Ross Beeckman

“ You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Pat Langdon, for doing what you have done! You ought to get down on your knees to Roderick Duncan, and beg his eternal pardon for the agony you have caused him, since noon of yesterday. I know it all—I know the whole story, from beginning to end! I know what your unreasoning pride and your haughty willfulness, have accomplished: they have driven almost to desperation the man who loves you better than he loves anything else in the world! But you have no heart. The place inside you where it should exist is an empty void. ”

“ Petersburg, the city itself, nihilism, Russia, the czar had ceased to exist for me, however. Whatever she may have seen upon the street that had brought that startled cry to her lips, and had made her turn about and grasp my arm, had also brought into her countenance an expression of such overwhelming and overpowering concern for me, that I knew with a perfect knowledge in that instant, that Zara loved me.
Have you ever been swayed by an impulse that is utterly beyond your control, and before which all other considerations degenerate to such utter insignificance as not to exist at all? ”

“ Roderick Duncan, it would be better for you, and for Patricia as well, if you never saw each other again. You might far better, and with much greater hope of happiness, cast your future lot with some other woman whom you have never thought of as a wife, than marry Patricia Langdon upon such terms as you have outlined. Have you known her so intimately all your life without understanding her at all? She might have forgiven disloyalty, or unfaithfulness, or at least have condoned such—but an offense against her pride? ”

“ I am selfish now, Dubravnik, in my concern for you, for after all it is myself whom I would protect, through you. But we must not belittle the danger. I know that you are brave and daring; that you have no fear. I realize that you view with contempt the perils that beset you, but oh, my love, suppose that you should not escape."
"Why suppose it, Zara? I am here; the danger is there. We need not anticipate it. Let us leave it to be met at the proper moment, forgetting for this once, that it exists."
"No, no, we must control ourselves. ”

“ She is a strange girl; but I love her, almost as much as you do," Beatrice continued, as if she had not heard his question. "She possesses characteristics, the depth of which I have never been able to sound, and I am her best and closest friend. If you two live up to this agreement, in the spirit in which it was made, and conclude it in the spirit in which she has dictated her conditions to Melvin, I tremble for the consequences that will ensue, for I can almost foresee them. Patricia is not one who forgives easily, and she will resent a hurt to her pride with all the force there is in her." ”

“ You do owe me a debt, and you can repay it if you will forget for a moment that you are a monarch, and remember that you are a man. You can repay all you owe me, and more, if you will still be my friend, and forget that this scene has occurred; and when you have done that, I will tell you that Zara de Echeveria is to be the wife of Daniel Derrington; is to leave Russia forever with her husband, and were she the worst nihilist in the empire—and I know that she is not—she will be far away from any temptation to do you harm, and under the guidance of one who has proven his devotion to you. ”

“ Patricia called out, in a voice that was wholly unlike her usual calm tones. "Will you call someone to care for the car?" Without waiting for a reply, she sprang from beneath the wheel, and with a light laugh returned the impetuous embrace with which the young matron greeted her.
In some mysterious manner, word had already been passed to the guests that Patricia Langdon had arrived in Richard Morton's car, but alone; and so, by the time Patricia had released herself from Sally's clinging arms, Roderick Duncan, followed by the others of the party, appeared in the open doorway. ”

“ If you mean by that expression, do I seek the life of Alexander? I could answer you in the affirmative without hesitation; but I would have to confess that my desire for vengeance upon him is more of a personal quality, than of a political character. I am mindful of the fact that we cannot destroy a tree by lopping off one of its branches, and whenever a czar is dead, another lives to take his place and to permit the injustices practiced in his name, to continue. He is like the hydra-headed monster of childhood's tales, and another head grows as fast as one may be cut off. ”

“ All her life, Patricia had been her father's chum; ever since she could remember, they had talked together of stocks and bonds, and puts and calls, and opening and closing quotations, and she knew every slang word that is uttered in "the street," that is used on the floor of the stock-exchange, or that appears in the financial columns of the newspapers.
And these two, father and daughter, were as much alike in outward bearing, in demeanor and in appearance, in gesture and in motion, as a man and a woman can be when the man is approaching seventy and the woman is only just past twenty. ”

“ I foresaw this moment, your majesty, and my men have their orders to meet it. If I am molested, every nihilist who was arrested last night—every one who was in prison in the city before that time—will be liberated in an hour, and you have not soldiers nor policemen enough to stop the tide that will flow against you then. Your empire will crumble like dust, and your life will go out like the snuffing of a candle. For the present, I am the Czar of Russia, and you are only Alexander Alexandrovitch. ”

“ I tell you, now, to your face, that Roderick Duncan is one man in ten thousand; and that he has loved you for years, as a woman is rarely loved. But you cast his love aside as if it were of no value—as if it were a little thing, to be picked up anywhere, and to be played with, as a child plays with a toy. ”

“ You scatter the guards around you like flies, and rush past them, straight for the cabinet of the emperor, where you have always been a welcome guest. You tell yourself that he loves you—that he loves your sister; that as soon as he hears the truth, he will correct the awful wrong that has been done; that the men who outraged the sanctity of your sister's sleeping room, will be punished. Ah! You do not know the czar—that man whom you call your friend; who is God's and man's worst enemy! ”

“ I dare you, Beatrice! They always have a wedding ceremony on tap, there; if you've got the sand, come on. It offers a solution of everything. Come on, Bee—marry me!"
She raised her eyes to his, and he understood, instantly, how he had wounded her; he saw that her laughter had not been real, and that she was very near to tears. But the fact that she shrank away from his impetuous words and manner, only spurred him on anew. He caught her hands again.
"Let's do it, Beatrice," he said rapidly, bending forward with sudden eagerness. "I hate all this mess and muddle of affairs. I hate it! ”

“ When she spoke again, it was with low-toned softness, and she glided a step or two nearer to me, raising her beautiful eyes, now softened to an appealing quality, and clasping her hands in front of her with a gesture of suppliant helplessness that was almost overwhelming.
"Do you think that we have no wrongs to right?" she demanded.
"I think you have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The nihilists are assassins, murderers, cutthroats." ”

“ He laughed, shortly.
"From any other woman than you, such an answer as that would be tantamount to an affirmative; but you are a puzzle, Patricia. You are not like anybody else. There is a depth to you that I cannot sound. There is a breadth to you that is like the open country of the Northwest, where one cannot see beyond the sky-line, ever, and where the sky-line remains, always, just so far away."
"I think I'll ask you to excuse me, Mr. Morton," she said, making as if to rise. "This interview is not a pleasant one. You are not kind, or considerate." ”

“ For a long time after that we were silent, and Zara was the first to rouse from our mutual revery.
"Dubravnik," she said, and you can have no idea how sweetly that name was made to sound by her utterance of it, "I have not yet completed the story I was telling you; but there is only a little more, and you must hear it."
"Yes," I replied. "As you will, Zara. I am content. But need we go more deeply into the sorrows of that poor girl and her suffering brother? Let us rather talk of the great joy that has come to us. There seems to be nothing but joy in the world, when I look into your eyes. ”

“ When Patricia entered the house, she passed rapidly forward to the spacious library, encountering no one. Entering it, she found Sally Gardner seated upon one of the chairs, convulsed with laughter, while directly before her stood Beatrice, her eyes flashing contemptuous anger, and scorn upon the fun-loving and now half-hysterical young matron, who seemed to be unduly amused. Neither of them was at the moment, conscious of Patricia's presence. She had approached so quietly and swiftly that her footsteps along the hallway had made no sound. ”