Samuel Hopkins Adams

“ One day passes much like another in Caracuña City. The sun rises blandly, grows hot and angry as it climbs the slippery polished vault of the heavens, and coasts down to its rest in a pleased and mild glow. From the squat cathedral tower the bells clang and jangle defiance to the Adversary, temporarily drowning out the street tumult in which the yells of the lottery venders, the braying of donkeys, the whoops of the cabmen, and the blaring of the little motor cars with big horns, combine to render Caracuña the noisiest capital in the world. ”

“ Io sat, not frightened so much as wondering. Her body ached in sympathy with the panting, racking toil of the man at the oars, the labor of an indomitable pigmy, striving to thwart a giant’s will. Suddenly he shouted. The boat spun. Something low and a shade blacker than the dull murk about them, with a white, whispering ripple at its edge, loomed. The boat’s prow drove into soft mud as Banneker, all but knocking her overboard in his dash, plunged to the land and with one powerful lift, brought boat and cargo to safety. ”

“ In his cabin, Captain Parkinson was frankly sea-sick: a condition which nothing but the extreme of nervous depression ever induced in him.
For several hours the rain fell and the gale howled. Then the sky swiftly cleared, and with the clearing there rose a great cry of amaze from stem to stern of the Wolverine. For far toward the western horizon appeared such a prodigy as the eye of no man aboard that ship had ever beheld. From a belt of marvellous, glowing gold, rich and splendid streamers of light spiralled up into the blackness of the heavens. ”

“ Smith's Log.
Blue-gray out of pearl-gray mist rose the shores of old England. Long before the sun, the Tyro was up and on deck, looking with all his eyes, a little awed, a little thrilled, as every man of the true American blood who honors his country must be at first sight of the Motherland. Slowly, through an increasing glow that lighted land and water alike, the leviathan of the deep made her ponderous progress to the hill-encircled harbor. ”

“ Of a sudden he beheld this great engine of print which had been, first, the caprice of his last flicker of irresponsible and headlong youth, then the very mould in which his eager and ambitious manhood was to form and fulfill itself—he beheld this vast mechanism blazingly illumined as with some inner fire, and now become a terrific genius, potent beyond the powers of humanity, working out the dire complications of men, and the tragic destruction of women. ”

“ The glow of the narrator’s cigar waxed, a pin-point of light in a world of dimness and mystery. Subdued breathing made our silence rhythmic. When I found my voice, it was hardly more than a whisper.
“Good God! What a tragedy!”
“Tragedy? You think it so?” The Little Red Doctor’s gnarled face gleamed strangely behind the tiny radiance. “Dominie, you have a queer notion of this life and little faith in the next.” ”

“ New York knows little of Our Square, submerged as we are in a circle of slums. Yet for us, as for more Elysian fields, the crocus springs in the happy grass, the flash and song of the birds stir our trees, and Romance fans us with the wind of its imperishable wing.
The first robin was singing in our one lone lilac when the Bonnie Lassie came out of the Somewhere Else into Our Square and possessed herself of the ground floor of our smallest house, the nestly little dwelling with the quaint old door and the broad, friendly vestibule, next but one to the Greek church. ”

“ Presently the four people from Third House stood on the cliff overhanging the sledge-hammer surf, and watched the life-saving crews of two stations, Bow Hill to the east, Sand Spit to the west, play their desperate game for a hazard of human lives. Straining their eyes, they could discern, in the whiteness of the whipped seas, a dull, undefined lump, which ever and anon flashed, like a magician’s trick, into the clean, pencilled outlines of a schooner, lying on her beam ends, and swept by every giant comber that rolled in from the wide Atlantic. ”

“ Cautiously Kent worked his way, now in the stream, now through the heavy growth on the banks, until he gained the roadway. Once there he went forward to the front gate of Hedgerow House. The bricked sidewalk runs, thence, straight and true to the rose-bowered square porch which is the mansion’s main entry. Kent paused for the merest moment. His gaze rested on the heavy black door. Heavier and blacker against the woodwork a pendant waved languidly in the faint breeze.
To the normal human being, the grisly insignium of death over a portal is provocative of anything rather than mirth. ”

“ There was no doubt or hesitancy in her thoughts, no weak attempt to justify herself or find an easy way out. If it had been any one but Gloria Greene whose happiness was at stake, Gloria who had picked her up from the scrap-heap of waste and made a living, pulsating, eager human creature of her, Darcy might have fought for her own hand. But how could a man who had loved Gloria Greene, and whom Gloria loved, care seriously for any other woman on earth? No; this was only a sudden, unreckonable infatuation on Jack Remsen’s part.... ”

“ Banneker, with one foot in the boat, gave a little shove and caught up his oars. An unseen hand of indeterminable might grasped the keel and moved them quietly, evenly, outward and forward, puppets given into the custody of the unregarding powers. Oars poised and ready, Ban sat with his back toward his passenger, facing watchfully downstream.
Leaning back into the curve of the bow, Io gave herself up to the pulsing sweep of the night. Far, far above her stirred a cosmic tumult. The air might have been filled with vast wings, invisible and incessant in the night of wonders. ”

“ It was as if the impalpable fates had cut off the last chance of withdrawal.
“I have come back to you.” The sweet precision of her speech was the unforgotten same, blessedly unchanged in any intonation. But wonder held Jeremy speechless. He stood, his hands knuckling the desk, and devoured her with his eyes.
“Will you not speak to me?” she said, with a quick sorrowful little intake of the breath. “You frighten me. You look so strange. Have you been ill?” ”

“ There is a spell woven in Our Square—it has held me these sixty years and more, and I wonder at times whether Death himself can break it—which draws back the hearts that have once known the place. It was a long month, though, before the butterfly fluttered back. More radiant than ever she looked, glowing softly in the brave November sun, as she approached my bench. ”

“ The Great American Pumess shot forth a little paw—such a soft, shapely, hesitant, dainty, appealing little paw—and laid it on Hal's hand.
"Please," she said.
"But, Esmé,"—he began. It was the first time he had used that intimacy with her. Her eyes dropped.
"We're partners, aren't we?" she said.
"Of course."
"Then you won't let them print it!"
"If Miss Pierce goes rampaging around the streets—"
"Please. For me,—partner."
"One would have to be more than human, to say no to you," he returned, laughing a little unsteadily. "You're corrupting my upright professional sense of duty." ”

“ A great, clambering rose tree had thrown its arms around the square porch, softening the uncompromising angles into curves of leafage and bloom. Along the paths pansies laughed at the sun, and mignonette scattered its scented summons to bee and butterfly. The place was a loved place; so much Kent felt with sureness of instinct. No home blooms except by love. ”

“ THE CRY IN THE DUSK MONTAUK POINT rises and falls like a procession of mighty swells fixed in eternal quietude and grown over with the most luxurious of grasses and field-blooms. One walks from hill to hill, passing between the down-curving slopes to hollows wherein flourish all-but-impenetrable thickets of the stunted scrub-oak, and abruptly walks forth upon a noble cliff-line overlooking the limitless ocean to the far-off southern horizon. Steep and narrow gullies at intervals give rock-studded access to the beach. ”

“ WALLED in by slums stands Our Square, a valiant green space, far on the flank of the Great City. Ours is an inglorious little world Sociologists have-not yet remarked and classified us. The Washington Square romancers who bold sentimental revel at the foot of Fifth Avenue reck nothing of their sister park, many blocks to the east. But we are patient of our obscurity. Close-knit, keeping our own counsel, jealous of our own concerns, and not without our own pride of place, we live our quiet lives, a community sufficient unto itself. ”

“ I like yah. D’ yah know why I like yah?”
Darcy, with brightening eye, shook her head.
“Because yah’r game,” said Mr. Andy Dunne.
A voice within Darcy’s heart burst into song. For the first time in her life she had been praised to the limit of a fellow being’s measure. For gameness, as she well knew, was the ultimate virtue to the athlete mind. The Big Feller had been game, even in his downfall; it was that, over and above all his victories, which had enshrined him in Andy Dunne’s and thousands of other stout and inexpressive hearts.
Her trainer had paid her his finest compliment. ”

“ Through the saddle-colored hordes on the moot ground of the narrow sidewalks moves an occasional Anglo-Saxon resident, browned and sallowed, on his way to the government concession that he manages; a less occasional Anglo-Saxoness, browned and marked with the seal that the tropics put upon every woman who braves their rigors for more than a brief period; and a sprinkling of tourists in groups, flying on cheek, brow, and nose the stark red of their newness to the climate.
Not of this sorority Miss Polly Brewster. ”

“ Any hour in which a man great of soul and clear of vision to meet the issue would speak out, was the appointed hour. He, Jeremy Robson, despite all his good intentions and brave promises, had procrastinated and paltered and dallied, while another, with far more to lose, had lifted the banner and set it up for a challenge to the disloyal, the unloyal, and the half-loyal. ”

“ The lonely station of Manzanita stood out, sharp and unsightly, in the keen February sunlight. A mile away in a dip of the desert, lay the town, a sorry sprawl of frame buildings, patternless save for the one main street, which promptly lost itself at either end in a maze of cholla, prickly pear, and the lovely, golden-glowing roseo. Far as the eye could see, the waste was spangled with vivid hues, for the rare rains had come, and all the cacti were in joyous bloom, from the scarlet stain of the ocatilla to the pale, dream-flower of the yucca. ”

“ To reach that little green space of peace amidst our turmoil of the crowded, encroaching slums, we must pass the Bonnie Lassie’s house, where her tiny figurines, touched with the fire of her love and her genius, which are perhaps one and the same, stand ever on guard, looking out over Our Square from her windows. ”

“ That gladness lasted about one heartbeat and died a death of terror. For, without a word, Carlo stepped upon the coping, lowered himself over the grim well-space between the houses, then threw his body outward, with a swift, powerful impulsion. He hurtled down the ten feet, which might be fifty, and destruction, if his out-thrust were not forceful enough. But he landed, one hundred and ninety-odd pounds of hard, lithe manhood, on the edge of the roof, as light and firm as a cat. ”

“ To Average Jones the memory of that day has never been wholly clear. Sodden with weariness, dazzled and muddled by the savage sun-glare, he followed, with eyes fixed, the rhythmically, monotonously moving feet of his leader, through an interminable desert of soft, clogging sand; a desert which dropped away into parched arroyos, and rose to scorched mesas whereon fierce cacti thrust at him with thorns and spikes; a desert dead and mummified in the dreadful heat; a lifeless Inferno wherein moved neither beast, bird nor insect. ”

“ The whole is greater than the part: the creator is greater than the thing he creates. They say, 'Surtaine of Certina.' It should be, 'Certina of Surtaine.' There's more to come of Surtaine."
His voice dropped to the old, pleading, confidential tone of the itinerant; as if he were beguiling them now to accept the philosophy which he was to set forth.
"What is life, my dear friends? Life is a paper-chase. We rush from one thing to another, Little Daisy Happiness just one jump ahead of us and Old Man Death grabbing at our coat-tails. ”

“ The captain mounted the gangplank with a steadiness that disproved my first suspicion of his having been on a drunk. He glanced aloft, cast a speculative eye on the stevedores trooping across the waist of the ship, and ascended to the quarter-deck where the mate stood leaning over the rail and uttering directed curses from between sweat-beaded lips. There the big man roamed aimlessly on what seemed to be a tour of casual inspection. Once he stopped to breathe on the brass binnacle and to rub it bright with the dirtiest red bandana handkerchief I ever want to see. ”

“ Human nature being what it is, there is nothing strange in the fact that, on her return to New York, Darcy shrank from meeting Gloria. Although the girl’s conscience absolved her, except for that one, instinctive lapse when she had been caught off her guard, her sore heart pleaded guilty to the self-brought charge of a lasting disloyalty. With the thrill of Jack Remsen’s kiss still in her veins, how could she face the woman to whom Remsen owed his allegiance, the woman who, moreover, had been the kindest, most effectual, most unselfish friend of her own unbefriended life? ”

“ It meant nothing—and therein Jeremy Robson lied to his own soul. It meant that he still clung to his vision, which nothing had blurred. For no other woman had so much as impinged upon the outskirts of his imagination. There was neither time nor space for women other than Marcia. He restored the picture, the note, the prim numerals of the golf scores—how vividly he could see the full, lithe swing of the young body vivid with untainted health and vitality as her brassie flicked the ball cleanly from its turfy lie!—and locked the drawer again. ”