David Graham Phillips

“ While Pierson was having his final cigarette before going to bed he looked up from his book to see before him Scarborough, even more tremendous and handsome in his gaudy pajamas.
"I wish to register a solemn vow," said he, with mock solemnity that did not hide the seriousness beneath. "Hear me, ye immortal gods! Never again, never again, will I engage in any game with a friend where there is a stake. I don't wish to tempt. I don't wish to be tempted."
"What nonsense!" said Pierson. "You're simply cutting yourself off from a lot of fun." ”

“ Dumont's look shot straight into Fanshaw's.
"Not a cent!" he said with vicious emphasis. "Not a red!"
Fanshaw paled and pinched in his lips. "I'm a desperate man. I'm ruined. Leonora—"
Dumont shook his head, the veins swelling in his forehead and neck. The last strand of his self-restraint snapped. "Leave her out of this! She has no claim on me NOW—and YOU never had."
Fanshaw stared at him, then sprang to his feet, all in a blaze. "You scoundrel!" he shouted, shaking his fist under Dumont's nose.
"If you don't clear out instantly I'll have you thrown out," said Dumont. ”

“ Instead of giving out in these charities and philanthropies—I never did believe in them—they're bound to be more or less degrading to the people that take, and when it's so hard to help a friend with money without harming him, how much harder it must be to help strangers. Instead of those things, why not be really great? Just think, John, how the world would honor you and how you would feel, if you used your genius to make the necessaries cheap for all these fellow-beings of ours who have such a hard time getting on. ”

“ An hour later Scarborough, his ticket elected and the society adjourned, reached Mrs. Trent's porch. In its darkness he saw the glowing end of a cigarette. "That you, Pierson?" he asked in the tone of one who knows what the answer will be.
"Sit down for a few minutes," came the reply, in a strained voice.
He could not see even the outline of Pierson's face, but with those acute sensibilities which made life alternately a keen pleasure and a pain to him, he felt that his friend was struggling for self-control. He waited in silence. ”

“ In the quiet, beautiful room in upper Fifth Avenue was Dumont in his wine-colored wadded silk dressing-gown and white silk pajamas. The floor near his lounge was littered with the snake-like coils of ticker-tape. They rose almost to his knees as he sat and through telephone and ticker drank in the massacre of his making, glutted himself with the joy of the vengeance he was taking—on his enemies, on his false or feeble friends, on the fickle public that had trampled and spat upon him. His wet hair was hanging in strings upon his forehead. ”

“ Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out—there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!" ”

“ From a tower of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure based upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. There is an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privately and everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In that newspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not known to the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate of ranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies. But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. ”

“ But the lofty buildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar and rush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set his thoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round a punch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses they make of us men! And all these vultures—I'm not carrion yet. But THEY soon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spin again.
A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "All about the big smash!" ”

“ When Olivia believed that Dumont was safely forgotten she teased her—"Your adoring and adored Scarborough."
Pauline was amused by this. With his unfailing instinct, Scarborough had felt—and had never permitted himself to forget—that there was some sort of wall round her for him. It was in perfect good faith that she answered Olivia: "You don't understand him. He's a queer man—sometimes I wonder myself that he doesn't get just a little sentimental. ”

“ At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon his embossed leather throne, under his grandfather's portrait, immersed in an atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he straightened himself, distended his chest, elevated his chin and glanced round with an air of haughty dignity, though there was none to witness and to be impressed. In Wall Street there is a fatuity which, always epidemic among the small fry, infects wise and foolish, great and small, whenever a paretic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happens to come true. ”

“ The clamor of the battle alarmed those in the galleries of the Stock Exchange—Zabriskie's brokers selling, the brokers of the mysterious speculator buying, the speculating public through its brokers joining in on either side; men shrieking into each other's faces as they danced round and round the Great Lakes pillar. The price went down, went up, went down, down, down—Zabriskie had hurled selling orders for nearly fifty thousand shares at it and Dumont had commanded his guns to cease firing. ”

“ He assured himself that he knew Fanshaw to be an upright man; but he did not go to so perilous a length in self-deception as to fancy he could convince cynical and incredulous New York. It was too eager to find excuses for successful and admired men like Dumont, too ready to laugh at and despise underdogs like Fanshaw. Herron never admitted it to himself, but in fact it was he who put it into Fanshaw's resourceless mind to compass the revenge of publicity in another way. ”

“ The four had arranged to go together to Indian Rock on the following Sunday. When the day came Olivia was not well; Pierson went to a poker game at his fraternity house; Pauline and Scarborough walked alone. As she went through the woods beside him she was thinking so intensely that she could not talk. But he was not disturbed by her silence—was it not enough to be near her, alone with her, free to look at her, so graceful and beautiful, so tasteful in dress, in every outward way what he thought a woman ought to be? ”

“ Pauline opened the sitting-room door. John Dumont caught her in his arms. "Polly!" he exclaimed. "It's all right. They've come round and—and—here I am!"
Pauline pushed him away from her and sank to the floor in a faint.
When she came to herself she was lying on the divan in the sitting-room. Her mother was kneeling beside her, bathing her temples with cold water; her father and her husband were standing, helplessly looking at her. "Send him away," she murmured, closing her eyes.
Only her mother heard. She motioned to the two men to leave the room. When the door closed Pauline sat up. ”

“ We knew well the enchanted house where she lived—stately, retreated far into large grounds in Jefferson Street; a high brick wall all round, and on top of the wall broken glass set in cement. Behind that impassable barrier which so teased our young audacity were flower-beds and "shrub" bushes, whose blossoms were wonderfully sweet if held a while in the closed hand; grape arbors and shade and fruit trees, haunted by bees; winding walks strewn fresh each spring with tan-bark that has such a clean, strong odor, especially just after a rain, and that is at once firm and soft beneath the feet. ”

“ Dumont came just in time to save him, came to build him up from the most shunned of coyotes into a deceptive imitation of a wolf with aspirations toward the lion class.
Leonora knew that he was small, but she thought all men small—she had supreme contempt for her own sex; and it seemed to her that men must be even less worthy of respect since they were under the influence of women and lavished time and money on them. ”

“ Dumont smiled. "Possibly. But I'm risking it for what's more than life to me, my dear Sackett."
"You'll excite yourself. You'll——"
"On the contrary, I shall calm myself. I'm never so calm and cheerful as when I'm fighting, unless it's when I'm getting ready to fight. There's something inside me—I don't know what—but it won't let me rest till it has pushed me into action. That's my nature. If any one asks how I am, say you've no hope of my recovery." ”

“ John Dumont. Also, it had never occurred to her as possible for a properly constituted woman not to love her husband. It was clearly her duty to marry Jack; therefore, the doubting thoughts and the ache at the heart which would not ease were merely more outcroppings of the same evil part of her nature that had tempted her into deceiving her parents, and into entangling herself and Scarborough. She knew that, if she were absolutely free, she would not marry Jack. ”

“ If you've changed so much in, thirty days, or, say, in sixty-seven days—you've been here that long, I believe—think of your whole life. The broader your mind and your life become, the less certain you'll be what sort of person to-morrow will find you. It seems to me—I know that, for myself, I'm determined to keep the future clear. I'll never tie myself to the past."
"But there are some things one MUST anchor fast to." Pauline was looking as if Scarborough were trying to turn her adrift in an open boat on a lonely sea. "There are—friends. You wouldn't desert your friends, would you?" ”

“ Pierson rose slowly and faced him.
"You astonish me," he said. "I shouldn't have believed you capable of a speech which no gentleman could possibly utter."
"YOU, sitting as a court of honor to decide what's becoming a gentleman!" Scarborough looked amused contempt. "My dear Pierson, you're worse than offensive—you are ridiculous."
"No man shall say such things to me especially a man who notoriously lives by his wits." ”

“ She invited Leonora Fanshaw down to stand between her thoughts and herself. Only the society of a human being, one who was light-hearted and amusing, could tide her back to any sort of peace in the old life—her books and her dogs, her horseback and her drawing and her gardening. A life so full of events, so empty of event. ”

“ After a pause Pauline said ambiguously: "The resemblance is stronger there than in life."
Olivia glanced at her and was made vaguely uneasy by the look she was directing at the face of the portrait. But though Pauline must have seen that she was observed, she did not change expression. They went out upon the east veranda and Olivia stood at the railing. She hardly noted the view in the press of thoughts roused by the hints of what was behind the richly embroidered curtain of her cousin's life. ”

“ Fanshaw was speaking—"You're very tired, aren't you?"
"Very," replied Pauline, with a struggle to smile.
"What a child you look! It seems absurd that you are a married woman. Why, you haven't your full growth yet." And on an impulse of intuitive sympathy Mrs. Fanshaw pressed her arm, and Pauline was suddenly filled with gratitude, and liked her from that moment.
Alone in her sitting-room at the hotel, she went up to the mirror over the mantel, and, staring absently at herself, put her hands up mechanically to take out her hat-pins. ”

“ Why not put your great combine on such a basis that it would bring an honest, just return to you and the others, and would pay the highest possible wages, and would give the people the benefit of what your genius for manufacturing and for finance has made possible? I think we who are so comfortable and never have to think of the necessaries of life forget how much a few cents here and there mean to most people. And the things you control mean all the difference between warmth and cold, between life and death, John! ”

“ Money! Her lips curled scornfully—out here, in her own home, among these simple people, the brutal power of money was master just as in New York, among a people crazed by the passion for luxury and display. ”