LMEB: Long-horizon Memory Embedding Benchmark
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B00_0 | THE LAW AND THE LADY
by Wilkie Collins
NOTE:
ADDRESSED TO THE READER.
IN offering this book to you, I have no Preface to write. I have only to request that you will bear in mind certain established truths, which occasionally escape your memory when you are reading a work of fiction. Be pleased, then, to remember (First... | |
B00_1 | “FOR after this manner in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”
Concluding the Marriage Service of the Chur... | |
B00_2 | “Take his arm!” she whispered, in the tone of a woman who had lost all patience with me.
I took his arm.
“Follow your uncle.”
Holding fast by my husband’s arm, I followed my uncle and the curate who had assisted him at the marriage.
The two clergymen led us into the vestry. The church was in one of the dreary quarters ... | |
B00_3 | The last ceremony left to be performed was, as usual, the signing of the marriage register. In the confusion of the moment (and in the absence of any information to guide me) I committed a mistake--ominous, in my aunt Starkweather’s opinion, of evil to come. I signed my married instead of my maiden name.
“What!” cried ... | |
B00_4 | Even then, in the days of my ignorance and my innocence, that curious outbreak of my aunt’s superstition produced a certain uneasy sensation in my mind. It was a consolation to me to feel the reassuring pressure of my husband’s hand. It was an indescribable relief to hear my uncle’s hearty voice wishing me a happy life... | |
B00_5 | “I wish you health and happiness, my love, with all my heart. You are old enough to choose for yourself, and--no offense, Mr. Woodville, you and I are new friends--and I pray God, Valeria, it may turn out that you have chosen well. Our house will be dreary enough without you; but I don’t complain, my dear. On the contr... | |
B00_6 | The parting with old Benjamin came next. “I wish you well, my dear; don’t forget me,” was all he said. But the old days at home came back on me at those few words. Benjamin always dined with us on Sundays in my father’s time, and always brought some little present with him for his master’s child. I was very near to “sp... | |
B00_7 | The glass shows a tall and slender young woman of three-and-twenty years of age. She is not at all the sort of person who attracts attention in the street, seeing that she fails to exhibit the popular yellow hair and the popular painted cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later days (as it was dressed years si... | |
B00_8 | The whole picture, as reflected in the glass, represents a woman of some elegance, rather too pale, and rather too sedate and serious in her moments of silence and repose--in short, a person who fails to strike the ordinary observer at first sight, but who gains in general estimation on a second, and sometimes on a thi... | |
B00_9 | Have I succeeded or failed in describing the picture of myself which I see in the glass? It is not for me to say. I have done my best to keep clear of the two vanities--the vanity of depreciating and the vanity of praising my own personal appearance. For the rest, well written or badly written, thank Heaven it is done!... | |
B00_10 | I see a man who is not quite so tall as I am, and who has the misfortune of looking older than his years. His forehead is prematurely bald. His big chestnut-colored beard and his long overhanging mustache are prematurely streaked with gray. He has the color in the face which my face wants, and the firmness in his figur... | |
B00_11 | With this one little drawback (if it is a drawback), there is nothing infirm or old or awkward about him; his slight limp when he walks has (perhaps to my partial eyes) a certain quaint grace of its own, which is pleasanter to see than the unrestrained activity of other men. And last and best of all, I love him! I love... | |
B00_12 | The glass has told me all I want to know. We leave the vestry at last.
The sky, cloudy since the morning, has darkened while we have been in the church, and the rain is beginning to fall heavily. The idlers outside stare at us grimly under their umbrellas as we pass through their ranks and hasten into our carriage. No ... | |
B00_13 | A _coup_ has been reserved for us at the railway station. The attentive porter, on the look-out for his fee pulls down the blinds over the side windows of the carriage, and shuts out all prying eyes in that way. After what seems to be an interminable delay the train starts. My husband winds his arm round me. “At last!”... | |
B00_14 | Still sitting close together, with my hand in his, with my head on his shoulder, little by little we fell insensibly into silence. Had we already exhausted the narrow yet eloquent vocabulary of love? Or had we determined by unexpressed consent, after enjoying the luxury of passion that speaks, to try the deeper and fin... | |
B00_15 | Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and foaming way through a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a windy, shadowy evening. A heavily clouded sunset lay low and red in the west. A solitary angler stood casting his fly at a turn in the stream where the backwater lay still and deep under an overhang... | |
B00_16 | Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the bank, sometimes (when the stream turned again) in the shallower water rushing over its rocky bed, the angler followed the captured trout, now letting the line run out and now winding it in again, in the difficult and delicate process of “playing” the fish. ... | |
B00_17 | The distance was trifling, the water was shallow, the bed of the river was (fortunately for me) of sand. Beyond the fright and the wetting I had nothing to complain of. In a few moments I was out of the water and up again, very much ashamed of myself, on the firm ground. Short as the interval was, it proved long enough... | |
B00_18 | He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without the fish. Knowing how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have been in his place, I apologized very earnestly. In my eagerness to make atonement, I even offered to show him a spot where he might try again, lower down the stream.
He would not hear of it; he... | |
B00_19 | I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my mother’s sister, and that the two had been father and mother to me since the death of my parents. He asked if he might venture to call on Doctor Starkweather the next day, mentioning the name of a friend of his, with whom he believed the vicar to be acquainted. ... | |
B00_20 | And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that first meeting, I had him by my side; he was mine for life! I lifted my head from his bosom to look at him. I was like a child with a new toy--I wanted to make sure that he was really my own.
He never noticed the action; he never moved in his corner of the... | |
B00_21 | We had long since owned our love and devoted our lives to each other. Already our interests were one; already we shared the pleasures and the pains of life. I had gone out to meet him that night with a heavy heart, to seek comfort in his presence and to find encouragement in his voice. He noticed that I sighed when he ... | |
B00_22 | He said it in a kiss. We had a moment of exquisite forgetfulness of the hard ways of life--a moment of delicious absorption in each other. I came back to realities fortified and composed, rewarded for all that I had gone through, ready to go through it all over again for another kiss. Only give a woman love, and there ... | |
B00_23 | “No, they have done with objecting. They have remembered at last that I am of age, and that I can choose for myself. They have been pleading with me, Eustace, to give you up. My aunt, whom I thought rather a hard woman, has been crying--for the first time in my experience of her. My uncle, always kind and good to me, h... | |
B00_24 | “My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David.”
“Why?”
He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike his natural tone that his voice sounded quite strange to me.
“You won’t be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?” I said. “My uncle, as I understood him, had several motives for writing to the major. One of them was to i... | |
B00_25 | To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our engagement to my uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a little flighty and strange. The vicar had naturally questioned him about his family. He had answered that his father was dead; and he had consented, though not very readily, to announce his conte... | |
B00_26 | This explanation was enough for me; it implied, so far as I was concerned, a compliment to my superior influence over Eustace, which a woman always receives with pleasure. But it failed to satisfy my uncle and my aunt. The vicar expressed to Mr. Woodville a wish to write to his mother, or to see her, on the subject of ... | |
B00_27 | Under such circumstances as these, to speak of my uncle’s motives was to venture on very delicate ground. Eustace relieved me from further embarrassment by asking a question to which I could easily reply.
“Has your uncle received any answer from Major Fitz-David?” he inquired.
“Yes.
“Were you allowed to read it?” His v... | |
B00_28 | “If _I_ had written for information about you,” I answered, “it would have been plain enough for me.”
“Is it not plain enough for your uncle?”
“No.”
“What does he say?”
“Why need you care to know, my darling?”
“I want to know, Valeria. There must be no secret between us in this matter. Did your uncle say anything when ... | |
B00_29 | “No,” I replied. “I only said that I did not understand the major’s conduct.”
“And what did your uncle say next? If you love me, Valeria, tell me the truth.”
“He used very strong language, Eustace. He is an old man; you must not be offended with him.”
“I am not offended. What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Mark my words! Ther... | |
B00_30 | He attempted to leave me. I clung to him in an agony of terror that shook me from head to foot.
“What do you mean?” I asked, as soon as I could speak. “I am yours and yours only. What have I said, what have I done, to deserve those dreadful words?”
“We must part, my angel,” he answered, sadly. “The fault is none of you... | |
B00_31 | I held him desperately, recklessly. His eyes, put me beside myself; his words filled me with a frenzy of despair.
“Go where you may,” I said, “I go with you! Friends--reputation--I care nothing who I lose, or what I lose! Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don’t madden me! I can’t live without you. I must and will be your... | |
B00_32 | Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight of seeing him by my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!
Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to the sweet realities of the present, I let my cheek touch his cheek, I whispered to him softly, “Oh, how I love you! how I love yo... | |
B00_33 | He had been thinking, he told me, of the contrast between his past and his present life. Bitter remembrance of the years that had gone had risen in his memory, and had filled him with melancholy misgivings of his capacity to make my life with him a happy one. He had asked himself if he had not met me too late--if he we... | |
B00_34 | The favorite watering-place was empty; the season was just over. Our arrangements for the wedding tour included a cruise to the Mediterranean in a yacht lent to Eustace by a friend. We were both fond of the sea, and we were equally desirous, considering the circumstances under which we had married, of escaping the noti... | |
B00_35 | I awoke, suddenly and unaccountably, from a deep and dreamless sleep with an all-pervading sensation of nervous uneasiness which I had never felt before. In the old days at the Vicarage my capacity as a sound sleeper had been the subject of many a little harmless joke. From the moment when my head was on the pillow I h... | |
B00_36 | I went to the window. The sun was just rising over the calm gray sea. For a while the majestic spectacle before me exercised a tranquilizing influence on the irritable condition of my nerves. But ere long the old restlessness returned upon me. I walked slowly to and fro in the room, until I was weary of the monotony of... | |
B00_37 | I took out the bottles and pots and brushes and combs, the knives and scissors in one compartment, the writing materials in another. I smelled the perfumes and pomatums; I busily cleaned and dusted the bottles with my handkerchief as I took them out. Little by little I completely emptied the dressing-case. It was lined... | |
B00_38 | I eagerly turned the photograph, expecting to see a woman with a stern, ill-tempered, forbidding countenance. To my surprise, the face showed the remains of great beauty; the expression, though remarkably firm, was yet winning, tender, and kind. The gray hair was arranged in rows of little quaint old-fashioned curls on... | |
B00_39 | The striking of a clock downstairs in the hall warned me of the flight of time. I carefully put back all the objects in the dressing-case (beginning with the photograph) exactly as I had found them, and returned to the bedroom. As I looked at my husband, still sleeping peacefully, the question forced itself into my min... | |
B00_40 | Eustace hesitated at asking me to accompany him to the yacht. It would be necessary for him to examine the inventory of the vessel, and to decide questions, not very interesting to a woman, relating to charts and barometers, provisions and water. He asked me if I would wait for his return. The day was enticingly beauti... | |
B00_41 | The scene on that fine autumn morning was nothing less than enchanting. The brisk breeze, the brilliant sky, the flashing blue sea, the sun-bright cliffs and the tawny sands at their feet, the gliding procession of ships on the great marine highway of the English Channel--it was all so exhilarating, it was all so delig... | |
B00_42 | Just as we were about to pass the stranger she took her handkerchief from her pocket, and accidentally drew out with it a letter, which fell unnoticed by her, on the sand. I was nearest to the letter, and I picked it up and offered it to the lady.
The instant she turned to thank me, I stood rooted to the spot. There wa... | |
B00_43 | In another minute my familiar landlady, walking on the other side of my mother-in-law, decided the question for me. I happened to say that I supposed we must by that time be near the end of our walk--the little watering-place called Broadstairs. “Oh no, Mrs. Woodville!” cried the irrepressible woman, calling me by my n... | |
B00_44 | I followed her, quite helplessly, to the base of the cliff. Some fallen fragments of chalk offered us a seat. I vaguely heard the voluble landlady’s expressions of sympathy and regret; I mechanically took the smelling-bottle which my husband’s mother offered to me, after hearing my name, as an act of kindness to a stra... | |
B00_45 | In the meantime the old lady was still speaking to me with the most considerate sympathy. She too was fatigued, she said. She had passed a weary night at the bedside of a near relative staying at Ramsgate. Only the day before she had received a telegram announcing that one of her sisters was seriously ill. She was hers... | |
B00_46 | The landlady and I recognized him at the same moment. It was Eustace coming to meet us, as we had arranged. The irrepressible landlady gave the freest expression to her feelings. “Oh, Mrs. Woodville, ain’t it lucky? here is Mr. Woodville himself.”
Once more I looked at my mother-in-law. Once more the name failed to pro... | |
B00_47 | He made no answer. The landlady, drawing the inevitable inference from the words that she had just heard, looked from me to my mother-in-law in a state of amazement, which paralyzed even her tongue. I waited with my eyes on my husband, to see what he would do. If he had delayed acknowledging me another moment, the whol... | |
B00_48 | She had hitherto kept her seat. She now rose slowly and faced her son in silence. The first expression of surprise passed from her face. It was succeeded by the most terrible look of mingled indignation and contempt that I ever saw in a woman’s eyes.
“I pity your wife,” she said.
With those words and no more, lifting h... | |
B00_49 | He put those questions as composedly, so far as his manner was concerned, as if nothing remarkable had happened. But his eyes and his lips betrayed him. They told me that he was suffering keenly in secret. The extraordinary scene that had just passed, far from depriving me of the last remains of my courage, had strung ... | |
B00_50 | “I am quite recovered,” I said. “Let us go back, as we came, on foot.”
Eustace glanced at the landlady. The landlady understood him.
“I won’t intrude my company on you, sir,” she said, sharply. “I have some business to do at Broadstairs, and, now I am so near, I may as well go on. Good-morning, Mrs. Woodville.”
She lai... | |
B00_51 | Instead of answering, he burst into a fit of laughter--loud, coarse, hard laughter, so utterly unlike any sound I had ever yet heard issue from his lips, so strangely and shockingly foreign to his character as _I_ understood it, that I stood still on the sands and openly remonstrated with him.
“Eustace! you are not lik... | |
B00_52 | “My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a serious explanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the world that you would expect from me. The idea of taking my mother seriously!” He burst out laughing again. “My darling, you don’t know how you amuse me.”
It was all forced: it was all unnat... | |
B00_53 | “It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn’t understand herself,” he answered. “But I will try. The key to my poor dear mother’s character is, in one word--Eccentricity.”
If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole dictionary to describe the lady whom I had met on the beach, “Eccentri... | |
B00_54 | “Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was walking behind her. She could not have known of the existence of such a person as myself until I spoke to her first.”
“So you suppose, Valeria.”
“I am certain of it.”
“Pardon me--you don’t know my mother as I do.”
I began to lose all patience with him.
“Do y... | |
B00_55 | “‘Acted’ is the right word,” he said, just as composedly as before. “The women on the stage are not the only women who can act. My mother’s object was to make herself thoroughly acquainted with you, and to throw you off your guard by speaking in the character of a stranger. It is exactly like her to take that roundabou... | |
B00_56 | I let him go on without saying a word. I listened--oh! with such a heavy heart, with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and despair! The idol of my worship, the companion, guide, protector of my life--had he fallen so low? could he stoop to such shameless prevarication as this?
Was there one word of truth in all t... | |
B00_57 | I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the miserable conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a family secret between my husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, we were separated, after a married life of barely four days.
“Valeria,” he asked, “have you nothing to say to me?”
... | |
B00_58 | He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to look at me.
I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of my weakness and my want of spirit. I was determined not to look at him.
In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at my feet, with a cry of despair that cut throu... | |
B00_59 | “Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don’t believe a word of what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly, contemptible lies! You don’t know what I have gone through; you don’t know how I have been tortured. Oh, my darling, try not to despise me! I must have been beside myself when I spoke to you as ... | |
B00_60 | Does it matter where we live, so long as we live for each other? Forgive and forget! Oh, Valeria, Valeria, forgive and forget!” | |
B00_61 | Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his voice. Remember this. And remember that I loved him.
“It is easy to forgive,” I said, sadly. “For your sake, Eustace, I will try to forget.”
I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air of a man who was too humble to venture on any mor... | |
B00_62 | On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked, talked, as if his life depended upon his not being silent for an instant on the rest of the way back. To me it was dreadful to hear him. I could estimate what he was suffering by the violence which he--ordinarily a silent and thoughtful man--was now doing to... | |
B00_63 | “Oh yes--take any time you like,” he answered, not (as I thought) very willingly. “While you are resting--there are still one or two little things to be settled--I think I will go back to the yacht. Is there anything I can do for you, Valeria, before I go?”
“Nothing--thank you, Eustace.”
He hastened away to the harbor.... | |
B00_64 | The effort was beyond me. Worn out in mind and body alike, I was perfectly incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I vaguely felt--if I left things as they were--that I could never hope to remove the shadow which now rested on the married life that had begun so brightly. We might live together, so as to sav... | |
B00_65 | Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to me. Was some new trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand? Half nervously, half irritably, I asked who was there.
The landlady’s voice answered me.
“Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?”
I opened the door. There is no disguising it--though ... | |
B00_66 | “As a gentlewoman myself,” proceeded the landlady--“reduced by family misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman--I feel sincere sympathy with you. I will even go further than that. I will take it on myself to say that I don’t blame _you_. No, no. I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised at your ... | |
B00_67 | Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself to--Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian spirit. As a lady yourself--I will even go the length of saying a cruelly used lady--you will, I am sure, understand--” | |
B00_68 | I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.
“I understand,” I said, “that you wish to give us notice to quit your lodgings. When do you want us to go?”
The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and sisterly protest.
“No,” she said. “Not that tone; not those looks. It’s natural you should be anno... | |
B00_69 | I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.
“Are you mad?” I asked.
The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a person who had deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it cheerfully.
“Yes,” she said. “I begin to think I _am_ mad--mad to have devoted myself to an ungrateful woman, t... | |
B00_70 | “I gave you a look when I left you on the beach,” pursued the landlady, growing louder and louder and redder and redder as she went on. “A grateful woman would have understood that look. Never mind! I won’t do it again I overtook your mother-in-law at the gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the disgrace of... | |
B00_71 | Her name (and consequently her son’s name) is Macallan--Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes! your husband is _not_ your husband. You are neither maid, wife, nor widow. You are worse than nothing, madam, and you leave my house!” | |
B00_72 | I stopped her as she opened the door to go out. She had roused _my_ temper by this time. The doubt that she had cast on my marriage was more than mortal resignation could endure.
“Give me Mrs. Macallan’s address,” I said.
The landlady’s anger receded into the background, and the landlady’s astonishment appeared in its ... | |
B00_73 | “I never thought of that,” she said. “Look here! if I give you the address, will you promise to tell me all about it when you come back?”
I gave the required promise, and received the address in return.
“No malice,” said the landlady, suddenly resuming all her old familiarity with me.
“No malice,” I answered, with all ... | |
B00_74 | “I know what you have come here for,” she said. “You have come here to ask questions. Spare yourself, and spare me. I warn you beforehand that I will not answer any questions relating to my son.”
It was firmly, but not harshly said. I spoke firmly in my turn.
“I have not come here, madam, to ask questions about your so... | |
B00_75 | “The question is a perfectly natural one in your position,” she said. “But I think I had better not answer it.”
“May I as k why?”
“Certainly. If I answered you, I should only lead to other questions, and I should be obliged to decline replying to them. I am sorry to disappoint you. I repeat what I said on the beach--I ... | |
B00_76 | “I believe there can be no doubt that you are lawfully my son’s wife,” Mrs. Macallan answered. “At any rate it is easy to take a legal opinion on the subject. If the opinion is that you are _not_ lawfully married, my son (whatever his faults and failings may be) is a gentleman. He is incapable of willfully deceiving a ... | |
B00_77 | “You are hard on me, madam,” I said at parting. “I am at your mercy, and I must submit.”
She suddenly looked up, and answered me with a flush on her kind and handsome old face.
“As God is my witness, child, I pity you from the bottom of my heart!”
After that extraordinary outburst of feeling, she took up her work with ... | |
B00_78 | Approaching the door of our lodgings, I saw my husband walking backward and forward before it, evidently waiting for my return. If he asked me the question, I decided to tell him frankly where I had been, and what had passed between his mother and myself.
He hurried to meet me with signs of disturbance in his face and ... | |
B00_79 | In London I could obtain the legal opinion which would tell me whether I were lawfully married to Eustace or not. In London I should be within reach of the help and advice of my father’s faithful old clerk. I could confide in Benjamin as I could confide in no one else. Dearly as I loved my uncle Starkweather, I shrank ... | |
B00_80 | After breakfast the next morning Eustace announced that he must leave me to attend to his business. I had previously mentioned to him that I had some purchases to make in London. He was quite willing to let me go out alone, on the condition that I should take a carriage provided by the hotel.
My heart was heavy that mo... | |
B00_81 | He left the room abruptly, as if he dare not trust himself to say more. It is better not to dwell on what I felt after this last repulse. I ordered the carriage at once. I was eager to find a refuge from my own thoughts in movement and change.
I drove to the shops first, and made the purchases which I had mentioned to ... | |
B00_82 | He was too distressed to say much. He fervently pressed my hand; he fervently thanked God that my father had not lived to hear what he had heard. Then, after a pause, he repeated my mother-in-law’s name to himself in a doubting, questioning tone. “Macallan?” he said. “Macallan? Where have I heard that name? Why does it... | |
B00_83 | At my request Benjamin put my case to the lawyer as the case of a friend in whom I was interested. The answer was given without hesitation. I had married, honestly believing my husband’s name to be the name under which I had known him. The witnesses to my marriage--my uncle, my aunt, and Benjamin--had acted, as I had a... | |
B00_84 | My companion shook his head, and entreated me to consider well beforehand what I proposed doing. His advice to me--so strangely do extremes meet!--was my mother-in-law’s advice, repeated almost word for word. “Leave things as they are, my dear. In the interest of your own peace of mind be satisfied with your husband’s ... | |
B00_85 | He was just descending the steps of a house--as if leaving it after a visit. His eyes were on the ground: he did not look up when the-carriage passed. As the servant closed the door behind him, I noticed that the number of the house was Sixteen. At the next corner I saw the name of the street. It was Vivian Place.
“Do ... | |
B00_86 | “I tell you again,” I went on, “my life is unendurable to me. I won’t answer for what I may do if I am left much longer to live in doubt of the one man on earth whom I love. You have had experience of the world. Suppose you were shut out from Eustace’s confidence, as I am? Suppose you were as fond of him as I am, and f... | |
B00_87 | Some intimate friend of my husband’s? I considered with myself. There was but one friend of his whom I knew of--my uncle’s correspondent, Major Fitz-David. My heart beat fast as the name recurred to my memory. Suppose I followed Benjamin’s advice? Suppose I applied to Major Fitz-David? Even if he, too, refused to answe... | |
B00_88 | We returned to the villa. The servant was sent at once to the nearest stationer’s to borrow a Directory. She returned with the book just as we sat down to dinner. Searching for the Major’s name under the letter F, I was startled by a new discovery.
“Benjamin!” I said. “This is a strange coincidence. Look here!”
He look... | |
B00_89 | “I have told you already that my mind is in a bad way about Eustace,” I answered. “_I_ say there is some motive at the bottom of his visit to Major Fitz-David. It is not an ordinary call. I am firmly convinced it is not an ordinary call!”
“Suppose we get on with our dinner?” said Benjamin, resignedly. “Here is a loin o... | |
B00_90 | I adapted myself to the old man’s genial humor as readily as I could. We ate and we drank, and we talked of by-gone days. For a little while I was almost happy in the company of my fatherly old friend. Why was I not old too? Why had I not done with love, with its certain miseries, its transient delights, its cruel loss... | |
B00_91 | “Yes--if you go by yourself. You don’t know what sort of man he is; you don’t know how he may receive you. Let me try first, and pave the way, as the saying is. Trust my experience, my dear. In matters of this sort there is nothing like paving the way.”
I considered a moment. It was due to my good friend to consider be... | |
B00_92 | I found Eustace waiting for me in our sitting-room at the hotel. His spirits seemed to have revived since I had seen him last. He advanced to meet me cheerfully, with an open sheet of paper in his hand.
“My business is settled, Valeria, sooner than I had expected,” he began, gayly. “Are your purchases all completed, fa... | |
B00_93 | He crossed the room as he spoke to ring the bell. I stopped him.
“I am afraid I can’t go to Ramsgate to-day,” I said.
“Why not?” he asked, suddenly changing his tone, and speaking sharply.
I dare say it will seem ridiculous to some people, but it is really true that he shook my resolution to go to Major Fitz-David when... | |
B00_94 | Not only his tone, but his look, when he put that second question, jarred on every nerve in me. He roused in my mind--I can’t tell how or why--an angry sense of the indignity that he had put upon his wife in marrying her under a false name. Fearing that I should answer rashly, that I should say something which my bette... | |
B00_95 | He started back at the sound of his own name as if I had struck him--he started back, and turned so deadly pale that I feared he was going to drop at my feet in a swoon. Oh, my tongue! my tongue! Why had I not controlled my miserable, mischievous woman’s tongue!
“I didn’t mean to alarm you, Eustace,” I said. “I spoke a... | |
B00_96 | I certainly heard the warning; but the only words which really produced an impression on my mind were the words preceding it, which he had spoken to himself. He had said: “Nothing, of course, _or she could not be here.”_ If I had found out some other truth besides the truth about the name, would it have prevented me fr... | |
B00_97 | “The friend who lent me the yacht is in town,” he said. “I suppose I had better see him, and say our plans are changed.” He tore up the telegram with an air of sullen resignation as he spoke. “You are evidently determined not to go to sea with me,” he resumed. “We had better give it up. I don’t see what else is to be d... | |
B00_98 | “Is it no concern of mine?” I asked, gently, “when I find that my husband has not married me under his family name? Is it no concern of mine when I hear your mother say, in so many words, that she pities your wife? It is hard, Eustace, to accuse me of curiosity because I cannot accept the unendurable position in which ... | |
B00_99 | “Listen to this,” he said. “What I am now going to say to you I say for the first and last time. Valeria! if you ever discover what I am now keeping from your knowledge--from that moment you live a life of torture; your tranquillity is gone. Your days will be days of terror; your nights will be full of horrid dreams--t... |
End of preview. Expand in Data Studio
LMEB semantic retrieval task based on NovelQA, retrieving passages from long-form fiction for character, plot, setting, relation, and temporal questions.
| Task category | Retrieval (text-to-text) |
| Domains | Fiction, Written |
| Reference | LMEB: Long-horizon Memory Embedding Benchmark |
Source datasets:
How to evaluate on this task
You can evaluate an embedding model on this dataset using the following code:
import mteb
task = mteb.get_task("NovelQA")
model = mteb.get_model(YOUR_MODEL)
mteb.evaluate(model, task)
To learn more about how to run models on mteb task check out the GitHub repository.
Citation
If you use this dataset, please cite the dataset as well as mteb, as this dataset likely includes additional processing as a part of the MMTEB Contribution.
@misc{zhao2026lmeb,
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
author = {Zhao, Xinping and Hu, Xinshuo and Xu, Jiaxin and Tang, Danyu and Zhang, Xin and Zhou, Mengjia and Zhong, Yan and Zhou, Yao and Shan, Zifei and Zhang, Meishan and Hu, Baotian and Zhang, Min},
eprint = {2603.12572},
primaryclass = {cs.CL},
title = {LMEB: Long-horizon Memory Embedding Benchmark},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12572},
year = {2026},
}
@article{enevoldsen2025mmtebmassivemultilingualtext,
title={MMTEB: Massive Multilingual Text Embedding Benchmark},
author={Kenneth Enevoldsen and Isaac Chung and Imene Kerboua and Márton Kardos and Ashwin Mathur and David Stap and Jay Gala and Wissam Siblini and Dominik Krzemiński and Genta Indra Winata and Saba Sturua and Saiteja Utpala and Mathieu Ciancone and Marion Schaeffer and Gabriel Sequeira and Diganta Misra and Shreeya Dhakal and Jonathan Rystrøm and Roman Solomatin and Ömer Çağatan and Akash Kundu and Martin Bernstorff and Shitao Xiao and Akshita Sukhlecha and Bhavish Pahwa and Rafał Poświata and Kranthi Kiran GV and Shawon Ashraf and Daniel Auras and Björn Plüster and Jan Philipp Harries and Loïc Magne and Isabelle Mohr and Mariya Hendriksen and Dawei Zhu and Hippolyte Gisserot-Boukhlef and Tom Aarsen and Jan Kostkan and Konrad Wojtasik and Taemin Lee and Marek Šuppa and Crystina Zhang and Roberta Rocca and Mohammed Hamdy and Andrianos Michail and John Yang and Manuel Faysse and Aleksei Vatolin and Nandan Thakur and Manan Dey and Dipam Vasani and Pranjal Chitale and Simone Tedeschi and Nguyen Tai and Artem Snegirev and Michael Günther and Mengzhou Xia and Weijia Shi and Xing Han Lù and Jordan Clive and Gayatri Krishnakumar and Anna Maksimova and Silvan Wehrli and Maria Tikhonova and Henil Panchal and Aleksandr Abramov and Malte Ostendorff and Zheng Liu and Simon Clematide and Lester James Miranda and Alena Fenogenova and Guangyu Song and Ruqiya Bin Safi and Wen-Ding Li and Alessia Borghini and Federico Cassano and Hongjin Su and Jimmy Lin and Howard Yen and Lasse Hansen and Sara Hooker and Chenghao Xiao and Vaibhav Adlakha and Orion Weller and Siva Reddy and Niklas Muennighoff},
publisher = {arXiv},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.13595},
year={2025},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13595},
doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2502.13595},
}
@article{muennighoff2022mteb,
author = {Muennighoff, Niklas and Tazi, Nouamane and Magne, Loïc and Reimers, Nils},
title = {MTEB: Massive Text Embedding Benchmark},
publisher = {arXiv},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.07316},
year = {2022}
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07316},
doi = {10.48550/ARXIV.2210.07316},
}
Dataset Statistics
Dataset Statistics
The following code contains the descriptive statistics from the task. These can also be obtained using:
import mteb
task = mteb.get_task("NovelQA")
desc_stats = task.metadata.descriptive_stats
{
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"max_text_length": 1312,
"unique_texts": 78365
},
"documents_image_statistics": null,
"documents_audio_statistics": null,
"queries_text_statistics": {
"total_text_length": 169096,
"min_text_length": 11,
"average_text_length": 109.73134328358209,
"max_text_length": 644,
"unique_texts": 1518
},
"queries_image_statistics": null,
"queries_audio_statistics": null,
"relevant_docs_statistics": {
"num_relevant_docs": 2506,
"min_relevant_docs_per_query": 1,
"average_relevant_docs_per_query": 1.626216742375081,
"max_relevant_docs_per_query": 28,
"unique_relevant_docs": 2412
},
"top_ranked_statistics": {
"num_top_ranked": 2164924,
"min_top_ranked_per_query": 367,
"average_top_ranked_per_query": 1404.8825438027254,
"max_top_ranked_per_query": 14158
},
"hf_subset_descriptive_stats": {
"Character": {
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"documents_text_statistics": {
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},
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"relevant_docs_statistics": {
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"top_ranked_statistics": {
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}
},
"Meaning": {
"num_samples": 79551,
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"documents_image_statistics": null,
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"relevant_docs_statistics": {
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"top_ranked_statistics": {
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},
"Plot": {
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"relevant_docs_statistics": {
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},
"Relation": {
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},
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},
"Setting": {
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}
}
}
}
}
This dataset card was automatically generated using MTEB
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