Hoder

“ As we approached the Hodder the sun shone full and strong, and flashed and glittered upon its rippling surface, broken at the time into innumerable wavelets where the full-uddered kine were plunging and wading in the shallows to cool themselves after the heat of the bright summer day. Half a mile or so up the river, half hidden among the trees on the hillside, we catch sight of the Hodder Place, or Hodder House, as it is sometimes called—a kind of novitiate or preparatory school in connection with the seminary at Stonyhurst. ”

“ They were Kahikatea and Hinauri. Her hands were clasped in his, and she was looking up at him, while he, with drooped head, was speaking to her. They were both oblivious of all else but each other. Even my flickering torchlight did not rouse them.
“Till death do us part?” he said.
“Nay, Kahikatea,” she returned, “for ever and ever. Here, in this very place, in an age gone by did I plight my troth to you, and here again——”
I dashed on, the light of my torch blurred before my eyes, up through the tunnel towards the marble cave, whither I knew the chief had gone. ”

“ If I go to war, I’ll go to carry—Your Cross! And if You’ll let me, I’ll carry it to the very front!”
Mrs. Hodder found him in the morning—though it was morning indeed when the fight was over. He had been asleep but an hour, there on the floor by the old red rocker, when she came briskly in to open the windows and give the manse study its usual early dusting and setting to rights. At sight of the desk light still burning dully in the pale daylight she looked astonished, and a moment later, [190] as she espied the figure on the floor by the chair, she started, frightened. ”

“ I don't think I shall like those clerks, they stared at me so rudely, and I felt so ashamed, because one looked hard at me, and then whispered to another: and I believe they were saying something about my boots, which you know, mother, are terribly down at heel, and so I put one foot over the other, to try and hide them."
"There was no need of that, George. It did not alter the fact that they were down at heel; and there is no disgrace in being clothed only as respectable as we can afford, is there?" ”

“ I have m}’self seen Hood only from the common level, but have beheld him in many moods and phases, when white, cold, and stern he towered rigidly over a winter landscape, and when draped from summit to base in a golden-tinted tissue of morning mist, through which he peeped like a girl in trying on a robe of yellow gauze,—not quite shaken down on one side, the petticoat of snow showing daintily underneath. Many are the solid old mountain’s masquerading airs, and, despite the dignity of his thousands of years, he sometimes affects the blushes of the rose. ”

“ Asa Waring was a splendid, uncompromising survival; his piercing eyes sometimes met Hodder's across the church, and they held for him a question and a riddle. Eleanor Goodrich bore on her features the stamp of true nobility of character, and her husband, Hodder knew, was a man among men. In addition to a respected lineage, he possessed an unusual blending of aggressiveness and personal charm that men found irresistible.
The rector's office in the parish house was a businesslike room on the first floor, fitted up with a desk, a table, straight-backed chairs, and a revolving bookcase. ”

“ Hodar may be a scoundrel but he is not a fool. He knows that it would be utterly impossible for one person to navigate my space-ship for any considerable distance. If he did away with me while we were out in interplanetary space it would be suicide for him.”
“Even suicide, in addition to murder, Hodar is perfectly capable of committing. Once he gets that stubborn mind of his set on an idea, nothing in the universe can stop him.” ”

“ At length my son Ngaraki, the Fierce One, arrived at the age when he should take up the duties of the ancient temple, and I came forth to die. But lo! I cannot go hence until I have undone the wrong that I did, until I have restored the child to her mother. Make haste, O Friend, and find the little maiden in the south. The sun lingers over the hills, but cannot set—my eyes grow dim, and I see your faces in a mist—my head is bowed to the ground, but my spirit cannot pass hence till this is done. ”

“ Hinauri is no more.
“She will never come again. No distant dawn will bear her feet, no sun ray bring her back to life.
“Alas! Alas! the wild white crane against the cloud a moment shows her shining wing, then all is dark and all is lost.”
He paused for a moment on the brink of the abyss—a torchlight picture framed in the gloom of his ancient temple. For a moment his eyes were raised as if his glance could pierce through the darkness and beyond the cavern’s roof; then his voice rang out again in fiercer tones:
“She stays not! neither will I stay! I’ll fling me to the dark! Ngha! ”

“ Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws,
Vowing the direst vengeance, with clenched claws,
On the vile cheat that sold the goods.
"Razors! a damned, confounded dog,
Not fit to scrape a hog!"
Hodge sought the fellow—found him—and begun:
"P'rhaps, Master Razor rogue, to you 'tis fun,
That people flay themselves out of their lives:
You rascal! for an hour have I been grubbing,
Giving my crying whiskers here a scrubbing,
With razors just like oyster knives.
Sirrah! I tell you, you're a knave,
To cry up razors that can't SHAVE."
"Friend," quoth the razor-man, "I'm not a knave. ”

“ Death, for them, had ennobled him. The little girl whom Hodder had met with the pitcher of beer came tiptoeing with a wilted bunch of pansies, picked heaven knows where; stolen, maybe, from one of the gardens of the West End. Carnations, lilies of the valley, geraniums even—such were the offerings scattered loosely on the lid until a woman came with a mass of white roses that filled the room with their fragrance,—a woman with burnished red hair. Hodder started as he recognized her; her gaze was a strange mixture of effrontery and —something else ”

“ And, when you hear the roaring of the sea overhead, and the great god Tangaroa lets loose the flood, then you will know that Te Makawawa has passed in safety, that his end is not yet.”
“And what then, O chief? Do we follow, or will you return?”
“I will let a rope down from above by the wall where you stand. Climb up the rope, O Friend. Then the Man-who-has-forgotten will tie the mountain lily to it, and together we shall draw her up, and let the rope down again for the Man-who-has-forgotten to ascend. ”

“ Then the dreamy look came into his eyes—the look which I knew meant his strange, mad desire to look into the face of Hinauri, who, lifeless, but full of meaning, stood praying up there in the forehead of the mountain.
“No,” he made answer presently. “Crystal Grey is your quest. You must go alone.”
We were digging into the soft ground with our sheath knives and scraping out the dirt with our hands. When we were nearly two feet down my sheath knife grazed upon something hard, and another minute disclosed the surface of a stone embedded there. ”

“ When we three, Kahikatea, Tiki, and myself, were leaving the pa, the old chief gave us a solemn and sad farewell. Sitting at the doorway of his house, he said: “Depart, O Kahikatea, Dreamer of dreams! Take not again the ‘way of the spider’ lest you become even as he who has forgotten his name and the face of his friend. Depart, O seeker of the child whose mother awaits you, and forget not my words. Go, my friends, to whom I have shown the secret of the ages. Go! while I remain here watching the kohutukutu’s yellow leaf that will not fall, watching the western sun that cannot set.” ”

“ Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.
'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. ”

“ George and Hardy had never talked together like this before; and they spoke hesitatingly, as if they hardly liked to hear their own voices joining to discuss a mean, unworthy, dishonourable trick.
O temptation! what an inclined path is thine! How slippery for the feet, and how rapidly the unwary traveller slides along, lower and lower—each step making the attempt to ascend again to high ground more difficult! George had made many dangerous slips that night—would he ever regain his position?
Mrs. Weston was sitting up for George, and pleased was she to hear, at last, his knock at the door. ”

“ As on this day he surveyed his decorous and fashionable congregation, Hodder had something of that sense of extremity which the great apostle to the Gentiles himself must have felt when he stood in the midst of the Areopagus and made his vain yet sublime appeal to Athenian indifference and luxury. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." . . Some, indeed, stirred uneasily as the rector paused, lowering their eyes before the intensity of his glance, vaguely realizing that the man had flung the whole passion of his being into the appeal. ”

“ The chief turned his fiery eyes upon me, said “He Pakeha!” and bounded off to strangle the only foe he could see—the savage who had just entered the pa. Stepping quickly aside from a fierce blow, he seized the unfortunate man by the throat with both hands, lifted him off his feet and shook him like a rat in the air, after which he broke his skull against one of the palisades. Then, picking up the weapon of his foe, a large greenstone meré, he turned to the opening of the pa to meet two who were rushing in. ”

“ The monster was in Eldon Parr—that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully....
“That is all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian, I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way.” (These were the words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) “What drives the world is the motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property. If we had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top next year.”
The rector shook his head. He remembered, at that moment, Horace Bentley. ”

“ Hodder did not desire to remain in the parish when it was so apparent that the doctrines which he now preached were not acceptable to most of those who supported the church. And he added (with sublime magnanimity) that he wished Mr. Hodder the success which he was sure he deserved, and gave him every assurance of his friendship.
Asa Waring was about to rise, when he perceived that Hodder himself was on his feet. And the eyes of every man, save one, were fixed on him irresistibly. The rector seemed unaware of it. ”

“ I followed the direction of her finger and saw, standing against a thin fleecy white cloud with a strip of summer blue beneath it, the palisading of Te Makawawa’s pa.
“It is a good omen,” I said merrily, turning towards them; “there is the pa; there is the fleecy cloud beyond it, and there in the further distance is the clear blue sky.”
Grey turned up the brim of his hat and let the sun shine on his happy face as he gazed up at the pa. ”

“ Look!” cried Crystal; “the water’s growing less; see! it’s sinking—it’s drying up.”
I gave a sigh of relief, for I saw the water was rapidly diminishing, and knew that the old chief had gained the ledge inside, passed round the lake, and pushed the great lever up to stop the flow of the water.
Gradually the surface of the pool sank below the aperture in the mountain wall and, finally, left the way perfectly clear. Grey made a movement as if to climb down and go in through the black opening, but I restrained him.
“We must wait till he returns,” I said. “We can do nothing without him.” ”

“ Presently there was a flickering light below, and soon afterwards the chief, bearing a torch, passed round the lake and paused upon the ledge above the abyss. As mechanically and wearily as I had found my way down to this point, I now stood and watched him.
Pacing to and fro upon the rocky ledge, he chanted his last karakia—a lament in which the poetry of his despair struggled through all his fierceness.
“Ihungarupaea! Hine-nui-o-te-po! Thou art hurled down, a sunken rock.
“Thou canst not rise. Shattered into fragments; never will your dust be gathered from its everlasting grave. ”

“ HODUR THE BLIND, ASSASSIN OF BALDUR
29. "Among the Æsir," continued Har, "we also reckon Hodur, who is blind, but extremely strong. Both gods and men would be very glad if they never had occasion to pronounce his name, for they will long have cause to remember the deed perpetrated by his hand. [132]
30. "Another god is Vidar, surnamed the Silent, who wears very thick shoes. He is almost as strong as Thor himself, and the gods place great reliance on him in all critical conjunctures.
31. "Vali, another god, is the son of Odin and Rinda, he is bold in war, and an excellent archer. ”

“ All of these things, Hodur, I thought strange, seeing that I know you to be nothing but a poor blind beggar who gains his bread by his skill upon the harp.”
“There are beggars who were not always beggars, Palka,” I said slowly.
“Quite so, Hodur, and there are great men and rich who sometimes appear to be beggars, and—many other things. Still, have no fear that we shall steal your necklace or talk about the red sword or the gold with which your niece Hilda weights her garments. Poor girl, she has all the ways of a fine lady, one who has known Courts, as I think you said was the case. ”