diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/altdd10h.htm')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/altdd10h.htm | 1791 |
1 files changed, 1791 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/altdd10h.htm b/old/altdd10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..782fa0e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/altdd10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1791 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Altar of the Dead</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James +(#10 in our series by Henry James) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Altar of the Dead + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #642] +[This file was first posted on September 10, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1916 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved +them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations +and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former +found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion +the date of Mary Antrim’s death. It would be more to the +point perhaps to say that this occasion kept <i>him</i>: it kept him +at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of +him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never +loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously +as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had +of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl who was to +have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. She had +died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been fixed, and +he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that promised to fill +his life to the brim.<br> +<br> +Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this life +could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost, still ordered +by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of numerous passions, +and even in all these years no sense had grown stronger with him than +the sense of being bereft. He had needed no priest and no altar +to make him for ever widowed. He had done many things in the world +- he had done almost all but one: he had never, never forgotten. +He had tried to put into his existence whatever else might take up room +in it, but had failed to make it more than a house of which the mistress +was eternally absent. She was most absent of all on the recurrent +December day that his tenacity set apart. He had no arranged observance +of it, but his nerves made it all their own. They drove him forth +without mercy, and the goal of his pilgrimage was far. She had +been buried in a London suburb, a part then of Nature’s breast, +but which he had seen lose one after another every feature of freshness. +It was in truth during the moments he stood there that his eyes beheld +the place least. They looked at another image, they opened to +another light. Was it a credible future? Was it an incredible +past? Whatever the answer it was an immense escape from the actual.<br> +<br> +It’s true that if there weren’t other dates than this there +were other memories; and by the time George Stransom was fifty-five +such memories had greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts +in his life than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had perhaps not +had more losses than most men, but he had counted his losses more; he +hadn’t seen death more closely, but had in a manner felt it more +deeply. He had formed little by little the habit of numbering +his Dead: it had come to him early in life that there was something +one had to do for them. They were there in their simplified intensified +essence, their conscious absence and expressive patience, as personally +there as if they had only been stricken dumb. When all sense of +them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if their purgatory +were really still on earth: they asked so little that they got, poor +things, even less, and died again, died every day, of the hard usage +of life. They had no organised service, no reserved place, no +honour, no shelter, no safety. Even ungenerous people provided +for the living, but even those who were called most generous did nothing +for the others. So on George Stransom’s part had grown up +with the years a resolve that he at least would do something, do it, +that is, for his own - would perform the great charity without reproach. +Every man <i>had</i> his own, and every man had, to meet this charity, +the ample resources of the soul.<br> +<br> +It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that spoke for them best; +as the years at any rate went by he found himself in regular communion +with these postponed pensioners, those whom indeed he always called +in his thoughts the Others. He spared them the moments, he organised +the charity. Quite how it had risen he probably never could have +told you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such as was after +all within everybody’s compass, lighted with perpetual candles +and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual +spaces. He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether +he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he +hadn’t at all events the religion some of the people he had known +wanted him to have. Gradually this question was straightened out +for him: it became clear to him that the religion instilled by his earliest +consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited +his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his +piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and +splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial +more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He +had no imagination about these things but that they were accessible +to any one who should feel the need of them. The poorest could +build such temples of the spirit - could make them blaze with candles +and smoke with incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. +The cost, in the common phrase, of keeping them up fell wholly on the +generous heart.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as happened, an emotion +not unconnected with that range of feeling. Walking home at the +close of a busy day he was arrested in the London street by the particular +effect of a shop-front that lighted the dull brown air with its mercenary +grin and before which several persons were gathered. It was the +window of a jeweller whose diamonds and sapphires seemed to laugh, in +flashes like high notes of sound, with the mere joy of knowing how much +more they were “worth” than most of the dingy pedestrians +staring at them from the other side of the pane. Stransom lingered +long enough to suspend, in a vision, a string of pearls about the white +neck of Mary Antrim, and then was kept an instant longer by the sound +of a voice he knew. Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond +the old woman a gentleman with a lady on his arm. It was from +him, from Paul Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with +the lady of some precious object in the window. Stransom had no +sooner recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with +this growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in +the very act of laying his hand on his friend’s arm. It +lasted but the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a +wild question. Was <i>not</i> Mrs. Creston dead? - the ambiguity +met him there in the short drop of her husband’s voice, the drop +conjugal, if it ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each +other. Creston, making a step to look at something else, came +nearer, glanced at him, started and exclaimed - behaviour the effect +of which was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring back across +the months at the different face, the wholly other face, the poor man +had shown him last, the blurred ravaged mask bent over the open grave +by which they had stood together. That son of affliction wasn’t +in mourning now; he detached his arm from his companion’s to grasp +the hand of the older friend. He coloured as well as smiled in +the strong light of the shop when Stransom raised a tentative hat to +the lady. Stransom had just time to see she was pretty before +he found himself gaping at a fact more portentous. “My dear +fellow, let me make you acquainted with my wife.”<br> +<br> +Creston had blushed and stammered over it, but in half a minute, at +the rate we live in polite society, it had practically become, for our +friend, the mere memory of a shock. They stood there and laughed +and talked; Stransom had instantly whisked the shock out of the way, +to keep it for private consumption. He felt himself grimace, he +heard himself exaggerate the proper, but was conscious of turning not +a little faint. That new woman, that hired performer, Mrs. Creston? +Mrs. Creston had been more living for him than any woman but one. +This lady had a face that shone as publicly as the jeweller’s +window, and in the happy candour with which she wore her monstrous character +was an effect of gross immodesty. The character of Paul Creston’s +wife thus attributed to her was monstrous for reasons Stransom could +judge his friend to know perfectly that he knew. The happy pair +had just arrived from America, and Stransom hadn’t needed to be +told this to guess the nationality of the lady. Somehow it deepened +the foolish air that her husband’s confused cordiality was unable +to conceal. Stransom recalled that he had heard of poor Creston’s +having, while his bereavement was still fresh, crossed the sea for what +people in such predicaments call a little change. He had found +the little change indeed, he had brought the little change back; it +was the little change that stood there and that, do what he would, he +couldn’t, while he showed those high front teeth of his, look +other than a conscious ass about. They were going into the shop, +Mrs. Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stransom to come with them and +help to decide. He thanked her, opening his watch and pleading +an engagement for which he was already late, and they parted while she +shrieked into the fog, “Mind now you come to see me right away!” +Creston had had the delicacy not to suggest that, and Stransom hoped +it hurt him somewhere to hear her scream it to all the echoes.<br> +<br> +He felt quite determined, as he walked away, never in his life to go +near her. She was perhaps a human being, but Creston oughtn’t +to have shown her without precautions, oughtn’t indeed to have +shown her at all. His precautions should have been those of a +forger or a murderer, and the people at home would never have mentioned +extradition. This was a wife for foreign service or purely external +use; a decent consideration would have spared her the injury of comparisons. +Such was the first flush of George Stransom’s reaction; but as +he sat alone that night - there were particular hours he always passed +alone - the harshness dropped from it and left only the pity. +<i>He</i> could spend an evening with Kate Creston, if the man to whom +she had given everything couldn’t. He had known her twenty +years, and she was the only woman for whom he might perhaps have been +unfaithful. She was all cleverness and sympathy and charm; her +house had been the very easiest in all the world and her friendship +the very firmest. Without accidents he had loved her, without +accidents every one had loved her: she had made the passions about her +as regular as the moon makes the tides. She had been also of course +far too good for her husband, but he never suspected it, and in nothing +had she been more admirable than in the exquisite art with which she +tried to keep every one else (keeping Creston was no trouble) from finding +it out. Here was a man to whom she had devoted her life and for +whom she had given it up - dying to bring into the world a child of +his bed; and she had had only to submit to her fate to have, ere the +grass was green on her grave, no more existence for him than a domestic +servant he had replaced. The frivolity, the indecency of it made +Stransom’s eyes fill; and he had that evening a sturdy sense that +he alone, in a world without delicacy, had a right to hold up his head. +While he smoked, after dinner, he had a book in his lap, but he had +no eyes for his page: his eyes, in the swarming void of things, seemed +to have caught Kate Creston’s, and it was into their sad silences +he looked. It was to him her sentient spirit had turned, knowing +it to be of her he would think. He thought for a long time of +how the closed eyes of dead women could still live - how they could +open again, in a quiet lamplit room, long after they had looked their +last. They had looks that survived - had them as great poets had +quoted lines.<br> +<br> +The newspaper lay by his chair - the thing that came in the afternoon +and the servants thought one wanted; without sense for what was in it +he had mechanically unfolded and then dropped it. Before he went +to bed he took it up, and this time, at the top of a paragraph, he was +caught by five words that made him start. He stood staring, before +the fire, at the “Death of Sir Acton Hague, K.C.B.,” the +man who ten years earlier had been the nearest of his friends and whose +deposition from this eminence had practically left it without an occupant. +He had seen him after their rupture, but hadn’t now seen him for +years. Standing there before the fire he turned cold as he read +what had befallen him. Promoted a short time previous to the governorship +of the Westward Islands, Acton Hague had died, in the bleak honour of +this exile, of an illness consequent on the bite of a poisonous snake. +His career was compressed by the newspaper into a dozen lines, the perusal +of which excited on George Stransom’s part no warmer feeling than +one of relief at the absence of any mention of their quarrel, an incident +accidentally tainted at the time, thanks to their joint immersion in +large affairs, with a horrible publicity. Public indeed was the +wrong Stransom had, to his own sense, suffered, the insult he had blankly +taken from the only man with whom he had ever been intimate; the friend, +almost adored, of his University years, the subject, later, of his passionate +loyalty: so public that he had never spoken of it to a human creature, +so public that he had completely overlooked it. It had made the +difference for him that friendship too was all over, but it had only +made just that one. The shock of interests had been private, intensely +so; but the action taken by Hague had been in the face of men. +To-day it all seemed to have occurred merely to the end that George +Stransom should think of him as “Hague” and measure exactly +how much he himself could resemble a stone. He went cold, suddenly +and horribly cold, to bed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey suburb, he knew his +long walk had tired him. In the dreadful cemetery alone he had +been on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had +taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no circling +cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner and measured +the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered dusk that he was +in one of those tracts of London which are less gloomy by night than +by day, because, in the former case of the civil gift of light. +By day there was nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George +Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good in themselves. It +wasn’t that they could show him anything, it was only that they +could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a while, they +did show him something: the arch of a high doorway approached by a low +terrace of steps, in the depth of which - it formed a dim vestibule +- the raising of a curtain at the moment he passed gave him a glimpse +of an avenue of gloom with a glow of tapers at the end. He stopped +and looked up, recognising the place as a church. The thought +quickly came to him that since he was tired he might rest there; so +that after a moment he had in turn pushed up the leathern curtain and +gone in. It was a temple of the old persuasion, and there had +evidently been a function - perhaps a service for the dead; the high +altar was still a blaze of candles. This was an exhibition he +always liked, and he dropped into a seat with relief. More than +it had ever yet come home to him it struck him as good there should +be churches.<br> +<br> +This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger shuffled +about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was hospitality +in the thick sweet air. Was it only the savour of the incense +or was it something of larger intention? He had at any rate quitted +the great grey suburb and come nearer to the warm centre. He presently +ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at last even a sense of community +with the only worshipper in his neighbourhood, the sombre presence of +a woman, in mourning unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of +her and who had sunk deep into prayer at no great distance from him. +He wished he could sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, +as rapt in prostration. After a few moments he shifted his seat; +it was almost indelicate to be so aware of her. But Stransom subsequently +quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light. If occasions +like this had been more frequent in his life he would have had more +present the great original type, set up in a myriad temples, of the +unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind. That shrine +had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the echo had ended +by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound now rang out, +the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a mystery of radiance +in which endless meanings could glow. The thing became as he sat +there his appropriate altar and each starry candle an appropriate vow. +He numbered them, named them, grouped them - it was the silent roll-call +of his Dead. They made together a brightness vast and intense, +a brightness in which the mere chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that +as it faded away he asked himself if he shouldn’t find his real +comfort in some material act, some outward worship.<br> +<br> +This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black-robed +lady continued prostrate; he was quietly thrilled with his conception, +which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden excitement of a +plan. He wandered softly through the aisles, pausing in the different +chapels, all save one applied to a special devotion. It was in +this clear recess, lampless and unapplied, that he stood longest - the +length of time it took him fully to grasp the conception of gilding +it with his bounty. He should snatch it from no other rites and +associate it with nothing profane; he would simply take it as it should +be given up to him and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain +of fire. Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church +round it, it would always be ready for his offices. There would +be difficulties, but from the first they presented themselves only as +difficulties surmounted. Even for a person so little affiliated +the thing would be a matter of arrangement. He saw it all in advance, +and how bright in especial the place would become to him in the intermissions +of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich in assurance at all times, +but especially in the indifferent world. Before withdrawing he +drew nearer again to the spot where he had first sat down, and in the +movement he met the lady whom he had seen praying and who was now on +her way to the door. She passed him quickly, and he had only a +glimpse of her pale face and her unconscious, almost sightless eyes. +For that instant she looked faded and handsome.<br> +<br> +This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly esoteric, +that he at last found himself able to establish. It took a long +time, it took a year, and both the process and the result would have +been - for any who knew - a vivid picture of his good faith. No +one did know, in fact - no one but the bland ecclesiastics whose acquaintance +he had promptly sought, whose objections he had softly overridden, whose +curiosity and sympathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his +eccentric munificence he had eventually won, and who had asked for concessions +in exchange for indulgences. Stransom had of course at an early +stage of his enquiry been referred to the Bishop, and the Bishop had +been delightfully human, the Bishop had been almost amused. Success +was within sight, at any rate from the moment the attitude of those +whom it concerned became liberal in response to liberality. The +altar and the sacred shell that half encircled it, consecrated to an +ostensible and customary worship, were to be splendidly maintained; +all that Stransom reserved to himself was the number of his lights and +the free enjoyment of his intention. When the intention had taken +complete effect the enjoyment became even greater than he had ventured +to hope. He liked to think of this effect when far from it, liked +to convince himself of it yet again when near. He was not often +indeed so near as that a visit to it hadn’t perforce something +of the patience of a pilgrimage; but the time he gave to his devotion +came to seem to him more a contribution to his other interests than +a betrayal of them. Even a loaded life might be easier when one +had added a new necessity to it.<br> +<br> +How much easier was probably never guessed by those who simply knew +there were hours when he disappeared and for many of whom there was +a vulgar reading of what they used to call his plunges. These +plunges were into depths quieter than the deep sea-caves, and the habit +had at the end of a year or two become the one it would have cost him +most to relinquish. Now they had really, his Dead, something that +was indefensibly theirs; and he liked to think that they might in cases +be the Dead of others, as well as that the Dead of others might be invoked +there under the protection of what he had done. Whoever bent a +knee on the carpet he had laid down appeared to him to act in the spirit +of his intention. Each of his lights had a name for him, and from +time to time a new light was kindled. This was what he had fundamentally +agreed for, that there should always be room for them all. What +those who passed or lingered saw was simply the most resplendent of +the altars called suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly +man, for whom it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in +a maze or a doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious +and fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there, +and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the conquests, +if there had been such, a record of that adventurous journey in which +the beginnings and the endings of human relations are the lettered mile-stones. +He had in general little taste for the past as a part of his own history; +at other times and in other places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to +consider and impossible to repair; but on these occasions he accepted +it with something of that positive gladness with which one adjusts one’s +self to an ache that begins to succumb to treatment. To the treatment +of time the malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and +these were doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to +him. The day was written for him there on which he had first become +acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the acquaintance +were marked each with a flame.<br> +<br> +The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had entered +that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one dies every +day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had flashed out her +white fire; yet already there were younger stars ablaze on the tips +of the tapers. Various persons in whom his interest had not been +intense drew closer to him by entering this company. He went over +it, head by head, till he felt like the shepherd of a huddled flock, +with all a shepherd’s vision of differences imperceptible. +He knew his candles apart, up to the colour of the flame, and would +still have known them had their positions all been changed. To +other imaginations they might stand for other things - that they should +stand for something to be hushed before was all he desired; but he was +intensely conscious of the personal note of each and of the distinguishable +way it contributed to the concert. There were hours at which he +almost caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now +die, that he might establish with them in this manner a connexion more +charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in +life. In regard to those from whom one was separated by the long +curves of the globe such a connexion could only be an improvement: it +brought them instantly within reach. Of course there were gaps +in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could only pretend to act +for his own, and it wasn’t every figure passing before his eyes +into the great obscure that was entitled to a memorial. There +was a strange sanctification in death, but some characters were more +sanctified by being forgotten than by being remembered. The greatest +blank in the shining page was the memory of Acton Hague, of which he +inveterately tried to rid himself. For Acton Hague no flame could +ever rise on any altar of his.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Every year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he went +to church as he had done the day his idea was born. It was on +this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he began +to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least as frequent +as himself. Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the church, +came and went, appealing sometimes, when they disappeared, to a vague +or to a particular recognition; but this unfailing presence was always +to be observed when he arrived and still in possession when he departed. +He was surprised, the first time, at the promptitude with which it assumed +an identity for him - the identity of the lady whom two years before, +on his anniversary, he had seen so intensely bowed, and of whose tragic +face he had had so flitting a vision. Given the time that had +passed, his recollection of her was fresh enough to make him wonder. +Of himself she had of course no impression, or rather had had none at +first: the time came when her manner of transacting her business suggested +her having gradually guessed his call to be of the same order. +She used his altar for her own purpose - he could only hope that sad +and solitary as she always struck him, she used it for her own Dead. +There were interruptions, infidelities, all on his part, calls to other +associations and duties; but as the months went on he found her whenever +he returned, and he ended by taking pleasure in the thought that he +had given her almost the contentment he had given himself. They +worshipped side by side so often that there were moments when he wished +he might be sure, so straight did their prospect stretch away of growing +old together in their rites. She was younger than he, but she +looked as if her Dead were at least as numerous as his candles. +She had no colour, no sound, no fault, and another of the things about +which he had made up his mind was that she had no fortune. Always +black-robed, she must have had a succession of sorrows. People +weren’t poor, after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they +were positively rich when they had had so much to give up. But +the air of this devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any +attitude, a beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom +that she had known more kinds of trouble than one.<br> +<br> +He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but +occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday afternoons, +it used to come back to him that there were glories. There were +moreover friends who reminded him of this and side by side with whom +he found himself sitting out concerts. On one of these winter +afternoons, in St. James’s Hall, he became aware after he had +seated himself that the lady he had so often seen at church was in the +place next him and was evidently alone, as he also this time happened +to be. She was at first too absorbed in the consideration of the +programme to heed him, but when she at last glanced at him he took advantage +of the movement to speak to her, greeting her with the remark that he +felt as if he already knew her. She smiled as she said “Oh +yes, I recognise you”; yet in spite of this admission of long +acquaintance it was the first he had seen of her smile. The effect +of it was suddenly to contribute more to that acquaintance than all +the previous meetings had done. He hadn’t “taken in,” +he said to himself, that she was so pretty. Later, that evening +- it was while he rolled along in a hansom on his way to dine out - +he added that he hadn’t taken in that she was so interesting. +The next morning in the midst of his work he quite suddenly and irrelevantly +reflected that his impression of her, beginning so far back, was like +a winding river that had at last reached the sea.<br> +<br> +His work in fact was blurred a little all that day by the sense of what +had now passed between them. It wasn’t much, but it had +just made the difference. They had listened together to Beethoven +and Schumann; they had talked in the pauses, and at the end, when at +the door, to which they moved together, he had asked her if he could +help her in the matter of getting away. She had thanked him and +put up her umbrella, slipping into the crowd without an allusion to +their meeting yet again and leaving him to remember at leisure that +not a word had been exchanged about the usual scene of that coincidence. +This omission struck him now as natural and then again as perverse. +She mightn’t in the least have allowed his warrant for speaking +to her, and yet if she hadn’t he would have judged her an underbred +woman. It was odd that when nothing had really ever brought them +together he should have been able successfully to assume they were in +a manner old friends - that this negative quantity was somehow more +than they could express. His success, it was true, had been qualified +by her quick escape, so that there grew up in him an absurd desire to +put it to some better test. Save in so far as some other poor +chance might help him, such a test could be only to meet her afresh +at church. Left to himself he would have gone to church the very +next afternoon, just for the curiosity of seeing if he should find her +there. But he wasn’t left to himself, a fact he discovered +quite at the last, after he had virtually made up his mind to go. +The influence that kept him away really revealed to him how little to +himself his Dead <i>ever</i> left him. He went only for <i>them</i> +- for nothing else in the world.<br> +<br> +The force of this revulsion kept him away ten days: he hated to connect +the place with anything but his offices or to give a glimpse of the +curiosity that had been on the point of moving him. It was absurd +to weave a tangle about a matter so simple as a custom of devotion that +might with ease have been daily or hourly; yet the tangle got itself +woven. He was sorry, he was disappointed: it was as if a long +happy spell had been broken and he had lost a familiar security. +At the last, however, he asked himself if he was to stay away for ever +from the fear of this muddle about motives. After an interval +neither longer nor shorter than usual he re-entered the church with +a clear conviction that he should scarcely heed the presence or the +absence of the lady of the concert. This indifference didn’t +prevent his at once noting that for the only time since he had first +seen her she wasn’t on the spot. He had now no scruple about +giving her time to arrive, but she didn’t arrive, and when he +went away still missing her he was profanely and consentingly sorry. +If her absence made the tangle more intricate, that was all her own +doing. By the end of another year it was very intricate indeed; +but by that time he didn’t in the least care, and it was only +his cultivated consciousness that had given him scruples. Three +times in three months he had gone to church without finding her, and +he felt he hadn’t needed these occasions to show him his suspense +had dropped. Yet it was, incongruously, not indifference, but +a refinement of delicacy that had kept him from asking the sacristan, +who would of course immediately have recognised his description of her, +whether she had been seen at other hours. His delicacy had kept +him from asking any question about her at any time, and it was exactly +the same virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her +at the concert.<br> +<br> +This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she finally +met his eyes - it was after a fourth trial - to predetermine quite fixedly +his awaiting her retreat. He joined her in the street as soon +as she had moved, asking her if he might accompany her a certain distance. +With her placid permission he went as far as a house in the neighbourhood +at which she had business: she let him know it was not where she lived. +She lived, as she said, in a mere slum, with an old aunt, a person in +connexion with whom she spoke of the engrossment of humdrum duties and +regular occupations. She wasn’t, the mourning niece, in +her first youth, and her vanished freshness had left something behind +that, for Stransom, represented the proof it had been tragically sacrificed. +Whatever she gave him the assurance of she gave without references. +She might have been a divorced duchess - she might have been an old +maid who taught the harp.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +They fell at last into the way of walking together almost every time +they met, though for a long time still they never met but at church. +He couldn’t ask her to come and see him, and as if she hadn’t +a proper place to receive him she never invited her friend. As +much as himself she knew the world of London, but from an undiscussed +instinct of privacy they haunted the region not mapped on the social +chart. On the return she always made him leave her at the same +corner. She looked with him, as a pretext for a pause, at the +depressed things in suburban shop-fronts; and there was never a word +he had said to her that she hadn’t beautifully understood. +For long ages he never knew her name, any more than she had ever pronounced +his own; but it was not their names that mattered, it was only their +perfect practice and their common need.<br> +<br> +These things made their whole relation so impersonal that they hadn’t +the rules or reasons people found in ordinary friendships. They +didn’t care for the things it was supposed necessary to care for +in the intercourse of the world. They ended one day - they never +knew which of them expressed it first - by throwing out the idea that +they didn’t care for each other. Over this idea they grew +quite intimate; they rallied to it in a way that marked a fresh start +in their confidence. If to feel deeply together about certain +things wholly distinct from themselves didn’t constitute a safety, +where was safety to be looked for? Not lightly nor often, not +without occasion nor without emotion, any more than in any other reference +by serious people to a mystery of their faith; but when something had +happened to warm, as it were, the air for it, they came as near as they +could come to calling their Dead by name. They felt it was coming +very near to utter their thought at all. The word “they” +expressed enough; it limited the mention, it had a dignity of its own, +and if, in their talk, you had heard our friends use it, you might have +taken them for a pair of pagans of old alluding decently to the domesticated +gods. They never knew - at least Stransom never knew - how they +had learned to be sure about each other. If it had been with each +a question of what the other was there for, the certitude had come in +some fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the instinct +of propagation, and it was as natural as it was beautiful that they +should have taken pleasure on the spot in the imagination of a following. +If the following was for each but a following of one it had proved in +the event sufficient. Her debt, however, of course was much greater +than his, because while she had only given him a worshipper he had given +her a splendid temple. Once she said she pitied him for the length +of his list - she had counted his candles almost as often as himself +- and this made him wonder what could have been the length of hers. +He had wondered before at the coincidence of their losses, especially +as from time to time a new candle was set up. On some occasion +some accident led him to express this curiosity, and she answered as +if in surprise that he hadn’t already understood. “Oh +for me, you know, the more there are the better - there could never +be too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds - I should like +thousands; I should like a great mountain of light.”<br> +<br> +Then of course in a flash he understood. “Your Dead are +only One?”<br> +<br> +She hung back at this as never yet. “Only One,” she +answered, colouring as if now he knew her guarded secret. It really +made him feel he knew less than before, so difficult was it for him +to reconstitute a life in which a single experience had so belittled +all others. His own life, round its central hollow, had been packed +close enough. After this she appeared to have regretted her confession, +though at the moment she spoke there had been pride in her very embarrassment. +She declared to him that his own was the larger, the dearer possession +- the portion one would have chosen if one had been able to choose; +she assured him she could perfectly imagine some of the echoes with +which his silences were peopled. He knew she couldn’t: one’s +relation to what one had loved and hated had been a relation too distinct +from the relations of others. But this didn’t affect the +fact that they were growing old together in their piety. She was +a feature of that piety, but even at the ripe stage of acquaintance +in which they occasionally arranged to meet at a concert or to go together +to an exhibition she was not a feature of anything else. The most +that happened was that his worship became paramount. Friend by +friend dropped away till at last there were more emblems on his altar +than houses left him to enter. She was more than any other the +friend who remained, but she was unknown to all the rest. Once +when she had discovered, as they called it, a new star, she used the +expression that the chapel at last was full.<br> +<br> +“Oh no,” Stransom replied, “there is a great thing +wanting for that! The chapel will never be full till a candle +is set up before which all the others will pale. It will be the +tallest candle of all.”<br> +<br> +Her mild wonder rested on him. “What candle do you mean?”<br> +<br> +“I mean, dear lady, my own.”<br> +<br> +He had learned after a long time that she earned money by her pen, writing +under a pseudonym she never disclosed in magazines he never saw. +She knew too well what he couldn’t read and what she couldn’t +write, and she taught him to cultivate indifference with a success that +did much for their good relations. Her invisible industry was +a convenience to him; it helped his contented thought of her, the thought +that rested in the dignity of her proud obscure life, her little remunerated +art and her little impenetrable home. Lost, with her decayed relative, +in her dim suburban world, she came to the surface for him in distant +places. She was really the priestess of his altar, and whenever +he quitted England he committed it to her keeping. She proved +to him afresh that women have more of the spirit of religion than men; +he felt his fidelity pale and faint in comparison with hers. He +often said to her that since he had so little time to live he rejoiced +in her having so much; so glad was he to think she would guard the temple +when he should have been called. He had a great plan for that, +which of course he told her too, a bequest of money to keep it up in +undiminished state. Of the administration of this fund he would +appoint her superintendent, and if the spirit should move her she might +kindle a taper even for him.<br> +<br> +“And who will kindle one even for me?” she then seriously +asked.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +She was always in mourning, yet the day he came back from the longest +absence he had yet made her appearance immediately told him she had +lately had a bereavement. They met on this occasion as she was +leaving the church, so that postponing his own entrance he instantly +offered to turn round and walk away with her. She considered, +then she said: “Go in now, but come and see me in an hour.” +He knew the small vista of her street, closed at the end and as dreary +as an empty pocket, where the pairs of shabby little houses, semi-detached +but indissolubly united, were like married couples on bad terms. +Often, however, as he had gone to the beginning he had never gone beyond. +Her aunt was dead - that he immediately guessed, as well as that it +made a difference; but when she had for the first time mentioned her +number he found himself, on her leaving him, not a little agitated by +this sudden liberality. She wasn’t a person with whom, after +all, one got on so very fast: it had taken him months and months to +learn her name, years and years to learn her address. If she had +looked, on this reunion, so much older to him, how in the world did +he look to her? She had reached the period of life he had long +since reached, when, after separations, the marked clock-face of the +friend we meet announces the hour we have tried to forget. He +couldn’t have said what he expected as, at the end of his waiting, +he turned the corner where for years he had always paused; simply not +to pause was a efficient cause for emotion. It was an event, somehow; +and in all their long acquaintance there had never been an event. +This one grew larger when, five minutes later, in the faint elegance +of her little drawing-room, she quavered out a greeting that showed +the measure she took of it. He had a strange sense of having come +for something in particular; strange because literally there was nothing +particular between them, nothing save that they were at one on their +great point, which had long ago become a magnificent matter of course. +It was true that after she had said “You can always come now, +you know,” the thing he was there for seemed already to have happened. +He asked her if it was the death of her aunt that made the difference; +to which she replied: “She never knew I knew you. I wished +her not to.” The beautiful clearness of her candour - her +faded beauty was like a summer twilight - disconnected the words from +any image of deceit. They might have struck him as the record +of a deep dissimulation; but she had always given him a sense of noble +reasons. The vanished aunt was present, as he looked about him, +in the small complacencies of the room, the beaded velvet and the fluted +moreen; and though, as we know, he had the worship of the Dead, he found +himself not definitely regretting this lady. If she wasn’t +in his long list, however, she was in her niece’s short one, and +Stransom presently observed to the latter that now at least, in the +place they haunted together, she would have another object of devotion.<br> +<br> +“Yes, I shall have another. She was very kind to me. +It’s that that’s the difference.”<br> +<br> +He judged, wondering a good deal before he made any motion to leave +her, that the difference would somehow be very great and would consist +of still other things than her having let him come in. It rather +chilled him, for they had been happy together as they were. He +extracted from her at any rate an intimation that she should now have +means less limited, that her aunt’s tiny fortune had come to her, +so that there was henceforth only one to consume what had formerly been +made to suffice for two. This was a joy to Stransom, because it +had hitherto been equally impossible for him either to offer her presents +or contentedly to stay his hand. It was too ugly to be at her +side that way, abounding himself and yet not able to overflow - a demonstration +that would have been signally a false note. Even her better situation +too seemed only to draw out in a sense the loneliness of her future. +It would merely help her to live more and more for their small ceremonial, +and this at a time when he himself had begun wearily to feel that, having +set it in motion, he might depart. When they had sat a while in +the pale parlour she got up - “This isn’t my room: let us +go into mine.” They had only to cross the narrow hall, as +he found, to pass quite into another air. When she had closed +the door of the second room, as she called it, he felt at last in real +possession of her. The place had the flush of life - it was expressive; +its dark red walls were articulate with memories and relics. These +were simple things - photographs and water-colours, scraps of writing +framed and ghosts of flowers embalmed; but a moment sufficed to show +him they had a common meaning. It was here she had lived and worked, +and she had already told him she would make no change of scene. +He read the reference in the objects about her - the general one to +places and times; but after a minute he distinguished among them a small +portrait of a gentleman. At a distance and without their glasses +his eyes were only so caught by it as to feel a vague curiosity. +Presently this impulse carried him nearer, and in another moment he +was staring at the picture in stupefaction and with the sense that some +sound had broken from him. He was further conscious that he showed +his companion a white face when he turned round on her gasping: “Acton +Hague!”<br> +<br> +She matched his great wonder. “Did you know him?”<br> +<br> +“He was the friend of all my youth - of my early manhood. +And <i>you</i> knew him?”<br> +<br> +She coloured at this and for a moment her answer failed; her eyes embraced +everything in the place, and a strange irony reached her lips as she +echoed: “Knew him?”<br> +<br> +Then Stransom understood, while the room heaved like the cabin of a +ship, that its whole contents cried out with him, that it was a museum +in his honour, that all her later years had been addressed to him and +that the shrine he himself had reared had been passionately converted +to this use. It was all for Acton Hague that she had kneeled every +day at his altar. What need had there been for a consecrated candle +when he was present in the whole array? The revelation so smote our +friend in the face that he dropped into a seat and sat silent. +He had quickly felt her shaken by the force of his shock, but as she +sank on the sofa beside him and laid her hand on his arm he knew almost +as soon that she mightn’t resent it as much as she’d have +liked.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He learned in that instant two things: one being that even in so long +a time she had gathered no knowledge of his great intimacy and his great +quarrel; the other that in spite of this ignorance, strangely enough, +she supplied on the spot a reason for his stupor. “How extraordinary,” +he presently exclaimed, “that we should never have known!”<br> +<br> +She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom stranger even than the +fact itself. “I never, never spoke of him.”<br> +<br> +He looked again about the room. “Why then, if your life +had been so full of him?”<br> +<br> +“Mayn’t I put you that question as well? Hadn’t +your life also been full of him?”<br> +<br> +“Any one’s, every one’s life who had the wonderful +experience of knowing him. <i>I</i> never spoke of him,” +Stransom added in a moment, “because he did me - years ago - an +unforgettable wrong.” She was silent, and with the full +effect of his presence all about them it almost startled her guest to +hear no protest escape her. She accepted his words, he turned +his eyes to her again to see in what manner she accepted them. +It was with rising tears and a rare sweetness in the movement of putting +out her hand to take his own. Nothing more wonderful had ever +appeared to him than, in that little chamber of remembrance and homage, +to see her convey with such exquisite mildness that as from Acton Hague +any injury was credible. The clock ticked in the stillness - Hague +had probably given it to her - and while he let her hold his hand with +a tenderness that was almost an assumption of responsibility for his +old pain as well as his new, Stransom after a minute broke out: “Good +God, how he must have used <i>you</i>!”<br> +<br> +She dropped his hand at this, got up and, moving across the room, made +straight a small picture to which, on examining it, he had given a slight +push. Then turning round on him with her pale gaiety recovered, +“I’ve forgiven him!” she declared.<br> +<br> +“I know what you’ve done,” said Stransom “I +know what you’ve done for years.” For a moment they +looked at each other through it all with their long community of service +in their eyes. This short passage made, to his sense, for the +woman before him, an immense, an absolutely naked confession; which +was presently, suddenly blushing red and changing her place again, what +she appeared to learn he perceived in it. He got up and “How +you must have loved him!” he cried.<br> +<br> +“Women aren’t like men. They can love even where they’ve +suffered.”<br> +<br> +“Women are wonderful,” said Stransom. “But I +assure you I’ve forgiven him too.”<br> +<br> +“If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn’t have brought +you here.”<br> +<br> +“So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?”<br> +<br> +“What do you call the last?” she asked, smiling still.<br> +<br> +At this he could smile back at her. “You’ll see - +when it comes.”<br> +<br> +She thought of that. “This is better perhaps; but as we +were - it was good.”<br> +<br> +He put her the question. “Did it never happen that he spoke +of me?”<br> +<br> +Considering more intently she made no answer, and he then knew he should +have been adequately answered by her asking how often he himself had +spoken of their terrible friend. Suddenly a brighter light broke +in her face and an excited idea sprang to her lips in the appeal: “You +<i>have</i> forgiven him?”<br> +<br> +“How, if I hadn’t, could I linger here?”<br> +<br> +She visibly winced at the deep but unintended irony of this; but even +while she did so she panted quickly: “Then in the lights on your +altar - ?”<br> +<br> +“There’s never a light for Acton Hague!”<br> +<br> +She stared with a dreadful fall, “But if he’s one of your +Dead?”<br> +<br> +“He’s one of the world’s, if you like - he’s +one of yours. But he’s not one of mine. Mine are only +the Dead who died possessed of me. They’re mine in death +because they were mine in life.”<br> +<br> +“<i>He</i> was yours in life then, even if for a while he ceased +to be. If you forgave him you went back to him. Those whom +we’ve once loved - ”<br> +<br> +“Are those who can hurt us most,” Stransom broke in.<br> +<br> +“Ah it’s not true - you’ve <i>not</i> forgiven him!” +she wailed with a passion that startled him.<br> +<br> +He looked at her as never yet. “What was it he did to you?”<br> +<br> +“Everything!” Then abruptly she put out her hand in +farewell. “Good-bye.”<br> +<br> +He turned as cold as he had turned that night he read the man’s +death. “You mean that we meet no more?”<br> +<br> +“Not as we’ve met - not <i>there</i>!”<br> +<br> +He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond, at the renouncement +that rang out in the word she so expressively sounded. “But +what’s changed - for you?”<br> +<br> +She waited in all the sharpness of a trouble that for the first time +since he had known her made her splendidly stern. “How can +you understand now when you didn’t understand before?”<br> +<br> +“I didn’t understand before only because I didn’t +know. Now that I know, I see what I’ve been living with +for years,” Stransom went on very gently.<br> +<br> +She looked at him with a larger allowance, doing this gentleness justice. +“How can I then, on this new knowledge of my own, ask you to continue +to live with it?”<br> +<br> +“I set up my altar, with its multiplied meanings,” Stransom +began; but she quietly interrupted him.<br> +<br> +“You set up your altar, and when I wanted one most I found it +magnificently ready. I used it with the gratitude I’ve always +shown you, for I knew it from of old to be dedicated to Death. +I told you long ago that my Dead weren’t many. Yours were, +but all you had done for them was none too much for <i>my</i> worship! +You had placed a great light for Each - I gathered them together for +One!”<br> +<br> +“We had simply different intentions,” he returned. +“That, as you say, I perfectly knew, and I don’t see why +your intention shouldn’t still sustain you.”<br> +<br> +“That’s because you’re generous - you can imagine +and think. But the spell is broken.”<br> +<br> +It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it really +was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him. All +he could say, however, was: “I hope you’ll try before you +give up.”<br> +<br> +“If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for +granted he had his candle,” she presently answered. “What’s +changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never +has had it. That makes <i>my</i> attitude” - she paused +as thinking how to express it, then said simply - “all wrong.”<br> +<br> +“Come once again,” he pleaded.<br> +<br> +“Will you give him his candle?” she asked.<br> +<br> +He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of +a doubt of his feeling. “I can’t do that!” he +declared at last.<br> +<br> +“Then good-bye.” And she gave him her hand again.<br> +<br> +He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything +that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he +could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered - lingered to see if +she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to propose. But +he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she +was as sorry for him as for any one else. This made him say: “At +least, in any case, I may see you here.”<br> +<br> +“Oh yes, come if you like. But I don’t think it will +do.”<br> +<br> +He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure it +would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his +chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to shake. +Then he made doleful reply: “I must try on my side - if you can’t +try on yours.” She came out with him to the hall and into +the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least +answer from his own wit. “Why have you never let me come +before?”<br> +<br> +“Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to +tell her how I came to know you.”<br> +<br> +“And what would have been the objection to that?”<br> +<br> +“It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any +rate have been that danger.”<br> +<br> +“Surely she knew you went every day to church,” Stransom +objected.<br> +<br> +“She didn’t know what I went for.”<br> +<br> +“Of me then she never even heard?”<br> +<br> +“You’ll think I was deceitful. But I didn’t +need to be!”<br> +<br> +He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed +behind him. Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed +face. He made a supreme appeal. “What <i>did</i> he +do to you?”<br> +<br> +“It would have come out - <i>she</i> would have told you. +That fear at my heart - that was my reason!” And she closed +the door, shutting him out.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had ruthlessly abandoned her - that of course was what he had done. +Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched +pieces gradually together and dealing one by one with a hundred obscure +points. She had known Hague only after her present friend’s +relations with him had wholly terminated; obviously indeed a good while +after; and it was natural enough that of his previous life she should +have ascertained only what he had judged good to communicate. +There were passages it was quite conceivable that even in moments of +the tenderest expansion he should have withheld. Of many facts +in the career of a man so in the eye of the world there was of course +a common knowledge; but this lady lived apart from public affairs, and +the only time perfectly clear to her would have been the time following +the dawn of her own drama. A man in her place would have “looked +up” the past - would even have consulted old newspapers. +It remained remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner +of her retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no +arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply been +that security had prevailed. She had taken what Hague had given +her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was only a +touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme reason +to know so great a master could have been trusted to produce.<br> +<br> +This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath +again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had +had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, +of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she +sat there to-day she was ineffaceably stamped with him. Beneficent, +blameless as Stransom held her, he couldn’t rid himself of the +sense that he had been, as who should say, swindled. She had imposed +upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as he. All +this later past came back to him as a time grotesquely misspent. +Such at least were his first reflexions; after a while he found himself +more divided and only, as the end of it, more troubled. He imagined, +recalled, reconstituted, figured out for himself the truth she had refused +to give him; the effect of which was to make her seem to him only more +saturated with her fate. He felt her spirit, through the whole +strangeness, finer than his own to the very degree in which she might +have been, in which she certainly had been, more wronged. A women, +when wronged, was always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions +when the least she could have got off with was more than the most he +could have to bear. He was sure this rare creature wouldn’t +have got off with the least. He was awestruck at the thought of +such a surrender - such a prostration. Moulded indeed she had +been by powerful hands, to have converted her injury into an exaltation +so sublime. The fellow had only had to die for everything that +was ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent. It was vain to +try to guess what had taken place, but nothing could be clearer than +that she had ended by accusing herself. She absolved him at every +point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had +profited had rushed back after its ebb, and now the tide of tenderness, +arrested for ever at flood, was too deep even to fathom. Stransom +sincerely considered that he had forgiven him; but how little he had +achieved the miracle that she had achieved! His forgiveness was +silence, but hers was mere unuttered sound. The light she had +demanded for his altar would have broken his silence with a blare; whereas +all the lights in the church were for her too great a hush.<br> +<br> +She had been right about the difference - she had spoken the truth about +the change: Stransom was soon to know himself as perversely but sharply +jealous. <i>His</i> tide had ebbed, not flowed; if he had “forgiven” +Acton Hague, that forgiveness was a motive with a broken spring. +The very fact of her appeal for a material sign, a sign that should +make her dead lover equal there with the others, presented the concession +to her friend as too handsome for the case. He had never thought +of himself as hard, but an exorbitant article might easily render him +so. He moved round and round this one, but only in widening circles +- the more he looked at it the less acceptable it seemed. At the +same time he had no illusion about the effect of his refusal; he perfectly +saw how it would make for a rupture. He left her alone a week, +but when at last he again called this conviction was cruelly confirmed. +In the interval he had kept away from the church, and he needed no fresh +assurance from her to know she hadn’t entered it. The change +was complete enough: it had broken up her life. Indeed it had +broken up his, for all the fires of his shrine seemed to him suddenly +to have been quenched. A great indifference fell upon him, the +weight of which was in itself a pain; and he never knew what his devotion +had been for him till in that shock it ceased like a dropped watch. +Neither did he know with how large a confidence he had counted on the +final service that had now failed: the mortal deception was that in +this abandonment the whole future gave way.<br> +<br> +These days of her absence proved to him of what she was capable; all +the more that he never dreamed she was vindictive or even resentful. +It was not in anger she had forsaken him; it was in simple submission +to hard reality, to the stern logic of life. This came home to +him when he sat with her again in the room in which her late aunt’s +conversation lingered like the tone of a cracked piano. She tried +to make him forget how much they were estranged, but in the very presence +of what they had given up it was impossible not to be sorry for her. +He had taken from her so much more than she had taken from him. +He argued with her again, told her she could now have the altar to herself; +but she only shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to +waste his breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn’t +he see that in relation to her private need the rites he had established +were practically an elaborate exclusion? She regretted nothing +that had happened; it had all been right so long as she didn’t +know, and it was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment +their eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had +doubtless been happiness enough for them to go on together so long. +She was gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a +deep immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold +of the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a stranger +of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He would +have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but he enjoyed +quite as little the vacant alternative.<br> +<br> +After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that to +have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of diminishing +their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her in greater +freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled together. +Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly sincere. They +began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame imitation, for +these things, from the first, beginning or ending, had been connected +with their visits to the church. They had either strolled away +as they came out or gone in to rest on the return. Stransom, besides, +now faltered; he couldn’t walk as of old. The omission made +everything false; it was a dire mutilation of their lives. Our +friend was frank and monotonous, making no mystery of his remonstrance +and no secret of his predicament. Her response, whatever it was, +always came to the same thing - an implied invitation to him to judge, +if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort she had in hers. +For him indeed was no comfort even in complaint, since every allusion +to what had befallen them but made the author of their trouble more +present. Acton Hague was between them - that was the essence of +the matter, and never so much between them as when they were face to +face. Then Stransom, while still wanting to banish him, had the +strangest sense of striving for an ease that would involve having accepted +him. Deeply disconcerted by what he knew, he was still worse tormented +by really not knowing. Perfectly aware that it would have been +horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend or to tell his companion the +story of their quarrel, it yet vexed him that her depth of reserve should +give him no opening and should have the effect of a magnanimity greater +even than his own.<br> +<br> +He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked himself if he were in +love with her that he should care so much what adventures she had had. +He had never for a moment allowed he was in love with her; therefore +nothing could have surprised him more than to discover he was jealous. +What but jealousy could give a man that sore contentious wish for the +detail of what would make him suffer? Well enough he knew indeed +that he should never have it from the only person who to-day could give +it to him. She let him press her with his sombre eyes, only smiling +at him with an exquisite mercy and breathing equally little the word +that would expose her secret and the word that would appear to deny +his literal right to bitterness. She told nothing, she judged +nothing; she accepted everything but the possibility of her return to +the old symbols. Stransom divined that for her too they had been +vividly individual, had stood for particular hours or particular attributes +- particular links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, +as he believed, that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature +of the plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition; that +it happened to have come from <i>her</i> was precisely the vice that +attached to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt +sure he would have listened; he would have deferred to an advocate who, +speaking from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without having +known Hague, should have had the imagination to say: “Ah, remember +only the best of him; pity him; provide for him.” To provide +for him on the very ground of having discovered another of his turpitudes +was not to pity but to glorify him. The more Stransom thought +the more he made out that whatever this relation of Hague’s it +could only have been a deception more or less finely practised. +Where had it come into the life that all men saw? Why had one +never heard of it if it had had the frankness of honourable things? +Stransom knew enough of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances, +not to say enough of his general character, to be sure there had been +some infamy. In one way or another this creature had been coldly +sacrificed. That was why at the last as well as the first he must +still leave him out and out.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IX.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +And yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again to +his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for him. +He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a frankness +qualified only by a courteous reluctance, a reluctance that touched +him, to linger on the question of his death. She had then practically +accepted the charge, suffered him to feel he could depend upon her to +be the eventual guardian of his shrine; and it was in the name of what +had so passed between them that he appealed to her not to forsake him +in his age. She listened at present with shining coldness and +all her habitual forbearance to insist on her terms; her deprecation +was even still tenderer, for it expressed the compassion of her own +sense that he was abandoned. Her terms, however, remained the +same, and scarcely the less audible for not being uttered; though he +was sure that secretly even more than he she felt bereft of the satisfaction +his solemn trust was to have provided her. They both missed the +rich future, but she missed it most, because after all it was to have +been entirely hers; and it was her acceptance of the loss that gave +him the full measure of her preference for the thought of Acton Hague +over any other thought whatever. He had humour enough to laugh +rather grimly when he said to himself: “Why the deuce does she +like him so much more than she likes me?” - the reasons being +really so conceivable. But even his faculty of analysis left the +irritation standing, and this irritation proved perhaps the greatest +misfortune that had ever overtaken him. There had been nothing +yet that made him so much want to give up. He had of course by +this time well reached the age of renouncement; but it had not hitherto +been vivid to him that it was time to give up everything.<br> +<br> +Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced the friendship +once so charming and comforting. His privation had two faces, +and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his last attempt +to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look at least. +This was the privation he inflicted; the other was the privation he +bore. The conditions she never phrased he used to murmur to himself +in solitude: “One more, one more - only just one.” +Certainly he was going down; he often felt it when he caught himself, +over his work, staring at vacancy and giving voice to that inanity. +There was proof enough besides in his being so weak and so ill. +His irritation took the form of melancholy, and his melancholy that +of the conviction that his health had quite failed. His altar +moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel, in his dreams, was a great +dark cavern. All the lights had gone out - all his Dead had died +again. He couldn’t exactly see at first how it had been +in the power of his late companion to extinguish them, since it was +neither for her nor by her that they had been called into being. +Then he understood that it was essentially in his own soul the revival +had taken place, and that in the air of this soul they were now unable +to breathe. The candles might mechanically burn, but each of them +had lost its lustre. The church had become a void; it was his +presence, her presence, their common presence, that had made the indispensable +medium. If anything was wrong everything was - her silence spoiled +the tune.<br> +<br> +Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went back; +reflecting that as they had been his best society for years his Dead +perhaps wouldn’t let him forsake them without doing something +more for him. They stood there, as he had left them, in their +tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him, on occasions +when he was willing to compare small things with great, liken them to +a group of sea-lights on the edge of the ocean of life. It was +a relief to him, after a while, as he sat there, to feel they had still +a virtue. He was more and more easily tired, and he always drove +now; the action of his heart was weak and gave him none of the reassurance +conferred by the action of his fancy. None the less he returned +yet again, returned several times, and finally, during six months, haunted +the place with a renewal of frequency and a strain of impatience. +In winter the church was unwarmed and exposure to cold forbidden him, +but the glow of his shrine was an influence in which he could almost +bask. He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate +and what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were +other churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in +one way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn’t +absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but without +contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other such rare semblance +of the mountain of light she had once mentioned to him as the satisfaction +of her need. As this semblance again gradually grew great to him +and his pious practice more regular, he found a sharper and sharper +pang in the imagination of her darkness; for never so much as in these +weeks had his rites been real, never had his gathered company seemed +so to respond and even to invite. He lost himself in the large +lustre, which was more and more what he had from the first wished it +to be - as dazzling as the vision of heaven in the mind of a child. +He wandered in the fields of light; he passed, among the tall tapers, +from tier to tier, from fire to fire, from name to name, from the white +intensity of one clear emblem, of one saved soul, to another. +It was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls that his deep strange +instinct rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no boon +of a contingent world; they were saved better than faith or works could +save them, saved for the warm world they had shrunk from dying to, for +actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human remembrance.<br> +<br> +By this time he had survived all his friends; the last straight flame +was three years old, there was no one to add to the list. Over +and over he called his roll, and it appeared to him compact and complete. +Where should he put in another, where, if there were no other objection, +would it stand in its place in the rank? He reflected, with a +want of sincerity of which he was quite conscious, that it would be +difficult to determine that place. More and more, besides, face +to face with his little legion, over endless histories, handling the +empty shells and playing with the silence - more and more he could see +that he had never introduced an alien. He had had his great companions, +his indulgences - there were cases in which they had been immense; but +what had his devotion after all been if it hadn’t been at bottom +a respect? He was, however, himself surprised at his stiffness; +by the end of the winter the responsibility of it was what was uppermost +in his thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them, that plea +for just one more. There came a day when, for simple exhaustion, +if symmetry should demand just one he was ready so far to meet symmetry. +Symmetry was harmony, and the idea of harmony began to haunt him; he +said to himself that harmony was of course everything. He took, +in fancy, his composition to pieces, redistributing it into other lines, +making other juxtapositions and contrasts. He shifted this and +that candle, he made the spaces different, he effaced the disfigurement +of a possible gap. There were subtle and complex relations, a +scheme of cross-reference, and moments in which he seemed to catch a +glimpse of the void so sensible to the woman who wandered in exile or +sat where he had seen her with the portrait of Acton Hague. Finally, +in this way, he arrived at a conception of the total, the ideal, which +left a clear opportunity for just another figure. “Just +one more - to round it off; just one more, just one,” continued +to hum in his head. There was a strange confusion in the thought, +for he felt the day to be near when he too should be one of the Others. +What in this event would the Others matter to him, since they only mattered +to the living? Even as one of the Dead what would his altar matter +to him, since his particular dream of keeping it up had melted away? +What had harmony to do with the case if his lights were all to be quenched? +What he had hoped for was an instituted thing. He might perpetuate +it on some other pretext, but his special meaning would have dropped. +This meaning was to have lasted with the life of the one other person +who understood it.<br> +<br> +In March he had an illness during which he spent a fortnight in bed, +and when he revived a little he was told of two things that had happened. +One was that a lady whose name was not known to the servants (she left +none) had been three times to ask about him; the other was that in his +sleep and on an occasion when his mind evidently wandered he was heard +to murmur again and again: “Just one more - just one.” +As soon as he found himself able to go out, and before the doctor in +attendance had pronounced him so, he drove to see the lady who had come +to ask about him. She was not at home; but this gave him the opportunity, +before his strength should fall again, to take his way to the church. +He entered it alone; he had declined, in a happy manner he possessed +of being able to decline effectively, the company of his servant or +of a nurse. He knew now perfectly what these good people thought; +they had discovered his clandestine connexion, the magnet that had drawn +him for so many years, and doubtless attached a significance of their +own to the odd words they had repeated to him. The nameless lady +was the clandestine connexion - a fact nothing could have made clearer +than his indecent haste to rejoin her. He sank on his knees before +his altar while his head fell over on his hands. His weakness, +his life’s weariness overtook him. It seemed to him he had +come for the great surrender. At first he asked himself how he +should get away; then, with the failing belief in the power, the very +desire to move gradually left him. He had come, as he always came, +to lose himself; the fields of light were still there to stray in; only +this time, in straying, he would never come back. He had given +himself to his Dead, and it was good: this time his Dead would keep +him. He couldn’t rise from his knees; he believed he should +never rise again; all he could do was to lift his face and fix his eyes +on his lights. They looked unusually, strangely splendid, but +the one that always drew him most had an unprecedented lustre. +It was the central voice of the choir, the glowing heart of the brightness, +and on this occasion it seemed to expand, to spread great wings of flame. +The whole altar flared - dazzling and blinding; but the source of the +vast radiance burned clearer than the rest, gathering itself into form, +and the form was human beauty and human charity, was the far-off face +of Mary Antrim. She smiled at him from the glory of heaven - she +brought the glory down with her to take him. He bowed his head +in submission and at the same moment another wave rolled over him. +Was it the quickening of joy to pain? In the midst of his joy +at any rate he felt his buried face grow hot as with some communicated +knowledge that had the force of a reproach. It suddenly made him +contrast that very rapture with the bliss he had refused to another. +This breath of the passion immortal was all that other had asked; the +descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with a great compunctious throb +for the descent of Acton Hague. It was as if Stransom had read +what her eyes said to him.<br> +<br> +After a moment he looked round in a despair that made him feel as if +the source of life were ebbing. The church had been empty - he +was alone; but he wanted to have something done, to make a last appeal. +This idea gave him strength for an effort; he rose to his feet with +a movement that made him turn, supporting himself by the back of a bench. +Behind him was a prostrate figure, a figure he had seen before; a woman +in deep mourning, bowed in grief or in prayer. He had seen her +in other days - the first time of his entrance there, and he now slightly +wavered, looking at her again till she seemed aware he had noticed her. +She raised her head and met his eyes: the partner of his long worship +had come back. She looked across at him an instant with a face +wondering and scared; he saw he had made her afraid. Then quickly +rising she came straight to him with both hands out.<br> +<br> +“Then you <i>could</i> come? God sent you!” he murmured +with a happy smile.<br> +<br> +“You’re very ill - you shouldn’t be here,” she +urged in anxious reply.<br> +<br> +“God sent me too, I think. I was ill when I came, but the +sight of you does wonders.” He held her hands, which steadied +and quickened him. “I’ve something to tell you.”<br> +<br> +“Don’t tell me!” she tenderly pleaded; “let +me tell you. This afternoon, by a miracle, the sweetest of miracles, +the sense of our difference left me. I was out - I was near, thinking, +wandering alone, when, on the spot, something changed in my heart. +It’s my confession - there it is. To come back, to come +back on the instant - the idea gave me wings. It was as if I suddenly +saw something - as if it all became possible. I could come for +what you yourself came for: that was enough. So here I am. +It’s not for my own - that’s over. But I’m here +for <i>them</i>.” And breathless, infinitely relieved by +her low precipitate explanation, she looked with eyes that reflected +all its splendour at the magnificence of their altar.<br> +<br> +“They’re here for you,” Stransom said, “they’re +present to-night as they’ve never been. They speak for you +- don’t you see? - in a passion of light; they sing out like a +choir of angels. Don’t you hear what they say? - they offer +the very thing you asked of me.”<br> +<br> +“Don’t talk of it - don’t think of it; forget it!” +She spoke in hushed supplication, and while the alarm deepened in her +eyes she disengaged one of her hands and passed an arm round him to +support him better, to help him to sink into a seat.<br> +<br> +He let himself go, resting on her; he dropped upon the bench and she +fell on her knees beside him, his own arm round her shoulder. +So he remained an instant, staring up at his shrine. “They +say there’s a gap in the array - they say it’s not full, +complete. Just one more,” he went on, softly - “isn’t +that what you wanted? Yes, one more, one more.”<br> +<br> +“Ah no more - no more!” she wailed, as with a quick new +horror of it, under her breath.<br> +<br> +“Yes, one more,” he repeated, simply; “just one!” +And with this his head dropped on her shoulder; she felt that in his +weakness he had fainted. But alone with him in the dusky church +a great dread was on her of what might still happen, for his face had +the whiteness of death.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named altdd10h.htm or altdd10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, altdd11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, altdd10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04 + +Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart hart@pobox.com + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* +</pre></body> +</html> |