Harold MacGrath

“ The determination which stirred her heart was not based upon pride. Sometimes we are credited with lofty actions when in truth we are urged forward only by a sense of shame. But Ruth had found herself. No more self-lies, no more evasions; she stood free at last, on rock, the morass behind her. An obligation was no longer a thing to run around; she would meet each one as it came, honestly and squarely. And there was something in her heart this morning she did not quite understand.
She drew her kimono over her shoulders and walked boldly into William's room. ”

“ She got up. "Would you like to hear me play the piano?"
"You can play? Well, say!"
"Come along, then. There is a piano in the alcove over the dining-saloon; and if there's no one around I'll play for you. The truth is, I've been hungering to touch that piano."
They succeeded in getting into the alcove without attracting attention; and shortly after William sat back in his chair, feeling that his soul had been plucked out of him and cast among the clouds. She played lightly and dreamily at first; half the time the music was but a low ripple of murmurous sounds. ”

“ After all, had it been Ruth that night? Was he letting his imagination establish as fact something which had never happened? She might have met Colburton casually in New York, and he had taken advantage of it that morning in the Piazza. Colburton was not above that; that was his particular style. There was nothing in all this to indicate that Ruth was the young woman who had come flying out of the restaurant.
He stared at the yacht again, somberly. The old wives' prescience, which every Irishman has tucked away somewhere in his soul, warned him that he had not seen the last of the Elsa. ”

“ Never had he felt so keenly and wonderfully alive as at this moment.
The bow of the Ajax went down, down, down, fathoms down. From the dining-saloon came the racket of crashing dishes. The potted palm on the piano fell with a crash. William laughed. Then the bow of the Ajax went up, up, up. He had to hang to the grip of the port to keep from sliding off his perch. The ship did not fall far this time. She struck a roller a thousand years old, and tons and tons of green water rushed over the deck. A forgotten magazine swam about frantically but hopelessly. ”

“ With an unexpected gesture William flung the chamois bag into Colburton's face. The thread snapped; the pearls cascaded to the floor and bounded and ran about.
William drew off his coat and flung it aside; and then Colburton knew that what he saw was made of solids. Trapped!
"Don't ... don't kill him!" whispered Ruth. She could not stand any more horrors.
"Kill him? Not much! But I'm going to put the fear of God in his heart, believe me. ..." ”

“ Docilely Ruth permitted the nurse to put her to bed and tuck her in. But sleep never came to her that night. She lay there thinking, thinking; dawn came and daylight, and still the tumult in her mind abated not a jot. A cheat! Was she always going to be one? Wasn't it in her to play fair even with William Grogan, who had fought for her like one of the ancient heroes, who had denied himself, toiled in the hot sun for her, and guarded her at night? ”

“ CHAPTER VIII WILLIAM had picked up his odds and ends of life in the streets, and these, as I have already observed, had formed the basis of a cynical philosophy. But to offset this he possessed an imagination as boundless and irresponsible as the perspectives of a Chinese painter. He knew nearly all there was to know about mankind, and enough of woman to be on his guard; but he was always soaring to heaven and tumbling back to earth, and so his philosophy was less a staff to lean on than an air-cushion for his frequent bumps. ”

“ She could hear the regular breathing of the two spinsters who shared the cabin with her. Life! To some, great canvases; to others, slender little pastels that one tucked away in the corner as pretty but innocuous. Had these withered little old sisters ever been stirred, quickened, tempted? Had anything ever happened (aside from this wonderful voyage) beyond their garden gate?
By and by she put the pearls back into the chamois bag, tied the strings about her neck, and lay back, her eyes still open.
Camden stirred uneasily as the sunshine blazed into the port. ”

“ Upon this occasion he set the disembodied spirit of Ruth in a furnished room, neat and comfortable, one flight up, in a genteel boarding-house in Washington Square. The scene would not have impressed the adventurous, consisting as it did of a lone young woman (who Ruth recognized as herself) feverishly packing a suit-case. When she had locked and strapped it she sat down upon a trunk near by, panting and disheveled. Her figure was slender yet shapely, the contours ripe; there was nothing out of the ordinary about it; indeed, the mold was common to nine-tenths of American women. ”

“ Up to the moment I looked into that mirror I was ready to go with you. I did not love you, but I might have. I would have kept to the letter of my bargain. Well, in the mirror I saw everything. I knew instantly the kind of man you were. You would not have kept to the letter of your bargain. And a little later I should have been no better than the the poor things who live in these houses until they go to the hospitals to die. But God did not intend that I should go that way—be your kind."
"You will be before you leave this house," he replied, moodily.
"I can always kill myself." ”

“ Not all his philosophy, such as it was, nor the recollection of his buffets and how he had taken them upstanding, nor the knowledge that financially he need no longer worry, sufficed to ease a corner of this dull weight of misery. He had fallen in love with a woman who was not his kind.
She was good, anyhow. No woman could pray like that and not be good. It was just a simple prayer of a soul in trouble. His clean heart and his cynical knowledge fought over this conclusion. It is impossible for a man to let sordidness touch the skirts of the woman he loves. ”

“ She flung up her head, slid from the trunk, snatched her hat from the bed, and put it on without so much as a glance into the mirror, which, in a young and comely woman, registers the sign that she is under some great emotional strain. She had made her calculations in cold blood; there was not even the shadow of love in her heart. Ah, if only love had swayed her, human and beautiful love, which gives everything and asks for nothing! ”

“ Perhaps the Master, having given William a perfect body, considered it unwise (for William's welfare) to add a perfect face. Even then, in one particular, he had relented. When you looked into William's eyes, you forgot the red hair and freckles. These eyes were as blue as Ionian seas, kindly and mirthful, and there was something electric in them, something which mysteriously flashed blue fires like the sea-water in the famed Blue Grotto of Capri; the eyes of a fighter who could also lose himself in fine dreams. ”

“ William was in love. The fact that until now his looks had never worried him deeply was sufficient proof of the state of his mind. The moment a man wants to be handsome he is riding for his fall. No man cares a rap for mere beauty among his kind; he wants nothing more than strength or cleverness. But let him think woman, and at once he desires the beauty of Antinous, the strength of Hercules, and the wisdom of Nestor. You will no doubt carefully note that Antinous is given the precedence. It is not that man wishes to shed these illustrious qualities upon woman ”

“ And she had patronized him, casually accepted the gift of his friendship as one accepted a book, a box of candy, or a bouquet of flowers! She could not have been more astonished if she had seen a lazy house-cat suddenly transformed into a lord of the jungle. The ridiculous complacency of her previous attitude came home to her forcibly; and instantly she knew that William Grogan was become an integral part of her future. She was able to grasp this fact hazily. Strange are the inconsistencies of human nature. ”

“ The woman shut the door and William stepped off the porch into the street. So Colburton would go through life disfigured? That was more comforting than to know that he was dead. He judged Colburton more or less accurately. Repulsive to women, no longer fawned upon except for his money, never able to shut out the memory of that humiliating beating he had received in the presence of the woman he had wronged, Colburton would go through what remained of life tasting daily a bit of the hell he had so carelessly and callously brewed for others. ”

“ In spirit, however, he was already wandering through that human hell whose dimensions are in exact ratio to the strength of one's love. William loved deeply, so he went, down deeply. But he knew how to cover up, to hide pain, to jog along without plaint, without hope. Love is only an exalted kind of torture. ”

“ William mapped out his campaign without an instant's hesitation. He had played the fool with Colburton; he had forgotten where he was or that the man would have henchmen somewhere about the house. Moreover, he was tired, and he could not close his puffed hands as tightly as he would have liked. He must keep the yellow devils in front, near the door, where he could see them all. If one succeeded in getting in the rear, out of range, that would be the wind-up. Sticking to his tactics of carrying the fight to the enemy, he ran to meet the onrush, crying out his final advice to Ruth. ”

“ William did not care where the gondolier carried him. He wanted leisure to think, to reconstruct his castle of romance, to discover an excuse which would prove impregnable, like Gibraltar. As there was no wind to speak of, the house of cards went up rapidly.
Elsa Warren; he was now positive that such a person existed. She had gone wrong, and the disgrace of it had been too much for her sister to bear. He saw the picture: Ruth staid and sensible and hard-working, Elsa vain and selfish and flighty, and no doubt, lazy. That kind of a girl generally went wrong. ”

“ He clutched the teak stand, heavy and tough, and swung it high above his head.
The yellow men paused; and well they might. They had been sent against a man; but yonder blue-eyed was not a man, he was a half-god, for all his bloody face, for all his tatters. They had had enough. As William whirled the stand and let go, they broke and made for the hallway. William slammed the door and leaned against it. ”

“ The Cairo fly is a firm believer in sunshine.
The boy carried a loaf of bread under one arm and a water-jar under the other. The water-jar was like those William had often admired on the heads of the graceful balancing Egyptian women. The boy approached William and stared; his glance was neither bold nor timorous, only mildly curious. The boy looked at him quite as William would have looked at a strange fish in the Battery Aquarium at home. Having satisfied his eyes, the boy nonchalantly dropped the bread to the ground and held the water-jar against William's swollen lips. ”

“ Self-analysis is the best of moral tonics. The fact that we can dig into our innermost thoughts and distinguish the good from the bad, that we are able to weigh justly the one against the other, is in itself a spur to noble deeds. By this process we become capable of forgiving wrongs, of bursts of real generosity and sacrifice. In face of such magnanimity as William had exhibited Ruth could be no less magnanimous herself. ”

“ William sat up stiffly. He heard these words as surely as he heard the lap-lap of the water against the sides of the gondola.
"I ask the strict attention of the jury, your Honor," went on the prosecuting attorney, "while I recite this prayer: 'Dear God, make me strong. Take out of my heart the evil longings. Give me strength always to be good. Let me not covet that which is not mine. Clean my heart and put temptation behind me. Amen!'"
"Aw, hell!" said William, aloud, crumpling back in his seat.
"Si, Signore," replied the gondolier, believing he had received an order to return to the hotel. ”

“ If the girl was fool enough to cast her lot with a man like Colburton, why, there was nothing more to be said. You could not argue with a woman who put clothes and good times above her soul. You wasted your breath. But when the girl had looked into the pit at her feet and drawn back, when she had fled temptation, fought and conquered it, as he knew Ruth had. ”

“ William suddenly awoke to the dismal fact that he was dreadfully alone. In all his busy years this thought had never before come home to him so keenly. There was not a soul in all the wide world who really cared what became of him, where he went, what he did, or how he died. Burns was all right, and so were the boys over at the engine-house, but they lacked something. ”

“ William decided that it was not the work of a professional. Fat chance for that breed on board the Ajax, where the wealth of the passengers consisted of small bills, few and slim letters of credit. People who could afford to travel on their own, without the tender solicitude of Thomas Cook, had real bank-accounts. Finally he gave up the puzzle. There was neither head nor tail to it. Anyhow, he had thirty to blow in when he landed at Gibraltar.
Having resigned himself to the loss, the recovery was like finding it; and eternally the poor never save anything they find. ”