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Friday, January 29, 2010
Kindle Price: $0.99
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The hilarious sequel to MY GUN HAS BULLETS.Ex-cop Charlie Willis handles "special security" at Pinnacle Pictures. His job: to protect the studio and its stars, to stop scandals before they explode, to keep the peace in the land of make-believe. When Pinnacle revives the cult, 1960s TV series "Beyond the Beyond" as the cornerstone of a fourth network, two powerful forces fight for control of the show—a talent agency that uses blackmail, torture, and murder to keep its clients on the A-list, and a homicidal legion of rabid fans led by an insane actor who thinks he's in outer space.
Editorial Reviews:
“Goldberg uses just about everything he can think of to send up the studio system, fandom, Star Trek, Trekkies, agents, actors… you name it, he’ll make you laugh about it.” Analog
"An outrageously entertaining take on the loathsome folkways of contemporary showbiz," Kirkus Reviews
“Mr. Goldberg has an observant eye and a wicked pen!” Washington Times
“Beyond the Beyond reads like a modern-day Alice in Wonderland set against the venal world of the TV industry. It’s wonderfully revealing and uncannily accurate,” Vancouver Sun (Canada)
"Some of the easily recognizable actors, agents and producers who are mercilessly ribbed may find it hard to crack a smile at the author's gag-strewn prose, likewise those seekers after politically correct entertainment. But the rest of us should have no trouble….the novel's satiric slant is strong enough to have an effigy of Goldberg beamed into outer space at the next Star Trek convention," Los Angeles Times
"Pinnacle Pictures has decided to revive a 25-year-old cult sci-fi TV show called Beyond the Beyond, but somebody keeps killing off the new cast. Is it the Hollywood agent who eats human flesh? The aging actor who still thinks he's a starship captain? The fans who live only to attend conventions? This sharp roman a clef goes where no Hollywood satire has gone before—altering just enough facts to avoid the libel courts but still smacking of a certain je ne sais Trek. It probably won't make Goldberg, a television writer and producer (Baywatch, Spenser: For Hire, seaQuest), the most popular boy on the Paramount lot, but it's a stingingly funny novel just the same."
—Entertainment Weekly
"The hilarious follow-up to Goldberg's witty debut, My Gun Has Bullets...Beyond the Beyond skewers the entertainment business, which Goldberg knows well," Oline Codgill, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.
"As in his riotous novel My Gun Has Bullets, TV writer/producer Goldberg once again bites the hand that feeds him, laughing all the while. Inspired silliness," Publishers Weekly...
Amazon offering early look at Paulson's memoir
 Amazon.com is offering readers early access to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s upcoming memoir if they own a Kindle (Amazon’s digital book device). In his author’s note Paulson writes: “I believe the most important part of this story is the way Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and I worked as a team through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” |
Book-Light
Book-Light Holds a Kandle to Kindle
Any book-light will work with your e-reader, but a purpose-made one will at least grip properly to the slim top of your Kindle, Sony Reader or Nook without wobbling loose. And if you own an actual Kindle, the Kandle is the perfect aesthetic match.
The clip-on LED Kandle costs $40 (current sale price $25) and folds down into a small, white, pocket-sized pod. A glance a the photos shows that it casts the usual cold light that comes from LEDs, a crying shame when all you want is the warm and cosy 3,000 Kelvin of an incandescent bulb, something easily done with a filter.
Still, as book lights go, this one looks pretty good. I remain a fan of reading in the almost-dark, choosing to believe that this will exercise my eyes (just as exerting any other muscle will improve its tone), and not destroy them as everybody in the world likes to (mistakenly) tell me. And when I’m actually in bed, I read from my iPod Touch so as not to disturb the Lady. One day, though, when I am single an almost blind, I shall buy myself a Kandle.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Shot of Tequila
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A GUTSY ROBBERYSeveral million bucks, stolen from the mob...
A PERFECT FRAME
All caught on video, with no chance of redemption...
A RED HOT RECIPE FOR RAMPAGING REVENGE
Now one man must face the entire Chicago Outfit, a group of hardened Mafia enforcers, a psychotic bookie, the most dangerous hitman on earth, and Detective Jacqueline Daniels...
His name is Tequila. And he likes those odds.
SHOT OF TEQUILA by JA Konrath
JA Konrath is the author of the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thrillers (Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, Cherry Bomb.)
This ebook also contains bonus material:
An excerpt of WHITE TOMBS by Christopher Valen.
An excerpt of IDENTITY CRISIS by Debbi Mack.
Praise for JA Konrath's thriller Fuzzy Navel:
"Fuzzy Navel is Konrath at his best – a hilariously heartstopping thriller." — Linda Fairstein
"This gripping novel is an adrenalin rush." — Library Journal
"This book moves so fast it was like having the words fired into my head by a machine gun." — Crimespree
Praise for Afraid (JA Konrath writing as Jack Kilborn):
"AFRAID is a masterpiece of unrelenting horror. And I'm not exaggerating. Masterpiece. It's the best piece of fiction I've read in several years. It simply NEVER lets up." — James Rollins, author of The Judas Strain
"A bloody, terrifying, hurtling assault across a landscape of non-stop mayhem. A guilty, guilty pleasure." — F. Paul Wilson, creator of Repairman Jack
“AFRAID is a true page turner, a novel that offers a million mile a minute action and suspense. Definitely, a must have with constant thrills and chills." — Heather Graham, author of Deadly Gift
"Never have I read a novel so gruesome and simultaneously relentless. This book throbs with unmitigated, inexorable. sheer friggin’ TERROR. You’ll probably need a shrink when you’re done.” — Edward Lee, author of Brides of the Impaler
"Fast and ferocious, this is a dangerous thriller that will take a bite out of you. An absolute must read for anyone who loves the adrenaline rush of a shocking story told with style, speed and savage grace." — Jonathan Maberry, author of Patient Zero
Nice Price
Relocating Mia
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Relocating Mia is a romantic thriller and the debut of award-winning novelist Rebecca Lerwill.Mia Trentino is the top relocating specialist at Worldmove, Inc., and her latest assignment is sending her to Siberia, Russia. But the new job comes with a new partner—a handsome threat to her career named Douglas Farland.
After a rocky start, the job is going well, and things begin to heat up between Mia and Douglas. Then, lies and secrets begin to surface that make Mia suspect her new partner might have a different agenda. What seemed like a simple relocation erupts into a cat-and-mouse game of intrigue full of drug smuggling, secret agents, and the Red Mafiya. Suddenly Mia’s in a fight for her life, and she may have to trust the one person who seems the most to blame.
Read A Free Story Now - 2nd Story
By The Sea
Author: Herman White Chaplin
Published: 1887
Language: English
Word count: 12,120--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Produced by David Widger
BY THE SEA
1887
By Heman White Chaplin
I.
On the southeastern coast of Massachusetts is a small village with which I was once familiarly acquainted. It differs little in its general aspect from other hamlets scattered along that shore. It has its one long, straggling street, plain and homelike, from which at two or three different points a winding lane leads off and ends abruptly in the water.
Fifty years ago the village had a business activity of its own. There still remain the vestiges of a wharf at a point where once was a hammering ship-yard. Here and there, in bare fields along the sea, are the ruins of vats and windmills,--picturesque remains of ancient salt-works.
There is no visible sign left now of the noisy life of the ship-yards, except a marble stone beneath a willow in the burying-ground on the hill, which laments the untimely death of a youth of nineteen, killed in 1830 in the launching of a brig. But traces of the salt-works everywhere remain, in frequent sheds and small barns which are wet and dry, as the saying is, all the time, and will not hold paint. They are built of salt-boards.
There were a good many of the people of the village and its adjoining country who interested me very greatly. I am going to tell you a simple event which happened in one of its families, deeply affecting its little history.
James Parsons was a man perhaps sixty years of age, strongly built, gray-haired, cleanshaven except for the conventional seaman's fringe of beard below the chin, and always exquisitely neat. Whether you met him in his best suit, on Sunday morning, or in his old clothes, going to his oyster-beds or his cranberry-marsh, it was always the same. He was usually in his shirt-sleeves in summer. His white cotton shirt, with its easy collar and wristbands, seemed always to have just come from the ironing-board. "It ain't no trouble at all to keep James clean," I have heard Mrs. Parsons say, in her funny little way; "he picks his way round for all the world just like a pussycat, and never gets no spots on him, nowhere."
You saw at once, upon the slightest acquaintance with James, that while he was of the same general civilization as his neighbors, he was of a different type. In his narrowness, there was a peculiar breadth and vigor which characterized him. He had about him the atmosphere of a wider ocean.
His early reminiscences were all of that picturesque and adventurous life which prevailed along our coasts to within forty years, and his conversation was suggestive of it He held a silver medal from the Humane Society for conspicuous bravery in the rescue of the crew of a ship stranded in winter in a storm of sleet off Post Hill Bar. He had a war-hatchet, for which he had negotiated face to face with a naked cannibal in the South Sea. He was familiar with the Hoogly.
His language savored always of the sea. His hens "turned in," at night. He was full of sayings and formulas of a maritime nature; there was one which always seemed to me to have something of a weird and mystic character: "South moon brings high water on Coast Island Bar." In describing the transactions of domestic life, he used words more properly applicable to the movements of large ships. He would speak of a saucepan as if it weighed a hundred tons. He never tossed or threw even the slightest object; he hove it. "Why, father!" said Mrs. Parsons, surprised at seeing him for a moment untidy; "what have you ben doing? Your boots and trousers-legs is all white!" "Yes," said Mr. Parsons, apologetically, looking down upon his dusty garments, "I just took that bucket of ashes and hove 'em into the henhouse."
The word "heave," in fact, was always upon his tongue. It applied to everything. "How was this road straightened out?" I asked him one day; "did the town vote to do it?" "No, no," he said quickly; "there was n't never no vote. The se-lec'men just come along one day, and got us all together, and hove in and hove out; and we altered our fences to suit."
I remember hearing him testify as a witness to a will. It appeared that the testator was sick in bed when he signed the instrument. He was suffering greatly, and when he was to sign, it was necessary to lift him with the ex-tremest care, to turn him to the light-stand. "State what was done next," the lawyer asked of James. "Captain Frost was laying on his left side," said James. "Two of us took a holt of him and rolled him over."
He had probably not the least suspicion that his language had a maritime flavor. I asked him one night, as we coasted along toward home, "What do seafaring men call the track of light that the moon makes on the water? They must have some name for it" "No, no," he said, "they don't have no name for it; they just call it 'the wake of the moon.'"
James's learning had been chiefly gained from the outside world and not from books. I have heard him lay it down as a fact that the word "Bible" had its etymology from the word "by-bill" (hand-bill). "It was writ," he said, "in small parcels, and they was passed around by them that writ 'em, like by-bills; and so when they hove it all into one, they called it the Bible.'"
But while James had little learning himself, he appreciated it highly in others. I had occasion to ask him once why it was that the son of one of his neighbors, in closing up his father's estate, had not settled his accounts regularly in the probate court. "Oh, I know how that was," he replied; "he settled 'em the other way. You see, he went to the college at Woonsocket, and he learned there how to settle accounts the other way: and that's the way he settled 'em." And then he added, "When Alvin left the college, they giv' him a book that tells how to do all kinds of business, and what you want to do so's to make money; and Alvin has always followed them rules. The consequence is, he's made money, and what he 's made, he 's kep' it. I suppose he's worth not less than sixteen hundred dollars."
Sometimes he would venture a remark of a gallant nature. "They don't generally git the lights in the hall so as to suit me," he once said. "I don't want it too light, because then it hurts my eyes; but I want it light enough so as 't I can see the women!"
James was a large, strong man, but Mrs. Parsons, although she was little and slight, and was always ailing, constantly assumed the rôle of her husband's nurse and protector, not only in household matters, but in other affairs of life. Whenever she had visitors,--and she and James were hospitable in the extreme,--she was pretty sure to end up, sooner or later, if James were present, with some droll criticism of him, as much to his delight as to hers.
James sometimes liked to affect a certain harshness of demeanor; but the disguise was a transparent one. How well do I remember the time--oh, so long ago!--when for some reason or other I happened to have his boat instead of my own, one day, with one of the boys of the village, to go to Matamet, twelve miles off, to visit certain lobster-pots which we had set. We were delayed there by breaking our boom, in jibing. We should have been at home at noon; at seven in the evening we were not yet in sight. When we got in, rather crestfallen at our disaster, particularly as the boat was wanted for the next day, James met us at the pier. We were boys then, and his tongue was free. As he stood there on the shore, bare-headed, hastily summoned from his house, with his hair blowing in the wind, waving his hands and addressing first us and then a knot of men who stood smoking by, no words of censure were too harsh, no comment on our carelessness too cutting, no laments too keen over the irreparable loss of that particular boom. The next time I could take my own boat, if I were going to get cast away. And I remember well how he ended his tirade. "I did n't care nothing about you two," he said. "If you want to git drownded, git drownded; it ain't nothing to me. All I was afraid of was that you 'd gone and capsized my boat, and would n't never turn up to tell where you sunk her. But as for you--" and he laughed a laugh of heartless indifference.
But ten minutes later, and right before his face, at his own front gate, Mrs. Parsons betrayed him. "I never see father so worried," she said, "sence the time he heard about Thomas; why, he 's spent the whole afternoon as nervous as a hawk, going up on the hill with his spy-glass; and I don't feel so sure but what he was crying. He said he did n't care nothing about the boat,--'What 's that old boat!' says he; but if you boys was drownded out of her, he would n't never git over it." At which James, being so unmasked, laughed in a shamefaced way, and shook us by the shoulders. He had a son who carried on some sort of half-maritime business on one of the wharves, in the city, and lived over his shop. When James went at intervals to visit him, he made his way at once from the railway station to the nearest wharf; then he followed the line of the water around to the shop. Where jib-booms project out over the sidewalk, one feels so thoroughly at home! From the shop he would make short adventurous excursions up Commercial Street and State Street, sometimes going no farther than the nautical-instrument store on the corner of Broad Street, sometimes venturing to Washington Street, or even moving for a short distance up or down in the current of that gay thoroughfare. He loved to comment satirically on the city, with a broad humorous sense of his own strangeness there. "The city folks don't seem to have nothing to do," he said. "They seem to be all out, walking up and down the streets. Come noon, I thought there'd be some let-up for dinner; but they did n't seem to want nothing to eat; they kep' right on walking."
I must not leave James Parsons without telling you of two whale's teeth which stand on his parlor mantel-piece; he ornamented them himself, copying the designs from cheap foreign prints. One of them is what he calls "the meeting-house." It is the high altar of the Cathedral of Seville. On the other is "the wild-beast tamer." A man with a feeble, wishy-washy expression holds by each hand a fierce, but subjugated tiger. His legs dangle loosely in the air. There is nothing to suggest what upholds him in his mighty contest.
II.
Now we must turn from James Parsons to a man of a different type, or rather of a different variety of the same type; for they descend alike from original founders of the town, and, like most of their fellow-townsmen, are both of unqualified Pilgrim stock.
To get to Captain Joseph Pelham's house, you have to drive along a range of hills for some miles, skirting the sea; then you come, half-way, to a bright modern village with trees along the main street, with houses and fences kept painted up, for the most part, but here and there relieved by an unpainted dwelling of a past generation.
Here you have an option. You may either pursue your road through the high-lying prosperous street, with peeps of salt water to the right, or you may turn sharply off at a little store and descend to the lower road. It is always a struggle to choose.
The road to the beach descends a sharp, gravelly hill, and crosses a bridge. Then you come out on a waste of salt-marsh, threaded by the creek, broken by wild, fantastic sand-hills, grown over by beach-grass which will cut your fingers like a knife. You drive close along the white, precipitous beach; you pass the long, shaky pier, with half-decayed fish-houses at the other end, and picturesque heaps of fish-cars, seines, and barrels. Then the road, following the shore a little longer, climbs the hill and enters the woods. Two miles more and you come out to fields with mossy fences, and occasional houses.
The houses begin to be more frequent. All at once you enter the main street of W------.
In a moment you see that you have come into a new atmosphere. There is a large modern church among the older ones. There are large, fine houses, some old-fashioned, others new. By some miraculous intervention Queen Anne has not as yet made her appearance. There are handsome, well-filled stores, going into no little refinement in stock. There is, of course, a small brick library, built by the bounty of a New Yorker who was born here. There is a brick national bank, and a face brick block occupied above by Freemasons, orders of Red Men, Knights Templars, and the Pool of Siloam Lodge, I. O. O. F., and below by a savings bank and a local marine insurance company.
It is here that we shall find Captain Joseph Pelham. If a stranger has occasion to inquire for the leading men of the place he is always first referred to him. It is he who heads every list and is the chairman of every meeting. When a certain public man, commanding but a small following here, appeared, upon his campaign tour, and found no one to escort him to the platform and preside, so that he was obliged to justify his appearance here by the Scripture passage, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick;" at the moment of entering the hall, closely packed with curious opponents, disposed perhaps to be derisive when the situation for the visitor was embarrassing in the extreme,--it was Captain Joseph Pelham who, though the bitterest opponent of them all, rose from his seat, gave the speaker his arm, escorted him to the platform, presented him with grave courtesy to the audience, and sat beside him through the entire discourse.
While Captain Pelham continued to go to sea, and after that, until he was made president of the insurance company, he lived a mile or two out of the town, in a house he had inherited. It is picturesquely situated, on a bare hill, with a wide view of the inland and the ocean. As you look down from its south windows, the cluster of houses nestling together at the shore below stand sharply out against the water. It is one of those white houses common in our older towns,--two-storied, long on the street, with the front door in the middle. Of the interior it is enough to say that its owner had sailed for thirty years to Hong-Kong, Calcutta and Madras. It had a prevailing odor of teak and lacquer. In the front hall was a vast china cane-holder; a turretted Calcutta hat hung on the hat-tree; a heavy, varnished Chinese umbrella stood in a corner; a long and handsome settee from Java stood against the wall. In the parlors, on either hand, were Chinese tables shutting up like telescopes, elaborate rattan chairs of different kinds, and numberless other things of this sort, which had plainly been honestly come by, and not bought.
Then, if you met the Captain's favor, he would show you with becoming pride some family relics, and tell you about them. They came mostly from his paternal grandfather, who was a shipmaster too, had commanded a privateer in the Revolution, and made a fortune. There were a number of pieces of handsome furniture,--these you could see for yourself What would be shown you, with a half-diffident air, would be: a silver mug; two Revere tablespoons; a few tiny teaspoons marked F.; a handsome sword and scabbard; a yellow satin waistcoat and small-clothes; portraits, not artistic, but effective, of his grandfather, in a velvet coat and knee-breeches, with a long spyglass in his hand, and of his grandmother, a strong, matter-of-fact looking woman, handsomely dressed.
But the thing which the Captain secretly treasured most, but brought out last, was his grandmother's Dutch Bible. It is a curious old book; you can see it still if you wish. It has an elaborate frontispiece. Sixteen cuts of leading incidents in Scripture history conduct you by gentle stages, from Eden, through the offering of Isaac, to the close of the Evangelists, and surround Dr. Martin Luther, who, in a gown, holds back the curtains of a pillared alcove, to show you, through two windows, an Old and a New Testament landscape, and a lady sitting beneath a canopy, with an open volume. The covers are of thick bevelled board covered with leather. There was once a heavy clasp. The edges are richly gilded, and figures are pricked in the gilding. It is very handsomely printed. It was in the possession, in 1760, of a young New England girl, the Captain's grandmother. There is a story about it,--a story too long to tell here. Suffice it to say that the Captain's ancestor, who settled early in New England, came from Leyden shortly after Mr. John Robinson. A hundred years later and more, in the oddest way, an acquaintance sprang up with certain Dutch connections, and in the course of it this Bible, then new and elegant, found its way over the sea as a gift to young Mistress Preston. In New England, and as a relic of the early ties of our people with Holland, momentarily renewed after a century had passed away, it is probably unique. It was a last farewell from Holland to her English children, before she parted company with them forever.
I have told you about this house, as I recall it, although Captain Pelham had now ceased to live there, because it was there alone that he seemed completely at home. Furnished as it was from the four quarters of the globe, everything seemed to fit in with his ways. He supplemented the Chinese tables, and they supplemented him. But when he ceased to go to sea, in late middle life, and settled down at home upon his competency, and began a little later to become interested in public matters; when he was at last made president of the insurance company, a director in the bank, and a trustee in the savings bank, and when affairs were left more and more to his control, it became convenient for him to get into town; and his wife and daughter were perhaps ambitious for the change.
So he had sold his house by the sea, and had bought a large and somewhat pretentious one on the main street, with a cast-iron summer arbor, and a bay-window closed in for a conservatory. He had furnished it from the city with new Brussels carpet, with a parlor set, a sitting-room set, a dining-room set, and chamber sets; and the antique things which had given his former home an air of charming picturesqueness were for the most part tucked away in unnoticed corners.
The Captain never seemed to me to have become quite naturalized in his new home. He never belonged to the furniture, or the furniture to him. The place where you saw him best in these later days was in the office of his insurance company, or in the little business-room of one of the banks, surrounded by a knot of more substantial townsmen, or talking patiently with some small farmer or seafaring man seeking for insurance or a loan. One of the most marked features of his character was a certain patience and considerateness which made all borrowers apply by preference to him. He would sit down at his little table with a plain man whose affairs were in disorder, and listen with close attention to his application for a loan. Somehow the man would find himself disclosing all the particulars of his distress. Then Captain Pelham, in his quiet way, would go over the whole matter with him; would plan with him on his concerns; would try to see if it were not possible to postpone a little the payment of debts and to hasten the collection of claims; to get a part of the money for a short time from a son in Boston or a married daughter in New Bedford; and so, by pulling and hauling, to weather the Cape.
I must say a word about his position in town matters. He had been at sea the greater part of the time from sixteen to fifty-two. During that time he had had absolutely no concern with political affairs. He had never voted: for he had never, as it had happened, been ashore at the time of an election. And yet before he had been at home six years he was one of the selectmen of the town and overseer of the poor, and had become familiar with the details of Massachusetts town government, superficially so simple, in fact so complex. It was a large town, of no small wealth. Lying as it did along the seaboard, where havoc was always being made by disasters of the sea, there was not only a larger number than in an inland town of persons actually quartered in the poorhouse, but there were many broken families who had to be helped in their own homes. And it was to me an interesting fact that in dealing with two score households of this class, Captain Pel-ham, who had spent most of his time at sea, was able to display the utmost tact and judgment. He applied to their affairs that same plain kindliness and sound sense which he showed in the matter of discounts at the bank.
While the friendships of Captain Pelham were chiefly in his own town, his acquaintance was not confined to it. In his own quiet, unpretending way he was something of a man of the world. He was known in the marine insurance offices in the large cities. He had been familiar all his life with large affairs; he had commanded valuable ships, loaded with fortunes in teas and silks, in the days when an India captain was a merchant.
III.
You will ask me why it is that I have been telling you about these men, and what it is that connects them.
It was now ten years since Captain Pelham's only son, himself at twenty-two the master of a vessel, had married a daughter of James Parsons,--a tall, impulsive, and warm-hearted girl,--one of those girls to whom children always cling. Both James Parsons's daughters had proved attractive and had married well. It had been a disappointment in Captain Pelham's household, perhaps, that this son, their especial pride, should not have married into one of the wealthy families in his own village. At first there had been a little visiting to and fro; it had lasted but a little time, and then the two households had settled down, as the way is in the country, to follow each its own natural course of living. George Pelham's wife had always lived in an odd little house, all doors and windows, near by her father, in her native village.
It was from Porto Cabello that that message came,--yellow fever--a short sickness--a burial in a stranger's grave. George Pelham's wife had been for two or three years of less than her usual strength. It was not long after that news came,--came so suddenly, with no warning,--that she began to fade away; and after ten months she died.
I remember seeing her a week or two before her death. Her bed had been set up in her little parlor for the convenience of those who were attending upon her. She lay on her back, bolstered up. The paleness of her face was intensified by her coal-black hair, lying back heavy on the pillow. Her hands were thin and transparent, and I remember well the straining look in her eyes as she talked with me about the boy whom she was going to leave.
She was living, as I have said, close by her father. It was natural that in the last few days of her illness the child should be taken to her father's house, and when she died and the funeral was over, it was there that he returned.
Picture now to yourself a boy toward nine years old, symmetrically made, firm and hard. His head is round, his features are good, his hair is fine and lies down close. He is clothed in a neat print jacket, with a collar and a little handkerchief at the neck, and a pair of short trousers buttoned on to the jacket. He is barefoot. He is tanned but not burnt. His complexion is of a rich dark brown. He is always fresh and clean. But the great charm about him is the expression of infinite fun and mirth that is always upon his face. Never for a moment while he is awake is his face still. Always the same, yet always shifting, with a thousand varying shades of roguish joy. Quick, bright, full of boyish repartee, full of shouts and laughter. And the same incessant life which plays upon his face shows itself in every movement of his limbs. Never for a moment is he still unless he has some work upon his hands. He has his little routine of tasks, regularly assigned, which he goes through with the most amusing good-humor and attention. It is his duty to see that the skiffs are not jammed under the wharf on the rising tide; to sweep out the "Annie" when she comes in, and to set her cabin to rights; to set away the dishes after meals, and to feed the chickens. Aside from a few such tasks, his time in summer is his own. The rest of the year he goes to the "primary," and serves to keep the whole room in a state of mirth. He has the happy gift that to put every one in high spirits he has only to be present. Such an incessant flow of life you rarely see. His manners are good, and he comes honestly by them.
There is an amusing union in him of the baby and the man. While the children of his age at the summer hotel walk about for the most part with their nurses, he is turned loose upon the shore, and has been, from his cradle. He can dive and swim and paddle and float and "go steamboat." He can row a boat that is not too heavy, and up to the limit of his strength he can steer a sail-boat with substantial skill. He knows the currents, the tides, and the shoals about his shore, and the nearer landmarks. He knows that to find the threadlike entrance to the bay you bring the flag-staff over Cart-wright's barn. He has vague theories of his own as to the annual shifting of the channel. He knows where to take the city children to look for tinkle-shells and mussels. He knows what winds bring in the scallops from their beds. He knows where to dig for clams, and where to tread for quahaugs without disturbing the oysters. He has a good deal of fragmentary lore of the sea.
Every morning you will hear his cry, a sort of yodel, or bird-call, peculiar to him, with which he bursts forth upon the world. Then you will hear, perhaps, loud peals of laughter at something that has excited his sense of the absurd,--contagious laughter, full of innocent fun.
Then he will appear, perhaps, with his wooden dinner-bucket,--he is going off with his grandfather for the day,--and will yodel to the old man as a signal to make haste. Then you will hear him consulting with some one upon the weather.
All this time he will be going; through various evolutions, swinging in the hammock, sitting on the fence, opening his bucket to show you what he has to eat, closing the bucket and sitting down upon the cover, or turning somersaults upon the grass. Then he will encamp under an apple-tree to wait until his grandfather appears, enlivening the time by a score of minute excursions after hens and cats. Then he will go into the house again, and rock while the old man finishes his coffee, sure of a greeting, confident in a sense of entire good-fellowship, until the meal is finished, and James Parsons is ready to take his coat and a red-bladed oar, and set out. Then the boy is like a setter off for a walk,--all sorts of whimsical expressions in his face, of absolute delight; every form of extravagance in his bearing. The only trouble is, one has to laugh too much; but with all this, something so manly, so companionable.
He is no little of a philosopher in his way. He has been a great deal with older people, and has caught the habit of discussion of affairs, or rather, perhaps, of unconsciously reflecting forth discussions which he has heard. He has an infinite curiosity upon all matters of human life. He likes, within limits, to discuss character.
In the boat his chief delights are to talk, to eat cookies, and to steer. When it is not blowing too hard for him to stand at the tiller, he will steer for an hour together, watching with the most constant care the trembling of the leach.
It makes no difference to him at what hour he returns,--from oystering or from the cranberry-bog. If it is in the middle of the afternoon, good and well. Instantly upon landing he will collect a troop of urchins; in an incredibly short space of time there will be a heap of little clothes upon the bank; in a moment a procession of small naked figures will go running down to the wharf, diving, one after the other. If distance or tide or a calm keeps him out late, so much the better. In that case there is the romance of coasting along the shore by night; of counting and distinguishing the lights; of guessing the nearness to land from the dull roar of the sea breaking on the beach. "Don't you think," he will sometimes say, "that we are nearer shore than we think we are?"
It is amusing sometimes, on a distant voyage of fifteen or twenty miles, after seed oysters, when a landing is made at some little port, to see him drop the mariner at once and become a child, with a burning desire to find a shop where he can buy animal-crackers. Finding such a place,--and usually it is not difficult,--he will lay in a supply of lions and tigers, and then go marching about with great delight, with mockery in his eyes, keenly appreciating the satire involved in eating the head off a cooky lion, incapable of resistance.
No picture of Joe would be complete which left out his dog. Kit was a black, fine-haired creature, smaller than a collie, but of much the same gentle disposition,--a present from Captain Pelham. When Kit was first presented to the boy he domesticated himself at once, and in a week it was impossible to tell, from his relations with the household, which was boy and which was dog. They were both boys and they were both dogs. Kit had an unqualified sense of being at home, and of being beloved and indispensable. It was long before he became a sailor. When, at the outset, it was attempted to make a man of him by taking him when they went out to fish, the failure seemed to be complete. He was a little sea-sick. Then he was sad, and sighed and groaned as dogs never do on shore. He would not lie still, but was nervous and feverish. Once he leaped out of the boat and made for shore, and had to be pursued and rescued, exhausted and half-drowned. Still, whenever he had to be left at home, it was a struggle every time to reconcile him and leave him. Once he pursued a boat which he mistook for James's along the shore of the bay, half down to Benson's Narrows, got involved in the creeks which the tide was beginning to fill, and had to be brought ingloriously home by a farmer, made fast on the top of a load of sweet, salt hay.
He would tease like a child to be allowed to go. He would listen with an unsatisfied and appealing look while Joe, with an exuberant but regretful air, explained to him in detail the reasons which made it impossible for him to go. But in a few months, as the dog grew older, he prevailed, and although he would generally retire into the shelter of the cabin, he was nevertheless the boy's almost inseparable companion on the water as on the shore. The relation between the two was always touching. It evidently never crossed the dog's mind that he was not a younger brother.
Now, to complete the picture of James Par-sons's household, add in this boy; for while it is but just now that he is strictly of it, he has been for years its mirth and life.
I remember that quiet household before it knew him,--cosey, homelike, with a pervading air even then of genial humor, but with long hours of silence and repose,--geraniums and the click of knitting-needles in the sitting-room; faint odors of a fragrant pipe from the shed kitchen; no stir of boisterous fun, except when some bronzed, solemn joker, with his wife, came in for a formal call, and solemnity gave way, by a gradual descent, to merriment. Joe had given no new departure, only an impulse. "James used to behave himself quite well," Mrs. Parsons would say, archly raising her eyebrows, "before Joe's time; but now there 's two boys of 'em together, and the one as bad as the other, and I can't do nothing with 'em. And then,"--with a mock gesture of despair,--"that dog!"
IV.
While Joe's mother was lying ill, and after it had become certain that she would soon leave this world forever, the question had been freely-discussed as to what her boy's future should be. In Captain Joseph Pelham's mind there was only-one answer to this question,--that the lad should come to him. He bore the Captain's name; he represented the Captain's son; he should take a place now in the Captain's home.
It was now about three weeks since Joe's mother had been buried. The stone had not yet been cut and set over her grave. But the Captain thought it time to drive over to James Parsons's and take the boy. That James would make any serious opposition perhaps never entered his mind. It was a bright, charming afternoon; with his shining horse, in a bright, well-varnished buggy, the Captain drove over the seven miles of winding roads through the woods, and along the sea, to the village where James Parsons lived. He tied his horse to the hitching-post in front of the broad cottage house, went down the path to the L door, knocked, and went in.
James was sitting in a large room which served in winter as a kitchen and in summer as a sort of sitting-room, smoking a pipe and gazing vacantly into the pine-branches in the open fireplace before him. He had been out all day on his marsh, but he had been home a couple of hours. His wife--kindly soul--received Captain Pelham at the door, wiping her hands upon her apron, and modestly showed him into the sitting-room; then she retired to her tasks in the shed kitchen. She moved about mechanically for a moment; then she ran hastily out into the lean-to wood-shed, shut the door behind her, sat down on the worn floor where it gives way with a step to the floor of earth by the wood-pile, hid her face in her apron, and burst into tears.
Joe was at the wharf with his comrades playing at war.
Now, if there ever was a hospitable man,--a man who gave a welcome,--a rough but merry welcome to every one who entered his doors, it was James Parsons. He had a homely, jocose saying that you must either make yourself at home or go home. But on this occasion he rose with a somewhat forced and awkward air, laid his pipe down on the mantel-piece, and nodded to the Captain with an air of embarrassed inquiry. Then he bethought himself, and asked the Captain to sit down. The Captain took the nearest chair, beside the table, where Mrs. Parsons had lately been sitting at her work. James's chair was directly opposite. The table was between them.
James rose and went to the mantel-piece, scratched a match upon his boot-heel, and undertook to light his pipe. It did not light; he did not notice it, but put the pipe in his mouth as if it were lighted.
It occurred to Captain Pelham now, for the first time, absorbed as he had been with exclusive thoughts of the boy, that he should first say something to this old man about the daughter whom he had lost: and he made some expressions of sympathy. The old man nodded, but said nothing.
There was silence for two or three minutes.
The subject in order now was inevitably the boy. Captain Pelham opened his lips to claim him; but, almost to his own surprise, he found himself making some common remark about the affairs of the neighborhood. It came in harsh and forced, as if it were a fragment of conversation floated in by the breeze from the street outside. Then the Captain waited a moment, looking out of the window.
James took his pipe from his mouth and leaned his elbows on the table. "Why don't you go take him?" he suddenly said: "he's probably down to the wharf. Ef you have got the claim to him, why don't you go take him? You 've got your team here,--drive right down there and put him in and drive off; if you 've got the right to him, why don't you go take him? But ef you 've come for my consent, you can set there till the chair rots beneath you."
With this, James rose and took the felt hat which was lying by him on the table, and saying not another word, went out of the door. He went down to the shore, and affected to busy himself with his boat.
There was nothing for Captain Pelham to do but to take his hat, untie his horse, and drive home.
The Captain well knew that nobody in the world had a legal right to the child until a guardian should be appointed. A plain and simple path was open before him: it was his only path. James Parsons had proved wilful and wrong-headed; there was nothing now but to take out letters as guardian of the boy. Then James would acquiesce without a word.
Immediately after breakfast the Captain went down the street. He opened his letters and attended to the first routine of business; then he went across the way and up a flight of stairs to a lawyer's office.
If you had happened to read the county papers at about this time, you would have seen among the legal notices two petitions, identical in form,--the one by Joseph Pelham, the other by James Parsons,--each applying for guardianship of Joseph Pelham, the younger of that name, with an order upon each petition for all persons interested to come in on the first Tuesday of the following month and show cause why the petitioner's demand should not be granted.
The county court-house was a new brick building, of modest size, fifteen miles from W------, and twenty miles from the village where James Parsons lived.
There were fifteen or twenty people from different towns in attendance when the court opened on the important first Tuesday. As one after another transacted his affairs and went away, others would come in. Three or four lawyers sat at tables talking with clients, or stood about the judge's desk. There was a sprinkling of women in new mourning. Printed papers, filled out with names and dates,--petitions and bonds and executors' accounts,--were being handed in to the judge and receiving his signature of approval.
The routine business was transacted first. It was almost noon when the judge was at last free to attend to contested matters. There was a small audience by that time,--only ten or a dozen people, some of whom were waiting for train-time, while others, who had come upon their own affairs, lingered now from curiosity.
The judge was a tall, spare, old-fashioned man; he had held the office for above thirty years. He was a man of much native force, of sound learning within the range of his judicial duties, and of strong common-sense. He was often employed by Captain Pelham in his own affairs, and more particularly in bank and insurance matters,--for the probate judges are free to practise at the bar in matters not connected with their judicial duties,--and Captain Pelham had always retained him in important cases as counsel for the town. He had a large practice throughout the county; he knew its people, their ideas, their traditions, and their feelings. He understood their social organization to the core.
"Now," said the judge, laying aside some papers upon which he had been writing, and taking off his glasses, "we will take up the two petitions for guardianship of Joseph Pelham."
Captain Pelham and the lawyer whom he had employed took seats at a small table before the judge; James Parsons timidly took a seat at another. His petition had been filled out for him by one of his neighbors: he had no counsel.
Captain Pelham's lawyer rose; he had been impressed by the Captain with the importance of the matter, and he was about to make a formal opening. But the judge interrupted him. "I think," he said, "that we may assume that I know in a general way about these two petitioners. I shall assume, unless something is shown to the contrary, that they are both men of respectable character, and have proper homes for a boy to grow up in. And I suppose there is no controversy that Captain Pelham is a man of some considerable means, and that the other petitioner is a man of small property.
"Now," he went on, leaning forward with his elbow on his desk, and gently waving his glasses with his right hand, "did the father of this boy ever express any wish as to what should be done with him in case his mother should die?" Nobody answered. "It would be of no legal effect," he said, "but it would have weight with me. Now, is there any evidence as to what his mother wanted? A boy's mother can tell best about these things, if she is a sensible woman. Mr. Baker," he said to Captain Pelham's lawyer, "have you any evidence as to what his mother wanted to have done with him?"
Mr. Baker conversed for a moment with Captain Pelham and then called him to the stand.
Captain Pelham testified as to his frequent visits to the boy's mother, and to her unbroken friendly relations with him. She had never said in so many words what she wanted to have done for the boy, but he always understood that she meant to have the child come to him; he could not say, however, that she had said anything expressly to that effect.
James sat before him not many feet away, in his old-fashioned broadcloth coat with a velvet collar. He cross-examined Captain Pelham a little.
"She did n't never tell you," he said, "that she was going to give you the boy, did she?"
"No, sir;" said Captain Pelham.
"How often did your wife come over to see her?"
"I could n't tell you, sir," said the Captain.
"Not very often, did she?"
"I think not," the Captain admitted.
"The boy's mother did n't never talk much about Mis' Captain Pelham, did she?"
"I don't remember that she did."
"She did n't never have her over to talk with her about what she was going to do with the boy, did she?"
"I don't know that she did," said the Captain. "She is here; you can ask her."
"You didn't never hear of her leaving no word with Mis' Captain Pelham about taking care of the boy, did you?"
"I can't say that I did," said Captain Pelham.
The old man nodded his head with a satisfied air. His cross-examination was done.
The Captain retired from the witness-stand; his lawyer whispered with him a moment and then went over and whispered for two or three minutes with Mrs. Pelham; then he said he had no more evidence to offer.
"Mr. Parsons," said the judge, "do you wish to testify?"
James went to the witness-stand and was sworn.
"Did n't your daughter ever talk about what she wanted done with the boy?"
"Talk about it?" said James. "Why, she didn't talk about nothing else. She used to have it all over every time we went in. It was all about how mother 'n me must do this with him and do that with him,--how he was to go to school, what room he was going to sleep in to our house, and all that."
Mr. Baker desired to make no cross-examination, and James's wife was called, and testified in her quaint way to the same effect.
By a keen, homely instinct James had half consciously foreseen what would be the controlling element of the case; and while he had not formulated it to himself he had brought with him one of his neighbors, who had watched with his daughter through the last nights of her life. She was one of the poorest women of the village. Her husband was shiftless, and was somewhat given to drink. She had a large family, with little to bring them up on. Her life had been one long struggle. She was extremely poorly dressed, and although she was neat, there was an air of unthrift or discouragement about her dress. She wore an oversack which evidently had originally been made for some one else; it lacked one button. She was faded and worn and homely; but the moment she spoke she impressed you as a woman of conscience. She had talked in the long watches of the night with the boy's mother, and she confirmed what James and his wife had said. There could be no question what the mother had desired.
Mr. Baker ventured out upon the thin ice of cross-examination.
"She must have talked about her father-in-law, Captain Pelham?" he said.
"Oh, yes," said the woman, "often."
"She seemed to be attached to him?"
"Yes, indeed," said the woman, quickly; "she was always telling how good he was to her; I have heard her say there was n't no better man in the world."
"She must have talked about what he could do for the boy?"
"Yes," said the woman. "She expected him to do for Joe."
"Did n't she ever say," and the lawyer looked round at James,--"did n't you ever hear her say that she was worried sometimes for fear her father would not be careful enough about the boy?"
The woman hesitated a moment. "Yes," she said, "I have heard her say so, but that 's what every mother says."
"What reason did you ever hear her give," the lawyer asked, "why she would rather have him stay over there than to go and be brought up by his grandfather Pelham?"
The woman looked around timidly at the judge. "Be I obliged to answer?" she said.
The judge nodded.
The woman looked toward Captain Pelham with an embarrassed air. He was the best friend she had in the world.
"I rather not say nothing about that," she said; "it 's no account, anyway."
"Oh, tell us what she said," said Mr. Baker.
He felt that he had made some progress up to that point with his cross-examination.
"Well, it was n't much," said the woman; "it was only like this. I have heard her say that Miss Captain Pelham was a good woman and meant to do what was right, but she was n't a woman that knew how to mother a little boy." And here the witness began to cry.
The judge moved slightly in his chair.
There was more or less rambling talk about the way the boy was allowed to run loose on the shore, and some suggestions were made in the way of conversational argument about his being allowed to go barefoot, and to go in swimming when he pleased; but the judge seemed to pay very little attention to that. "That 's the way we were all brought up," he said. "It is good for the boy; he 'll learn to take care of himself, and his mother knew all about it.
"It is plain enough," he said at last, "that there would be some advantages to the boy in going to live with Captain Pelham; but there is one thing that has been overlooked which would probably have been suggested if the petitioner Parsons had had counsel. It has been assumed that the boy would be cut loose in future from his grandfather Pelham unless he was put under his guardianship; but that is n't so. All his grandparents will look out for him, and when he gets older, and wants to go into business, here or elsewhere, Captain Pelham will look after him just the same as if he were his guardian. The other grandfather has n't got the means to advance him. I am not at all afraid about that," he said; "the only question here is, where he shall be deposited for the next five or six years. Either place is good enough. His father had a right to fix it by will if he had chosen to; but he did n't, and I think we must consider it a matter for the women to settle: they know best about such things. It is plain that his mother thought it would be best for him to stay where he is, and she knew best. He 's wonted there, and wants to stay."
Then he took up his pen and wrote on Captain Pelham's petition an order of dismissal. On the other he filled out and signed the decree granting guardianship to James Parsons, and approved the bond. Then he handed the papers to the register and called the next case.
From this day on, little was seen of Captain Pelham at James's house. Sometimes he would stop in his buggy and take the boy off with him for a little stay; but Joe soon wearied of formality, and grew restless for James, for his grandmother Parsons, for the free life of the little wharf and the shore. Life always opened fresh to him on his return.
Once and only once Captain Pelham entered James's door-yard. James was sitting in an armchair under an apple-tree by the well, smoking and reading the paper. The Captain began, this time, with no introduction.
"Fred Gooding," he said, "tells me you are talking of letting Joe go out with Pitts in his boat You know Pitts is no fit man."
"You tell Fred Gooding he don't know what he 's talking about," said James, as he rose from his chair, holding the paper in his hand. "What I told Pitts was just the contr'y,--the boy should n't go along o' him." Then his anger began to rise. "But what right you got," he demanded, "to interfere? 'T ain 't none of your business who I let him go along of. It's me that's the boy's guardeen."
"Very well," said the Captain. "Only I tell you fairly,--the first time I get word of anything, I 'll go to the probate court and have you removed!"
James followed him down the path with derisive laughter. "Why don't you go to the probate court?" he said; "you hed great luck before!" And as the Captain drove away, James shouted after him, "Go to the probate court! Go to the probate court!"
V.
There is a low, pleasant boat-shop, close on the shore of a little arm of the sea. The tide ebbs and flows before its wide double doors, and sometimes rises so high as to flow the sills; then you have to walk across in front of the shop on a plank, laid upon iron ballast. There is a little wharf or pier close at hand, the outer end of which is always going to be repaired. There are two or three other shops near by, and about them is the pleasant litter of a boat-yard. In the cove before them lie at their moorings in the late afternoon a fleet of fifteen or twenty fishing and pleasure boats, all cat-rigged, all of one general build, wide, shoal, with one broad sail, all painted white, by the custom of the place, and all or nearly all kept neat and clean: they are all likely enough to be called upon now and then for sailing-parties. Often of a bright afternoon in summer the sails will all be up, as the boats swing at their floats: then you have all the effect of a regatta in still life.
The shop faces down the bay of which this inlet is the foot, and as you look out from your seat within, on a wooden stool, the great door frames in a landscape of peaceful beauty. The opening to the sea is closed to the view. Simply you can see the two white sand-cliffs through which it makes. The bay is a mile in length, perhaps, and of half that width. From its white, sandy shores rise gentle hills, bare to the sun or covered with a low growth of woods. To the right are low-lying pastures and marshes, with here and there a grazing cow. At the head of the bay the valley of a stream can be faintly distinguished, while in the distance there is a faint suggestion of a few scattered houses on the upper waters. At one or two points masts of boats rise from the grass of the inland, and sometimes a sail is seen threading its slow way amid the trees.
The shop is a favorite resort. You may go there in the early morning, in the late forenoon, or in the afternoon; whenever you go you will find there more or less company. There is a sort of social, hospitable atmosphere about the place which is attractive in the extreme. Sometimes there is a good deal of conversation; sometimes there is a comfortable silence of good-fellowship. There is more or less knitting there and crocheting; often in the afternoon the women from near by take their work there to enjoy the view, and the fresh air which draws up there as nowhere else.
There is a good deal of religious discussion there, although the atmosphere of the shop is not entirely religious, as you may see by some of the papers lying about, and the cuts pasted up on the walls. Chief is a picture representing a scene in the life of the prophet Jonah. Jonah and the seamen are drawing lots to see who shall be cast over. Jonah has just drawn the ace of spades.
There are various other pictures on the walls,--prints of famous yachts, charts, advertisements of regattas, sailing rules of yacht-clubs. Nowhere is the science of boat-building and boat-sailing studied with greater closeness than in that shop. Many a successful racer has been built there. There are models of boats pinned up against the wall,--models which to the common eye hardly vary at all, but to a trained perception differ widely. There are oars lying about the shop, oil-skin suits, a compass, charts, in round tin cases, boat hardware, and coils of new rope.
The little pier has its periods of activity and life, like the great world outside. At three or four o'clock, in the gray dawn, fishermen appear, singly, or two by two; there is often then a failure of wind, and they have to get out to sea by heavy rowing or by the drift of the tide. Then there is silence for some hours, and when the world awakes the cove is nearly deserted. At seven o'clock begins the life of the shop. Amateur fishermen appear,--boarders from New York or visiting sons from Brockton. Later still, little parties come down,--a knot of young fellows and laughing girls with bright-colored wraps, bound on a sailing-party to Katameset, with a matron, and with some well-salted man to steer the boat, perhaps in slippers and a dressing-gown. They go singing out to sea. Then come a party of bathers,--ladies and little children, with towels and blue suits, and all the paraphernalia of pails and wooden shovels. Then will come perhaps a couple of girls, to sketch. They will encamp anywhere upon the shore, call into their service some small amphibious creature to tip a skiff up on its side to make an effective scene, and proceed with the wonders of their art. Soon the bathers return. They have been only a little way down the narrows, and come back to dinner at one. The fishermen come in from three to four, unless they happen to be becalmed; there is a bustle then of getting out ice; of slitting and weighing and packing fish, and loading them into wagons to be carted to the railway. Then there is a lull until the sailing-parties return, perhaps at five, perhaps at six, perhaps not until the turn of the tide or the evening breeze brings them home.
All the time the quiet life of the boat-shop goes on,--its labor, its discussions on politics and religion, its criticism of yachts. All day long small boys play about the pier, race in skiffs or in such insignificant sailing-craft as may be available, and every half-hour, at the initiative of some infant leader, all doff their little print waists and short trousers and "go in," regardless of the sketchers on the shore.
It was a bright, fresh day. The air was as clear as crystal. Joe had been gone since dawn with Henry Price. The wind had been blowing hard from the north for a dozen hours, and, as the saying is, had kicked up a sea. On the shoal the waves were rolling heavily, and since three o'clock the tide had been running against the wind, and the seas had been broken every way. But to Henry Price, and with that boat, rough seas, from March to November, were only what a rude mountain road would be to you or me. If his wife, toward afternoon, shading her eyes at the south door, ever felt anxious about him, it was a woman's foolish fear; it was only because she thought with concern of that--internal neuralgia was it?--which her husband brought back from the war; which seized him at rare intervals and enfeebled him for days. He made light of it, and never spoke of it out of the house. There was no better boatman on that shore. Let alone that one possibility of weakness, and the ocean had a hard man to deal with when it dealt with him.
They had been gone all day. It had been rough, and they would come in wet. This wind would not die down; they were sure to make a quick run, and would be in before dark.
It was late in the afternoon. James was sitting in the shop with one or two companions, engaged in a loud discussion. He had been discoursing upon all his favorite themes. He had been declaiming upon the dangers from Catholic supremacy and the subserviency of the Irish vote to the Church of Rome, and upon the absolute necessity of the supremacy of the Democratic party; upon the Apocalypse and the seven seals. He had been maintaining the literal infallibility of the Scriptures, and the necessity of treating some portions as legendary. It would be hard to say what inconsistent views he had not set forth within the space of the past hour; and all this with the utmost intensity, and yet with the utmost good-humor, always ready to acknowledge a point against himself,--the more readily if entirely fallacious,--with a burst of hearty laughter.
At last there was a pause. Something had called out of doors the two or three men who were within. There was nothing to disturb the peaceful beauty of the afternoon. It was blowing hard outside, but this was a sheltered spot, and the wind was little felt.
As James sat there silent, with no one at hand but the owner of the shop, who was busy upon the keel of a new boat, a fisherman came in and took a seat, with an affectation of ease and nonchalance; in a moment another followed; two or three more came in, then others.
The carpenter stopped his work, and shading his eyes with his hand, seemed to be looking down the bay.
There was a dead silence for a few moments. Then James spoke. But it was not the voice of James. It was not that cheery and hearty voice which had just been filling the shop with mirth. It was a voice harsh, forced, mechanical,--the voice of a man paralyzed with terror.
"Why don't you tell me?" he said; "is it Henry, or--is it the boy?"
But no one spoke.
"You don't need to tell me nothing," he said, in the same strange tone of paralysis and fear, "I knowed it when Bassett first come in. I knowed it when the rest come in and closed in round me and did n't say nothing."
He sat still a moment. Then he rose abruptly and turned to the landward door. He stumbled over a stool which was in his way, and would have fallen but that one of the men sprang forward and held him. He plunged hastily out of the door. Just outside, in the shade of a small wild cherry-tree, was a bucket of clams which he had dug; across the bucket was an old hoe worn down to nothing. He stopped and mechanically took up the pail and hoe. Bassett stood by the door and looked after him as he went along the foot-path toward his home. There was a scantling fence close by. He went over it in his old habitual fashion: first he set over the bucket of clams and the hoe; then one leg went over and then the other; he sat for an instant on the top slat and then slid down. He took up his burden and went his way over the fields. In a moment he was lost to sight behind a bit of rising ground. Then he reappeared, making his way over the fields at his own heavy gait, until he was lost to sight behind a clump of trees close to his own door.
They did not find Henry and the boy that night. It was not until the next day that the bodies were washed ashore. One of the searchers, walking along the beach in the early dawn, found them both. He came upon Henry first; he was lying on the sand upon his face. A little farther on, gently swayed by the rising tide, lay Joe and his dog. Joe lay on his side, precisely as if asleep; the dog was in his arms.
The boy lies in the burying-ground on the hill, near the stone and the weeping-willow which mourn the youth who met his untimely death in 1830, in the launching of the brig. There is a rose-bush at the grave, and few bright days pass in summer that there is not a bunch of homely flowers laid at its foot. It is the spot to which all Mrs. Parsons's thoughts now tend, and her perpetual pilgrimage. It is too far for her to walk both there and back; but often a neighbor is going that way, with a lug-wagon or an open cart or his family carriage,--it makes no difference which,--and it is easy to get a ride. It is a good-humored village. Everybody stands ready to do a favor, and nobody hesitates to ask one. Often on a bright afternoon Mrs. Parsons will watch from her front window the "teams" that pass, going to the bay. When she sees one which is likely to go in the right direction on its return from the bay,--everybody knows in which direction she will wish to go,--she will run hastily to the door, and hail it.
"Whoa! Sh-h! Whoa! How d'do, Mis' Parsons?"
"Be you going straight home when you come back? Well, then, if it won't really be no trouble at all, I 'll be at the gap when you come by; I won't keep you waiting a minute. It 's such a nice, sunshiny afternoon, I thought I 'd like to go up and sit awhile, and take some posies."
End
Amazon Kindle versus Sony Reader
I'm an avid reader. But it's a pain to carry an assortment of books and novels - especially now with tightened airport security limiting the size of your carry-on. Narrowing the choice of assortment to bring becomes tougher.
My solution? eBooks - primarily dominated by Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. They are an electronic pad that holds and displays the pages of a book as you would peruse on paper. Both come with an array of snazzy features, but the lightweight portability with loads of memory capacity allows you a wide assortment of reading selections.
My solution? eBooks - primarily dominated by Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader. They are an electronic pad that holds and displays the pages of a book as you would peruse on paper. Both come with an array of snazzy features, but the lightweight portability with loads of memory capacity allows you a wide assortment of reading selections.
Amazon Kindle or the Sony Reader
Amazon Kindle - 6" and 9.7" respectively priced at $259 and $489 US.
Amazon KindleStorage capacity of 1500 and 3500 books each with wireless eBook downloads in 60 seconds from wherever you are in most countries (uses their Whispernet transmission on cell networks). At 1/3 "thick and about 10 oz, the battery life is now upwards of 2 weeks of reading. Selection available from Amazon is in excess of 400,000 books, International newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Sony's Reader - 6" and 7" versions priced at $299 and $399 US. (Mini handheld also available)
Sony ReaderStorage capacity of 350 books with books accessible for download through their eReader program and Google Books online-net access through your PC/Laptop is required. The 7" version adds wireless download capabilities. Sony's Reader measures 0.4" thick and weighs roughly the same at 10.2 oz. Sony's battery life boasts 7500 page turns or two weeks before recharging.
One of my concerns for both Sony and Kindle is the screen and eye-strain. Both use an E-Ink technology, however, that delivers a paper-like reading experience making it easy to read even in the sunshine. Selection seems extremely wide across both readers. Amazon's vision for Kindle is "to have every book ever printed, in every language, available in 60 seconds from anywhere in the planet" - that's pretty awesome!
Download rates for books are substantially cheaper than their paper cousins (usually about $9.99), and Newspaper subscriptions are about $10-$15 monthly (New York Times is $13.99 monthly).
A few of the concerns found by early-adopters of this new emerging technology relate to file format limitations and cross-eReader functionality. The range of file formats seem to mostly be solved with all reading the major defined formats of supports Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP.
The challenge still relates to cross-reader access. What you download in Kindle is not transferrable to Sony's Reader and vice versa . Add Barnes and Noble's Nook to the mix and another new proprietary format adds a wrinkle. Eventually, like MP3's and the music industry these will all standardize to a common format or universal compatibility, but it's a concern for the time being.
With such a vast reading selection, the environmental paper savings and the light-weight portability of the device and materials, travelling seems to have gotten a whole lot simpler for readers. Looks like I'll be searching out my Clive Cussler, Malcolm Gladwell, and Erik Qualman in eBook formats for my next adventure.
Do you have a preference or have you tried one or both, we'd love to hear your perspectives? Let us know.
With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell
Here’s a riddle: How do you make your book a best seller on the Kindle?
Answer: Give copies away.
That’s right. More than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge.
Although some of the titles are digital versions of books in the public domain — like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — many are by authors still trying to make a living from their work.
Earlier this week, for example, the No. 1 and 2 spots on Kindle’s best-seller list were taken by “Cape Refuge” and “Southern Storm,” both novels by Terri Blackstock, a writer of Christian thrillers. The Kindle price: $0. Until the end of the month, Ms. Blackstock’s publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is offering readers the opportunity to download the books free to the Kindle or to the Kindle apps on their iPhone or in Windows.
Publishers including Harlequin, Random House and Scholastic are offering free versions of digital books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-retailers, as well as on author Web sites, as a way of allowing readers to try out the work of unfamiliar writers. The hope is that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.
“Giving people a sample is a great way to hook people and encourage them to buy more,” said Suzanne Murphy, group publisher of Scholastic Trade Publishing, which offered free downloads of “Suite Scarlett,” a young-adult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, “Scarlett Fever,” out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list.
The digital giveaways come as publishers are panicking about price pressure on e-books in general. Amazon and other online retailers have set $9.99 as the putative e-book price for new releases and best sellers, and publishers worry that such pricing ultimately creates expectations among consumers that new books are no longer worth, say, $25 (the average list price of a new hardcover), or even $13 (a standard list price for trade paperbacks).
Some publishers have tried to take control of pricing by delaying the publication of certain e-books for several months after the books are made available in hardcover.
Executives at some houses said that given such actions, offering free content amounts to industry hypocrisy.
“At a time when we are resisting the $9.99 price of e-books,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, the publisher of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer, “it is illogical to give books away for free.”
Similarly, a spokesman for Penguin Group USA said: “Penguin has not and does not give away books for free. We feel that the value of the book is too important to do that.”
But some publishers regard free digital books as purely promotional, in the same vein as the free galleys they distribute to booksellers and reviewers to create attention and word-of-mouth buzz for an author.
“Most people purchase stuff because somebody has recommended the title,” said Steve Sammons, executive vice president for consumer engagement at Zondervan.
Neither Amazon nor other e-book retailers make any money on these giveaways either. But it is a way of luring customers to their e-reading devices.
Free e-books are also a way of distinguishing a less-well-known author from the marketing juggernauts of the most popular books.
“You have to show people things because there’s a lot of competition,” said Ms. Johnson, the author of “Suite Scarlett” and seven other books. “If they go into a store, they are going to see 4,000 books with Robert Pattinson’s face on it,” she added, referring to movie-tie-in versions of Ms. Meyer’s “Twilight” series. “Then my book will be buried under them.”
And if a free e-book rises to the top of the Kindle best-seller list — or Barnes & Noble’s ranked list of free e-books — it automatically gives an author more visibility.
“When you push to No. 1 of any best-seller list, that in itself seems to beget publicity,” said Brandilyn Collins, who writes suspense novels with Christian themes and whose novels “Exposure” and “Dark Pursuit” were No. 1 and 2 on the Kindle best-seller list earlier this month and remain in the Top 10 (and are still available free).
Most of the giveaways are of older titles by an author, with the idea that reading them will convert new fans who will go on to buy more recently released books. Even if only a small percentage of those who download a free book end up buying another one, “that’s all found money,” said Steve Oates, vice president for marketing at Bethany House Publishers, a unit of Baker Publishing Group, whose authors Beverly Lewis and Tracie Peterson had free titles on the Kindle best-seller list this week.
Samhain Publishing, a publisher of romance and erotica, has offered a free e-book title every two weeks for more than a year. Christina Brashear, its publisher, said that the giveaways have led to a noticeable bump in sales.
In October, the most recent month for which she has statistics, Ms. Brashear said Samhain offered free digital versions of “Giving Chase,” a romance novel by Lauren Dane, leading to 26,897 downloads.
But paid purchases of some of Ms. Dane’s other novels jumped exponentially. Her earlier novel “Chased,” which sold 97 copies in September, sold 2,666 digital units in October, and another of her previous books, “Taking Chase,” which sold 119 copies in September, sold 3,279 in the month in which a free download was available.
With e-books still representing about 5 percent of the total book market, data on the effect of digital giveaways is still inconclusive. Brian O’Leary, a principal at Magellan Media Consulting Partners, which advises publishers, said that while it appeared that free downloads led to an uptick in actual book buying, there was a risk that free reading could eventually “supplant paid reading.”
Indeed, said Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins, “free is not a business model.”
Authors are torn between wanting to experiment with new formats and wanting to protect their income. Charlie Huston, the author of the Henry Thompson crime trilogy and a series of books about Joe Pitt, a vampire detective, said that “the part of me that grew up in a union household” still feels as if he were occasionally undermining himself by sanctioning digital giveaways by his publisher, Random House.
But, he said, “I guess my attitude right now is that I can be afraid of what’s coming or I can try and aggressively embrace it in some form.”
And in some cases, the free e-books work. Pamela Deron, a 29-year-old administrative assistant in Florida, said she downloaded a free edition of “Already Dead,” the first in the Joe Pitt series, onto her Kindle this month.
“There are so many authors out there that fall into obscurity,” Ms. Deron wrote in an e-mail message. “Simply no one knows of them, and some readers are hesitant buying an author they never heard of. Free books allow you to experience the writer as a whole, not just a small tidbit.”
She added: “Fifty dollars later, I have the entire Joe Pitt series.”
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Read A Free Story Now
The Cold Embrace
Author: Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Language: English
Wordcount: 3,507
Genres: Horror, Short Story
Genres: Horror, Short Story
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HE was an artist--such things as happened to him happen sometimes to artists.
He was a German--such things as happened to him happen sometimes to Germans.
He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless.
And being young, handsome and eloquent, he was beloved.
He was an orphan, under the guardianship of his dead father's brother, his uncle Wilhelm, in whose house he had been brought up from a little child; and she who loved him was his cousin--his cousin Gertrude, whom he swore he loved in return.
Did he love her? Yes, when he first swore it. It soon wore out, this passionate love; how threadbare and wretched a sentiment it became at last in the selfish heart of the student! But in its golden dawn, when he was only nineteen, and had just returned from his apprenticeship to a great painter at Antwerp, and they wandered together in the most romantic outskirts of the city at rosy sunset, by holy moonlight, or bright and joyous morning, how beautiful a dream!
They keep it a secret from Wilhelm, as he has the father's ambition of a wealthy suitor for his only child--a cold and dreary vision beside the lover's dream.
So they are betrothed; and standing side by side when the dying sun and the pale rising moon divide the heavens, he puts the betrothal ring upon her finger, the white and taper finger whose slender shape he knows so well. This ring is a peculiar one, a massive golden serpent, its tail in its mouth, the symbol of eternity; it had been his mother's, and he would know it amongst a thousand. If he were to become blind tomorrow, he could select it from amongst a thousand by the touch alone.
He places it on her finger, and they swear to be true to each other for ever and ever--through trouble and danger--sorrow and change--in wealth or poverty. Her father must needs be won to consent to their union by and by, for they were now betrothed, and death alone could part them.
But the young student, the scoffer at revelation, yet the enthusiastic adorer of the mystical, asks:
"Can death part us? I would return to you from the grave, Gertrude. My soul would come back to be near my love. And you--you, if you died before me--the cold earth would not hold you from me; if you loved me, you would return, and again these fair arms would be clasped round my neck as they are now."
But she told him, with a holier light in her deep-blue eyes than had ever shone in his--she told him that the dead who die at peace with God are happy in heaven, and cannot return to the troubled earth; and that it is only the suicide--the lost wretch on whom sorrowful angels shut the door of Paradise--whose unholy spirit haunts the footsteps of the living.
The first year of their betrothal is passed, and she is alone, for he has gone to Italy, on a commission for some rich man, to copy Raphaels, Titians, Guidos, in a gallery at Florence. He has gone to win fame, perhaps; but it is not the less bitter--he is gone!
Of course her father misses his young nephew, who has been as a son to him; and he thinks his daughter's sadness no more than a cousin should feel for a cousin's absence.
In the meantime, the weeks and months pass. The lover writes--often at first, then seldom--at last, not at all.
How many excuses she invents for him! How many times she goes to the distant little post-office, to which he is to address his letters! How many times she hopes, only to be disappointed! How many times she despairs, only to hope again!
But real despair comes at last, and will not be put off any more. The rich suitor appears on the scene, and her father is determined. She is to marry at once. The wedding-day is fixed--the fifteenth of June.
The date seems to burn into her brain.
The date, written in fire, dances for ever before her eyes.
The date, shrieked by the Furies, sounds continually in her ears.
But there is time yet--it is the middle of May--there is time for a letter to reach him at Florence; there is time for him to come to Brunswick, to take her away and marry her, in spite of her father--in spite of the whole world.
But the days and the weeks fly by, and he does not write--he does not come. This is indeed despair which usurps her heart, and will not be put away.
It is the fourteenth of June. For the last time she goes to the little post-office; for the last time she asked the old question, and they give her for the last time the dreary answer, "No; no letter."
For the last time--for tomorrow is the day appointed for the bridal. Her father will hear no entreaties; her rich suitor will not listen to her prayers. They will not be put off a day--an hour; to-night alone is hers--this night, which she may employ as she will.
She takes another path than that which leads home; she hurries through some by-streets of the city, out on to a lonely bridge, where he and she had stood so often in the sunset, watching the rose-coloured light glow, fade, and die upon the river.
* * *
He returns from Florence. He had received her letter. That letter, blotted with tears, entreating, despairing--he had received it, but he loved her no longer. A young Florentine, who has sat to him for a model, had bewitched his fancy--that fancy which with him stood in place of a heart--and Gertrude had been half-forgotten. If she had a rich suitor, good; let her marry him; better for her, better far for himself. He had no wish to fetter himself with a wife. Had he not his art always?--his eternal bride, his unchanging mistress.
Thus he thought it wiser to delay his journey to Brunswick, so that he should arrive when the wedding was over--arrive in time to salute the bride.
And the vows--the mystical fancies--the belief in his return, even after death, to the embrace of his beloved? O, gone out of his life; melted away for ever, those foolish dreams of his boyhood.
So on the fifteenth of June he enters Brunswick, by that very bridge on which she stood, the stars looking down on her, the night before. He strolls across the bridge and down by the water's edge, a great rough dog at his heels, and the smoke from his short meerschaum-pipe curling in blue wreaths fantastically in the pure morning air. He has his sketch-book under his arm, and attracted now and then by some object that catches his artist's eye, stops to draw: a few weeds and pebbles on the river's brink--a crag on the opposite shore--a group of pollard willows in the distance. When he has done, he admires his drawing, shuts his sketch-book, empties the ashes from his pipe, refills from his tobacco-pouch, sings the refrain of a gay drinking-song, calls to his dog, smokes again, and walks on. Suddenly he opens his sketch-book again; this time that which attracts him is a group of figures: but what is it?
It is not a funeral, for there are no mourners.
It is not a funeral, but a corpse lying on a rude bier, covered with an old sail, carried between two bearers.
It is not a funeral, for the bearers are fishermen--fishermen in their everyday garb.
About a hundred yards from him they rest their burden on a bank--one stands at the head of the bier, the other throws himself down at the foot of it.
And thus they form the perfect group; he walks back two or three paces, selects his point of sight, and begins to sketch a hurried outline. He has finished it before they move; he hears their voices, though he cannot hear their words, and wonders what they can be talking of. Presently he walks on and joins them.
"You have a corpse there, my friends?" he says.
"Yes; a corpse washed ashore an hour ago."
"Drowned?"
"Yes, drowned. A young girl, very handsome."
"Suicides are always handsome," says the painter; and then he stands for a little while idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas covering.
Life is such a golden holiday for him--young, ambitious, clever--that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny.
At last he says that, as this poor suicide is so handsome, he should like to make a sketch of her.
He gives the fishermen some money, and they offer to remove the sailcloth that covers her features.
No; he will do it himself. He lifts the rough, coarse, wet canvas from her face. What face?
The face that shone on the dreams of his foolish boyhood; the face which once was the light of his uncle's home. His cousin Gertrude--his betrothed!
He sees, as in one glance, while he draws one breath, the rigid features--the marble arms--the hands crossed on the cold bosom; and, on the third finger of the left hand, the ring which had been his mother's--the golden serpent; the ring which, if he were to become blind, he could select from a thousand others by the touch alone.
But he is a genius and a metaphysician--grief, true grief, is not for such as he. His first thought is flight--flight anywhere out of that accursed city--anywhere far from the brink of that hideous river--anywhere away from remorse--anywhere to forget.
* * * He is miles on the road that leads away from Brunswick before he knows that he has walked a step.
It is only when his dog lies down panting at his feet that he feels how exhausted he is himself, and sits down upon a bank to rest. How the landscape spins round and round before his dazzled eyes, while his morning's sketch of the two fishermen and the canvas-covered bier glares redly at him out of the twilight.
At last, after sitting a long time by the roadside, idly playing with his dog, idly smoking, idly lounging, looking as any idle, light-hearted travelling student might look, yet all the while acting over that morning's scene in his burning brain a hundred times a minute; at last he grows a little more composed, and tries presently to think of himself as he is, apart from his cousin's suicide. Apart from that, he was no worse off than he was yesterday. His genius was not gone; the money he had earned at Florence still lined his pocket-book; he was his own master, free to go whither he would.
And while he sits on the roadside, trying to separate himself from the scene of that morning--trying to put away the image of the corpse covered with the damp canvas sail--trying to think of what he should do next, where he should go, to be farthest away from Brunswick and remorse, the old diligence coming rumbling and jingling along. He remembers it; it goes from Brunswick to Aix-la-Chapelle.
He whistles to the dog, shouts to the postillion to stop, and springs into the coupe.
During the whole evening, through the long night, though he does not once close his eyes, he never speaks a word; but when morning dawns, and the other passengers awake and begin to talk to each other, he joins in the conversation. He tells them that he is an artist, that he is going to Cologne and to Antwerp to copy Rubenses, and the great picture by Quentin Matsys, in the museum. He remembered afterwards that he talked and laughed boisterously, and that when he was talking and laughing loudest, a passenger, older and graver than the rest, opened the window near him, and told him to put his head out. He remembered the fresh air blowing in his face, the singing of the birds in his ears, and the flat fields and roadside reeling before his eyes. He remembered this, and then falling in a lifeless heap on the floor of the diligence.
It is a fever that keeps him for six long weeks on a bed at a hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle.
He gets well, and, accompanied by his dog, starts on foot for Cologne. By this time he is his former self once more. Again the blue smoke from his short meerschaum curls upwards in the morning air--again he sings some old university drinking song--again stops here and there, meditating and sketching.
He is happy, and has forgotten his cousin--and so on to Cologne.
It is by the great cathedral he is standing, with his dog at his side. It is night, the bells have just chimed the hour, and the clocks are striking eleven; the moonlight shines full upon the magnificent pile, over which the artist's eye wanders, absorbed in the beauty of form.
He is not thinking of his drowned cousin, for he has forgotten her and is happy.
Suddenly some one, something from behind him, puts two cold arms round his neck, and clasps its hands on his breast.
And yet there is no one behind him, for on the flags bathed in the broad moonlight there are only two shadows, his own and his dog's. He turns quickly round--there is no one--nothing to be seen in the broad square but himself and his dog; and though he feels, he cannot see the cold arms clasped round his neck.
It is not ghostly, this embrace, for it is palpable to the touch--it cannot be real, for it is invisible.
He tries to throw off the cold caress. He clasps the hands in his own to tear them asunder, and to cast them off his neck. He can feel the long delicate fingers cold and wet beneath his touch, and on the third finger of the left hand he can feel the ring which was his mother's--the golden serpent--the ring which he has always said he would know among a thousand by the touch alone. He knows it now!
His dead cousin's cold arms are round his neck--his dead cousin's wet hands are clasped upon his breast. He asks himself if he is mad. "Up, Leo!" he shouts. "Up, up, boy!" and the Newfoundland leaps to his shoulders--the dog's paws are on the dead hands, and the animal utters a terrific howl, and springs away from his master.
The student stands in the moonlight, the dead arms around his neck, and the dog at a little distance moaning piteously.
Presently a watchman, alarmed by the howling of the dog, comes into the square to see what is wrong.
In a breath the cold arms are gone.
He takes the watchman home to the hotel with him and gives him money; in his gratitude he could have given the man half his little fortune.
Will it ever come to him again, this embrace of the dead?
He tries never to be alone; he makes a hundred acquaintances, and shares the chamber of another student. He starts up if he is left by himself in the public room of the inn where he is staying, and runs into the street. People notice his strange actions, and begin to think that he is mad.
But, in spite of all, he is alone once more; for one night the public room being empty for a moment, when on some idle pretence he strolls into the street, the street is empty too, and for the second time he feels the cold arms round his neck, and for the second time, when he calls his dog, the animal shrinks away from him with a piteous howl.
After this he leaves Cologne, still travelling on foot--of necessity now, for his money is getting low. He joins travelling hawkers, he walks side by side with labourers, he talks to every foot-passenger he falls in with, and tries from morning till night to get company on the road.
At night he sleeps by the fire in the kitchen of the inn at which he stops; but do what he will, he is often alone, and it is now a common thing for him to feel the cold arms around his neck.
Many months have passed since his cousin's death--autumn, winter, early spring. His money is nearly gone, his health is utterly broken, he is the shadow of his former self, and he is getting near to Paris. He will reach that city at the time of the Carnival. To this he looks forward. In Paris, in Carnival time, he need never, surely, be alone, never feel that deadly caress; he may even recover his lost gaiety, his lost health, once more resume his profession, once more earn fame and money by his art.
How hard he tries to get over the distance that divides him from Paris, while day by day he grows weaker, and his step slower and more heavy!
But there is an end at last; the long dreary roads are passed. This is Paris, which he enters for the first time--Paris, of which he has dreamed so much--Paris, whose million voices are to exorcise his phantom.
To him to-night Paris seems one vast chaos of lights, music, and confusion--lights which dance before his eyes and will not be still--music that rings in his ears and deafens him--confusion which makes his head whirl round and round.
But, in spite of all, he finds the opera-house, where there is a masked ball. He has enough money left to buy a ticket of admission, and to hire a domino to throw over his shabby dress. It seems only a moment after his entering the gates of Paris that he is in the very midst of all the wild gaiety of the opera-house ball.
No more darkness, no more loneliness, but a mad crowd, shouting and dancing, and a lovely Debardeuse hanging on his arm.
The boisterous gaiety he feels surely is his old light-heartedness come back. He hears the people round him talking of the outrageous conduct of some drunken student, and it is to him they point when they say this--to him, who has not moistened his lips since yesterday at noon, for even now he will not drink; though his lips are parched, and his throat burning, he cannot drink. His voice is thick and hoarse, and his utterance indistinct; but still this must be his old light-heartedness come back that makes him so wildly gay.
The little Debardeuse is wearied out--her arm rests on his shoulder heavier than lead--the other dancers one by one drop off.
The lights in the chandeliers one by one die out.
The decorations look pale and shadowy in that dim light which is neither night nor day.
A faint glimmer from the dying lamps, a pale streak of cold grey light from the new-born day, creeping in through half-opened shutters.
And by this light the bright-eyed Debardeuse fades sadly. He looks her in the face. How the brightness of her eyes dies out! Again he looks her in the face. How white that face has grown! Again--and now it is the shadow of a face alone that looks in his.
Again--and they are gone--the bright eyes, the face, the shadow of the face. He is alone; alone in that vast saloon.
Alone, and, in the terrible silence, he hears the echoes of his own footsteps in that dismal dance which has no music.
No music but the beating of his breast. The the cold arms are round his neck--they whirl him round, they will not be flung off, or cast away; he can no more escape from their icy grasp than he can escape from death. He looks behind him--there is nothing but himself in the great empty salle; but he can feel--cold, deathlike, but O, how palpable!--the long slender fingers, and the ring which was his mother's.
He tries to shout, but he has no power in his burning throat. The silence of the place is only broken by the echoes of his own footsteps in the dance from which he cannot extricate himself. Who says he has no partner? The cold hands are clasped on his breast, and now he does not shun their caress. No! One more polka, if he drops down dead.
The lights are all out, and, half an hour after, the gendarmes come in with a lantern to see that the house is empty; they are followed by a great dog that they have found seated howling on the steps of the theatre. Near the principal entrance they stumble over--
The body of a student, who has died from want of food, exhaustion, and the breaking of a blood-vessel.
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