Nathanael Greene

“ The girl was genuinely frightened, and, after Sibella and Sproot had been consulted, she was paid her wages and told she could pack her things. In less than half an hour she had turned in her key and departed with her luggage. Such information as she left behind her was largely a substantiation of Hemming’s outpourings. She, though, did not regard the two murders as the acts of an outraged God. Hers was a more practical and mundane view.
“There’s something awful funny going on here,” she had said, forgetting for the moment the urge of her coquettish spirits. “The Greenes are queer people. ”

“ This struggle between the forces of good and evil is exceedingly well depicted in Greene's Repentances, under his own or fictitious names; of all the heroes of his tales he is himself the most interesting and the most deeply studied. As a novel writer and an observer of human nature, his own portrait is perhaps his masterpiece. ”

“ SCENE III.—At Wakefield.
Enter George-a-Greene.
Geo. The sweet content of men that live in love
Breeds fretting humours in a restless mind;
And fancy, being check'd by fortune's spite,
Grows too impatient in her sweet desires;
Sweet to those men whom love leads on to bliss,
But sour to me whose hap is still amiss.
Enter Jenkin.
Jen. Marry, amen, sir.
Geo. Sir, what do you cry "amen" at? ”

“ With Greene we come to something at once very different from Lyly, and quite new,—to the vehement exuberant Elizabethan drama, which in strong hands reaches the loftiest heights of poetry [240] and passion, but in others falls to the lowest depths of rant, or runs to the very madness of fustian. It is not the greater achievement that we must look for in Greene. ”

“ Now what remains? there's twenty crowns for house, three crowns for household-stuff, sixpence to buy a constable's staff; nay, I will be the chief of my parish. There wants nothing but a wench, a cat, a dog, a wife, and a servant, to make an whole family. Shall I marry with Alice, Goodman Grimshawe's daughter? she is fair, but indeed her tongue is like clocks on Shrove Tuesday, always out of temper. Shall I wed Sisley of the Whighton? O, no! she is like a frog in a parsley bed; as skittish as an eel: if I seek to hamper her, she will horn me. But a wench must be had, Master Slipper ”

“ A weak, conceited, self-indulgent man, with a genuine vein of lyric poetry and of tenderness, is perhaps as accurate a summing up as can be given of Greene. He was born in 1560 and died in 1592, worn out by a Bohemian life led in a very exuberant time. There seems to be no doubt that the end was very miserable. Greene has enjoyed an unfortunate notoriety on the strength of a passage in his last pamphlet, The Groat’s Worth of Wit, in which he abuses Shakespeare. ”

“ Greene thinks, there is another explanation of last night’s crime, then it’s essential to acquaint ourselves with the conditions existing here. And it’s equally essential not to rouse the suspicions of the servants. Hence, my apparent irrelevancies. I’m trying to size up the various human factors we have to deal with; and I think I’ve done uncommonly well. Several rather interesting possibilities have developed.”
Before Markham could reply Sproot passed the archway and opened the front door to some one whom he greeted respectfully. Greene immediately went into the hall. ”

“ I was too familiar with the sight to be particularly impressed; and Vance, who detested noise and disorder, looked on with an air of bored annoyance. But Ada’s face lighted up at once. Her eyes sparkled and the blood rushed to her cheeks. She gazed over the railing in a thrall of fascination.
“And now you see, Miss Greene, how foolish men can be,” said Vance.
“Oh, but it’s wonderful!” she answered. “They’re alive. They feel things. They have something to fight for.”
“You think you’d like it?” smiled Vance.
“I’d adore it. I’ve always longed to do something exciting—something . ”

“ I know old Tobias Greene has gone to his Maker.”
“Yes, old Tobias died about twelve years ago. But his wife is still living, though she’s a helpless paralytic. Then there are—or rather were—five children: the oldest, Julia; next, Chester; then another daughter, Sibella, a few years under thirty, I should say; then Rex, a sickly, bookish boy a year or so younger than Sibella; and Ada, the youngest—an adopted daughter twenty-two or three, perhaps.” ”

“ Van Loan had seized the cane, and flourished it for a second in heroic attitude above the prostrate body of his victim. Then finding Lee almost within touch, he turned and ran with it into an open doorway of South College.
But Lee did not follow him; he stopped where Parmenter lay in the moonlight, white-faced, limp, and unconscious, with flowing blood staining the pavement under his head.
“He’s hurt!” cried Lee, frightened at his friend’s appearance, and bending over him in deep anxiety. “He’s hurt! Maybe the brute has killed him! Here, give us a lift; let’s carry him in! ”

“ Geo. Tell me, sweet love, what good fortune brought thee hither?
For one it was that favour'd George-a-Greene.
Bet. Both love and fortune brought me to my George,
In whose sweet sight is all my heart's content.
Geo. Tell me, sweet love, how cam'st thou from thy father's?
Bet. A willing mind hath many slips in love:
It was not I, but Wily, thy sweet boy.
Geo. And where is Wily now?
Bet. In my apparel, in my chamber still.
Geo. Jenkin, come hither: go to Bradford,
And listen out your fellow Wily.—
Come, Bettris, let us in,
And in my cottage we will sit and talk. ”

“ What, dost thou mock me?
Miles. Not I, sir, but what would you at Brazen-nose?
Erms. Marry, we would speak with Friar Bacon.
Miles. Whose men be you?
Erms. Marry, scholar, here's our master.
Ralph. Sirrah, I am the master of these good fellows; mayst thou not know me to be a lord by my reparrel?
Miles. Then here's good game for the hawk; for here's the master-fool, and a covey of coxcombs: one wise man, I think, would spring you all.
P. Edw. Gog's wounds! Warren, kill him.
War. Why, Ned, I think the devil be in my sheath; I cannot get out my dagger. ”

“ Wily. Alas, sir, it is Hebrew unto me,
To tell me of George-a-Greene or any other!
Search me, good sir, and if you find a letter
About me, let me have the punishment that's due.
Grime. Why are you muffled? I like you the worse for that.
Wily. I am not, sir, asham'd to show my face;
Yet loth I am my cheeks should take the air:
Not that I'm chary of my beauty's hue,
But that I'm troubled with the toothache sore.
[Unmuffles.
Grime. [aside] . A pretty wench, of smiling countenance!
Old men can like, although they cannot love ”

“ Though most of the productions of Greene were written to supply the wants of the passing hour, yet the poetical effusions scattered through his works betray few marks of haste or slovenliness, and many of them, indeed, may be classed among the most polished and elegant of their day. To much warmth and fertility of fancy, they add a noble strain of feeling and enthusiasm, together with many exquisite touches of the pathetic, and so many impressive lessons of morality, as, in a great measure, to atone for the licentiousness of several of his prose tracts. ”

“ Could you endure it? Miserere nostri! . . . No, it won’t come to that. But—dash it all!—that Greene murder is haunting my slumbers like a lamia. And the business isn’t over yet. There’s a horrible incompleteness about what’s already occurred. . . .”
It was scarcely eight o’clock on the following morning when Markham brought us the news of the second Greene tragedy. I had risen early, and was having my coffee in the library when Markham came in, brushing past the astonished Currie with only a curt nod.
“Get Vance out right away—will you, Van Dine?” ”

“ Is better than an earl, if he be false;"
and
"'tis more credit to men of base degree,
To do great deeds, than men of dignity."
George's words, "Tell me, sweet love, how is thy mind content," "Happy am I to have so sweet a love," and "I have a lovely leman, as bright of blee as is the silver moon," sound like Greene's style matured and softened by experience. Yet that the play is Greene's one would not dare to say. Its present form displays either hasty composition or garbled version, or both, for it is neither consistent nor well integrated. ”

“ And if my own children see fit to do everything they can to annoy me, why should I expect total strangers to show me any consideration?”
“When one is bent on murder, Mrs. Greene,” rejoined Markham, stung by her callousness, “one doesn’t stop to think of the mere inconvenience his crime may cause others.” ”

“ Markham also has retired to private life; and Sergeant Ernest Heath, that doughty and honest officer of the Homicide Bureau who officially handled the Greene case for the Police Department, has, through an unexpected legacy, been able to gratify his life’s ambition to breed fancy wyandottes on a model farm in the Mohawk Valley. Thus circumstances have made it possible for me to publish my intimate records of the Greene tragedy. ”

“ Greene,” interposed Vance, “was your sister Julia in the habit of leaving her door unlocked at night?”
Greene’s jaw dropped a little, and his eyes opened wider.
“By Jove—no! Now that you mention it . . . she always locked herself in.”
Vance nodded absently, and we passed out into the hall. A thin, swinging baize door hid the servants’ stair-well at the rear, and Markham pushed it open.
“Nothing much here to deaden the sound,” he observed.
“No,” agreed Greene. “And old Sproot’s room is right at the head of the steps. He’s got good ears, too—too damned good sometimes.” ”

“ Caitiff, what sayest thou?
Slip. I say, sir, that if she call you shifting knave, you shall not put her to the proof.
Ateu. And why?
Slip. Because, sir, living by your wit as you do, shifting is your letters-patents: it were a hard matter for me to get my dinner that day wherein my master had not sold a dozen of devices, a case of cogs, and a suit of shifts, [264] in the morning. I speak this in your commendation, sir, and, I pray you, so take it.
Ateu. If I live, knave, I will be revenged. What gentleman would entertain a rascal thus to derogate from his honour? ”

“ It was nearly five o’clock when we reached the Criminal Courts Building. Swacker had lit the old bronze-and-china chandelier of Markham’s private office, and an atmosphere of eerie gloom pervaded the room.
“Not a nice family, Markham old dear,” sighed Vance, lying back in one of the deep leather-upholstered chairs. “Decidedly not a nice family. A family run to seed, its old vigor vitiated. If the heredit’ry sires of the contempor’ry Greenes could rise from their sepulchres and look in upon their present progeny, my word! ”

“ And I’m much too young for wrinkles.”
“Like Ninon de L’Enclos, you’ll always be too young for wrinkles,” rejoined Vance, holding a match to her cigarette. “But perhaps you can suggest, without becoming too serious, some one who might have had a reason for wanting to kill your two sisters.”
“Oh, as for that, I’d say we’d all come under suspicion. We’re not an ideal home circle, by any means. In fact, the Greenes are a queer collection. We don’t love one another the way a perfectly nice and proper family should. ”

“ Warren and Ermsby are Englishmen of a sturdy type, and Sir Cuthbert Anderson and Lady Anderson are studied as if in their Scotch castle. But Greene did something more than present the exteriors of men as types. He studied their psychology, and knew the warring forces within the individual soul, the power of circumstance, and ambition, and love to direct the forces of character into untoward paths. He knew that logic of human nature that counts consistency untrue, and constructs motives out of the syllogisms of perversity. ”

“ It was on the day after the funeral that Vance paid his first unofficial visit to the Greene mansion. Sibella received him without any show of surprise.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she greeted him, almost gaily. “I knew you weren’t a policeman the first time I saw you. Imagine a policeman smoking Régie cigarettes! And I’m dying for some one to talk to. Of course, all the people I know avoid me now as they would a pestilence. I haven’t had an invitation since Julia passed from this silly life. Respect for the dead, I believe they call it. ”

“ Markham regarded him with some astonishment and considerable concern.
“Perhaps you are preparing to let the criminal escape in the present case,” he said, with the irony of resentment.
“Oh, no,” Vance assured him. “I shall turn your victim over to you. The Greene murderer is of a particularly vicious type, and should be rendered impotent. I was merely trying to suggest that the electric chair—that touchin’ device of your beloved society—is not quite the correct method of dealing with this culprit.” ”

“ An atmosphere of mutual hatred pervades the Greene mansion.
2. Mrs. Greene is a nagging, complaining paralytic, making life miserable for the whole household.
3. There are five children—two daughters, two sons, and one adopted daughter—who have nothing in common, and live in a state of constant antagonism and bitterness toward one another.
4. Though Mrs. Mannheim, the cook, was acquainted with Tobias Greene years ago and was remembered in his will, she refuses to reveal any of the facts in her past. ”

“ When Pen told his grandfather that a snowball fight had been decided upon as the method of settling the controversy between the Hilltops and the Riverbeds, and that Miss Grey had given her permission to that effect, the old gentleman chuckled gleefully.
"A very wise young woman," he said; "very wise indeed. When will the sanguinary conflict take place?"
"Why," replied Pen, "the first day the snow melts good."
"I see. I suppose you will lead the forces of Chestnut Hill?"
"I expect to; yes, sir."
"And our young friend, Master Sands, will marshal the troops of the Valley?" ”