Tollan

“ Not far off, in the course of time, they founded their great city of Tollan, now Tula, which became the centre of the Toltec nation.
These people built so well and so ruins found at tula.
much that the name became the word to mean builders. The few ruins left of their capital attest their skill. They felt themselves to be a superior race to that they found in their new home. The Toltecs were tall, robust, and well-formed, of light-sallow complexion, with but little hair on their face. They were wonderful for running, and could run at the greatest speed for hours. ”

“ Their knowledge of architecture must have been quite advanced to have enabled them to construct such an edifice. The third year after their arrival at Tulancingo, marked a Toltec age of 104 years from the time they left their home in Hue hue Tlapalan. Finally, eighteen years having elapsed, they transferred the capital to Tollan, afterwards the centre of the Toltec empire. Tollan is stated to have been eastward of Tulancingo (in all probability a mistake) . [386] In this migration 247we have a distance of 1150 leagues traversed ”

“ Thus we see that this is a myth of the returning seasons, and of nature waking to life again after the cold months ushered in by the chill rains of the late autumn. The principle of fertility is alone perennial, while each individual must perish and die. The God of Wine in Mexico, as in Greece, is one with the mysterious force of reproduction.
No writer has preserved such numerous traditions about the tricks of Tezcatlipoca in Tollan, as Father Sahagun. ”

“ It is a transparent metaphor, and could be paralleled by a hundred similar expressions in the myths of other nations. The Night brings forth the Day, the darkness leads on to the light, and though thus standing in the relation of father and son, the struggle between them is forever continued.
Another myth represents him as the immediate son of the All-Father Tonaca tecutli, under his title Citlallatonac, the Morning, by an earth-born maiden in Tollan. In that city dwelt three sisters, one of whom, an unspotted virgin, was named Chimalman. ”

“ Where's the sense in envying other men, when I can have all that they have, just as well as not? And I'll have it, too," said Mr. Tolman, as he went out and locked the doors. Once in the streets, and walking rapidly, his ideas shaped themselves easily and readily into a plan which, by the time he reached the house of his head clerk, was quite matured. Mr. Canterfield was just going down to dinner as his employer rang the bell, so he opened the door himself. "I will detain you but a minute or two," said Mr. Tolman, handing the keys to Mr. Canterfield. "Shall we step into the parlor?" ”

“ The night druggist wanted to think about it.
"There is nothing to think," said Mr. Tolman. "We know all about the lady." (He spoke truly, for he had informed himself about both parties to the affair.) "Take my advice, and be here to-morrow afternoon—and come rather early."
The next morning Mr. Tolman went up to his parlor on the second floor, and brought down two blue stuffed chairs, the best he had, and put them in the little room back of the shop. He also brought down one or two knicknacks and put them on the mantel-piece, and he dusted and brightened up the room as well as he could. ”

“ The madman paused, but only for a moment, then again he thundered out his rabid and distorted prayer. "'Their throat is an open sepulcher: they flatter with their tongue.... Destroy them, O God: let them perish through their own imaginations.'"...
When Tollman's delirium had burned him into a temporary exhaustion he collapsed into a chair and at his feet, forgotten now, fell the envelope which he had flaunted vainly before the eyes of the transgressors. ”

“ With a low and bitter laugh—or the fragment of a laugh, she turned and left the room.
After weeks of patient silence, Tollman asked once more, "Conscience, is there still no hope for me?" To his surprise she met his questioning gaze very directly and answered,
"That depends on your terms."
"I make no terms," he hastened to declare. "I only petition."
"If you ask a wife who can be a real wife to you—who can give you all her love and life—then the answer must still be no," she went on steadily with something like a doggedness of resignation. "I can't lie to you. I have only a broken heart. ”

“ Suddenly Tollemache burst into speech, hectic, slurred, rather bitter:
“I don’t understand. I don’t know what it is all about. They were my cards. I took them from my room. A brand-new pack with the seal unbroken, and ...”
“Silence!” thundered his father. “You bad son! You wicked brother! You—you ...” his voice peaked to a high-pitched, senile screech—“to cheat! At cards! Like a low Piccadilly cad—like some swine of a racetrack tout! God! To bring shame and disgrace on an honorable English name, for the sake of some damned, trashy, pinchbeck jewel for some damned, painted London harlot ...” ”

“ Tolman began to feel hungry. He had his winter appetite, and had lunched early. So said he to the night druggist, who had opened his "Dormstock," "How would you like to sit here and read awhile, while I go and get my dinner? I will light the gas, and you can be very comfortable here, if you are not in a hurry."
P. Glascow was in no hurry at all, and was very glad to have some quiet reading by a warm fire; and so Mr. Tolman left him, feeling perfectly confident that a man who had been allowed by the old lady to renew a book nine times must be perfectly trustworthy. ”

“ If the enemy did not discover them, they passed without defeat.
Her young and splendid body seemed to her a temple out of which she had driven the love god, the deity of motherhood and the glowing lights of wholesome sex ... and [Pg 267] where she had set up instead a pale allegiance of soulless form. Her life seemed a thing of quenched torches and unlit lamps.
Conscience Tollman was in a dangerous mood, and some of her belligerency of spirit Stuart Farquaharson saw as he came quietly to her side and spoke her name, gently, as one might speak to a sleep walker. ”

“ Later in the day when the body still lay in the parlor of the Tollman house and Conscience sat almost as motionless near by, Eben Tollman paced the floor with features set in an expression unpleasantly suggestive of the undertaker's professional solemnity.
Possibly Tollman was not inconsolably cast down. So long as the old man's precarious life spark had been [Pg 177] a danger signal, burning against the influence of Stuart Farquaharson, it was vital that he should live. Now he was entitled to the serenity of a holy man's reward. ”

“ Tollman had chosen a program out of which breathed a potency of passion and allurement. Voices rich with the gold of love's abandon sang the songs of composers, wholly dedicated to love's own form of expression.
Stuart Farquaharson's cigar had gone out and he [Pg 228] sat meditative in the shadows of the terrace—himself a shadowy shape, with his eyes fixed upon Conscience, and Conscience, too, remained quiet with that unstirring stillness which bespeaks a mood of dreams. Something in the air, subtle yet powerful, was working upon them its influence. ”

“ Every one else in the establishment had gone home; and he, with the keys in his hand, was ready to lock up and leave also. He often staid later than any one else, and left the keys with Mr. Canterfield, the head clerk, as he passed his house on his way home.
Mr. Tolman seemed in no hurry to go. He simply sat and thought, and increased his apparent age. The truth was he did not want to go home. He was tired of going home. This was not because his home was not a pleasant one. No single gentleman in the city had a handsomer or more comfortable suite of rooms. ”

“ Tolman, "I think it would be well for you to bring your love matters to a conclusion while I am here to help you."
"My love matters!" exclaimed Mr. Glascow, with a flush.
"Yes, certainly," said Mr. Tolman. "I have eyes, and I know all about it. Now let me tell you what I think. When a thing is to be done, it ought to be done the first time there is a good chance. That's the way I do business. Now you might as well come around here to-morrow afternoon, prepared to propose to Miss Edwards. ”

“ Eben Tollman for your sudden discovery that I am a sneak and a coward?"
"That," shouted the invalid, "proves your meanness of spirit. Had Mr. Tollman held a brief for you he could not have defended you more stoutly. He, too, was deceived in you, it seems."
"Stuart," suggested the girl, "it's no use. You can't change him now. Perhaps when he's less angry—"
"Less angry!" screamed the old man. "For almost seventy years my wrath against the machinations of hell has burned hot. If God grants me strength to the end, it will never cool. You, too, have turned to my enemies in my last days. ”

“ Shadows leaped and danced fantastically against the color of the crackling logs and in her hair shimmered a glow that ranged between the glint of darkened mahogany and jet. It was of this that Stuart thought, as, for a half hour, they listened to Tollman's talk, content with brief replies or none at all. Some magic had lulled him, too, into a quietened mood from which had been smoothed the saw-edged raggedness of despair. With a vague wonderment he recognized this metamorphosis. No such soothing potency lay in any wine ever pressed from the grapes of Funchal ”

“ It had hurt when Tollman referred to Farquaharson's unfavorable record, even with the consideration of tone he had employed. But Conscience told herself that her duty lay less in defense of the man whom she had once loved and who had fallen from his pedestal than in the square facing of present facts.
Her husband had alluded to Stuart with neither rancor nor resentment but in kindliness and fair judgment. Now, at all events, she argued wildly, seeking to coerce her heart, it was to Eben and not to Stuart that she owed loyalty. ”

“ La Vireville stretched out his hand to him. "You behold in me, M. le Lieutenant," he observed, with rather a grim smile, "a twice condemned criminal. I have no right to be anywhere but underground. But what is the news you have to tell me, Monsieur?"
Mr. Tollemache sat down beside him and told him. The wounded man heard him through to the end without comment, his face shielded by the thin hand on which he leant it. At the end he said under his breath, "Thank God!" and held out that hand again to the narrator. "You are a brave man, Mr. Tollemache." ”

“ The voice of impulse pleaded with him fiercely to go back and tax that man, panoplied though he was in the sanction of society and the church, with having won foully. Tollman would never kindle the fire that burned deep and blue-flamed in his wife's nature. Her life with him would be thirst and hunger. But Stuart's fever turned to chill again as he remembered. ”

“ Tollman's face was gravely serious as he put a question which might have seemed less near the kernel of the matter than several others, "Why did they fear a raid?"
"They sometimes happen, you know. The police get periodically active. The Van Styne has been pinched before." Mr. Hagan rose from his seat and added with the solicitude of one wishing to make the amende honorable, "However, Mr. Tollman, I believe that was before you owned the place." ”

“ Tolman was left sitting behind the little counter, the sole manager and proprietor of a circulating library and a stationery and notion shop. He laughed when he thought of it, but he rubbed his hands and felt very well satisfied.
"There is nothing really crazy about it," he said to himself. "If there is a thing that I think I would like, and I can afford to have it, and there's no harm in it, why not have it?" ”

“ For, from behind an immense, gnarled deodar tree, drifted voices, the princess' and Tollemache's, speaking in soft, gliding Persian which Hector translated to Jane in an undertone.
“Aziza Nurmahal!” said Tollemache, “I need thee, I need thee so! The thought of thee going out of my life—God!—I cannot stand it. I could not face existence without thee!” ”

“ Tollman rose and went over to the window which gave off across the garden. He presented the seeming of a man whose thought was dispassionate, and because dispassionate impossible to ignore. "This young man has in his blood bold and romantic tendencies which will not be denied. To him much that we revere seems a type of narrowness. His ancestors have made a virtue of the indulgences of sideboard and card table—but the boy is not to blame for that."
Eben Tollman was playing on the prejudices of his host as he might have played on the keys of a piano. ”

“ Poor old Tolley, to whom Armageddon is an intensely personal affair, and who interested himself in it from the purely private motives of the patriot, in the competitive spirit of the pothunter, or in the wicked caprice of the law-abiding civilian lusting to travel abroad without a ticket, go shooting without a licence and dabble in manslaughter without the subsequent expense of briefing counsel,—poor old Tolley sees a personal slight in this, and is quite sure that K. has a down on all of us and on himself in particular. ”

“ Sometimes when he thought I wasn't looking his eyes would get like a fellow's I seen once in death-row up the river, but if he caught me peepin' he'd laugh and straighten up sudden."
"Well, I don't suppose you can get anything on him till he gives you a chance," said Mr. Hagan grudgingly, "but what this man Tollman wants is results. He ain't paying out good money that he's hoarded for years, just to get merit reports. ”

“ Do you think that story will stand scrutiny with the public or with your wife?"
"Be good enough," cautioned Tollman ominously, "to leave my wife's name out of this talk. It's hardly an appropriate combination."
"No," assented Hagan with readiness, "and it's going to be less so before I finish. How do you expect to rid yourself of the Van Styne? By selling it, at a profit, to somebody else that'll go on getting rich on other Minnie Rays? And when you've done that are you going to carry the same policy of high-minded [Pg 255] reform through the rest of your property in New York find Boston? ”