Taking the Veil by Katherine Mansfield

It seemed impossible that anyone should be unhap­py on such a beautiful morning. Nobody was, decided Edna, except herself. The windows were flung wide in the houses. From within there came the sound of pi­anos, little hands chased after each other and ran away from each other, practicing scales. The trees fluttered in the sunny gardens, all bright with spring flowers. Street boys whistled, a little dog barked; people passed by, walking so lightly, so swiftly, they looked as though they wanted to break into a run. Now she actually saw in the distance a parasol, peach-coloured, the first para­sol of the year.

Perhaps even Edna did not look quite as unhappy as she felt. It is not easy to look tragic at eighteen, when you are extremely pretty, with the cheeks and lips and shining eyes of perfect health. Above all, when you are wearing a French blue frock and your new spring hat trimmed with cornflowers. True, she car­ried under her arm a book bound in horrid black leath­er. Perhaps the book provided a gloomy note, but only by accident; it was the ordinary Library binding. For . Edna had made going to the Library an excuse for get­ting out of the house to think, to realise what had hap­pened, to decide somehow what was to be done now An awful thing had happened. Quite suddenly, at the theatre last night, when she and Jimmy were seat­ed side by side in the dress-circle, without a moment's warning — in fact, she had just finished a chocolate almond and passed the box to him again — she had fallen in love with an actor. But — fallen —in — love.... The feeling was unlike anything she had ever imag­ined before. It wasn't in the least pleasant. It was hard-ly thrilling. Unless you can call the most dreadful sen­sation of hopeless misery, despair, agony and wretch­edness, thrilling. Combined with the certainty that if that actor met her on the pavement after, while Jim­my was fetching their cab, she would follow him to the ends of the earth, at a nod, at a sign, without giving to Jimmy or her father and mother or her happy home and countless friends again....

The play had begun fairly cheerfully. That was at the chocolate almond stage. Then the hero had gone blind. Terrible moment! Edna had cried so much she had to borrow Jimmy's folded, smooth-feeling hand­kerchief as well. Not that crying mattered- Whole rows were in tears. Even the men blew their noses with a loud trumpeting noise and tried to peer at the pro­gramme instead of looking at the stage. Jimmy, most mercifully dry-eyed— for what would she have done without his handkerchief? — squeezed her free hand, and whispered "Cheer up, darling girl!" And it was then she had taken a last chocolate almond to please him and passed the box again. Then there had been that ghastly scene with the hero alone on the stage in a deserted room at twilight, with a band playing out­side and the sound of cheering coming from the street. He had tried — ah! how painfully, how pitifully! — to grope his way to the window. He had succeeded at last. There he stood holding the curtain while one beam of light, just one beam, shone full on his raised sightless face, and the band faded away into the dis­tance....

It was — really, it was absolutely — oh, the most — it was simply — in fact, from that moment Edna knew that life could never be the same. She drew her hand away from Jimmy's, leaned back, and shut the choco­late box for ever. This at last was love!

Edna and Jimmy were engaged. She had had her hair up for a year and a half; they had been publicly en­gaged for a year. But, they had known they were go­ing to marry each other ever since they walked in the Botanical Gardens with their nurses, and sat on the grass with a wine biscuit and a piece of barley-sugar each for their tea. It was so much an accepted thing that Edna had worn a wonderfully good imitation of an engagement-ring out of a cracker all the time she was at school. And up till now they had been devoted to each other.

But now it was over. It was so completely over that Edna found it difficult to believe that Jimmy did not realise it too. She smiled wisely, sadly, as she turned into the gardens of the Convent of the Sacred Heart and mounted the path that led through them to Hill Street. How much better to know it now than to wait until after they were married! Now it was possible that Jimmy would get over it. No, it was no use deceiving herself; he would never get over it! His life was wrecked, was ruined; that was inevitable. But he was young.... Time, people always said, Time might make a little, just a little difference. In forty years when he was an old man, he might be able to think of her calm­ly — perhaps. But she,— what did the future hold for her?

Edna had reached the top of the path. There under a new-leafed tree, hung with little bunches of white flowers, she sat down on a green bench and looked over the Convent flowerbeds. In the one nearest to her there grew tender stocks, with a border of blue, shell-like pansies, with at one corner a clump of creamy free-sias, their light spears of green criss-crossed over the flowers. The Convent pigeons were tumbling high in the air, and she could hear the voice of Sister Agnes who was giving a singing lesson. Ah-me, sounded the deep tones of the nun, and Ah-me, they were echoed....

If she did not marry Jimmy, of course she would marry nobody. The man she was in love with, the fa­mous actor — Edna had far too much common-sense not to realise that would never be. It was very odd. She didn't even want it to be. Her love was too in­tense for that. It had to be endured, silently; it had to torment her. It was, she supposed, simply that kind of. love.

"But, Ednal" cried Jimmy. "Can you never change? Can I never hope again?"

Oh, what sorrow to have to say it, but it must be said. "No, Jimmy, I will never change."

Edna bowed her head; and a little flower fell on her lap, and the voice of Sister Agnes cried suddenly Ah-no, and the echo came, Ah-no....

At that moment the future was revealed. Edna saw it all. She was astonished; it took her breath away at first. But, after all, what could be more natural? She would go into a convent... Her father and mother do everything to dissuade her, in vain. As for Jimmy, his state of mind hardly bears thinking about. Why can't they understand? How can they add to her suffering like this? The world is cruel, terribly cruel! After a last scene when she gives away her jewellery and so on to her best friends — she so calm, they so broken-heart­ed — into a convent she goes. No, one moment. The very evening of her going is the actor's last evening at Port Willin. He receives by a strange messenger a box. It is full of white flowers. But there is no name, no card. Nothing? Yes, under the roses, wrapped in a white handkerchief, Edna's last photograph with, writ­ten underneath. The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Edna sat very still under the trees; she clasped the black book in her fingers as though it were-her missal. She takes the name of Sister Angela. Snip! Snip! All her lovely hair is cut off. Will she be allowed to send one curl to Jimmy? It is contrived somehow, And in a blue gown with a white headband Sister Angela goes from the convent to the chapel, from the chapel to the convent with something unearthly in her look, in her sorrowful eyes, and in the gentle smile with which they greet the little children who run to her. A saint! She hears it whispered as she paces the chill, wax-smelling corridors. A saint! And visitors to the chapel are told of the nun whose voice is heard above the other voic­es, of her youth, her beauty, of her tragic, tragic love. "There is a man in this town whose life is ruined...."

A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the delicate flower leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy, careless flower!

Sister Angela looked at it and said, "Now it is win­ter." One night, lying in her icy cell, she hears a cry. Some stray animal is out there in the garden, a kitten or a lamb or — well, whatever little animal might he there. Up rises the sleepless nun. All in white, shiver­ing but fearless, she goes and brings it in. But next morning, when the bell rings for matins, she is found tossing in high fever... in delirium... and she never re­covers. In three days all is over. The service has been said in the chapel, and she is buried in the corner of the cemetery reserved for the nuns, where there are plain little crosses of wood. Rest in Peace, Sister An­gela....

Now it is evening. Two old people leaning on each other come slowly to the grave and kneel down sob­bing, "Our daughter! Our only daughter!" Now there comes another. He is all in black; he comes slowly. But when he is there and lifts his black hat, Edna sees to her horror his hair is snow-white. Jimmy! Too late, too late! The tears are running down his face; he is crying now. Too late, too late! The wind shakes the

leafless trees in the churchyard. He gives one awful

bitter cry.

Edna's black book fell with a thud to the garden path. She jumped up, her heart beating. My darling! No, it's not too late. It's all been a mistake, a terrible dream. Oh, that white hair! How could she have done it." She has not done it. Oh, heavens! Oh, what hap­piness! She is free, young, and nobody knows her se­cret. Everything is still possible for her and Jimmy. The house they have planned may still be built, the little solemn boy with his hands behind his back watching them plant the standard roses may still be born. His baby sister... But when Edna got as far as his baby sister, she stretched out her arms as though the little love came flying through the air to her, and gazing at the garden, at the white sprays on the tree, at those darling pigeons blue against the blue, and the Convent with its narrow windows, she realised that now at last for the first time in her life — she had nev­er imagined any feeling like it before — she knew what it was to be in love, but — in — love!

Word combinations To take the veil To call a sensation of To grope one’s way To be an accepted thing To do everything to dissuade smb To have far too much common- sense To have smth unearthly in one’s look To provide a gloomy note

Exercises to the text 1 Explain and expand on the following. 1) It was hardly thrilling. 2) The play had begun fairly cheerfully. 3) This at last was love! 4) It had to be endured, silently. 5) As for Jimmy, his state of mind hardly bears thinking about. 6) She takes the name of Sister Angela. 2 Give Russian equivalents. It was hardly thrilling; without giving another thought to smth; not that crying mattered; an accepted thing; common- sense; it had to torment her; to take one’s breath away; to dissuade; to add to one’s suffering; contrived. 3 Reproduce the situations with the following word combinations or sentences. 1) It is not easy to look tragic at eighteen. 2) For Edna had made going to the Library an excuse for getting out of the house… 3) to be hardly thrilling 4) Not that crying mattered 5) that ghastly scene 4 Give English equivalents. Вызвать чувство; пробираться на ощупь; едва ли это было волнующим; быть общепризнанным; разубеждать; это нужно было стерпеть; здравый смысл; добавлять мрачную ноту; неземное во внешности; запутанный; поразить кого- либо; ужасная сцена, принять постриг.

Topics for discussion 1 Summarize the story. 2 Comment on the title of it. 3 Describe Edna. 4 Discuss the main idea of the story. 5 Give a detailed account of: 1) the setting 2) the main character’s ideas about love 3) the final scene 6 Analyze the text.

The New Adam and Eve by Nathaniel Hawthorne

We, who are born into the world's artificial system, can never adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger Nature; she is a step-mother, whose crafty tenderness has taught us to despise the bountiful and wholesome ministrations of our true parent. It is only through the medium of the imagination that we can loosen those iron fetters, which we call truth and reality, and make ourselves even partially sensible what prisoners we are. For instance, let us conceive good Father Miller's interpretation of the prophecies to have proved true. The Day of Doom has burst upon the globe, and swept away the whole race of men. From cities and fields, sea-shore and mid-land mountain region, vast continents, and even the remotest islands of the ocean - each living thing is gone. No breath of a created being disturbs this earthly atmosphere. But the abodes of man, and all that he has accomplished, the foot-prints of his wanderings, and the results of his toil, the visible symbols of his intellectual cultivation and moral progress - in short, everything physical that can give evidence of his present position - shall remain untouched by the hand of destiny. Then, to inherit and repeople this waste and deserted earth, we will suppose a new Adam and a new Eve to have been created, in the full development of mind and heart, but with no knowledge of their predecessors, nor of the diseased circumstances that had become encrusted around them. Such a pair would at once distinguish between art and nature. Their instincts and intuitions would immediately recognize the wisdom and simplicity of the latter; while the former, with its elaborate perversities, would offer them a continual succession of puzzles.

Let us attempt, in a mood half-sportive and half- thoughtful, to track these imaginary heirs of our mortality through their first day's experience. No longer ago than yesterday, the flame of human life was extinguished; there has been a breathless night; and now another morn approaches, expecting to find the earth no less desolate than at eventide.

It is dawn. The east puts on its immemorial blush, although no human eye is gazing at it; for all the phenomena of the natural world renew themselves, in spite of the solitude that now broods around the globe. There is still beauty of earth, sea, and sky, for beauty's sake. But soon there are to be spectators. Just when the earliest sunshine gilds earth's mountain tops, two beings have come into life, not in such an Eden as bloomed to welcome our first parents, but in the heart of a modern city. They find themselves in existence, and gazing into one another's eyes. Their emotion is not astonishment; nor do they perplex themselves with efforts to discover what, and whence, and why they are. Each is satisfied to be, because the other exists likewise; and their first consciousness is of calm and mutual enjoyment, which seems not to have been the birth of that very moment, but prolonged from a past eternity. Thus content with an inner sphere which they inhabit together, it is not immediately that the outward world can obtrude itself upon their notice.

Soon, however, they feel the invincible necessity of this earthly life, and begin to make acquaintance with the objects and circumstances that surround them. Perhaps no other stride so vast remains to be taken, as when they first turn from the reality of their mutual glance, to the dreams and shadows that perplex them everywhere else.

»Sweetest Eve, where are we?« exclaims the new Adam, - for speech, or some equivalent mode of expression, is born with them, and comes just as natural as breath; - »Methinks I do not recognize this place.«

»Nor I, dear Adam,« replies the new Eve. »And what a strange place too! Let me come closer to thy side, and behold thee only; for all other sights trouble and perplex my spirit.«

»Nay, Eve,« replies Adam, who appears to have the stronger tendency towards the material world; »it were well that we gain some insight into these matters. We are in an odd situation here! Let us look about us.«

Assuredly, there are sights enough to throw the new inheritors of earth into a state of hopeless perplexity. The long lines of edifices, their windows glittering in the yellow sunrise, and the narrow street between, with its barren pavement, tracked and battered by wheels that have now rattled into an irrevocable past! The signs, with their unintelligible hieroglyphics! The squareness and ugliness, and regular or irregular deformity, of everything that meets the eye! The marks of wear and tear, and unrenewed decay, which distinguish the works of man from the growth of nature! What is there in all this, capable of the slightest significance to minds that know nothing of the artificial system which is implied in every lamp-post and each brick of the houses? Moreover, the utter loneliness and silence, in a scene that originally grew out of noise and bustle, must needs impress a feeling of desolation even upon Adam and Eve, unsuspicious as they are of the recent extinction of human existence. In a forest, solitude would be life; in the city, it is death.

The new Eve looks round with a sensation of doubt and distrust, such as a city dame, the daughter of numberless generations of citizens, might experience, if suddenly transported to the garden of Eden. At length, her downcast eye discovers a small tuft of grass, just beginning to sprout among the stones of the pavement; she eagerly grasps it, and is sensible that this little herb awakens some response within her heart. Nature finds nothing else to offer her. Adam, after staring up and down the street, without detecting a single object that his comprehension can lay hold of, finally turns his forehead to the sky. There, indeed, is something which the soul within him recognizes.

»Look up yonder, mine own Eve!« he cries; »surely we ought to dwell among those gold-tinged clouds, or in the blue depths beyond them. I know not how nor when, but evidently we have strayed away from our home; for I see nothing hereabouts that seems to belong to us.«

»Can we not ascend thither?« inquires Eve.

»Why not?« answers Adam, hopefully. »But no! Something drags us down in spite of our best efforts. Perchance we may find a path hereafter.«

In the energy of new life, it appears no such impracticable feat to climb into the sky! But they have already received a woeful lesson, which may finally go far towards reducing them to the level of the departed race, when they acknowledge the necessity of keeping the beaten track of earth. They now set forth on a ramble through the city, in the hope of making their escape from this uncongenial sphere. Already, in the fresh elasticity of their spirits they have found the idea of weariness. We will watch them as they enter some of the shops, and public or private edifices; for every door, whether of alderman or beggar, church or hall of state, has been flung wide open by the same agency that swept away the inmates.

It so happens - and not unluckily for an Adam and Eve who are still in the costume that might better have befitted Eden - it so happens, that their first visit is to a fashionable dry-good store. No courteous and importunate attendants hasten to receive their orders; no throng of ladies are tossing over the rich Parisian fabrics. All is deserted; trade is at a stand- still; and not even an echo of the national watch- word - 'Go ahead!' - disturbs the quiet of the new customers. But specimens of the latest earthly fashions, silks of every shade, and whatever is most delicate or splendid for the decoration of the human form, lie scattered around, profusely as bright autumnal leaves in a forest. Adam looks at a few of the articles, but throws them carelessly aside, with whatever exclamation may correspond to 'Pish!' or 'Pshaw!' in the new vocabulary of nature. Eve, however, - be it said without offence to her native modesty, - examines these treasures of her sex with somewhat livelier interest. A pair of corsets chance to lie upon the counter; she inspects them curiously, but knows not what to make of them. Then she handles a fashionable silk with dim yearnings - thoughts that wander hither and thither - instincts groping in the dark.

»On the whole, I do not like it,« she observes, laying the glossy fabric upon the counter. »But, Adam, it is very strange! What can these things mean? Surely I ought to know - yet they put me in a perfect maze!«

»Poh! my dear Eve, why trouble thy little head about such nonsense?« cries Adam, in a fit of impatience. »Let us go somewhere else. But stay! How very beautiful! My loveliest Eve, what a charm you have imparted to that robe, by merely throwing it over your shoulders!«

For Eve, with the taste that nature moulded into her composition, has taken a remnant of exquisite silver gauze and drawn it around her form, with an effect that gives Adam his first idea of the witchery of dress. He beholds his spouse in a new light and with renewed admiration, yet is hardly reconciled to any. Word combinations To throw smb into a state of hopeless perplexity To impress a feeling of desolation To receive a woeful lesson To be implied in every lamp-post To lie scattered around

To be at a stand-still

To impart smth to smth Exercises to the text 1 Explain and expand on the following. 1) The Day of Doom has burst upon the globe… 2) Their instincts and intuitions would immediately recognize the wisdom and simplicity of the latter; while the former, with its elaborate perversities, would offer them a continual succession of puzzles.

3) It were well that we gain some insight into these matters. 4) But, Adam, it is very strange! What can these things mean? 2 Give Russian equivalents. The interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man; crafty tenderness; bountiful and wholesome ministrations; the foot-prints of his wanderings; the diseased circumstances; elaborate perversities; in a mood half-sportive and half- thoughtful; 3 Reproduce the situations with the following word combinations or sentences. 1)The Day of Doom has burst upon the globe, and swept away the whole race of men. From cities and fields, 2) There is still beauty of earth, sea, and sky, for beauty's sake. 3) We are in an odd situation here! Let us look about us.«

4) The new Eve looks round with a sensation of doubt and distrust 4 Give English equivalents. Железные путы; видимое отражение его интеллектуального и морального развития; нетронутый рукой судьбы; воображаемые наследники нашего бессмертия; пламя человеческой жизни было потушено; нависает над землей; бросать в состояние безнадежной растерянности; непоправимое прошлое; сообщать кому-то что-то; следы износа; получить горький урок. Topics for discussion 1 Summarize the story. 2 Comment on the title of it. 3 Describe the behaviour of the main characters in the shop 4 Discuss the main idea of the story. 5 Give a detailed account of: 1) the setting 2) art and nature as they are described in the story 3) the final scene 6 Analyze the text.

Ambrose Bierce The Moonlit Road

I

Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.

I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health - with many other advantages usually valued by those having them and coveted by those who have them not - I sometimes think that I should be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and my inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention. In the stress of privation and the need of effort I might sometimes forget the somber secret ever baffling the conjecture that it compels.

I am the only child of Joel and Julia Hetman. The one was a well-to-do country gentleman, the other a beautiful and accomplished woman to whom he was passionately attached with what I now know to have been a jealous and exacting devotion. The family home was a few miles from Nashville, Tennessee, a large, irregularly built dwelling of no particular order of architecture, a little way off the road, in a park of trees and shrubbery.

At the time of which I write I was nineteen years old, a student at Yale. One day I received a telegram from my father of such urgency that in compliance with its unexplained demand I left at once for home. At the railway station in Nashville a distant relative awaited me to apprise me of the reason for my recall: my mother had been barbarously murdered - why and by whom none could conjecture, but the circumstances were these:

My father had gone to Nashville, intending to return the next afternoon. Something prevented his accomplishing the business in hand, so he returned on the same night, arriving just before the dawn. In his testimony before the coroner he explained that having no latchkey and not caring to disturb the sleeping servants, he had, with no clearly defined intention, gone round to the rear of the house. As he turned an angle of the building, he heard a sound as of a door gently closed, and saw in the darkness, indistinctly, the figure of a man, which instantly disappeared among the trees of the lawn. A hasty pursuit and brief search of the grounds in the belief that the trespasser was some one secretly visiting a servant proving fruitless, he entered at the unlocked door and mounted the stairs to my mother's chamber. Its door was open, and stepping into black darkness he fell headlong over some heavy object on the floor. I may spare myself the details; it was my poor mother, dead of strangulation by human hands!

Nothing had been taken from the house, the servants had heard no sound, and excepting those terrible finger-marks upon the dead woman's throat - dear God! that I might forget them! - no trace of the assassin was ever found.

I gave up my studies and remained with my father, who, naturally, was greatly changed. Always of a sedate, taciturn disposition, he now fell into so deep a dejection that nothing could hold his attention, yet anything - a footfall, the sudden closing of a door - aroused in him a fitful interest; one might have called it an apprehension. At any small surprise of the senses he would start visibly and sometimes turn pale, then relapse into a melancholy apathy deeper than before. I suppose he was what is called a 'nervous wreck.' As to me, I was younger then than now - there is much in that. Youth is Gilead, in which is balm for every wound. Ah, that I might again dwell in that enchanted land! Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.

One night, a few months after the dreadful event, my father and I walked home from the city. The full moon was about three hours above the eastern horizon; the entire countryside had the solemn stillness of a summer night; our footfalls and the ceaseless song of the katydids were the only sound aloof. Black shadows of bordering trees lay athwart the road, which, in the short reaches between, gleamed a ghostly white. As we approached the gate to our dwelling, whose front was in shadow, and in which no light shone, my father suddenly stopped and clutched my arm, saying, hardly above his breath:

»God! God! what is that?«

»I hear nothing,« I replied.

»But see - see!« he said, pointing along the road, directly ahead.