earth a new year commenced the roses came out and the snail came out now you are an old rose bush said the snail you will soon die away you have given the world everything that you had in you whether that be much or little is a question upon which I have not time to reflect but it is quite evident that you have not done the slightest thing towards your inward development otherwise I suppose that something different would have sprung from you can you answer this you will soon be nothing but a stick can you understand what I say you startled me said the rose tree I have never thought upon that no I suppose that you have never meddled much with thinking can you tell me why you bloom and how it comes to pass how why no said the rose tree I blossom with pleasure because I could not do otherwise it was so warm the air so refreshing I drank the clear dew and the fortifying rain I breathed I lived a strength came into me from the earth a strength came from above I felt a happiness ever new ever great and therefore I must bloom ever that was my life I could not do otherwise you have led a very easy life said the snail nothing has been given to me said the rose tree but still more has been given to you you are one of those meditative pensive profound natures one of the highly gifted that astound the whole world I have assuredly no such thought in my mind said the snail the world is nothing to me what have I to do with the world I have enough with myself and enough in myself but should we not all on earth give the best part of us to others offer what we can it is true that I have only given roses but you, you who have received so much what have you given to the world what do you give her what I have given what I gave I spit upon her she is good for nothing I have not to do with her put forth roses let the hazel bushes bear nuts let the cows and sheep give milk they have each their public I have mine within myself I retire within myself and there I remain the world is nothing to me and there upon the snail withdrew into her house and closed it that is so sad said the rose tree with the best will I must ever spring out spring forth in roses the leaves drop off and are blown away by the wind yet I saw one of the roses laid in the hymnal book of the mother of the family one of my roses was placed upon the breast of a charming young girl and one was kissed with joy by a child's mouth this did me so much good it was a real blessing that is my recollection my life and the rose tree flowered in innocence and the snail set indifferently in her house the world was nothing to her and years passed away the snail became earth to earth and the rose tree became earth to earth the remembrances in the hymnal book were also blown away but new rose trees bloomed in the garden new snails grew in the garden they crept in their houses and spat the world is nothing to them shall we read the story of the past again it will not be different the end of the snail and the rose tree by Hans Christian Andersen this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the student by Anton Shekov at first the weather was fine and still the thrushes were calling and the swamps close by something alive droned pithily the sound like blowing into an empty bottle a snipe flew by and the shot aimed at it rang out with a gay resounding note in the spring air but when it began to get dark in the forest of cold penetrating wind blew certainly from the east and everything sank into silence needles of ice stretched across the pools and it felt cheerless, remote and lonely in the forest there was a whiff of winter Ivan Velikopolski the son of a sacristan and a student of the clerical academy returned home from shooting walked all the time by the path in the waterside meadow his fingers were numb he was burning with the wind it seemed to him that the cold that had suddenly come on had destroyed the order and harmony of things the nature itself felt ill at ease and that was why the evening darkness was falling more rapidly than usual all around it was deserted and peculiarly gloomy the only light was when gleaming the widow's gardens near the river the village over three miles away and everything in the distance plunged in the cold evening mist the student remembered that as he went out from the house his mother was sitting barefoot on the floor on the entry cleaning the psalm over while his father lay on the stove coughing as it was good Friday nothing had been cooked and the student was terribly hungry and now shrinking from the cold he thought that just such a wind had blown in the days of Rurik in the time of Ivan the Terrible Peter and in their time there had been just the same desperate poverty and hunger the same thatched roof with holes in them ignorance, misery the same desolation around the same darkness the same feeling of oppression all these had existed, did exist and would exist and the lapse of a thousand years would make life no better and he did not want to go home the gardens were called the widows because they were kept by two widows and their daughters a campfire was burning brightly with a crackling sound throwing out light far around on the plowed earth the widow Vasalisa a tall fat old woman in a man's coat was standing by and looking thoughtfully into the fire her daughter Lucuria a little pockmarked woman with a stupid looking face was sitting on the ground washing a cauldron there was a sound of men's voices it was the laborers watering their horses at the river here you have winter back again so the student going up to the campfire good evening Vasalisa started but at once recognized him and smiled cordially I did not know you God bless you she said you'll be rich they talked a woman of experience who had been in service with a gentry first as a wet nurse afterwards as a children's nurse expressed herself with refinement and a soft, sedate smile never left her face her daughter Lucuria a village peasant woman who had been beaten by her husband simply screwed up her eyes at the student and said nothing and she did a strange expression like that of a deaf mute there was such a fire the apostle Peter warmed himself so the student stretching out his hands to the fire so it must have been cold then too ah what a terrible night it must have been granny an utterly dismal long night he looked round the darkness shik's head abruptly and asked no doubt you have been at the reading of the twelve gospels yes I have answered Vasilese if you remember the last supper Peter said to Jesus I am ready to go with thee and to darkness and unto death and our Lord answered him thus I say unto thee Peter before the cock crow with thou wilt have denied me thrice after the supper Jesus went through the agony of death in the garden and prayed and poor Peter was weary and spirit and faint his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep he fell asleep and you heard how Judas the same night kissed Jesus and betrayed him to his tormentors they took him bound to the high priest and beat him while Peter exhausted worn out with misery and alarm hardly awake you know feeling something awful was just going to happen on earth followed behind he loved Jesus passionately and tentatively and now he saw from far off how he was beaten Lucuria left his spoons and a movable stare upon the student they came to the high priests they began to question Jesus and meantime the laborers made a fire in the yard as it was cold and warmed themselves Peter too stood with him near the fire and warmed himself as I am doing a woman seeing him said he was with Jesus too that is as much as to say that he too should be taken to be questioned and all the laborers that were standing near the fire must have looked sourly and suspiciously at him because he was confused and said I don't know him a little while after again someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said thou too art one of them but again he denied it and for the third time someone turned to him why did I not see thee with him in the garden today for the third time he denied it and immediately after that time the cock crowed and Peter looking from afar off at Jesus remembered the words he had said to him in the evening he remembered he came to himself went out of the yard and wept bitterly and the gospel it is written he went out and wept bitterly I imagine it the still, still dark dark garden and the stillness faintly audible smothered sobbing the student sighed and sank into thought still smiling Vasilisa suddenly gave a gulp big tears flowed freely down her cheeks and she screamed her face from the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her tears and Lucuria staring immovably at the student flushed crimson and her expression became strained and heavy like that of someone enduring intense pain the laborers came back from the river and one of them riding a horse was quite near and the light from the fire quivered upon him the student said good night to the widows and went on and again the darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb a curl wind was blowing winter really had come back and it did not feel as though Easter would be the day after tomorrow now the student was thinking about Vasilisa since she had shed tears all that had happened to Peter the night before the crucifixion must have some relation to her he looked around the solitary light was still gleaming the darkness and no figures could be seen near at now the student thought again that if Vasilisa had shed tears and her daughter had been troubled it was evident that what he had just been telling them about which had happened 19 centuries ago had a relation to the present to both the women to the desolate village to himself and to all people the old woman had wept not because he could tell the story touchingly but because Peter was near to her because her whole being was interested in what was passing in Peter's soul and joy thinly stirred in his soul and he even stopped for a minute to take a breath the past he thought is linked with a present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another and it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain that when he touched one end the other quivered when he crossed the river by the ferry boat and afterwards, mounting the hill looked at his village and toward the west with a cold crimson sunset lay a narrow streak of light he thought the truth and beauty which had guided human life there in the garden and in the yard of the high priest had continued without interruption to this day and had evidently always been the chief thing in human life and in all earthly life indeed, and the feeling of youth half bigger it was only 22 an inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness of unknown mysterious happiness took possession of a little by little and life seemed to him enchanting marvelous and full of lofty meaning End of The Student by Anton Shekhov