Melville Davisson Post

“ He had loved this woman as a man loves just one time. He was trusting his very life to her keeping; he was going to her for everything that woman could give; all of sweet fellowship, all of tender sympathy, all of love. She was the only woman in the world. The expression is a platitude, but the fact was as real to Carper as the green trees and the sunlight. One could no more have convinced this man that other women held some of the charms of life, than one could have convinced him that light was a liquid. ”

“ They were the pioneers of civilization; a motley crowd in which the best and worst of human society was mixed and intermixed. They were, for the most part, bronzed, bearded, fearless examples of the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest, but not all. Some were the reckless advance agents of those hardy vices that follow close in the wake of empire,—devils too villainous to be tolerated in the cities of the East, and too bold and too wary to be stamped out by the deliberate machinery of the law. ”

“ The Governor looked up at the massive face of the gambler, marred by evil circumstance and the riot of dissipation, and wondered—as he had wondered many a time before,—at the splendid unselfishness of this man. From whence could have come this flower of nobility? The life of Ambercrombie Hergan had been sterile soil indeed for such a plant as this. How could it be in the economy of men that such princely fidelity obtained alone even without trace of the common attendant virtues? ”

“ Just how this meeting began Alfred Randal could never afterwards quite recall. He could remember in vivid details the first picture of this superb woman as she arose to greet him, but then, just then, the love of his youth that had seemed to sleep under an anæsthetic for so many years, suddenly woke into glorious life, and gushed into his heart and overran his senses with its marvellous vitality. ”

“ You forget that a woman is a human being with a heart. You think I am afraid of the world, afraid of poverty, afraid of life as God makes it, as God wills it; that I am a fragile something that the rain and the sunlight would ruin if it touched; that I am a something more or less than you, a something that requires ease and luxury and all the gilded stage-setting of wealth—and you are wrong. ”

“ Who was Hergan that he should be considered against this woman? Who, but a reckless and improvident adventurer? It was not his own happiness urged the something; that would be a matter of little moment. It was the happiness of another, and that other was true, innocent of wrong, superlatively just. What contrast could be drawn between the woman and this gambler? Duty? What duty could he owe to the irresponsible Hergan that could approach in the slightest part the measure of the duty which he owed to the woman who had trusted him for so many years, and waited, and loved him? ”

“ Wise magistrates, laboring for the welfare of the race, have been pleased to write down what should be done and what should not be done, and have called it "law." The citizen, having no time to inquire, has gone about his trade under the impression that these rules were offering ample protection to his person and his property. But the law, being of human device, is imperfect, and in this fag end of the nineteenth century, the evil genius thrusts through and despoils the citizen, and the robbery is all the more easy because the victim sleeps in a consciousness of perfect security. ”

“ As for you, sir, the scheme in which you have been an actor was abominably planned, and more abominably executed. The most drivelling intelligence should have seen peril staring out from every infantile move made by you and this stupendous blunderer Hirst. You You have taken an old, time-worn plan, teeming with dangers, and, not content with its frightful hazards, you and this witless Hirst have added one complicated peril after another until you have finally constructed a masterpiece of idiocy that in its complex nonsense approaches the sublime. ”

“ The giant Alshire ran out into the street, caught the horses and threw his ponderous weight against the iron bits. The heavy Percherons reared and fell back on their haunches, the tongue of the wagon shot forward, grazing the giant's shoulder, and the wheels stopped for a moment almost against the body of the prostrate man. In that moment Van Meter dragged the hapless pedestrian from beneath the belly of the horses. ”

“ I don't want to commit a crime.”
The veins in the forehead of Randolph Mason grew black with anger.
“Commit a crime!” he cried. “No man who has followed my advice has ever committed a crime. Crime is a technical word. It is the law's name for certain acts which it is pleased to define and punish with a penalty. None but fools, dolts, and children commit crimes.” ”

“ This great industry, not content with changing the civilization, had changed also the very face of the land; two years before this fluttering summer breeze had carried with it the murmur of ripening corn fields, the sweet odor of quiet pasture land where herds of fattening cattle wandered through fields of blue grass. Now, the lands were marked with wagon roads, studded with the rough shanties of the pumpers and the gigantic wooden tanks of the great oil companies ”

“ II CARPER had been given the long afternoon to arrange some scheme, to plan some way out, but he allowed it to slip by like any leisure day. His mind was indolent, absurdly indolent. In all the other crises of his life, it had been restless as a blown wave. This day it was sluggish. Realizing the end, it had folded its arms. It was difficult to appreciate that his career was ripped off like a rotten seam. That afternoon his broker had talked confidentially of a certain railroad venture. ”

“ Prior to the notable exodus of the machine to Idaho, Randal had called upon Miss Lanmar, who was at that time a very young woman in college. The two were quite important, quite enthusiastic, and pitiably ignorant of the world's ways.
This last meeting to them seemed big with fate, and was dramatic to the limit of a play-actor's rehearsal. Youth lent to it all the glamour of romance. To Miss Lanmar young Randal was her chivalrous knight-errant, on the eve of his departure into a wild and unknown land full of mysterious peril, in quest of wealth and fair fame, all for her. ”

“ He could not understand why men had sometimes said that life was good.
Carper had looked, he believed, into not a few chambers of the temple. The same hooded shape sat in each. If fame was given, the skull was pretty generally crushed with the crown. If wealth was given, the back was broken with the weight. If love was given,—yes, the heart was usually broken with it,—love!
Carper arose and went over to a cabinet in the wall, unlocked the door and took out a big photograph, which he brought over to the fire. It was the picture of a woman, young, beautiful, quivering with the power of life ”

“ It may be that the woman will pray to be rid of the evil thing, or it may be that she will pray to hold it always as a gift of good, but be that as it happens, the woman's heart will remain forever helpless to evict its tenant.
“Is it strange, then, if I love you, that I should want to go with you and live with you, and be with you always, and make your joys and your burdens my joys and my burdens, and have a share and an interest in everything that comes to you? Is it strange that I should hold wealth or place or even honor as nothing against you? ”

“ But the very depth of my love makes me a coward. I could not bear to see you subject to all the evil things that come with poverty. I know what a frightful plight it is—how it crushes out the sweetness and the nobility of one's life, how it squeezes the heart, day after day, until it finally becomes a dry husk in one's breast. ”

“ The man leaned over and rested his arm on the mantel-shelf. “I have read somewhere,” he continued, “how the evil fiend strove to destroy a man whom he hated; how he robbed him of his wealth, of his friends, of his fair fame, and how the man worked on, laughing in the demon's face, and how it all failed, until one morning the evil fiend reached down into the man's heart and plucked the motive out of his life, and then the man threw away his tools and came and sat in the doorway of his shop. ”

“ Still he maintained his place, until on a certain autumn morning at a fat cattle show in Chicago, the good wife of a powerful Virginia grazier, on a quest for the ideal bullock, pointed down into the stock ring at the splendid Polled-Angus and said, “There he is, but he don't look human.” And there he was indeed, broad, and shiny black, and hornless as a man's palm—nature's answer to the breeder's dream.
The great tawny sun climbed high in the heavens; the heat of the day settled down over the living earth like an invisible mantle ”

“ The sheriff sat down suddenly and replaced the eye-glasses on his fat nose.
“You mean,” said the prosecuting attorney, “that the prisoner cannot be put twice in jeopardy for the same offense?”
“Unless,” responded the judge, “the judicial machinery in McDowell can be held exempt from the Constitution of the State and the Constitution of the Federal Government, a conclusion,” he added, with prodigious gravity, “in which I should rather hesitate to concur upon a casual hearing. Having been once properly tried for murder, this man cannot be again tried for the same offense.” ”

“ Jerry Van Meter arose and went over to the window. He was mightily affected by the hopeless position of his friend, and in his breast his heart was heavy. The condition of things was reversed. From his very babyhood he had gone to the giant with his troubles, and the giant had always found some way out. Now the man had come to him, and he was helpless. He looked at the huge grazier sitting motionless with his face in his hands, and the tears gathered in his eyes. Van Meter knew too much of the world not to know that the man was ruined. ”

“ I know that the insurance companies and this unusual woman will leave no stone unturned in order to discover just how Hirst came to his death, and I am not fool enough to think that they will eventually fail. I don't believe any of the bosh about murder crying from the ground, but I am entirely convinced that it is almost impossible to cover a crime so that human ingenuity cannot trail down the man who committed it.
“I judge that I was not intended for business of this sort. I cannot fight out in good order. ”

“ Van Bartan, and how she had hoped to see Dalton at the LeConte Dean's, and not finding him had slipped away, and, availing herself of the foggy night, had been driven unattended to his house in order to implore his aid; how she came and stood beside him, and pointed out the dread results sure to follow the elder Mrs. Van Bartan's unnatural intentions,—results disastrous to her and to hers. Gerald Van Bartan was worthless, she knew that; he had never been taught to work; he was now too old to learn; it would mean poverty, grinding poverty, and shame worse than all ”

“ Thus do men hoot the customs of their fellows when in conflict with their own. One looking at this grand jury as an exhibit would have gone away regretting that the chief fad of Delilah had not been handed down in the county of McDowell, just as the jury would have wondered why the funny little man divided his hair in the middle like a woman and wore a tight band around his neck and a stiff breastplate of cloth and starch over his ribs, when he could dress like a Christian, and be comfortable. ”

“ It must be borne in mind, however, that more gigantic and more intricate methods for evading the law and for appropriating the property of the citizen are available. The unwritten records of business ventures and the reports of courts are crowded with the record of huge schemes having for their ultimate purpose the robbery of the citizen. Some of these have been successful and some have failed. Enough have brought great fortunes to their daring perpetrators to appal that one who looks on with the welfare of human society at heart. ”

“ Greed ruled the world, and beauty, like many another gift of nature, was battered out under his hammer.
The oil driller stopped at the road side and leaned his long body on the rail fence. He was a thin, old man, with sharp, emaciated features, his hair and iron-gray beard were matted with oil, and his long arms, bare to the elbow and burned black by the sun, glistened greasy as the piston of his engine. The ancient workman kept his watch in dead silence, and beyond this his face showed no interest. ”

“ In fact, Robert Dalton was a stern and practical man of large legal acquirements, with no more romance in his composition than a ship carpenter. In the practice of his profession he was always cold, clear headed, and technical, believing no man, and fearing no man; in truth, the wags asserted, his courtesy was in itself a libel, because of all members of the bar no one was more rigid, more exacting, or more relentless than Robert Dalton, of Carpenter, Lomax, & Dalton. ”

“ I have the money, but it is daubed over with the blood of a man's heart. It has the price of a man's honor stamped on the face of every coin. I hate it all. Everything I see, every thread that touches me, taunts me with the shame of such a sacrifice. ”

“ Thus gambling, wagering, and all gambling and wagering contracts and transactions are illegal as against public policy, since they are repugnant to the well-being of society, fraught with vice, pregnant with demoralization, and corrupting alike to the youth and to the aged, as they inspire a hope of reward without labor. ”

“ Van Bartan was a woman of iron will, of stern resolve, of relentless determination, and that neither he nor any other living man could affect her. And how like a woman she answered that he, Dalton, would be sent for to make the will, and that he must save her some way, she did not know how,—he would know, he was shrewd, he was a great lawyer, he could certainly find some way ”