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Pragmatic
Python
Programming
Learning Python the Smart Way

Gabor Guta
Pragmatic Python
Programming
Learning Python the Smart Way

Gabor Guta
Pragmatic Python Programming: Learning Python the Smart Way
Gabor Guta
Budapest, Hungary

ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-8151-2 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-8152-9


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8152-9

Copyright © 2022 by Gabor Guta


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The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if
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they are subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal
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express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
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endurance and support.
Table of Contents
About the Author���������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi

About the Technical Reviewer�����������������������������������������������������������xiii

Acknowledgments������������������������������������������������������������������������������xv

Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xvii

Chapter 1: Expression: How to Compute����������������������������������������������1


Expressions with Additional Types������������������������������������������������������������������������3
Boolean Type in an Expression������������������������������������������������������������������������4
String Type in an Expression���������������������������������������������������������������������������4
Expressions with Conditional Operators����������������������������������������������������������5
Floating-Point Number Type in an Expression�������������������������������������������������6
Complex Number Type in an Expression���������������������������������������������������������7
Variable Names�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������8
Statements����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������10
Deletion of a Variable Name��������������������������������������������������������������������������������12
Additional Language Constructs�������������������������������������������������������������������������13
Statements and Expressions in Practice�������������������������������������������������������������14
Advanced Details������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������16
Names�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������16
Keywords and Special Names�����������������������������������������������������������������������16
Literals�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17
Characters with Special Meaning������������������������������������������������������������������21
Python Standards������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������23

v
Table of Contents

Object Diagram Notation�������������������������������������������������������������������������������23


Key Takeaways����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������23

Chapter 2: The Function: Programs as a Series of Statements����������25


Calling a Function�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������26
Side Effects of Functions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������27
Function Arguments��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������29
Defining a Function���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������30
Keyword Arguments��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������32
Visibility of Names����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33
Functions as Parameters������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35
Definitions of Nested Functions��������������������������������������������������������������������������36
Functions in Practice������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37
Advanced Details������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������40
Namespace and Scope����������������������������������������������������������������������������������41
Positional-Only and Keyword-Only Parameters���������������������������������������������41
Variable Number of Arguments���������������������������������������������������������������������42
Lambda Expression���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43
Decorator�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43
Yield Statement and Asynchronous Functions����������������������������������������������45
Key Takeaways����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������45

Chapter 3: The Class: How to Model the World�����������������������������������47


What Is a Class?��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������49
Creating Objects��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������50
Using Instance Variables and Methods���������������������������������������������������������������50
Defining Classes�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51
Relationships Among Classes�����������������������������������������������������������������������������55
Properties������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������58

vi
Table of Contents

Inheritance����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������61
Nested Classes���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������64
Special Methods�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65
Classes in Practice����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������68
Advanced Details������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������70
Class Variables, Class Methods, and Static Methods������������������������������������70
Abstract Base Classes�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������72
Immutable Objects and Data Classes������������������������������������������������������������73
Methods of Identifying Classes���������������������������������������������������������������������76
Class Diagrams����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������77
Key Takeaways����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������78

Chapter 4: The Control Structure: How to Describe the Workflow������81


if Statement��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������82
match Statement������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������86
while Statement��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������90
for Statement������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������97
Exception Handling�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������100
Context Management����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������104
Recursion����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105
Loops in Practice����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������106
Advanced Details����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108
Matching Classes and Other Kinds of Patterns�������������������������������������������108
Exception Classes����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������111
Context Manager Classes����������������������������������������������������������������������������112
Evaluating Strings���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113
Activity Diagram������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113
Key Takeaways��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������114

vii
Table of Contents

Chapter 5: The Sequence: From Data to the Data Structure�������������115


Lists and Their Operations��������������������������������������������������������������������������������116
Processing of a List�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������123
Tuples����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������127
Dictionaries�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129
Sets�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������132
Copying Sequences�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������134
Sequences in Practice��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������136
Advanced Details����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������137
Iterable Objects�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������137
Deep Copy of Data Structures���������������������������������������������������������������������138
Generator Functions and Coroutines�����������������������������������������������������������139
Functional-Style Manipulation of Lists��������������������������������������������������������143
Multiplicity of Class Diagram Connections��������������������������������������������������143
Sequence Diagram��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������144
Key Takeaways��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������145

Chapter 6: The Module: Organization of Program Parts


into a Unit�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������147
Built-in Modules������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������148
Defining Modules����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������152
Packages����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������153
Future Package�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������154
Package Management��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������155
Useful Third-Party Packages�����������������������������������������������������������������������������156
Modules in Practice������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159
Advanced Concepts������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������160

viii
Table of Contents

Structure of Python Projects������������������������������������������������������������������������160


Virtual Environments�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������163
Tools for Testing�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163
Tools for Static Analysis�������������������������������������������������������������������������������165
Tools for Formatting������������������������������������������������������������������������������������166
Preparation of Documentation���������������������������������������������������������������������166
Key Takeaways��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������169

Appendix A: Binary Representation��������������������������������������������������171

Appendix B: Type Annotations����������������������������������������������������������177

Appendix C: Asynchronous Programming����������������������������������������181

Bibliography�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������189

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������193

ix
About the Author
Gabor Guta studied and carried out research
at the Research Institute for Symbolic
Computation, Johannes Kepler University,
Linz, to gain an understanding of the formal
meaning of programming languages. He
worked on complex technology transfer,
cheminformatics, and bioinformatics projects
where both strong theoretical background
and practical software development skills were crucial. Currently, he is
developing distributed software for an open data project. Besides his
software development work, he has been continuously training people
both in academic and industrial settings. He has been actively teaching
Python since 2017.

xi
About the Technical Reviewer
Joshua Willman began using Python in 2015
when he needed to build neural networks
using machine learning libraries for image
classification. While building large image
datasets for his research, he needed to build
a program that would simplify the workload
and labeling process, which introduced him
to PyQt. Since then, he has tried to dive into
everything that is Python.
He currently works as a Python developer, building projects to help
others learn more about coding in Python for game development, AI, and
machine learning. Recently, he set up the site redhuli.io to explore his and
others’ interests in utilizing programming for creativity.
He is the author of Modern PyQt: Create GUI Applications for Project
Management, Computer Vision, and Data Analysis and Beginning PyQt:
A Hands-on Approach to GUI Programming, both published by Apress.

xiii
Acknowledgments
I am thankful to István Juhász, my former diploma supervisor; without his
encouragement and enthusiastic support, this book could not have come
into existence. I am grateful to my friend László Szathmáry, who helped
me as an experienced Python developer and trainer with his insightful
feedback.

xv
Introduction
Communication gaps can build up in IT workplaces between developers
and other roles not requiring programming skills. This gap frequently
hurts the project’s progress and makes cooperation between participants
difficult. My intention is to bridge this gap with this book by explaining the
common mental models with which humans think. I will also demonstrate
the way these models are applied during the programming process.
The book is based on more than two decades of training and software
development experience. Python is not only a popular and modern
programming language, but it is also an easy-to-learn and efficient tool to
reach your goals.
I will not provide too many hands-on exercises and technical details
(how an operating system is built, the way a networking protocol works,
etc.). Regrettably, I cannot offer a quick option to acquire these skills, as
the only way to achieve these skills is with extensive amounts of practice
and troubleshooting. This book will give you a strong basis for starting that
practice.

Structure and Use of the Book


My intention with the book is to discuss the Python language, along the
key concepts, using a new approach. Every chapter of the book starts
with the introduction of a particular concept and then goes through the
advanced features of the language (as if it were a reference manual).

xvii
Introduction

• For those who are just getting acquainted with the


language and whose aim is only to understand the
major concepts of the programming language, focusing
on the first parts of the chapters is recommended.
Please feel free to skip the “Advanced Features”
sections. Studying Appendix A will also be worthwhile.

• For those who are just becoming acquainted with


the language aiming to learn how to program, I
recommend running and experimenting with the
examples. It will be worthwhile to skim the “Advanced
Features” section and then return to that section later
for a detailed reading.

• For experienced software developers, it is worthwhile


to quickly read the first parts of each chapter by paying
attention to the concepts in the Python language that
do not exist in other program languages. For such
readers, the “Advanced Features” sections at the end of
the chapters are mandatory.

Figures use the UML notation, and a short description of their meaning
is shown at the end of Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5. In the source code examples,
I deviate sometimes from the Python coding standard due to the page
layout constraints. These appear mostly with short or shortened names
and 40- to 50-character lines. Program code examples are conceptually
independent units, but they assume former examples of the book have
been run, since they may refer to definitions in them. The examples are
based on the most up-to-date Python 3.10.2 version available when writing
the book. Most of the examples can be run in versions 3.8.x and 3.9.x,
which are the most widespread at this time. Results of the examples are
intentionally not published in the book. The source code in the book is
available for download and you can experiment with it.

xviii
Introduction

Source Code
All source code used in this book is available for you to download from
https://github.com/Apress/pragmatic-­python-­programming.

Installing an Environment
The installation steps for the most widespread operating systems
(Windows 10, macOS, Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS) are described here so you
can run the examples in this book. For another operating system, you can
find assistance on the Internet.

Installation on Windows 10
Follow these steps to install and run Python on Windows 10:

1. Open http://python.org in a browser, select the


Downloads menu, and then select Python 3.10.2 (or
a newer version if it’s offered).

2. The browser automatically launches the download


or displays the file download dialog, which starts the
download.

3. After selecting the Download menu, the newly


downloaded file appears: python-3.10.2.exe.
Launch the installer by clicking the filename.

4. Select the Add Python 3.10 to PATH option in the


installation window and click the “Install now” button.

xix
Other documents randomly have
different content
Quite by chance, Cyprian glanced at the clock and remarked in startled
tones that it was past eleven.

"Is it?" she asked indifferently.

Her arms were clasped round her knees and her chin resting on them.
Sometimes she rocked herself gently backwards and forwards. He smiled to
himself, remembering the pose since she was seven.

"I am thinking it is about time I saw you home," he said. "Mrs.


Carmichael will be wondering what on earth we are doing."

"No she will not. There is no one at home, Cyprian, and I am not
expected back till to-morrow."

"But where have you arranged to spend the night?"

She gave that little shrug of the shoulders, once characteristic of


fourteen-year-old Ferlie shrugging the Inessential off her horizon.

"Here, I think," she said with wide eyes on the ruby coals.

Cyprian laughed. Then he protested, in his amusement, at the simplicity


of Ferlie grown-up. Presently, he sobered and began to attempt
explanations; to all of which she turned a dispassionately deaf ear.

"Come on, dear," said Cyprian at last.

"Where to?"

Driving it home that this unexpected arrival on his doorstep had, in very
sooth, been a Ferlie-esque escapade from which he must extricate her; if she
would lend herself to extrication. He was honestly puzzled.

Of course, he realized that, since they were Themselves, and not another
couple, her outlook was perfectly reasonable. Ferlie and he. A law unto
themselves long ago, when she awoke at night to scream because her
surroundings were dark and lonely. A law unto themselves when he
received her at the hands of Martha and Mary, mistrusters of men in
general, but willing to admit him into the fold on account of that farcical
avuncular status. A law unto themselves in their unnaturally unusual
correspondence with its sprawled confidences on one side and its restrained
admissions on the other of his need of her in the background of his life.

That need was within him still, but it must be his part to limit it now that
she was grown up: to take over the reins of friendship and—and normalize
it.

"Well, Cyprian," said Ferlie, quietly watching him, "are you, even now,
an occupant of a cage in the greater Zoological Garden, outside the walls of
which I promised you, a long while ago, that I always intended to remain?"

This was utter nonsense. Ferlie, with her talk of cages at fourteen, was
not to be encouraged, but Ferlie, holding similar views at eighteen, was,
most distinctly, to be brought up short.

He shifted the chair impatiently and she forestalled his reply.

"I suppose," she said, "that some buy their freedom in the course of
years with the big price of experience, but others are born free. If you have
not bought yours yet you will some day. But I was born free. Peter, too, I
think. He has the courage of his beliefs; he is no captive to past customs,
nor is the fear of the neighbour the beginning of his wisdom. If we walk
into cages it will be of our own free will, and not because any stale bait can
tempt us from within, nor any pursuing hounds scare us from without."

"Ferlie," said the bewildered man beside her, "will you please tell me
exactly what you mean?"

She shook a tangled lock out of her eyes and, at that moment, in the
gilding firelight, he had an odd fancy that a man might fill his hands with
sovereigns who had the courage to plunge them into her hair. Involuntarily,
he touched the ruffled rebellious head.

"You and I have always understood one another," he reminded her.

She imprisoned his fingers between her two soft palms.


"It is a good many years now, Cyprian, since you and I became friends.
Whenever I have had need of you and you could possibly reach me, you
have always come. We have had to face separation for what has seemed a
vitally long time to me since your last leave. To you, already mentally
settled and developed, it may not have seemed so long. But I have been half
afraid that your return would separate us more surely than, so far, has the
sea. To test that fear, I came to-night, because I have need of you, Cyprian.
To-night, not to-morrow. When I was little, what help could you have given
me by waiting for the daylight? I used to think you could save me from the
tomb which was all ready to close on me. Now it is a cage of which I am
afraid. I want to stay with you until that fear is past. I want to assure myself
of you; to re-learn you in the light of my increased knowledge of life. To-
night, not to-morrow. For to-morrow I have to make a decision concerning
that cage, and the decision depends upon what I may learn of you in the
little time we have together to-night. I knew how you would shrink from
offending Convention; therefore I have frustrated Convention. We have
only a few more free hours in which to pick up the threads which may have
got dropped and twisted. Upon the untangling of them rests my decision of
to-morrow. I have gone to sleep in your arms so often that it is a very
natural thing for me to remain beside you now until we can both sleep—at
rest, in one another's presence again. I need you, Cyprian, just now. And I
want you to realize just how much, or how little, you need me."

All but mesmerized, he listened. That which was hide-bound in him,


and entirely reticent British, put up a dull fight against the naked simplicity
of her words. He said weakly: "Dear, you are so young. You do not
understand."

"I understand 'What a Young Girl Ought to Know,'" and she bubbled
over with quick mockery. "Curiously enough, the knowledge neither
distresses nor shames me. This isn't the Victorian era. But all that I
understand, or misunderstand, about the threadbare 'Facts of Life,' affects
neither of us with regard to this situation. We have cherished our hours in
the past, scattered here and there, each like a desert oasis. We have come to
another now. Later, very much later, I think I shall probably fall asleep in
this chair and then you may cover me up and depart in peace, yourself, to
bed. And to-morrow we can breakfast somewhere together as if I had just
come upon the morning train and you had met me, and no one need hear
that we spent a happy night, or thereabouts, re-discovering one another."

Stirred to the depths and vexed with himself for his susceptibility to her
moods, Cyprian withdrew his hand into safety.

"You always had a way of making the unnatural seem perfectly natural
and ordinary."

"What forms your opinion on what is 'natural'?" asked Ferlle, abruptly.

His brain groped around in the dark awhile before he found an answer.

"There is a daimon in every man," he insisted in low tones, speaking


more to himself than to her, "which forces upon him the knowledge when a
thing is not Right, even though it may be Natural."

And then, that very daimon, thus invoked, spoke to him in the ensuing
silence.

The same child who had fallen asleep on his shoulder in the past was
beside him now, expectant of the same "crystallized apricot" of comfort. Let
him take heed that it was such comfort as healed and did not merely drug.
What, for all her dreams, could she have grasped of the Powers which spin
the dice for good or evil? Eighteen to thirty-nine! Supposing he yielded to
this childish defiance of the Unwritten Law and anyone came to know? He
got up and crossing to the window, flung it wide. The roar of London traffic
rushed upwards on the rising wind. He stood, his profile directed at the
struggling smoke-befogged stars; his shoulders, so moulded to desk-work, a
little bowed. Far below him, the haunches of a large black draught-horse
lumbered towards a mews. Its heavy deliberation touched a chord of
memory: a fragment of verse—Yeats, wasn't it?—assailed him in warning.

"The years like great black oxen plough the land, While God the
Ploughman gathers in" ... Gathers in ... Gathers in ... The grain?

There had been a clever fantastical novel he believed written round the
theme, and he had seen it filmed.
Someone in it had found the long-desired elixir of Youth.

At the time this had not seemed impossible, but now ... "While God, the
Ploughman..." Anyway, He did not hold back the great black oxen. The
inexorable ploughing, sowing and garnering must go on. Eighteen to thirty-
nine. How possible to take advantage of Ferlie's crystal faith and
unanalysed affection? If her words veiled the faint suggestion that her need
of him was as great as his need of her—wonderingly, reverently, he
repeated it to himself, "his need of her"—he must pretend, for the present at
any rate, that he did not hear it. He must be just to her Youth, that glorious
jewel of Life which she wore with such careless indifference.

"The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the
Herdsman goads them on behind."

That was it....

"Cyprian." Her voice brought him down from the clouds and he closed
the window with a slight sense of chill. "Cyprian, look at me."

He raised his eyes to hers, to drop them again immediately.

"Can you tell me, honestly," she asked him, "that you consider it would
be what is called a 'sin' for me to lean upon our friendship in the way I
choose, to-night?"

He shook his head at that but he would not answer.

"Cyprian, look at me." Nor would he do that again. His eyelids blinked
—their old short-sighted trick—over her head, at the sapphire resting
against her white throat, at the dying embers, at the hearth-rug where lay,
kicked free by its owner, a glass-buckled Cinderella shoe.

And she knew that she would be proved helpless against his refusal so
much as to look at his conception of the Forbidden Thing: for every flutter
of his eyelids was the drawing of a shutter which blocked from her another
window of his soul.
* * * * * *

"And now," said Cyprian at last, his voice dry with exhaustion, "Would
you mind going?"

Instantaneously, Ferlie turned her back and thrust her foot into the errant
shoe. In the doorway she faced him, her cloak over her arm.

"You have never asked that of me before," she said, "and you will never
be required to say it again."

Half paralysed he heard the front door bang. In another moment the
wave of reaction set in. What in thunder was he thinking of to allow her to
go out into Jermyn Street at this hour of the night, alone?

He snatched his hat and followed, gaining on her by the fact that he
could take the lift. She was passing under the stone arch leading to the
pavement as he crashed back the gates.

"Ferlie!" he called after her, "Wait." But she did not stop nor turn her
head at the sound of his footsteps hurrying along behind her. A taxi crawled
near with its flag up. He was just too late to prevent her getting into it. With
feverish presence of mind he noted the number. Fortune favoured him, for it
was caught in a block of cars returning from the theatres, as another car
ejected its passenger on the other side of the road.

Cyprian, too fiercely anxious at the moment to see the humour of the
situation, gave his penny-novelette directions. The driver awarded him an
indifferent glance and held out his hand for earnest money. He was used to
minding his own business in his profession.

Once in full pursuit of Ferlie's taxi Cyprian found himself on the verge
of unnatural mirth. His third night in England; and he and Ferlie playing
hide-and-seek, in and out of the London traffic, like any hardened human
satyr and some nymph of the by-streets. And why? What was this
intangible, invisible Thing which had suddenly interposed itself between
them? A silly whim on her part, an instinct-driven refusal on his and the
shadow had assumed these gigantic proportions.
Outside the Carmichaels' town residence, with its Sale-advertising
boards and closed blinds, Ferlie alighted.

From the prompt departure of her driver one might divulge that she paid
him without examining the fare. On her own front door-step, wrestling with
her latch-key, Cyprian reached her.

"Ferlie, don't be a little goose!"

Her eyes meeting his in the reflection of the street lamp were as hard as
pebbles.

"Only Beckett is here," she said, referring to the old butler, "and he has
put up the chain. Since you must let me in for a silly betrayal of my
unexpected return you had better come down into the basement and see if
you can hoist me through his bedroom window, if he sleeps with it open.
His room is next to the pantry and silver-chest. If I set an alarm going
accidentally, he will only think it is a burglar at last and plunge his head
further under the clothes."

"But, Ferlie——" She was half-way down the area steps and he, less
familiar with the house, followed stumblingly.

Beckett's window was open and quite near it stood a rain-barrel. She
tossed the cloak she had not troubled to put on into Cyprian's arms.

"I can't take that with me," she said, and, before he could recover his
breath to protest, she had reached the summit of the barrel. An instant she
swayed on the edge of it, balancing herself by means of a pipe running
down from the bathroom window. She was now only a shadowy shape
poised above him in the darkness.

"Somewhere," the coldly-spoken sentence stole down to him after she


drew herself up on to Beckett's window-ledge, "I have heard it said that 'to
the pure all things are impure.'"

The blank black square of her egress stared unfathomably back at


Cyprian, standing below it with the loose unfolded cloak, emptied of its
owner, in his arms.

CHAPTER VII

Her father said, "Well, if he is a decent chap, and Ferlie likes him, she is
lucky." Adding, a little later, from his pillows, his brow considerably
smoother than it had been for some time past, "At any rate, he will never
leave his wife a pauper."

Her mother said, "Oh, my darling! I always knew you'd come to see." ...
And aye had let the tears down fall in thanksgiving that there existed no
Jock o' Hazeldean to abstract the bride at the last moment.

Peter said, "There will be lots of girls ready to scratch your eyes out
with envy, Old Thing."

Lady Cardew said, "My dear, I thought from the very first that it was
Meant."

While, to Ferlie, Clifford said, "I was perfectly sure you would come
round in the end. I know women!"

And Beckett lost his bet with the cook; perhaps because he was less
inclined to put his head under the clothes at night than one might think.

Cyprian said nothing at all. He was, apparently, most tremendously


busy; though, as Mrs. Carmichael justly remarked, "One would have
imagined he would make an effort to come in, considering how interested
he had always been in dear Ferlie as a child."

Dear Ferlie as a woman was beginning to show herself a little


disconcerting. A dignified demeanour was all very well for one so soon to
wear the title of Lady Clifford Greville-Mainwaring, but this complete
aloofness to the arrival of satin-lined boxes and sealed wooden cases was
almost irritating. People were constantly coming up to the scratch, too, and
relations who, in the event of the prospective bridegroom's comparative
penury, would have considered pepper-pots quite suitable for the state of
life unto which it had pleased God to call Ferlie, were, in present
circumstances, producing eight-day clocks and jewellery.

Dear Clifford, also, was singularly blessed in a dearth of relatives who


would, otherwise, have been entitled to run appraising eyes over the girl
destined to assist him bear the burden of an ancient name.

"Not but that," as Ferlie's mother more than once pointed out to
congratulating friends, "the Carmichaels could hold their heads as high as
the Greville-Mainwarings in that respect." She trusted Lady Cardew had
rubbed it into the Duchess. The Duchess herself, a first cousin of Clifford's
father, emerged presently, from the mist of introductions, as an untidy,
acidly cheerful old lady, much more interested in horse-racing than in
Clifford; though she had been overheard to express a hope that his fiancée
had not bitten off more than she could chew. Which vulgarity reconvinced
Ferlie's mother that everybody in the Peerage had not got in, so to speak, by
the front door.

The Carmichaels were unmistakably "front door" people, even though


Ferlie's particular branch might remain collateral for some years to come in
default of railway accidents and infantile epidemics.

There was no earthly reason to delay the wedding. The doctors had not
made up their minds as to the date of Mr. Carmichael's operation and the
sooner his wife was free to devote all her energies to this decision the better.

Lady Cardew advised haste on account of her own private recollection


that Clifford had, more than once, been guilty of changing a matrimonially-
inclined mind. Had she imparted this news to Ferlie the latter might have
insisted on delay; at least until Cyprian should be completely out of her
range, in Burma. As it was, he received a silver-edged invitation to the
wedding with everybody else; though Mrs. Carmichael hoped to give him
to understand quite clearly that he had fallen from grace, when they met
face to face on the Day.
He had decided—nearly—to refuse it.

He had decided—nearly—that Ferlie could never have meant anything


at all by that most particularly Ferlie-esque mood.

He had decided—nearly—that he had done Right.

But the Daimon produced nothing to demonstrate that virtue brings its
own reward.

He had made two attempts to see Ferlie and arrive at some sort of an
explanation, but on each occasion she had deliberately frustrated him.

He had found it impossible to make his letter of congratulation anything


but stereotyped. Cyprian was not good at expressing himself except in
reports where exhaustive information was required in condensed form. It
would be more than necessary for him to send Ferlie a wedding present.

Nothing impersonal could prove of interest in the ancestral halls of


Mainwaring. Yet, there did not seem to be any personal message that Ferlie
would be likely to welcome from him at the moment. A younger man had
felt more cause for resentment, that Ferlie, during the short intimate
moments when she hailed their recovered friendship, had not confided in
him her intention of marrying this man. Cyprian was, himself, incapable of
resentment against her, however well-deserved.

By chance, he caught sight of something in a jeweller's window which


attracted him for unanalysable reasons: it was a small golden apple attached
to a slender gold chain. By means of a catch, cunningly concealed under the
leaf, it split in half, revealing a tiny magnifying mirror and a minute
powder-puff. Round the mirror was engraved the legend, "To the Fairest."

Cyprian bought the apple, caused it to be packed and sealed, and wrote
the address in the shop; whence he despatched it to Ferlie, omitting even to
enclose his card.

She did not acknowledge it but, at least, she did not send it back.
* * * * * *

With the dawning of her wedding day a fatalistic calm descended upon
his tortured mentality, preparing him to see the thing decently through.

On account of Mr. Carmichael's illness the ceremony and reception


were to be comparatively "quiet." But when Cyprian arrived, in response to
exultant bells, at the fashionable church's door, whence a strip of red carpet
protruded like a derisive tongue, his muffled senses perceived quite a
formidable array of guests in wedding-garments who ostensibly came to
pray and remained to stare.

An immaculate gentleman, blandly manipulating yards of scarlet cords


suggestive of a royal lynching, inquired of him, "whether he were on the
side of the bride or the bridegroom," and, receiving an inarticulate reply,
pushed him into the end of the last pew and left him to his own devices with
a hymn-book.

The organ blared joyously, as if the organist aimed at drowning the


torrent of whispering and the squeaks of enraptured greeting uniting the
pews.

Here and there, was a face known to Cyprian through the medium of the
illustrated papers.

Fragments of conversation were wafted backwards through the lily-


scented air.

"The mother really landed him, I believe."

"Yes, the Glennies are furious, and Mona Glennie says..."

"But he was never actually engaged to her, was he?"

"Wild oats. What young man doesn't... No. The Vane girl was older than
he was. The attraction at that establishment was the Samaritan Actress."

"Well, it's the first time I have heard a member of the tribe of Abraham
described as a Samaritan."
"You don't understand. Why, she took in the Vane when all doors..."

Cyprian sat back and opened the hymn-book at random. Did he feel
things more intensely than these folk and was it a disgrace to be thin-
skinned?

Muriel, and now ... Ferlie. "The One before the Last." But Muriel had
figured in the life of a different man from the Cyprian who sat here
watching for Ferlie. If intense desire could be construed by the high gods
and accepted as prayer, he did most intensely desire Ferlie to be happy.

The buzz of conversation thickened into low murmurings and died. The
bridegroom had entered by a side door and was speaking to someone in a
front pew.

Almost immediately the Voluntary changed to Lohengrin's "Wedding


March," and a clump of rose-coloured dresses, presumably belonging to
bridesmaids in the porch, took individual form and clustered round
someone in white.

From his post at the back Cyprian had not been able to gather more than
that Ferlie's future husband was tall and rather thin but, on turning his head
now, his eyes encountered hers fully. He was startled by the impression that
he was staring into the face of a perfect stranger. How ghastly white she
looked! The fraction of a moment and the eyes dropped, even as his own
had dropped before hers the night she had wished to keep him at her side.

She was passing by on Peter's arm. The pair of them looked as if they
ought still to be going to school.

Peter's face wore precisely the same expression as must have adorned it
when he first took his place at roll-call among the sixth-form "Bloods."

The bridesmaids twittered behind large bouquets of sweet-peas.

Everybody was standing. Everybody was howling a hymn, what time all
craned their necks and stealthily mounted hassocks to stare at Ferlie ...
Ferlie, who hated people to see her at emotional moments.... He would
wake in a little while to find her beside him, seeking shelter from the Thing
which had whitened her face with terror....

"Dearly Beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God..." Ah,


well, if the man thought so.

Cyprian felt certain that, whatever God had seen fit to do in Cana of
Galilee, He was not presiding amongst these wedding-guests.

Every now and then a gap in the swaying pews would give him a
glimpse of Ferlie's mother dabbing at her face with a handkerchief, in token
that she must be regarded as bereft of a daughter against her will. At
intervals, she was, doubtless, thanking God that she had done her duty.

Cyprian again sought refuge in the hymn-book.

The mutterings up at the altar were stilled and various people had
escaped from confinement to wander through the vestry-door in the wake of
the chief actors in this religious farce. Or was it tragedy?

While bitter thought was crowding thus against bitter thought in his
mind, his gaze became involuntarily fixed upon the lines of the hymn the
choir was singing to fill in time:

"O Perfect Love, all human thought transcending!


Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy Throne,
That theirs may be the love that knows no ending
Whom Thou for evermore doth join in one."

But—Good Gracious!—thought Cyprian, in the light of blinding revelation,


he and Ferlie did not need all this to make them one. They had always
known that they were one, united by some mystic Force which had its roots
in a Far Beginning and its branches in the Eternities.

Then why were they building these barriers deliberately between them
and their united freedom?

"With childlike trust which fears not pain nor death."


He had missed the rest of the second verse, but that last line was a perfect
description of Ferlie's approach to Love in the abstract. (The woman in
front of him would not stop sniffing.)

"Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow,


Grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife;
And to Life's day the glorious unknown morrow
That dawns upon eternal love and life...."

It was over. In a dream he had seen her flit by him, glancing neither to
the left nor to the right, but this time she was not clinging to Peter.

With her departure the church became a happy tumult of rising sound.
The organist had pulled out everything in the diapason line that his fingers
could reach, and Cyprian escaped along the flower-strewn carpet, and so to
his taxi, with a great longing upon him for the silence of catacombs.

The philosophic sensations which had followed his sleepless night were
no proof now against his throbbing nerves. Ferlie, also, he remembered,
experienced physical suffering in mental sorrow. The knowledge formed
another of the cobweb-threads binding them to one another.

In Mrs. Carmichael's drawing-room people were now shaking hands


with her. There was more noise and a great deal of affected laughter.
Cyprian, avoiding the Family, including the uplifted Peter, slipped into an
ante-room in search of whisky and soda.

He could not face Ferlie before all that crowd. He could not.

From the ante-room he made his way to an apartment containing a bowl


of goldfish. He remembered it commanded a view of the stairs. If she
passed up or down the staircase, unattended, he might reasonably expect to
have her for a moment to himself. He waited for a long while, watching the
goldfish go round and round in circles. They roused misty recollections of
Ferlie's nonsensical talk of the general imprisonment of human spirits.
When she did come, although she passed right through the room in her
white veil and flowing draperies, he nearly failed to step forward from that
sheltered corner by the bookcase.

"Ferlie!"

She started violently and swung round.

"Oh! It's you, is it?"

She spoke on a high-pitched delirious note. Naturally, people were


agreeing any girl would be over-excited who had achieved this marriage.

Her whole appearance shocked Cyprian, who knew the real Ferlie.

"I never acknowledged your gift, Cyprian. The Apple of Discord.


Clever of you to think of that. Not that I needed a material reminder of the
fact that you and I had at last experienced ... shall we call it a
misunderstanding?"

The words raced one another to a close, and she ended on the edge of
shrill laughter. He flinched as if she had struck him in the face.

The tale of their years for that instant reversed, he looked back at her
with the eyes of a hurt and bewildered child. Shaded them with his hand
against the pain as he replied:

"You know that is neither fair nor true."

"I no longer know what is true," said Ferlie.

Half beside himself with the sight of her thus altered, he caught her
wrists and held them.

"Because you have formed a new and all-absorbing tie for the future, is
it necessary to mock at that older discarded friendship which stretches out a
hand to you from the past?"
A slow flush crept up her face and the grey eyes widened on a look of
anger and intense pain.

"Mock? No, Cyprian, I am not Muriel Vane—kind to men in order to be


cruel. If I seem to indulge in that particular vein of cruelty, it is because I
know of no other way to be kind ... now."

He saw the thin gleam of a gold chain which lost itself in the folds of
transparent softness near her throat, and was superseded by a visible string
of pearls—"the gift of the Bridegroom."

Then she wrenched herself away and left him there, staring
uncomprehendingly at the goldfish going round and round.

CHAPTER VIII

Cyprian did not return to the flat. He went out into the restless London
streets. Block after block he passed, from the more fashionable quarters to
the outskirts of the park, walking swiftly to escape pursuing Memory, until
at last the damp darkness of the river divided the myriad scintillating eyes
of the city.

Further along the Embankment dead forms lay huddled where the
shadows lay deepest, every now and again to start erect, galvanized into life
by the angry flash of a police-lantern.

As he paused to strike a match against a stone bench, shaped like an


incompleted coffin, one of these corpses twitched itself upright.

"Fit ter drop!" it muttered, still in the throes of uneasy slumber; "Gawd!
fer one bloody night to fergit meself in."

Cyprian replaced his pipe in his pocket and fumbled.


"Here," he said, "I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I
am, but if you, too, are in need of sleep and a little forgetting, go and buy it
with this, which will not buy it for me."

With the astonished gratitude of a "Gawd bless yer bleedin' eyes,


Gov'ner" (even here it was God, God, God, thought Cyprian, who refused to
be shut out of Man's tortured intellect even while it anathematized His
works) this invisible wreck of Humanity, made in His image, slouched
away to drink itself blind to sorrow for a short time in some starless rat-hole
known only to its kind.

And Cyprian sat and smoked on the deserted seat, still redolent with the
effluvia of rotting rags, until a suspicious arc of light searched him out in
his sins and a voice, hoarse with hectorings, commanded him to move on.

Morning found him so far from home that a sleepy taxi-driver whom he
hailed rolled a jaundiced eye on receiving the directions of this individual
whose damp, crumpled clothes and unclean collar showed unmistakable
evidence of an unusual brand of night-on-the-tiles, and Cyprian was obliged
to disburse half the fare in advance.

His physical exhaustion stood him now in good stead and he slept
deeply on the shabby leather cushions the whole way back to the flat. Slept
again on his undisturbed bed, afterwards, till the scandalized valet roused
him for tea; his first meal in twenty-four hours.

Before he set sail for the East, he made one attempt, and only one, to
renew correspondence with Ferlie.

The letter conveyed nothing to her of the true state of his mind. In
despair he had closed it on a pathetic admission, "I fear I have no gift of
expression." She answered him, but her own methods of expression were,
as usual, fantastic. In the letter she enclosed a small gold key. "A gift for a
gift, Cyprian. I suppose it was inevitable that you should shut the gates
upon me. I send the sign that only you can unlock them."

He placed the key upon his watch-chain, and, with Herculean efforts of
self-control, refrained from any attempts to discover her meaning.
She had always been such a rebel; she had always been so sure of the
light within her and, alas, she had always been so sure of the light within
him.

A few weeks later, when, the honeymoon accomplished, Ferlie and her
husband had returned to town, Mr. Carmichael died.

The operation proved successful enough but, somehow, he never really


rallied. Perhaps the predominant feeling that his day's work was now ended
lessened the incentive to live.

He smiled with grim satisfaction the afternoon Peter came to see him; a
Peter who had already begun to regard the Human Form Divine in the same
light as the Butcher regards the liver and kidneys which he slaps down upon
the marble slab to dissect for purchasing housewives; a Peter who would be
decidedly happier using the knife than saving the unwary limb that might
stray his way.

Peter's hair was untidy, his eyes bloodshot, his collar unhygienic, and
his finger-nails in half-mourning. His appearance was altogether
unsterilized and self-assured. He cried, with a loud voice. His opinions on
certain experimental operations, his criticisms on those neighbouring
embryo surgeons at work on the same yellow preserved leg as himself, his
versions, punctuated with spasms of hearty merriment, of the latest hospital
yarn, portraying his fellow-students as a set of inquisitive young ghouls
more triumphant over an eminent physician's sponge forgotten in a victim's
intestines than troubled with sympathy for the latter's bereaved relatives.

"And I'll tell you exactly what they did to you, Father; it's old Gumboil's
favourite amusement. First he cuts open the..."

"Peter, I am surprised at you!" broke in his horrified mother.

Thus had the path of Peter been made smooth and his way plain by
Ferlie's brilliant marriage.

"I staked little enough on her," said Mr. Carmichael, relishing the jest of
Martha and Mary's antiquated establishment. "Your mother was mistrustful
of education for her own sex; she did quite well for herself without it, didn't
she? Ferlie seems to have justified the conviction that the old-fashioned girl
gets the matrimonial plums. At any rate, you will owe your sister a good
deal. See that she stays happy."

Of his son-in-law, whom he only saw once, he said very little.

"Impossible to judge them by the young men of my day. This type did
well enough in the War crisis."

He did not leave his wife badly off. With Peter on the way to being
floated, and Ferlie secure, she had her widow's pension to herself, besides a
little private means and the sum the big town-house eventually fetched
when Ferlie bought it, pandering to a dream of her mother's that Peter might
one day practise there and retain the Carmichael traditions in the old setting.
Till that satisfactory day it could nearly always be sub-let.

Somewhat doubtful of the Christian aspect of her husband's expressed


desire for cremation Mrs. Carmichael, while respecting his wishes,
determined that the rest of the funeral obsequies should be sufficiently
orthodox to disarm his Creator.

"No proper tombstone, you see," she complained damply to Ferlie. "The
design should, so obviously, have been a severe cross, quite plain, with
perhaps a weeping angel praying. Then a dove of peace hovering, and
maybe a few lilies. The simpler the better, you know. And a scroll at the
foot, or an open book with one of those grand old texts—Isaiah, is it, or
Ecclesiasticus?—anyway, one of the Prophets—'Fear not for I have
redeemed thee.' So comforting. Or else the one about panting for living
waters that always makes me feel thirsty myself. Your dear father was so
fond of rhetoric."

Ferlie, not quite sure whether the weeping angel was destined to wear a
delicate semblance to the bereaved wife, nor convinced that the cross could
be considered suitably symbolic of the faith of one who had ever regarded it
as the undeserved gibbet, brought upon him by himself, of a well-meaning
Eastern agitator nearly two thousand years ago, was inclined to demur.
"Father never evinced either the slightest fear of his condemnation
hereafter, nor any faith in an ultimate redemption," she protested, "and I
think it would have been rather hypocritical to parade a thirst for living
waters after death in anyone who can hardly be described as having gasped
for them during life."

Then, responding to her mother's grievously shocked demeanour, she


relented into explanation.

"I think I never admired Father so much in his life as I did at his death.
He closed his eyes, restfully and unfearingly, upon the consciousness of
work well done and principles truly upheld. What business is it of ours if
they were mistaken principles? So many people, who profess to cling to the
creeds supported by the Churches, live as if they had none, and then drift
out on a tide of terrified remorse and shame. But, personally, I would not
feel fit to intercede for Father's 'forgiveness,' if he really requires to be
forgiven for being true to his lights."

Ferlie's mother was too religious to see it, and, since it seems to follow
that the brighter the hope of Eternal Life, the blacker the garb in which it
must be approached, there was much melodious moaning at the bar when
her husband's ashes were interred upon the shores of that Eternal Sea which
brought us hither and upon which, in imagination, she had safely launched
his sceptical soul.

A week later she was still sewing bands of crepe on to Peter's various
coats and seeking consolation in those little details of mournful respect she
was able to accord her Dead.

* * * * * *

In due course, Aunt Brillianna, returning from the uttermost ends of


Italy, was overwhelmed by the volume of water which had poured under the
Family Bridge during her inexcusable retirement.

As the younger relatives, who had expectations at her hands, remarked:


"Anything might have happened to her at her time of life." Why, Death had
happened to her nephew!

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