Max

“ Max had come out of the far West. He was a foundling who had been adopted by a wealthy German ranchman named Scharfenstein, which name Max assumed as his own, it being as good as any. Nobody knew anything about Max's antecedents, but he was so big and handsome and jolly that no one cared a hang. For all that he did not know his parentage, he was a gentleman, something that has to be bred in the bone. Once or twice I remember seeing him angry; in anger he was arrogant, deadly, but calm. He was a god in track-linen, for he was what few big men are, quick and agile. ”

“ Max leaned forward, quivering to a new impulse, and, raising the heavy coils, twisted them swiftly about his head. With the action, the blood rushed into his cheeks, a flame of excitement sprang into his eyes and, drawing the candles closer, he peered into the mirror.
There are moments when a retrospective impression is overwhelming—when a scent, a sight, a sound can quicken things dead—things buried out of mind. ”

“ Abruptly, unpleasantly, Max came back to the world and the consequences of his act.
Impressions and instincts spring to the artist mind; in a moment he was armored for self-preservation—so straitly armored that every sentiment, even the vague-stirring jealousy of himself that had been given sudden birth, was overridden and cast into the dark.
With the old hauteur, the old touch of imperiousness, he returned Blake's glance. ”

“ An incurable dreamer, the fancy took him and he yielded to its glamour. How delightful to know and study that exquisite face! How fascinating beyond all words to catch the fleeting semblance of his charming Max—to lose it in the woman's seriousness—to touch it again in some gleam of boyish humor! It was a quaint conceit, apart from, untouched by any previous experience. Its subtlety possessed him; existence suddenly took on form and purpose; the depression, the sense of loss dispersed as morning clouds before the sun. ”

“ Max. enters almost in a state of derangement from extreme agitation, his eyes roll wildly, his walk is unsteady, and he appears not to observe his father, who stands at a distance, and gazes at him with a countenance expresisive of compassion. ”

“ Suddenly Max had a sensation of being very small, very insignificant; suddenly he had an impression of Blake as a denizen of a wider world, where other emotions than laughter and comradeship held place—and his heart trembled unreasonably.
"Oh, mon cher!" he cried. "Forgive me! Forgive me! Say I am still your boy! Say it! Say it!"
Truth lent passion to his voice—false passion Blake esteemed it, and the cold, imaginary wall became more impregnable.
"That'll do, Max! Heroics are no more attractive to me than hysterics. Good-night to you!" ”

“ The Russian samovar, the books, the open cigarette-box, each of which spoke and breathed of Max!
Every object came to him clearly in the quiet light of the lamp upon the bureau; it seemed like the setting of a play, where the atmosphere had been carefully created, the details definitely woven into a perfect chain.
He stood, looking upon the silent room, wondering what would happen—convinced that something must happen; and at last, with the same quietness—the same intense naturalness, perfect as extreme art—a slight sound came from the balcony and a woman stepped into the subdued light. ”

“ Max was saying to himself, as he continued to watch the wretched man tear away at the food, and act as though he were a wild beast rather than a human being, once gifted with a mind that could reason, love, hate, and learn. ”

“ Max raised his glass and drank some of his champagne. His first dread of the place was gripping him again—exciting him, confusing him. All about him, like the scent-laden atmosphere itself, moved the crowd—the girls of Montmartre and their cavaliers. Everywhere was that sense of conscious enjoyment—that grasping of the mere moment that the Parisian has reduced to a science. It enveloped him like a veil—the artless artificiality of Paris! ”

“ Max, standing in the darkness—eager of glance, quick of thought, acutely attentive to every tone of Blake's voice—suddenly became cognizant of his demon of jealousy, felt its subtle stirring in his heart, its swift spring from heart to throat. A wave of blood surged to his face and receded, leaving him pale and trembling, but with the intense self-possession sometimes born of such moments, he stepped into the studio and relighted the candle Blake had blown out. ”

“ Neither Max nor Maxine had any place in her conceptions. She saw Lize, broken but justified, because she had given when life asked of her; she saw the little Jacqueline, with the halo of candle-light turning her blonde hair to gold; in a distant dream she saw the frail, steadfast Madame Salas, and in a near, poignant vision she saw Blake, and her soul melted within her.
She conceived the world as one immense censer into which men and women poured their all, and from which a wondrous white smoke, a scent incredibly lovely, rose continually, enveloping the universe. ”

“ With a good-natured smile, Max picked up his books and marched down the aisle to the appointed place, where he seated himself, with a triumphant backward glance at his mates, triumphant, for this was a fresh vantage point for an attack. ”

“ New and unaccountable to plain Max were the mercurial moods, the exaltations and despondencies, the irrepressible, child-like delight occasioned by such simple things as a burst of sunlight on a cloudy day, the sudden, unexpected song of a bird, a glimpse of a fair woman-face, a rhyme of some old poet, a shade of color on some faded canvas, or, above all, the outlines and structure of Strasburg Cathedral. ”

“ Max never lost possession of his senses; he was only dazed. And, whilst in that condition, he was lifted in the strong arms of the Arab, and thrown bodily into the canoe. When he was sufficiently recovered to endeavour to rise to his feet, he found that he was in mid-stream, drifting rapidly towards the river. He looked about him for a paddle, and seeing none, turned his eyes to the bank. And there stood the Arab, in his mud-stained garments, his white teeth showing in his swarthy face in a broad, unholy grin. Moreover, in both hands, he held the paddles which he had taken from the canoe. ”

“ Then Max himself had such a bright, intelligent face and genial manner, was so ready to assist or oblige a comrade in any right and honorable way that lay in his power, so very conscientious about obeying rules and doing his duty in everything, and brave in facing ridicule, insolence, and contempt, when the choice was between that and wrong-doing, that no one of them could help respecting him, whether willing to acknowledge it or not. ”

“ The adventurer awoke in him alive and alert.
"She intrigues you, then—Maxine?"
"Marvellously—as the Sphinx intrigues me! To begin with, why the name? You Max! She Maxine!"
For an instant Max scanned the dark plantation with knitted brows; then he looked over his shoulder with a peculiar smile.
"We are twins, mon cher!" he said, taking secret joy in the elaboration of his lie. "My mother was a Frenchwoman, by name Maxine, and when she died at our birth, my father in his grief bestowed the name upon us both—the boy and the girl—Max and Maxine!" Very carefully he lighted his cigarette. ”

“ Max shrugged his shoulders in a way which plainly said that the last reason appeared to him highly unsatisfactory.
"Every man to his taste!" he said coolly. "This limitless love would not exactly be mine, and, so far as I see, there is very little to be gained by it. But"--he stood up--"it is time for me to go on duty, for I see the flutter of a light garment out yonder near those elder-bushes, and a glow on your countenance as though the seventh heaven had opened to your delighted vision. ”

“ Again it was the atmosphere of their first meeting—the boy hedged behind his pride, the man calmly breaking a way through that hedge.
Max shrugged. "The word is final. It explains itself."
With a conciliatory, affectionate movement, Blake's hand slipped from his shoulder to his arm. "Don't be absurd, boy," he said, gently. "Nothing on God's earth is impossible. 'Impossibility' is a word coined by weak people behind which to shelter. Why may I not know your sister?"
Max drew away his arm, not ostentatiously, but with definite purpose. ”

“ It spoke a thousand things, and with its vibrations trembling upon her lips, Maxine came round the chair and Blake, looking up, saw Max—Max of old, Max of the careless clothes, the clipped waving locks.
It is in moments grotesque or supreme that men show themselves. ”

“ Maxine, in her little white bedroom, arraying herself for Blake, was wrapped in a cloud of illusion, translated to a sphere above the common earth by this magic blindness. Never again while life lasted was she to stand as she stood to-night, eyes searching her mirror with perfect steadfast sincerity, lips parted in breathless joy of confidence. Never again! But for the moment the illusion was complete. She saw the triumphing soul of Max glimmer through her own fair body, saw the boy's faith carried like a banner in her woman's hands. ”

“ The thought stung him with an amazing sharpness, and he fled from it, as he had fled from the café and its smiling proprietress.
His descent upon Paris was a descent upon a region of beauty. The sense of summer lay like a bloom upon the flowers for sale at the street corners, and shimmered—a ribbon of silver sunlight—across the pale-blue sky. The trees in the grand boulevards shone in their green trappings; rainbow colors glinted in the shop windows; everywhere, save in the heart of Max, was fairness and youth and joy. ”

“ Max was now a broad-shouldered, well-built young fellow of twenty. He was not much above medium height, but his rowing and running at Hawkesley and his hard work in the various shops of the Durend concern had given him a muscular development that most of the real workmen might have envied. His responsibilities as stroke at college, and, later, as the future head of the firm, had given him a self-reliant attitude of mind that was reflected in his bearing, and enabled him to maintain with unconscious ease his sudden increase in years over his more youthful-looking comrade. ”

“ Max's enthusiasm on his friend's behalf had been much damped by his behavior, and he gave him a nod, turned on his heel and left him without another word. He gave up trying to understand the mystery which hung about Dudley, and left it to Doreen and to his father to unravel. ”

“ It is true that the sense of regained happiness beat strong in the mind of Max when he followed Jacqueline into her unpicturesque living-room with its sparse, cheap furniture, its piano and its gas stove, and that the happiness budded and blossomed like a flower in the sun at the one swift glance exchanged with Blake ”

“ In a vague way, absorbed in his own thoughts, Max fell to studying this solitary woman, until something in her impassivity, something in the sphinx-like calm with which she went through the business of her meal, blent with his imaginings, and he suddenly found her placed beside Blake in the possession of his thoughts—an integral part of their joint lives. In a flash of memory the large black hat, the opulent figure took place within his consciousness and, answering to a new instinct, he rose and took an involuntary step in the woman's direction. ”

“ Max made a quick gesture, sweeping the words aside. "I am not sufficient to you?"
Blake stared. "I don't understand."
"Yet I speak your own tongue! I say 'I am not sufficient to you?' I have given you my friendship—my heart and my mind, but I am not sufficient to you? Something more is required—something else—something different!"
"Something more? Something different?"
"Yes! In this world it is always the outward seeming! I may have as much personality as my sister Maxine; I may be as interesting, but you do not inquire. Why? Why? Because I am a boy—she a woman!" ”

“ Well, we told Max every single thing that had happened—good, bad, and indifferent—since he went away, including, of course, about Phil's going to college, and Fee's not going, and about aunt Lindsay's present to Fee and Nannie,—all talking together, and as loud as we pleased (we always do with Max) until we came to the new people that had moved in across the way—and what do you suppose? Max knows them! ”

“ He turns away, and stands so that Max cannot pass by him nor approach the Princess.
Max. Thou know'st that I have not yet learnt to live
Without thee! I go forth into a desert,
Leaving my all behind me. O do not turn 15
Thine eyes away from me! O once more shew me
Thy ever dear and honoured countenance. ”

“ All most respectable people, of course, without a breath of scandal attaching to their names—Max was too careful for that—and yet each and every one on the lookout for precisely the type of man that Max represented: one never happy or even contented when outside the radius of a waving fan or away from the flutter of a silken skirt. ”

“ Twenty-four hours later Max was vexing his soul with the difficulty of transcending planes. There was so much of which he could have warned his master, now that he had got him back from Long Island; but there was neither speech nor language, neither symbol nor sign, to make human beings understand anything but the most primitive needs and concepts. ”

“ Max's only gift, a shrewd, practical sense, enabled him readily to discern the qualities of those around him, and a loyal, generous nature, unspoiled by affectation or envy, brought him into sympathy with men of far higher capacities than his own. ”

“ That Max could make exquisite music, do the gallant thing at the right moment, and wear his clothes as if they were king’s ermine—it was all this that made the less gifted, untaught waif of a boy—boy yet though a man in size—rage at himself and hate everyone, Max in particular.
Twice more Max came home radiant, the second time full of plans for more music through that part of the vacation when Bess should be in town, and afterward when both should be in the university. For Max, the housebreaker, had taken a new hold on life, had determined to be a man in the world of best men. ”