Crauford

“ Delighted and surprised with this confession, Crauford continued: “I believe,—I fear not; thank God, our virtue can never be so tried: but even you, Glendower, even you, philosopher, moralist as you are,—just, good, wise, religious,—even you might be tempted, if you saw your angel wife dying for want of the aid, the very sustenance, necessary to existence, and your innocent and beautiful daughter stretch her little hands to you and cry in the accents of famine for bread.” ”

“ A cessation of unusual length in the series of the lightnings, and the consequent darkness, against which the dull and scanty lamps vainly struggled, prevented Crauford and another figure approaching from the opposite quarter seeing each other till they almost touched. Crauford stopped abruptly.
"Is it you?" said he.
"It is a man who has outlived fortune!" answered Glendower, in the exaggerated and metaphorical language which the thoughts of men who imagine warmly, and are excited powerfully, so often assume. ”

“ Often and often, humble and defeated through all his dissimulation, was Crauford driven from the presence of the man whom it was his bitterest punishment to fear most when most he affected to despise; and as often, re-collecting his powers and fortifying himself in his experience of human frailty when sufficiently tried, did he return to his attempts. ”

“ He was only so far resembling Crauford as one man of the world resembles another in selfishness and dissimulation: he could be dishonest, not villanous,— much less a villain upon system. He was a canter, Crauford a hypocrite: his uttered opinions were, like Crauford's, different from his conduct; but he believed the truth of the former even while sinning in the latter; he canted so sincerely that the tears came into his eyes when he spoke. ”

“ When Crauford's guilt and imprisonment became known; when inquiry developed, day after day, some new maze in the mighty and intricate machinery of his sublime dishonesty; when houses of the most reputed wealth and profuse splendour, whose affairs Crauford had transacted, were discovered to have been for years utterly undermined and beggared, and only supported by the extraordinary genius of the individual by whose extraordinary guilt, now no longer concealed, they were suddenly and irretrievably destroyed ”

“ So far might the character of Richard Crauford find parallels in hypocrisy and its success. Dive we now deeper into his soul. Possessed of talents which, though of a secondary rank, were in that rank consummate, Mr. Crauford could not be a villain by intuition or the irregular bias of his nature: he was a villain upon a grander scale; he was a villain upon system. Having little learning and less knowledge, out of his profession his reflection expended itself upon apparently obvious deductions from the great and mysterious book of life. ”

“ In wickedness there is peril, and mutual terror is the strongest of ties. At all events, the wicked can, not unoften, excite an attachment in their followers denied to virtue. Habitually courteous, caressing, and familiar, Crauford had, despite his own suspicions of Bradley, really touched the heart of one whom weakness and want, not nature, had gained to vice; and it was not till Crauford's guilt was by other witnesses undeniably proved that Bradley could be tempted to make any confession tending to implicate him. ”

“ Crauford sank not in the estimation of the world.
“It was easy to see,” said the spectators of his domestic drama, “that a man in temper so mild, in his business so honourable, so civil of speech, so attentive to the stocks and the sermon, could not have been the party to blame. One never knew the rights of matrimonial disagreements, nor could sufficiently estimate the provoking disparities of temper. Certainly Mrs. Crauford never did look in good humour, and had not the open countenance of her husband ”

“ It chanced that it came when the Earl was in a good humour.
'Ah, John Crauford,' said Cassillis, ''tis a changed day since Bargany and you chased us off Skeldon Haughs. It looks as if the sow had not been flitted so far after all. But ye shall have the peace ye ask. For we live under a gracious King who loves quietness as much as when he dwelt here in our kindly North. And he is now the better able to enforce it. Therefore, look ye to it. I will maintain you Craufords in your heritages of Kerse—which by my power as Bailzie, I might legally declare forfeit. ”

“ That convivial gentleman emptied it at a draught, and, faltering out, "Honest Sir John!—room for my Lady Bradley's carriage," dropped down on the floor insensible.
Crauford rose instantly, satisfied himself that the intoxication was genuine, and giving the lifeless body a kick of contemptuous disgust, left the room, muttering, "The dull ass, did he think it was on his back that I was going to ride off? He! he! he! But stay, let me feel my pulse. Too fast by twenty strokes! One's never sure of the mind if one does not regulate the body to a hair! Drank too much ”

“ To this, dourly enough, the Craufords perforce agreed. For, indeed, they could make no better of it, so great a man was our Earl grown.
But to me he was ever kind, and proved none so ill-given when it liked him. For he said, 'Build you the house of Palgowan and I will plenish it for you, and that not meanly. And you and my cousin Nell shall rear me routh of lusty knaves to protect my south-western marches, and keep down the reivers of the Dungeon!' Which, indeed (so far as I was concerned) , I was right willing to promise. ”

“ The Ingrams anticipated by several weeks their projected departure for Newport—they had given out that they were to spend the summer there—and, quitting New York, quite left, like the gentleman in "The School for Scandal," their reputations behind them.
I continued to observe Crawford with interest, and, although I did full justice to his wisdom and self-control, when the summer arrived I was ill at ease about him. He led exactly the life he had led before his engagement, and mingled with society; neither more nor less. ”

“ Not the type of thing Quartel would use. Not making you ride a horse or letting you watch Africano. Not anything as simple to get away from. Merely suggestion, Crawford. Your mind will do the rest. Little things. Insidious things.
"Like the story of a miner who got crushed in a cave-in down at Monterrey. Did that stay with you a long time, Crawford? At night, perhaps, you'd wake up. Remembering. Wondering. Innuendoes, Crawford. Insinuations. Things for the mind to retain and savor. Because it is your mind. I showed you that with the examination. It isn't your legs. ”

“ Old Crawford's memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on age, 'respect, and troops of friends.' His son—whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the middle ages—is driver, in the season, and sportsman in and out of it. ”

“ Then it was the shadowy figure moving out of the darkness down the trail, and Crawford yanked on the maguey and it slipped off the branch and the branch snapped up with a soft crackle and caused the figure to whirl that way, his gun crashing, his back toward the thicket in which Crawford lay.
"Maybe you're a dangerous man," screamed Crawford in a terrible release, leaping to his feet and throwing himself bodily at the man, who was still firing wildly into the opposite thicket, "but this is one bronc you'll wish to hell you never climbed on." ”

“ To come out on the porch that morning and see you standing there beside Whitehead's body, knowing what it meant. It doesn't happen to a person often in her life, Crawford. That sort of feeling. Let me help you, Crawford. I want to. I can't if you don't trust me."
She was up against him now, almost sobbing it, and his hands had slid around her waist, the flesh hot and silken against his palm through her gown. For one last moment he tried to fight it. But he had fought so long, so alone, without anyone, and the warm resilience of her body against him filled Crawford with a giddy weakness. ”

“ A man stepping off then would have ultimately lost his touch with the horse too. But Crawford rode its neck when it twisted onto its hips and rode its head when it put its rump into the ground and rode its belly while it was upside down.
The horse rose into a veritable orgasm of mad bucking, pin-wheeling, sunfishing, humping up and coming down with all four feet planted, and knocking most of the consciousness from Crawford every time it landed. Crawford was bleeding at the nose and ears, face covered with blood and sweat, clothes black with dirt. ”

“ Crawford stood there facing him, breathing heavily. "What are you trying to do, Huerta?"
"Give you, shall we say, an illustration," said Huerta. "Don't you think I know what is the matter with you, Crawford? Ever since I first saw you watching Africano out in the corral. Perhaps the others are still groping. They sense something not quite right in you, Crawford. But they don't know for sure, yet. I know, Crawford." He said the last softly, positively, watching Crawford. He took a drag on the cigarette. "It must be a terrible thing to live with constantly. ”

“ Philip Crawford stared at me.
“He says so,” I went on; “but no one can prove his statement. He refuses to say where he was in New York, or what he did. Now, merely as a supposition, why couldn't he have come out here—say on the midnight train—called on Mr. Joseph Crawford, and returned to New York before daylight?”
“Absurd! Why, he had no motive for killing Joseph.”
“He had the same motive Florence would have. He knew of Mr. Crawford's objection to their union, and he knew of his threat to change his will. Mr. Hall is not blind to the advantages of a fortune.” ”

“ Layard, who gave himself no airs, but was always a pleasant gentleman, though he was not in the counting-house of the great Welford Gas Company, but in the works, where her own husband was employed.
"Why, don't you consider a man four inches taller than I a tall man?" cried Crawford, drawing brows down over his quick furtive eyes, and looking at the woman as if he was reproaching her with having committed a heinous crime. ”

“ Moreover, I found a late extra of a New York paper in Mr. Crawford's office. This wasn't on sale until about half past eleven that night, so whoever left it there must have come out from the city on that midnight train, or later.”
A change came over Philip Crawford's face. Apparently he was brought to see the whole matter in a new light.
“What? What's that?” he cried excitedly, grasping his chair-arms and half rising. “A late newspaper! An extra!”
“Yes; the liner accident, you know.”
“But—but—Gregory Hall! Why man, you're crazy! Hall is a good fellow. ”

“ At the Counter Club there were men every night who did not mind how far into the morning they sat so long as they were winning. From the moment Crawford touched the cards until he rose at half-past six he had lost steadily. Though he had played for higher stakes than usual, he had been as careful of his game as if he had no more than a few hundred pounds with him. ”

“ Then he dropped the big coffeepot with a clang and began running his way, grunting as each foot struck the ground, his short, bandy legs looking as if they would collapse every time the prodigious weight of his torso descended on them in a step.
"Dios, Crawford," he shouted. "Válgame Dios. What happened? Que hace? Who is it? Are you all right? What happened?"
He was halfway to Crawford by the time Aforismo stumbled into view at the bunkhouse door, pulling bare brown legs into his stiff, greasy chivarras and blinking sleepily. ”

“ Layard thought Crawford must be a very excitable and somewhat eccentric man to allow himself to be troubled by a purely playful speech as to the pedestrian on the tow-path; but he felt he had been almost unjust to Crawford when talking to his sister, and he was anxious for this reason, and because of a desire to conciliate his lodger, to gratify him by joining in this expedition, which he looked on as absurd. ”

“ He isn't four inches taller than you, Mr. Crawford."
"He is."
"Excuse me, sir; if you tell me so, of course I have nothing more to say," said Mrs. Grainger, rising with severity and dignity. "The gentleman that lives on Poland's Ait is a shorter man than you, sir."
"Are you sure?" said Crawford, standing for the third time in front of the woman.
"Quite certain."
"Shorter than I?" said he, in a tone of abstraction, as he gnawed his knuckles, unconscious of her presence--"shorter than I?" he repeated, lost in thought. "Then he can't be Philip Ray," he cried in a tone of relief. ”

“ Quartel's gun crashed from ahead of them, but Crawford was too taken up with reining the black to use his Henry. He had that blurred impression of violent undulation around him. There was another snapping thud against Africano's buckskin shield, and a big diamondback fell to the ground beneath them as they went by.
Then it was the shrill scream from Huerta's copperbottom ahead. Crawford saw the huge rattler dropping off the animal's rump, and the copperbottom started to buck.
"There it is," screamed Huerta, "there it is!"
"Don't lose your head," shouted Crawford. "Get him to running again. ”

“ That is unfortunate. I am a very dangerous man, Crawford."
"That's your horse." Quartel nodded at a ewe-necked old paint standing near the corral fence. It had rheumy eyes and rope scars all over its gaunt shoulders and a saddleback the shape of hickory bow and the weediest legs Crawford had ever laid eyes on. Yet, standing even this near the animal, Crawford could feel that nebulous excitation begin to rise in him. Or was it excitation? The sweat broke out on his palms. ”

“ Later, by his novels, Crawford was to teach the English reading world to love the simple Italian ways. He taught me so much of Italy that I am glad to find, from an old letter, that he learned something that was worth while from me,—the American point of view. I was frankly horrified at the lack of purpose in his life. This handsome, gifted, brilliant man of twenty-four seemed perfectly content to live at home, idle, and supported by his mother.
Crawford’s mother, for years “a leader” of the Anglo-American colony, was much beloved.
“Madama Terry is the most simpatica American I know!” ”