Thane of Cawdor

“ Outlaw I am, Osric, but I can fight; today I bore the war arrow --that one who neither knew nor believed me gave me -- faithfully to Matelgar the Thane, who is here in obedience to that summons. And when I took it I was on my way out of the kingdom as I was bidden, but I turned back because of the need for a trusty messenger. Now I ask only to be allowed to fight alongside your men in this levy, and after that it is over -- if I live -- I will go my way again. ”

“ I wouldn't want to, and I ain't his father nor yet his girl. Would you?"
"Hardly," said Thane. "Still, if you felt about it as Mr. Withers does, you'd put yourself in the place of the dead, not the living; and he has a reason for coming, besides. I haven't spoken of it, because I doubt if the thing is feasible. He wants to see whether the water, of the spring can be brought into the hollow here—piped, to feed a permanent drinking trough and fountain. Good for evil, you see—the soft answer."
"Well, that's business! That gits down where a man lives. His cattle kin come in on that, too. ”

“ My handsome sword and belt seemed to decide him, for though the armour and helm were plain, they were good enough for any thane who meant them for hard wear and not for show.
"Sir," he said, very courteously but without any servility, "I see you are a stranger, and you meet me on a strange errand. I am the priest whom they call the hermit, Leofwine -- should I name you thane?"
I was going to answer him as I would have replied but yesterday morning -- so hesitated a little, and then answered shortly.
"No thane, Father, but the next thing to it -- a masterless man." ”

“ As Thane and Selan watched, the flashes changed direction. The marshalling was complete, and the assembled might of Darzent was on its way. Thane found it hard to believe that even the fleet waiting before him could cope with all the force of Darzent.
The Darzent fleets had started from points spanning the whole Galaxy. With each flash of lights they converged, arrowing toward the Onzarian Confluence. Thane could imagine the watchers at similar screens in each ship of the battle fleet. Eyes becoming, grimmer, nervous smiles appearing and disappearing on faces, hands clenching on instruments. ”

“ Not all this, but something else, something more that Daphne could not have put into words, spoke in the look which Thane surprised. It was but a flash between long lashes that fell instantly and put it out; but no woman whose heart was in the grave ever looked at a living man in that way, and the living man could not help but know it. ”

“ Out of this bitter knowledge Miss Thane finally spoke, apparently recurring in thought to their previous talk on the piazza;—
"Mr. Arling, how is one to love God, if one does not?"
It was perhaps the most difficult of all questions to answer. How are the blind eyes to be opened, and the deaf ears unstopped? How is the frozen heart to be softened, and the slumbering affection to be wakened into leaf and bloom? How is the Father to be made acceptable to the children that are insensible of His goodness, and will none of His reproof? ”

“ This iron apology which some late scruple had ground out of Thane seemed to command Daphne's deepest attention. She gave it a moment's silence, then she said, "There is nothing that hurts one, I think, like being unable to feel as people take for granted one must and ought to feel." But her home application of it gave a slight deflection to Thane's meaning which he firmly corrected.
"I felt all right; so did he, I dare say, but we never let each other know how we felt. Men don't, as a rule. Your uncle takes for granted that I knew a lot about him,—his thoughts and feelings ”

“ A gold shagell, wings outstretched, at one corner of Candar's enormous desk. And Candar, in a perfectly plain uniform, staring up at him from behind the desk. His own expensive way, Thane considered, for showing his contempt for the gold fetish of the church.
Candar looked up at him steadily for a moment without speaking. Then: "I always greet the emissaries from the Allied Systems personally. They always have so much of interest to tell us in one way or another sooner or later."
Thane stared back and said, "You are right. I have information that will save Onzar if I give it to you. ”

“ You don't love him, you don't actually believe in him. You—you are sort of like a bird that is being charmed by a snake. It knows it ought to fly away and yet it can't, because it's so interested in what the snake is going to do next. Thane is attractive. ”

“ These two, Thane and the Cornishman, had been egged by their fellows into a state of intense rivalry. They were the most powerful men in the mill. Each in his daily work easily performed feats of strength beyond the power of others, but with this difference, that while Thane exerted himself only now and then for the mere feeling of it and the sooner when no one was watching, the Cornishman exhibited his superiority continuously because his vanity required it, and set a killing pace for the men of his crew. ”

“ Then it is likely that she knows that you are no churl, but the son of Grim, though we have fallen on hard times for a while. I have heard say that it is the custom here that a man who has crossed the seas in his own ship so many times is a thane by right of that hardihood. Thane’s son, therefore, might we call you. Then there is the jealousy of every other thane, if she chooses an East Anglian. Then she needs one who shall be mighty to lead her forces. Even the greatest thane will be content to follow a man who is a warrior of warriors. Ragnar can have told her what you are in that way. ”

“ Then Wulfhere and I took counsel about flight, being troubled also about the holy women in this place; for the heathen would not respect the walls of a nunnery. But for them we thought Osric would surely care.
Now there came to us as we stood and talked, a housecarle in a green cloak, and asked us if we had seen a warrior, wounded maybe, riding a great white horse, which, he added, had been Edred the Thane's, who was killed. ”

“ I know coasts where a stranger would be a slave from the moment his foot touched shore. Now tell me whose ship this is that has given me shelter, and what your father's name is, that I may thank you rightly."
"Elfric, the Thane of Reedham, is my father," I said, "Sheriff of the East Anglian shore of the North Folk, under Eadmund, our king. And this is his ship, and this himself to whom you have spoken."
"Then, Thane and Thane's son, I, whose life you have saved, am Lodbrok, Jarl {ii} of a strip of Jutland coast. ”

“ Diva Thane, it is perhaps needless to say, was a child of the North. Her peculiar type of beauty blossoms only out of soil, which, for half the year, withdraws its warmth into its deep heart, and wraps itself in a chill, white robe of snow. She had made her appearance in Savalla, about a twelvemonth before, unheralded and unknown, had rented the parlor of a decayed aristocratic mansion as a studio, and had tacked on the door a card signifying to the public that she was a painter in oils. ”

“ There are the men who wreck our homes, assault our women, take away our bread. Kill [333] them! Kill them without mercy!” He was unnaturally articulate. “Cowards!” he cried. “Follow me!”
He levelled his rifle at the barges. The only man in sight was Thane, walking up the bank. The insane neurotic fired and Thane fell in a crumpled heap.
Several men together leaped at the assassin and disarmed him. He disappeared.
Thane was unconscious. There was no doctor, no ambulance. They took him to Pittsburgh in the launch.
John arrived the next morning. He looked once at Agnes and knew the worst. ”

“ Sir John Everett Millais caught its gesture in the most poignant pencil sketch in the world—“Marrying and Giving in Marriage at the Deluge.”
Thane’s emotions were parallel. He loved that woman. And the stark enigma moved him in the same way to answer death with life. Being a man he thought himself abominable. Yet the impulse overthrew him.
Breaking his walk before the furnace he strode to [281] the bench where she sat, lifted her free, pressed her to him and kissed her once hotly on the mouth. ”

“ Thane crossed the pasture from this direction. That's positive,—because I followed him. It is a dead certainty he did not meet the Vick girl. I would have witnessed any such meeting. The fact that he lived at her father's house for several weeks may have something to do with the case,—but that's guesswork. What we want is facts. This much is certain. I did not see Miss Crown go into that house,—but I did see her come out. I never was so paralysed in my life. It is clear, therefore, that she was in there before either I or Thane came upon the scene. ”

“ Thane was pushing through.
“He wants to die upstairs,” he said.
Instantly on speaking of it he became aware that the situation had an irrational aspect; and he wondered how he should clear them out of the room in which Enoch wished to die and keep them out,—for of course they would follow. He could not help that. With a resolve if necessary to throw them all downstairs he crossed the threshold. The alienist from Philadelphia and the two Wilkes-Barre consultants fell back. It was not their case. The family doctor barred Thane’s way at the foot of the staircase. ”

“ All the vales and hills the swords of Hengist and Horsa had won, and baptized with foemen’s blood, in the mighty names of old Norsemen and Valhalla, were being christened anew to suit a mincing, latter tongue. Thane and franklin uncapped them at the roadside to these steel-bound swarms of ruthless spoilers, and nothing was sacred, neither deed nor covenant, neither having nor holding, which ran counter to the wishes of the western scourges of our English weakness. ”

“ He is inspired and set above fate by a demoniacal energy, a lust of wounds and slaughter. Even after he meets Macduff his courage does not fail; but when he hears the Thane was not born of woman, all virtue goes out of him; and though he speaks sounding words of defiance, the last combat is little better than a suicide. ”

“ But it ain't a game for a grown-up man to play, and that's what I think this feller Thane has been pulling."
"What you want to find out, before it's too late, is whether Thane is all that he professes to be," said the other. "Well, I'm simply sitting tight on the job, stalling along until I hear from our people in New York. They have cabled England to find out whether he was connected with the British air forces. Now, what I want to do is to get into that fellow's room for ten or fifteen minutes. Can you fix it?" ”

“ According to that letter Miss Miller had from New York, Thane is not above betraying a girl. Of course, if the Vick girl is dead and left nothing behind to implicate Thane, it will be out of the question to charge him with being even indirectly responsible for her death."
"The main thing," said Charlie, who had turned a shade paler during this matter-of-fact, cold-blooded analysis, "is to keep Alix Crown from falling into his clutches. He's a bad egg, that feller is, and he's made up his mind to win her by fair means or foul." ”

“ Thane's eyes were on the ground, but he silently renewed his grasp of the old man's hand. "May God be our Guide as we go hence to finish our separate journeys! May He help us to forgive as we hope to be forgiven! May He teach us submission! But, O Lord! Thou knowest it is hard."
"Mr. Withers is a parson, ain't he?" Kinney inquired, as he and Thane, each leading one of the team horses, and with an empty canteen swinging by its strap from his shoulder, filed down the little stony gulch that puckers the first rising ground to riverward of the hollow. ”

“ Where is Edred the Thane? Where is Matelgar? Where twenty others you called friends? Dead by Combwich, and none to bury them. The Danes have their arms, the wolves their bodies. Is no vengeance to be taken for this? Or shall the Danes sail away laughing, saying that the hearts of the Saxons are as water?"
Then there rose an angry growl at that, and I was glad to hear it. So was Eanulf, as it seemed. And Wulfhere got up and stood beside me and spoke. ”

“ Thane helped Selan out into the stinging cold of the Onzar night. Just inside the gloomy passage to the grav-well a harsh voice sounded. "Halt!"
They stopped. Thane made out a uniformed man, his hand on his holster.
"We have come at the call of Astrid Reine," Thane said. "She wishes our assistance."
"All who come for the thirteenth level must have the code word. Give it and you will pass."
Thane's right arm went up and the side of his stiff hand flashed down, hitting the sentry between his neck and shoulder. The man's pistol was almost aimed at Thane when Thane hit. ”

“ Eanulf spoke; but he had no anger in his voice and it seemed as though he repeated the words of others.
"Heregar, son of Herewulf," he said, "these things have been brought against you by honourable men, and you cannot disprove them -- hardly can you deny them. They may not be passed over; yet for the sake of your youth, and for the pleading of Ealhstan, our Bishop, your doom shall be lighter than some think fit. Death it might be; but that shall not pass now on you, or for this. But Thane you may be no longer, and we do confirm that sentence. Landless also you must be, as unworthy to hold it. ”

“ But water might be struck higher up the gulch—might sink a trench and cut off the spring."
"That would depend on the source," said Thane, "and on how much the old gentleman is willing to stand; the fountain alone, by the time you haul the stone here, will foot up pretty well into the thousands. But we'll see."
"Hadn't you better stay round here with them till I git back?" Kinney suggested; for Thane had taken the empty canteens from the wagon, and was preparing to go with him to the spring. "You kin do your prospectin' later."
"They would rather be by themselves, I think," said Thane. ”