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189 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. It was an uninspiring bit of street: narrow, paved with cobble; hot and noisy in summer, reeking with unwholesome mud during the drizzling and snow-slimed months of winter. It looked anything this May after noon except a starting-place for drama. But, then, the great dramas of life often avoid the splendid estates and trappings with which conventional romance would equip them, and have their beginnings in unlikeliest environment; and thence sweep on to a noble, consuming tragedy, or to a glorious unfolding of souls. Life is a composite of contradictions - a puzzle to the wisest of us: the lily lifting its graceful purity aloft may have its roots in a dunghill. Samson's dead lion putrefying by a roadside is ever and again being found to be a storehouse of wild honey. We are too accustomed to the ordinary and the obvious to consider that beauty or worth may, after bitter travail, grow out of that which is ugly and unpromising.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819917342
Langue	English

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CHAPTER I
It was an uninspiring bit of street: narrow, pavedwith cobble; hot and noisy in summer, reeking with unwholesome mudduring the drizzling and snow-slimed months of winter. It lookedanything this May after noon except a starting-place for drama.But, then, the great dramas of life often avoid the splendidestates and trappings with which conventional romance would equipthem, and have their beginnings in unlikeliest environment; andthence sweep on to a noble, consuming tragedy, or to a gloriousunfolding of souls. Life is a composite of contradictions - apuzzle to the wisest of us: the lily lifting its graceful purityaloft may have its roots in a dunghill. Samson's dead lionputrefying by a roadside is ever and again being found to be astorehouse of wild honey. We are too accustomed to the ordinary andthe obvious to consider that beauty or worth may, after bittertravail, grow out of that which is ugly and unpromising.
Thus no one who looked on Maggie Carlisle and LarryBrainard at their beginnings, had even a guess what manner ofpersons were to develop from them or what their stories were tobe.
The houses on the bit of street were allthree-storied and all of a uniform, dingy, scaling redness. Thehouse of the Duchess, on the left side as you came down the streettoward the little Square which squatted beside the East River,differed from the others only in that three balls of tarnished giltswung before it and unredeemed pledges emanated a weakly lure frombehind its dirt-streaked windows, and also in that the personalityof the Duchess gave the house something of a character of itsown.
The street did business with her when pressed forfunds, but it knew little definite about the Duchess except thatshe was shriveled and bent and almost wordless and was seeminglywithout emotions. But of course there were rumors. She was so old,and had been so long in the drab little street, that she was asmuch a legend as a real person. No one knew exactly how she hadcome by the name of "Duchess." There were misty, unsupportedstories that long, long ago she had been a shapely and royal figurein colored fleshings, and that her title had been given her inthose her ruling days. Also there was a vague story that she hadcome by the name through an old liking for the romances of thatwriter who put forth her, or his, or their, prolific extravagancesunder the exalted pseudonym of "The Duchess." Also there was arumor that the title came from a former alleged habit of theDuchess of carrying beneath her shapeless dress a hoard of jewelsworthy to be a duchy's heirlooms. But all these were just stories -no more. Down in this quarter of New York nicknames come easily,and once applied they adhere to the end.
Some believed that she was now the mere ashes of awoman, in whom lived only the last flickering spark. And somebelieved that beneath that drab and spent appearance theresmouldered a great fire, which might blaze forth upon someoccasion. But no one knew. As she was now, so she had always beeneven in the memory of people considered old in theneighborhood.
Beside the fact that she ran a pawnshop, which wasreputed to be also a fence, there were only two or three otherfacts that were known to her neighbors. One was that in the farpast there had been a daughter, and that while still a very younggirl this daughter had disappeared. It was rumored that the Duchesshad placed the daughter in a convent and that later tire girl hadmarried; but the daughter had never appeared again in the quarter.Another fact was that there was a grandson, a handsome young devil,who had come down occasionally to visit his grandmother, until hebegan his involuntary sojourn at Sing Sing. Another fact - this onethe best known of all - was that two or three years before animpudent, willful young girl named Maggie Carlisle had come to livewith her.
It was rather a meager history. People wondered andtalked of mystery. But perhaps the only mystery arose from the factthat the Duchess was the kind of woman who never volunteeredinformation about her affairs, and the kind even the boldly curioushesitate to question...
And down here it was, in this unlovely street, inthe Duchess's unlovely house, that the drama of Maggie Carlisle andLarry Brainard began its unpromising and stormy career: for, thoughthey had thought of it little, their forebears had been sowers ofthe wind, they themselves had sown some of that careless seed andwere to sow yet more - and there was to be the reaping of thatseed's wild crop.
CHAPTER II
When Maggie entered the studio on the Duchess'sthird floor, the big, red-haired, unkempt painter roared hisrebukes at her. She stiffened, and in the resentment of her proudyouth did not even offer an explanation. Nodding to her father andBarney Palmer, she silently crossed to the window and stoodsullenly gazing over the single mongrel tree before the house anddown the narrow street and across the little Square, at theswirling black tide which raced through East River. That painterwas a beast! Yes, and a fool!
But quickly the painter was forgotten, and once moreher mind reverted to Larry - at last Larry was coming back! - onlyto have the painter, after a minute, interrupt her excitedimagination with:
"What's the matter with your tongue, Maggie?Generally you stab back with it quick enough."
She turned, still sulky and silent, and gazed withcynical superiority at the easel. "Nuts" - it was Barney Palmer whohad thus lightly rechristened the painter when he had set up hisstudio in the attic above the pawnshop six months before - Nuts wastransferring the seamy, cunning face of her father, "Old Jimmie"Carlisle, to the canvas with swift, unhesitating strokes.
"For the lova Christ and the twelve apostles,including that piker Judas," woefully intoned Old Jimmie from themodel's chair, "lemme get down off this platform!"
"Move and I'll wipe my palette off on that MardiGras vest of yours!" grunted the big painter autocratically throughhis mouthful of brushes.
"O God - and I got a cramp in my back, and my neck'sgone to sleep!" groaned Old Jimmie, leaning forward on his cane."Daughter, dear" - plaintively to Maggie - "what is the crazygentleman doing to me?"
"It's an awful smear, father." Maggie spokeslightingly, but with a tone of doubt. It was not the sort ofpicture that eighteen has been taught to like - yet the picture didpossess an intangible something that provoked doubt as to itsquality. "You sure do look one old burglar!"
"Not a cheap burglar?" - hopefully.
"Naw!" exploded the man at the easel in his bigvoice, first taking the brushes from his mouth. "You're aswell-looking old pirate! - ready to loot the sub-treasury and thenscuttle the old craft with all hands on board! A breathing,speaking, robbing likeness!"
"Maggie's right, and Nuts's right," put in BarneyPalmer. "It's sure a rotten picture, and then again it sure lookslike you, Jimmie."
The smartly dressed Barney - Barney could not keepaway from Broadway tailors and haberdashers with their extravagantdesigns and color schemes - dismissed the insignificant matter ofthe portrait, and resumed the really important matter which hadbrought him to her.
"Are you certain, Maggie, that the Duchess hasn'theard from Larry?"
"If she has, she hasn't mentioned it. But why don'tyou ask her yourself?"
"I did, but she wouldn't say a thing. You can't geta word out of the Duchess with a jimmy, unless she wants to talk -and she never wants to talk." He turned his sharp, narrowly seteyes upon the lean old man. "It's got me guessing, Jimmie. Larrywas due out of Sing Sing yesterday, and we haven't had a peep fromhim, and though she won't talk I'm sure he hasn't been here to seehis grandmother."
"Sure is funny," agreed Old Jimmie. "But mebbe Larryhas broke straight into a fresh game and is playing a lone hand.He's a quick worker, Larry is - and he's got nerve."
"Well, whatever's keeping him we're tied up tillLarry comes." Barney turned back to Maggie. "I say, sister, howabout robing yourself in your raiment of joy and coming with yourstruly to a palace of jazz, there to dine and show the populace whatreal dancing is?"
"Can't, Barney. Mr. Hunt" - the name given thepainter at his original christening - "asked the Duchess and me tohave dinner up here. He's to cook it himself."
"For your sake I hope he cooks better than hepaints." And sliding down in his chair until he rested upon a morecomfortable vertebra, the elegant Barney lit a monogrammedcigarette, and with idle patience swung his bamboo stick.
"You're half an hour late, Maggie," Hunt began ather again in his rumbling voice. "Can't stand for such a waste ofmy time!"
"How about my time?" retorted Maggie, who indeed hada grievance. "I was supposed to have the day off, but instead I hadto carry that tray of cigarettes around till the last person in theRitzmore had finished lunch. Anyhow," she added, "I don't see thatyour time's worth so much when you spend it on such painty messesas these."
"It's not up to you to tell me what my time'sworth!" retorted Hunt. "I pay you - that's enough for you!...Because you weren't on time, I stuck Old Jimmie out there to finishoff this picture. I'll be through with the old cut-throat in tenminutes. Be ready to take his place."
"All right," said Maggie sulkily.
For all his roaring she was not much afraid of thepainter. While his brushes flicked at, and streaked across, thecanvas she stood idly watching him. He was in paint-smeared, baggytrousers and a soft shirt whose open collar gave a glimpse of adeep chest matted with hair and whose rolled-up sleeves revealedforearms that seemed absurdly large to be fiddling with thoseslender sticks. A crowbar would have seemed more in harmony. He wasunromantically old - all of thirty-five Maggie guessed; and withhis square, rough-hewn face and tousled, reddish hair he wasdecidedly ugly. But for the fact that he really did work - thoughof course his work was foolish - a