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Appleton's rich, besides he's a softwood man an' ain't fixed for handlin' veneer, so I might's well get in on the bird's-eye as let you an' Creed an' Lebolt steal it all. But I ain't got to the point where I'd murder a good man to cover up my dirty tracks an' I never will!" And so, without consulting Stromberg, Moncrossen bided his time and laid his plans. And now the time had come.
It was late at night when we reached the place, but saloon and dance-hall were ablaze with light and loud with the raucity of phonographs and the stamping of feet. Everything was "wide open," and there was not even the thinnest veneer of respectability. Drinking and gambling and dancing go on all night long.
When you came into my life, or rather when you went out of it yes, I am Irish I saw that money and station are the mere veneer of life: the central reality is Love." Again her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent. "And I saw that I, the master, was really poorer than the majority of my serfs, with their wives and bairns." "You are a good fellow," she murmured.
He remembered that in his naivity and love of his nativity he had fused the two stories together. He smiled ruefully as all variety of family was now gone from him, its ephemeral nature expedited by circumstance and choice. It occurred to him how quickly the child within could penetrate the veneer of a man, and by resurfacing, claim hegemony over adult thoughts.
Perhaps Dudley Veneer had not gained so much in worldly wisdom as if he had been more in society and less in his study. The indulgence with which he treated his nephew was, no doubt, imprudent. A man more in the habit of dealing with men would have been more guarded with a person with Dick's questionable story and unquestionable physiognomy.
It was a strange and terrible surprise to Dudley Veneer to find that his nephew, who had been an inmate of his house and the companion of his daughter, was to all intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think what effect the news would have on Elsie.
Here was emergency, when all veneer fell from him as the green coat of summer falls from the trees at the first breath of winter. His haste was not the swift movements of a man whose nerve is steady. He knew that he had at least twelve hours before any one of the three men were likely to awaken from their drunken stupor. And yet he feared. Nor did he know what he feared.
He would not have believed that a white man could possess two so widely varying phases of character; but as to negroes, they were as yet a crude and undeveloped race, and it was not safe to make predictions concerning them. No one could tell at what moment the thin veneer of civilization might peel off and reveal the underlying savage.
You can't tell a horse by driving him once, Mr. Langdon, nor a patient by talking half an hour with him." "Do you know much about the Veneer family?" said Mr. Bernard, in a natural way enough, the Doctor's talk having suggested the question. The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed movement, so as to command the young man through his spectacles.
"Hit's yo' er me," panted the latter, assuming a pantherlike crouch. "Let it go at that," answered the city man, dropping naturally into a fighting position. The veneer of our vaunted civilization is, at the best, thin, and every man, in whose veins runs red blood, has within him pent-up volcanic forces which require but little awakening to produce a soul-shattering upheaval.
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