D) Discuss with your partner what you would add to or change in the information given in the text. (Compare it with the superstitions spread in your country).

XII. a) Read the text and find the following information in the text:

 

1) Who is a mandarin?

2) Is it possible to kill a man by just thought-transference?

 

Text 2

The Murder of the Mandarin

I

 

‘What’s that you’re saying about murder?’ asked Mrs. Cheswardine as she came into the large drawing-room, carrying the supper-tray.

‘Put it down here’, said her husband, referring to the supper-tray, and pointing to a little table which stood two legs off and two legs on the hearth-rug.

‘I asked you what you were saying about murder’, said Vera sharply, ‘but it seems-‘

‘ Oh! Did you?’ Woodruff apologized. ‘ I was saying that murder isn’t such an impossible thing as it appears. Anyone might commit a murder.’

‘Then you want to defend, Harrisford? Do you hear what he says, Stephen?’

The notorious and terrible Harrisford murders were agitating the Five Towns that November. People read, talked, and dreamt murder; for several weeks they took murder to all their meals.

‘He doesn’t want to defend Harrisford at all,’ said Cheswardine, with a superior masculine air, ‘and of course anyone might commit a murder. I might.’

‘Stephen! How horrid you are!’

‘ You might, even!’ said Woodruff, gazing at Vera.

‘ Charlie! Why, the blood alone-‘

‘There isn’t always blood,’ said the oracular husband.

‘ Listen here,’ proceeded Woodruff, who read variously and enjoyed philosophical speculation. ‘Supposing that by just taking thought, by just wishing it, an Englishman could kill a mandarin in China and make himself rich for life, without anybody knowing about it! How many mandarins do you suppose there would be left in China at the end of a week!’

‘At the end of twenty-four hours, rather,’ said Cheswardine grimly.

‘Not one,’ said Woodruff.

‘ But that’s absurd,’ Vera objected, disturbed. When these two men began their philosophical discussions they always succeeded in disturbing her. She hated to see life in a queer light. She hated to think.

‘It isn’t absurd,’ Woodruff replied. ‘It simply shows that what prevents wholesale murder is not the wickedness of it, but the fear of being found out, and the general ness, and seeing the corpse, and so on.’

Vera shuddered.

‘ And I’m not sure,’ Woodruff proceeded, ‘that murder is so very much more wicked than lots of other things.’

‘ Usury, for instance,’ Cheswardine put in.

‘ Or bigamy,’ said Woodruff.

‘ But an Englishman couldn’t kill a mandarin in China by just wishing it,’ said Vera, looking up.

‘ How do we know?’ said Woodruff, in his patient voice.

‘ How do we know? You remember what I was telling you about thought-transference last week. It was in Borderland.’

Vera felt as if there was no more solid ground to stand on, and it angered her to be plunging about in a bog.

 

II

 

It was at that juncture of despair that she thought of mandarins. Or rather – I may as well be frank – she had been thinking of mandarins all the time since retiring to rest. There might be something in Charlie’s mandarin theory…. According to Charlie, so many queer, inexplicable things happened in the world. Occult – subliminal – astral – thoughtwaves. These expressions and many more occurred to her as she recollected Charlie’s disconcerting conversations. There might…. One never knew.

Suddenly she thought of her husband’s pockets, bulging with silver, with gold, and with bank-notes. Tantalizing vision! No! She could not steal. Besides, he might wake up.

And she returned tomandarins. She got herself into a very morbid and two-o’clock-in-the-morning state of mind. Suppose it was a dodge that did work. (Of course, she was extremely superstitious; we all are.) She began to reflect seriously upon China. She remembered having heard that Chinese mandarins were very corrupt; that they ground the faces of the poor, and put innocent victims to the torture; in short, that they were sinful and horrid persons, scoundrels unfit for mercy. Then she pondered upon the remotest parts of China, regions where Europeans never could penetrate. No doubt there was some unimportant mandarin, somewhere in these regions, to whose district his death would be a decided blessing, to kill whom would indeed be an act of humanity. Probably a mandarin without a wife or a family; a bachelor mandarin whom no relative would regret; or, in the alternative, a mandarin with many wives, whose disgusting polygamy merited severe punishment! An old mandarin already pretty nearly dead; or, in the alternative, a young one just commencing a career of infamy!

 

‘I’m awfully silly,’ she whispered to herself. ‘But still, if there should be anything in it. And I must, I must, I must have that thing for my dress!’

She looked again at the dim forms of her husband’s clothes, pitched anyhow on an ottoman. No! She could not stoop to theft!

So she murdered a mandarin; lying in bed there; not any particular mandarin, a vague mandarin, the mandarin most convenient and suitable under all the circumstances. She deliberately wished him dead, on the off-chance of acquiring riches, or, more accurately, because she was short of fourteen and fivepence in order to look perfectly splendid at a ball.

In the morning when she woke up – her husband had already departed to the works – she thought how foolish she had been in the night. She did not feel sorry for having desired the death of a fellow-creature. Not at all. She felt sorry because she was convinced, in the cold light of day, that the charm would not work. Charlie’s notions were really too ridiculous, too preposterous. No! She must reconcile herself to wearing a ball dress which was less than perfection, and all for the want of fourteen and fivepence. And she had more nerves than ever!

She had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and fussy husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every night, she attacked the wrong drawer – an empty unfastened drawer that she never used. And lo! The empty drawer was not empty. There was a sovereign lying in it!

This gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at the first blush she did, with the mandarin.

Surely it couldn’t be, after al.

Then she came to her senses. What absurdity! A coincidence, of course, nothing else? Besides, a mere sovereign! It wasn’t enough. Charlie had said ‘rich for life’. The sovereign must have lain there for months and months, forgotten.

However, it was none the less a sovereign. She picked it up, thanked Providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to Brunt’s. The particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly thin, slim, and fetching silver belt – a marvel for the money, and the ideal waist decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown. She bought it, and left the shop.

And as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding out the poster of the early edition of the Signal. And she read on the poster, in large letters: ‘DEATH of LI HUNG CHANG’. It is no exaggeration to say that she nearly fainted. Only by the exercise of that hard self-control, of which women alone are capable, did she refrain from tumbling against the blue-clad breast of Adams, the Cheswardine coachman.

She purchased the Signal with well-feigned calm, opened it and read: ’Stop-press news. Pekin. Li Hung Chang, the celebrated Chinese statesman, died at two o’clock this morning. – Reuter.’

III

Vera reclined on the sofa that afternoon, and the sofa was drawn round in front of the drawing-room fire. Vera was having a headache; she was having it in her grand, her official manner.

The death of Li Hung Chang was heavy on her soul. Occultism was justified of itself. The affair lay beyond coincidence. She had always known that there was something in occultism, supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what now. But she had never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a homicidal act on her part.

She then fell asleep.

When she awoke, some considerable time afterwards, Stephen was calling to her. It was his voice, indeed, that had aroused her. The room was dark.

‘I say, Vera,’ he demanded, in a low, slightly inimical tone, ‘have you taken a sovereign out of the empty drawer in your toilet-table?’

‘No,’ she said quickly, without thinking.

‘Ah!’ he observed reflectively, ‘I knew I was right.’ He paused, and added, coldly, ‘If you aren’t better you ought to go to bed.’

Then he left her, shutting the door with a noise that showed a certain lack of sympathy with her headache.

She sprang up. Her first feeling was one of thankfulness that that brief interview had occurred in darkness. So Stephen was aware of the existence of the sovereign! The sovereign was not occult. Possibly he had put it there. And what did he know he was ‘right’ about?

She lighted the gas, and gazed at herself in the glass, realizing that she no longer had a headache, and endeavouring to arrange her ideas.

‘What’s this?’ said another voice at the door. She glanced round hastily, guiltily. It was Charlie.

‘Steve telephoned me you were too ill to go to the dance,’ explained Charlie, ‘so I thought I’d come and make inquiries. I quite expected to find you in bed with a nurse and a doctor or two at least. What is it?’ He smiled.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘Only a headache. It’s gone now.’

She stood against the mantelpiece, so that he should not see the white parcel.

‘That’s good,’ said Charlie.

There was a pause.

‘Strange, Li Hung Chang dying last night, just after we had been talking about killing mandarins,’ she said. She could not keep off the subject. It attracted her like a snake, and she approached it in spite of the fact that she fervently wished not to approach it.

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘But Li wasn’t a mandarin, you know. And he didn’t die after we had been talking about mandarins. He died before.’

‘Oh! I thought it said in the paper he died at two o’clock this morning.’

‘Two a.m. in Pekin,’ Charlie answered. ‘You must remember that Pekin time is many hours earlier than our time. It lies so far eastward.’

‘Oh!’ she said again.

Stephen hurried in, with a worried air.

‘Ah! It’s you, Charlie!’

‘She isn’t absolutely dying, I find,’ said Charlie, turning to Vera: ‘You are going to the dance after all – aren’t you?’

‘I say, Vera,’ Stephen interrupted, ‘either you or I must have a scene with Martha. I’ve always suspected that confounded housemaid. So I put a marked sovereign in a drawer this morning, and it was gone at lunch-time. She’d better hook it instantly. Of course I shan’t prosecute.’

‘Martha!’ cried Vera. ‘Stephen, what on earth are you thinking of? I wish you would leave the servants to me. If you think you can manage this house in your spare time from the works, you are welcome to try. But don’t blame me for the consequences.’ Glances of triumph flashed in her eyes.

‘But I tell you – ‘

‘Nonsense,’ said Vera. ‘I took the sovereign. I saw it there and I took it, and just to punish you, I’ve spent it. It’s not at all nice to lay traps for servants like that.’

‘Then why did you tell me just now you hadn’t taken it?’ Stephen demanded crossly.

‘I didn’t feel well enough to argue with you then,’ Vera replied.

‘You’ve recovered precious quick,’ retorted Stephen with grimness.

‘Of course, if you want to make a scene before strangers,’ Vera whimpered (poor Charlie a stranger!), ‘I’ll go to bed.’

Stephen knew when he was beaten.

She went to the Hockey dance, though. She and Stephen and Charlie and his young sister, aged seventeen, all descended together to the Town Hall in a brougham. The young girl admired Vera’s belt excessively, and looked forward to the moment when she too should be a bewitching and captivating wife like Vera, in short, a woman of the world, worshipped by grave, bearded men. And both the men were under the spell of Vera’s incurable charm, capricious, surprising, exasperating, indefinable, indispensable to their lives.

‘Stupid superstitions!’ reflected Vera. ‘But of course I never believed it really.’

 

And she cast down her eyes to gloat over the belt.

 

(From “The Murder Of the Mandarin” by Arnold Bennet).

 

b) Highlight the following words and phrases in the text – if any are unfamiliar, try to work out their meanings from the context:

 

oracular; subliminal; thought-transference; astral; charm; marvel; coincidence; bewitch; feigned; providence; thoughtwave; spell

 

 

c) Match these definitions to the words you highlighted in the text:

 

an act or expression believed to have magical powers;

2) to cause another person to think in the same way;

to have the same thoughts;

telling people what would happen in the future or giving them advice from the gods;

relating to or using stars; relating to a world of spiritual, not physical, ideas and experiences;

a combination of events happening by chance at the same time or in the same way;

pretended; giving an appearance of smth that is not true;

to have a magic effect, often harmful;

a powerful influence on someone, usually an influence that makes them admire or obey another person;

subconscious influence that may affect you even though you do not notice or think about it;

a special event showing God’s care or a powerful force that some people believe causes everything that happens to us;

a wonder; someone or something that is very surprising or impressive;

 

d) Highlight these words with the help of the episodes and situations based on your personal experience:

 

thought-transference; oracular; providence; coincidence; spell.

e) Referring back to the text, answer these questions:

 

1) What was the philosophical speculation of Woodruff on a murder?

2) What inexplicable things happen in the world?

3) How did Vera murder a mandarin? Why was she persuaded she had done it?

4) What effect did the news produce on Vera? Why did she believe it?

5) How did a sovereign appear to be in the empty drawer in Vera’s toilet-table? Why was it put there? What did she need money for?

6) Why did Vera tell her husband that she hadn’t taken the sovereign?

7) How did Charlie explain that Li Hung Chang had died before their talking about mandarins?

8) What was the reason of Li’s death? Was it a coincidence or thought-transference?

9) Was Vera superstitious?

10) Which is more powerful: superstitions or thought-transference? Why?

11) What was your reaction to the story? Were you surprised, interested, inspired, depressed or amused by what you read?

 

f) Highlight an example in the text of each of the following:

 

1) information (something you didn’t know or realize before);

2) opinion (a point of view that made you pause and think);

3) entertainment (something that made you smile);

4) social comment (a criticism of the way people behave);

5) empathy (something that made you share the main character’s/ or writer’s/ feelings).

 

g) Recount a similar episode from your life experience and discuss it with your partner: