Hurst

“ A crack of light showed under the kitchen door, and, pushing it open with some force, he gazed spellbound at the spectacle before him.
"Come in," said Mr. Hurst, heartily. "I've just finished."
He rocked an empty beer-bottle and patted another that was half full. Satiety was written on his face as he pushed an empty plate from him, and, leaning back in his chair, smiled lazily at Mr. Mott.
"Go on," said that gentleman, hoarsely. Mr. Hurst shook his head.
"Enough is as good as a feast," he said, reasonably. "I'll have some more to-morrow." ”

“ For the first day or two I thought it was merely a touch of marsh-fever, that would pass off with no worse consequence than a little weakness; but on the third day I perceived that she would die.
Hurst met me as I came from her bedside, stood aside on the narrow landing for me to pass, and followed me down into the little sitting-room, which, deprived for three days of her presence, already bore the air of a room long deserted. He came in after me and shut the door.
“You’re wrong,” he said abruptly, reading my thoughts as usual; “she won’t die—she can’t die.” ”

“ Hurst went abroad, to Paris or Leipzig or somewhere, to study hypnotism, and to prepare notes for his book on “Black Magic.” This came out in the autumn, and had a strange and brilliant success. Hurst became famous, famous as men do become nowadays. ”

“ Hurst, what do you wish—what am I to do?"
"You are to leave this country now and forever—leave it without speaking the name of my daughter. You are never to step your foot again upon the land which she inhabits. Do this, and I will invest fifty thousand dollars for your benefit, the income to be paid you in any country that you may choose to infest, any except this."
"And what if I refuse to sell my liberty, my—" he paused, for Mr. Hurst was keenly watching him, and he dared not mention Florence as his wife, though the word trembled on his lip. ”

“ Before leaving the house I was informed that Miss Jorgensen wished to speak to me.
"Mr. Hurst has done a most imprudent thing!" she exclaimed, the moment I was inside the door. "I ought to have published a 'personal,' or done something to let him know I could not go to the post-office, and to account for his not hearing from me."
"He has returned to the city?"
"Yes!" She fairly ground her teeth with rage at this "stupidity," as she termed it. "He always does the very thing he ought never to have done, and leaves undone the things most important to do. ”

“ I declared, for my part, that I was dependent on Horace's movements; that, if I could possibly have anticipated the delightful evening which had awaited us, every other arrangement should have given way, &c. &c.; when Hurst's reappearance turned the whole force of Mrs Leicester's persuasions upon him, backed, too, as she was by both her daughters. "Won't you stay, Mr Hurst? Must you go too? Will you be so shabby as to leave us?" How could any man stand it? William Wellington Hurst could not, it was very plain. At first he looked astonished; wondered why on earth we couldn't all stay ”

“ Honour bright.”
“Stop a bit, Hurst,” hastily interposed Bywater. “There’s no knowing what he may think ‘very bad.’ Give generals, not particulars. Here the fellow comes, I do believe!”
“It was only a trick we were going to play old Ketch,” whispered Hurst. “Come out quickly; better that he should not hear us, or it may spoil sport for another time. Gently, boys!”
Hurst and the rest stole round the cloisters, and out at the south door. Hamish and Arthur followed, more leisurely, and less silently. Ketch came up. ”

“ Hurst’s attention came from the off-wheel. The sound was rapidly growing more acute, rising to a long-sustained screech that was the clearest possible demand for more oil: but the woman trudging by the horse’s head did not seem to notice it. A step sounded near Mrs. Hurst, and she glanced round, to meet Danny’s friendly gaze.
“Evenin’, Mrs. Hurst,” he said. “I jus’ come over to see if yous was all right. Been a cow of a day, hasn’t it?—an’ the smoke’s thicker than ever. Wonder who them travellers are? They’ll have a hot axle if they don’t watch it.” ”

“ You can come! Now, too, while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't want you skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head—or hers! You can tell her to-night—but in my presence! Come!"
"Yes, sir," he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!"
Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click.
"Yes—sir!"
They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat of rain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timbers taxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did something horrid to her. ”

“ We will take six picked men with us, if that be enough; you and I will make eight; and if there be not more than a hundred and fifty of the enemy, I think we could manage."
"A hundred and fifty!" cried Hurst. "Why, there are but seven, and one of them is not a fighting man."
"Who may they be?" asked Barecolt, in a solemn tone; "If there be but seven we shall have no need of any men; I will go alone. Who may they be?"
"Why, there's that Captain Batten, whom my lord took away prisoner, I hear," replied Hurst; "then there's a Dr. Bostwick, a parliamentary committee man ”

“ Like many other under-graduates [Pg 74] of every man's acquaintance, Hurst laboured under the delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the proctor, was an opus operatum of the highest possible merit. ”

“ And Hurst began to quaver again—
"Queen of my soul, whose"—
"I'll tell you what," said Horace, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, with his hands under his coat-tails—"You may not be aware of it, but you're rather drunk, Hurst."
"Drunk!" said Hurst; "no, that's quite a mistake; three glasses, I think it was, of champagne at supper; and you men have sat here drinking punch all the evening; if anybody's drunk, it's not me."
Hurst's usually modest demeanour was certainly"> [Pg 100] so very much altered as to justify, in some measure, Leicester's supposition ”

“ After a few modest and conscientious scruples on my part, at intruding on the hospitality of comparative strangers, and a strong private remonstrance from Hurst, on the impropriety of sitting down to dinner with ladies in a [Pg 82] surtout and white cords, we accepted the invitation, and betook ourselves to kill the intervening hour or so as we best could.
"Well, Horace," said I, as Hurst went off to make his apology for a toilette—"how are you going to settle about the driving home?"
"Oh! never fear; I'll manage it: I have just seen Miller and Fane ”

“ After much persuasion, in 1895, he consented to stand for the mayor's chair in the Perth Council. When Mr. Saunders' candidature was announced, he wished to retire from the contest, but, owing to strong influence, could not. He was defeated.
In 1863 Mr. Hurst married a daughter of Mr. William Reader, of Poplar, East London. Mr. Hurst is widely known as a benevolent man. Let one in poverty appeal to him and win his respect, and he is liberal to a degree. We can believe that few have asked him for bread and been given a stone. ”

“ The dog fell to snoring. Another while ticked past—loudly. And as if the ticking were against her brain like drops of water, she rose to a half-sitting posture, reached for the small onyx clock on the mantelpiece and smothered it beneath one of the red sateen sofa-pillows. When she relaxed again two fresh tears waggled heavily down her cream-colored cheeks. Then for a while she slept, with her mouth ever so slightly open and revealing the white line of her teeth. The tears slid off her cheeks to the mussed frills of her negligée and dried there. ”

“ It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit up the one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the wee hours in her chain of hot applications.
For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with little jabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes began to look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up two fingers with a little pressing movement to her temple.
"You're a great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety of expression. ”

“ Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-on cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face.
"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your little finger. ”

“ Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.
"Alma!"
It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice.
"You can't marry Louis Latz."
"Can't I? Watch me."
"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!" ”

“ In the flash of her flung-open door, as her head in its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double over the upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a white terribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an arm suddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him. ”

“ There, there, girl, I don't blame any of you for feathering your nest." He was flushed now and above the soft collar, his face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "Feather your nest, girl; you got the looks to do it. It's a far cry from Flamm Avenue to where a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. And I wish it to you, girl; the best isn't good enough."
"I—I dare you to ask me again, Charley!"
"Ask what?"
"You know. Throw your head up the way you do when you mean what you say and—ask." ”

“ Ross, who had lost a saving sense of time and place, leaned after that ship receding in majesty, long after it had curved from view.
The crowd, not a dry-eyed one, women in spite of themselves with lips whitening, men grim with pride and an innermost bleeding, sagged suddenly, thinning and trickling back into the great, impersonal maw of the city. Apart from the rush of the exodus, a youth remained at the rail, gazing out and quivering for the smell of war. ”

“ Hurst. "She says they are in bad taste, but she can give them to the charwoman."
"Oh!" said the girl. "Oh, indeed! Very kind of her. Isn't there anything else she doesn't like?"
Mr. Hurst stood considering.
"She doesn't like the upholstering of the best chairs," he said at last. "She thinks they are too showy, so she's going to put covers over them."
There was a long pause, during which Mr. Mott, taking his niece gently by the arm, assisted her to a chair.
"Otherwise she is quite satisfied," concluded Mr. Hurst.
Miss Garland took a deep breath, but made no reply. ”

“ Then she instituted a campaign down one side and up the other of two blocks of Nineteenth Street. Finally there came a whimper from the depths of the blanket, and a light and coughy little cry against and into her heart.
She stood on the corner, arguing with herself for a clear brain, the easy fatigue of weakness beginning to descend and a queer unsteadiness of limb setting in.
"Don't lose your head, Lilly," she admonished of self. "There is a way, only you haven't yet struck it. Don't let your brain feel trapped. Keep cool. Quiet. Dove. Peace. Cathedral. Sweet and low. Sweet and low. Neugass. ”

“ Stay with me, Leon! Don't go away! The people at home got to be kept happy with music. That's being a soldier, too, playing their troubles away. Stay with me, Leon! Don't go leave me—don't—don't—"
He suffered her to lie, tear-drenched, back into his arms, holding her close in his compassion for her, his own face twisting.
"God! ma, this—this is awful! Please—you make us ashamed—all of us! I don't know what to say. Esther, come quiet her—for God's sake quiet her!"
From her place in that sobbing circle Esther Kantor crossed to kneel beside her mother.
"Mamma darling, you're killing yourself. ”

“ The children meanwhile would forgather on the front hall stairs, the peaked flare of an olive of gaslight that burned through a red glass globe with warts blown into it, bathing the little group in a sort of greasy fluid. Roy and Flora Kemble, Snow Horton, Lester Eli, and Stanley Beinenstock, racked with bronchitis and lending an odor of creosote, Lilly, and even Harry in his poor outlandish blouse.
"Snow, tell us a story; you're the oldest." ”

“ It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with points to them. ”