“ Samstag's right temple. Alma could sense, rather than see the ridge of pain.
"You're all right, mama?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and plumped rather than sat herself down on a divan, its naked greenness relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet, stenciled in gold.
"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," said her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand-bag where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and furtively as if for the shape of its contents.
"Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her voice. ”

“ He called this to mind when on the night of the dance information came to his ear that she had sold her pearls to lift the lien on Cap'n Sam Dreed's ship, with her own hands tearing down the libel from the mast and grinding it under her heel.
No man whom she had once passed and silently interrogated could quite forget her, not even Jethro Rackby. The harbor master swayed on his oars, collected himself, and looked forward across the dimpled floor of his harbor, which in its quietude was like a lump of massy silver or rich ore, displaying here and there a spur of light, a surface sparkle. ”

“ At fourteen Fanutza was a full-grown woman. Her hair, braided in tresses, was hanging from underneath a black fur cap she wore well over her forehead. Her eyes were large and brown, the long eyebrows were coal black. Her nose was straight and thin and the mouth full and red. Withal she was of a somewhat lighter hue than her father or the rest of the gipsy tribe. Yet there was something of a darker grain than the grain in her people that lurked beneath her skin. And she was light on her feet. Even trudging in the deep snow, she seemed more to float, to skim on top, than to walk. ”

“ I wondered why any one so rich and so beautiful should ever be unhappy—for I had been schooled by poverty to believe that money is the first essential of happiness—and yet her unhappiness was as evident as her beauty, or the luxury that enveloped her. At that instant I felt that I hated Mr. Vanderbridge, for whatever the secret tragedy of their marriage might be, I instinctively knew that the fault was not on the side of the wife. She was as sweet and winning as if she were still the reigning beauty in the academy for young ladies. ”

“ The harbor master answered with the motion of his oars.
She glanced at him shrewdly, then struck her hands together at her breast, which she caused to rise and fall stormily. She was, in fact, a storm petrel in the guise of woman.
"You have saved my life," she cried out, "when not another man in all this world would have lifted so much as his little finger. Do what you will with me after this. Let me be your slave, your dog—. I am a lost woman if you will not take pity on me."
Rackby's heart came into his throat with the slow surge of a sculpin on a hook. ”

“ Stires and Ching Po were within, and from the sibilant noise that stirred the peaceful air, I judged that Ching Po was talking. Their backs were turned to the outer world. I pushed open the door, and Follet and I entered.
For the first time I found myself greeted with open hostility by my fellow countryman. "What the devil are you doing here?" I was annoyed. The way they all dragged me in and then cursed me for being there! The Chinaman stood with his hands folded in his wicked sleeves, his eyes on the ground. In the semi-gloom of Stires's warehouse, his face looked like a mouldy orange. ”

“ Neal had always been moved by the romance of the subway, but tonight, in his elevation of spirit, it seemed something of epic quality, full of a strange, unreal grandeur. Faint red lights here and there revealed nothing of the tunnel; they but lent mystery to dimly seen arches and darkling bastions, fleeting by the roaring train.
They stopped a minute at Canal Street, and more people pushed into the overcrowded car, and then the train was off again. The man pushing against Mr. Neal was heavy-jowled as a prize-fighter, but if ever he had followed the ring his fighting days were over now. ”

“ Ennis had her doubts. He was very vain; underneath his urbanity there might be an elastic hardness.
There were, moreover, at times indications of a rather contemptuous attitude toward a world less highly trained than himself. She turned to Pollen, trying to recollect what for the last few moments he had been saying to her. He perceived her more scrutinizing attention and faced toward her. From under lowered eyelids he had been watching, with a moody furtiveness, Mary Rochefort and Burnaby, who were oblivious to the other two in the manner of people who are glad they have met. ”

“ Zulus had captured him once, and he had come perilously close to death on so many occasions that it was a miracle that he should be sitting here now, sipping his champagne and smoking his cigarette.
On the way home—I had a habit of seeing Shelby to his doorstep during this period—he turned to me and said:
"Isn't it strange, Allison, that nothing of that kind has ever happened to me? I move about all the while, I look eagerly for excitement, I hope always for the supreme adventure—and I never find it. Yet I love romance. Why does it never come to me?" ”

“ But from the rim of the sea, where the surf was seen only as a white glow waxing and waning, a constant drone was borne in to them—a thunder of the white horses' hoofs trampling on Pull-an'-be-Damned; the vindictive sound of seas falling down one after another on wasted rocks, on shifting sand [Pg 208] bars—a powerful monotone seeming to increase in the ear with fuller attention. The contrast was marked between the heavy-lying peace of the inner harbor and that hungry reverberation from without of waters seeking fresh holds along a mutilated coast. ”

“ Come to me, Alma, stay with me close. He asked me tonight."
"What?"
"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have." [Pg 266]
"Seen what?"
"Don't make mama come out and say it. For eight years I've been as grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and he—asked me tonight."
There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared there by a hand.
"Asked you what?"
"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, steadier man than Louis Latz? ”

“ After they left Deolda came to Aunt Josephine and put her arms around her like a good, sweet child.
"What's the matter, Auntie?" she asked.
"You—that's what. I can't stand it to hear you go on."
Deolda looked at her with a sort of wonder. "We were only saying out loud what every girl's thinking about when she marries a man of forty-five, or when she marries a man who's sixty-five. It's a trade—the world's like that."
"Let me tell you one thing," said my aunt. "You can't fool with Capt. Mark Hammar. It means that you give up your other sweetheart." ”

“ She went against the good government of souls.
Even Rackby had taken note of her once, deep as his head was in the clouds by preference and custom. It was a day in late November. No snow had fallen, and she floated past him like a cloud shadow as he plodded in the yellow road which turned east at the Preaching Tree. She passed, looked back, slashed a piece of dripping kelp through the air so close that salt drops stung his pale eyes, laughed aloud, and at the top of her laugh, broke into a wild, sweet song unfamiliar to him. ”

“ Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold.
"Oh, God, why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my own child!"
"Oh—mama—"
"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. ”

“ You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say yes?"
"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow—I lean on her so."
"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her mother's light."
"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and through, quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too much to—to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself. She's precious to me, Louis."
"Why, of course. You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would want you to feel different?" ”

“ Hunching his shoulders up against the blast, he hurried back to the subway.
Heartbreaking though his disappointment was, Mr. Neal was not embittered. There was one thing that he knew now beyond all cavil or doubt: he knew that he should find the man with the good face. He knew that he should eventually meet him somewhere, sometime, and come to know him. How Mr. Neal longed for that time words cannot describe, but his settled faith that his desire would one day be fulfilled kept him tranquil and happy. Why should he be impatient? ”

“ So it drew on toward Day Rackby's eighteenth birthday.
One morning in October they set out from Meteor for the village. A cool wind surged through the sparkling brown oak leaves of the oaks at Hannan's Landing.
"They die as the old die," reflected Jethro Rackby, "gnarled, withered, still hanging on when they are all but sapless."
Despite the melancholy thought, his vision was gladdened by a magic clarity extending over all the heavens, and even to the source of the reviving winds. The sea was blown clear of ships. In the harbor a few still sat like seabirds drying plumage. ”

“ And then as suddenly, drawn by something compellingly alive and pervading, I glanced at Jim, who stood next to me; and catching the slant of his vision followed it to the edge of the crowd, where, her thin dress clinging to her knees, her face almost blue with cold, stood Lisbeth; and there was across her eyes and mouth an expression of contempt and loathing such as I had never seen in a girl so young. Jim was watching her intently, noting, with that certain appraisal of his, the etched profile; and, with all an artist's sensibility, reading life into the line of head and shoulders. ”

“ The train thundered away, its colored rear-lights vanishing far-off in the black tunnel. Oblivious to the interest of the spectators, oblivious to all the hurrying and running and crowding as other trains roared into the underground station, the little man leaned limply against a pillar.
"He's gone!" he muttered to himself. "He's gone!"
For upward of twenty years Mr. James Neal had been a clerk in the offices of Fields, Jones & Houseman on Lower Broadway. Every day of these twenty-odd years, if we except Sundays and holidays, Mr. Neal had spent an hour and a half on subway trains. ”

“ Deolda, for God's sake, marry me before he comes back! He'll kill you, that's what he'll do. It's not for my sake I'm asking you—it's for your sake!"
She looked at him with her big black eyes. "I believe you mean that, Conboy. I believe I'll do it. But I'll be fair and square with you as you are with me. You'd better let me be; you know what I'm like. I won't make you happy; I never pretended I would. And as for him killing me, how do you know, Conboy, I mightn't lose my temper first?"
"He'll break you," said Conboy. "God! but he's a man without pity! ”

“ Rackby, who had fallen into a deep sleep, lying northeast and southwest, was awakened by a hand smiting his door in, and a wailing outside of the Old Roke busy with his agonies. In a second his room was full of crowding seamen, at their head Peter Loud, bearing in his arms the dripping form of Caddie Sills. He laid her gently on the couch.
"Where did you break up?" whispered Rackby. He trembled like a leaf.
"Pull-an'-be-Damned," said Deep-water Peter. "The Cap'n's gone. He didn't come away. Men can say what they like of Sam Dreed; he wouldn't come into the boat. I'll tell all the world that." ”

“ My world of romance was blue and gray, with the savage dunes glittering gold in the sun. Here life was intense. Danger lurked always under the horizon. Lights, like warning eyes, flashed at night, and through the drenching fog, bells on reefs talked to invisible ships. Old men who told tales of storm and strange, savage islands, of great catches of fish, of smuggling, visited my aunt.
Then, as if this were merely the background of a drama, Deolda Costa came to live with us in a prosaic enough fashion, as a "girl to help out." ”

“ The storm petrel hovered high, swooped close, her lips parted. Her teeth shone with a native luster, as if she had lived on roots and tough things all her life. Again little Rackby felt that glow of health and hardness in her person, as if one of the cynical and beautiful immortals of the Greeks confronted him. He was heartily afraid of her mystifying power of enchantment, which seemed to betray him to greater lengths than he had dreamed. Even now perhaps all was lost.
"I will meet you tonight, then—at the top of the hill. See? By the Preaching Tree." ”

“ It was twilight, and I was hurrying home through the dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell ringing quietly somewhere and a moth flying by brushed against my face with velvet—and I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering white, and see the first star swinging low above the trees, and lower still, and brighter still, the lights of home.—And then before my very eyes, they would fade, they would fade, dimmer and dimmer—they would flicker and go out, and I would be back again, with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about me—and I would pay. ”

“ But he wasn't a very great artist, or he wouldn't have done so; he would have had the discrimination to control the artist's greatest peril. It's a flame, this cold objectiveness, but a flame so powerful that it must be properly shaded for intimate use. Otherwise it kills like violet rays. Women wore out their hearts on him, not like waves breaking on a crystal rock, but like rain breaking into a gutter."
"Good Lord!" murmured Mrs. Ennis involuntarily.
Burnaby caught her exclamation. "Bad, wasn't it?" he smiled. "But remember I am only repeating what Mackintosh told me. ”

“ There was a curious flicker in her face as if her pallor came and went.
"We were at the table when she came in. Has Mr. Vanderbridge a secretary who lives in the house?"
"No, he hasn't a secretary except at his office. When he wants one at the house, he telephones to his office."
"I wondered why she came, for she didn't eat any dinner, and nobody spoke to her—not even Mr. Vanderbridge."
"Oh, he never speaks to her. Thank God, it hasn't come to that yet."
"Then why does she come? It must be dreadful to be treated like that, and before the servants, too. Does she come often?" ”

“ She saw him, detached and spiritualized, and she saw also the Other One—for while we waited I became slowly aware of the apparition in the firelight—of the white face and the cloudy hair and the look of animosity and bitterness in the eyes. Never before had I been so profoundly convinced of the malignant will veiled by that thin figure. It was as if the visible form were only a spiral of grey smoke covering a sinister purpose. [Pg 192]
"The only way," said Mrs. Vanderbridge, "is to fight fairly even when one fights evil." ”

“ Nor did he feel a greater kinship with the family in the Bronx with which he lodged. They were at pains not to annoy him; he kept apart from them.
Perhaps the pallid little clerk with the large grey eyes would have become very lonesome if he had not eventually found a real interest in life. This, then, was the manner and substance of his finding.
As he traveled back and forth on the subway morning and evening, day in and day out, week after week, he wasted the hours much more completely than most of his fellow travelers. ”

“ I had neither seen nor heard him move, but he was waiting for us on the porch. He could be as noiseless on occasion as Ching Po.
"You'd better not come into this," I suggested; for there was no staying power, I felt, in Follet.
He seemed to shiver all over with irritation. "Oh, damn his yellow soul, I'll marry her!" He spat it out—with no sweetness, this time.
Madame Maür swung round to him like a needle to the pole. "You may save yourself the corvée. She won't have you. Not if any of the things she has been sobbing out are true. ”

“ Now I am the law. Maybe there shall come, now and then, a Dutch gunboat to have a look-in. I raise up that flag. The captain shall dine with me. All is good. But, my dear sir, I am the law."
The "music" began to be heard, a measured monotone of drums, a breath of voices in a recitative chant, slightly impassioned by that vanished gallon. The same old thing, indeed; one of the more than fifty-seven varieties of the island hula. Then that had died away.
The light from the "place" grew among the higher leaves. And the trader, becoming visible, halted. ”

“ The mother looked at Laura, as if expecting her to welcome her child. Laura did nothing. She must be alone. She was there to be with Howie.
She was not as late as she had feared. There would be time for getting ready—getting ready for Howie! She knew this would be the last time she would see Howie as he had moved through the world. For the last time she would see his face light to a smile. If she did not reach him tonight, she would never reach him. ”

“ Now he gained on the man, who turned south into Third Avenue. As Mr. Neal breathlessly turned the corner he saw the tall man mounting the stoop of a shabby four-story apartment house a little way down the street. About to enter, he turned his face toward the running clerk, and even by the dim light at the entrance to the dingy house, Mr. Neal could see how ineffably spiritual and strong the face was. Joy filled the little clerk's heart so full that tears came to his eyes. At last he was to meet the man with the "good face"—after so long! ”

“ Disquieted, he resumed the oars. They had drifted close to the bank, and a shower of maple leaves, waxen red, all but fell into the boat.
"These die as the young die," thought the harbor master, sadly. "They delight to go, these adventurers, swooping down at a breath. They are not afraid of the mystery of mold."
His glance returned to the wandlike form of his daughter, whose eyes now opened upon his archly.
"So she would adventure death," he reflected. "Almost at as light a whisper from the powers of darkness, too." ”