Edwin Balmer

“ They went to the landing on the south of the rock, climbed the steps and entered the great room, now warm and streaming with sunlight, where Barney's mother was waiting,—a strange, physically weakened cousin Agnes but whose touch seemed more vital than ever before as her lips kissed Ethel; whose hands, though thin, clasped with a confident pressure; whose eyes looked at Ethel steadily as ever, with some new sadness in them but with new joy, too, and with that haunting shadow quite gone. ”

“ Beyond, lay smooth, floating ice—the witness of cold weather with calm; still further out was water, the witness of wind again, when the further ice-field broke off and blew out.
There the floe was in sight with a white edge of cast-up, congealed spray. Beyond it was water once more; then ice; ice to the edge of the horizon, to the edge of the world, to the edge of creation, nothing but ice and sky. ”

“ The salvo of the Pennsylvania; twelve fourteen-inch guns erupted—the whole broadside fired together!
The second ship in the American line—the Nevada—now saluted the Poseidon, second of the enemy, with a spurt of spray alongside, and then the roar of all its guns. And now the Oklahoma, engaging the Xerxes, thundered into the action; the Texas and Wyoming joined; the two flagships—the New York and the Vulcan, fought abreast; broadside to broadside their guns battered and bellowed, the haze of the powder gas and smoke clouding up and concealing the fluttering flags. ”

“ For that land for which I had clung and held on to those slippery boards in the waves till my arms were pulled from their sockets and my fingers torn and my whole body wrenched and sprained—that land was just cliffs of rock and great, sloping granite reefs leaning up from the sea; and neither farther up nor farther back from the water in any direction upon those rocks where I had climbed and thrown myself down, was a single scrap of green or growing thing or any life or living thing at all, but a gull or two which flew at and then away from me. ”

“ The vision flowed before Ruth's eyes for an instant with horror; then she saw them, not choking and fighting each other for escape which none could find, but crouching safe and smiling in their boat, stealing away swiftly and undamaged to wait chance to rise again to try another torpedo at the Starke or to surprise with gunfire, at the next dawn, another vessel like the Ribot and murder more people in their beds and fill the space below decks with the dead and the agonized dying. ”

“ All through the wood were noises; a moaning came from a dark copse of pine and hemlock to their right, rose and died away; a wail followed—a whining, whimpering wail—so like the crying of a child that it startled her. Shadows seemed to detach themselves, as the trees swayed, to tumble from the boughs and scurry over the snow; they hid, as one looked at them, then darted on and hid behind the tree trunks.
Henry was barely moving; now he slowed still more. A deep, dull resonance was booming above the wood; it boomed again and ran into a rhythm. ”

“ One rainy morning in April, Luther Trant sat alone in his office. On his wrist as he bent closely over a heap of typewritten pages spread before him on his desk, a small instrument in continual motion ticked like a watch. It was for him an hour of idleness; he was reading fiction. And, with his passion for making visible and recording the workings of the mind, he was taking a permanent record of his feelings as he read. ”

“ When the first crest of that yellow rim would push clear of the grim, gray horizon stretching its great, empty half circle about the Chicago shore, he was going to make a decision—a decision for the life or for the death of a young man; and as he personally had always cared for that man more than for any other man so much younger, and as his neice, who was the chief person left in the world that Sheppard loved, also cared for the man so much that she would surely marry him if he were left alive, Sheppard was not at all anxious for that day to begin. ”

“ Suddenly an orange light glows above the red which blocks the cross street; orange tops the green upon the posts which halve the tumult on the boulevard; the orange is gone; red gleams, and it is as if a mighty hand halts and holds still every car which, at the instant before, moved; for upon all the miles of the boulevard motion has been forbidden and every vehicle obeys; a miracle of authority has been achieved.
The spectacle of it subtly thrilled Calvin as his taxi crossed before the ranks of waiting cars. A display of order always pleased him ”

“ Three hundred and thirty miles away, at the tip of Lake Huron where the tiny isle of Mackinac lay like an emerald goal, it was ten degrees cooler only. Heat lay over all the lakes—violent, fiery July heat; but the wind was Steady and almost abeam, wherefore the crew of the Arletta smiled and sang, and hung a cap over the barometer. For the Arletta was a fair-weather boat, light and fast. Seldom could a sloop stay in sight with her, when all canvas was spread; she liked to lean before the wind and skurry and skim. ”

“ Mademoiselle, it was gunpowder that made the nations: I, Henri Racicot, with the flying machine will make the great empire. Mademoiselle, I offer you—the world! Since the beginning no man has offered any woman so much. Stretch out your hand to me and take it!"
Alice Endicott screamed in terror as he reached his hand toward her. She turned away with uncontrollable repugnance from his face, bloated with desire, ambition and the sense of power over mankind.
The aeroplane rushed up a mountainside, the treetops murmuring just under them. ”

“ It seemed, Ethel thought, that when there was sufficient occasion, the angels of their own accord appeared and not only succeeded in making their message heard but in striking dumb one who doubted them. For great events, the heavens opened; could it be true now that the gates of eternity might swing to and fro for the passing of souls earthward bound on trivial, mortal errands? Was she blasphemous to imagine that she might, of her own act, refer to her father in heaven the low, frightful deed which Merrill Kincheloe had performed on the Rock? ”

“ THE old people were still asleep on the floor. No one of them stirred as she crept within, but she could not compose herself to lie down. The moon, hung high over the valley, silvering it all with its shimmering light, emphasized the rugged, impassable sheerness of the rocks on both sides—the impossibility of fighting a way out. ”

“ So, in spite of that five-minute-ago defiance of fear of physical possession, Dave satisfied himself now with switching on the light again to see her face—the clear, dear line of her forehead and nose, the soft dark brown of her hair and the blueness of her eyes always open to his. She had lovely eyes and so loyal looking—unswervingly loyal to him, indeed, ever since that day, long ago, when they rested on his in a way he would never forget and she said: "We're going to be good friends forever, aren't we, you and I?" ”

“ Gregg, you haven't seen Marjorie, have you? You've no idea what Clearedge Street and Rinderfeld have done to her. She's not the same girl at all. But oh, my God, I love her so, Gregg; I love her so much more when she's in this frightful trouble which is doing things to her—things she can't realize at all. Why, Gregg, an hour ago when I tried to show her that what she'd done wasn't right, she answered me that right didn't make any difference; she said right was only the obvious thing to do, as if any one was a fool who did it. ”

“ The noises from the car deck, no longer muffled by the cabins, clanged and resounded in terrible tumult; with the clang and rumble of metal, rose shouts and roars of men.
To liberate and throw overboard heavily loaded cars from an endangered ship was so desperate an undertaking and so certain to cost life that men attempted it only in final extremities, when the ship must be lightened at any cost. Alan had never seen the effect of such an attempt, but he had heard of it as the fear which sat always on the hearts of the men who navigate the ferries—the cars loose on a rolling, lurching ship! ”

“ Noise from within the inn, which had halted her, now reached Andy. Some one was knocking at her door—not doubtfully, but with the sharp raps of demand for admittance; a pause for reply; then men’s voices and men’s shoulders against the door; it came down with a crash, and the room was lit by dancing yellow lamps brandished in hand.
Roberta slid swiftly down the rope, and dropped to the grass. Andy caught her; her light hair was against his lips; he felt her breath, as she stood against him, gloriously excited, and she lifted her head to look up to her window. ”

“ Thought of him mittened and hooded and goggled climbing into the seat-pit of a gale-blown airplane facing northeast somewhere in a hollow of Grant Park; thought of him opening the throttle, steering his wind-swayed ship straight into the storm, bumping at first over the frozen ground; then rising into the air and skimming out into the snowy blackness of the lake.
She was too familiar with the facts of flight to have her terrors dwell long on the flight itself. She knew his skill and believed, therefore, he would succeed in gaining the air, he would be safe for a while—if his engine was good. ”

“ Gerry strode on with consciousness of these events almost physically pressing upon him. In their presence, what was he with his prejudices and passions, what was that girl who had seared his lips when he pressed them against her fingers so that still for many moments afterwards his lips burned and tingled? If she was a German spy who had been deluding and playing with him, to permit her to proceed now might work further catastrophe incalculable; whereas were she what he believed—yes; he believed—she could do no good but must merely destroy herself if allowed to go on. ”

“ It was plain to Calvin that Elmen was feeling, as he himself realized, the diminution of interest in the witnesses for the State. The jury, like the crowd on the court benches, seemed to be relaxed and waiting without further interest in the prosecution; they wanted to see, upon the witness stand, the girl who had been shown them in the court-room when the jury was being chosen and who since had been banished to the witness-room; they would have her exhibit her beauty and bare her soul to save the prisoner; and they would wait no longer for their treat. ”

“ Yet he waited.
"Home, father; home's a sort of fairy place, isn't it? It's not like any other house in the world when it's home; your father's not like any other man; nor your mother like any other woman. When they are, it's gone like that, home; and you can't come back to it just by opening a door of a house and stepping in, can you?"
He cleared his throat and after a moment said: "No. This isn't—home, Marjorie; of course I know I can never make a house home for you again." ”

“ Wain held back and Barney advanced alone, he was not conscious of ever having seen the woman who lay on her side with her profile plain against the pillow. Yet a fluttering of awe—of more than awe—came over him as he halted silently beside the bed.
Not because of the evidence of the imminence of Death; Barney was far too familiar with the hoverings of Death to have that fact alone so tremendously affect him. This emotion which possessed him was amazingly more tumultuous than any like passion of his life. ”

“ He had my pistol in his hand, waiting—waiting! And at last he cried out it was eleven; and he raised the pistol and shot straight at me—with the face—the face of a demon with fear. It was no use to try to speak to him, or to get away; I fell on my knees before him, just as he shot at me again and again—aiming straight, not at my eyes, but at my hair; and he shot again! ”

“ Alan could see only a few hundred yards out over the water as the taxicab ran along the lake drive, but what was before him was the surf of a sea; that constant, never diminishing, never increasing roar came from far beyond the shore; the surge and rise and fall and surge again were of a sea in motion. Floes floated, tossed up, tumbled, broke, and rose again with the rush of the surf; spray flew up between the floes; geysers spurted high into the air as the pressure of the water, bearing up against the ice, burst between two great ice-cakes before the waves cracked them and tumbled them over. ”

“ Di, too, had abandoned the life of her people for the city of business.
Queer that, at this recollection, Ellen felt again the draw of the city—and business. Though it had "destroyed" Di, ten times more powerfully Ellen felt it.
She was the draw of adventure, enterprise, danger! Danger, to be sure, her father well knew and endured; but his danger was of an old, patterned sort. His manner of meeting it was set out for him; he held within him patterns of courage and skill as old as shipping; as old, indeed, as physical peril and man's first impulse to save his fellow from storm and sea. ”

“ But no one knew better than Myra that Alice never could do it; no one more fully realized the force of that tremendous, initial advantage which David had taken of Alice when he came to college, an overworked, serious and awkward boy, so strange to social manners that others laughed at him but Alice drew to his defense; no one better undestood that Alice never could hope to find, nor could she ever have heart to seek for, a substitute for her love for David which had been growing throughout the four years they had been developing from girl and boy together. ”

“ A few yards away in another compartment of another car—probably in the compartment where Lady Agnes sat—Ruth knew that he was kneeling before a window also gazing out; and she knew that the helpless impulse which stirred her with desire to be out there above to fly and fight was surging through him a thousand times intensified. She could feel even Hubert Lennon twist and sway at struggle with that impulse; how much more was Gerry Hull's lithe, powerful body—that strong, rhythmically moving form which had carried her—straining now to join his comrades there above and to strike. ”

“ Marjorie imagined Clara Seeley beside her and knowing what she did about some of these people; and she seemed to hear Clara say: "Kept wives!"
And to possess a mansion, to build for yourself the housing for a family with many rooms and with wide lawn and to fill it with servants enough to minister to many, to buy with your husband's money the display of appurtenances of a home for many children and for the woman to bear a single child for her justification for ease all her life; that became to Marjorie base and despicable. ”

“ Asa seemed to think so.
She started, seeing a shadow following her on the western wall of the great room. It was her own shadow; light was streaking across the floor, and cold, dazzling beams were striking in through the low windows to the east as the rim of the sun pushed up from the frozen, motionless lake. East and south, as far as Ethel could see, ice and ice and ice extended; all the world in that direction was frozen, limitless ice, smooth and unbroken. Below the ice lay water, above it only sky and sun. ”