Reginald Wright Kauffman

“ He was about to fling himself from the cliff at the beetling chapel of St. Pilon. By ending his life in such a way that Muriel would suppose that end an accident, he was, for the woman he loved, about to court the death that he had all his life feared.
He reached the mountain's bald top, and there flamed about him the panorama of the Chaîne de la Sainte Baume from Toulon to Marseilles, from the mountains to the sea. It was blue, intensely blue, under a full sun and in an air vibrant with health. The sky was a vivid blue, cloudless, the distant water was a blue that danced before his eyes. ”

“ Mystery breathed through the entire hacienda. The forsaken graveyard, half buried in marsh, seemed alive with it, the very stones of the chapel whispered of it. There had been danger and to spare on the water front of San Lorenzo, but the danger of the gallows seemed, because it was more tangible, almost less ominous than the secret perils of this house of empty passageways, set within the strange walled estate and guarded by peons—that was the right name for them!—who were equally terrified and terrifying. ”

“ For herself, for Max, but most of all for the hideous facts of life, she shook in physical disgust. Before the face of such things, what must birth and marriage mean? She opened her eyes, but she could not look at her silent witnesses; she shut her lids, but she saw, behind them, the hairy arms of a gorilla closing on her, to break her and bear her away. For one moment, all that she had loved she hated, and for the next, seizing his smiling reassurance as the one vow that could legalize what nothing could refine, all that she had come to hate she tried to force herself to love. ”

“ One morning, when Cartaret, with unsteady hand, drew back his curtain, rouge-gorges were calling from the concierge’s garden, and seemed to be calling to him.
“Seize hold of love!” they chorused in that garden. “Life is short; time flies, and love flies with it. Love will pass you by. Take it, take it, take it, while there still is time! Like us, it is a bird that flies, but, unlike us, it never more returns. It is a rose that withers—a white rose: take it while it blooms. ”

“ Clammy and slimy and heavy it fell and, circling canopy and hammock, the thick coils of the snake wrapped Dan around and squeezed.
A shriek rang out. Not his own; he saw, in a green streak of moonlight, the beautiful face of the girl distorted by terror. Dan had no chance to cry; he was struggling with all his imprisoned strength at the horror that encircled him.
“Coming!”
That was Ramon's voice. The huge man flung himself upon the monster. The thing's flat head darted up and gaped at him. With an exultant laugh, Villeta ripped that head from its bloody body. ”

“ A rare good fortune had favored Katie Flanagan; but Mary, her parents, Rose and her girls, Carrie, Policeman Riley and Magistrate Dyker, even Angel and Max—not one of them, well regarded, could be unequivocally condemned. They were all, preying or preyed upon, an inevitable result. They were but the types of millions everywhere. New York itself, with all its women-slaves and men-slaves, must be but an illustration of what the other cities of the world are and have been. No rescue of a slave could put an end to the slavery. ”

“ Señor Kent was with Don Cipriano tonight: you thought you could wait, and that he would—until tomorrow! Tomorrow? Everybody knows everything: Señor Kent knows who is Cheavey, and Señor Barboza has by now seized him. Señor Barboza-Cheavey knows that you know his plot, but does not guess that you dread delay, and so he goes to the jungle for his jewels to hurry the plot's execution. These two know these things because I told them. I learned their intentions, I suggested their actions, because they both are in love with me—both, though this handsome Don Buster is not yet aware of his devotion. ”

“ He is very hungry.”
There was something superbly authoritative about the Domingan, something that, with radiant gesture, swept aside all the superfluous. He did not appear to miss the smallest details, even in ordering a breakfast, but it was plain that his was the sort of mind that prefers to deal in large things in a large way. Don Ramon looked to Dan, even in this moment when reflection were absurd, like the magnificent real-estate operator or contractor who, scorning the mere building of one house, erects, on an empty hillside, an entire suburb of a great city. ”

“ Tucker, who was to die? What, in all this, was Josiah Tucker's rôle?
Dan thought of the weak, none-too-honest face that had looked up from the pillows in the sick room. He thought of the delicately modeled but discolored fingers. An American, too! Why, of course, the fellow had somehow been seduced from honorable but, in Tucker's mind, underpaid government employ; he was the expert necessary, whenever any technical slip occurred, to the actual making of these notes. There was just one place from which he could have come—from the manufacture of real money to the manufacture of bogus. ”

“ Warner looked at Marbury from the head down. He saw the complacent, strong face between its brief whiskers; he saw the double chin, the white chrysanthemum in the frock-coat, the spats and the bulging shoes. He was painfully conscious of his own inadequate figure, and a touch of red came into his face, just above its high cheek-bones.
“Mr. Marbury,” he said, “this Commission is illegal; it can't under the present law, be created. ”

“ I had never been farther away from this place than Alegria, but I had had French and English governesses, and I read books and dreamed dreams. I loved to paint; I thought that I could learn to be a real artist, but I knew that my brother would think that a shame in an Eskurola and would never permit his unmarried sister to go to a foreign city to study. Nevertheless, I was hungry for the great world outside—for the real world—and so I took poor Chitta, gathered what jewels were my own and not family-jewels, and ran away. ”

“ If God wants you to be honest, why does He make it so hard? The truth was that our being married was a lie, and so all we did was lies and lies."
"You told me that I gave you all you wanted, Muriel."
"All that you could give, but not the one thing you had promised to give—not what I gave you—not youth." Her tone hardened again. "What was the rest to that? If I told you that you gave me all I wanted, you always knew that you had all you wanted. Well, you had. But did you ever think that a girl begins life with plans and dreams as much as a man does? You sinned against me and against Nature. ”

“ You must wait. He dare not let Señor Bridgeman go. Señor Bridgeman is as dangerous to Señor Barboza as are you. I shall tell him the President suspects the revolution—that he must cause it immediately or be delivered up for extradition. He needs more ready money: the army demands it if it is to rebel. He has not enough here. All his jewels he has hidden in an old temple in the jungle beyond Rio de Adrar, which everybody knows and none visits: even Señor Trujillo goes to that one no more.
“I shall say to Don Cipriano that he must get the jewels to buy the generals. ”

“ Don Ramon proved a mighty trencherman and laughed through the meal, commending its cook as if nothing but kindness and respect had ever passed between them. Dan decided he was puzzled simply because he was in the presence of customs entirely new to his thoroughly North American mind.
“No bread,” Don Ramon smiled to Dan. “We prefer millet in Domingo. But see these yams. You do not have green plantain in the United States, nor yet cassava roots.” He raised his eyes ecstatically. “Think of Christmas dinner without cassava pudding! And our coffee—your people possess no such coffee as ours.” ”

“ Rivington Street turns and tosses on its hot couch, and through its dreams slink hideous shadows that dare not show themselves by day. One, ten, a hundred, each alone, they come and go: vague, inhuman. And then, reluctantly, the hesitant dawn creeps shivering out of the East River, and the weary day begins again.
Into this street—into its noisiest quarter at its noisiest time—the cab that bore Violet on her way to liberty at last turned and proceeded as far under the flaring gasoline torches as the evening crowd of workers, buyers, and sellers, would permit. ”

“ Nor that alone—the thought burned in his brain: she had told this wild brother of hers that he, Cartaret, had insulted her; she had incited Eskurola to battle—perhaps to save herself, perhaps to salve some strange Basque conception of honor or pride. So be it; Cartaret could render her one more service—the last: if he allowed himself to be killed by this half-savage who so serenely thought that he was better than all the rest of the world, Don Ricardo’s wounded honor would be healed, and Vitoria—now evidently herself in danger or revengeful—would be either safe or pacified. ”

“ At the advice of their chauffeur, they commenced with the Bal Tabarin. From the motor-car that had hauled them up the long hills of dark and tortuous streets, they stepped into a blaze of yellow light, under which half a dozen men hurried to them. One held the door of the cab; another, as if it were his sole business in life, wielded a folded newspaper as a shield to protect Muriel's gown from contamination by the motor's muddy tires; two pointed to the scintillating doorway, and two more chattered enquiries that Jim could in no wise interpret. ”

“ She knew now that she loved him, and she had learned the ultimate tragedy of love: that love and mistrust may be one.
"How can I know anything?" she went on. "How can I be sure of anything? How can I understand such a world as this? It seems as if all the earth was lying to me, and as if all the earth could lie and still look honest. I trusted the girl; I trusted you. I beg of you to prove to me that I was right only when I trusted you. Wesley,"—she almost extended her arms to him—"tell me that you didn't do it!"
Dyker saw his advantage, but decided that the way to keep it was to be firm. ”

“ I am Spanish; the people, because they hate me, call me Basque; but I am true Spanish. The President brings me here to be prima donna. Oh, only because he loves music, Don Buster: music and money he loves, but no woman. Very good. It is my best luck in all my life. Do I not owe him a return?”
“Of course—of course. Well?”
“Well, this silly Don Cipriano wants me to marry him. Ah, Señor Kent, if you knew how hard was my life because so many want to marry me! But if I marry one, all the others will make life dangerous—I love none of them. ”

“ She freed herself. That newer perfume filled the purple twilight: the pure perfume of the Azure Rose that the wandering Basque carries with him abroad to bring him safely home. She drew the rose from beneath her blouse and held it out to him. Cartaret kissed it. She took it back, kissed it too, went to the nearest window and, tearing the flower petal from petal, dropped it into the Paris street.
“No,” she said softly when she had turned to him again, “do not kiss me yet. I want you first to understand me. I do love my own country, but I cannot stay in it forever. ”

“ The thoroughfare is like a boiling cauldron; it can hold no more, and still it must hold more and more.
Only very slowly, as the night wears on, do the crowd and noise lessen; but at last, by tardy degrees, they do lessen. Imperceptibly, but inevitably, even this portion of New York breathes somewhat easier. By twos and threes the people melt away; a note at a time, the cries weaken and the shuffling dies; and finally, in the small hours of the morning, Rivington Street turns over, with a troubled sigh, to a restless doze. ”

“ And as the steam rises from the red waste that runs from the furnace into the river, there now rose to Stainton's desert-starved ears the clanging of cable-cars, the rattle of carriages, the tooting of the purring motors—all the humming chorus of the night-wakeful thing that men call New York. ”

“ Vitoria leaned on the rampart. She was panting a little from her climb; her cheeks were flushed, and her whole face glowing.
“It is as if we were gods on some star,” she said, “looking down upon a world that is strange to us.”
She was speaking in English. Cartaret bent closer. Pledges of mere friendship ceased, for the moment, to appear of primary importance: he wanted, suddenly, to make the most of a little time.
“Am I never to see you alone?” he asked.
She forsook the view of Paris to give him a second’s glance. There was something roguish in it.
“Chitta,” she said, “has not yet arrived.” ”

“ Philip Beekman passed his long fingers through his black hair. It was the gesture she had seen him employ on that remembered night at Rose's, but now it had a new significance. The young man was as much the creature of his surroundings as Violet was the creation of hers. He could no more appreciate her point of view than she could comprehend his. It was as if they spoke different tongues. Beekman was powerless to argue further, and when a man reaches that condition, he takes a firm stand upon authority. ”

“ It was useless to imagine that he might live and leave her, for he knew that if he left her she, unable to marry von Klausen, would marry no one and would come to what Stainton believed to be a worse estate. He knew that if he lived, he would have to live beside her and not with her, a despised protector. If passion should once or twice more flicker in its socket, it would be an animal passion that he detested and that would make Muriel and him detest each other. ”

“ The city that has in her tender keeping the dust of many lovers, cradled him and drew him forward. Her soft breath fanned his cheek, her sweet voice whispered in his ears:
“Trust me and obey me! Did I not know and shelter Gabrielle d’Estrées and her royal suitor? Have I not had a care for De Musset and for Heine? In that walled garden over there, Balzac dreamed of Mme. Hanska. Along this street Chopin wandered with George Sand.”
That whisper followed him to his room, still thrilling with Vitoria’s visit. ”

“ Though Violet had for some time been excited by her escape, that excitement had already given place to utter exhaustion. The lamp had scarcely been extinguished before, with throbbing head, she passed into a sleep that was almost coma, and the lamp that was burning when she opened her aching eyes was the lamp of midmorning.
She was alone and afraid to be alone. Her head seemed splitting. She saw the milk and rolls that Katie had set out for her on the oilcloth-covered table, but her stomach revolted at the thought of food, and her poisoned nerves cried out for alcohol. ”

“ Stainton was not unusual.
"I have won my fight—yes," he said. "I have got the means. Can I gain the end? It's you who must tell me that."
She saw now.
"How can I help?" she faltered.
"I wanted Life," he repeated, and wished that he could see her face. "Life means more than money. Money will protect it, secure it; but Life means Love. Long ago I knew your mother."
Very simply, but directly, he told her how he had loved that other Muriel. ”

“ With some difficulty, Cartaret got rid of the composer. On a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, he took account of his resources. They were shockingly slender and, if they were to last him any time at all, he must exercise the most stringent economy. He must buy no more brandy for musical geniuses. Indeed, he must buy no more café dinners for himself....
It struck him, as a happy thought, that he might save a little if he lived on such cold solids as he could buy at the fruit-stand and pâtisseries and such liquids as he might warm in a tin-cup over his lamp. ”

“ Grotesque men, could you see them, stagger into dim entrances; terrible caricatures of women, if the light would show them, steal out and dart upon gutter-couched drunkards to paw their pockets. The night is alive with shadows, and the whole street a hungry, quivering quicksand.
Only by urging her eyes to their utmost could Mary make out anything of the house before which she and her unsteady companion came to pause. ”