Arthur Stringer

“ Then he heard the tinkle of a bell below deck, and he realized that the engines had stopped.
In the lull of the quieted ship's screw he could hear the wash of distant surf, faint and phantasmal above the material little near-by boat-noises. Then came a call, faint and muffled, like the complaining note of a harbor gull. A moment later the slow creak of oars crept up to Blake's straining ears. Then out of the heart of the darkness that surrounded him, not fifty feet away, he saw emerge one faint point of light, rising and falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow creak of the oars. ”

“ A space was cleared on the deck, promptly, solemnly, as though for the despatch of some casual and duly appointed ship's business. Then the circle re-formed, watching and silent, waiting with set faces, for what was to come. And McKinnon saw that it was indeed to come, that there was no escaping it.
For one moment only did Ganley hesitate. Just once did the deepset and malicious little eyes shift in one sidelong glance of hesitancy. McKinnon, from his cabin door, could see that look. He could see the change of colour that crept slowly up through the gun-runner's flaccid face. ”

“ It had been a day full of quiet happiness for both of them, and a feeling of vague regret, of languid sorrow, fell over them, as they stood in silence, looking on the beauty of river and foot-hill and mountain bathed in autumnal silence and gold.
"Oh, if we never grew old!" Cordelia said, with a wistful little shake of the head, drawing closer to Hartley, and slipping her hand through his arm.
He looked down at her with a strange sternness that was not all sternness in his eyes. She turned away, gazing across the wide stretch of river dotted with its shifting opals and pearls. ”

“ I’ve even been trying to solace myself with the claim that she’s a trifle ox-like in her make-up. But that is not being just to Olga. She makes a perfect wife. She is as tranquil-minded as summer moonlight on a convent-roof. She is as soft-spoken as a wind-harp swinging in an abbey door. She surrenders to the will of her husband and neither frets nor questions nor walks with discontent. I suppose she has a will of her own, packed somewhere away in that benignant big body of hers, but she never obtrudes it. She placidly awaits her time, as the bosom of the prairie awaits its harvesting. ”

“ To the left of the fireplace again was the picture of a girl. There was something so fine in the drawing, something so rich in the clear tones, that I made bold to lift the oil-lamp close to the canvas, to catch a better glimpse of the face.
It was the portrait of a young woman of eighteen or nineteen years, perhaps even twenty; a clear-eyed, red-lipped, golden-haired girl, teeming with the vigor and love of life, with audacity crowning the fresh young mouth, and some strange spirit of revolt renting warningly about the deep and shadowy eyes. ”

“ Your voice, like dew, falls deep in my dry heart,
And like a bell your name swings through my dreams;
Now all my being throbs and cries for you;
Come back with me; but come, and I will speak
A thousand gentle words for each poor tear
That dimmed your eyes! Come back, and I will crown
Your days with love so enduring it shall light
The eternal stars to bed!
Sappho
Ask me no more,—
My Phaon, you must ask me nevermore:
Though Music pipe from Memory’s darkest pine
Her tenderest note, all time her wings are torn;
The assuaging founts of tears themselves have failed. ”

“ I sat down and stared at that neatly folded pile of baby-clothes two feet high, a layer-cake of whites and faded blues and pinks. I stared at it, and began to gulp tragically, wallowing in a wave of self-pity. I felt so sorry for myself that I let my flat-iron burn a hole clean through the ironing-sheet, without even smelling it. That, I told myself, was all that life could be to me, just a round of washing and ironing and meal-getting and mending, fetch and carry, work and worry, from sun-up until sun-down, and many a time until midnight. ”

“ Once there, Durkin edged round by the wall, squeezed himself unceremoniously out, until, at last, he came to the brass railing guarding the edge of the spectator’s gallery. Then he took a deep breath, and gazed down at the sea of commotion that boiled and eddied at his feet.
It was one mad tumult of contending forces, a maelstrom of opposing currents. Seldom was there a lull in that hundred-throated delirium, where, on raised steps about a little circular brass railing, men shouted and danced and flung up their hands and raced back and forth through a swarming beehive of cotton-hunger. ”

“ Then, early Autumn came to Banff. Summer was over and gone once more in the valley of lost hopes. They were together on the summit of Tunnel Mountain, intangibly saddened at the touch of Winter in the cooling air, drawn closer to each other by some fugitive sense of loss.
Margaret looked out over the peaks touched with wine-glow, that softest curtain of rose-mist which Twilight lowers about her barren snows. The ghost of a breeze gently rippled the musing woman's bright, brown hair, as she faced the silent mountains, so wrapped in Autumnal peace.
"Love is the wine-glow on the wastes of life!" ”

“ The house above me was as silent and dark as a tomb. The street was as empty as a church. Had the thing been a meteor out of a star-lit sky, or a wildcat leaping from a tree-branch, it could not have startled me more.
I stood looking at it, in wonder, as it lay beside the very area-railing on which my hand had rested. Then I stepped back and leaned in over this railing, more clearly to inspect the mystery. Whatever it was, it had fallen with amazingly little noise. There was no open window to explain its source. There had been no wind to blow it from an upper-story sill. ”

“ Kestner could see both the clear-cut profile and the reflected image of her in the mirror. He could see the ivory whiteness of the rounded throat, the shimmer of the heavy cascade of loosened hair, the soft line of one relaxed arm, almost white against the rose-colour of her gown. And more than ever before a wayward impression of her sheer physical beauty swept over him.
It was the first time he had ever seen her in a moment of impassivity, quite off her guard, with that touch of wistfulness which comes to humanity when alone with its own thoughts. ”

“ As her brougham turned out from the curb a hansom drove up. In it, against the shadow of the green trimming cloth of the cab hood, she could see the white and unhappy face of Dorat. A throb of pain, as tangible as a bullet shot, flashed through her breast. He seemed to her, as he sat there, so engulfed in some terrible isolation of soul, so hopeless in his misery of body and sickness of heart, that a little half-smothered, motherlike cry of pity broke from Charlotte's lips. He seemed only the crushed shell of a man; the very flame of life seemed to have died out of him. ”

“ She covered her face with her hands.
"Oh, I can't tell you!" she moaned. "I can't explain."
"But there must be some good and definite reason why this young woman's death should end everything for you."
The girl looked about her, like a life-prisoner facing the four blank walls of a cell. Her face was without hope. Nothing but utter misery, utter despair, was written on it.
Then she spoke, not directly to me, but more as though she were speaking to herself.
"When she dies, I die too!" ”

“ The sudden leap and cry of Keenan sent a tingle of apprehension up and down her body. She asked herself, vaguely, if all the rest of her life was to be made up of this brawling and fighting in unlighted chambers of horror; if, now that they were in the more turgid currents for which they had longed, there were to come no moments of peace amid all their tumult and struggling.
Then she drew in her breath with a little gasp, for she saw Pobloff, with a quick writhe of his thin body, free his imprisoned right arm, and strike with the metal butt of his revolver. ”

“ But I was no longer watching Wendy Washburn and his walking-stick. My eye had traveled on to the man in the checked tweed suit with the black club-bag. I could see him distinctly, in the clear light below me, as he leaped for the street door, I knew, even before I saw his face, that it was Pinky McClone.
He did not go to the door. He knew, apparently, that it was too late. He seemed to realize that he had a fight to face, before he could achieve his freedom, for he dropped the club-bag and swung about as Wendy Washburn edged in between him and his iron-grilled avenue of escape. ”

“ As the shaking team swung round, plunging and quivering with their instinctive animal fear, arms of smoke reached out for him, and he saw the red tide of fire bearing in on him. He knew that it was hopeless. But still he pushed on, carefully, most carefully picking his perilous road, holding his breath at every badger-hole, gasping at every jolt of the huge wagon-box. Through a momentary smoke-rift he caught sight of Trappan and the first wagon, lurching and rocking up the divide. For one moment he saw the fleeing man pouring the leather onto his team. ”

“ And Lonely felt so bad about it all that he wondered whether or not he was drawing near to an untimely death,—and to be on the safe side, secretly made his will, up in the hay-loft, and duly signed it in his own blood.
The migration from Cowansburg had not been of a kind to suit Lonely's spirit. It had been effected slowly, placidly, and laboriously, by means of a venerable old wagon from which two hub-bands and five wheel spokes were conspicuously absent, together with a raw-boned, long-haired, and ineffably meek-spirited steed of gigantic proportions, answering to the name of Plato. ”

“ Blake balanced himself on the bow of his surf -boat and tugged and strained until he gained the ladder-bottom. He stood there, recovering his breath, for a moment or two, peering up towards the inhospitable silence above him. But still he saw no sign of life. No word or challenge was flung down at him. Then, after a moment's thought, he lay flat on the grill and deliberately pushed the surf-boat off into the darkness. He wanted no more of it. He knew, now, there could be no going back. ”

“ As she crept on, forging ever southward under the high-arching azure sky, this sense of quietness and completion grew deeper. The air became warm and soft. The sun streamed down on the patched awnings, on the worn deck that seemed bone-white in the flat, strong light of noonday. Through the ventilators, all day long, came the purposeful throb and beat of the engines, muffled, like the throbbing of a great heart. There seemed something inevitable and ordered in that unhurried and undeviating pulse, as though the ship and all she carried were forever at peace with the world. ”

“ To Frances herself it seemed like the effortless fall in a nightmare; she could remember neither how nor when it ended, only she had the sensation of being pulled sharply across cold flagstones. Durkin had dragged her in under the shadow of the heavy brownstone steps, behind a galvanized iron garbage can, hoping against hope that he had not been noticed, and silently praying that if indeed the end was to come it might not come in a setting so sordid and mean and small.
A street cat, lean and gaunt and hungry-looking, slunk like a shadow down the area-steps. ”

“ Smiles sadly disempassioned over men
And their tumultuous cities crowned with song,
Where live by night so many heavy hearts,
So smile the gods on my pale-lipped despairs.
On to the end these feet must walk alone,—
Alone, once more, and unillumined, fare;
For I am far from home to die, and far
From any voice to comfort me beyond
The cypress twilight and the hemlock gloom!
Not evermore, O blue Ionian Sea,
And vine-clad valleys, shall these eyes behold
My Lesbos, still my first and last of loves!
But take me, mother Ocean, while I feel
Burn thro’ my blood this magic ecstasy! ”

“ Durkin's first tangible feeling was a passion to lose and submerge himself in the muffling midnight silences, the silences of those outwardly quiet gardens at heart so old in sin and pain.
He felt the necessity for some sudden and sweeping readjustment, and his cry for solitude was like that of the child wounded in spirit, or that of the wild animal sorely hurt in body. Before he could face life again, he felt, he had to build up about him the sustaining fabric of some new and factitious faith. ”

“ To get leg-weary in the open air, tramping about the sedgy slough-sides after mallard and canvas-back, to smell coffee and bacon and frying grouse in the cool of the evening, across a thin veil of camp-fire smoke, to see the tired world turn over on its shoulder and go to sleep—it's all a sort of monumental lullaby.
The prairie wind seems to seek you out, and make a bet with the Great Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to rest. ”

“ But it isn’t quite that, Dinky-Dunk, for there’s something almost spiritually satisfying about this prairie life if you’ve only got the eyes to see it. I think that’s because the prairie always seems so majestically beautiful to me. I can see your lip curl again, but I know I’m right. When I throw open my windows of a morning and see that placid old never-ending plain under its great wash of light something lifts up in my breast, like a bird, and no matter how a mere man has been doing his best to make me miserable that something stands up on the tip of my heart and does its darnedest to sing. ”

“ I began to wonder if this were due to the feeling, so teasing and persistent, of that painted canvas being an actual presence in the room, a sentry-like and sentient being who might witness and resent any movement I essayed. Then it crept into my mind how wary and artful the little old miser had been, in reality; how there was now something more intimidating in his very absence than in his presence. Once beyond my range of vision, in that midnight house, he threatened me from every imaginable quarter. Each silent door became a danger, each moving shadow a menace. ”

“ She had taught him to love flowers, to see beauty in trifling things, to wonder at sunsets and rain and snow, to catch the spirit of the quieter and littler things of life, the things which the old-time man of action in him, crushing feverishly on to his ends, had missed.
He beheld his old East, and all that it stood for, growing more and more insubstantial. He even caught himself, at times, weaving fancies about the future, and, all along, found himself battling more desperately than ever for his lost health, and gazing less often eastward over the mountains. ”

“ You have been saying to yourself, I know, that you want to live your own life. But it is only we 'who are old and wise and gray,' dear Charlotte, who learn that, after all, the fiercest slavery can and does lie in excess of liberty. Beyond the sea-line of every new view there always lies another golden island for us to sigh after, beyond the frontier of each new passion there stretches another strange land to tempt and call us. You have asked too much of life. You want everything absolute, when, after all, existence is made up of compromises. ”

“ The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy water. He was bewildered by a sense of dampness in his right leg. He patted it with his hand, inquisitively, and found it wet. He stooped down and felt his boot. It was full of blood. It was overrunning with blood. He remembered then. Binhart had shot him, after all. ”