The Dark Star. Chambers Robert William
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 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!
CHAPTER I
THE WONDER-BOX
As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner’s wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the child was permitted to rummage among the treasures in the box until she had satisfied her perennial curiosity; conversation with her absent-minded father ensued, which ultimately included a personal narrative, dragged out piecemeal from the reticent, dreamy invalid. Then always a few pages of the diary kept by the late Herr Wilner were read as a bedtime story. And bath and bed and dreamland followed. That was the invariable routine, now once more in full swing.
Her father lay on his invalid’s chair, reading; his rubber-shod crutches rested against the wall, within easy reach. By him, beside the kerosene lamp, her mother sat, mending her child’s stockings and underwear.
Outside the circle of lamplight the incandescent eyes of the stove glowed steadily through the semi-dusk; and the child, always fascinated by anything that aroused her imagination, lifted her gaze furtively from time to time to convince herself that it really was the big, familiar stove which glared redly back at her, and not a dragon into which her creative fancy had so often transformed it.
Reassured, she continued to explore the contents of the wonder-box – a toy she preferred to her doll, but not to her beloved set of water-colours and crayon pencils.
Some centuries ago Pandora’s box let loose a world of troubles; Herr Wilner’s box apparently contained only pleasure for a little child whose pleasures were mostly of her own invention.
It was a curious old box, made of olive wood and bound with bands of some lacquered silvery metal to make it strong – rupee silver, perhaps – strangely wrought with Arabic characters engraved and in shallow relief. It had handles on either side, like a sea-chest; a silver-lacquered lock and hasp which retained traces of violent usage; and six heavy strap hinges of the same lacquered metal.
Within it the little child knew that a most fascinating collection of articles was to be discovered, taken out one by one with greatest care, played with discreetly, and, at her mother’s command, returned to their several places in Herr Wilner’s box.
There were, in this box, two rather murderous-looking Kurdish daggers in sheaths of fretted silver – never to be unsheathed, it was solemnly understood, except by the child’s father.
There was a pair of German army revolvers of the pattern of 1900, the unexploded cartridges of which had long since been extracted and cautiously thrown into the mill pond by the child’s mother, much to the surprise, no doubt, of the pickerel and sunfish.
There were writing materials of sandalwood, a few sea shells, a dozen books in German with many steel plate engravings; also a red Turkish fez with a dark blue tassel; two pairs of gold-rimmed spectacles; several tobacco pipes of Dresden porcelain, a case full of instruments for mechanical drawing, a thick blank book bound in calf and containing the diary of the late Herr Wilner down to within a few minutes before his death.
Also there was a figure in bronze, encrusted with tarnished gold and faded traces of polychrome decoration.
Erlik, the Yellow Devil, as Herr Wilner called it, seemed too heavy to be a hollow casting, and yet, when shaken, something within rattled faintly, as though when the molten metal was cooling a fissure formed inside, into which a few loose fragments of bronze had fallen.
It apparently had not been made to represent any benign Chinese god; the aspect of the yellow figure was anything but benevolent. The features were terrific; scowls infested its grotesque countenance; threatening brows bent inward; angry eyes rolled in apparent fury; its double gesture with sword and javelin was violent and almost humorously menacing. And Ruhannah adored it.
For a little while the child played her usual game of frightening her doll with the Yellow Devil and then rescuing her by the aid of a fairy prince which she herself had designed, smeared with water-colours, and cut out with scissors from a piece of cardboard.
After a time she turned to the remaining treasures in the wonder-box. These consisted of several volumes containing photographs, others full of sketches in pencil and water-colour, and a thick roll of glazed linen scrolls covered with designs in India ink.
The photographs were of all sorts – landscapes, rivers, ships in dock, dry dock, and at sea; lighthouses, forts, horses carrying soldiers armed with lances and wearing the red fez; artillery on the march, infantry, groups of officers, all wearing the same sort of fez which lay there in Herr Wilner’s box of olive wood.
There were drawings, too – sketches of cannon, of rifles, of swords; drawings of soldiers in various gay uniforms, all carefully coloured by hand. There were pictures of ships, from the sterns of which the crescent flag floated lazily; sketches of great, ugly-looking objects which her father explained were Turkish ironclads. The name “ironclad” always sounded menacing and formidable to the child, and the forbidding pictures fascinated her.
Then there were scores and scores of scrolls made out of slippery white linen, on which had been drawn all sorts of most amazing geometrical designs in ink.
“Plans,” her father explained vaguely. And, when pressed by reiterated questions: “Plans for military works, I believe – forts, docks, barracks, fortified cuts and bridges. You are not yet quite old enough to understand, Ruhannah.”
“Who did draw them, daddy?”
“A German friend of mine, Herr Conrad Wilner.”
“What for?”
“I think his master sent him to Turkey to make those pictures.”
“For