Ogdoad

“ Wherefore, he says, the psychic man does not receive the things of God’s spirit; for they are foolishness unto him. But foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was senseless and mindless and thought that he fashioned the cosmos, being ignorant that Sophia, the Mother, the Ogdoad, wrought all things with regard to the creation of the world for him who knew it not. ”

“ Ogden was a thin, pale, pock-marked man, with an upstanding head of gray hair, a very high and retreating forehead, and a long upper lip,—one of those men in whom the face, disproportionately large for the head, always gives the impression of a self-sufficient nature. He had a harsh, sharp voice, with an articulation of a most painful accuracy, even his commonplaces being enunciated with a sort of distinct impressiveness, as though to imply that his copper was of more value than another man's gold. ”

“ In Welsh the equivalent of the Gaulish word Ogmios has always remained an appellative; but not so in Irish, where Ogma figures as the name of one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, as the gods of the Goidelic pantheon are collectively called in Irish. Nor is this all: he is signalized in Irish mythology as the inventor of writing, that is to say of the Ogam alphabet; for Ogma being much skilled in dialects and in poetry, it was he, we are told, [31] who invented the Ogam to provide signs for secret speech only known to the learned, and designed to be kept from the vulgar and poor of the nation. ”

“ Ogden stood there straight before him. He ground his teeth together to keep his face composed; behind him his nails dug into the palms of his hands, as he held himself back from springing forward and fastening them around the throat of Abbie Brainard's father. There was a ringing in his ears, and through it there sounded faintly the fine tones of Fairchild, speaking to Mary Brainard:
"Nobody really knows who he is, or who his people are, or where he is from ... a town full to overflowing with single young men ... from everywhere. They are taken on faith. Most of them are all right, no doubt ”

“ Yes! in the prehistoric, in Ogga, the gaunt horror of the desire to kill had arisen. The pallid beast of hatred, ridden by the clutching hags of envy and jealousy and spite and terror, ran before Ogga in his path. He—Ogga—stared wildly at the image of a man, stifled and gasping, held at the throat by Ogga’s hand—his own—until the eyes started from their sockets, turning their lifeless whitenesses downward and upward in the wanton agony of death. ”

“ The king asked whether he knew who Œgvald was, he whom the Ness was called after. He answered, “He dwelt here on the Ness, and dearly loved a cow, so that she would follow him wherever he led her, and he would drink her milk; and therefore people that love cattle say that man and cow shall go together. This king fought many a battle, and once he strove with the king of Skorestrand; in that battle fell many a man, and there fell also King Œgvald, and he was afterwards buried aloft here on the Ness, and his barrow will be found here a little way from the house; in the other barrow lies the cow.” ”

“ She waved aside this ardent apology, and looked rather shyly through the rusty iron-work of the hand-rail. The syringas were in blossom; the asphalt path had stopped its afternoon's running and had solidified since sundown.
"I think he likes her because she isn't afraid of him. Neither are you," she added, in a low tone, as if on an after-thought. She did not look his way.
Ogden appreciated this appreciation of his behavior. He had always been prompt and respectful with Brainard, but he had never knuckled down.
"He gives her letters almost every day. She corrects his mistakes." ”

“ It was the evening of the day when Ogga killed the mastodon that the four medicine men of the little village—Shan, Flitout, Slin and Slaggar—squatted on the edge of the mesa, gazing with half shut, squinting eyes, into the vacancy before them. They had attained a sufficient distinction in ugliness, querulousness, abiding and carefully nurtured vindictiveness to hold without question in that aboriginal community, the preeminence their position implied. Their mutual distrust of one another had rendered more acute their craftiness of demeanor. ”

“ Round the corner yonder lies Ogden, one of the most promising towns of all the West, and as we approach it the great expanses of meadow stretching down to the lake and the wide alfalfa levels give place to a barren sage veldt, where the sunflower still retains ancestral dominion, and the jackass rabbits flap their ears at each other undisturbed by agriculture or by grazing stock. ”

“ Lord Ogleby is a hypochondriac, a fop, an aged flirt, who leers at the ladies and makes up his complexion. "I have rather too much of the lily this morning in my complexion," he says to his valet; "a faint tincture of the rose will give a delicate spirit to my eyes for the day." He converses in French, he chirps out stanzas, whilst twinged with rheumatism. "Love is the idol of my heart," says the old fop, "and the demon, interest, sinks before him." But that there is a strong vein of sarcasm in Lord Ogleby, there seems to be no element in the character that agrees with that of Brice. ”

“ He twitched his narrow little shoulders as he teetered back and forth on his toes. "Old man on the rampage some more? He's had it pretty bad for the last three weeks."
"Oh, get out!" Ogden responded briefly.
Fairchild was a man well on in the fifties. He had a quiet, self-contained manner, a smooth forehead, a gray moustache. His general trustworthiness was highly esteemed by Brainard, who generally treated him with civility and sometimes almost with consideration. He had his privileges. ”

“ Ogga was skillful in fashioning, and his skill grew, and as he lived so, he came northward toward the steppe country and saw the mastodon. Then he felt a desire to possess its great white tusks, and one day he found a dead mastodon, and from its tusks he made many things, patiently working in the woods for many years. He met men who bought these things, exchanging baskets and green stone knives and even gold. And so he became a hunter and lived alone in a [Pg 119] bark tent watching the Mastodon and becoming fearless and strong and knowing. Such was Ogga’s story. ”

“ In 1880 the Ogdens had left India hurriedly on account of Colonel Ogden's health. When Milly was a baby and Joan three years old, the family had turned their backs on the pleasant luxury of Indian life. Home they had come to England and a pension, Colonel Ogden morose and chafing at the useless years ahead; Mrs. Ogden a pretty woman, wide-eyed and melancholy after all the partings, especially after one parting which her virtue would have rendered inevitable in any case. ”

“ It really doesn’t matter.”
“It’s a wonder mother didn’t find it; she’s always prowling around among the flowers,” said Nola, her eyes fixed in abstracted stare, as if she was thinking deeply of something apart from what her words expressed.
What she was considering, indeed, was that her little scheme of alienation had failed. Major King, she told herself, had not returned the glove to Frances. For all his lightness in the matter, perhaps he cared deeply for Frances, and would be more difficult to wean than she had thought. It would have to be begun anew. ”

“ To search at random for an individual unit among London's millions lends an undeniable attraction to a day in town. In a desultory way I pursued my investigations through the morning and afternoon, but neither of Ogden nor of his young friend Lord Beckford was I vouchsafed a glimpse. My consolation was that Smooth Sam was probably being equally unsuccessful.
Towards the evening there arose the question of return to Sanstead. I had not gathered whether Mr Abney had intended to set any time-limit on my wanderings, or whether I was not supposed to come back except with the deserters. ”

“ Mr. Ogden, to whom she owed all this splendor, regarded with unconcealed displeasure the day's proceedings. He reproached himself for having yielded to her entreaty. She had begged and coaxed him so much, until he gave his consent, then he ordered the decoration of the boat. [Pg 17] Her costume was especially ordered from the most expensive tailor according to ancient pictures of the Egyptian Queen. Ogden undoubtedly wanted her to be the most striking figure on the lake. ”

“ Brethren came to it from Salt Lake City. Gentiles came from everywhere. The settlement grew and prospered.
In 1849, people began to talk of locating a city right there at the junction of the two rivers.
In 1850, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and others, laid out the settlement and called it Ogden, after Peter Skeen Ogden, the explorer, long since dead, but whose dashing, daring, brilliant adventures were still charming to the men of that wild land. Every time the city's name is mentioned it is another proof that although,
"The man might die, his memory lives." ”

“ The Brainard house reared itself in the same frivolous ugliness that we have already viewed; but an excess of light came through the front parlor windows, and Ogden was prepared to find that at least four of the eight burners in the big chandelier were lighted. This turned out to be the case; it was as great a tribute as the family ordinarily paid to society. The family he found represented by Brainard, his wife, and his elder daughter; society was present in the shape of a young couple who were called Mr. and Mrs. Valentine. ”

“ He was a handsome young fellow, and stated that he was called Odo, and was the son of a neighbouring king, and that, having gone forth in search of treasure and adventures, he had succeeded in amassing a large quantity of gold and precious stones, and was on his way home, when he heard of the wonderful bird, who could foretell the future. He had gained the valley and was almost close to the bird, when he incautiously looked back, hearing wild cries for help, and in that moment he had been turned to stone, and his were the quaintly shaped chests Olga had noticed. ”

“ It was before a creature of this sort, gigantic, grotesque, decadent and foreign, that Ogga stared with all his eyes, thinking to please Lhatto by bringing back to her some trophy from its body. The strange beast continued its prolonged feeding and Ogga watched. The night, darkening the valley with blue shadows, that sensibly thickened, overtaking each other and pressing like a repulsing force the fleeing lights, rising upward on the mountain, soon hid the animal, and with the night came rain and a low wind raising innumerable voices in the great woods. ”

“ Ogden's return was a matter of nearly an hour, and he left first. He carried away the discontented feeling of a young man whose aim in the direction of a young woman is frustrated by the presence of uncongenial elders and irrelevant outsiders. He had been quite certain of his ability to meet Abbie Brainard after the bank episode without any particular embarrassment or restraint; certainly he had come to view with more interest a girl whose hand had lain in his and whose head had rested on his shoulder. ”

“ When within a few streets of the Brainard corner he passed a house (one of a long row) on whose front steps (as with its neighbors, right and left) were camped a large and merry party, whose exaggerated domesticity made it plain that they were all fellow-boarders. They occupied two rugs as well as two chairs and a foot-stool at the head of the steps. Through their light-minded hubbub came dominatingly a voice which Ogden recognized, and he threw up his head to meet the frank but overdone bow of Cornelia McNabb. ”

“ Ogilvie first turned white, and then her face grew red and angry.
“I don’t believe a single word of what they say,” she retorted with some passion. “The child looks better every day. What the dear little thing wants is rousing. The bazaar will do her no end of good. Mark my words, Miss Winstead, we shall have Sibyl on her feet again by the 24th.”
“You forget,” said Miss Winstead slowly, “the Sahara is due in England about that date. Mr. Ogilvie will be back. He will not be prepared for—for what he has to see.” ”

“ Where the opening valleys of the Fair Land turned northward into the Dismal Country of heaped ridges, interminable peat hogs, low woods, and scanty or puissant streams, upon an upland sparingly covered with trees, and almost on its incline to the lowland beyond it, dwelt Ogga—the mastodon hunter. ”

“ I should be breathing sunlight if I lived in the most squalid of all its houses. And they say she is going to Liverpool, and to Manchester, and to Leeds; and it is as if my very life were being drawn away from me. I try to think what people may be around her; I try to imagine what she is doing at a particular hour of the day; and I feel as if I were shut away in an island in the middle of the Atlantic, with nothing but the sound of the waves around my ears. Ogilvie, it is enough to drive a man out of his senses."
"But, look here, Macleod," said Ogilvie, pulling himself together ”

“ Some of us are going to the south of France in his yacht next week.'
'What a delightful idea!'
There was a certain pensive note in Cynthia's voice.
'A splendid idea!' she murmured.
Mrs Ford swooped. She descended on Ogden in a swirl and rustle of expensive millinery, and clasped him to her.
'My boy!'
It is not given to everybody to glide neatly into a scene of tense emotion. Ogden failed to do so. He wriggled roughly from the embrace.
'Got a cigarette?' he said.
He was an extraordinarily unpleasant little boy. Physically the portrait standing on the chair did him more than justice. ”