Michael Daragh

“ She had to come to New York to seek her fortune, not to—to—whatever it was that Michael Daragh wanted her to do. And yet, she was always being drawn, willynilly, into any woe within her ken. Herself a contained creature of radiant health and placid nerves with a positively masculine aversion to scenes and applied emotion of any sort, people were always coming and confiding in her. ”

“ Michael Daragh, I'm up in my cunning little room with its heaving ceiling and its braided mats and patchwork quilt, and I can look down on the corner of the graveyard and see Dan'l and his dog waiting for Uncle Robert. He is not a real postman but he drives down for his own mail every day and "stops by" with the Gillespies'. (Not that they ever have any!) He's the old man who got down on his rusty black stomach to peek into the culvert and call "Come, pup, come, dear!" He's the sweetest old thing with Dan'l. ”

“ It was while M. Drakovics was pursuing these financial researches, in the vain hope of tracking down his successful rival and bringing him to ruin, that the Princess of Dardania arrived at Bellaviste with her four children—the Princesses Elisabeth and Ludmilla and the Princes Alexis and Kazimir, whose arrival was hailed with joy by King Michael. The Prince of Dardania had gone to Pavelsburg on a visit to the Scythian Court; but his wife, who had been invited to accompany him, was of opinion that her presence was more needed in Thracia. ”

“ Darragh gazed at her, astounded; took the hand she stretched out to him; held it with a silly expression on his features.
"Hal Smith," she said with perceptible emotion, "I take back what I once said to you on Owl Marsh. No man is a real crook by nature who did what you have done. That is 'faithfulness unto death'—the supreme offer—loyalty——"
Her voice broke; she pressed Darragh's hand convulsively and her lip quivered.
Darragh, with the morocco case full of jewels buttoned into his hip pocket, stood motionless, mutely swallowing his amazement. ”

“ When breakfast was ready Eve once more lay asleep with a slight dew of perspiration on her brow.
Darragh was half starved: Stormont ate little. Neither spoke at all until, satisfied, they rose, ready for sleep.
At the door of his room Stormont took Darragh's offered hand, understanding what it implied:
"Thanks, Jim. ... Hers is the loveliest character I have ever known. ... If I weren't as poor as a homeless dog I'd marry her to-morrow. ... I'll do it anyway, I think. ... I can't let her go back to Clinch's Dump!" ”

“ Eve was coming toward him in the dusk, moving painfully on her wounded feet. Darragh's flannel shirt and his hunting coat buttoned around her slender waist clothed her.
[166] The next instant he was beside her, lifting her in both arms.
As he placed her in the saddle and adjusted one stirrup to her bandaged foot, she turned and quietly thanked Darragh for the clothing.
"And that was a brave thing you did," she added, "—to risk your life for my father's property. Because the morocco case which you saved proved to be empty does not make what you did any the less loyal and gallant." ”

“ Kitty Clare had put one round, white arm on top of the gate palings, and was crying softly into the crook of it.
“And still they'll be making you take the fast mail run,” she sobbed brokenly. “'Tis your grandfather and my grandmother—she's always saying that your luck would turn.”
It is not often that the man becomes the comforter; but this time Darragh proved the exception.
“Don't cry, Kitty, colleen. The luck's with us yet. Three times have I seen the Darragh dwarf, and twice death has leaped at me. But I've got to be a man, darlin' ”

“ Darragh, the man at the throttle of the 809, was all right till an enemy put the “black curse" on him. Perhaps he should have laughed when the Clurichawn—the little old dwarf with the long white beard—confronted him. But Darragh hailed from Enniskiilen and the fear of death gripped him. The mysticism in the blood of the Celtic race dies hard. ”

“ Darragh was looking away through the waiting-room window at the red, white, and green switch lights starring the Brewster yard.
“No. Most times I can see as good as ever I could,” he asserted slowly; and then he added: “That's the trouble, Kitty, girl. I can see too good. I've seen my death.”
There was a shocked blankness in the pretty face when he let his gloomy eyes seek it again. ”

“ O spirits, your prison loathe and freedom gain you;
The destinies in deep laments have shut you
Of mortal hate, because they do disdain you,
And yet of joy that they in prison put you.
Earth, take this earth with thee to be enclosed;
Life is to me, and I to it, opposed! ”

“ They killed mighty Dargo in the field; Dargo before invincible. His daughter was fair as the morn; mild as the beam of night. Her eyes, like two stars in a shower: her breath, the gale of spring: her breasts, as the new-fallen snow floating on the moving heath. The warriours saw her, and loved; their souls were fixed on the maid. Each loved her, as his fame; each must possess her or die. But her soul was fixed on Oscur; my son was the youth of her love. She forgot the blood of her father; and loved the hand that slew him.
Son of Oscian, said Dermid, I love; O Oscur, I love this maid. ”

“ Death has relieved you of the task I imposed upon you. John Darrow’s body is in the well in the cave on Malabar Hill, where, before this reaches you, my body will have also gone to meet it. To this fragment of paper, then, must I confide the debt of gratitude I owe to you and to him who will bear it to you, Nana Kandia. ”

“ The Dalmatia had steamed into New York at eleven o’clock on the morning of the 24th day of April with a broken screw!
Imagine my amazement! The net of circumstantial evidence wound around Ragobah seemed to be such as to leave no possibility of escape, and yet, the very first effort made to draw it tighter about him had resulted in his walking, with the utmost ease, right through its meshes! There is no gainsaying such an alibi, and I am, therefore, forced to acknowledge that Rama Ragobah could not, by any possibility, have murdered John Darrow. ”

“ For by this time the Grand Duchess of Esthonia—Ricca, as she was called by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz—must have arrived in New York.
At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod—now inherited by Darragh—there might be a letter—perhaps a telegram—the cue for Hal Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but glittering part, and——
[161] Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his ideas—indefinite and hazy as they were, so far. ”

“ As a man will, when trying to readjust his mental processes, Darrow clasped his hands behind him, bent his head, and strolled along a little way, oblivious to all about him. Little he knew that, half a block behind, a husky individual in a gray suit and Panama, with bristly, close-cropped yellow mustache, had slacked his pace at the same moment, and now with sudden interest was studying the shop-window signs, as though looking for some very special place. ”

“ When Stormont came out a great fire of birch-logs was blazing in the living-room, and Darragh stood there, his elbow on the rough stone mantel-shelf.
Stormont came straight to the fire and set one spurred boot on the fender.
"She's warm and dry and sound asleep," he said. "I'll wake her again if you think she ought to swallow something hot."
At that moment the fish-culturist came in with a pot of steaming coffee.
"This is my friend, Ralph Wier," said Darragh. "I think you'd better give Eve a cup of coffee." And, to Wier, "Fill a couple of hot water bags, old chap. ”

“ They went out together. Stormont lifted Eve out of the saddle. She did not wake. Darragh led the way into the log house and along a corridor to his own room.
"Turn down the sheets," whispered Stormont. And, when the bed was ready: "Can you get a bath towel, Jim?"
Darragh fetched one from the connecting bath-room.
"Wrap it around her wet hair," whispered Stormont. "Good heavens, I wish there were a woman here."
"I wish so too," said Darragh; "she's chilled to the bone. You'll have to wake her. She can't sleep in what she's wearing ”

“ He was struck afresh, as he listened, by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of constraint, leaving to it only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It was the kind of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized as “awkward”, yet that was proving, in the event, as much outside such definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in a dew-drenched forest; and Darrow reflected that mankind would never have needed to invent tact if it had not first invented social complications. ”

“ We see a manned boat and a wrecking ship upon the immense ocean, with its swirling drift blown across like a tongue of tormented flame; and huge volumes of grey cloud over the horizon, walling out from the sea the gorgeous dawn of a new day, on fire with the blaze of sunlight. The painting of the vast sea-surface is a very great effort of knowledge and mastery, and a very successful one. ”

“ Dawson arose silently and, putting on her hat in the hall, left the house. She was furious. Her face was very white. She shook with passion. What a life! What a home! What a husband for a rising woman to have dragging her down! Not even willing to help her socially! Why, it had been only two years, and here he was sunk to the shoulders in the narrow groove it had taken women centuries to struggle out of! Had she ever been proud of him? Impossible! He was unjust, contemptible, mean! Why—why—could he not be like John Darrach? There was a man, strong, fearless, a politician. ”

“ This morning Draxy had that mysterious feeling as if all things were new, which so often comes to poetic souls. It is at once the beauty and the burden, the exhaustion and the redemption of their lives. No wonder that even common men can sometimes see the transfiguration which often comes to him before whose eyes death and resurrection are always following each other, instant, perpetual, glorious. Draxy took out her little diary. ”

“ Darrow, and with him Jack Warford, had descended more leisurely. Before leaving the building Darrow placed the flat of his hands over his ears, and motioned Jack to do the same. Thus they missed the stunning effect of receiving the world of noise all at once; as a man goes to a bright light from a dark room. Furthermore, Darrow returned several times from the sound to the silence, trying to determine where the line of demarcation was drawn. Then, motioning to Jack, he began methodically to make his way through the crowd. ”

“ Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt himself obscurely outraged by these promiscuous contacts. It was as though all the people about him had taken his measure and known his plight; as though they were contemptuously bumping and shoving him like the inconsiderable thing he had become. "She doesn't want you, doesn't want you, doesn't want you," their umbrellas and their elbows seemed to say. ”

“ Some stood frozen to one spot, their faces agonized, as a man would stand still were the earth likely to yawn anywhere. Darrow would have liked to reassure these, for their eyes expressed a frantic terror. One red-faced individual with white side-whiskers, looking exactly like the comic-paper caricatures of the trusts, had evidently refused to accept any arbitrary dictates of natural forces. ”

“ I adore Thee, oh my God, Who hast created me. I believe in Thee, oh Eternal Truth. I hope in Thee, oh Infinite Mercy. I love Thee, oh Supreme Goodness; I love Thee above everything; I love Thee more than myself, for Thou art worthy of being loved: And because I love Thee, I repent with all my heart for having despised Thy grace. I promise Thee to suffer every kind of death, and a thousand deaths, rather than displease Thee.
O Jesus, Son of God, Who didst die for me, have pity upon me! My Saviour, save me; and let it be my salvation to praise Thee through eternity. ”

“ Be it not seen in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retain;
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death ”

“ So is the Church, our sweet Mother. O, she is no creation of the imagination! O, she is no mere accident in human history, in divine Providence, divine grace, in the conversion of souls! She is a glorious, a living reality, living the divine, the eternal life of God. Her maker is her Husband, and he places her, after him, over all in heaven, on the earth, and under the earth. All that he can do to adorn and exalt her he has done. All he can give he gives; for he gives himself, and unites her in indissoluble union with himself. ”

“ She did not care for Darrach. He was an attentive, congenial companion; that was all. But how wrong, how loathsome, now seemed her association with him!
She felt a great choke coming into her throat. She detested her campaign, woman suffrage, and, most of all, herself as she had been in these two years.
Suddenly she sat erect. "I will give it all up," she said. "I will go back to my husband and my children, from whom I have wandered—oh, God, how far! Other women may do as they choose—I shall make a home again, and stay therein. I believe active life will restore my husband's health. ”

“ Darrow had straightened, and his indolent manner had fallen from him.
"I have said I would permit no harm to come to these people, and I mean it," said he.
"No harm!" cried Helen. "What do you call this—"
Darrow turned to the window looking out over the city.
"This!" he said. "Why, this isn't harm! There isn't a man out there who is not better off for what has happened to him. He has lost a little time, a little money, a little sleep, and he has been given a new point of view, a new manhood. As a city dweller he was becoming a mollusk, a creature that could not exist without its shell. ”