Alan

“ Alan, they will have to interest you. This one will have to interest you. I am awfully sorry for you, Alan. But I can't help myself. You are the one man who is able to save me. I am forced to bring you into the matter. I have no option. Alan, you are scientific. You know about chemistry and things of that kind. You have made experiments. What you have got to do is to destroy the thing that is upstairs – to destroy it so that not a vestige of it will be left. ”

“ He answered:
"When the Powers that be offer me a Commission in the Royal Flying Corps."
"I see." She breathed freely. "And so—we are not to be married until then?"
"Would you—to-morrow, if I——"
"You know I would!" Her voice broke over him in a wave of tenderness. "You've made me love you—so dreadfully, Alan. Now if the little tin gods hear us—the spiteful little gods who spoil people's lives—something will happen to part us, soon."
His arm went round her and gathered her against him. He said with a great thrill of triumph:
"If the Great God is for us we can defy the little tin devils! ”

“ His curiosity roused, Alan crept closer still to the trees, but the undergrowth prevented his seeing any distance. He was sure, however, that it was Thomas speaking, and he could now distinguish the words, in spite of the muffled tones.
'I don't seem to see how it is to be done,' muttered the gardener, sullenly. 'It's not easy, I tell you.'
'What's the matter, man?' came in a voice with a foreign accent, which Alan did not recognise. 'The thing is possible enough if you choose to do it, and I'm sure I am making it worth your while. It isn't every day as you will get such an offer. ”

“ The doorbell rang, and Alan turned to the door and threw it open. In the dusk the figure of the man outside was not at all recognizable; but as he entered with heavy and deliberate steps, passing Alan without greeting and going straight to Constance, Alan saw by the light in the hall that it was Spearman. ”

“ How Alan fared when he was quite alone it would be hard to say. Such seasons were rare, except at the dead hours of night, when sleep comes naturally to every constitution, unless some powerful momentary excitement is at work; for he mixed more in general society than he had done for years. I doubt if he did not suffer less acutely than when Helen was alive, and in her husband's power. He was at least free from the torments of anxiety and apprehension. If in this world of ours we can defy these two enemies of man's peace, we have gained no mean victory over Fate. ”

“ Alan stood by the fireplace facing me, but far too occupied to see me. His last speech had seemingly aroused George to fury, for the latter turned on him now with savage passion.
"Damn it all, Alan!" he cried, "can't you be quiet? I will be master in my own house. Take care, I tell you; the curse may not be quite fulfilled yet after all."
As George uttered these words, Alan lifted his eyes to him with a glance of awful horror: his face turned ghastly white; his lips trembled for a moment; and then he answered back with one half- whispered word of supreme appeal—"George!" ”

“ Alan found out how much a man may suffer and yet go on living and working. As for that, his work was all that made life possible for him now and he flung himself into it with feverish energy, growing so thin and hollow-eyed over it that even Elder Trewin remonstrated and suggested a vacation—a suggestion at which Alan merely smiled. A vacation which would take him away from Lynde's neighbourhood—the thought was not to be entertained. ”

“ Wrestle with it in a hand to hand combat? Alan edged around the center table. He was bathed in cold sweat. This thing so horrible! It was too large! Half the length of his own body, now. In a moment it might be twice that! He was aware of Glora pulling at him; and his father rushing [348] past him with a bottle of liquid, and shouting:
"Alan! Run! You and this girl, get out of here! The other room—"
Then Alan saw the things upon the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! ”

“ Taking the seat next the chauffeur, Alan gave the word to drive on, and the car slipped away from the mining-camp, saluted by cheers from the miners.
Half an hour passed without a word being spoken by any member of the party. Each was deep in his or her own especial preoccupation, Alan turning over plans for an early wedding, Rose hugging the contentment regained through her lover's protestations, Judith lost in profoundest melancholy, Trine nursing his rage, working himself up into a silent fury whose consequences were to be more far-reaching than he dreamed. ”

“ There was an unconscious revelation in the girl's mournful eyes as she turned them on Alan. It thrilled him to the core of his being. She loved him. If it were not for that empty marriage form, he could win her, but the knowledge was only an added mocking torment. Alan had not known a man could endure such misery and live. A score of wild questions rushed to his lips but he crushed them back for Lynde's sake and held out his hand. ”

“ Alan got up and went to look at himself in the mirror he had seen in the hall. He was white, now that the flush of the fighting was going; he probably had been pale before with excitement, and over his right eye there was a round, black mark. Alan looked down at his hands; a little skin was off one knuckle, where he had struck the man, and his fingers were smudged with a black and sooty dust. He had smudged them on the papers up-stairs or else in feeling his way about the dark house, and at some time he had touched his forehead and left the black mark. ”

“ Only the coldest comfort was to be extracted from the reflection that, even with the aid of that fog- signal, hunting a lost schooner in those mist-masked waters was a task like that traditional one of the needle and the haystack. Alan's life of late seemed simply one endless tissue of wild improbabilities. So long as his luck held, the least likely thing was always to be considered the one thing most certain to come to pass. ”

“ I grip your hand like this, and the abyss between us is closed. While I hold you, nothing can come between.”
Alix’s hand opened and settled into his. Alan went on:
“Words talk to the mind, but through my hand my body talks to yours in a language that was old before words were born. If I am full of dreams of you and a desert island, I don’t have to tell you about it, because you are with me. The things I want, you want. There are no other things in life; for while I hold you, our world is one and it is all ours. Nothing else can reach us.” ”

“ I did not dream that the message of the rose was known to any but Alan and myself. I cannot understand!"
"I may tell you that your father maintains a very efficient corps of secret agents."
"You think he spied upon me?"
"I know he did. In the service of my employer I, too, employ agents of my own. Your father sent you to Europe for the sole purpose of having you meet Alan." ”

“ Then they retraced their steps unconsciously, wandering along silently in the sunlight towards the school. Michael did not want to converse because he was too much elated by this walk, and the satisfying way in which Alan had lived up to his ideal of him. He began to weave a fine romance of himself and Alan going through life together in a lofty self-sufficiency from which they would condescend to every aspect of humanity. ”

“ There is nothing more annoying when you feel yourself aggrieved by fate than to be told that your troubles have originated in your own fancy; so I dropped the subject. Though the discussion spread for a few minutes round the whole table, Alan took no part in it. Neither did George, except for what I thought a rather unnecessarily rough expression of his disbelief in the cause of my night’s disturbance. As we rose from breakfast I saw Alan glance towards his brother, and make a movement, evidently with the purpose of speaking to him. ”

“ The look of self-reproach was a study, and the penitential sigh rightly executed to a breath.
"It is not that I doubt Alan's meaning fairly; indeed, I believe he does his best; but when a man has lived that wild life, old connexions are very difficult to shake off; sometimes it is years before he is quite free. You don't understand these things; but I do, my Helen, and I know how you would suffer. You are not cold-blooded enough to be patient or prudent. ”

“ Alan has the gambling spirit born in him; it's not his fault; it's the visitation of the sins of the father upon the son. It came to your father in just the same way. No, I'm not even blaming your father for it; it has come down from generation to generation; but there has never been dishonor, thank God—there has never been a dishonest Porter in my husband's family, and, please God, there never may be. That would be too much! It would kill me. And it's better that you go, Allis, for Alan is but a boy, and the temptations to a young man at the race course must be almost impossible to resist. ”

“ Alan caught his friend's hand and pressed it warmly, a caress eloquent of his gratitude to Barcus for taking their peril lightly, or pretending to, for the sake of Rose.
A ticklish business, that—groping their way through blackness so opaque that it seemed palpable. An elbow in the tunnel—sensed rather than felt or seen—cut them off from direct communication with the bulkhead, and at the same time opened up a shaft of daylight striking down through that pitchy darkness like a column of gold. ”

“ I thought Alan would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of writing in that desert. But he was a man of more resources than I knew; searched the wood until he found a quill of a cushat-dove, which he shaped into a pen; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn and water from the running stream; and tearing a corner from his French military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the gallows) , he sat down and wrote as follows:
“Dear Kinsman,—Please send money by the bearer to the place he kens of. ”

“ He quite realized the fact that, in default of a son, he would have chosen Wyverne out of all England as the heir to his broad lands and great possessions. He knew enough of Alan's character to feel sure that no more than common kindness in earlier days would have been needed to win his affection and keep it; but he had held him at arm's length with the rest till it was too late to do anything better than change dislike into indifference. For thirty years he had sat alone, "nursing his wrath to keep it warm," fancying that he could make the many suffer for the crime of one. ”

“ And as the way opened and he looked toward the altar and saw Alan standing hand in hand with Rose while the minister invoked a blessing upon the union that had been but that instant consummated, added strength, the strength of the insane, was given to Seneca Trine.
When Alan, annoyed by the disturbance in the body of the chapel, looked round, it was to see the aged maniac standing within a dozen feet of him; and as he cried out in wonder, Trine whipped a revolver from the pocket of his dressing-gown and swung it steadily to bear upon Alan's head. ”

“ Nothing could more discredit Alan than such an unsustainable accusation against the partner who was opposing Alan's taking his father's place. For it had been plain that Spearman dominated Sherrill, and that Sherrill felt confidence in and admiration toward him.
Alan grew hot with the realization that, in the interview just past, Spearman had also dominated him. He had been unable to find anything adequate to do, anything adequate to answer, in opposition to this man more than fifteen years older than himself and having a lifelong experience in dealing with all kinds of men. ”

“ When Alan reached the trysting-place, under a broad-armed oak, in a glade of the woodland, Herminia was there before him; a good woman always is, ’tis the prerogative of her affection. She was simply dressed in her dainty print gown, a single tea-rosebud peeped out from her bodice; she looked more lily-like, so Alan thought in his heart, than he had ever yet seen her. She held out her hand to him with parted lips and a conscious blush. Alan took it, but bent forward at the same time, and with a hasty glance around, just touched her rich mouth. Herminia allowed him without a struggle ”

“ On the last night Alan went up with Elizabeth to her room to see, he said, if the fire were cosy, and sitting together on the fender-stool they talked—talked of their father ("Take care of him, Lizbeth," Alan said. "Father is a bit extra, you know. I've yet to find a better man") , of how things had worked out, of Walter in India, of the small Buff asleep next door—one of those fireside family talks which are about the most comfortable things in the world. "I'm glad you came to Etterick, I like to think of you here," Alan said. ”

“ Alan's idea was a good one; but there were no hinges to be seen.
"I believe the lock and the hasps are nothing but false ones to put people off the scent," said Alan. "What a beastly mess," rubbing the cobwebs off his hands on to his knickerbockers. "I believe this is a puzzle chest, and it opens in some secret way like Mrs. Shaw's box. We're having quite a run of secrets."
How Blanche longed to tell Alan of the room upstairs! It was all she could do to prevent herself from speaking of it. ”

“ Men of little imagination and small mental baggage often dominate men of superior imagination by the sheer tenacious simplicity of never being in doubt of what they want. As I see them now, Alan was revolt and Ben traditionalism in its most rigid New England form. He was born to maintain what was as it had been, a mid-Victorian in his tastes, a Bourbon in his ideas,—quite capable, in another era, of burning witches at the stake. ”