Aaron Rodd

“ I shall break into my wife's rooms, and she will hold out her arms to me, and she will have her necklace, and I have got my thousand pounds. Enfin! Let us descend."
Harvey Grimm took up his hat and Aaron Rodd followed suit.
"It seems to me," Aaron remarked, as he brought up the rear of the little procession, "that the only man who gets nothing out of this is Mr. Brodie!"
Chapter VII The Infidelity of Jack Lovejoy
Cresswell and Aaron Rodd were dining with Captain Brinnen and his sister at a corner table in the Milan Restaurant. ”

“ I, on the other hand——"
"Have changed your name and become a capitalist," Aaron Rodd interrupted drily.
"Precisely!"
There was a moment's silence. Mr. Harvey Grimm, with the beatific smile of opulence, was whistling softly to himself. His companion's thoughts had apparently travelled back into the past.
"Well," the latter said at last, "I will imitate your candour. The document I was examining with so much interest when you came in, is a seven-year-old lease, long since cancelled. The few black boxes you see around the room are, with one exception, bogus. ”

“ Aaron Rodd and the poet both glanced cautiously in the direction indicated. A tall, clean-shaven young man, dark, with big black eyes, a mass of sleekly-brushed black hair and rather puffy cheeks, good-looking in a stagy sort of way, was entertaining an artistically decorated young ornament of the musical comedy stage.
"You know him, perhaps?" Brinnen enquired.
Both men shook their heads.
"He is always about here," Cresswell remarked, "generally in the bar."
"He is an American actor," Brinnen continued. "His name on the programmes is Jack Lovejoy. ”

“ Then, too, there is a peculiar and romantic importance attached to the successful poet whose reputation has been enhanced in so singular a fashion. The young lady will be interested in me from the start. She will be proud to remember that we are old acquaintances, and she will treat me with greater confidence than any ordinary person."
Harvey Grimm lit a cigarette deliberately. Aaron Rodd's heavy eyebrows seemed to have contracted a little.
"Why are you so sure that it will be the young lady who will keep the appointment?" ”

“ Rodd used to talk of the virtue of an ordered world, while the bookseller lived in dreams of Anarchy, men and women left alone so that the good in them could come to the top and create a millennium of kindliness. Rodd's researches into the human heart had revealed to him only too clearly the terror that burns at the sources of human life, but because the bookseller's dreams were dear to him, because they kept him happy and benevolent, Rodd could never bring himself to push argument far enough to disturb them. ”

“ Groping with his imagination into the vitals of the society into which he had been born, Rodd had consoled himself with the assurance that a cataclysm would come to smash the odious system by which the old enslaved the young, and that then there would be a cleaner atmosphere in which his ideas could live, and his words would be intelligible to all, because in it that deeper consciousness which was released in his imagined world would come into play to sweep away all falsehoods and stale ideas.... ”

“ And this madman was at large! At that very instant he might be listening to their breathing and their whispered words half a dozen feet away; any moment might see the blackness take form and the terrible thing hurl itself at their throats. Rod, unlike Wabigoon, knew that the powers of this strange creature of the chasm were greater than their own, that it could travel with the swiftness and silence of an animal through the darkness, that perhaps it could smell them and feel their presence as it passed on its way to the plain. He was anxious now to hear the cry again. ”

“ A furious jealousy swept away what was left of Rodd's intellectual world and released at last his passions. His mind worked swiftly through the story, picking it up in time with every thread.
Was she only an actress? Was the perfection which he had worshipped a figment, a projection of herself in the character most pleasing to his idealism? Impossible! There can be no feigning of purity, honesty, joy. That is where the pretences of humanity collapse. In such a pretence as that simulated passion—the ultimate baseness, breaks down, creates no illusion, and is foiled. ”

“ The sides were open, and half of the wharf was filled with moonlight, but over the other half the roof cast a black shadow, and into this Inez passed quickly. Roddy as quickly followed. His heart was leaping in a delightful tumult. His love of adventure, of the picturesque, was deeply gratified. As he saw it, the scene was set for romance; he was once more in the presence of the girl who, though he had but twice met her, and, in spite of the fact that she had promised herself to another man, attracted him more strongly than had any woman he had ever known. ”

“ I could linger here for hours. Look how that shaft of sunlight quivers through the crowns of yonder elms. But thou hast no eye for such effects, Rodd; thou art woefully lacking in artistic insight. See! a squirrel. What a pretty rascal it is?"
Roden had risen. "I am waiting for you, Felix," he said coldly. "But perhaps you wish me to leave you here and go back alone."
Although Roden Marsh addressed his foster brother as "Felix" when they were alone, in the presence of others he always spoke of and to him as "Mr. Drelincourt." ”

“ I do not see how it is possible for you to work at night at El Morro and by day on the light-house and not break down. We have no right to permit it.”
“My health,” explained Roddy dryly, “is in no danger from overwork. I am not employed by the company any longer. If I like I can sleep all day. I’ve discharged myself. I’ve lost my job.”
“You have quarrelled with your father,” said the girl quickly, “on account of my father? You [Pg 233] must not!” she exclaimed. “Indeed, we cannot accept such a sacrifice.”
“The misunderstanding with my father,” Roddy assured her, “is one of long standing. ”

“ He must know that his message has reached the outside. He must feel that some one is working toward him. He is the entombed miner, and, to keep heart in him, we must let him hear the picks of the rescuing party.”
“Fine!” cried Roddy, “I am for that, too. I’ll get my friend Vicenti, the prison doctor, to show you over the fortress to-morrow. And we’ll try to think of some way to give Rojas warning.”
They at once departed for the café of the Dos Hermanos, where the gay youth of Porto Cabello were wont to congregate, and where they found the doctor. ”

“ During those months I didn’t worry much about poor Roddy. I told myself the advertisements would surely get him—I knew his habit of reading newspapers. There are times when one’s vitality is too high to be clouded, too elastic to stay down. Hurrying from my cabin in the morning to the spot in the Cliff City where I studied under a cedar, I used to be frightened at my own heartlessness. But the feel of the narrow moccasin-worn trail in the flat rock made my feet glad, like a good taste in the mouth, and I’d forget all about Blake without knowing it. ”

“ Did I do right?”
“Whatever you do is right,” answered Roddy. “We might as well start life with that proposition as a fixed fact.”
“And do you want me with you now?” whispered the girl.
“Do I want you with me!” Roddy exclaimed, in mock exasperation. “Don’t provoke me!” he cried. “I am trying,” he protested, “to do my duty, while what I would like to do is to point this boat the other way, and elope with you to Curaçao. So, if you love your father, don’t make yourself any more distractingly attractive than you are at this moment. ”

“ The eyes of the girl grew anxious with disappointment.
“Do you mean,” she asked, “that you think he did not send that message?”
“It doesn’t sound to me,” said Roddy, “like the sort of message he would send, knowing the pain it would cause. He isn’t the sort of man to give up hope, either. Even if it were true, why should he tell your mother he is dying? And that epitaph!” cried Roddy excitedly. “That’s not like him, either! It is not modest.” ”

“ Rennell Rodd’s last volume, The Unknown Madonna and Other Poems. Mr. Rodd looks at life with all the charming optimism of a young man, though he is quite conscious of the fact that a stray note of melancholy, here and there, has an artistic as well as a popular value; he has a keen sense of the pleasurableness of colour, and his verse is distinguished by a certain refinement and purity of outline; though not passionate he can play very prettily with the words of passion, and his emotions are quite healthy and quite harmless. ”

“ Because if I could make you care as I care for you, it wouldn’t make any difference to you, either. No one on earth could love you more,” pleaded Roddy. “I know it. I feel it. There is nothing else so true! Other men may bring other gifts, but ‘Mine is the heart at your feet! He that hath more,’” he challenged, “‘let him give!’ All I know,” he whispered fiercely, “is, that I love you, I love you, I love you!”
He was so moved, he felt what he said so truly, it was for him such happiness to speak, that his voice shook and, unknown to him, the tears stood in his eyes. ”

“ What are you going to do in Tennessee?"
"Teach."
"Have you relatives there?"
"No."
"A miserable life—a hard, lonely, loveless life," said Rodman. "God help the woman who must be that dreary thing, a teacher from necessity!"
Miss Ward turned swiftly, but the keeper kept by her side. He saw the tears glittering on her eyelashes, and his voice softened. "Do not leave me in anger," he said; "I should not have spoken so, although indeed it was the truth. Walk back with me to the cottage, and take your last look at the room where poor Ward died, and then I will go with you to your home." ”

“ Rod no longer entertained any doubts concerning the identity of those who occupied the red racing car. One of them he felt positive must be Jules Baggott, the unscrupulous cousin of Andre, who would profit if the soldier should never live to sign the papers which were mentioned in the will of the dead uncle.
By this time Rod had his fighting blood up. Opposition always made him the more determined to accomplish his ends, when his heart was back of the undertaking. ”

“ They could not know that the eyes of the tourists were filled with pity, that, at the sight of the villa on the cliff the heart of each had quickened with kindly emotions, with excitement, with the hope of possible adventure.
Roddy clutched Peter by the wrist; with the other hand he pointed quickly. Through a narrow opening in a thicket that stood a few rods from the house Peter descried the formal lines of a tennis court. Roddy raised his eyebrows significantly. His smile was radiant, triumphant. ”

“ Roddy impatiently waited until a quarter of an hour had passed, then galloped to Willemstad. On the way he put up the pony at a livery-stable in the suburbs, and on foot made his way as quickly as possible to the bookstore. What he wanted, he explained, were guidebooks and histories of Venezuela. Among those the man showed him was one in three volumes, in Spanish, by Señor Don Miguel Rojas. Roddy’s fingers itched to open it, but he restrained himself and, after buying half a dozen other books, returned to his hotel. Peter was still asleep, and he could not wait to waken him. ”

“ Rodney fretted under the old man’s vague replies, and said: "But darn it all, can’t you tell us what you think?"
His father did not take his eyes off the rye-field. "I’m thinking," he answered, in the same old-fashioned way, "that I’ve been working here since you were born, Rod. I’ve blundered along, somehow, just boggling my way through. I ain’t got anything more to say. The farm ain’t mine any more, but I’ll keep my scythe sharp and my axe ground just as I always did, and I’m for workin’ as I’ve always worked as long as I’m let to stay." ”

“ I've got a great basket of mending that must be done, and you remember there's a choir rehearsal for the new anthem this afternoon, but anyway I can help a little on the cleaning. Then you can make Rodman do a few of the odd jobs, it will be a novelty to him; and Cephas will work his fingers to the bone for you, as you well know, if you treat him like a human being.”
“All right!” cried Patty joyously, her mood changing in an instant. “There's Rod coming over the bridge now! Toss me my gingham apron and the scrubbing-brush, and the pail, and the tin of soft soap, and the cleaning cloths ”

“ Roden read the letter, and put it in his pocket without a word. It had touched his vanity. He had had few dealings with men of the standing and position of Cornish, and here was this peer's nephew and peer's grandson appealing to him as to a friend, classing him together with himself as a man of the world. No man has so little discretion as a vain man. It is almost impossible for him to keep silence when speech will make for his glorification. Roden arrived at the works well pleased with himself, and found Von Holzen in their little office, put out, ill at ease, domineering. ”

“ She did not light the candles, but lay there in the darkness striving to compel some order out of the turmoil that rioted in her brain—her first thought was of Roddy. Roddy had always been to her the supreme type of animal spirits and vigour—that had been, above everything else, what he stood for. That he should have been struck down like this!
The cruelty, the irony of it! Much better that he should die than be compelled to lie on his back for the rest of his life—anything better for him than that—
If he died Rachel would be free. Lizzie faced that thought quite calmly! ”