5
1
Overview
This edition has been proof an corrected from the original hardcover book.
***
an excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
I. THE GIRL IN THE HANSOM CAB
"Mysteries, my boy, are always things of the night."
—A Saying of Garry Webster.
Kenyon ate the good little German dinner which the Berlin always served, and looked amusedly out upon Broadway.
"Apparently it's the same old town," said he. "A little more light, a few more people; but the same cocksureness, the same air of being the goal of all human effort."
With a smile, he lay back in his chair and watched the tide ebbing along. It was a November night and the pulse of Broadway beat heavily: the stream of life that flowed through the great artery was as flippant and as garish as a vaudeville. An orchestra was drooning behind some palms in the Berlin; it played one of those Indian things, filled with the throb of tom-toms and unusual combinations of tone.
But Kenyon listened inattentively. He ate the last morsel of his dessert with satisfaction, and drained the last drop of wine with appreciation; then he turned once more and watched the crowds. It was the first time he had been in New York in ten years; yet the glare and effrontery of its big highway was waking the fever of the city in his blood.
"Will there be anything else, sir?" asked the precise German who had served him.
"Only the check," answered Kenyon. He felt for his card-case, after the waiter had turned away; it held a single ten-dollar bill, and this he regarded ruefully.
"It is not much of a defence against the aggressions of the world," said he. "And I fancy that this little dinner will put a rather large-sized breach in it." He turned the check over gingerly. "Seven-fifty! Whew! Why, that would have kept me half a lifetime in Rio."
Then he stood up to be helped on with his long top-coat. His dress clothes had been made in Montevideo, but a good English tailor had done the work, and they looked well even under the searching eyes and lights of the Berlin. But almost anything would have looked well on Kenyon; he was of the tall, wide-shouldered type that wear even shapeless things with distinction.
"Danke schön," said the waiter as he slipped the coin handed him into his waistcoat pocket, and gravely bowed his patron out.
Drawing on his gloves Kenyon leisurely walked up Broadway. People turned and glanced after him with curious eyes, for there was always a sort of elegance in Kenyon's manner of dress that commanded attention. But it was not alone the hang of a smoothly fitting coat over the shapely, powerful figure; there was the good-humored, good-looking face, also an air of quiet distinction and breeding; and then, stamped all over him, so to speak, was the resolution that makes victors of desperately circumstanced men.
No one, to look at him as he walked slowly along, would have dreamed that this immaculate creature had stood, only seven hours before, stripped to the waist in the stoke-hole of the British ship Blenheim. Yet it was so. He had boarded her at Rio when she touched there two weeks before; and though the fire room was no inviting prospect, still it was better than Bio. A Latin-American city is never a place for a penniless Gringo.
The section called the "Great White Way" lay before Kenyon like a shimmering vortex.
"It screams like a phonograph," pronounced the young man, critically. '' And it's just as ceaseless, as senseless, and as raucous. This is the spot, I think, that old Colonel Ainsleigh at West Point used to call a phosphorescent ulcer. And it looks it. It's the pride spot of the habitual New Yorker from the small town—the money dump—the place of cakes and ale."
Then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"I really think the Berlin's dinner does not set well on me," he told himself. "I once liked New York very well. But it may be that thirty is a great deal more than ten years older than twenty. My taste for many things has slackened in those ten years, and who knows but what the big town has suffered along with the other old likings."
Hard-worked hansoms and goblin-eyed motor-cars spun along the smooth asphalt; jeweled women and carefully attired men streamed in at the light-flooded lobbies of the theatres. Electric-cars loaded with pleasure seekers flashed clanging up and down.
***
an excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:
I. THE GIRL IN THE HANSOM CAB
"Mysteries, my boy, are always things of the night."
—A Saying of Garry Webster.
Kenyon ate the good little German dinner which the Berlin always served, and looked amusedly out upon Broadway.
"Apparently it's the same old town," said he. "A little more light, a few more people; but the same cocksureness, the same air of being the goal of all human effort."
With a smile, he lay back in his chair and watched the tide ebbing along. It was a November night and the pulse of Broadway beat heavily: the stream of life that flowed through the great artery was as flippant and as garish as a vaudeville. An orchestra was drooning behind some palms in the Berlin; it played one of those Indian things, filled with the throb of tom-toms and unusual combinations of tone.
But Kenyon listened inattentively. He ate the last morsel of his dessert with satisfaction, and drained the last drop of wine with appreciation; then he turned once more and watched the crowds. It was the first time he had been in New York in ten years; yet the glare and effrontery of its big highway was waking the fever of the city in his blood.
"Will there be anything else, sir?" asked the precise German who had served him.
"Only the check," answered Kenyon. He felt for his card-case, after the waiter had turned away; it held a single ten-dollar bill, and this he regarded ruefully.
"It is not much of a defence against the aggressions of the world," said he. "And I fancy that this little dinner will put a rather large-sized breach in it." He turned the check over gingerly. "Seven-fifty! Whew! Why, that would have kept me half a lifetime in Rio."
Then he stood up to be helped on with his long top-coat. His dress clothes had been made in Montevideo, but a good English tailor had done the work, and they looked well even under the searching eyes and lights of the Berlin. But almost anything would have looked well on Kenyon; he was of the tall, wide-shouldered type that wear even shapeless things with distinction.
"Danke schön," said the waiter as he slipped the coin handed him into his waistcoat pocket, and gravely bowed his patron out.
Drawing on his gloves Kenyon leisurely walked up Broadway. People turned and glanced after him with curious eyes, for there was always a sort of elegance in Kenyon's manner of dress that commanded attention. But it was not alone the hang of a smoothly fitting coat over the shapely, powerful figure; there was the good-humored, good-looking face, also an air of quiet distinction and breeding; and then, stamped all over him, so to speak, was the resolution that makes victors of desperately circumstanced men.
No one, to look at him as he walked slowly along, would have dreamed that this immaculate creature had stood, only seven hours before, stripped to the waist in the stoke-hole of the British ship Blenheim. Yet it was so. He had boarded her at Rio when she touched there two weeks before; and though the fire room was no inviting prospect, still it was better than Bio. A Latin-American city is never a place for a penniless Gringo.
The section called the "Great White Way" lay before Kenyon like a shimmering vortex.
"It screams like a phonograph," pronounced the young man, critically. '' And it's just as ceaseless, as senseless, and as raucous. This is the spot, I think, that old Colonel Ainsleigh at West Point used to call a phosphorescent ulcer. And it looks it. It's the pride spot of the habitual New Yorker from the small town—the money dump—the place of cakes and ale."
Then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
"I really think the Berlin's dinner does not set well on me," he told himself. "I once liked New York very well. But it may be that thirty is a great deal more than ten years older than twenty. My taste for many things has slackened in those ten years, and who knows but what the big town has suffered along with the other old likings."
Hard-worked hansoms and goblin-eyed motor-cars spun along the smooth asphalt; jeweled women and carefully attired men streamed in at the light-flooded lobbies of the theatres. Electric-cars loaded with pleasure seekers flashed clanging up and down.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940011916540 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 10/29/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 405 KB |
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