“NOT RONDAH, WHO HAS NO STRENGTH!”
The great storm when the star turned, the accompanying disaster, the
horror of convulsion, the sunless years—these were troubles which Regan
wished he could avert. With Rondah he often wondered whether they might
not spend the winter in the Sun Island.
In dreamy luxury the months and years passed on. Rondah was happy and
took no note of time; it was for cycles, no need to measure it by hours,
no death ahead. Regan was busy with great schemes. With the ideas of his
mammoth earth built upon the little star turned into realities, the
planet became a paradise of beauty.
Deputations were sent around the length of the continent to found cities
on the broad inland plains and have dwellings prepared for the time when
there should be no more winter. These colonists knew that the winter
sleep would separate them entirely from each other, but they cared
nothing for that. It was no more than that two forests were miles apart.
Their somnolence was with the whole star, a part of it. The bird people,
now engrossed with and ambitious for Regan’s plan of improvement and
commerce, coined gold into beautiful, shiny, clinking money, and were
sorry that they must leave the pleasant occupation and desist from their
architectural amusements until Jupiter dawned. They had no other dread
of their winter sleep.
Among other experiments, they set several thousand small and crowded
pods into a new and fertile field. They saw that the withering or
uprooting of one of these destroyed its vitality, and the backwardness
meant a thirty-three years’ sleep for its occupant.
One thought would not leave Rondah—to reach the Sun Island. The bird
people refused to go there. According to her designs and instructions
were constructed several various locomotives of a kind intended first to
sail in the air and later to crawl in the sea. But none of them were
successfully used. The channel at one point was almost bridged by a lava
ledge, but not entirely so, and the water was boiling in the strait.
Summer passed. The star turned. Tumult of earthquake, flood and tornado
was all over the land for days as before. But the surface was now much
more stable; the houses were constructed with reference to these things;
they were in the centre of the continental plains, not directly on the
shore. There was no great damage done.
The planet receded from the sun into the colder distance; the autumn
haze settled for years upon its peaked hills; the leaves changed hue for
all that long time; the sea grew cold and steely; the sun faded and
diminished.
“How will you endure the long winter?” said Regan to Rondah.
“I do not mind the darkness.”
“You do not know what it is yet!”
Ah, Regan, not from seas and their snows, not from darkness and its
despair comes the danger which is so great that even now you feel the
horror of it upon your heart! Look otherwhere than at the purpling sky;
look away from the barren and desolate mountains. It is not there, it is
not there!
Rondah was walking in the noonday light through the paths beside the
lake. The wind soughed through the leafless boughs above her; the light
had the color of a partial eclipse; the leaves rustled as she walked
among them; they recalled the rustling leaves of that oak-shadowed path
which was on Earth. Rondah wondered if it were there yet.
Lifting her eyes, she saw a dark form moving swiftly across the cliffs
upon the very summit of a distant mountain.
She wondered at first who it was. Then she remembered it could be only
Regan. How very fast he was moving over the difficult path. How he could
have reached that distance and elevation in the short time since she
left him Rondah could not think.
She turned in the path; when she came again where she could see the
cliffs, he was not there.
When she entered the palace, Regan was reading in the library. A new
supply of the works of the bird people had just been sent in from the
printing establishment and Regan was delighted with some of the
productions.
“Look at these books, Rondah. Here is one in particular which is
remarkable.”
He placed the book in Rondah’s hand.
“How long,” said Rondah, “have you been back?”
“I have not been out to-day!”
Rondah opened the book slowly, thinking, but, when she had thought, the
red and gold volume fell from her nerveless hands; she sank upon a couch
before the hearth and looked at the floor.
“Were not you on the cliff?”
“I? Certainly not!”
“Some one was there—a man! I thought it was you!”
“A man or a bird man?”
“A man!” replied Rondah.
This was his danger; Regan knew now. There was everything to fear from
another man—insurrection of the elf men, helplessness of sleep, horror
of war, confusion of conflicting power. An enemy! Powerful, else he
would never be able to endure the star! Wily, else he had never been
able to reach the star! He could see those hideous troops of traitorous
elf men, roused to any pitch of enthusiasm by a few human words, ranging
in red lines over the cold snow like streaks of human blood! Oh! all
misfortune he foresaw in that moment’s realization, but he foresaw
nothing like the true one!
No death, no death, no death on the star! If his enemy were there, he
was there forever!
“Possibly it was Father Renaudin. I will see him.”
Regan’s voice sounded strangely.
“What can he do, Regan?—the man!”
“I cannot tell.”
They found Father Renaudin, meditating in the blue, silver and crimson
radiance of his own great rooms. He was in possession of a large wing,
where the rooms had been given up entirely to his use.
When he looked up and saw them, he smiled with the pleasure of an
indulgent and idolizing parent, who contemplates a couple of beautiful
children.
Regan wore always the half-Greek costume, tunic and cloak, which he had
adopted upon coming to the star. He had a suit of dark green, the
sleeves gold-slashed, the belts and clasps of gold and gems. His shoes
were yellow leather, tied with long, gold-decked strings wound about
scarlet hose.
Rondah wore a long, loose robe of rose color, belted with a bow of
gemmed stars. A wide collar of gems was on her shoulders, and a gemmed
coronet held the braided bands of her shining hair. Her arms were hidden
under a network of jewels, which covered a close, long sleeve of rose
color.
“How beautiful, young and strong they are!” thought Father Renaudin.
He wondered that Rondah found never-ceasing delight in the lonely pomp
and splendor of her position, wondered that the careless adoration of
the bird people as well pleased her as if it were the thoughtful
allegiance of humanity.
He noticed Regan’s face, pallid and stern, that old fury in his eyes
once more.
He sprang to his feet. Better than any other human being Father Renaudin
knew the depths of slumbering, chained depravity in Regan’s soul, knew
his destructive power when his rage was kindled, his heartlessness
unlimited when he chose to become a tyrant.
Always he was fearing that, for some aggravating cause, Regan would
destroy the people, if not the star, before the time of Jupiter’s reign
began.
“Father Renaudin—Father Renaudin!”
No more words than these could he speak; leaning against one of the
pillars, he waited to control himself.
“Was it for the presence of the other man?” Rondah thought. “It must be,
but why was he so disturbed?” Then she said aloud: “I saw a man walking
on the cliffs; was it you, Father Renaudin? Oh, was it not you?”
With a cry, Father Renaudin started to his feet, speechless; he shook
his head at them, looking with terrified gaze from an ashen, livid face.
Then he clasped his hands to his eyes.
“Not this, oh, God, not this! Not Rondah, not Rondah, who has no
strength!”
His utterance was slow and stifled; he fell senseless upon the floor.
Cold yet from horror, Regan raised him to the couch and, fearing the
words of his return to consciousness, he sent Rondah into another
apartment.
When, after some time, Father Renaudin recovered, he looked where she
had stood, and, finding her gone, said to Regan:
“Never, never leave her! Watch! A doom is upon her! Oh, there are no
prayers of mine, or deeds of yours which can avert it! Only do not leave
her! To reveal more I am forbidden!”
If it had not been that it was impossible, Regan would have killed him
for those last words; but he knew it could not be done. Smothering his
futile anger, he turned his dreadful eyes away, with curses of mad rage
in his heart because his teacher was so fanatically given to mysteries
and silence; he asked quietly:
“Was it Gregg Dempster who stood on the cliff?”
“No! Gregg Dempster has been removed to another sphere, years removed!
His influence, too, is gone! We must hope for no further help from him!
As humanity fights, we must fight out our own fate! No! It was not Gregg
Dempster who stood on the cliff!”