Max Rittenberg

“ The contrast between the broad frame of the shipowner and the delicate, nervous, under-sized physique of his boy was striking in its irony. Here was the strong man carving out an empire for his descendants, and here was his only son, the inheritor-to-be. Neither physically nor mentally could Olaf ever be more than the palest shadow of his father, and yet Larssen was the only person who could not see this. He was trying to train his boy to hold an empire as though he were born to rule.
"How clever Mr Dean is!" Olaf was saying. ”

“ Money was the oxygen of civilization. Without money a man slowly asphyxiated. It must be every man's ambition to own big money—to breathe it in himself with full-lunged, lustful, intoxicating gulps, and to dole it out as master to dependents pleading for their ration of life. That was the meaning of power: to give or withhold the essentials of life at one's pleasure.
Consequently he had failed to read the riddle of Matheson's motive at that crucial interview in the financier's office on the Rue Laffitte. ”

“ He caught sight of a shapeless something at the further side of the whirlpool, and with all his strength beat round towards it. It was Olive, clinging to an oar.
He reached her; shouted some words of hope above the roar of the wind; searched around the blackness of the night for a place of safety. Thirty yards away, tossed upwards on a giant wave as though in signal to them, there showed for a brief moment the silhouette of an upturned boat, with two men clinging to it.
"Our boat—over there!" he cried to Olive, and clutching her by the arm, fought the combers towards the hope of refuge. ”

“ He did not tell it to Olive. She was to be used as a pawn in the great game, just as he was using Sir Francis and the dead Clifford Matheson. It came upon him that she was now a widow. He would fan her open admiration so as to make use of it when she awoke to the fact of her widowhood.
So he answered: "How far I climb depends on the help of my best friends. I don't hide that. When my dear wife was with me, she was an inspiration to me. No man can drive his car to the summit without a woman to spur him on." ”

“ Elaine! You have me by your side! I ask you to let me devote my life to you!"
She weighed it scrupulously in the balance of reason, and judged it Pity. It was the hasty word of a chivalrous man torn by the sight of her helplessness. If it had been love, he would not have been stopped by her refusal. Love is insistent, headstrong, ruthless of obstacles. Love would have forced his offer upon her again and again. Love would have divined the doubt in her mind. Love would have drowned it in kisses.
It was not Love but Pity that Rivière felt for her. ”

“ If Matheson would stand aside and let the Hudson Bay scheme go through, no doubt Larssen would play fair in the matter of Elaine. That in effect was what he offered as his hand hovered over the electric bell.
The shipowner, though an easy smile of triumph masked his feelings as he lay back in his chair, knew that he was at the critical point of his career. If Matheson decided to let Olive be shown in, then Olive would have in her hands the judgment between the two men. To be dependent on a woman's mood, a woman's whim, would be Larssen's position. ”

“ The many-tunnelled cliff-route from Villefranche to Cap D'Ail, where moments of darkness tease one to longing for the sight of the azure coves dotted with white-winged yachts and foam-slashed motor-boats.... Europe's silken, jewelled fringe!
But scenery made no appeal to Lars Larssen. Scenery would not help him to the attainment of his great ambitions. Scenery was no use to him. His delight lay in men and women and the using of them. Business—the turning of other men's energies to his own ends—was the very breath of his being. ”

“ Olive's thrust went home, though not to the exact point she aimed at. Elaine remained silent as the thought raced through her of how Olive, if she deemed it to her own interests, might kill Rivière's work.
"So you see, dear," pursued Olive, "that our interests are really very much the same. We both care deeply for Clifford. We both want to help him in his life-work. We both want to do our best for him. That means that we must pull together and not against one another. We must each of us think matters out coolly and dispassionately. ”

“ Wiesbaden is both a Bond Street and a Harley Street. Specialists in medicine and surgery have their consulting rooms a few doors away from those of specialists in jewellery, flowers or confectionery. Their names and their specialities are prominent on door-plates almost as though they were competing against the lures of the traders.
But Dr Hegelmann had no need to cry his services in the market-place. His consulting rooms and nursing home were hidden amongst the evergreens of a cool, restful garden well away from the flaunting life of the Wilhelmstrasse. ”

“ The way lies by vineyards and olive orchards alternating with open, wind-swept heathland. The stunted olive trees, twisted and gnarled, pictured themselves to him as little old men worn and weary with their fight against the winds. Here the mistral was master and the olive trees his slaves.
At Arles Rivière posted his letter in a box on the platform of the station, and asked of a porter when the next train would take him back to Nîmes. Standing close by as he asked this question was a lean, wiry, crafty-looking peasant of the Camargue—a hard-bit youth toughened by his work on the soil. ”

“ It was pride and not love that had decided her, five years before, to marry the financier. She had admired the way in which he had slashed out for himself his place in the world of London and Paris finance, from his humble beginning as a clerk in a Montreal broker's office. It ministered to her pride to be the wife of a man who had plucked success from the whirlpool of life. ”

“ Olive, after marriage, had showed herself entirely out of sympathy with the idealism that formed so large a part of the complex character of her husband. She wanted money and power, and she drove spurs into her husband that he might obtain for her more and more money, more and more power. Any other ambition in Clifford she tried to sneer down with the ruthlessness of an utterly mercenary woman.
He had come to loathe the sensuous artificiality of his life. He had come to loathe the ruthless selfishness of finance. ”

“ You're in love with Miss Verney—I know it. It's hard for you to have to cut loose—very hard. But for her sake you must cut loose. Now, at once. Matters can't go on as they are. I know perfectly well that the relations between you are absolutely innocent—I haven't a word to breathe against her character now that I've seen her and really know her. But things can't go on as they are. You must put yourself aside and consider her alone. You must think of her reputation. People will begin to talk."
"What people?" asked Rivière uneasily.
"At the nursing home I can see that they regard you as lovers. ”

“ There was despair in her voice.
"The doctor is very hopeful for you, if you will put yourself under Hegelmann's care."
"He can do nothing for me, I feel it. Only useless expense. No man can give me back the sight I want for my work."
"In time," said Rivière gently, but he could not force conviction into his voice. It went hard with him to lie to the woman he cared for most in the world, even to bring temporary comfort to her.
"My work. Barrèze and the Odéon," she murmured slowly, speaking to herself rather than to him. "My work was my life. ”

“ The money would see her through the expenses of Dr Hegelmann's nursing home and for a few months afterwards—a year at the outside. After that she must inevitably be dependent on the charity of friends or on some charitable institution.
The thought of the time when her capital would be gone was like an icy hand gripping at her heart. "Money is terribly useless," she had said to Rivière, but there were times when she wished passionately that she had the money with which to buy comforts for a life of blindness. ”

“ Wherever the traveller around Europe now reaches a place that makes instant appeal; where harsh winds are screened away and blazing sunshine filters through feathery foliage; where all Nature beckons one to halt and rest awhile—there he is practically certain to find Roman remains. The wealthy Romans wintered at Nice and Cannes and St Raphael; took the waters at Baden-Baden and Aix in Savoy; made sporting centres of Treves on the Moselle and Ronda in Andalusia; dallied by the marble baths of Nîmes.
Nîmes had captured Rivière at sight. ”

“ If he had wanted Olive, he would have thrown Elaine in the discard without a moment's remorse. Decisions are easy for such a man as Larssen, because the burden of scruples has been pitched aside.
Rivière, on the other hand, was cursed with scruples—as Olive had phrased it, "a pretty mixed set of scruples." He felt he had to do the square thing by his wife, by Elaine, and by the public who were being called upon to invest their savings under the guarantee of his name. He had to smash the shipowner's scheme, and he had to get back to his own scientific work in peace and quietude. ”

“ Please smoke away the remembrance of them."
"The Carleton-Wingates are a useful crowd," said Larssen. "There's an M.P., a major-general and a minister plenipotentiary amongst them."
"Give me those to deal with, and you entertain the twin frumps," answered Olive. "Twins are always hateful in a room, because they sit together and chorus their comments together, just as if they were one mind with two bodies. You feel as if you ought to split yourself in two and devote half to each, so as not to cause jealousy. But twin old maids are especially hateful." ”

“ The fortunes of the world's financial giants have all been built up on "control." Dwarfing "capital" and "credit" it stands—that word "control." If the wild gamble of the Hudson Bay scheme were to rush through to commercial success—if the limitless wheat-lands of Canada were to pour their mighty torrent of life into Europe through the channel of Hudson Bay—it would be Lars Larssen who would hold the key of the sluice-gate. ”

“ And then the material vision of both eyes faded away, and he saw only the inner vision of Elaine lying with bandaged eyes in the darkened room of the Dr Hegelmann's surgical home. The great specialist, pulling at his beard with his long, delicately-chiselled fingers, so out of keeping with the shapelessness of his bulky, untidy figure, had taken Rivière aside and had given him orders in that wonderfully musical voice of his.
"Fraulein is worrying—that is bad for the recovery. I will not have her worried. You must tell her that everything will come right—you must make her smile again." ”

“ In this fight for the control of Britain's wheat-supply, Larssen had played to the highest his powers of intellect, his foresight, and his ruthless determination. He had forced the signature of Clifford Matheson to the draft prospectus, thus sanctioning its issue. He had evaded by one daring stroke the spirit of his own signed agreement. He had most carefully and minutely arranged for the flotation of the company at the time when Matheson would be on the high seas and out of touch with London news. ”

“ She laid her fingers on the keys and looked up at him expectantly.
"Something lively," he ordered, and she rattled into the latest success of the musical comedy stage. Such as it was, she played it brilliantly. To-night she was in that morphia mood of the terrace of Monte Carlo when she had first told him of her contempt for her husband.
Under cover of the playing, while Sir Francis was reading a novel of turf life, Olive whispered: "Can't we have a few moments together by ourselves?"
"I'll arrange it," answered Larssen. ”

“ There are only two hotels worthy of the name in Arles, and the coincidence of meeting again was of the very slightest. Yet [Pg 56] somehow he felt subconsciously that the arm of Fate was bringing their two lives together, and he resented it.
The silence between them remained unbroken.
In the evening he wrapped himself in a cloak against the bitter wind rushing down the valley of the Rhone and spreading itself as an invisible fan across the delta, and wandered about the dark alleys of the town, twisting like rabbit-burrows, lighted only here and there with a stray lamp socketed to a stone wall. ”

“ Beyond the clamorous glitter of the Place Pigalle, with its garish entertainment halls and all-night restaurants, there is a dark, narrow, winding lane ascending steeply to the great white sentinel church on the heights. Up this Matheson strode, still deep in thought, and his shadower followed. But, half-way up, a new factor cut sharply into the situation. Out of a ruelle crept two apaches with the stealthy glide of their class. One followed close behind Clifford Matheson, while the other stopped to watch the lane against the possible arrival of an agent de police. ”

“ Self-control is very often mistaken superficially for cold-bloodedness, just as heartiness is mistaken for big-heartedness.
He was balanced enough to hold no blame for Olive. Within two years of marriage he had plumbed her to the depths. It was not in her to be more than a reckless spender of other people's money and other people's lives. She was born to waste just as another is born to create. The way in which she was throwing herself at Larssen during his absence for a few weeks was typical of her inborn character, which nothing could uproot. ”