RONDAH;
OR,
THIRTY-THREE YEARS IN A STAR.
BY
FLORENCE CARPENTER DIEUDONNÉ.
“RONDAH; OR, THIRTY-THREE YEARS IN A STAR,” by Florence Carpenter
Dieudonné, is an exceedingly bright, clever and fascinating novel. It
is cast in a peculiar mould, and holds the reader as much by its weird
singularity as by its ingenious plot and striking incidents. The theme
is mainly the strange adventures and experiences of four people, three
men and one woman, who, in the midst of a storm, are cast from the
Earth to a small star, which is as yet in a volcanic state and but
partially cooled, Rondah, the heroine, being left behind. There they
remain for over thirty-three years, during twenty of which, the winter
season, they sleep, as is the habit of the inhabitants of the star,
who are mostly bird people with wings. These bird people are
vegetables and grow in enormous pods. The action never pauses and
surprise is followed by surprise. Love and jealousy are mingled with
mystery, forming a romance of decided interest and much power. The
heroine is afterwards brought to the star and takes part in a number
of startling episodes, notably the exploration of the wonderful Sun
Island. “RONDAH” is one of the best of the fanciful novels now so
popular.
PHILADELPHIA:
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
306 CHESTNUT STREET.
Copyright:
FLORENCE CARPENTER DIEUDONNÉ.
1887.
Right to Dramatize Reserved.
_“Rondah; or, Thirty-three Years in a Star,” is one of the brightest,
most ingenious and most absorbing of the fanciful and mysterious class
of novels recently made so popular by H. Rider Haggard. It is much
better than “She” or “King Solomon’s Mines,” and will give greater
satisfaction. The plot is strange and weird and the incidents
surprising in the highest degree. The scene is laid chiefly in a
little star with subterranean volcanic fires and boiling seas. To this
small planet, not yet entirely fitted for human inhabitants, some of
the characters are conveyed by extraordinary means from the Earth
while a tempest is in progress. Their adventures during the luxuriant
summer and the icy twenty years’ winter are vividly and strikingly
depicted, love, hate, jealousy and enthusiasm entering largely into
their very peculiar and interesting experience. The heroine, who for a
time remains on Earth, has also a strange career. She eventually
reaches the star and plays a prominent part in the disclosure of the
mysteries of the Sun Island, a wonderful region of marvels and
magnificence. The romance is by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné, and is
finely written. It will be widely read and greatly liked._
TO MY FATHER,
WHO HAD FAITH IN MY
TALENT BEFORE IT WAS PROFITABLE,
THIS VOLUME IS LOVINGLY
INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
ROY LEE’S JOURNAL.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I.— MONARCH OF FATE 23
II.— WHERE? 32
III.— A MONSTER 46
IV.— A LIVING ISLAND 58
V.— BLOSSOMS 74
VI.— WINTER 91
ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE.
VII.— THE TORCH 99
THE FURTHER HISTORY AS SET FORTH BY THE WHOLE PARTY AND WRITTEN BY THE
HISTORIAN.
VIII.— RED LIGHT 101
IX.— A TRIUMPH 106
X.— UNDER THE LIGHT OF TWO SUNS 114
XI.— AN OLD FRIEND 121
XII.— THE HEADLESS MEN 127
XIII.— CAN WE GO BACK? 133
XIV.— “HE HAS DONE THIS!” 137
RONDAH’S STAR “PARZELIA.”
XV.— GOLD AND GLITTER 144
XVI.— THE EARTH HOME 153
XVII.— “NOT RONDAH, WHO HAS NO STRENGTH!” 157
XVIII.— THE SUN ISLAND 167
XIX.— “HE IS NOT HERE!” 172
XX.— GOOD-BYE 179
XXI.— FORGETTING REGAN 186
XXII.— THE GREEN MOON 201
XXIII.— “FAREWELL” 205
XXIV.— THE MYSTERY OF THE SUN ISLAND 208
RONDAH;
OR
THIRTY-THREE YEARS IN A STAR.
BY FLORENCE CARPENTER DIEUDONNÉ.
PART I.
ROY LEE’S JOURNAL.
CHAPTER I.
“MONARCH OF FATE.”
“Monarch of Fate is man, above all destiny. Man yet shall chain the
stars; shall drive the harnessed worlds,” said Regan Farmington.
It was winter midnight in the Adirondack Mountains. Regan had brought us
to the desolate hut of a hermit; we had not realized that the
circumstance might be the result of design; it seemed like an accident.
We had been lost in the snow storm; the horses had failed us; even
Father Renaudin, who for twenty years had not missed his smallest
appointment for any hindrance, was bewildered and could not say which
way to go to save us all from death.
Like a spirit of the storm itself, Regan had led us through drifted
ravines and across cloudy plains until we reached safety.
The warm light of the fire fell upon a company which had never before
been united under one roof.
There was Father Renaudin, the fanatical, puritanic priest of a small
new sect, one which he had gathered in this wilderness. His silver hair,
pale, stern face, tall, powerful form and crimson robe were vividly
illuminated. Beside him sat the beautiful Isabella, with bronze hair,
starry eyes, perfect face; her purple velvet robes were heavy with rich
furs; her arms and hands were sparkling with jewels. A very queen of
beauty was Isabella.
On the other side of the hearth was Rondah, a dull, frightened child.
Her face was tear-stained and her lips were yet quivering from her
recent fright. Her brown eyes were too large; her red hair was tumbling
loose from its braids. Still, I must pity her—shabby, frail, in terror,
but all alone among us.
Regan was there. I remember him yet as he looked then. I think I shall
remember him so beyond the grave. His dark, patrician face was lighted
with iniquitous triumph, which glowed beneath a mask of assumed quiet as
fiery coals glow under ashes. His jet black hair clustered in rings
about his brow; his wonderful, beautiful eyes scintillated scorn. It
seemed to me that the life of his soul was demon-bred, but chained to
certain customs of humanity, because weighted with the accident of a
human body.
Regan’s name was the town’s disgrace; though so young he had no friends,
accepted no truths, discarded all faiths. He talked of a Destiny, which,
he claimed, blundered in ruling the universe—a creature blind and
non-reasoning, of immensity itself a part; a monstrous something driven
like the sun, but by some causeless motor, forever.
The storm raged on unabated. As I looked at Regan, some subtle influence
seemed to stand beside me. Plain as a human friend’s, I heard its
whisper:
“Duped, duped again, Roy Lee! Do you recall that this is the thirteenth
of November?”
The thought chilled me—the thirteenth!
I hated Regan. He had just saved my life, but still I hated him!
Why did he listen, listen? One need not listen to hear the storm!
“Did the old hermit die here alone?” asked Isabella.
The silent form lay in another room.
“I was here. I came at the last, almost too late,” answered Regan.
As in a dream I saw that death-bed—the monomaniac lying in darkness,
watched by the angel Fear, menaced by the monarch Death, waiting,
waiting for such a friend of all the earth!
“When he had forgotten all else but his dream and my name, he gave me
this. It is the secret of his life. Perhaps you would like to know it.”
And Regan unrolled a large scroll. It was yellow with age, mapped and
covered with long lines and singular hieroglyphics.
“What does it mean?” asked Rondah.
We spread the chart upon the table to view it better.
“It contains the discovery which is the result of the observation of
three generations. A circle of meteoric worlds and fragments is whirling
on an elongated orbit about our sun.
“Once in thirty-three and a third years it strikes the path of the
Earth. Small planets mingled with masses of chaos are brought almost to
the tops of our mountains.
“Years ago the hermit devised a spiral car, which, by means of
subterranean cavities, walled with cement and filled with certain
explosives of his own combination, should be shot into the coming
meteor. All the machinery of the contrivance is hidden and connected
with a secret clock. At the precise second when the worlds strike right
the clock will explode the torpedoes and the car will be launched into
space!
“Twice has Gregg Dempster seen the small star, or world, come close. But
he mistook his measurements, as he did not calculate for the swerving of
the ball from its true orbit as it passed the giant planets out in
space.
“This time he would have been successful, but he shared the great hope,
which had become the nerve of his life, with another man and from the
lessened tension died.”
“Right,” said Father Renaudin. “If Gregg Dempster had kept his secret,
he had seen his star once more. But only then to die of disappointment.
For man to migrate from star to star is an impossibility!”
Then Regan replied:
“Monarch of Fate is man, above all destiny. Man yet shall chain the
stars; shall drive the harnessed worlds!”
“It is simply impossible!” repeated the priest.
From the darkness where lay the dead man came a voice:
“And I will give him the morning star!”
Then all was voiceless save the storm.
“The dead speak!” cried the pale Rondah, clasping her hands.
Isabella had been brave in all the danger. Now she rose and, with the
girl as her companion, stood close to the door.
That mockery of mystery, a voice from the dead, was more terrible than
anything which we were accustomed to account for by natural laws.
The rocks on which the hut stood seemed to shake and to reverberate.
“The people say the hermit spent his life in tunnelling the rocks and in
watching the stars,” said Father Renaudin. “It seems as if the tunnels,
if such there be, had made musical pipes of themselves to-night.”
Suddenly Regan crossed the room to where the two girls stood. Something
was in his face which was terrible.
I hastily drew Isabella away from him. The other one, Rondah, looking at
him, fell back from the door and cried:
“This is the day! Let us go, Regan, let us go!”
Before I could comprehend, I saw Father Renaudin move toward Regan, who,
like a flash, opened the door and cast into the terrible, lurid night
the girl Rondah, after which he bolted the door and steadied himself as
if for a death-struggle with Father Renaudin.
Then I heard the jar of the steps of two powerful combatants, but
everything was dark. There were no words until Regan cried:
“Too late! You must all go!”
A window crashed open above us. It gave us a view of a world, black with
storm, ringed in by a halo of electric fire, dashing down at us—falling,
falling!
The struggle ceased. We held our weak human hands above our heads to
ward off the stroke of a world!
There was a smothering jar!
CHAPTER II.
WHERE?
This was death! There really was a river for souls to cross! I felt its
cold! I heard its roar! Its chill waves lapped on an invisible shore!
This was the darkness of the grave! Earth had not such! Where was the
phantom boatman? He should be——
Where was Isabella? Where were they all? The dead could remember all
they loved on Earth!
“But then,” I thought, “could the dead soul think in such an earthly
fashion? Could dead hands reach out in damp, hot darkness and touch
rough, jagged rocks? It seemed that spirits followed human modes!”
Then I touched a cold, still, human face, some one who moved and
hoarsely whispered: “Rondah!”
“Regan, awake. We are not dead!”
I shrieked the words into a gloom so incomprehensible that I had
believed it was the grave.
Regan answered in a riddle, but I thought he had not collected his
senses:
“It is done! Triumph! Fate has been merciful!” He added instantly:
“Don’t move! There are chasms and waters! Don’t you hear the sea
surging?”
He did not think he was dead! He did not dream of a river! The meaning
of his words startled me.
“Where is Isabella?” he asked.
“Pray God she may be dead!” I answered, as I realized what had probably
happened.
“She is here, alive but senseless.”
The voice was Father Renaudin’s.
We found her. After a time she revived.
“Regan! Regan!” (Always his name first by everyone!) she called, in a
subdued voice.
“Hush! The star is chained!” answered Regan.
Then they were both silent, both as strange to each other as if those
words had had no deep meaning. But could I ever forget?—some secret they
kept, something so great that a change of spheres did not affect it!
And I loved her! I, Roy Lee!
“Father Renaudin, if the cloud masses of two worlds are propitious, you
can see the Holy Land soon, but you will never tread its paths! Roy Lee,
look in that great moon, our lost home—Earth!—and you can locate London,
where your fortunes are still, let us hope, in the ascendant! Take a
farewell look, friends, for you will soon be as far from all that
revolving globe contains as Heaven is removed from Earth!”
“When day comes we shall see where we are!” I answered, but I had no
hope.
“’Tis very strange! This heavy air is not on mountain top! Where is the
snow? This is a vast body of water, which roars so loudly and falls so
heavily! I can feel these rocks, some worn smooth, some perforated, by
water!” said Father Renaudin.
Can you imagine how we waited for that dawn? We scarce admitted when we
knew that the darkness was paling! What were we to see? A foreign world?
We consoled ourselves with the thought that in all the ages such a thing
was unchronicled, and we mentally decided that it was not for a
contemptible villain like Regan Farmington to solve the mystery of a
universe!
No; we concluded in our consideration that there would be found some
natural explanation.
Father Renaudin thought some tornado might have fallen. Time might have
elapsed, which allowed rains to melt the snow. Still, even then——
Came ever dawn so suddenly!
We looked on peaked and lofty lava rocks, upon a clay-colored sea
sweeping to a near horizon. Tall steepled, non-verdured isles broke the
surface of the sea. The air was heavy, as if we were in a covered pit.
Clouds sunk so low that we could almost touch them, dark brown and
green-blue clouds, inexpressibly gloomy.
In silence we looked away from each other’s faces; each waited for some
one else to say the words:
“It is a star!”
With one bound the sun rose up. Across the shimmering clouds flamed a
bewildering gorgeousness surpassing description. The colors of a
thousand sunsets were moving in unparalleled radiance above our heads,
covering the entire field of heaven. Far, far were we from being pleased
to look upon this glory! Oh! dawn of doom! Never was such a daybreak
upon our own green world!
The sun rose above the banks of clouds. It sent shafts through the
breaks and silvered pinnacles of rock. It marked white circles on the
troubled waters. Then the day became gloomy and a storm of rain fell.
Isabella first acknowledged our situation:
“It is certainly a star! Gregg Dempster was right!”
“Poor child, I am sorry that you are here!”
It was Regan who said this, and his words were so softly spoken, so
musical and gentle, that I wondered (and raged) when I heard them.
“My life’s years and toils are wasted, my creeds useless, my people
lost, my mission vain! What shall I preach to stones and uncooled stars?
What little good I shall do where there are only four souls in a world!”
The words were a wail of utter despair, a cry from a broken heart. It
was Father Renaudin who uttered them.
“Regan, it was fiendish to doom others to share this fate with you! Why
have you selected the most pious and the most beautiful for this misery?
This man’s life was a holy ambition. A dull or ordinary man would have
borne the change better. Isabella had all earth’s pleasures and triumphs
before her; there were others who would have lost but little.
“It takes a particularly selected company to insure a great success!”
answered Regan. “I have selected my people with the most special care! I
could not afford to pity! If I had allowed so maudlin a sentiment to
enter my soul, it would have been for Isabella!”
He laughed triumphantly. It was a most exasperating sound for a dupe to
hear—the knell of my hopes, for I had much to lose. My father’s house
was an honorable one, our wealth was phenomenal in the age, our ships
were on all seas, our name known in the world’s marts. I had all, on
Earth. Here I was a useless, helpless dupe—I, Roy Lee!
“It is all too terrible to be true!” said I.
“You who claim such faith in an infinite Jehovah are easily depressed!”
sneered Regan. “Possibly your Deity has forgotten you! I prefer to trust
to blind, blundering Destiny, that soul of universes! She has neither
lost nor forsaken this atom of the creation, this little star islanded
in space!”
Father Renaudin rose and went slowly away into the gloomy ravines. He
moved as if half a century had been added to his years, leaning heavily
upon his staff. His face was drawn and dreadful to look upon.
“Follow him!” said Isabella, hurriedly. “He will destroy himself!”
“Oh! no,” coolly replied Regan. “He is a fanatic. He believes that
something almighty has great need of his human services. His
narrow-fenced faith will hold him fast. His heart may break, but his
soul will stand firm through every trial. These earthly superstitions
are very comfortable possessions!”
“I am very, very sorry for him!” whispered Isabella, turning to me; but
she listened to Regan as if he had authority. I wondered why! What
possible regard could that wealthy, beautiful girl of high caste have
for that vagabond Regan?
Then I remembered that caste was gone. We were transferred to the Age of
Stone. We could select a cave, build a hearth of rocks, fry a fish and
sleep. Wake, fry more fish; after years enough had passed we could die!
Horrible!
I rose and walked about to wake myself. It might be all a dream. It must
be all a dream!
In the sunlight above the clouds I saw Father Renaudin standing upon the
summit of a peak. His white hair was blown on the wind; it looked like
silver.
Isabella had not spoken one word of regret. There was no sorrow in her
eyes, no apprehension in her manner. She was as composed as if the
inevitable had occurred.
Father Renaudin and I blamed Regan, and we had expressed our blame in
strong words. She said nothing. I went to her side and said to her:
“How can you be so quiet? Do you realize your fate, your loneliness?”
“It is worth loneliness to be the only woman in a world!” she replied.
The cold, hopeless acceptance of her tone shocked me immeasurably.
Another thought! True, a world was in our possession!
The sun had passed the noon mark when Father Renaudin came down the
hills. A wonderful peace was on his face; a strange delight was in his
eyes.
“Earth has not all she needs. We can learn faster here!” he replied to
our wondering comments.
“He thinks he has seen another vision, I believe!” whispered Isabella.
“No; he thinks nothing! Father Renaudin is of the mould of that humanity
which does see visions if ever they are seen!” said Regan.
Just then we saw the great world rise up—a fiery globe, where dimly
emerald and palely blue were lands and seas. The continents turned
before our eyes. The light of this giant moon made it still day for us,
though our sun had set.
Oh! grand, great world! I cast myself upon the rocks in agony that it
was lost, _lost_! Something was whispering in my ear:
“Duped, duped, duped again, Roy Lee!”
“My son,” and Father Renaudin laid his hand gently upon my shoulder, “do
not let sorrow overcome you. It is nothing. Only a human life lost. A
sort of death has come. It is a kind death—removal from temptation, from
necessity to sin; a respite for glorious work; the chance for a higher
place in eternity.”
“A world unfinished; seas simmering over primeval fires. A baby world,
devoid of great opportunity. It is as Regan says. God, if God there be,
has forgotten us!”
“Not so, not so! Being here, God’s work for us is here. Shall we not do
it? Rise up! Shake off your grief, apply your wonderful ability, your
great practical knowledge, to the improvement of the sphere!”
His voice was as a song of triumph, a chant of victory!
As I rose to my feet, Regan sprung lightly past me. He took his stand
upon a huge square rock; from his cloak he drew a large silken banner
wrought with a showy design in red and gold. He shook its folds to the
wind.
“I claim this world, with all its contents, by right of discovery! It is
my just possession! Its sovereign am I! Its seas are my ways, its lands
my domains, its people my subjects!”
Turning to Father Renaudin, Regan held toward him a shining band of
silver, set with gems.
“Here, Father Renaudin, put this on my brow! You are the highest
religious dignitary of the world in which I am!”
“Not so!” cried I. “No man’s subject am I! The people rule! Father
Renaudin, you will not found a monarchy where no such absurd abomination
has ever existed!”
“Have not the worlds themselves one sun supreme for ruler? Find in the
universe one whirling, stupendous monarchy! Where is the denunciation in
Holy Writ against a good king? God himself upholds thrones!”
“This man is a scoundrel, a fiendish monster! See how he toys with lives
and souls.”
“Think, with his superhuman strength and intelligence, how brilliant
shall he stand; as an archangel at that last day, when, his work done,
he shall bring in his nations and their glory!”
Father Renaudin passed me by, and, in another moment, stood beside
Regan. He placed the crown upon his brow. His flag fell like a radiant
robe about him. His triumphant eyes were magnificent.
Close beside the rock where he stood was Isabella, gazing steadfastly.
Her look was almost devotional. My heart beat slower when I beheld her.
Everything seemed falling. I realized with all the rest, “Duped, duped,
duped!” Regan a king—I standing mute, a subject, listening to the first
prayer upon the star for blessings on his head—this man whose friendship
I had despised, this vagabond whom I had at times patronized!
Dizzily I looked at him. I saw about him, over his lava throne, around
his regal cloak, hovering a yellow, mysterious light, a visible,
tremulous, bewildering baptism of his awful destiny, surrounding him as
does the zodiac the sun! I knew I could not stop his rise! I knew there
was a greater power than that of man which cut his pathway!
My path was dark. Isabella looked away. I could not see her eyes.
“Duped, duped!”
I fell senseless to the ground.
CHAPTER III.
A MONSTER.
When next I realized events, the life of the Stone Age had begun. We
dwelt in a cave; a fire of drift wood was burning; a bird was frying. My
head was pillowed on coarse grass, and one of Isabella’s purple wraps
covered me. It was night, and rain was falling.
They had hoped for my return to health for many days. They told me that
they had learned much concerning the little star. It was about three
hundred miles in circumference. The lofty peaks were disproportioned to
the size, according to all our standards of measurement; they served as
observatories for overlooking the surface of one-half the sphere. The
ball seemed belted by a continuous continent, with deeply indented
shores; this made a very long coast line.
“There are fine harbors and very good locations for great towns,” said
Isabella to me.
Towns! One person in a town! My brain was still dull from my illness. As
a worrying remembrance, I thought of ships, people, tumult of business.
Then I looked away at the great star which was our Earth. Home was
there. All was there. This was a wilderness of uncooled lava!
“He must be told of our discovery,” cheeringly remarked Father Renaudin.
Thereupon he brought and arranged upon a large flat stone a little
circle of smoke-blackened stones, surrounding some charred sticks, and a
couple of bones.
I looked at this collection and then wonderingly at their triumphant
faces, astonished at their waiting, expectant manner. What did they mean
me to see in that little circle?
“Father Renaudin found it on the top of the mountain,” explained
Isabella, joyfully.
“I appoint you to commence, continue and control manufactures and all
the commerce of the star,” said Regan.
Still I did not see. I had been very ill. I had not, as yet, become
accustomed to the chances of the planet.
“Roy,” said Isabella, “some man built this circle! Don’t you know that
neither beasts nor birds could build a hearth and light a fire?”
That was it! In the childish toy before me was the promise of a world!
There was commerce, manufactures, wealth, hope, life—the old life! What
did I care that Regan was monarch! The wealth would be the real power!
That would be mine again, all mine! I should rule the sea, I, Roy Lee!
I had been weak, but I was strong now; my lethargy was gone. There was
work to be done at once.
As the course of the star was toward the sun, the heat was becoming
intense, and we removed from our station in the black ravine to the edge
of the forest, where it was more pleasant, and near the sea, where it
was cooler.
We traveled, in moving, over the roughest way, crossing mountains and
going around deep arms of the sea. The air was much more dense than that
which we had been accustomed to breathe. It seemed as if we were
inhaling warm water. As we ascended into the heights we found it more
comfortable, except when we struck one of the chilly clouds.
The small ball with its little gravitation caused us to be so light that
we were not fatigued, and as the days were only six hours long we had
but a short time to labor.
Having found a site which was remarkably pleasant, we built ourselves
four stone houses, and proceeded to adorn the grounds.
We called the broad, rapid river which flowed past to the sea the Styx,
because its waters were so dark and because the forest on the further
side was so mysterious.
The tall trees about us were of corn stalk consistency. They grew from a
deep morass. The broad leaves formed so close a surface that they penned
the heated air beneath them, and at noon-time we could see the
atmosphere turn to a greenish hue, and vibrate as if over a heated
stove.
Sometimes the roots became too heavy and, falling somewhere, pulled the
tops to the ground. Sometimes the tops became too heavy and the tree
toppled on one side, lodged, and, after awhile, fell with some of its
fellows into a pile of green reeds and vines. These heaps of trunks and
webs of vines made it possible for us to cross the river; from isle to
isle there were vine bridges formed, and thus we were enabled to
investigate the forest, where we were glad to find an abundance of fruit
and berries.
Into this bewildering maze, a dreamland of bottomless swamps and
foundationless jungle, Regan and I went often. Always in the morning, as
at noon its heat became unendurable. We found many birds, which we
killed with no difficulty, several different fruits, and a few harmless
serpents. There was a lack of animal life in the seething woodlands of
the Star.
We gathered a bark, softer and lighter than that of the birch, and this
we used for paper, upon which we chronicled every important event, fact
and discovery of our Earth, as fast as we could remember them. We were
making wooden type and printing presses, but meantime wrote everything
so as not to forget; forget and grow like the uncivilized nations of
Earth before we could find those people who had built the fire.
We were late this day. The burdens of bark were heavy and hindered our
progress through the vines and over the fallen trunks.
The hours, always too few, had gone before we knew it, and we were
hastening to get into the cooler air, in momentary expectation of
falling from the heat.
“Where does this intense heat come from?” asked Regan. “Is it all from
the sun?”
“The Star itself is not cooled,” replied I. “I imagine, if the heat were
from the sun wholly, the seas would boil over their entire surface
rather than in spots.”
“’Tis a Planet in construction, not nearly finished,” said Regan. “Now
what possible reason can there be for such a thing as that?”
He pointed to a great black surface of lava, which rose in a mud lake or
very deep slough. Around were trees veiled in vines, a reed-grown width
of swamp and a waste of reddish mud.
I noticed that the great reeds were matted like crushed cornstalks in
many places; they were also mud-spattered and generally draggled and
disturbed.
It was necessary for us to spring from one of the matted foot-holds to
the ball of lava and from there reach the overhanging vines on the other
side; unless we did this we must make a long, uncertain tour around the
steaming slough into the vibrating heat of the forest.
“Shall we cross, or go around?” I asked.
“Let us cross, leaving our burdens of bark in this tree; we will return
for them to-morrow,” said Regan.
We swung them into the low bough and sprang upon the block, wondering
again that it should be there, in the bottomless morass.
It began to move! It shook, commenced to sink! From the mud rose a
pillar of black flesh, surmounted by a hideous, yellow-eyed,
serpent-tongued head.
With a powerful stroke the shape reached after us, and, striking Regan,
cast him like a ball into the vines of the bank.
Meantime, with the sinking bulk, I was slipping, sliding into the muddy
depths, clutching at the shell and shrieking at the trees. I fell under
the shade of a huge paw, with fingers like those on the human hand, but
at least four feet in length. As I sank into the iron-like mire, that
hand fell, splashing and clawing, after me in a surge of mud. I rolled
between two fingers, over the paw again uplifted, and into a mass of
crushed reeds.
Dashing the mud from my face, I saw Regan spring upon the huge back, now
heaving and moving like a small mountain; dodging the head, he sprang
into the morass beside me; missing the reeds, he sunk into the mud to
his shoulders, but, clutching some vines and reeds as he fell, he drew
himself partly up, and reaching a log stood upon it.
He stretched out his hand to me and I clambered to where he stood;
together we climbed up the bank, not pausing for even a moment’s rest.
The sun burned down; the morass was steaming in white vapor, but the
monster began to loosen its bulk from the slough bed and, partially
turned, came toward us, swaying its hideous head, its tongue darting not
far from us. It clawed the banks, but they fell under its feet, and it
splashed into the slough. Recovering its lost ground, it clumsily
climbed on. Trees crushed down like the grass as it moved. I could not
breathe in the heat; even with that creature coming I did not think I
could flee.
“Leave me, leave me! Escape? I cannot move!” I gasped to Regan.
“Man, have you nothing to live for?” cried Regan, with a look of rage in
his face which even then I noticed. “It is a terrible death! Rouse up!
There is the river! Run, Roy, run!”
I saw the blue water. I thought I might as well try. We ran a few steps
and came where a bridge of vines, falling to the surface of the river,
gave us the salvation of a little island.
We swung across and sank down in some shade to dash water on our hot
faces and hands.
Then we glanced back. There came the awful shape, blindly and madly
following us. We could see it plainly—a head like that of a hippopotamus
on a huge trunk which looked like a tree bole, a great flattened body
like a turtle’s, a black shell which we had thought lava, long paws
ending, as I had before observed, in human-shaped hands. Devoid of
instinct, although in bulk as large as twenty full-grown elephants and
in strength proportioned, it did not stop when it clawed vines instead
of earth, but pushed itself over the river’s edge of lava rocks and fell
headlong, helpless, into the water.
“If it can swim, we are lost!” I said.
“Yes, or if the water is shallow it will crawl out!” said Regan.
“Swing back on the vines; a few farther up are left!” shouted I.
“It is gone!” said Regan. “Look!”
There was a mighty surge of the waves, a few tremendous tossings; then
the water settled silently, and whatever became of the monster in the
depths below we saw it no more.
“Like lead or like a leaf, all is the same in those swallowing waters!”
said we, as we wearily sought a path home.
Then I could but think how brave he was, that Regan, to return from
comparative safety upon the very block of his danger to drag from death
one who claimed not even to be his friend!
I could not understand why so persistently Regan always befriended me to
the utmost of his power when our natural hate was unconcealed from each
other! I was forced to admire his courage. I could not comprehend why he
should take so much unnecessary and thankless trouble, for I almost
wished that I had died rather than that he had saved me.
Having learned the signs of the lairs of these beasts, we avoided them
in our future visits. They were somnolent creatures and never woke but
under provocation. With greater precautions we continued our
investigations in the forests, for we must know the resources and
productions of our world.
There was a long, long winter before us, far off, but inevitable.
We made collections of large plantain-shaped leaves, which we used for
building triple platforms to serve for shades above the roofs of our
houses.
CHAPTER IV.
A LIVING ISLAND.
Shortly the vines and flowers veiled our walls and hid us in temples of
green, crimson and white-hued blossoms. A paradise was about us.
We turned water from the mountain springs and made silvery lakes and
rippling streams through the shaded fragrance. We almost forgot that
Gregg Dempster had predicted a twenty years winter!
There were trees with silver fringes, others with crimson leaves, and
masses of shrubs whose leaves were the purple velvet of the pansy. The
landscape became like a beautiful dream; its coloring was of a kind
which paled the hues of Earth to insipidity.
Nature seemed to move by contraries; everything was a bewilderment. We
were afraid the very trees would encroach upon us and wind us in their
ever-extending arms.
The waters of the heavy, frothy sea scintillated with the brilliant hues
of the rainbow, but not a leaf or a twig would float upon them;
everything sank, even the feathers with which we experimented.
The low-hanging clouds had fantastic shapes and were constantly casting
wonderful prismatic effects upon sea and rock. The shafts of light which
broke through them made the star kaleidoscopic; but during storms we
seemed to be in the volume of the bursting thunder-clouds.
Verdure began to bloom on those distant isles out at sea. I had given up
hope of reaching them, but Regan ever looked restlessly away at those
singular islands, those lonely peaks and mounds in that steaming,
unbounded water. Through noon’s heat, through starlit nights, he watched
and considered how to reach them.
“To be king of the isles and unable to get to the isles!” he explained
to Isabella.
“Try a balloon!” suggested Father Renaudin.
“I have thought of that,” said Regan. “We have no cloth, or the
possibility of manufacturing any. Then the laws of atmospheric pressure,
the lack of gravitation, the too hot air above volcanoes, or some other
reason on this little ball, may cause the work of months to be a
failure. I cannot afford to fail!”
“Not there, certainly; failure means death in the sea!” said I.
“I suppose so,” reluctantly assented Regan.
“If by any means we could attach a rope to that central peak of rock!”
said Isabella. She was always so intensely interested in anything that
Regan wished to do!
In a few minutes Regan sprang to his feet.
“Isabella, I have thought how I can get there!” he said.
“How?” we asked in a breath.
“With ropes and kites!” he replied.
Then for weeks we busied ourselves in making heavy vine cables and
strong, light cords. We made, also, with the utmost pains to have them
exactly alike, two huge bark kites.
How like child’s play it seemed, I thought, as with diligence, day after
day, we devoted our whole time to this petty work.
But why not play? What better were we than children in this land where
we looked vainly for any sign of the existence of those people who had
lighted the fire on the circle of stones?
I wondered if Regan had not kindled that fire to make us believe that he
was king of something! No; I could not think so. I would have been glad
to doubt him, but I could not. One who lived daily where he was must
believe in him whether he would or not.
All was prepared. The heavy cables wound the huge basket, strung to
slide on them. The light cords were attached to the kites, the heavy
ones to fly them were ready. When a strong wind blew directly toward the
isle we started them. The idea was to sail them above and beyond the
peak. Thus they would carry the unbroken cord around the lava column; by
cutting the kite strings the kites would fall, dropping the cord where
we could draw it so as to bring, instead of its lightness, the great
vine cables about the peak, and then we could cross with the basket.
Having once drawn ourselves to the isle we could make a permanent basket
ferry.
If the cables broke, even if the little cord tangled, our work must be
done over again.
“As if to please the king,” Isabella said, the night breeze, strong and
straight, blew to the isle.
I looked at that vine-veiled bunch of chaotic, volcanic collection;
almost it seemed like some primeval mammoth of the lost ages. How
mysterious a common thing becomes when we are hindered from reaching it!
But for that fathomless, seething sea we had never desired to go to that
particular point.
Something like horror was in my heart as we stood gazing at the flights
of the kites. Father Renaudin and Isabella were to remain on shore.
There were so few of us if anything should happen.
The kites flew in a gray evening twilight. A black storm slept on the
near horizon; around us all things were darkening. How beautiful they
were—the kites! Then I stopped my thoughts angrily. Had I, for lack of
greater things to watch, reached a stage where I was interested in the
flight of a kite, I who had managed great white-sailed fleets of Earth,
I who had selected their silken wares, sold their immense cargoes, I,
Roy Lee?
I could not shake it off—the feeling that it was of the vastest
importance that the kites sail right.
They did sail right. “As if an angel guided them,” Father Renaudin said.
I hoped Isabella would not say anything about their sailing to please
the king, and she did not; she only breathlessly watched them.
It was a perfect success. Regan’s work again.
At the close of the following day the basket swung on the cables
stretching from shore to the island.
Early the next morning we crossed to the island, which looked strange
and more dangerous as we neared. We stood upon the shore and from the
basket took the shovels, cords, hatchets and spears which we always
carried now. There was a roll of blankets of straw cloth, which we had
also brought to serve as shelter from heat.
We took each a couple, slung on our shoulders; took long, strong staves
in our hands and climbed up the gashed sides of the cliffs.
Wondering more and more at every step at this strange rock, at the
singular terror which we could but control with strong determination, we
both felt like rushing even into the waters of the sea.
From the high cliffs we gazed into a round, deep cavity, half-dark even
at noon with a haze of settling smoke.
“It looks like the throat of a beast,” said Regan, as we hesitated on
the brink.
Looking closely, we saw a volcanic crater such as was common all over
the continent. It was only faintly alive. The smoke was reddish above
the crater’s mouth. Listening, like a giant’s breath we could hear the
roar of the surging flames far below.
“What can be those two huge yellow spots in that vale?” I asked.
“They look like two great plates of gold,” answered Regan.
“Like little mirrors laid on the rock,” said I. “Shall we go down?”
“Certainly, I came for that,” responded Regan.
We began the descent. Once I paused. There was the tremor of a slight
earthquake. The volcano’s breath was heavier. Under the clouds of smoke
we were shaded. Cautiously we stepped from stone to stone, so much
terrified that neither of us spoke.
“What are these plates?” at last said I.
They were about twelve feet in diameter, of a round, yellow and wrinkled
substance, but whether vegetable, mineral or animal we could not
determine.
Without a word of his intention, Regan raised his hammer of stone and
struck a powerful blow upon the yellow surface by which we were
standing.
The earth shuddered, the cliffs burst and cracked; the island itself
leaped from the sea, and about our heads tumbled stone and pillars of
rock, dust of lava, deluges of vines. An awful call of rage, a voice
from the rocks, the menacing roar from the living soil sounded like the
trump of doom about us. Everywhere, from all the walls of stone at once,
not like thunder and not like sea—more like the bellow of the most
mighty convulsion of earthquake which humanity ever knew.
Trees fell; vines entangled us. We would have fled, but there was no
place to flee. The land was raging. That voice—that maddening, horrible
voice!
“It’s an eye!”
Like a demon orb, great, horrifying, fusing, flashing, that eye looked
at us. Those wrinkled yellow covers were the lids.
The breath was a snort of vengeance now. It was a living island! Those
eyes—those awful eyes!
I shrank from their glare. I fell into the crater’s mouth. An instant I
swung above a fiery depth. Regan caught my hand with mighty strength. I
saw his face, defiant even then, looking up at those toppling peaks and
quivering, gashed sides.
“He has only to let go. I shall be out of his way forever then!”
Even in the supreme suspense of the moment I thought I could not die and
leave Isabella more happy without me.
He was going to save me. I knew he would.
But the rocks moved from him and together we rolled into the fiery
crater, among sulphur and hot stones. We clung to the sides, the voice
bewildering us with its roar, the breath shaking the whole surface of
the volcano and of the rock. The smoke rose into a pillar above the
crater. The yellow glare of the fire showed us where we were, showed us
the danger on all sides.
So strange an enemy stilled our hearts and palsied our faculties. We did
nothing. Entombed in a volcano, hopelessly we sank upon the sand and
waited, waited for death, until the daylight had gone. It was night.
By this time the voice was still; the angry island had ceased to groan.
The yellow liquid fire seethed in the cauldron; the smothering flames
and smoke were often puffed into our faces.
What would it do? A mad isle had its human hate! Was all the Star alive?
Had the ball a huge heart to beat in the fiery centre? Had rocks a brain
and nerve to think?
“Did you believe it possible for rock and flame to look and think?” said
I.
I spoke to hear my own voice. The silence of voices was as bad as the
danger.
“We are not surprised to see that a sponge is vegetable in fibre with
animal life,” replied Regan. “Roy, this is yellow gold; see here!”
Regan shook some cooled drops of the liquid of the volcano into my hand.
“Leave it on the ashes. Gold or dross it is all the same here. Let us
cast ourselves down into this pit and end it all!” said I.
I could die well enough if Regan would die too!
Our blankets had fallen with us. Regan spread one above the flame. The
hot air began to fill it. There was a hope. At once we were more
cheerful. We broidered the ends of the blankets together, tied them into
a balloon shape, expanding the mouths with our broken staves, leaving
loops for our hands.
We held the bag inverted above the crater. It slowly inflated. It began
to pull.
“That weak thing to swing above that lava! Never!” I exclaimed, and
thoughtlessly, tortured by the heat, I let go the staves.
In a second’s time Regan was swung into the air; the smoke hid him; he
did not return.
Then I gave way to my bitter despair and wept as I cast myself on the
stones. Forever he was gone! I was alone—entombed by the rage of an
island, deserted by the hate of a man!
How long it was I do not know. Day whitened the crater smoke. I heard a
voice call: “Roy! Roy!” It sounded in the rocks at my side: “Roy! Roy!”
“Regan!”
“Here, at the right!”
A torch flared. There he was, with water and food; he had found another
opening into the crater. After I had drunk the water and eaten the food
we returned into the sunlight to life once more.
Looking about us at the strange rocks, we wondered at our unseeing
blindness when we had walked on that half-animal surface of wrinkled,
unnatural stone and had not thought it a mighty leviathan of unknown
existence.
Still the cables were unbroken. We returned over the homeward way, a
little apprehensive that the isle could remember as well as groan.
Once more we stood beside the waiting two, Father Renaudin and Isabella.
They had seen. The island had half-reared from the sea. Its contour was
changed; its rocks were broken. They had seen its peaks topple, had
noted its awful voice.
For a time we feared the very soil on which we walked, but we discovered
no signs of life in the continental cliffs.
After this we made no more investigations for some time, while the line
of white at the far north became less and less. The mass of black and
fire-streaked cloud at the south grew larger and redder.
The sun began to burn the whole day, instead of at noon only. When it
rose it seemed as if a great furnace door opened on us. We stayed in the
shelter of our vines and beside our lake of water.
One night we were sitting before our houses, watching the shimmer of the
river where the firelight fell upon it. We heard the sound of wings;
looking up at the moonless sky we saw floating black forms—huge birds,
we thought. We saw their wings reflecting the light as they moved, saw
their eyes shining like glass, saw faces looking wistfully down upon us!
What were those things, circling nearer, lower, slower?
“It is the people at last! Thank God!” cried Father Renaudin.
“It is the people!” hissed Regan. “Monsters with wings!” Then I heard
him whisper: “But if there were a God he would do this! He would not
people every world the same!”
I was glad that his subjects had wings, those great, strong wings!
Magnificent attributes!
They came down and stood beside us, their wings hanging like folded
cloaks, mottled and splotched with red, orange and silver. They looked
like ambassadors in ’broidered mantles.
“If we could speak to them!” said Regan.
“We can understand all that you say!” they answered.
It was useless to try to find out where and of whom they had learned our
language. They only could tell us that they had been taught from the Sun
Island, a far-off land of the sea. Sometimes, they said, the tide was
low and we could walk on dry rocks to the isle. Sometimes there was a
“wall in the air.” Then no one could get there.
Who is there? What is there? There was no answer. We could think of no
way of accounting for this; we determined to visit the place at once,
but other cares prevented us.
Another strange thing occurred.
CHAPTER V.
BLOSSOMS.
When daylight came our friends were still in existence and gathered
about our houses. I had feared that they would vanish as a dream of
night.
They led us to a vale, hidden between perpendicular walls of rock. Miles
and miles the cleft extended, and the surface of the lowland was filled
with a strange-looking growth. Tall pods, smooth and satiny, in color
pale green, stood like soldiers in an army. The pods were as much as ten
feet in height and shaped like the husks of an ear of corn.
Walking among these pods we heard confused murmurs and calls, as if the
green things themselves had voices.
Then we came upon one of the pods burst open; from the husk crawled
forth a winged man, blind and helpless, his huge wings useless and
cumbersome.
I saw the truth. These people were a living vegetable—a product of the
soil.
After we had somewhat recovered from our consternation, we began to
consult. It was blossoming time; we must harvest our people.
Thousands of subjects for Regan; thousands of artisans for me! Sailors
for air-ships, toilers at looms! A host of people for Father Renaudin to
preach to and to teach. A crowd to fill a vast cathedral. A populace!
We remained among them for some weeks, until they were strong enough to
fly away over wood and mountain isle. We taught them our language,
engrafted our ideas upon them and instilled our desires into the minds
and hearts of this new multitude.
We were earnest, politic workers; for once every one of us joined in the
one great purpose—to civilize the people that we need not live in a
world alone!
Our success was unlimited. There seemed to be no barriers to their
understanding; they comprehended, became interested; in a few weeks they
helped us plan. We had a great army of docile, winged servants.
There appeared to exist no envy, hate or anger among them. They were
ambitious, but they were not treacherous. Their faith in us, in all we
hoped and in all we did, was perfect.
Regan was delighted. He planned the most stupendous works.
We took possession of four great plains bordering on the sea, and each,
with those who chose to assist, began improvements.
“I will build a cathedral which shall surpass St. Peter’s!” said Father
Renaudin. “I shall have a praise-offering congregation, for I can see no
sin among these bird men! They are not a fallen race; their brain is not
clogged by wickedness! That is why they learn so fast!”
We knew another thing, but we thought Father Renaudin did not see it, so
we did not tell him. It was that this people, with all their brilliance
of intellect, lacked something. They would never be a dominant race.
They must have leaders, and I am compelled to acknowledge that in Regan
they had found one. What a commander of hosts he would have been, had
there been any occasion for the hosts! What a defender of the nations,
had there only been need of a defence!
We even began to dislike our security!
As it was, Regan built walls and piers, planted great gardens to
decorate his mountain sides, erected towns and surrounded them with
terraces of earth and stone work, where the silver of fountains was
contrasted with pale thread-like leaves, purple pansy color and deep
cardinal red. The spires and domes and squares which he designed were
always architecturally superior to any which the rest of us could
conceive.
Isabella had a pretty little town. Every house seemed a home-like
cottage of Earth. She had schools and soon printing presses, upon which
Father Renaudin printed condensed remembrances of the most important
subjects of earthly teachings. Isabella herself put into record music
and poetry, “original and selected.”
We found among the volcano’s rocky depths many beds of sulphur. We found
also many minerals of Earth. Of iron, lead, silver and salt we had mines
and worked them.
A heavy reed, growing in abundance, was easily pasted and pressed into
sheets of paper. Among the grasses we found one rice-like seed which
gave us a substance which, when crushed, made a not unwholesome floury
food. We found some roots which were palatable when baked. We had varied
and delicious fruits.
We made cloth from straw and from bark, and from a cotton-like growth we
manufactured a fine, soft, gauze-like material, very beautiful.
Along the mountain’s side was a flattened rock platform, upon which we
built great rough-walled manufactories, and the smoke looked very
earthly as it rose from the pipes and chimneys.
Of laborers we had a limitless supply, each hand as interested in our
experiments as were we ourselves.
Of demand for our wares we had almost too much, for the whole Star
wished to possess each article of convenience, dress or luxury. In a
singularly perfect copy of Earth the furnishings and decorations of the
rooms of the palaces of piled-up, smoothed stone thickened in the vales.
We taught these men the use of pen and ink; taught them correspondence,
postal service and the value of the clinking silver coins.
We brought the study of music into light and they constructed, after our
models, harps, cymbals, trumpets, guitars and drums. Anthems and chorals
for the Cathedral service were chanted in the halls. Light and graceful
melodies of Earth were trilled from the hills.
Art was represented by colossal statuary in glass, stone and lava, in
painting and in metal work.
Oils and crude colors for painting were collected, the first from slain
animals, the second from earths, crushed berries and ground minerals.
It was a busy, bustling little star, whirling in a furnace heat toward
the sun. The only comfortable hours upon it were in the night when Venus
was ablaze before us.
The years went by so fast! The clouds sank closer to the surface of the
star. We began to be almost smothered in their noonday weight!
The growth of the verdure of the star had changed it from a black lava
ball to one mass of green and gorgeousness. The tops of the peaks alone
stood above the vines.
The trees were lost in their own green; moss clung to everything. The
steaming sea, always boiling in spots above the lava of subterranean
chasms and volcanoes, further moistened the noonday air, which, if it
had been of Earth, had been utterly unendurable in its temperature.
We understood that the clouds cloaked our planet. The dense air was not
like the world’s atmosphere. We were close to the orbit of Venus; we
feared that we should go on and burn in the flames of the sun!
We appointed a day to gather with our chief friends that we might report
our achievements and our successes.
We were to meet at the town built by Father Renaudin, where we arranged
for a grand festival to take place in his cathedral, now nearly
completed.
After a long day’s travel, I arrived, weary and dusty. Isabella and
Father Renaudin came out to meet me. It was sunset; the last beam of
sunlight had just left the scene. It was a still, sultry, purplish
twilight.
As we walked beneath an avenue of bloom, we heard the most enchanting
music.
Stepping through the bowers of green, we looked up into the sky. Above
the surface, so far as to be still in the glow of the sun, which was
below the horizon, we saw a multitude of white-robed people.
“Is it a stampede of angels?” asked Father Renaudin.
Their floating white robes and shining, flying hair were outlined on the
blue sky. They were illuminated by a flood of golden sunshine. They were
carrying something. We could hear their melodious song like the sound of
a far-off bell. We could see wreaths of flowers, a mica-bright surface.
The latter was a glistening car; therein, most gorgeous in apparel, like
an Indian prince for brilliance of attire, was Regan, crowned and
sceptered! He was followed at a distance, we now saw, by troops of his
bird men.
It was a true misery to me. Whatever this villainous Regan did was
always done with so much majesty that there was no use in trying to
think it was ridiculous.
“He really is a monarch! It does not help me that he has made himself
one!” I thought.
I raged at my own stupidity. There were my people; they would have borne
me and have sung for me; they would have wrought fabrics and wreaths for
me, but I came on foot; I arrived dusty and tired.
It was Regan first again!
We enjoyed our festival; that is, I suppose the rest did. We had torches
by thousands at the feast, had music from sea shells, reeds and stringed
instruments. We seemed to be in a magic land, the air was so soft, the
star Venus so brilliant! The scene was bewildering! The sea was musical!
“The star is small, but it is all ours!” we said.
There were no warlike races to conquer, no insubordinate people to
subdue. There was nothing to hinder the grand march of progress.
I noticed that Isabella looked pale and very sad. I had never seen such
an expression upon her face before.
The walls of the house, where we went after the fête was over, were
glittering with glass set in panels. The doors were hung with fabrics of
gold-colored straw and of brilliant cloth. The floors were of polished
woods, overlaid with grass rugs. Flowers were banked in corners, and a
fire was upon the hearth, for we could not pass the hours of night
without great fires, on account of the exceeding dampness of the air.
When we had quietly settled ourselves for the few hours left till day,
the rain began to fall heavily.
While Father Renaudin and Regan were at the table before the door,
looking over maps, I sat beside Isabella and we were speaking of the
change which we had made in the star.
“If these people could not fly, they would work slower. They are living
machines; don’t you think so?” said Isabella.
“Certainly their wings are a great advantage,” replied I.
“Do you know what Regan has done about the wings?” asked Isabella.
“No.”
“Then he has not told you?”
“No.”
“He calls them ‘hideous deformities,’ ‘cumbersome appendages.’”
“Yes; I know he doesn’t like the powerful wings of the people. But what
is it, Isabella?”
“He says they are only subject when they choose to be—temporarily.”
“Yes. Isabella, have you seen Regan often in all these years?”
“Oh! yes, very often!” answered she, paying no heed to me or my
question, absorbed, as ever, with some idea about Regan.
“Duped, duped!”—that hammer-like voice in my ears again!
“I am so troubled, Roy; he has cut off their wings from ten—”
“What!”
“Yes, he thought they would recover; but they—they—”
“Died?”
“No! I wish they had! They languished awhile, and then they fell upon
the ground only to look more and more miserable! Finally, to end their
misery, he—”
Isabella began to weep bitterly.
“How in the world did you learn all this?” I exclaimed.
“I was there!” she answered, composedly as regarded my question, only in
tears over Regan’s iniquity. “Well, Roy, he killed them! They are
vegetables you know!”
“Regan a murderer!”
She heard the triumph and pleasure in my voice.
“He is a king!” she began, vehemently.
“Nonsense! He is a criminal! He ought to be hanged!”
“Not for subjects, not by subjects!” I had never seen Isabella so
beautiful; she looked like an enraged goddess. “He is a king! He has a
right to kill!”
“Can you so forget right—”
“It is ‘right’ of another world! It has no place here!”
“Calling men vegetables does not change the crime!” insisted I. “These
creatures have souls! They are the humanity of the sphere!”
“I shall tell you nothing more, Roy!” said Isabella. “You do not comfort
me in my troubles! You only make me feel worse!”
She turned to go.
“Stay here, stay here!” I exclaimed. “It has been years since I have
heard your voice till now! Stay here and talk with me!”
And she stopped, dried her tears and did not go away from my side until
the party broke up for the night.
There were some good things about the star after all. One need not
follow all the hypocrisies of Earth. If Isabella wished to remain and
talk with me, she could do so!
When I was alone in my apartments, listening to the heavy rain, I
thought it all over. It was a murderer who wore the silver crown, the
’broidered robes, who was so kingly in his manner! A murderer was ruler
of the star! Must I be one of his minions, I, Roy Lee?
He was our law. Why not kill ten men? Now and then in some such
disagreeable way he made us all realize his power.
I was madly in love with Isabella, but, if I should marry her, Regan
would possibly kill her!
What would Father Renaudin think now of the monster whom he had crowned?
He ought to take the crown from his head and give it to me! I was the
more worthy. No blood stained my hands; my station, education and
character were suited to the position. That name, or title, of king
seemed very powerful with Isabella!
It was no use to gnash my teeth and roll on my bed. I dashed the long
curtain away for air and thought the matter over. It was Regan who made
the laws. If I spoke of a republic, he laughed at me and said:
“The discovery to the discoverer! A king is a fundamental law of the
creation! The stars cannot whirl without a ruler!”
If I wanted Regan dethroned, what of that? How was I to remedy the
matter?
How wonderfully the rain was falling! Was that the river roaring? The
tumult was so ceaseless and singular that I rose and dressed. Scarcely
had I done so when the sound of shrieks and bird voices came to me.
Hastening into the long hall where we had been in the evening, I saw the
floor covered with water. Just then Isabella, Regan and Father Renaudin
came into the same room.
“It is the sea! it is the sea!” they cried.
We ran out upon the foot-hills, from where we could see, in the light of
the dawn, a waste of muddy water and a shroud of cloud.
We climbed into the peaks of the lava rocks and waited, drenched with
storms.
We were above some of the clouds and could only dimly see the demolition
of all we prized. Tower after tower fell. The water washed the stones
from the foundations of the cathedral.
We saw the morass broken by the sea, saw masses of land as large as a
farm sink from sight like lead.
When we could see so far we could note the flowing columns of fire in
the cloud-dark south still increasing in size and redness.
We could hear the bursting of rocks in chasms where the water would not
stay.
We found some sheltering ledges and waited.
CHAPTER VI.
WINTER.
We had it all to repeat after we had endured the catastrophe.
We thought that the star, having reached the end of its elongated orbit,
turned with exceeding suddenness upon its course, so changing the
temperature of north and south as to produce the excessive storm.
I will not tell you of our discouraged hearts, but will go on to that
winter which was approaching from this time.
True that we were disheartened, but that we should desist from our labor
was impossible. We must prepare for a frigid zone.
This time we selected a high tableland, broken through with narrow
clefts where the sea penetrated the land. Some of these clefts we roofed
over.
We built with reference to enormous weights of snow. We made coverings
and corridors; we put windows and pipes and tubes all so that we could
breathe and so that we could close them in case of necessity.
We sunk wells, collected oil and firewood.
At one spot in the rocks we found intense heat; here we built a vast low
building to be warmed from the perpetual heat of the star’s volcanic
fire. Time passed on.
As we receded from the sun our fears became greater.
Again we came where we could see our Earth, almost a moon. Then we
departed into colder, darker space.
Snow fell constantly until the forest disappeared under a white bank.
The volcanoes were cloaked almost to their tops. The surface of the land
was changed.
We had wood for fifty years in our cellars.
The smoke from the islands of the sea told us that the life of the star
was still existing.
Day became twilight. On the snow it was inexpressibly gloomy. The sky
grew black; we were entering a night of years.
About this time it became so cold that it was unsafe to go into the open
air to look. We could only venture out in a hollow case of skins, with
lamps about us for warmth.
We made all our investigations through triple plates of glass.
Then the bird people fell into a sleep from which it was impossible to
wake them. We put them into a great hall by dozens, where they lay
motionless, lifeless to all appearance.
Father Renaudin, Regan, Isabella and I were alone.
Day after day we watched our dear, far sun receding, and, as we gazed on
the desolate, purpling waste, we wondered if we should find it possible
to exist until the night was past!
Such an awful sky! The sun only as a taper in it!
The star was so small! Would it continue safely on or would it drop down
upon some larger sphere?
Then we all became aware that another form or presence was among us!
Like a black mist it entered and stood beside the fire, sometimes
remaining for hours.
For a time each observer feared to mention the phantom, lest the others
prove that it was an illusion of the mind. We were afraid of the
delusions of darkness of twenty years. But when we all began to watch
for it together, we spoke of it. All had seen it, had heard its step,
had felt its touch.
Prisoned, we could venture out no more. It was dangerous even to go into
the corridors.
Father Renaudin had been writing from remembrance the condensed books of
the Bible. He had finished his work so far as to have reached the words
which were spoken by the dead man on that night when we left Earth:
“And I will give him the morning star.”
“I wonder what was meant when that was written?” said Father Renaudin.
He leaned his head upon his hand and seemed in deep study.
The shade had been for hours beside the fire. Now it crossed the floor
and touched him upon the shoulder.
“Come!” it said.
“It is Gregg Dempster!” cried Regan. “It is his voice! There is no God!
Oh! if there were He would do this!”
Father Renaudin rose, took his staff and his books and went after his
guide. We followed along the corridors, through doors which we had not
opened, out into the last corridor, where the cold stopped us.
We saw them go out into the dark cold, the two, side by side, like
spirits moving across the snow, Father Renaudin in his crimson robe, his
hair blown like silver, his books clasped in one hand, his staff in the
other.
The darkness hid them.
I would have married Isabella if I could have ever gained courage to so
defy Regan. Now Father Renaudin was gone and there was no hope of his
return.
“There are things in this star which were never on Earth!” said
Isabella.
Then she threw herself down beside Regan and, leaning her head upon the
arm of his chair, sobbed and wept in frightful passion. She looked only
at Regan, Regan—never at me!
But Regan looked at me, with a face like a demon’s, where was such
horrid cruelty and rage that I shuddered. And still he touched the bowed
head gently and said:
“Poor child, he will return!”
It was of no use to hope. Calamities and circumstances seemed to me to
be in Regan’s control! He would never give her up!
“There is no humanity in our wonderful endurance!” said Regan, at last.
“Why should we keep up this fraud of hypocrisy?” sobbed Isabella. “We
are lost!-utterly, hopelessly, everlastingly most miserable! Oh! I wish
I could see the sun! I wish I could see a woman’s face! I wish I could
hear the little children laugh! I hate these yellow, churning seas, this
volcanic world! I can never leave it, never, never!”
Still the days went on. We wrote, composed music, painted, devised
dramas and made plans for their presentation. We coined money, we made
statuary in stone. We hated it all in our darkness and desolation.
As day after day we sat beside the fire, from hating fate, Regan and I
grew to hate each other, hate as two who were dead and laid in two
separate graves of black might hate each other if angelhood were to be
won by only one of them!
Did not Isabella see and know, when she carefully removed every
implement which might serve as a weapon?
Did she fear when we sat glowering sullenly at the fire and dangerously
at each other? Did she not constantly talk, talk, sing, sing?
I think that human beings must all grow dangerous if they do not see the
sun. One-half this sentiment, which we call “gentleness,” “humanity,”
“mercy,” is only sunlight!
We were not much troubled when the star began to shake in its shroud. If
the rocks should fall, what then? Possibly we should have no more of the
terrible life to endure!
The shocks grew worse and worse. One night, as we sat hating beside the
fire, a part of the wall fell down. We could see the cold, far stars
shining into our house, that house which we had builded so strong! The
dreadful breath of cold like steel struck upon our faces!
It was but for one instant. For once I thought quickly. I caught
Isabella in my arms and rushed into the tunnel where the rocks were
warm. Where Regan went I did not see.
END OF ROY LEE’S JOURNAL.
PART II.
ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TORCH.
I did not know what had happened. I did not see the walls fall down. It
was very dark, and some one held my arm. Then I saw the flare of a
torch.
I could hear no voice in the commotion, but it was upon Roy Lee’s face
that the light of the torch fell. I saw his steel blue eyes in quick
search for the cave look swiftly around.
Above our heads the tunnel walls were roofed with trees laid crosswise.
These were coated with ice; long icicles depended like white swords,
gleaming above our heads.
When the torch expired we should die in darkness!
Roy fastened it carefully among the frozen boughs. Then he came to my
side and pushed away from my face the fur cloak.
“Come where I can look upon your face, Isabella, for I love you! I have
loved you always! When the torch dies out we shall not see again until
we see in Heaven!”
Then I sat beside him and we watched the torch and spoke of the drear
years which had passed, in which we might have been so happy if we had
known!
And then I remember nothing!
END OF ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE.
PART III.
THE FURTHER HISTORY AS SET FORTH BY THE WHOLE PARTY AND WRITTEN BY THE
HISTORIAN.
CHAPTER VIII.
RED LIGHT.
Walls of rock crashed beside Regan; he fell into a chasm where before
his eyes flowed volcanoes’ fire.
The air was sulphurous. The sea swept upon him through the cleft rocks.
Even he was appalled! Alone! Both dead!—Isabella and the man who would
not marry her, who would not love her, his beautiful sister Isabella!
For Regan did not know that they were saved. He had no time to see what
had happened.
“But still I live,” he cried, “and we shall reach the planet sun of
Jupiter after a time! I will take courage! It is only a custom of man to
expect companionship! One can exist just as well without it! No human
voice! No human love! No kiss! No help! No words! I will go on alone! I
can go on alone!”
Then for awhile he was silent, looking about him. After a time he said:
“It will not do; there is no one to cheat save myself and my own soul!
Shall I try to lie to it? Oh! tortured soul! If I only could believe!”
Regan cast himself beside the molten flood, waiting his doom.
“Rondah! Rondah! I shall never see you!” he moaned. “Did you die in the
snow? Where are you? From what place do you see me? Oh! my love, my
love!”
The air grew sulphurous with smoke. The rocks fell between him and the
sea, and others fell between him and the lava.
He was too lethargic to look. The habit of the globe had seized upon
him! He fell asleep for years! For people are a part of that globe which
they inhabit. They do not realize it, but they breathe, move, think,
exist, according to its spirit, as a portion of it!
If world still call to world, as they did when the morning stars sang
together, the voices are of different attunement, but they blend in one
grand chord of harmony.
Jupiter marched on, attended by his satellites.
A little light fell upon the white ball; far off, the sun, as a
day-star, gave a grayness to the darkness.
The winds were dead. They did not move the smoke above the craters.
Asleep with the stars, asleep was Regan!
On, on came that burning planet, which has yet to cool from lava seas to
the crust of continents, yet to jar and burst, and flame with deluges of
the first ocean’s fall, yet to pass through all the cataclysms of
universal epoch, before there shall be upon its surface one pulpy,
spongy thing that has the lowest form of life!
As one leaf among ten million has Nature’s time to fall, so in Nature
shall come the time for a globe to bloom, among myriads, as unnoticeable
in the multitude sweeping before the vision of the Lord as is the one
leaf on the tree!
Time shall come when it shall add a world’s souls to the kingdom of the
Redeemer!
When the small sun and red Jupiter shone at once upon the star it made
strange daylight. The great planet sent red, burning beams ahead.
Brilliant scarlet was his day.
What spirit would fall across space from such a fiery mass of convulsion
as Jupiter? Nothing quieting, nothing holy, nothing merciful! A red
light—only a red light!
Upon one spot in the star the cold touched not, the snow did not fall.
The Sun Island, as the bird men named it, was as calm as Paradise
through all these years!
Like a piece of the sun it slept in snow. What was beyond its blazing
walls no one knew.
From this white brilliancy, when Jupiter had brought daylight, came
forth Father Renaudin. Across the waste of snow he walked serenely, an
unearthly rapture upon his face. Storms could not ruffle his crimson
robe, nor was he touched by the chill breath of the wind which had
wakened for Jupiter.
“By and by,” he was saying, “I shall know all. I shall have passed
beyond the reach of forgetfulness. I shall be troubled by no such paltry
remnant as earthly remembrance. Somewhere and sometime I shall be freed
from the clogs of this non-understandable machine, the human brain! This
atom, borne apart from all the isles in the ocean of immensity, shall
come one cycle nearer to the æon’s goal, the end of time!”
Father Renaudin was not dismayed at the approach of the star to the
great planet. The crash of worlds could not shake the faith of a man
come from the Sun Island!
And the days of Jupiter became more brilliant than ever with red light.
CHAPTER IX.
A TRIUMPH.
Snows and seas began to melt, as at the heat of a giant torch; loosened
snow fell in avalanches; wind and waves piled masses of ice in walls.
The frozen soil under all these powers was crushed and cracked. The sky,
where clouds had been frozen out, again filled with moisture. Gold-red
burned the snow; the black peaks of lava for their darkness melted deep
pits around them.
The equatorial region swept clear of bonds; lava isles cooled upon snow
fell where the sea washed out their foundations and splashed into the
depths, where the ice alone floated.
Among the ravines was a forest of stunted pods, which only bloomed for
Jupiter. They had slept since the star met the planet at the same
distance before. Now they crept out into the glare—imps, dwarfed and
small winged, an inferior creation, unshuddering in the cold, blinking
their first gaze at a burning ball, more astounded at their own
existence than at the strange theatre whereon they stood, unfrightened
in the snow, homeless.
Regan awoke. It had been years since he slept, but he did not know it;
he wandered out into the cold.
At the same time Roy Lee woke. He glanced up at the torch still burning,
wondered when the icicles melted, looked for Isabella and found her
gone.
Where was she?
He went out to seek her with that same fear in his heart which had
tortured him for months before he fell asleep—the dread that the
unscrupulous Regan would rob him of the woman he loved. The fear had all
the growth of months of desperation when he had hated and planned
through a dark, horrible season, when he had thought and thought, and
almost determined——
Roy Lee on Earth was a man of honor. It was a great mystery to him when
he lived there how men became so depraved as to commit some of their
terrible crimes. It was no mystery now. In those long, hating days he
had come to know that it is the great power of all those other souls in
the world which holds the man of Earth in check to civilization.
When there are three people in one world, how much better, sometimes,
that there be only two, there being no law, no knowledge, no hindrance
to the deed save one man’s will to hold his hand, and the fear of a God
away, oh! so very far away—somewhere!
It was years before, but not so to Roy Lee, as he stood again
overlooking a gray sea, not knowing that his sleep had been of unusual
duration, regarding his safety as one more of the mysteries, with
Isabella lost, remembering his hate as yesterday’s hate, his fear as
present as the fear of last night, the fear that Regan meant to take his
life.
“I don’t wonder,” he muttered to the cliffs, “that Cain killed Abel! I
only wonder that Abel did not kill Cain before he had a chance to
strike!”
A lurid glare, as if it were a trail of blood, fell across the snow. The
red Jupiter rose before his astonished eyes. The rays scorched his cheek
like a near fire. Then he heard a step; he turned; there beside him
stood Regan, with dark, furious face, scorn in every lineament, the
grand, fierce eyes raging at the uncontrollable in Nature, that
expectant, defiant gaze, which to Roy Lee had become so dreadful.
But it would not have happened even then, if Regan had not spoken, or
even if he had said any other words, for Roy Lee called back to
remembrance his earthly teaching. This man had been his friend in
trouble, had saved his life! It was a sin to bring death upon a soul!
Somewhere there was a God!—and he took away his hand from the hilt of a
dagger.
“Tell me at once where is Isabella!”
It was no friend speaking to friend. It was an insolent, imperious
demand—sovereign to subject!
“She is saved from you forever!”
Low, hoarse, almost whispered were the words. A dagger blazed crimson in
the sun as it fell, fell twice.
Roy Lee looked away; he looked across the black, tossing, groaning sheet
of water, where, like golden coffins, the huge blocks of fiery ice
bobbed up and down in the black waves.
Far off in the inky sky swung a faint star. There were struggling
nations scattered all over it. These nations held very serious beliefs.
Generally speaking, they considered murder wrong, unless it were the
murder of an army! They had grand laws—a great many of them!
But what could it matter to Roy Lee, the belief of those people who
lived in that particular star?
Before him fire-red snow peaks rose against a violet sky; iced spires
cast gleams of fire into his eyes from their shining tops. From ashen
chasms of unsunned snow the hideous imps peeped, grinning at him.
Jupiter burned and blazed at Roy Lee. The little Earth shuddered. An
island fell into the sea and set the ice coffins dancing. Winds howled
requiems in the steeply crags above his head. At the north some breaking
ice fields groaned a knell. Roy Lee did not hear them; he was listening
for something else—to hear Regan fall!
Slowly, shielding his eyes from the full sight with his hand, he turned
partly toward him to look. All the earthly horror of his crime came
sweeping to his soul. There were no voices to cry “murder,” unless he
heralded himself! No newspaper would put his name under that awful
combination of letters! If it were chronicled, his own hand must cut it
into the rock! But some things were the same. Human love, human hate and
human ferocity were just the same in the one sphere as in the other!
Oh! he was dead! Man of earth might be horrified! The heart of that one
man of the star was triumphant above all horror!
Oh! he was dead!
Roy Lee looked out upon the shady north, where there was neither red
Jupiter nor pale sun, pausing a moment yet before he could gaze upon his
achieved triumph. Blue-black sky was cut across by a bank of unmelted
white snow framed in by lava cliffs.
There, with face stern and awful, his silver hair flowing about his
head, his crimson robe clear against the violet sky, his grand form
upright, his shining staff uplifted as if to call down God’s vengeance,
stood Father Renaudin!
Beside him was Isabella, of the superb beauty of the moment seeming a
part, with ashen face, parted lips, and steady eyes gazing past him,
ever past Roy Lee, at something else!
“When the torch dies out we shall not see again until we see in Heaven!”
He remembered he had told her that. Now, at what was she looking?
Roy turned to where Regan had stood.
He stood there still, and from the point of the withdrawn dagger he was
shaking his own heart’s blood!
“Father Renaudin, come here!” cried Roy Lee, in an awful voice. “Come
here! Am I mad, or has the world gone mad? I’ve killed a man! I’ve
killed him and he does not die!”
“There is no God!” whispered Regan, “there is no God! There can be none,
but, if there were one, all-merciful and a rememberer of the agony of
human hearts, He would permit this!”
CHAPTER X.
UNDER THE LIGHT OF TWO SUNS.
“Traitor and murderer, Roy Lee!” said Regan.
Then Roy saw that close beside him stood Isabella. She clasped his cold
hand.
“It was for Isabella,” whispered Roy, “and I shall kill you again!”
Another island fell into the sea. The ice of the north waved and
crashed. None of them heard it.
Father Renaudin came to draw Isabella from Roy’s side.
“I will not leave him!” said she, clinging fast to the arm of a
murderer.
For woman’s love does not change for spheres or stars, neither for
murders!
“Can it be possible that it was for jealousy that you struck?” exclaimed
Regan.
“Yes!”
“How could you be so mistaken? Isabella is my sister! I supposed you
were aware of the fact! There is another woman whom I love! Her name is
Rondah!”
“Oh! why not have told me this? The misery of years has been so
terrible! A word would have saved me! I need not have stood under the
light of two suns a murderer—I, Roy Lee!”
Remorse, agony, shame! But nothing could undo the deed! It was
committed! Not even a death to come, when it could be, at least,
forgiven! No death upon the star! Always a murderer!
Isabella stood by him. If it were not for that, he would have lost
himself in utter despair.
“The attempt is a failure, Roy! It is a wonder that you waited so many
years before attempting my death! But let that pass. We are united once
more. Father Renaudin is here. Seas and convulsions may part us at any
time. If you love Isabella, marry her!” and, with the most ceremonious
politeness, Regan returned to Roy Lee his dagger.
So it was Regan, Regan, Regan, who gave to Roy Lee his wife! It was
Regan who ordered that the murder should never be referred to upon the
star so long as it should whirl!
In the light of a burning world, their carpet the black lava of a
cooling one, their witness a man who should be dead, the pastor a man
who had passed beyond the bounds usually allotted to the understanding
of mortals, who stood one step nearer angelhood, were they wedded.
Then Father Renaudin explained to them how long years had passed while
they slumbered.
“Blessed sleep!” exclaimed Regan. “I am so much nearer—”
Then he stopped.
“Rondah!” finished Isabella.
The bird people woke after a time. When the spring of years had come
they had again created a paradise.
Great fields of fertile lands were cultivated, beautiful towns erected.
Magnificent prodigality of color and foliage in Nature aided them in
beautifying. If they planted a sapling, in a few months it flourished—a
great tree! All their plans were ably seconded by the people. If they
polished and cut a stone, a hundred pairs of willing hands made each
another stone look just like it.
They cut through the narrow continent, and so moderated its temperature
by allowing the warm waters of the volcanic and torrid south to come
into the cold northern seas; they made several such canals.
Regan was restless and very unhappy.
He had been wandering in his gardens one evening, when the star was
white with Earthlight. After awhile he turned away and sought Father
Renaudin where he sat beside the fire.
Regan drew a low couch to the side of the table and watched him,
silently.
“Well?” asked Father Renaudin.
“Father Renaudin, it is all worth nothing, worse than nothing! It is
endless repetition of misery with each day! It is a beautiful world, but
it lasts forever! That is too long! It is a subject world, completely
so! If I could see the face of that one woman whom I love on Earth, I
would give all, all!”
“Now you speak the truth of years of sorrow!”
“Yes!”
“Why not have brought her here instead of this one?”
“I meant to do so, I would have done so. I looked that night at her
fair, girlish face, so frail, her divine eyes, which always smiled at
me. I noted how frightened she was, how weak and like a spirit; too
ethereal to be brought to such a winter, to a land not done with its own
creation, where no sunlight should brighten to gold her red hair, where
her face must be ever blanched with danger! I left her, Father Renaudin,
where kind Destiny—”
“Say God, Regan!”
“Had placed her hand in mine! I put her out into that winter night of
Earth—because I loved her! More dreadful than any other sound upon this
star is that echo which no tumult can drown, which I ever hear—Rondah’s
cry when I left her! Soul reader that you are, I don’t believe you know
one tenth the torture of that remembrance! If she were here, oh! if she
were here, the sea might swallow the towns, the volcanoes bury my
people, but this black lava ball would be a paradise!”
Was that Regan, abandoned to such grief that Father Renaudin was
alarmed? Men did not die, but they might go mad!
“Regan, be calmer! I have a hope for you,” cried Father Renaudin,
“really a hope for you and for Rondah! I pity you! Know that I, too,
have loved, have loved and lost hopelessly! You need not be hopeless! I
learned a secret of importance at the Sun Island! This will be the last
revolution for you to reach Rondah! At the next the star will be
captured by Jupiter and will whirl as one of the satellites about it
until the end of time! You can gather your people, build and adorn!
There will be little more destruction, no more such winter! The heat of
Jupiter will transform the star into a world of most luxuriant
vegetation! The geological changes are very rapid on such a small globe.
These volcanoes will cool and die, those at the south acting as the
safety-valve of the sphere!”
“But Rondah? What of her?”
“I tell you, hope! I can say no more! Gregg Dempster, moved only by
man’s curiosity, reached the star by powder mines and a detached hut of
spiral springs. You are moved by a greater power. You ought to be able
to reach the Earth and return once more!”
CHAPTER XI.
AN OLD FRIEND.
More like a gorgeous dream became the life of each day. The sea of gems
was rippling in its blue. The glorious islands were purple and pink in
mist and bloom. The air was laden with perfume from gold, silver and
purple trees.
Earth came to be a great moon.
In the light of the night walked Regan, pondering ever the same subject.
He noticed a shade upon the silver sheet of the fountain. He looked up.
Huge black and beautiful wings flapped above his head about a great
bronze body.
Then a bronze and shiny angel stood before him, grand and dark, but with
no shade upon the radiant face, with benediction in the gaze of the
great, calm eyes.
There was wondrous sweetness in the voice which said:
“Worshiper of Destiny, worship God!”
But at the sound of the voice Regan was cold with awe; it was but the
voice, more beautiful, of his earthly friend, that feeble, maimed,
disappointed, dying old man, who only of all the Earth had found Regan
to be most kind, most true. That one who had died stood here now, a
thing to reverence, not asking aid. But Regan remembered him still as a
friend, forgot not those promises made on Earth, called on the man
although he beheld the angel:
“Gregg Dempster, it is our star now! We both are here! You receive the
reward of your long labor, the fruition of your abiding faith! I stood
beside you until you came here! Let me go back to Earth!”
“Leave your star! It is your kingdom! It shall be yet more lovely and
more pleasant!”
“The beauty torments me! Let me go to Earth! The woman I love is there!
Her name is Rondah!”
“Yes, her name was Rondah!” said the voice of his friend once more. “How
do you hope to return, Regan?”
“There was a hermit, blind, feeble, dying. I was his friend. There is an
angel, powerful, kind—he will be my friend!” answered Regan. “You, who
are like a God, can create!”
“Oh! torturing mortal, cease! Man of earth, I cannot create! If only I
could!”
“Yet a higher Power!” whispered Regan. “If there were a God, it would be
like this! Is there then something still withheld that an angel longs
for?” he asked.
“In this star, yes—not in the later heavens! On Earth I prayed for
another life; now I am living it! I can only govern something already
created!”
“Harness a satellite!” said Regan.
“What if I unbalance the poising of the universe, bring suns and stars
clashing into chaos?”
“Still I must go! I can see her before they fall!”
“Regan, think! No more should Rondah be a fair young girl! Those earthly
faces have changed! They are dead, some of those on Earth!”
“Rondah is not dead!”
“She may be old, bent, wrinkled, uncomely!”
“For all that I must go back! She is my love! Do you know what I know?
She was never beautiful! Her brown eyes were heavy with fatigue, her
pale face almost always dull, her hair coarse, her gnarled hands, even
then, marred by toil from which she must not rest! Now, she is old,
cheerless and broken-hearted! She thinks me dead! I doubt if she can
smile! Poverty has followed her all her life! Care has weighed upon her!
Loneliness has dwarfed her intellect! Ignorance has kept her very
silent!
“Once, when I was a desperate, ragged vagabond, she came to my side and
whispered: ‘Do not be utterly discouraged, Regan! You are different from
the others, greater than those who despise you!’ Later, when all men
shunned me, when they complained that my name disgraced their country,
she said: ‘Regan, so long as I live you have always a friend! I am poor,
but I am one in the world!’ Now, I want her here to share my throne! I
want her here that I may give her a world!”
“Foolish man,” said the angel, “I am very sorry for you! The whole star
is yours; for this one woman will you leave it, lay down your mission
for which, of the race of men, you were particularly born? For a woman a
world! For love a kingdom! For a remembered sentiment of Earth the
substantial honor of a gift from gods!”
“All for her!” answered Regan.
“Will you return, take up age, toil of Earth, die?—most horrible of all,
to die!”
“Death is the most surpassing mercy of the life of man! Nothing is so
dreadful as to live on forever!” answered Regan. “On Earth I can die!
Remember Earth enough to pity human grief! Answer humanity with human
gratitude! Let me go!”
“I will take you back to Rondah, Regan! If you do not understand,
remember Rondah was also a friend to a desolate old hermit, who lived
alone in a comfortless hut in the lonely hills! In ten days, be ready!”
He was gone like a vanished flash of light.
“It was my friend, that grand angel of superhuman power! Why is he here?
It is the one great purpose and prayer of a life brought beyond the
grave! He whom I thought a helpless, feeble old man, whom I pitied for
his weakness, forgot between times, the same that I saw lying dead, cold
and still upon his shabby bed, he came here before me! This star he has
shared with me! If there is a heaven, his Sun Island is a piece of it;
’tis blest with the security of a heaven! Do these things chance? Can
Destiny be blind, be driven, blunder on such successes? Can these
rulings be a part of stupendous chaos? Can nothingness do all things? Am
I, are these rocks, do I live? Oh! if I could believe in that God of
Father Renaudin! Alas! there is no God! But if there were one, infinite,
loving, He would do this!”
CHAPTER XII.
THE HEADLESS MEN.
It was now more than twenty years since Regan had cast the bodies of the
headless bird men into a deep chasm.
He looked up to see the sunrise after his angel friend had left him, and
behold! those unfortunate victims of experiment were coming like ghastly
shadows, falteringly, down the hill over which was the glory of dawn.
With their heads in their arms, they stumbled along.
Regan, for an instant, would have fled, but he stopped himself. Should a
monarch run away from his own experiment? He defiantly waited the coming
of the specimens of his mercilessness, with horror of their reproaches.
They came close to him. He saw that the heads were also living, separate
from the bodies!
From the bodies, as they had lain upon the ground, had sprouted little
heads, which had not grown, as they should, upon the neck. The
many-headed creatures seemed all alive; they stood, complaining that
they had not been able to find their own heads!
It was one thing to call them “vegetables.” It was another thing to have
vegetables with souls stand, asking a man to undo the wrong he had
committed, but could never repair!
Regan looked at them, helplessly; they seemed a group of heads—heads,
nothing but heads and eyes!
He fell down, insensible!
He did not open his eyes again until the noonday sun was blazing down.
They were still standing, headless, waiting! Regan staggered to his
feet. Through all his cruelty, through all their miserable years, they
had yet faith, strong and perfect faith, that this man, their king,
would and could restore them to their old life! And Regan knew he could
do nothing!
All the land and sea and air began to burn in a transparent glory. The
sun itself was lost in a greater splendor. Dim, golden forms in
tremulous radiance moved ceaselessly. Vibrating chords of a transcendent
song came thrilling all the space. Beyond this miracle of whitening
glory, swept along in a chariot of purple and gold, was a great dim
gate, rising as one dark cloud rises beyond a misty white one. Through
these moving portals was a glimpse of a bewildering vision which made
the star seem dark! So rise the God-lit heights of Heaven beyond the
gates of pearl!
Yet Regan knew this was not Heaven. No; it was only a translation from
the star to some greater glory. There were winged angels indistinctly
flitting.
Regan saw hundreds of thousands of his bird subjects rise, until they
seemed all to go. He feared there would be none left. Turning from him
with songs of rapture, they rose into angels before his very eyes, as
birds flying in flocks from a shady forest come into a sunshine of
yellow light.
For hours the bewildering sight continued, engrossing his entire
attention. Then the forms began to recede. First, he could not see the
gate. Then the angels seemed only like stars. Then there was nothing but
a cold blue sky after sunset.
Where he had seen flakes of brightness loosed from the throne, he looked
at a dull, common sky, giving no hint of the sphere beyond.
He saw nothing. But they had been there. Where had they gone?
He gazed about to see if any of his bird people were left.
He had forgotten. They stood there yet, waiting, those terrible headless
men! The assembled multitudes had looked upon the result of his
experiment!
“Go away! go away!” shrieked Regan.
The revulsion of feeling was awful. He had been looking at the glory
astray from Heaven. He looked on deepest human misery. He had not only
spoiled more than twenty years of their existence—he had kept them back
from translation!
“Go away!” he repeated, wildly. “What if Rondah should ever see these
men!”
“We have waited over twenty years!” insisted the speaking heads.
Then Regan controlled himself and tried to imagine what he should do; he
could think of nothing, nothing, unless he imprisoned them once more.
A footstep was heard beside him. It was Isabella.
“Oh! my sister, see them! They are here! I cannot save them! They will
not go! What shall I do? The worst of all is they have the idea that I
can save them!”
Regan was utterly confounded, hopeless.
“Thank God they live!” cried Isabella. “They are not dead!”
“I wish they were! Look at the heads!”
“All mixed up!” said Isabella, with a philosophical acceptance of the
inevitable. “Regan, we will encase them in the pods and the heads will
graft themselves to their proper places!”
So this was what they did. They corrected the misappropriation of heads,
set them on the necks and sewed the ten bird men securely into ten empty
pods.
“They will emerge at blossoming time with their troubles ended! I hope
you will not experiment again!”
Regan said nothing. She had not seen the vision; she did not mention it.
He left his sister and went to ponder upon his eventful day.
Isabella, as soon as she was alone, proceeded to experiment on her own
account. Gathering the little heads which had been severed from the
bodies she put each one into a pod.
“Whatever they may come to I do not know,” she said to herself; “but I
will not help to kill anything! I don’t want deathless heads rolling
about this bewitched planet after me!”
CHAPTER XIII.
CAN WE GO BACK?
Roy and Isabella were watching the Earth rise, when Regan, having
assured himself of his powerful friend’s assistance, came to tell them
of their leaving the star.
He pitied their homesickness. It was he who had robbed them of a life’s
happiness. There had been no particular gift to them from the star.
They could see the continents now upon the world.
“Would you like to go back, Roy?”
Roy did not answer. The whisper which never left him held him from
replying; he only looked sharply at Regan and listened to the words,
“Duped, duped!” in his own ear. Isabella answered:
“Would we return? Oh! gladly, yes! A world in possession does not make a
woman happy! How tired I am of these rainbow seas! I wish I could look
at still blue water! How tired I am of these flying people! I wish I
could see Rondah’s old grandmother hobble by with her crutch! I am
disgusted with the possession of gold and silver and glass—of wealth and
station where these things are worth nothing! I am smothered in these
low clouds, in the hot breath of this uncooled planet! Regan, you do not
jest? We can go back?”
“Yes; we shall go back to-morrow!”
Next morning a huge meteorite, a mile in circumference, hung, enveloped
in a heavy cloud, above the surface of the star.
Father Renaudin would not return. He could not leave his people and his
cathedrals. He gave orders for several sacred books, which Regan was to
procure for him if he could do so.
“My place on the Earth is gone from me,” he said. “God is most kind. He
gave to me a small sphere and more time. I shall belt this star with one
holy faith.”
Isabella wondered that he was more pleased with his distracting
congregations of elf men without much understanding than with all the
assemblages of grand, sinless bird men.
“He thinks he can improve the little sinful elves,” said Roy. “It gives
him something to preach to!”
The world was nearing. The meteorite must be launched. With tears,
Isabella bade Father Renaudin an everlasting farewell.
“We shall not meet even in Heaven, for you will not get there for ages!”
she sobbed.
But the angel folded them away and they whirled out into space.
“Father Renaudin must not return!” said the angel. “He has lived long
past his allotted days. He is a dead man on the Earth!”
They flew much swifter than Earth or star. They swung into the clouds of
a storm on Earth and, in a moment, were upon the height where they had
been thirty-three years and four months before.
“Look!” cried Isabella.
The two looked at the angel. In the storm, dark on the Hermit’s Hill,
there stood no angel! A bent, feeble, blind old man was there!
Gregg Dempster!
“Two days to find Rondah!” he said to Regan. “Isabella, Roy, farewell!
Be happy on Earth! Know the star was never for you! The star is for
Rondah!”
CHAPTER XIV.
“HE HAS DONE THIS!”
Where was Rondah?
All these years she had remained in one place. Her grandmother died and
Rondah fell heir to the home and the hidden stores of wealth which only
she knew about. She had been so fortunate as to be left to enjoy these
treasures in her own way. She cared for but few things in life. Her hope
was in a star, lost to view somewhere on high. Flowers and sun were her
treasures. Silver and gold were piled in her cabinets. Brocades and
velvets and laces and jewels were hers, her possession of which no one
knew. She had no friend save her hope. Around her, her girl
acquaintances grew old and left her. Rondah saw that no change of age
came upon her. As years rolled on she realized that some unnatural
influence was keeping her face the face of a child. By the work of years
she should be gray-haired and wrinkled.
“If it is so that the star comes back, Regan will come for me! I know he
will come! I know he will come!”
As it came evening time in the last year, Rondah grew impatient with
suspense and longing. Those who noticed her at all, said:
“Rondah watches for the Hermit’s star. She does not know that it will
not strike in the same place this time!”
But they were gentle people. No one cared to tell Rondah this.
One night, when storm-clouds had been darkening the sky, Rondah, waiting
with a tumult of fear and hope which made her heart beat like a hammer,
mused sadly by her fire. It was splendid about her, but it was lonely
splendor.
“If he does not come,” said Rondah, talking to the fire, “I shall die
after this! I shall die the sad death of a child! No one will remember
that I have lived a woman’s life, suffered a woman’s heart-break, earned
a woman’s honor! No hairs are gray upon my head to crown it; when I lay
it down in a coffin the people will very soon forget me! Sometimes I
seem a mysterious monster to myself! Why do I not grow old like other
people, if it is not for the star?”
She thought and thought until she could remain quiet no longer. Looking
out she saw that the storm-clouds were piled in banks, aside, and that
the sun was trying to break through them.
“In two days more, only two days, after all these years, and then I
shall know! I cannot rest! What if it should not come? Regan! Regan! It
is so many years!”
She threw a mantle of gold and crimson around her, wrapped a soft pink
scarf about her head, and went out in the cool evening.
She took her usual route to the hill. She felt hurried and anxious. She
thought she should see the star.
Now, her eyes took back their startled look, her face grew pale.
She saw a dark form in the path before her. She stopped; her heart beat
swiftly. It was not time. She must not be deceived—a shock would lose
her reason. It looked like Regan!
She went forward steadily, with dilating eyes. She did not know that in
the whole world there was no one else so beautiful as was she, as she
hastened to meet the man in the path, standing under the very tree where
she had so often seen Regan waiting for her.
Rondah scarcely breathed. She saw the man lean forward and gaze at her
with a close scrutiny. The man’s face was plainly seen in the glow of
orange light which was after sunset.
That man was Regan!
The vales heard a wild cry—the town heard it—a cry of joy from this
heart, loveless for all of a lifetime save for love from another world!
“Regan! Regan! you have come! I knew you would come! I knew you would
come!”
Regan had made himself believe that he should find something so
different! What could explain matters to him? He knew that it was
Rondah, young, splendidly appareled, bewilderingly beautiful, but the
same Rondah, the same Rondah! To mysteries he was accustomed.
“Rondah! My own Rondah!” he cried and clasped her in his arms once more.
“There is a God, such a thinking, loving world-mover as Father Renaudin
preaches! Nothing that blunders could bring such joy as this to the
heart of man! There is a God who rules over all! Rondah, we are again
united! He has done this!”
The darkness of the storm-cloud swept upon them. Their chariot of rock
and their angel guide were there. It was time to go.
“Rondah, you are leaving the Earth forever! Look back, look back! Are
there loved ones there to leave?”
“No! My loves have been in a different Sphere!” said Rondah, and she
laughed the happy, careless laugh of a child. “Where is the star?” asked
she.
Then they saw it, serenely sailing far off in the blue.
“It is our home, Regan!” said Rondah.
“It is a world, a little kingdom!” answered Regan.
“Our home! The long, long years! I thought they would never end! This
time I thought it would never come!”
“How came you to be so gloriously beautiful, Rondah?”
“I do not know! It was hope in your coming, I think!”
“It was the blessing of a hermit, who has become an angel!” said the
angel-man. “Rondah on Earth was robbed of many blessings. I could bless
her life with one chief happiness. I chose beauty. Regan, did I choose
rightly?”
“Oh! marvelously right! The angels will stop to look upon her face when
comes the next translation!”
“Are there people in the star?”
“Father Renaudin is there! He waits for us!”
“There are no other humankind?”
“Only bird people with wings.”
“I shall be as wise in my dullness as any in the star!” said Rondah,
joyfully.
“Yes!” Regan knew the clog of her dullness had been a life-long torture
to her. She would be no more humiliated and pained with her dullness
there. Where the brilliant Isabella had been so utterly miserable, this
woman in content would be a happy, happy wife!
“There is our star! Do you see the multitudes, hear their song of
welcome? Do you see them rise in flocks?”
“A grand world! Our world, Regan!”
“What will you name it, Rondah? I have never named it! I waited for you
to come!”
Wreathed in flowers, singing like silver bells, the crowds rose toward
them. White the walls and domes glistened on the green plain by the
seaside below.
“Our world forever! I will call it,” said Rondah, “Parzelia!”
END OF THE FURTHER HISTORY.
PART IV.
RONDAH’S STAR, “PARZELIA.”