Harold MacGrath

“ How would you like to be mayor of Herculaneum next fall?"
"Mayor?" gasped Warrington.
"Yes."
"I'd make a fine mayor," with forced laughter, but thinking rapidly. "Aren't you jollying me, Senator?"
"I'm dead in earnest, Warrington. There is not another available man in sight. By available I mean a man who can pull the party out of the bog. There are a hundred I could nominate, but the nomination would be as far as they could go. We want a man who is fresh and new to the people, so far as politics goes; a man who can not be influenced by money or political emoluments. ”

“ The trees on the Warrington lawn sighed incessantly; and drip, drip, drip, went the rain on the leaves. Not a light shone anywhere in the house; total darkness brooded over it. In one of the rooms a dog lay with his nose against the threshold of the door. From time to time he whined mournfully. In another room an Angora cat stalked restlessly back and forth, sometimes leaping upon a chair, sometimes trotting round and round, and again, wild-eyed and furtive, it stood motionless, as if listening. Death had entered the house; and death, to the beast, is not understandable. ”

“ But the average man is jolly bad," Bennington added gravely. "But you, Dick; I'm not worrying about you. Perhaps the writer of that letter sees good in you that you can't see yourself; good that is in you but of which you are unconscious. One thing, you have never besmirched the talents God gave you. Everything you have done has been clean and wholesome—like yourself."
"I wish I could believe that! But I've had no ties, Jack, none. You can't keep to a course without a compass. The real good in life, the good that makes life worth while, is the toil for those you love. ”

“ In the shops the men knew all about those eyes and shoulders. They had been fooled once, but only once. They had felt the iron in the velvet.
"I'm mighty glad to see you, boy," said Warrington, dropping his arms. "You haven't changed a bit."
"Nor you, Dick; if anything you look younger."
"How many years is it, John?"
"Six or seven; not very long."
"Time never seems long to a man who never has to wait for anything. I have had to reckon time with hours full of suspense, and those hours have aged me; perhaps not outwardly, but all the same, I'm an old man, John." ”

“ The clapboards were still stained with rust, the barns were still a dingy red, the stone and rail fences needed the same repairs. Nothing had changed there but the masters. And under that roof he had made his first feeble protest against life; he had dreamed those valiant dreams of youth that never come true, no matter how successful one may become in after life. Every waking means an illusion gone, another twig pruned from the tree of ardent fancy; and when one is old there is neither shade nor shelter.
Warrington stopped his horse. ”

“ Herculaneum has its counterpart in every state; each city is a composite of all the others. A fashion in New York is immediately reproduced in every other city on the continent. Conservatism, day by day, becomes more and more retiring; presently it will exist only in Webster, side by side with the word prehistoric.
It was Sunday in Herculaneum, a June Sunday, radiant with sunshine. The broad green leaves of the maples shivered, lacing the streets with amber and jade, and from a thousand emerald gardens rose the subtle, fragrant incense of flowers. ”

“ This is the weapon of the cowardly and envious heart, so filled with venom and malice that it has the courage or brazenness to go about piously proclaiming the word duty. Beware of the woman who has ink-stains on her fingers and a duty to perform; beware of her also who never complains of the lack of time, but who is always harking on duty, duty. Some people live close to the blinds. Oft on a stilly night one hears the blinds rattle never so slightly. Is anything going on next door? Does a carriage stop across the way at two o'clock of a morning? Trust the woman behind the blinds to answer. ”

“ It takes a great and strong man to withstand success, and Warrington was only a genius. It was not from lack of will power; rather it was because he was easy-going and loved pleasure for its own sake. He had fought and starved, and now for the jingle of the guinea in his pocket and the junkets of the gay! The prodigality of these creative beings is not fully understood by the laity, else they would forgive more readily the transgressions. Besides, the harbor of family ties is a man's moral bulwark; and Warrington drifted hither and thither with no harbor in view at all. ”

“ It was only pretense, but Warrington was not aware of it. She had stared at the sheet, reading only her miserable thoughts. Presently she smiled; the girlish exuberance amused her.
"She has put you quite out of reach. What a fine thing it must be to have such faith in any man!"
"And I'm not worth in her esteem an ounce to the pound." He was quite frank with himself. "I would to Heaven I were!"
"And this is the kind of woman that you will fall violently in love with, some day, Dick. It will be your punishment." ”

“ But to-night his puppets were moving hither and thither across the stage, pulsing with life; they were making entrances and exits; developing this climax and that; with wit and satire, humor and pathos. It was all very real to the dreamer.
The manuscript lay scattered about the top of his broad flat desk, and the floor beside the waste-basket was flaked with the remains of various futile lines and epigrams. The ash-pan was littered with burnt matches, ends of cigars and pipe tobacco, while the ash-crumbs speckled all dark objects, not excepting the green rug under his feet. ”

“ It would be a pleasant pastime to sit on Patty's veranda and talk, become, and act like one of the young people. He was growing old; his youth must be renewed soon, or he would lose it utterly. This young man had been surfeited with noise and light, with the sham and glitter of hotels, clubs and restaurants. He was not to the manner born; thus he could easily see how palpably false life is in a great city. To those who have lived in the abnormal glamour of city life, absolute quiet is a kind of new excitement.
Warrington found that he was a bit stiff from the long ride. ”

“ These were curious to see how Warrington was affected, if he showed his grief or contained it, so that they might have something to talk about till some one else died. There are some people in this merry world of ours who, when they take up the evening paper, turn first to the day's death notices; who see no sermons in the bright flowers, the birds and butterflies, the misty blue hills, the sunshine, who read no lesson in beauty, who recognize no message in the moon and the stars, in cheerfulness and good humor. On the contrary, they seem to abhor the sunshine ”

“ My son, never surrender once to injustice, for if you do you will establish a precedent, and you will go on surrendering to the end of time. I leave the shops to you. There is but one thing I demand, and that is that you shall never sell the shops; Bennington or nothing. If you have difficulties with the men, weigh them on the smallest scales. You will be master there—you alone. It is a big responsibility, but I have the greatest confidence in you. When the time comes, show that you are master, even to the tearing down of every brick and stone that took me so long to erect. ”

“ Women are like daws; their sympathy comes but to peck. Do you know what it is to be alone in a city? The desert is not loneliness; it is only solitude. True loneliness is to be found only in great communities. To be without a single friend or confidant, when thousand of beings move about you; to pour your sorrows into cold, unfeeling ears; to seek sympathy in blind eyes—that is loneliness. That is the loneliness that causes the heart to break."
Warrington's eyes never left hers ”

“ Night is either sweetest or most wretched; one spends it recounting one's joys or one's sorrows. Patty was unhappy; and leave it to youth to gain the full meed of misery. Youth has not the philosophy of matured age to cast into the balance. Satisfaction in this workaday world is only momentary. One is never wholly satisfied; there is always some hidden barb. The child wears the mother's skirts enviously while the mother mourns her youth. ”

“ I die prosperous and contented, having acquired my riches without ill to any and without obligation. I have never wronged any man, though often the power to do so has been in my hands. But reason always cools hot blood, and I have always kept a strong curb on all my angry impulses. Some day the men will strike again, what about I know not; but this I do know: it will be without justice. I have bent to them nine out of ten times. Nine of their demands were not wholly unreasonable, but the tenth was. And this demand was that I should have no non-union men in the shops. ”

“ No man is a hero to his valet; no woman is a beauty to her maid. In and out, to and fro; the social leader, the shop-girl, the maid, the woman of the town, the actress, the thin old spinster and the fat matron, here might they be found.
At rare intervals a man was seen to ring the bell, but he was either a bill-collector or a husband in search of his wife.
The proprietress knew everybody intimately—by sight. She was squat, dyed, rouged and penciled, badly, too. She was written down in the city directory as Madame de Chevreuse, but she was emphatically not of French extraction. ”

“ Tragedy was abroad that day, crossing and recrossing Williams Street. Tragedy has the same prerogative as love and death—the right to enter the palace or the hovel, into the heart of youth or age. It was not a killing to-day, only a breaking of hearts, that is to say, the first step. Tragedy never starts out on her rounds roughly; she seeks her cause first; she seeks her anonymous letter, her idle hands, her lying tongue; then she is ready. Tragedy does nothing hastily; she graduates her victim. ”

“ Nature had lent a hand to bring voting humanity to the polls. Some men are such good citizens that they will vote in the rain. But warmth and sunshine bring out the lazy, the indifferent, and the uninterested.
Warrington voted early in the morning, rode to the Country Club, made an attempt to play golf over the partly frozen course, lounged round till three in the afternoon, and then returned to town. There was not a flutter in his heart. There was this truth, however, staring him in the eyes: if he lost, he would become an indifferent citizen; if he won, an in different mayor. ”

“ By and by, when his name began to figure in the dramatic news items, and home visitors in New York returned to boast about the Warrington "first nights," the up-state city woke and began to recollect things—what promise Warrington had shown in his youth, how clever he was, and all that. Nothing succeeds like success, and nobody is so interesting as the prophet who has shaken the dust of his own country and found honor in another. ”

“ Here the latent power of the story-teller, the poet and the dramatist was awakened; in any other pursuit the talent would have quietly died, as it has died in the breasts of thousands who, singularly enough, have not stood in the path of Chance.
Socially, Warrington was one of the many nobodies; and if he ever attended dinners and banquets and balls, it was in the capacity of reporter. But his cynical humor, which was manifest even in his youth, saved him the rancor and envy which is the portion of the outsider. ”

“ It is very easy to make an idol and a fool of a boy; but Mrs. Bennington always had the future in mind. It was hard, it was bitter, that another should step in and claim the perfected man. She had been lulled into the belief that now she would have him all her own till the end of her days. But it was not to be. Her sense of justice was evenly balanced; her son had the same right that his father had; it was natural that he should desire a mate and a home of his own; but, nevertheless, it was bitter. That his choice had been an actress caused her no alarm. ”

“ Bennington mounted a pile of molds and raised his hand. The murmur of voices dwindled away into silence. The sun came in through the spreading skylights, and Bennington stood in the center of the radiance. He was a man, every inch of him, and not a man among them could deny it. There are many things that are recognizable even to crass minds, and one of these is a man. Genius they look upon with contempt, but not strength and resolution; they can not comprehend what is not visible to the eye.
"Fire away, boss!" ”

“ Bennington, Jack will marry a woman who is as loyal and honest as she is brilliant and beautiful. Miss Challoner is a woman any family might be proud to claim. She numbers among her friends many of the brilliant minds of the age; she compels their respect and admiration by her intellect and her generosity. Oh, Jack is to be envied. I can readily understand the deep-rooted antagonism the actress still finds among the laity. It is a foolish prejudice. I can point out many cases where the layman has married an actress and has been happy and contented with his lot. ”

“ There is, alack! always some intimate friend who sees, who dabbles her pen in the ink-well and labors over a backhand stroke. It is her bounden duty to inform the husband forthwith. The letter may wreck two lives, but what is this beside stern, implacable duty? When man writes an anonymous letter he is in want of money; when woman writes one she is in want of a sensation. It is easy to reject a demand for money, but we accept the lie and wrap it to our bosoms, so quick are we to believe ill of those we love. ”

“ Always to be identified as the actress? To be looked at curiously, to be annoyed by those who are not my equals, and only tolerated by those who are? No! I want a man who will protect me from all these things, who will help me to forget some needless follies and the memory that a hundred different men have made play-love to me on the other side of the footlights. ”

“ Death makes a vacancy, but the Great Accountant easily fills it; and the summing up of balances goes on. Let us thank God for the buoyancy of the human spirit, which, however sorely tried, presently rises and assumes its normal interest in life.
Warrington looked dreamily at the grave, and the philosopher in him speculated upon the mystery of it. Either the grave is Heaven or it is nothing; one can proceed no farther. ”

“ And we build so many castles that one day tumble down about our ears. Why is it a mother always wishes her boy to marry the woman of her choice? What right has a mother to interfere with her son's heart-desires? It may be that we fear the stranger will stand between us. A mother holds, and always will hold, that no woman on earth is good enough for her son. Now, as I recollect, I did not think Mr. Bennington too good for me." She smiled drolly.
Lucky Jack! If only he had had a mother like this! Warrington thought. ”

“ I shall appeal to you for civic or military protection; if you refuse it, to the governor; if politics there interferes, I shall appeal to Washington, where neither your arm nor McQuade's can reach. I understand the causes back of this strike; they are personal, and I'm man enough to look out for myself. But if politics starts to work, there will be a trouble to settle in the courts. You may not know the true cause of this strike, Mr. Donnelly, but I do. The poor deluded men believe it to be the English inventor, but he is only a blind. ”

“ The truth is, Patty was busy reforming the wayward dramatist, and Warrington was busy watching the result. There were those who nodded and looked wise whenever they saw the two together.
Oh, Herculaneum was a city to be desired, socially. Everybody was on his or her best behavior. It was only from among the poor that scandal gleaned her items for the newspapers. The shooting of such a man by such a woman's husband aroused only the mildest comment. But that class of people, don't you know, is so primeval. To kill a man from jealousy! ”