Magter

“ Brion said to Ulv. "The radio won't work this far underground."
"Then the bombs will fall?" Ulv asked, looking searchingly at Brion's face in the dim reflected light from the cavern.
"Unless something happens that we know nothing about, the bombs will fall."
They said nothing after that—they simply waited. The three technicians in the cavern were also aware of the time. They were calling to each other and trying to talk to the magter. The emotionless, parasite-ridden brains of the magter saw no reason to stop work, and they attempted to beat the men back to their tasks. ”

“ It explained that the magter had started a war that could have only one ending—the destruction of Dis. Only if the magter were thrown down and their weapons discovered could there be any hope.
"Are these words true?" Ulv asked.
"Yes," Brion said.
"They are perhaps true," Gebk said, "but there is nothing that we can do. I was with my brother when these word-things fell out of the sky and he listened to one and took it to the magter to ask them. They killed him, as he should have known they would do. The magter kill us if they know we listen to the words." ”

“ Not the same as the magter, but not much different in the results. They will kill the brain-symbiotes, even if it means killing every magter who harbors one."
"If that is the case we can't leave now," Brion said. With these words it suddenly became clear what he had to do. "The ship is coming down now from the fleet. Get in it and take the body of the magter. I won't go."
"Where will you be?" she asked, shocked.
"Fighting the magter. My presence on the planet means that Krafft won't keep his threat to drop the bombs any earlier than the midnight deadline. ”

“ In fact, they are having difficulty restraining the Disans led by Ulv, who are happily killing any magter they see as being pure umedvirk."
"What will they do when they have all those frothing magter madmen?"
"They don't know yet," he said. "They won't really know until they see what an adult magter is like with his brain-parasite dead and gone. They're having better luck with the children. If they catch them early enough, the parasite can be destroyed before it has done too much damage." [Pg 170]
Lea shuddered delicately and let herself lean against him. "I'm not that sturdy yet ”

“ Brion said, forestalling the question on her lips. "The magter are the ones who are responsible for causing the trouble, and I had to see them up close before I could make any decisions. It wasn't a very pleasant thing, but I found out what I wanted to know. They are different in every way from the normal Disans. I've compared them. I've talked to Ulv—the native who saved us in the desert—and I can understand him. He is not like us in many ways—he certainly couldn't be, living in this oven—but he is still undeniably human. ”

“ The great jaws closed like the flap of hell, and Maget leaped back with a cry of triumphant terror.
he bullets had finally stopped the big frog, but at its heels came a strange, jellylike creature, not quite as bulky as the frog, but pushing along on its legs and with a tail some eight feet thick and fifteen feet in length. This, too, evidently a polywog, was blind, with whitened discs for eyes, but it slid along at a rapid rate because of its size. Maget's gun was empty; he turned so flee, but the polywog stopped and sniffed at the thick blood of its fellow. ”

“ Miss Garth’s head drooped low over the mute revelation of Magdalen’s return to her better self.
“Oh, never doubt her again!” pleaded Norah. “We are alone now—we have our hard way through the world to walk on as patiently as we can. If Magdalen ever falters and turns back, help her for the love of old times; help her against herself.” ”

“ But I beg pardon for running from my subject; women's pens, Sir, are not used to order.
In my calamitous distress I applied to the Magdalen House; and I was received with all that humanity which distinguishes the worthy managers of it. I fancied and foreboded every good to myself, when, on the day of admission, I perceived many of the gentlemen wipe their eyes while I was relating some of my early miseries! For alas, Sir, though I am old in grief, I have yet seen but nineteen years! It is impossible for me to describe, as I ought, the comforts I found in that house. ”

“ Society, the mud wherein we stand
Up to the eyes, whence if I drag you forth,
Saving your soul and mine, there shall ascend
A poisonous blast that may o'ertake our lives.
Magdalen. I feel a meaning in your eloquence;
I see my poor thoughts made celestial
Like faded women Jove hung in the sky.
Obey my nature, sir? How shall I know
The voice of nature from the thousand cries,
That clamour in my head like piteous birds,
Filling the air about a lonely isle
With ringing terror when the hunter comes.
Smith. Shut out the storm and heed the still, small voice.
Magdalen. Have pity. ”

“ And Magdalen mingled amongst the crowd to listen to the words of the young master.
Some of his disciples having said in speaking to him of Magdalen, that she had been seduced and then abandoned by a young doctor of the law, the figure of Jesus became grave, severe, and almost menacing, and he exclaimed——
'Woe to you, doctors of the law! Woe to you, hypocrites! You are like unto whitened sepulchres; the outside appears gay, but within all is bones and putridity. Thus, outwardly you appear just in the eyes of men, but inwardly you are full of iniquity and hypocrisy. ”

“ Am I dusty? am I dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of the man, my dear girl—the nature of the man!”
He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. ”

“ It might have happened in Rome or Florence or Perugia. Magdalen, the lady of noble blood but famous with ill-fame, fair of person and of heaven-bright countenance, who dresses splendidly and lives with many lovers, spending her days in the pleasure of rich banquets and perfumed baths, delighting her heart with the music of lyres and flutes and the voices of young men, appears before us with a reality that proves how deep a hold upon the poet's fancy her picturesque tale had taken. Martha, her good but commonplace sister, forms a foil to the more impassioned and radiant figure of Magdalen. ”

“ Magdalen has frightened me.”
Norah rose hurriedly; rose, startled and distressed by Miss Garth’s reply.
“Don’t think ill of Magdalen,” she said. “Magdalen suffers in secret more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard about us this morning. Does it matter who we are, or what we keep or lose? What loss is there for us after the loss of our father and mother? Oh, Miss Garth, there is the only bitterness! What did we remember of them when we laid them in the grave yesterday? Nothing but the love they gave us—the love we must never hope for again. ”

“ Magdalen Graham ...
Magdalen. Yours, always, only yours.
Brown. I warn you, monstrous rogue, abduction earns
A lengthy term of penal servitude.
Smith. Inept fool!—Lady, life, the shooting star,
Is no more worth than is the miser's gold,
The cultured man's impressions, lust's delight;
It is a prison innocence may break;
A moment mere of immortality.
Magdalen. Watch for the moon: she slips her sable shawl,
And silver lace. Behold!
Smith. The happy night
Heaves a deep long-drawn sigh of sweet content.
Magdalen. Oh, if the world would look on us like that! ”

“ The little man then vanished, leaving his gifts behind him, and Magdalen hastened joyfully home. Her first care was to prepare herb tea for the patient, whose health was miraculously restored as soon as she had tasted it. But when Magdalen tried to cut the cheese the kind-hearted gnome had given her, she was amazed to find it was a solid lump of pure gold! She and her mother were so rich with this treasure that they soon purchased the Bründlisalp, where Magdalen and Alois, a happy husband and wife, tended their flocks together. ”

“ Yuh shore got to agree with me that it was an error on His part when He wished long ears and uh brayin’ voice on uh perfectly innocent jackass, and let some people I know resemble uh human bein’.’
“Tellurium is uh big hulk of uh man, and Magpie ain’t what you’d call uh runt; so after watchin’ it uh while I pries ’em apart with uh pick-handle. They arbitrates what’s left of th’ battle and smoke uh peace pipe. When Tellurium hikes back up th’ trail home, I notices that his limp is plumb gone.
“‘That’s psychology, Ike,’ states Magpie. ‘He comes down uh cripple and we sends him home whole. ”

“ On no account allow yourself to be seen by any one except the Magpie. I would tell you to go now, only, unless it is vitally necessary, we cannot afford to arouse the Magpie's suspicions—he'd have every crook in the underworld snarling at our heels. ”

“ Through the dingy window at the north the moon was looking in, and lighting up that end of the garret with a weird, ghostly kind of light, which made Magdalen shiver more than utter darkness would have done. She knew she was alone; there was no sign of life around her, except the huge rat, which, frightened at this unlooked-for visitation, sprang from Magdalen knew not where, and running past her disappeared in a hole low down under the eaves, reminding Magdalen of what Hester had said of “the loose plank under the rafters where you have to stoop.” ”

“ A slight noise—like, and yet not like, the chirruping of a bird—caught her ear as she approached the summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance; looked in; and discovered Magdalen and Frank seated close together. To Miss Garth's horror, Magdalen's arm was unmistakably round Frank's neck; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss. ”

“ Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which even Frank submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not forget to set down his discontent to the right side. "How fond he is of me!" she thought. "A year's waiting is quite a hardship to him." She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank's complimentary complaints. Miss Garth's elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth's breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? ”

“ Before Magdalen could pursue her advantage, the vagabond had recovered his balance: Wragge was himself again.
“Smart,” said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming with his umbrella on the pavement. “Some men might take it seriously. I’m not easily offended. Try again.”
Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience among people who possessed a common sense of honor, and a common responsibility of social position. ”

“ For he was a clerk and versed in the Scriptures, and he remembered how the Lord fed his prophet Elias by a raven; whence he inferred that the Holy Mother of God had sent by a magpie twelve deniers to her poor penman, Florent Guillaume.
On the morrow Florent and Marguerite the lace-maker ate a dish of tripe,—a treat they had craved for many a long year.
So ends the Miracle of the Magpie. May he who tells the tale live, as he would fain live, in good and gentle peace, and all good hap befall such folk as shall read the same. ”

“ Mitford, that you should suggest such a solution of the mystery. It is quite a vulgar error to suppose that magpies are thieves of anything but that which contributes to their sustenance. If a magpie will take one bright thing he will take another. There is a silver pencil-case,” said the incredulous doctor, placing it on the table, when, to his great surprise, the bird, that had hitherto been immovable, hopped from my father’s shoulder to the armchair. ”

“ John the Baptist in Siena, Venice, and Berlin. Of these, the Magdalen in the Baptistery at Florence is the most typical and the most uncompromising. She stands upright, a mass of tattered rags, haggard, emaciated, almost toothless. Her matted hair falls down in thick knots; all feminine softness has gone from the limbs, and nothing but the drawn muscles remain. It is a thin wasted form, piteous in expression, painful in all its ascetic excess. The Magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism. ”

“ But I think you will be as much surprised as I was when I tell you that the description given by the people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave's appearance is most startlingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen's appearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the circumstances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I cannot describe to you—which I dare not realize to myself. Pray come and see me! I have never felt so wretched about Magdalen as I feel now. Suspense must have weakened my nerves in some strange way. I feel superstitious about the slightest things. ”