Alans

“ The steady, powerful droning of the power-plant rose, blent with the soothing murmur of the rapids and the river.
“Seems like a lullaby--doesn't it, dearest?” murmured Allan. “You know--it won't be long now before it's good-by and--good night.”
“I know,” she answered. “We've lived, haven't we? Oh, Allan, no one ever lived, ever in all this world--lived as much as you and I have lived! Think of it all from the beginning till now. No one ever so much, so richly, so happily, so well!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I think you have known that, Allan. ”

“ How was I to protect Alan from the contamination I had let him live in? I couldn't preach by example – couldn't hold up his father as a warning, or denounce the money we were living on. All I could do was to disguise the inner ugliness of life by making it beautiful outside – to build a wall of beauty between him and the facts of life, turn his tastes and interests another way, hide the Radiator from him as a smiling woman at a ball may hide a cancer in her breast! Just as Alan was entering college his father died. ”

“ I have forgotten, Allan. Perhaps because the curious, such as you are, like to hear tales even stranger than their own, which in the days to be may become their own. Therefore you will be wise to believe only what I do, and of what I tell you, nothing. ”

“ An hour after this interview Allan was on his way to Riga. In every life there are a few sharp transitions. People pass in a moment, as it were, from one condition to another, and it seemed to Allan as if he never could be quite the same again. ”

“ After reading the narrative attentively to the last line (under which appeared Allan's signature) , the doctor looked across the breakfast-table at Midwinter, and tapped his fingers on the manuscript with a satirical smile.
"Many men, many opinions," he said. "I don't agree with either of you about this dream. Your theory," he added, looking at Allan, with a smile, "we have disposed of already: the supper that you can't digest is a supper which has yet to be discovered. My theory we will come to presently; your friend's theory claims attention first." ”

“ As for the friends who had been asked at Allan's request—the widow lady (otherwise Mrs. Pentecost) and her son (the Reverend Samuel) in delicate health—two people less capable, apparently of adding to the hilarity of the day could hardly have been discovered in the length and breadth of all England. A young man who plays his part in society by looking on in green spectacles, and listening with a sickly smile, may be a prodigy of intellect and a mine of virtue, but he is hardly, perhaps, the right sort of man to have at a picnic. ”

“ From that moment Allan believed his rule established now by stronger bonds of love than any force could be. And through all the intoxication of success and consummated power he felt a love for Beatrice, who had rendered all this possible, such as no human words could ever say.
Allan, Junior, grew lustily, waxed strong, and filled the colony with joy. A new spirit pervaded Settlement Cliffs. The vital fact of new life born there, an augury of strength and increase and world-dominance once more, cemented all the social bonds. ”

“ Stranger things still may happen before long, which I may not live to see. Remember, if that time comes, that I died firmly disbelieving in your influence over Allan being other than an influence for good. The great sacrifice of the Atonement—I say it reverently—has its mortal reflections, even in this world. If danger ever threatens Allan, you, whose father took his father’s life—YOU, and no other, may be the man whom the providence of God has appointed to save him. ”

“ It was long ere Allan could endure the presence of the child, until it occurred to his imagination, from her features perhaps, that she did not belong to the hated blood of his enemies, but had become their captive in some of their incursions; a circumstance not in itself impossible, but in which he believes as firmly as in holy writ. ”

“ Disturb me no more, Allan, with the tremors and changes of your uncertain mind, lest you should work more evil than you think, and making mine uncertain also, spoil my skill. Nay, do not try to fly, for already the net has thrown itself about you and you cannot stir, who are bound like a little gilded wasp in the spider's web, or like birds beneath the eyes of basilisks. ”

“ Now I know what it is that stirs us in the beauty of the sky, in the sound of water and in the scent of flowers. It is Love who speaks in everything, though till we hear his voice we understand nothing. But when we hear, then the riddle is answered and the gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the way that wends through death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of which our love is but a shadow. ”

“ Moreover, I understand it not; what meanest thou by the words?"
"I know not, Your Majesty," said Allan, shaking his head, "for ofttimes I sing that which I do not clearly understand mine own self."
"Well, well," quoth the King, "let it pass; only I tell thee this, Allan, thou shouldst turn thy songs to such matters as I spoke of, to wit, love or war; for in sooth thou hast a sweeter voice than Blondell, and methought he was the best minstrel that ever I heard." ”

“ Allan likewise saluted the flame; then he faced the multitude.
“O my people,” he began, striving to speak clearly above the noise of the fire-jet, his voice sounding dull and heavy in that compressed atmosphere, “O Folk of the Merucaans, I greet you! There be many things to tell that you must know and believe. I have come back to you with great peril in my flying-boat to tell you of the upper world and all its goodness.
“Easily could I have stayed in those places of light and plenty, but my heart was warm for my people. I thought of my people night and day. The woman Beatrice thought of you. ”

“ With those words Allan descended the terrace steps in front of the house, whistling cheerfully. He had met the serious responsibility of settling his domestic establishment to his own entire satisfaction. "People talk of the difficulty of managing their servants," thought Allan. "What on earth do they mean? I don't see any difficulty at all." He opened an ornamental gate leading out of the drive at the side of the house, and, following the footman's directions, entered the shrubbery that sheltered the Thorpe Ambrose gardens. ”

“ Do so once more, Allan, and I swear I'll bring thee to grovel on the ground and kiss my foot and babble nonsense to a woman sworn to another man, such as never for all thy days thou shalt think of without a blush of shame. ”

“ As it was, there was always a faint hope of winning him to add a zest to his delightful companionship, and Sir Allan, who was a very shrewd man, was perfectly aware of this. He was a sybarite of refined taste, with an exquisite appreciation of the finer and more artistic pleasures of life; and the society of educated and well-bred women was one of the chief of them. ”

“ So far as Alan knew, it was a simple case of business which called him away; more than once afterwards he thought it would have been better if he had died that night, with the music of Helen's whisper in his ears, the print of her ripe scarlet lips on his cheek, the pressure of her lithe twining fingers still lingering round his own.
Many men, before and since, have thought the same. It is, perhaps, the most reasonable of all the repinings that are more futile than the vainest of regrets. ”

“ An elbow planted heavily in the pit of the stomach of one disposed of him for the time being. A blow from the shoulder sent the other reeling to the gutter. And Alan was in the tenement's lowermost hall. Sounds of scuffling feet were audible on the first landing. Alan addressed himself impetuously to the staircase, gaining its top in half a dozen leaps, and only in time to see a door slammed at the forward end of the hall and hear a key turned in its lock.
A cluster of men blocked his way. He threw himself headlong into their midst, and gained the closed door before they sought to stay him. ”

“ Had he—as his knowledge of his friend’s facile character bound him to do—warned Allan to distrust his own hasty impulses, and to test himself by time and absence, before he made sure that the happiness of his whole life was bound up in Miss Gwilt? No. The bare doubt whether, in speaking of these things, he could feel that he was speaking disinterestedly, had closed his lips, and would close his lips for the future, till the time for speaking had gone by. Was the right man to restrain Allan the man who would have given the world, if he had it, to stand in Allan’s place? ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 change had diverted Allan, but had not altered him in the least. He was as impenetrably superior to all worldly ambition as Diogenes himself. "Which is best," asked this unconscious philosopher, "to find out the way to be happy for yourself, or to let other people try if they can find it out for you?" From that moment Mr. Brock permitted his pupil's character to grow at its own rate of development, and Allan went on uninterruptedly with the work of his yacht. ”

“ 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. ”