Stargarde

“ With never a hand put up to steady the nodding, swaying garden spot atop of her head, she guided herself among the crowd of people, her manifold tier of petticoats bobbing behind her like the tail of a gigantic bird, and presently disappeared.
“Good souls, those colored people,” ejaculated Camperdown, looking after her. “They live on their spirits. Oh, look here, Stargarde,” and he drew some envelopes from his pocket. “Flora is 289chameleonizing. She’s going to give a dance for ma’m’selle. Read that invitation card. I frightened her into civility.”
“Poor Vivienne,” said Stargarde. ”

“ His term was inadvisedly chosen, and Zeb flashed him a wicked glance over the bone that her little, sharp teeth were gnawing. Stargarde to her dismay saw that there was a smouldering fire of distrust and dislike between her two guests, that at any moment might break into open flame. Zeb was jealous of Dr. Camperdown. With ready, quick suspicion, she divined the fact that his sympathies were not with her kind. He would take away from her and her fellow-paupers the beautiful woman who at present lived only for them, and she hated him accordingly. ”

“ If he could imagine Stargarde twenty years older than she was, a ruined, hardened, degraded creature, a drunkard dragged through the mud of several large cities, he might have conjured up something like this bold and hard-featured woman of unusually large stature who sat in a rickety armchair by the fire, her dress twitched aside to show the cheap embroidery of her petticoat, steam rising in a cloud from her wet boots that she held pressed close against the bars of the grate. ”

“ That he will fall in love with her is a foregone conclusion. He rarely goes anywhere; never has been brought into intimacy with any woman for any length of time; propinquity makes a man either hate or love a woman. He’s disliked her long enough; can’t keep it up. There will be a tremendous rebound that will nearly shake the life out of him; but will she reciprocate?”
“I don’t see how she can help it,” said Stargarde impulsively; and the mere thought of Stanton beloved and happy, touched her tender heart and filled her eyes with tears.
“Nor I,” said Camperdown, with mock enthusiasm. ”

“ It were good had I a shield to show you yourself in as you say that, Starkad’s daughter! Through every fibre of your beauty, from the light in your eyes to the ruddy gold of your hair, runs the color of flame. The red of your lips is the fiery blood of the North that no ice can cool; and every motion of your slim hand kindles fire in the breasts of the men who look on you. Jarl’s sister, when that fire shall break out against your 120rule, it will blaze as much higher than a bondmaid’s passion as your spirit is stronger than hers. ”

“ The song-maker’s smile came readily as he glanced across at the high-seat of the northern 95wall, which had been held during Starkad’s time by that warrior-bishop of Saint Olaf who was known as Magnus Fire-and-Sword, but which now awaited in emptiness the pleasure of the new ruler.
“It will be rearranging them in earnest this time, Jarl. Lord, is it possible that you do not feel the excitement in the air as every person here draws breath with hope or fear of your rule? The force of their eyes upon you is like the beat of waves upon the shore.” ”

“ Rabbit lifted his head again, perking his ears forward toward a new sound that had nothing weird or mysterious about it; a sound that was essentially earthly, material, modern, the distant purr of a high-powered automobile on the trail away to their right. Starr turned his face that way, listening as the horse listened. It seemed to Helen May as though he had become again earthy and material and modern, with the desert love song but the fading memory of a dream. ”

“ But the Jarl’s voice sounded presently in measured accents: “Has it come to your ears that men are speaking against my rule?”
Slightly appeased, Mord’s hands relaxed to smooth his beard. “I do not mean that, Starkad’s son. You mistake me if you think I mean that the fellow has yet power enough to get you disliked. Well spoken of over all the land is your rule. Only—”
Measured and relentless as the boom of surf, the Jarl’s voice sounded through his. “When it happens that they do find fault, come and tell me of it; and I will listen patiently. ”

“ To fly, he saw, would ruin bring On them and him -- the folk and king. `Hands up the arms to one and all!' Cries out the king; `we'll win or fall! Sooner than fly, heaped on each other Each man shall fall across his brother!'" Then King Harald drew up his ships to attack, and brought forward his great dragon in the middle of his fleet. So says Thiodolf: --
"The brave king through his vessels' throng His dragon war-ship moves along; He runs her gaily to the front, To meet the coming battle's brunt." ”

“ CHAPTER SEVEN MOONLIGHT, A MAN AND A SONG Just out from the entrance to a deep, broad-bottomed arroyo where an automobile had been, Starr came upon something that surprised him very much, and it was not at all easy to surprise Starr. Here, in the first glory of a flaming sunset that turned the desert to a sea of unearthly, opal-tinted beauty, he came upon Helen May, trudging painfully along with an old hoe-handle for a staff, and driving nine reluctant nanny goats that alternately trotted and stood still to stare at the girl with foolish, amber-colored eyes. ”

“ He heard the muffled pluckety-pluck of a horse galloping down the sandy trail, and he knew that there went Luis on his bitter mission to San Bonito. His eyes turned involuntarily toward Sunlight Basin. There twinkled still the light from Helen May's window, though it was well past midnight. Starr wondered at that, and hoped she was not sick. Then immediately his face grew lowering. For between him and the clear, twinkling light of her window he saw a faint glow that moved swiftly across the darkness; an automobile running that way with dimmed headlights. ”

“ Such things, they think, can ne'er give way; The little know the battle day. The Danish girls, who dread our shout, Might wish our ship-gear not so stout. "'Tis in the fight, not on the wave, That oars may break and fail the brave. At sea, beneath the ice-cold sky, Safely our oars o'er ocean ply; And when at Throndhjem's holy stream Our seventy cars in distance gleam, We seem, while rowing from the sea, An erne with iron wings to be." King Harald sailed south along the land, and called out the levy everywhere of men and ships. ”

“ So Helen May, who was something of a dreamer when Life let her alone long enough, rode home through the moonlight and wove cloth-of-gold from the magic of the night, and with the fairy fabric she clothed Starr—who was, as we know, just an ordinary human being—so that he walked before her, not as a plain, ungrammatical, sometimes profane young man who was helping her home with her goats, but a mysterious, romantic figure evolved somehow out of the vastness in which she lived ”

“ I could see right away that Starr loved to be alone. Most of the upper-floor offices were empty. My mind snagged hold of some creepy ideas as I mounted those stairs. I thought about Starr's odd ways, his odd voice, for that matter. As if he had a machine down in his throat, a talking machine designed by a clever somebody who had once heard a human voice. About how hepped Starr was on the Kiriki, how painstakingly he had drawn them. He talked about them as if they were real. Of course, being a science fiction writer myself, I understood that brand of wackiness, or thought I did. ”

“ The sword in his hand to the heart he thrusteth Of the fiend's offspring; avenged is his Father. Now goeth Hlödyn's glorious son Not in flight from the Serpent, of fear unheeding; All the earth's offspring must empty the homesteads, When furiously smiteth Midgard's defender. The sun shall be darkened, earth sinks in the sea,— Glide from the heaven the glittering stars; Smoke-reek rages and reddening fire: The high heat licks against heaven itself. And here it says yet so:
Vígrídr hight the field where in fight shall meet Surtr and the cherished gods ”

“ By this means the youth soon won such favour with all men, that he not only equalled in renown the honours of his forefathers, but surpassed the most ancient records of kings.
At the same time one Starkad, the son of Storwerk, escaped alone, either by force or fortune, from a wreck in which his friends perished, and was received by Frode as his guest for his incredible excellence both of mind and body. ”

“ CHAPTER TWENTY STARR DISCOVERS THINGS Starr was sitting on the side of his bed with one boot off and dangling in his hand, and with his thoughts gone journeying out over the mesa and the desert and the granite ridge beyond, to a squatty, two-room adobe shack at the head of Sunlight Basin. During the days he had been too fully occupied with the work he had to do to dwell much on the miserable fact of Helen May's duplicity, her guilt of the crime of treason against her native country. ”

“ There again he found the prints of Helen May's small, mountain boots, prints which he had come to know very well. And close to them, looking as though the two had stood together, were the larger, deeper tracks of a man.
Starr dared not rise and stand upright. He must keep always under cover from any chance spying from below. He could not, therefore, trace the footprints down the peak. But he got some idea of the man's direction when he left, and he knew, of course, where to find Helen May. He did not connect the two in his mind, beyond registering clearly in his memory the two sets of tracks. ”

“ It is the working of fate that when my Other Shape possesses me, I know no qualms. Until I come in that guise, then! Yet before we part, press my hand once more in love. Friends clasp when they separate for a day,—shall souls sunder forever and say no farewell?”
It was a strange embrace; for in the eyes of Starkad’s son, the doomed man was as one dead; and to the mind of the song-maker, his friend had ceased to live. Like the sound of a clod upon a coffin-lid was the sound of the door closing for the last time between them. ”

“ He crept closer to the Basin side of the peak and looked down, following an impulse he did not try to analyze. Certainly he did not expect to see any one, unless it were Vic, so he had a little shock of surprise when he saw Helen May riding the pinto up past the spring, with a man walking beside her and glancing up frequently into her face. Starr was human; I have reminded you several times how perfectly human he was. He immediately disliked that man. When he heard faintly the tones of Helen May's laugh, he disliked the man more. ”

“ Back inside, she proceeded to anoint Sira's body, exclaiming her pleasure at its perfection. The oil smelled fishy, but it was soothing, and it was not long before the claimant to the throne of Mars was deep in restful slumber.
Late that afternoon the deacon returned and hung his nets up to dry. He was dour, his fever having left him. But he had a strange story to impart.
"I think that girl I picked up is the Princess Sira," he told the old woman. "On the fish buyer's barge, in the teletabloid machine, I saw the forecast of her wedding to Scar Balta. And I'll swear it's the same girl!" ”

“ While Sarcand spoke it seemed that the green jewel brightened and darkened and deepened strangely, like a tiny window with all the sea's mystery and immensity lying beyond. Enthralled and entranced, I forgot the circumstances of our situation: for the jewel swelled upon my vision, blotting from view the black fingers of Sarcand, with a swirling as of tides and of shadowy fins and tentacles far down in its glimmering greenness.
"Beware, Manthar," the Master murmured in my ear. "We face a dreadful magic, and must retain the command of all our faculties. Avert your eyes from the emerald." ”

“ When, what his own hath not conceived, another’s brain unfolds. [218]
“There, next to Thor,” thus Hermod said, “Starkodder, is thy seat.”
At times throughout the vast saloon flashes a splendour great;
It flashes from the shields that hang in rows against the wall;
The silver hilts and the steel blades a dazzling ray let fall.
When now the mead was drank, and when each Scald had ceased his song,
Enter’d the scoffer Asa-Lok the jovial guests among;
His nature is well-known: now red with insolence he grew;
And to the mock’ry of the gods exposed himself anew. ”

“ But when Starkad saw that the slayers of Frode were in high favour with the king, his stern glances expressed the mighty wrath which he harboured, and his face betrayed what he felt. The visible fury of his gaze betokened the secret tempest in his heart. At last, when Ingild tried to appease him with royal fare, he spurned the dainty. Satisfied with cheap and common food, he utterly spurned outlandish delicacies; he was used to plain diet, and would not pamper his palate with any delightful flavour. ”

“ Formerly a member of the Hanseatic League, the town retains memorials of its early importance in the large church of St Mary, built in the 14th century, the 16th-century town-hall, and some gateways and towers dating from the 14th century. The walls which formerly surrounded it have been mostly converted into promenades. Extensive new law-courts and three large barracks are among the modern buildings. Stargard has a considerable market for cattle and horses, and carries on trade in grain, spirits and raw produce. ”