The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

bird and distributed the sacrifice impartially between both dogs—it being the custom of the country.

Neeland junior broke his gun, replaced the exploded shell, content indeed with his one hundred per cent performance.

“Better run over and speak to the little girl, Jim,” suggested old Dick Neeland, as he motioned the dogs into covert again.

So Jim ran lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey eyes.

“Little girl,” he said, “I’m afraid the shot from my gun came rattling rather close to you that time. You’ll have to be careful. I’ve noticed you here before. It won’t do; you’ll have to keep out of range of those bushes, because when we’re inside we can’t see exactly where we’re firing.”

The child said nothing. She looked up at the boy, smiled shyly, then, with much composure, began her retreat, not neglecting any tempting blackberry on the way.

The sun hung low over the hazy Gayfield hills; the beeches and oaks of Mohawk County burned brown and crimson; silver birches supported their delicate canopies of burnt gold; and imperial white pines clothed hill and vale in a stately robe of green.

Jim Neeland forgot the child—or remembered her only to exercise caution in the Brookhollow covert.

The little girl Ruhannah, who had once fidgeted with prickly heat in her mother’s arms outside the walls of Trebizond, did not forget this easily smiling, tall young xxiii fellow—a grown man to her—who had come across the pasture lot to warn her.

But it was many a day before they met again, though these two also had been born under the invisible shadow of the Dark Star. But the shadow of Erlik is always passing like swift lightning across the Phantom Planet which has fled the other way since Time was born.

Allahou Ekber, O Tchinguiz Khagan!

A native Mongol missionary said to Ruhannah’s father:

“As the chronicles of the Eighurs have it, long ago there fell metal from the Black Racer of the skies; the first dagger was made of it; and the first image of the Prince of Darkness. These pass from Kurd to Cossack by theft, by gift, by loss; they pass from nation to nation by accident, which is Divine design.

“And where they remain, war is. And lasts until image and dagger are carried to another land where war shall be. But where there is war, only the predestined suffer—those born under Erlik—children of the Dark Star.”

“I thought,” said the Reverend Wilbour Carew, “that my brother had confessed Christ.”

“I am but repeating to you what my father believed; and Temujin before him,” replied the native convert, his remote gaze lost in reflection.

His eyes were quite little and coloured like a lion’s; and sometimes, in deep reverie, the corners of his upper lip twitched.

This happened when Ruhannah lay fretting in her mother’s arms, and the hot wind blew on Trebizond.

Under the Dark Star, too, a boy grew up in Minetta Lane, not less combative than other ragged boys about xxiv him, but he was inclined to arrange and superintend fist fights rather than to participate in battle, except with his wits.

His name was Eddie Brandes; his first fortune of three dollars was amassed at craps; he became a hanger-on in ward politics, at race-tracks, stable, club, squared ring, vaudeville, burlesque. Long Acre attracted him—but always the gambling end of the operation.

Which predilection, with its years of ups and downs, landed him one day in Western Canada with an “Unknown” to match against an Athabasca blacksmith, and a training camp as the prospect for the next six weeks.

There lived there, gradually dying, one Albrecht Dumont, lately head gamekeeper to nobility in the mountains of a Lost Province, and wearing the Iron Cross of 1870 on the ruins of a gigantic and bony chest, now as hollow as a Gothic ruin.

And if, like a thousand fellow patriots, he had been ordered to the Western World to watch and report to his Government the trend and tendency of that Western, English-speaking world, only his Government and his daughter knew it—a child of the Dark Star now grown to early womanhood, with a voice like a hermit thrush and the skill of a sorceress with anything that sped a bullet.

Before the Unknown was quite ready to meet the Athabasca blacksmith, Albrecht Dumont, dying faster now, signed his last report to the Government at Berlin, which his daughter Ilse had written for him—something about Canadian canals and stupid Yankees and their greed, indifference, cowardice, and sloth. xxv

Dumont’s mind wandered:

“After the well-born Herr Gott relieves me at my post,” he whispered, “do thou pick up my burden and stand guard, little Ilse.”

“Yes, father.”

“Thy sacred promise?”

“My promise.”

The next day Dumont felt better than he had felt for a year.

“Ilse, who is the short and broadly constructed American who comes now already every day to see thee and to hear thee sing?”

“His name is Eddie Brandes.”

“He is of the fight gesellschaft, not?”

“He should gain much money by the fight. A theatre in Chicago may he willingly control, in which light opera shall be given.”

“Is it for that he hears so willingly thy voice?”

“It is for that.... And love.”

“And what of Herr Max Venem, who has asked of me thy little hand in marriage?”

The girl was silent.

“Thou dost not love him?”

“No.”

Toward sunset, Dumont, lying by the window, opened his eyes of a dying Lämmergeier:

“My Ilse.”

“Father?”

“What has thou to this man said?”

“That I will be engaged to him if thou approve.”

“He has gained the fight?”

“Today.... And many thousand dollars. The xxvi theatre in Chicago is his when he desires. Riches, leisure, opportunity to study for a career upon his stage, are mine if I desire.”

“Dost thou desire this, little Ilse?”

“Yes.”

“And the man Venem who has followed thee so long?”

“I cannot be what he would have me—a Hausfrau—to mend his linen for my board and lodging.”

“And the Fatherland which placed me here on outpost?”

“I take thy place when God relieves thee.”

“So ist’s recht!... Grüs Gott—Ilse––”

Among the German settlers a five-piece brass band had been organised the year before.

It marched at the funeral of Albrecht Dumont, lately head gamekeeper to nobility in the mountains of a long-lost province.

Three months later Ilse Dumont arrived in Chicago to marry Eddie Brandes. One Benjamin Stull was best man. Others present included “Captain” Quint, “Doc” Curfoot, “Parson” Smawley, Abe Gordon—friends of the bridegroom.

Invited by the bride, among others were Theodor Weishelm, the Hon. Charles Wilson, M. P., and Herr Johann Kestner, a wealthy gentleman from Leipsic seeking safe and promising investments in Canada and the United States.

A year later Ilse Dumont Brandes, assuming the stage name of Minna Minti, sang the rôle of Bettina in “The Mascotte,” at the Brandes Theatre in Chicago.

A year later, when she created the part of Kathi in “The White Horse,” Max Venem sent word to her that xxvii she would live to see her husband lying in the gutter under his heel. Which made the girl unhappy in her triumph.

But Venem hunted up Abe Grittlefeld and told him very coolly that he meant to ruin Brandes.

And within a month the latest public favourite, Minna Minti, sat in her dressing-room, wet-eyed, enraged, with the reports of Venem’s private detectives locked in the drawer of her dressing table, and the curtain waiting.

So complex was life already becoming to these few among the million children of the Dark Star Erlik—to everyone, from the child that fretted in its mother’s arms under the hot wind near Trebizond, to a deposed Sultan, cowering behind the ivory screen in his zenana, weeping tears that rolled like oil over his fat jowl to which still adhered the powdered sugar of a Turkish sweetmeat.

Allahou Ekber, Khodja; God is great. Great also, Ande, is Ali, the Fourth Caliph, cousin-companion of Mahomet the Prophet. But, O tougtchi, be thy name Niaz and thy surname Baï, for Prince Erlik speeds on his Dark Star, and beneath the end of the argument between those two last survivors of a burnt-out world—behold! The sword!

THE DARK STAR