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About Pearson
Pearson is the world’s learning company, with presence
across 70 countries worldwide. Our unique insights and
world-class expertise comes from a long history of
working closely with renowned teachers, authors and
thought leaders, as a result of which, we have emerged
as the preferred choice for millions of teachers and
learners across the world.
Sheetal Taneja
Department of Computer Science
Dyal Singh College
University of Delhi
Delhi, India
and
Naveen Kumar
Department of Computer Science
University of Delhi
Delhi, India
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Assignment Statement
Shorthand Notation
1.7 Keywords
Summary
Exercises
2. Functions
input Function
eval Function
Composition
print Function
type Function
round Function
Type Conversion
min and max Functions
pow Function
Function help
Keyword Arguments
Summary
Exercises
3. Control Structures
Conditional Expression
Summary
Exercises
4. Debugging
4.1 Testing
4.2 Debugging
Summary
Exercises
5. Scope
5.2.1 Namespaces
5.2.2 Scope
LEGB Rule
Summary
Exercises
6. Strings
6.1 Strings
6.1.1 Slicing
6.1.2 Membership
Function replace
Function join
List of Functions
Summary
Exercises
7.1 Lists
7.2 Sets
7.3 Tuples
7.4 Dictionary
7.4.2 Deletion
Summary
Exercises
8. Recursion
8.1.1 Factorial
Iterative Approach
Recursive Approach
Iterative Approach
Recursive Approach
8.2.3 Palindrome
8.3.2 Copy
8.3.4 Permutation
Summary
Exercises
Summary
Exercises
10. Classes I
10.2.1 Destructor
Summary
Exercises
11. Classes II
11.1 Polymorphism
Comparing Dates
11.6 Composition
11.7 Inheritance
Scope Rule
Exercises
12.1 Sorting
12.2 Searching
Complete Script
Summary
Exercises
13.1 Stacks
13.2 Queues
Summary
Exercises
14.1 Introduction
Summary
Exercises
Summary
Exercises
16.6 Sudoku
Summary
Exercises
17. Graphics
17.1 2D Graphics
Multiple Plots
Saving Figure
Circle
Ellipse
Rectangle
Polygon
Arrow
17.2 3D Objects
Box
Sphere
Ring
Cylinder
Arrow
Cone
Curve
Summary
Exercises
Open Authentication
An Echo Server
Summary
Exercises
Index
Colour Illustrations
Foreword
Since the early days of teaching programming languages,
the science of programming has changed substantially.
Since the times of COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL, C, and
ADA, Python reflects a major paradigm shift. The
classical book ‘The Art of Computer Programming’ by D.
E. Knuth changed the landscape by making
programming independent of any language. As
programmers found it hard to design structured code in
languages like FORTRAN and COBOL, subsequent
languages like C, C++, and Java provided a natural
framework for structured programming. While C++
introduced object-oriented programming as an add on
feature, Java was designed to be an object-oriented
platform independent language with extensive support
for web development. Although implemented efficiently,
Java lacks the conciseness and flexibility that the
amateur and professional programmers cherish so much.
This is where Python steps in as a language of choice.
Prof. S K Gupta
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
New Delhi, India
Preface
This book introduces programming concepts through
Python language. The simple syntax of Python makes it
an ideal choice for learning programming. Because of the
availability of extensive standard libraries and third-
party support, it is rapidly evolving as the preferred
programming language amongst the application
developers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PYTHON PROGRAMMING: AN
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1.1 IDLE – An Interpreter for Python
1.7 Keywords
Python shell displays the prompt >>> to indicate that it is waiting for a user
command
hello world
>>> 18 + 5
23
>>> 3 ** 2
>>> 6 / 3 / 2
1.0
>>> 2 ** 3 ** 2
512
>>> 10 * -5
-50
>>> 7 + 3(4 + 5)
7 + 3(4 + 5)
TypeError: 'int' object is not callable
>>> 7 / 0
7 / 0
'Hello World'
Hello World
>>> """Hello
What's
happening"""
"Hello\nWhat's\nhappening"
>>> print("""Hello
What's
happening""")
Hello
What's
happening
'hello !!'
>>> 'hello' * 5
'hellohellohellohellohello'
Python 3 does not allow string values to be compared with numeric values
False
i.e. False
parentheses have the highest precedence while logical operators have the
lowest precedence
>> english = 57
assignment statement
>>> english
57
>>> maths = 64
>>> commerce = 62
>>> percentage
61.0
Assignment Statement
As discussed above, values are assigned to variables
using an assignment statement. The syntax for
assignment statement is as follows:
variable = expression
total_marks
TotalMarks
totalMarks
TOTAL_MARKS
>>> age = 24
>>> Age
Age
Python is case-sensitive.
age and Age are different names
>>> a = 5
>>> b = a
>>> a = 7
Shorthand Notation
By now, we have seen several examples of assignment
statements. The following assignment statement updates
value of the variable a by adding 5 to the existing value.
>> a = a + 5
>>> a += 5
a shorthand notation
>>> a = a + b + c
>>> a = a ** (b + c)
>>> a += b + c
>>> a **= b + c
a = a <operator> b
is equivalent to
a <operator>= b
>>> totalMarks = 0
>>> count = 0
20 10
num1 = num2
1.7 KEYWORDS
By the time the coffee was made, and the porridge, and Mary
had emerged from the tent, washed and brushed and sparkling, she
bethought her of the boy. “I’ll fetch him,” she told Senhouse. “He
must be fed.” Senhouse nodded, so she went back to her gîte of the
night. The boy had disappeared, and with him her cloak.
Senhouse chuckled when he heard her faltered tale. “Nature all
over—bless her free way,” he said. “She’ll lap you like a mother—and
stare you down for a trespasser within the hour. She takes her profit
where she finds it, and if she can’t find it will cry herself to sleep.
Don’t you see that you were so much to the good for our friend?
Well, what have you to regret? You warmed him, cuddled him, fed
him—and he’s gone, warmed, cuddled, and fed. You’ve been the
Bona Dea—and he’s not a bit obliged to you; very likely he thinks
you were a fool. Perhaps you were, my dear; but I tell you, fools are
the salt of the earth.”
“Yes, I know,” Mary said. “Of course I don’t mind the cloak. He
wanted it more than I did. But what will become of him—poor little
pinched boy?”
Senhouse picked up a bleached leaf of rowan—a gossamer leaf—
and showed it to her. “What will become of that, think you? It all
goes back again. Nothing is lost.” He threw it up, and watched it drift
away on the light morning wind. Then, “Come and have your
breakfast,” he bade her.
As they ate and drank she found herself talking to him of matters
which London might have shrieked to hear. But it seemed not at all
strange that Senhouse should listen calmly, or she candidly discuss
them. He had not shown the least curiosity either to find her here or
to know why she had come; in fact, after his question of “No
trouble, I hope?” and her reply, he had become absorbed in what he
had to do that day—the meal to be prepared, and the plantation of
Mariposa lilies which he was to show her. “The work of three years—
just in flower for the first time. You’re lucky in the time of your visit
—another week and you would have missed them.” But her need to
speak was imperious, and so she gave him to understand.
She told him, therefore, everything which had been implied in
former colloquies—and found him prepared to believe her. Indeed,
he told her fairly that when he had first heard from her that she was
to marry John Germain he recognized that she would not be married
at all. “Mind you,” he went on, “that need not have mattered a bit if
the good man had had any other career to open to you. It was a
question of that. You might have been his secretary, or his
confidante, or his conscience, or his housekeeper. But he’s so
damned self-contained—if you’ll forgive me for saying that—that he
and the likes of him start in life filled up with everything except
nature. There was really nothing for you to be to him except an
object of charity. Nor did he want you to be anything else. He
actually bought you, don’t you see, so that he might do his
benevolence comfortably at home. You were to be beneficiary and
admiring bystander at once. And you must have made him
extremely happy until you began to make use of his bounties, and
learn by what you had to do without them. Where was he then? It’s
like a mother with a sucking child. She makes it strong, makes a
man of it; and then, when it leaves her lap and goes to forage for
itself, she resents it. What else could she expect? What else could
Germain expect? He gives you the uses of the world; you find out
that you are a woman with parts; you proceed to exercise yourself—
and affront him mortally. I’ll warrant that man quivering all over with
mortification—but I am sure he will die sooner than let you know it.”
Her eyes shone bright. “Yes, that’s true. He is like that. Well, but
——”
Senhouse went on, speaking between pulls at his pipe. He did
not look at her; he looked at his sandalled feet.
“I may be wrong, but I do not see what you owe him that has
not been at his disposal any day these two years and a half. I
suppose, indeed, that the blessed Law would relieve you—but by
process so abominable and disgusting that a person who would seek
that way of escape would be hardly fit to be let loose on the world.
That being so, what are you to do? The fact is, Germain’s not sane.
One who misreads himself so fatally, so much at another’s expense,
is not sane. Then, I say, the world’s before you, if you have courage
enough to face the policeman. He can’t touch you, you know, but he
can stare you up and down and make you feel mean.” Then he
looked at her, kindly but coolly—as if to ask, Well, what do you make
of that? And if he saw what was behind her hot cheeks and lit eyes
he did not betray the knowledge.
She could herself hardly see him for the mist, and hardly trust
herself to speak for the trembling which possessed her. “Oh, I would
dare any scorn in the world, and face any hardships if—” but she bit
her lip at that point, and looked away; he saw tears hover at her
eyes’ brink.
Presently he asked her, “What brought you up here to see me?”
and she almost betrayed herself.
“Do you ask me that?” Her heart was like to choke her.
“Well,” said he, “yes, I do.” She schooled herself—looked down
and smoothed out the creases in her skirt.
“There’s some one—who wants me.”
“I can’t doubt it. Well?”
She spoke fast. “He has—wanted me for a long time—since
before I was married. Perhaps I have given him reason—I didn’t
mean to do that—but certainly he used to think that I belonged to
him. I was very ignorant in those days, and very stupid—and he took
notice of me, and I was pleased—so he did have some reason, I
think. Well, it all began again last year—imperceptibly; I couldn’t tell
you how. And now he thinks that I still belong to him—and when I
am with him I feel that I do. But not when I am away from him, or
alone. I am sure that he does not love me; I know that I don’t love
him. I feel humiliated by such a courtship; really, he insults me by
his very look; and so he always did, only I couldn’t see it formerly.
But now I do. I desire never to see him again—indeed, I dare not
see him; because, if I do, I know what must happen. He is stronger
than I, he is very strong. I know, I know very well that he could
make me love him if I let him. You have no conception—how could
you have? You don’t know what a woman feels when she is—when
such a man as that—makes her love him. Despair. But I must not—
no, no, I would sooner die. I could never lift up my head again.
Slavery.” She shuddered, and shut her eyes; then turned quickly to
Senhouse. “Oh, dear friend, I came to you because I was nearly lost
one night. I had all but promised. I saw your sign in the road—or
thought that I did—just in time, just in the nick of time. And when I
saw it, though I had my letter to him in my hand, telling him where
to find me the next day—Do you know, I felt so strong and
splendidly free that I posted the letter to him—and came straight
here without any check—and found you. Ah!” she said, straining her
two hands together at the full stretch of her arms, “Ah! I did well
that time. Because that very night when I was fighting for my life
you were dreaming of me.” If Senhouse had looked at her now he
would have seen what was the matter with her. But he was sunk in
his thoughts. “This fellow,” he said, broodingly, “this fellow—
Duplessis, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“I used to know Duplessis—at Cambridge. And I’ve seen him
since. He’s not much good, you know.”
She was looking now at her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers
about, suddenly bashful.
“But I think,” Senhouse went on, in a level voice, “I think you had
better go back and face him.”
She started, she looked at him full of alarm. “Oh, don’t tell me to
do that—I implore you. Let me stay here a little while, until I’m
stronger.” He smiled, but shook his head.
“No, no. Too unconventional altogether. Really I mean what I say.
If you are to be free you must fight yourself free. There’s no other
way. Fight Germain, if it is worth your while; but fight Duplessis at
all events. That is essential. Bless you, you have only to tell him the
truth, and the thing’s done.”
She was very serious. “I assure you, it is not. He won’t care for
the truth; he won’t care what I tell him—No, don’t ask me to do
that. It’s not—kind of you.”
Senhouse got up. “Let’s go and look at my lilies,” he said. “We’ll
talk about your troubles again presently.” She jumped to her feet
and followed him down the mountain.
He led her by a scrambling path round the face of Great Gable,
and so past Kirkfell foot into Mosedale, bright as emerald. As they
neared the mountains, he showed her by name the Pillar, Steeple
and Red Pike, Windy Gap and Black Sail. High on the southern face
of the Pillar there was, he said, a plateau which none knew of but
he. To reach it was a half-hour’s walk for her; but he encouraged her
with voice and hand. There! he could tell her, at last; now she was
to look before her. They stood on a shelf which sloped gently to the
south. Mary caught her breath in wonder, and gave a little shriek of
delight. “Oh, how exquisite! Oh, how gloriously beautiful!” A cloud of
pale flowers—violet, rose, white, golden yellow—swayed and danced
in the breeze, each open-hearted to the sun on stalks so slender
that each bell seemed afloat in air—a bubble of colour; she thought
she had never seen so lovely a thing. Senhouse, peacefully
absorbing her wonder and their beauty, presently began to explain
to her what he had done. “I had seen these perfect things in
California, growing in just such a place; so when I lit on this plateau
I never rested till I got what it was plainly made for. Full south, you
see; sheltered on the east and north; good drainage, and a peaty
bottom. I had a hundred bulbs sent out, and put them in three years
ago. No flowers until this year; but they’ve grown well—there are
nearly two hundred of them out now. I’ve had to work at it though. I
covered them with bracken every autumn, and kept the ground
clean—and here they are! With luck, the tourists won’t light on them
until there are enough and to spare. They are the worst. I don’t
mind the Natural History Societies a bit; they take two or three, and
publish the find—but I can stand that, because nobody reads their
publications. The trippers take everything—or do worse. They’ll cut
the lot to the ground—flowers and leaves alike; and, you know, you
kill a bulb if you take its leaves. It can’t eat, poor thing—can’t
breathe. Now just look into one of those things—look at that white
one.” She was kneeling before the bevy, and cupped the chosen in
her two hands. “Just look at those rings of colour—flame, purple,
black, pale green. Can such a scheme as that be matched
anywhere? It’s beyond talk, beyond dreams. Now tell me, have I
done a good thing or not?”
She turned him a glowing face. “You ought to be very happy.”
He laughed. “I am happy. And so may you be when you please.”
“Ah!” she looked ruefully askance. “I don’t know—I’m not sure.
But if I am ever to be happy it will be by what you teach me.”
“My child,” said Senhouse, and put his hand on her shoulder,
“look at these things well—and then ask yourself, Is it worth while
troubling about a chap like Duplessis, while God and the Earth are
making miracles of this sort every day somewhere?” Thoughtful,
serious, sobered, she knelt on under his hand.
“Love between a man and a woman is just such a miracle—just
as lovely and fragile a thing. But there’s no doubt about it, when it
comes—and it ought not to be denied, even if it can be. When
there’s a doubt, on either side—the thing’s not to be thought of.
Love’s not appetite—Love is nature, and appetite is not nature, but a
cursed sophistication produced by all sorts of things, which we may
classify for convenience as over-eating. ‘Fed horses in the morning!’
Well, one of these days the real thing will open to you—and then
you’ll have no doubt, and no fears either. You’ll go about glorifying
God.” He felt her tremble, and instantly removed his touch from her
shoulder. He sat on the edge of the plateau with his feet dangling.
“Let’s talk of real things,” he continued after a time, “not of feelings
and symptoms. This is one of my gardens—but I can show you some
more. Above this plateau is another—just such another. I filled it
with Xiphion iris—what we call the English iris, although the fact is
that it grows in Spain. It’s done well—but is nearly over now. I just
came in for the last week of it. And of course I’ve got hepaticas and
auriculas and those sort of things all over the place—this mountain’s
an old haunt of mine. But my biggest job in Cumberland was a glade
of larkspurs in a moraine of Scawfell Pike. I surpassed myself there.
Last year they were a sight to thank God for—nine feet high some of
them, lifting up great four-foot blue torches off a patch of emerald
and gold. I lay a whole morning in the sun, looking at them—and
then I got up and worked like the devil till it was dark. . . .
“Some brutal beanfeasters from Manchester fell foul of them
soon after—fell upon them tooth and claw, trampled them out of
sight—and gave me three weeks’ hard work this spring. But they
have recovered wonderfully, and if I have luck this year I sha’n’t fear
even a Glasgow holiday let loose on them.”
She was caressing the flowers, half kneeling, half lying by them.
“Go on, please,” she said when Senhouse stopped. “Tell me of some
more gardens of yours.”
He needed no pressing, being full of his subject, and crowded
upon her his exploits, with all England for a garden-plot. To her
inexperience it seemed like a fairy tale, but to her kindling inclination
all such wonders were fuel, and he could tell her of nothing which
did not go to enhancing the magic in himself. Peonies, he told her of,
in a Cornish cove opening to the sea—a five years’ task; and a niche
on a Dartmoor tor where he had coaxed Caucasian irises to grow like
wholesome weeds. Tamarisks, like bushes afire, in a sandy bight
near Bristol—“I made the cuttings myself from slips I got in the
Landes”—Wistaria in a curtain on the outskirts of an oak wood in the
New Forest. That had been his first essay—ten years ago. “You
never saw such a sight—the trees look as if they were alight—
wrapped in mauve flames. And never touched yet—and been there
ten years!
“I’ve got the little Tuscan tulip—clusiana is its name, a pointed,
curving bud it has, striped red and white—growing well on a wooded
shore in Cornwall; I’ve got hepaticas on a Welsh mountain, a pink
cloud of them—and Pyrennean auriculas dropping like rosy wells
from a crag on the Pillar Rock. Ain’t these things worth doing? They
are worth all Chatsworth to me!”
She caught his enthusiasm; her burning face, her throbbing heart
were but flowers of his planting. Once more she was splendidly
conscious of discovery, of unsuspected distances seen from a height
and once more exulted in the strength which such knowledge gave
her. No education could have bettered this—an interest in life itself,
in work itself. All that day she laboured by his side—digging,
weeding, fetching and carrying in that sunny hollow of the hills. She
cooked his meals and waited upon him; she grimed her hands,
scratched and blistered them, tore her gown, blowsed herself, was
tired, but too happy to rest. This, this was life, indeed.
Towards dusk, after dinner, she was so tired that she could hardly
keep her eyes open; and Senhouse who had been watching her with
shrewd amusement, bade her to bed. The tent was at her disposal,
while she remained. Slowly she obeyed him, unwillingly but without
question. The day was fading to a lovely close; night, as it were, was
drawing violet curtains over the dome of the sky. The great hills
were intensely dark, and the valley between them and below lay
shrouded in a light veil of mist. It was so quiet that they could hear
the Lingmell beck crisping over the pebbles or swishing between the
great boulders; and once a fish leapt in a pool, and the splash he
made was like a smack on the cheek.
Mary obeyed slowly. She stood behind him where he sat
watching all the still wonder of the dusk, hoping he would speak,
afraid herself to break the spell of her own thoughts. She was
excited, she felt the exquisite luxury of ease after toil; if she had
dared she would have indulged her quivering senses. She could
deceive herself no more; she had no need in the world which
Senhouse could not satisfy, and no chance of happiness unless he
did. But she respected him more than she loved him; it never
entered her head for a moment that it would be possible for her to
draw such a man on. Still she stayed, as if unable to leave him; his
mere neighbourhood was balm to her fever.
So they remained for some unmeasured time, while the silence
became crushing and the dark blotted out hill and hollow. She could
not hear her heart beating, and the pulses in her temples. In a
manner she was rapt in an ecstasy: she thought no more; she was
possessed; her happiness was at the point of bliss.
Senhouse sat on, motionless, he, too, absorbed in contemplation
—like a priest before his altar-miracles. He may not have known that
she was so close to him; or he may have known it very well. If he
did, he showed no sign of it. His thoughts, whatever they were, held
him, as he sat, his chin between his clasped knees, rigid as a dead
Viking, crouched so in his tomb of stones. His black, glazed eyes
were fixed sombrely towards the shrouded valley—across it, to the
mountains beyond. So at last, when her pleasure became a pain so
piercing that, had it endured much longer, she must have cried
aloud, she shivered as she clasped her hands together over her
breast—and then lightly let one fall to touch his shoulder.
She must needs speak to him now. “Do you wish me to go?”
He answered shortly. “It will be better. Yes, you had better go.”
“Very well—I will. But to-morrow? Am I to go home to-morrow? I
shall do exactly what you tell me. You know that.”
He did not move, nor answer her immediately. She hung upon his
silence.
Then he said, “I’m a man, you know—and you’re a woman.
There’s no getting away from that.”
“And you wish me——?”
“I’m a compromise—by my own act. This is Halfway House. You
may rest here, you see—and go on—or go back.”
She could school her voice, but not her hand which touched his
shoulder. She had to move it away before she spoke. “And if I decide
—to go on?”
“You must not—until you know what it means. Some day—
possibly—when you see—not feel—your way, it may be— Look here,”
he said abruptly, “we won’t talk about all this. I told you—in cold
blood—what I thought you ought to do. Go back and see Duplessis.
Don’t ask me to reconsider that—in hot blood. I’m not myself at this
time of night. I saw straight enough when you put it to me. I value
your friendship—I’m proud of it. More I must not say. It is something
to have made a woman like you trust me. That’s too good a thing to
lose, do you see? And I’ll tell you this, too—that you may trust me.
If you do as I tell you, it will work out all right.”
“Yes, yes—I believe that. But you told me this morning to follow
—my heart.”
“I did, my dear, and I meant it. But not what your heart calls out
at midnight.”
She stood where she was a little longer; presently she sighed.
“I will do as you bid me—because you bid me;” and he laughed.
“Reason most womanish.”
“Don’t laugh at me just now,” she said.
He folded his arms tightly, and stooped his head towards them.
“I daren’t do anything else,” he told her; “and I will not.”
In the dark she stretched out her hands to him; but soon she
gave over, and gloried in the strength he had.
“Good-night,” she said; and he answered her without moving,
“Good-night.”
She stole away to his tent; but he sat on where he was, far into
the night.
In the morning light they met as if nothing had happened; and
after breakfast he took her by Wastwater to Seascale—to the train
for the south. He was the old informal, chatty companion, full of
queer knowledge and outspoken reflections. He told her his plans, so
far as he could foresee them. He should be going to Cornwall in
November.
Then he put her in the train, and touched her hand lightly, as his
way was. He looked into her face, and smiled half ruefully. “Don’t
forget Halfway House,” he told her. She could only sob, “Oh, no! Oh,
never, never!” He turned away—waited for the train to move—then
waved his hand. As the train carried her under the arch, and bent on
its course, she had her last glimpse. He stood, white and slim,
against the grey buildings. She waved her hand, and was carried
onwards to the south.
XIII
THE SUMMONS
She knew now that she loved Senhouse, and that knowledge
filled her with indescribable triumph, and gave her unimagined
strength. At the same time, the quietude of her new joy really
amazed her. She could lie back in her corner seat of the train and
watch her flight to the south, be conscious that every thresh of the
great driving wheels was taking her from her beloved, reflect that
she could neither write to him nor hear from him—wanderer that he
was, and sojourner in tents—and regret nothing, and long for
nothing more tangible than she possessed already. He had her
heart; she had made her surrender on that night of intense colloquy.
That had been her true bridal night—by that mysterious intercourse
she had become his irrevocably. A great security possessed her, a
conviction, which it would have been blasphemous to question, that
all was well. If one had told her, you and he may never meet again,
she would have laughed in his face at the absurdity. Such a thing
was not worth argument, spelt its own refutation.
An immense content possessed her, a security which excused her
from looking back, and made the future indifferent. She thought
neither of her husband with remorse nor of Duplessis with
apprehension. She was not appalled by the flatness of her
immediate prospect: of a return to town and its round of flurry,
chatter, and dress; of Southover and its autumn rites. These things
were shadows of life: the real life was hidden in her heart. She
would send her tricked-out body to dinner-parties and other
assemblies of dolls, while she herself would be elsewhere, in some
blue immensity of air, breasting some great hill, breathing the breath
—which was food—of her mother the Earth—her mother! Their
mother! She and her beloved were brother and sister. Entertainment
here, for the flying miles, to which the threshing wheels lent
processional music.
If she hardly knew herself it is no wonder. She crossed London
by rote, reached Blackheath, walked sedately to her father’s little
house, entered the little dull door, and kissed her parents, whom she
found at tea—all in a dream. They made much of her, the great lady
she was become; found it not amiss that she appeared in tumbled
gown, with soiled blouse, and hat remarkable for its
unremarkableness. Great ladies could do as they pleased, being a
law unto themselves. Nor were they confused by her replies to the
proper inquiries. “Mr. Germain?” she said, “I think he’s very well. I
haven’t seen him since I left London. We don’t see much of each
other, you know, Mother.” A stack of forwarded letters was indicated,
telegrams among them. She nodded her head, and passed her cup
for some more tea.
She heard of the girls’ progress—all out in good boarding schools
of her providing; next of Jinny’s triumphs in the Lincolnshire home of
the Podmores. “Jinny has a bold way with her, as you know, Mary.
They were not inclined towards her at first. There was a question
whether she should not pack up her box again the day after she got
there—but Mr. Podmore—her Mr. Podmore—went on his knees, on
his knees, Mary—and she consented to stay. Very bold of Jinny,
considering that old Mr. Podmore is a Rural Dean——”
Mary smiled. The simple talk went on. By-and-by it came out that
a visitor had called to see Mary several times—a Mr. Duplessis, a
very tall young man. “He came here the evening we had expected
you, and I thought the chimney was afire when I heard his knock.
Exactly like the fire brigade. I opened the door in a twitter—and
there he was—six feet-two of him, and a tall hat atop of that. “Is
Mrs. Germain at home?” he asks me, and I say, “She may be, for
she’s not here.” Then he says, “You are Mrs. Middleham, I take it.” I
tell him he takes me rightly. “Don’t you expect your—Mrs. Germain?”
I told him the truth. “I’ll call to-morrow,” he says—“and he did, Mary,
and to-day, too. A handsome, upstanding young man—very much at
home with the likes of me. I suppose—but you know your own
business best, of course.”
Mary stroked her mother’s cheek. “Dear little old Mother,” she
said, “I know you’re afraid for me. Mr. Duplessis is quite harmless.
I’ll see him, if he comes to-morrow.”
In the intervals of housework—for she insisted upon being useful
—she wrote to her husband from day to day, telling him in her first
letter that she had been unable to write before as she had been
travelling. On this particular information he made no comment
whatsoever; indeed, he confined himself to such generalities as the
state of the weather, his cold, “which, under medical advice, I am
nursing at home,” and the proceedings of Mrs. James. “Constantia is
a great comfort to me. You will be pleased to hear that I am not
without hope of inducing her to prolong her visit. She speaks very
kindly of you. My brother, I regret to say, has been called home by
parochial cares. . . . The Cantacutes dined here last evening. I
regretted that I could not be down to receive them. However,
Constantia. . . .” She replied pleasantly to all this, feeling not one
grain of discomfort out of anything which Mrs. James could or could
not do. She begged to be kept informed of his cold. “You know that
I will come to you the moment you care to have me.” In answer to
that, by return of post, he wrote that “on no account” must she alter
her plans. “Believe me, I am fully contented that you should be with
your parents. It is, I understand, reckoned a failing of the past
generation that children should admit any claim in them who bore
and nurtured them. Personally, I do not pretend to be abreast of the
times in this particular; nor should I wish you to be so. I am assured
that there is no cause for uneasiness on my account, and will most
certainly see that you are kept supplied with bulletins. I beg my
sincere respects to your father and mother.”
After that she heard nothing more from him.
Duplessis had called two days after her arrival, but she had been
out, and he had not waited. He came again after three days’ interval
—having written to announce his intention—at 11 o’clock in the
morning. She was on her knees, in pinned-up skirt and apron, her
arms bare to the elbows, scrubbing the kitchen floor, when his knock
resounded through the house. The quick blood leapt into her cheeks,
but she held to her task. Her mother came fluttering in. “That’s your
visitor, Mary. What am I to do?—and you in such a state!”
“Show him in here, Mother,” says Mary.
“Never, child. He’ll think you demented.”
Mary was inflexible; her eyes glittered. “I shall see him nowhere
else,” she said.
Upon his second attack, a scared and serious Mrs. Middleham
opened the door. Mary, pausing in her scrubbing, heard the dialogue.
“Oh, good-morning. Mrs. Germain?”
“My daughter is here, Sir.”
“Oh, she’s come, has she? Do you think she would see me?”
“She says so, Sir. I have asked her. But she hopes you will excuse
her untidiness——”
“Oh, of course——”
“She has been kind enough to help us here—she is at work now.
You will please to overlook——”
“My dear Mrs. Middleham——”
“If you will follow me I will show you where she is.”
Mary rose from her knees to receive him, having wiped her hands
and arms on her apron. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes alight
—but she looked none the worse, assuredly, for that.
When Duplessis, stooping his fair head, entered the kitchen, she
came forward lightly to receive him. “Good-morning,” she said. “You
will take me as I am?”
“I’ll take you how I can,” said Tristram, shaking hands. “Your
mother prepared me for this attack of industry. You might let me
help you.”
Mary laughed. “Don’t destroy my mother’s illusions. She is
convinced of the complete idleness of the upper classes. If she lost
that she would have to alter all her ideas of society.”
“I don’t know anything about the upper classes; but Mrs.
Middleham can have no notion how hard I can work,” Duplessis said.
“I was at it all last night. Dancing till Heaven knows when.”
“I’ll warrant Heaven does,” said Mrs. Middleham to herself. She
was not able to find anything to say to this magnificent visitor.
Duplessis and Mary made a fairer show, for she had learned to
dread, with the high world, a single second of awkwardness. She
was even able to continue her work on her knees and chat with
Tristram, who, for his part, sat calmly on the kitchen table and talked
nineteen to the dozen. It is difficult to say which side of this simple
performance scandalized Mrs. Middleham the more—that Mary
should be on her knees with a scrubbing brush, or that Duplessis
should not be. The good blunt woman sat it out as long as her
endurance would last, growing more and more stiff in the back,
primming her lips in and in until she showed none at all. Finally she
rose with a “You will excuse me,” and stalked out of her own
kitchen. She sat in the empty parlour and looked at a photograph
album as a protest. Meanwhile Mary’s hour had come. It had been
on the edge of her tongue to ask her mother to stay—but she had
dismissed the thought as unworthy. She fixed her mind upon the
plateau of Mariposa lilies, and her eyes on her work, and scrubbed
for life.
“Molly,” said Duplessis, “why did you run away from me?”
She elbowed her brush stoutly. “Because I was afraid of you,” she
said—then stopped and looked up at him. “But I’m not now—not in
the least afraid.”
“You need not be. You wrote to me that you were coming on the
13th.”
“I know.”
“And this is the 20th, and you are only just here.”
“No. I have been here four or five days.”
“Where were you—when you were not here?”
“I was travelling.”
“Travelling!”
“Yes. But I decline to be questioned.”
“You mean, I suppose, that you will decline to answer.”
Her colour rose. “You always correct my language, I know. My
exact meaning is that I deny your right to question me about my
own affairs.”
“But if they are my affairs, too? May I not know what you are
doing with them?”
She thought. “Yes—I suppose you may do that.”
“Very well. Then I will ask you why you sent me word that you
were to come here on the 13th ‘by train,’ and then did nothing of the
sort?”
On her knees still, she faced him with her answer. “Yes, I will
answer that. When I wrote, I intended to come—and expected that
you would meet me. But when I posted the letter I had changed my
mind. I did not intend to come.”
He stared, with very cold, bright eyes. “You did not intend to
come when you posted the letter? Pray, did you intend me to expect
you at the station?”
She answered him, “Yes, I did expect it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really, my dear friend, you interest me
extremely. Did you think that six hours or more at Charing Cross
Station would be good for my nerves, morals, or constitution?”
“I will tell you what I thought,” she said. “I thought that waiting
at Charing Cross would be no worse—to say the least—for a man
than an appointment in Burlington Arcade could be for a woman.”
Duplessis bit his cheek. “That was your gentle reproof, then, for
my blunder?”
“Yours was only a blunder because I saw what it really was. It
had never entered your head that I could be other than honoured to
meet you anywhere. You presumed that I should run there.”
“You ran very near to it, my friend,” he said. “That is, you had
yourself driven.”
She bowed her head. “I admit it. I was a fool—but I am not a
fool now.”
“No,” said Duplessis, “you are not. You are, as a matter of truth,
extraordinarily beautiful just now, and I am more ridiculously in love
with you than ever. But—” She rose from her knees and stood before
him.
“Let me finish what I have to say to you, please,” she said. “That
was not my only reason for deceiving you. I wished you to wait for
me in vain, because I wished you to understand that I could not see
you any more. I wished you to believe that our intercourse must be
over. I chose the harshest means I could think of. I might have
written it, no doubt, but you would have answered the letter, and I
am no match for you in writing. I might have seen you and told you
—but I couldn’t do that.”
“Molly,” said Duplessis, folding his arms, “why couldn’t you see
me?”
She looked down. “Because I couldn’t.”
“It was because you dared not,” said Duplessis.
She did not answer; she was trembling a little now, and he saw
it. But presently she looked him straight in the face.
“Yes,” she said, “that is true. I did not dare.” He laughed gaily
and started forward to take her; but she put her hand up.
“No,” she said, “you are mistaken. I dared not then, but now I
dare. I can meet you now whenever you please, and have no fear at
all.”
Duplessis, red in the face, scowled and watched her from under
savage brows. “Am I to understand by that that you have ceased to
care?”
“You must understand that I do not love you.”
He left the table where he had been sitting and took a turn about
the room. Presently he stopped in front of her. His height gave him
great advantage.
“I decline to take that answer. I cannot believe that you mean it
seriously. I think that you loved me two, nearly three years ago, and
that you have loved me of late since last October—some nine
months. I know that I have never for a moment ceased to love you.
Through your engagement—horrible entanglement as it was—
through your years of married life—miserable eclipse—my love has
gone on, my need has increased. You know that; you cannot doubt
me. It was not my doing that you were false to our love; I couldn’t
interfere; it was begun without my suspicion, and all the mischief
done before I could get home. After that I did my honest best to get
on without you—and then your fool of a husband must drag me in.
What next? The inevitable, the undoubted. We two were drawn
together: it had to be. And now you ask me to believe that—for no
reason at all—it must stop. My dear girl, you can’t swap horses
crossing the stream, you know. I decline to be switched off like so
much electric current. Who’s the other man?”
This surprising turn to his speech nearly threw her off her
pedestal. But she could answer him truthfully.
“There is no question of caprice or of other people at all. The real
truth is that I have grown wiser. I know now that I was losing my
self-respect by permitting you to love me as you did—in the manner
you saw fit to use. It was not love at all—you had got into the habit
of considering me as your property, and you could not bear that
anybody else should claim a right to me. Directly I saw that, I knew
that I couldn’t allow myself to think of you, to be with you—if I was
to be—if I could hope to hold up my head.”
He was very angry. “May I know what, or who, enabled you to
see this unfortunate aspect of my affairs?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “It came to me suddenly. I think
your asking me to meet you in such an extraordinary place had
something to do with it.”
“I beg your pardon for that,” he said at once. “Honestly and
sincerely I am ashamed of that. Only it is fair to say that I meant no
possible disrespect to you. I couldn’t well meet you in your own
house. The weather was beastly—I thought we could discuss our
plans—and might as well do it under a glass cover as under
umbrellas. We might have been there five minutes. Really, I can’t
admit that the base is broad enough to hold all the superstructure.”
“It was nothing,” she admitted; “I was only offended for a
moment—and of course if I had still been nursery governess I
should have gone, without a question. I should have been flattered,
I am sure. But—ah, surely you can be honest with yourself, surely
you know what it is you want of me. Why, if I could bring myself—
would it be worthy of you to—?” She broke off, impatient at the
hopelessness of convincing him. “Mr. Duplessis,” she said, and he
frowned at the style, “I have been wicked, I think—at least, I have
been so foolish that I can hardly believe it was I. I am sure you
won’t be so ungenerous as to pin me down to a mistake. I beg you
to take what I say now—as I mean it.”
Looking up at him, she saw that she had made no way. The more
she said, she could see, the greater the fire in the man. He stooped
right over her, and she could hear the fever in his voice.
“My love, my adorable love—I shall never give you up—never—
never——”
She cowered. “Ah, be merciful——”
He said, “My mercy shall be my love and service”—and took her
hands.
She strained away—she turned her head—“No, no,” she
murmured, “I implore you.” But he drew her in—“My beloved—my
darling——”
The street knocker clamoured—a double call—and as he started
she sprang back to the wall, and gained the door. She went down
the passage and met her mother with a telegram in her hand. “For
you, Mary. No bad news, I hope.”
Mary read. “Think it would be well if you could come to-day.—
Constantia Germain.”
She had not heard from Hill-street for three days. Yes, certainly
she must go.
“Mother, I must go home immediately. Mr. Duplessis will take me.
I’ll tell him to wait.”
She returned to the kitchen; Duplessis was biting his cheek
leaning against the table with folded arms. His breath was still quick.
“Mr. Duplessis,” said she, “I have had a telegram from home—
from Mrs. James. My husband is ill and I must go to him. Will you
take me, please?”
He jumped forward. “Of course. I’m very sorry. I’ll do everything.
Go and get ready—I’ll find a cab.”
XIV
VIGIL
Her calmness, which was not the stupor of grief, from this point
onwards shocked her friend and disturbed her enemy in the house.
The Rector could not but feel it a slight upon his dead brother and
an attitude most unbecoming to so young a widow; but Mrs. James
was made uncomfortable by an attitude for which she had not been
prepared. Whatever the girl’s faults may have been, she had never
been brazen. Why, then, was she brazen now? Why almost—yes,
indecent in her indifference? Mary proposed nothing, objected to
nothing; took no part in the funeral arrangements, answered no
letters, read none, allowed her sister-in-law entire control, sank
back, with evident contentment, to be the cipher in her own house,
which, of course, she ought to have been from the first. There was
something behind all this; Mrs. James was far too intelligent to
misread it. This did not mean that Mary was over-whelmed—by grief,
or shame, either; it did not mean that she felt herself in disgrace.
No. This was impudence—colossal.
The Rector, to whom this reading of the girl was propounded,
could not deny it colour. “She’s very young to have such troubles
upon her, and of course she’s still very ignorant. She can’t express
herself. I don’t at all agree with you, Constantia; but I own I should
have preferred to see her in tears.”
“Why should she cry, pray? She has all that she wants—a sure
income and her liberty. At least, that is what she supposes; but we
shall see.”
“You paint your devils so impossibly black, my dear,” said the
Rector, “that really they refute themselves. I am sorry to have to say
it, but you are incapable of being just to this poor girl. However, as I
own, tears had been a sign of grace.”
Certainly she shed no tears, that any one could see. She was
frequently in her room alone, and may have cried there. The Rector
made advances, by look, by gesture, even by words. He was not an
effusive man; would sooner have died than have invited anybody to
pray with him—but for all that he did put himself in her way, heart in
hand, so to speak—and when she gently disregarded him he felt
chilly.
She did not attend the funeral, nor did she choose, though she
was urged, to be present at the reading of the will. She told the
Rector, who pressed this duty upon her, that she couldn’t oblige him.
“Please don’t ask me to do that. I have nothing to expect—and if he
had left me anything I should have to think about it very seriously.
He took me from nothing; I brought him nothing; he has done more
for me, and allowed me to do more for my parents than I could ever
have asked—even of him. I make no claims at all, and have no
expectations. I have never thought about such things——”
“Naturally, my child, naturally not. But—after such a shock as this
—after the first pang of loss—it is wise to think of the future. You
had no settlement, you know.”
“How could I?” she asked simply. He smiled at the question.
“Well, my dear, well. Your parents might reasonably have looked
—my dear brother was very impulsive in some ways—I can’t doubt
but that he intended to make proper provision. But he kept his
affairs very much to himself—too much. However, at such a time—to
judge the beloved dead—! No, no. For the same reason I can’t press
you——”
“No—please do not,” she said, and turned to the window. He left
her.
The will, then, was read before the Rector and Mrs. James, Miss
Germain, and Miss Hester Germain, and produced its effect. It bore
the date of a month before the testator’s second marriage and was
expressed to be made in view of that coming ceremony, and to take
the place of any settlement. It left her Porchfield House in
Farlingbridge, “otherwise known as the Dowry House,” with all its
furniture and household gear, and three thousand pounds a year
charged upon his Southover estate “so long as she remain chaste
and unmarried.” Mr. Dockwra, solicitor, slurred his phrase, excusing
it. Mrs. James liked it extremely. In the case of remarriage, Mary was
to have five hundred pounds. That was all, said Mr. Dockwra, so far
as Mrs. Germain was concerned; and he only said this much because
he was asked by Mrs. James Germain if there was no further
reference to her. For the rest the deceased gave handsome legacies
to his sisters, though they were otherwise provided for, and liberal
remembrances to his servants—annuities calculated upon their years
of service; and referred to the fact that the Southover property and
the London property alike were in strict settlement upon his own
children, should he have any, and, failing them, upon his brother
James.
Mr. Dockwra then produced a small bundle of papers. “There was
a codicil,” he said, “which bore date the 26th of August—a week
before Mr. Germain’s wedding. By this document he left five hundred
a year to “my cousin Tristram Duplessis,” so long as he remained
unmarried.” Thus tersely expressed, the Rector started as if he had
been shot, and his wife compressed her lips.
“I think that I should explain,” said Mr. Dockwra, “that this codicil
was not drawn by me, and that I had no knowledge of its existence
until the day after Mr. Germain’s death. Mr. James Germain, however,
as executor, handed me then the sealed envelope containing it. That
envelope contained one other paper—a telegram, which (as it has no
obvious reference to the disposition) may have been put there by
oversight. I shall hand it now to Mr. Germain.”
The Rector took it, opened it, looked at it, and raised his
eyebrows. Presently he put it quietly on the table before him. Mrs.
James, without turning her head, read it. It was very short—
Middleham, Hill-street, Berkeley-square—Look out. Mrs. James
smiled at her thoughts—and presently left the room.
Mary must now be told what she had not cared to hear. The
Rector broke her the contents of the will but said nothing of the
codicil. He had not asked his wife the meaning of that second
document, and did not mean to. It pointed to a domestic mystery.
Without being a prude, all such matters were distasteful to him.
He was very kind, as he had always been. “You will be very
comfortably left, you see, Mary,” he said, “at any rate, let us say,
while you are looking about you.”
Mary had shown no more than a polite interest in his report.
Three thousand a year? Porchfield? She may have been dazed, but
she certainly was not dazzled. James Germain reflected to himself on
the ease with which one gets acclimatized. Little more than two
years ago this child was working hard for sixty pounds a year; now
she hears that she is secured three thousand—without moving a
muscle.
“I need not tell you,” he went on, “that your home is here or at
Southover for any length of time convenient to you. Indeed, I am
sure I might include the Rectory in my general invitation. We have
been so nearly related; I could not bear to think the tie severed by
my dear brother’s death. Apart from that, we have learned to love
each other, I hope. I shall always look upon you as one of us—if you
will let me; and your settlement at Porchfield will be a reason the
more to keep me at Southover.”
“That is very kind of you, Mr. Germain,” Mary said—but without
enthusiasm. After a few more efforts, the worthy man left her alone.
It was then Mrs. James’s turn. She came in, after knocking, with
the telegram in her hand.
“This, I think, belongs to you,” she said.
Mary took it, read it, and remembered. A quick flush of colour
showed that she did.
“Yes,” she said, “but it is of no importance now.” And she tore it
across.
But Mrs. James was not to be balked. “You must allow me to
explain its importance. It was found in the envelope containing the
codicil to my dear brother’s will—a codicil which he made within two
days of your receiving it.”
Mary, still looking out of the window, commented idly. “A codicil?
Was there a codicil? That meant that you changed your mind, didn’t
it?”
“In this case,” said Mrs. James, “it means, I think, that my dear
brother explained his mind. I thought that the Rector might have
informed you.”
“No,” said Mary. Mrs. James cleared her throat and began to
enjoy herself.
“By that he left five hundred a year to my cousin Tristram
Duplessis—so long as he remained unmarried.”
Mary was puzzled at first. She knew by the speaker’s tone that
she was in disgrace—and connected it with Duplessis at the mention
of his name. She stared at the bitterly incisive lady. “Mr. Duplessis—
five hundred—if he doesn’t marry? What has that to do with—?” She
stopped—her eyes widened and deepened—showed fathomless.
“Ah!” she said, and picked up the torn paper. She read the date,
August 24th. “What did you say was the date of the will?”
“It was a codicil,” said Mrs. James.
“The date, please, the date,” Mary asked her, fretfully.
“It was dated the 26th of August.”
Jinny’s birthday! Mary remembered it perfectly. He had had tea
with the two of them, and she had clung to him afterwards, with a
confession on the tip of her tongue. He had never been more loving
to her than on that afternoon—and he had Jinny’s telegram in his
pocket—in his breast pocket—while she had clung sobbing to his
breast! And he had left her that evening, full of love, as he had
seemed to be, and gone home and tied Tristram by the leg. Ah—so
he had known everything—always! Before that night at Exeter—he
had known it from the beginning.
She sat very still—the telegram in her lap—and her eyes cast
down, as she played idly with the pieces, lifting them up and letting
them fall. The triumphant foe could see nothing but her heavy
eyelids, and the fringe of her lashes curving upwards as they
brushed her cheeks. If she expected victory she was to be
disappointed.
“I am glad you sent him my telegram,” she said. “I am glad he
knew about Mr. Duplessis and me.”
Mrs. James lifted her head. “It was certainly advisable that he
should be told. Personally, I could not interfere. I told him nothing
that may have presented itself to me——”
“No,” said Mary, “of course not. It was no business of yours.” Mrs.
James jumped.
“It seems to me that it was very much a business of yours, if you
will forgive me.”
“It was,” Mary said. “And I told him all about it.”
Mrs. James started. “I told him,” Mary said, “on the night he
died. He quite understood.”
“It is horrible to me,” cried Mrs. James, “that he was kept in the
dark so long.”
“He wasn’t at all in the dark,” Mary said. “That is plain now. I
wish that I had known it before.”
“You may well say so. Apart from candour, apart from sincerity,
surely it is the sacred duty of a married woman to have no secrets
from her husband.”
Mary looked up. She had the eyes of a woman acquainted with
grief. “I am not a married woman,” she said. “I fancy that you must
know it.”
XVI
WINGS
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