Comprehension and Discussion. 1. What was the king's daughter like?

1. What was the king's daughter like? How was she similar to her father?

2. Why did the king send his daughter's lover to prison?

3. Why did he think that he would be rid of the young man no matter what happened?

4. Why was the audience surprised when the young man en­tered the arena?

5. What had the princess discovered about the doors?

6. Describe the silent communication between the young man and the princess.

7. What did the princess imagine when she saw her lover open the tiger door? The lady door?

8. What do you think of this system of justice? Is fate the best way to decide guilt or innocence?

9. What deeper message do you think the author had which he was trying to communicate to us?

10. What came out of the opened door? If you were the prin­cess, which choice would you have made?

Exercises

A. Use each of the following terms in a sentence:

moral, psychological, gruff, at least, gladiator, religious, heretic, by chance, whichever, to be posted, slaughter, to be in one's own hands, the apple of one's eye, spectacle, to put oneself in the place of, hot-blooded, semibarbaric, with­out hesitation, right-hand.

B. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate form of the adjective.

Example: It was the_____________ (long), ____________(difficult) question I ever had to answer.

It was the longest, most difficult question I ever had to answer.

1. They searched for the __________________ (fierce) tiger in the realm.

2. She was the __________________ (beautiful) maiden in the kingdom.

3. The king was __________________(tall)than his daughter.

4. The princess was __________________ (barbaric)as her father.

5. The people gasped because they thought he was the ___________________ (handsome) young man they had ever seen.

6. It was the __________________ (cruel) tiger they could find.

7. The princess thought that the lady was ______________________(beautiful) than she was.

8. They couldn't find any system of justice which was __________________ (fair) than this one.

9. I don't think that this crowd is _________________ (large) as the crowd we had last week.

10. Which possibility made the princess _______________ (angry), the lady, or the tiger?

 

C. Circle the word on the right that has a SIMILAR meaning to the word on the left.

Example: in back of across/ behind / after / with

1. hitch snag / food / weather / walk

2. troupe group / pair / loop / several

3. passionate easygoing / aware / intense / available.

4. alter use / eat / marry / change

5. hint clue / speech / delivery / desire

6. often seldom / frequent / never / always

7. shriek laugh / talk / cry / indicate

8. crude open / new / unsophisticated / old

9. gruff pleasant / happy / enthusiastic / rough

10. arena stage / stadium / kingdom / vault

 

D. Change these sentences first to the future with will, then to the future with going to.

Example: He goes on trial tomorrow.

He will go on trial tomorrow. He is going to go on trial tomorrow.

1. She signals with her right hand.

2. She discovered the secret of the doors.

3. They cheer when there is a wedding.

4. We stand when the king enters the arena.

5. I was present at the trial.

6. You decide which came out of the door.

7. He walked immediately to the door on the right.

8. He knew his fate was behind one of the doors.

9. The stories have deep moral implications.

10. She screamed and tore her hair.

Unit 11: Adolescence

Hetty Hemingway

Hetty Hemingway wrote many short stories for her friends and family, but this was the only one for the general public.

PART ONE

Sara and Polly always seemed to dawdle a few feet behind their governess. They constantly exchanged meaningful glances, and they were always smiling at each other and squeezing hands.

Mrs. White walked briskly in front of them, but she con­stantly twisted her head around like a mother goose. Her voice sounded harsh and concerned. "What are you girls babbling about there? I declare, we will never see Naples at this rate! Here we are at the National Museum, and instead of looking at things, you're always whispering and laughing. We might just as well be back in the convent. I will never take two such heedless young things traveling again!"

The governess spoke with a vehemence that she tried to make sound convincing. It was difficult. In the course of her whole drab, prosaic life she had never had so much pleasure as now. It was such a treat to leave her crabbed and invalided old mother, to whom she was devoted, and take these two rich girls from the convent traveling in Italy. Yet she repeated very often, "I de­clare, I will never take young girls traveling again! Such respon­sibility! I'm exhausted. It's terrible, terrible."

She announced that they were going to see the Pompeian relics. "Oh, yes, we must see them; they are very important for your education. Oh! Polly, what are you looking at now?"

Polly was standing before a figure of the Hermes of Praxiteles. She had let go of Sara's hand.

"Come, don't look at that," said the governess, hastily con­sulting her guidebook. "It's only a plaster cast; it's not the real thing. Now, that Minerva over there, it was— " She began to read.

But Polly wasn't interested in the Minerva. She gave it a perfunctory glance, and her soft eyes reverted and lingered with unfathomable admiration on the white, graceful messenger god. He regarded her, as he regarded everything in the room, with his smile, mysterious and aloof, of disdainful tenderness.

"What are those impudent young men over there laughing at?" cried Mrs. White. "Don't turn around, Sara. One doesn't smile at strange men in Italy."

Sara turned around, of course, and stared with interest at the three young men.

"I think they probably like our looks," said Sara, who always spoke the truth. She was a beautiful seventeen-year-old, with the touching and sheltered purity of a little child.

Certainly the men were looking at Polly, just as she was look­ing at the Hermes, smiling to herself and humming. The sun­light, spilling through a stained-glass window, spattered his dazzling body with multicolored light.

The governess cleared her throat, startling Polly in her rev­erie. The three ladies proceeded to the Pompeian room.

Later, they lunched on the open terrace of a hotel overlooking the bay, with Vesuvius puffing in the distance.

"Oh, how splendid! How spectacular!" Mrs. White seemed to be muttering or exclaiming about everything they saw. It exasperated her that Sara and Polly took as much pleasure in their meal as they did in the view. The governess somehow believed that she must always be expressing aloud her appreciation of beautiful things. She spoke as if to some unseen creator who needed to hear her. She was like a tiresome dinner guest who is constantly thanking and complimenting her host. Sara and Polly, on the other hand, accepted beauty and drank it in with­out self-consciousness. Children somehow share the marvelous egotism of gods in this respect. Whatever was there was the natural background and scenery for themselves, so they scarcely thought of it.

After lunch they drove to a monastery described in the guide­book under "Interesting Sights." It was perched on the side of a dusty hill, and its white spires gleamed among the vineyards with a full, azure-blue Neapolitan sky above. An old monk, dressed in a brown, hooded cloak with a rope around its waist, showed them about the place. As he moved, his great ring of keys bounced and jingled.

Inside the gray walls was a mellow hush, an immaculate still­ness. The sunlight inundated the court, falling hot on the flag­stones between the white pillars of the cloisters, where other brown-clad brothers were walking sadly, their eyes fixed on the ground. Sara and Polly thought that they had never beheld such abundant sunshine or such deep shadows or known such still­ness. Their hearts were full of awe and reverence because of the sun and the silence and the brown brothers walking sadly with their eyes on the ground. Even Mrs. White was impressed, and she read from her guidebook in a hushed, monotonous tone, as if it were the breviary.

"We must see the crypt. It says the mosaics are of special interest. It says the underground passages are more interesting, on a smaller scale, than the Catacombs at Rome," she whispered to the girls.

The cold breath of the crypt fanned their faces as they de­scended the sunken stone steps. Underneath the chapel the air felt stale and fuzzy. They were in the crypt of the church. Polly looked at Sara, at her calm, deep, Madonna-like face. All around them, piled against the ornate walls, were bones and skeletons. They were tossed about in no particular method or order. Empty heads stared at them from dark corners, and there was a dank odor that made their flesh creep.

"This is how we shall all be eventually," said the old monk in a reverent tone. Sara closed her eyes, smiling, and clasped her hands tightly together. Even Mrs. White was affected. Polly looked about her at the gleaming, hollow heads and imagined that they were leering at her. She took a deep breath of the stale, lifeless air. Quite suddenly an armless, legless skeleton reminded her of the statue she had seen that morning. A great wave of ecstatic buoyancy leaped within her.

"I'm young, young, young," she cried to herself, bracing her tingling feet against the stone floor as if she could draw life like a plant from the earth, rich with the ashes of countless dead. She looked at the sagging face of the governess in the green light and the lined, parchment countenance of the old monk, and she continued to thrill and to tingle and to cry to herself, "I'm young, young, young; I shall never die—never, never, never!" She smiled impudently and coyly into the graves dotted with white heads. She caught the old monk's glowing eye upon her, and he seemed to divine her mood, for all at once he threw back his head, and his old eyes glowed and lighted.

"Long live the young! Life to the young!" he cried, raising the torch high and saluting Polly playfully with it. "Our Savior, too, was young and knew the joy of life," he added, crossing himself and smiling tenderly and oddly.

"These brothers!" said the governess when they were back in their carriage, rattling along the dusty road. "I don't trust them. They're full of tricks. I don't even trust the gray hairs, children," she added with a cunning, satisfied expression. She smiled curi­ously and decided on the spot that they would not spend the evening at the hotel going to bed early. She mulled it over in her mind, looking mysterious all through dinner. At dessert she said, "You girls go up and put on your best dresses. We're going to the opera."

Comprehension

1. What is the relationship among the three main characters?

2. Where are they? Why are they there?

3. Why did Polly stand before the statue of Hermes and stare?

4. Why were the young men staring at Polly?

5. How did the two young girls react to nature and beauty?

6. Why did they go to the monastery?

7. Describe the monastery.

8. Why did they go to the crypt? What was it like?

9. What happened to Polly as she was standing in the crypt looking at a skeleton?

10. How did the monk respond to Polly's mood?

PART TWO

Sara wore a white dress and put a blue ribbon in her hair. Polly put on a white dress because Sara had done so, and she put a blue ribbon in her hair, too. She was distressed because the shade of blue was slightly paler than Sara's. All the way in the carriage she held Sara's cool, smooth hand. It was necessary for the perfection of her happiness that she should be near or touching Sara all the time. It relieved a happiness which was almost too great for her to bear alone. She often felt happy and elated for no reason she could explain. During the drive, her fifteen-year-old heart gave her sensations that, in a grown-up person, would have been cause enough to send for a doctor.

Mrs. White wore a stiff, black silk dress. Money from her savings had been taken to buy it. A great deal of anxious thought had gone into it. To the girls, it looked exactly as any black silk dress would look on a stout, elderly woman; but to Mrs. White, who had never had anything pretty to wear, it was deliciously important. She was as concerned about it as if she were still young and good-looking.

Sara and Polly had never been in a theater as large as the one in Naples. They were thrilled by the vastness and all the ornate trimmings. They adored the pale blue ceiling which was painted in imitation of the sky, with white clouds and angels floating across it. Sara loved the idea of painting one's ceiling to look like the sky and was smiling at the angels when she heard a Frenchwoman, who looked very intellectual, say, "What taste! Look at that ridiculous ceiling!"

Both Sara and Polly wondered how anyone could be so blind to beauty.

The opera was in Italian, and Polly could not understand one word that the actors were saying, but she was vaguely and exqui­sitely entertained just the same. She felt instinctively that the story was improper, but the fact did not interest her.

The music made all the trivialities on the stage seem roman­tic. Every time the hero, who was a little fop in a red fez with something ludicrous in his motions, approached the heroine, the orchestra played the "Waltz Dream." The melody began in a low key, swelling higher and higher, repeating and intensifying its poignant refrain, till it became so pleading and insistent that the audience began to sway with it. Some persons nodded their heads or tapped their feet; others lay back in their chairs and smiled dreamily with closed eyes.

In a box, elevated over the stage at one side, Polly recognized an Italian officer she had seen at the museum. He was resplen­dent in a pale-blue uniform; the metal trappings on his coat and sword reflected the light of the stage and twinkled like multicol­ored jewels in the semidarkness of the orchestra. His head was fair and large and shaped like that of the Hermes of Praxiteles. His lips wore the same expression of aloof and slightly mocking tenderness. When the "Waltz Dream" was played, he stood up and, with his arm about a comrade, swayed his slim body with the rhythm of the music. There was an elemental and spontaneous grace in the unselfconscious motions which told anyone whose eye happened to follow the sinuous figure that he was intoxicated with the music, that he felt its caressing and insis­tent melody running through him.

Polly, from her seat in the dark orchestra, kept turning her eyes in the direction of the swaying figure in the box. She felt the music running through her, too. She squeezed Sara's hand, but it did not satisfy or console her entirely. The wistfulness of her mood, induced by the music, seemed to her to become so vast as to be almost unendurable. It was as if the persistent burden of the song were reminding her of something forgotten, something once known and amazing, an intimate mystery, poi­gnant, beautiful, and unfinished.

The music subsided softly. The curtain dropped while the audience applauded. The opera was over. There was a sudden stampede for cloaks and hats. Sara and Polly were jostled by the crowd. Mrs. White spoke loudly and angrily, as she always did when she was frightened. The girls laughed.

Suddenly Polly cried out as a strange hand from the crowd passed swiftly yet caressingly over her bare neck and down be­tween her shoulder blades. She felt fingers gently clasp her small neck and shake her playfully. She also heard a laughing voice whispering, "Cattiva, cattiva, Bimba mia!"

Polly shrank backwards into Sara and turned quickly to see who was at the end of that hand and voice. "Look at that man!

See what he did to me!" She cried out indignantly. "He put his hand right down my back!"

"It was the same officer who was standing in the box over the stage. I saw him!" exclaimed Sara.

Polly was hot all over, and tears rose in her eyes.

"It's your own fault," Mrs. White said as she signaled for a carriage. "Why did you stare at him during the entire perform­ance? I saw you, you know. What do you expect? You can't do things like that in Italy."

Finally they found a cab. Mrs. White was exhausted by this time and she promptly fell asleep in a corner of the seat, her head nodding on her breast. Polly held Sara's hand again and watched her Madonna-like face, pure in the flickering light of the passing street lamps.

"I'm so tired," murmured Sara. "You know, Polly, I think it would be lovely to live in a monastery—I mean a convent—like the one we saw this afternoon, don't you? I would love to die young and beautiful, wouldn't you?"

Polly thought about it, but didn't answer. She wondered how anyone could possibly be tired. She thought about the monas­tery, and she remembered again the wave of ecstatic life that had welled up within her as she looked at the poor armless skeleton. No, she did not wish to die young; her little body and soul were exquisitely troubled by the presence of an energy which was rampant within her. It was more significant and alive than she was herself.

Her eyes were dreamy, but not with sleep. Later, as they were getting ready for bed, she sat in one position for at least ten minutes, caressingly passing her fingers through her unbound hair.

She lay beside Sara in the dark for a long time, not moving. Softly she crept out of bed, and lighting the pink light by the dressing table, she looked over her shoulder and surveyed her plump neck above the thin shoulder blades. Reverently and cau­tiously she passed her hand over them.

She turned out the lights and, going to the open window, laid her head upon the sill. Oh, the Bay of Naples, rippling in the moonlight, and Vesuvius, serene and terrible, clothed in the starlit mist and darkness! The sweet, sweet fragrance of the spring, rising from the orange blossoms—all this! But Polly did not see the Ray of Naples or even mighty Vesuvius, mounting alive out of the night. She was only vaguely aware of the teeming scent from the pale, closed buds below. She was thinking of a smile of disdainful tenderness, of a caress arrogant and fleeting. Her dumb little being was stirred and jarred by a stupendous wonder, and there was spring in the fifteen-year-old heart that night.