The hope which stood high in John Sheldon’s breast was short lived.
There was that one cry, undoubtedly Paula’s, then only the silence
broken by Sheldon’s crashing through the bushes. Now and then when he
stopped to listen he heard only his own heavy breathing.
But he pushed on, deeper into the woods. Her voice had floated to him
clearly; she could not be very far away, and he knew the general
direction. But when he came at last to the foot of the mountain where
there were long lines of low cliffs he had found nothing. And, although
he did not give up as the hours passed and the sun turned toward the
west, his search went unrewarded.
He went back and forth along the base of the cliffs, fearing that she
had fallen, that that scream had been whipped from her as she plunged
over a precipice. He breathed more easily when he could be assured that
this was not the case. After a while he even called out to her, crying
“Paula! Where are you? I won’t hurt you.” But there was no answer.
Why had she cried out like that? One suspicion came early and naturally.
Perhaps to draw him away from the cabin so that she or the madman could
slip back to it. He had retraced his steps when the thought came to him,
running. But as before there was no sign that another than himself had
recently visited the house.
Late in the afternoon great black thunder clouds began to gather upon
the mountain tops. They billowed up with the wind-driven swiftness of a
summer storm, piling higher and higher until the sky was blotted out.
A peal of thunder, another—deep rumbles reverberating threateningly. A
drop of rain splashed against his hand. He could hear the big drops
pelting through the leaves of the trees; scattering drops kicked up
little puffs of dust in dry, bare spaces. A forked tongue of lightning
thrust into the bowels of the thick massed clouds seemed to rip them
open. The rain came down in a mighty downpour. The rumble of the thunder
was like the ominous growl of ten thousand hungering beasts.
The lightning stabbed again and again, the skies bellowed mightily, the
forest shivered and moaned like a frightened thing under the hissing
impact of the sudden wind. The dry ground drank the water thirstily, but
even so, little rivulets and pools began to form everywhere. The rain,
like a thick veil blown about by the wind, hid the mountains or gave
brief views of them. For fifteen minutes the storm filled sky and forest
noisily. Then it passed after the way of summer showers, and Sheldon
came out from the makeshift shelter of a densely foliaged tree.
He was a mile or more from Johnny’s Luck. The storm over, he turned back
on his trail again, determined to gain the cabin before the daylight was
gone, to wait there again for those for whom it was futile to search.
Then the second time, unexpectedly, he heard Paula’s voice calling.
“Where are you?” it cried. “Oh, where are you?”
He stepped out of the trail, slipping behind a giant pine. She could not
be a hundred yards away; he thought that she was coming on toward him,
that she was running.
The world was filled with a strange light from the lowering sun shining
through the wet air, a light which shone warmly like gold, which seemed
to throb and quiver and thrill as it lay over the forest. It gave to
grass and tree a new, vivid green, a yellow flower looked like a burning
flame. Out of a fringe of trees into a wide open space Paula came.
She came on, running with her own inimitable, graceful swiftness, until
she was not a score of paces from him. Here she stopped abruptly,
looking this way and that eagerly, listening. Sheldon, his heart
hammering from his own eagerness, stood still. If she came a little
nearer—
“Where are you?” she called again. “Man from the world outside, where
are you?”
Sheldon stared in amazement. She was calling him, she was seeking him,
running to him!
Before he could answer, her quick eyes had found him out. With a strange
look in them which he could not fathom, she ran to him. She was in the
grip of some emotion so strong that she was no longer afraid of him, so
that she laid her hand for the fraction of a second upon his arm as she
cried brokenly:
“Come! Come quickly!”
“What is it?” he demanded, wondering. “What do you want? What is the
matter?”
“You must help him,” she answered swiftly. “He says to bring you. But
you must hurry. Run!”
Again she had touched him, was tugging at his sleeve. He looked at her
curiously, even suspiciously, not unmindful of the bear-pit of this
morning. But her eyes were wide with alarm not inspired by him, alarm
too sincere to be mistrusted. Since all things are possible, it might be
that the madman had sent her to lure Sheldon into some further danger.
But there was only one way to know.
“Go on,” he said crisply. “I’m with you.”
She turned then and sped back the way she had come, Sheldon running at
her heels, she turning her head now and then, accommodating her pace to
his. This way and that they wove their way through the forest. In a
little they were again under the cliffs standing upon the eastern rim of
the valley. In the open now, he carried his rifle in two hands, ready.
But here at least was no trap set for him. Paula, running on ahead of
him, now suddenly had dropped to her knees, and for the first time
Sheldon saw the prone body of the madman. The girl had taken his head
into her lap and was bending over him; the gaunt, hollow, burning eyes
blazed full at Sheldon. And they were filled with malice, with lurking
cunning, with suspicion, and unutterable hatred. But the man made no
effort to rise. Sheldon came on until he stood over him.
“He fell from the cliffs?” he asked, looking down for a second into the
eyes of Paula which, filled with anguish, were turned up to him.
She sought to answer, but her voice broke; she choked up and could only
shake her head. He looked away from her to the head resting in her lap.
There was reason enough for the dread in Paula’s breast; the man was
dying!
“Tell me,” said Sheldon softly, “can I do anything for you? Is there any
way I can help you?”
The burning eyes narrowed. The old man lifted a shaking hand and pushed
the tangled beard away from his lips.
“Curse you!” he panted. “Why are you here?”
“Why, father!” cried Paula. “You told me to bring him!”
“Him?” It was a mutter, deep in the throat, labored and harsh. “You were
to get a doctor, girl! This man is a thief, like the others. He comes to
steal our fortune from us.”
Both bewilderment and terror stared out of the girl’s eyes. Her hand on
the old man’s brow drew the matted hair back, smoothed and smoothed the
hot skin.
Fully realizing the futility of seeking to reason with unreason,
nevertheless Sheldon said gently: “I didn’t come to steal anything. I
was just loafing through the country, got lost, and came here.”
“Liar!” scoffed the other. “I know what you want. But you can’t have it;
it is my secret!”
“But, Father,” pleaded Paula, her lips trembling, “why did you send me
for him if he—”
“Mr. Hamilton,” began Sheldon.
The old man frowned.
“Hamilton?” he muttered. “Who is Hamilton? Where is Hamilton?”
“You are,” said Sheldon stoutly. “Don’t you remember? Charles Francis
Hamilton, professor of entomology in Brownell University?”
“Brownell University?” There came a thoughtful pause. “Yes; of course. I
am Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., M.D., professor of entomology. Who
said that I wasn’t?”
“Then, Dr. Hamilton, you ought to be able to tell by looking at me,” and
Sheldon grinned reassuringly, “that I am no scientist! I don’t know the
difference between a bug and an insect; I swear I don’t! I’m just a
mining engineer out of a job and down on the rocks.”
“Then,” querulously, “you didn’t come looking for—”
“For the _Parnassius Aureus Giganticus_?” smiled Sheldon. “No. And
though you may not believe it, I don’t come looking for gold either!”
His words had a strange, unlooked-for effect. He had hoped that they
might a little dispel suspicion. Instead, the madman jerked away from
Paula’s hands, sought to spring to his feet, and achieved a position
half-kneeling, half-squatting, his whole body shaken, a wild fury in his
eyes.
“My _Parnassius_!” he shrieked. “My _Parnassius_! He comes to steal it
away from me; it and my immortality with it! Curse him and curse him and
curse him! He knows; he has stolen my secret. He says ‘_Parnassius
Aureus Giganticus_’! He knows its name, the name I have given it. He
says ‘Gold!’ He knows that the _Parnassius_ is to be found only where
the mother lode of the world is bared! That there is a little invisible
mist, a vapory elixir, which rises from gold in the sun, and that my
_Parnassius_ lives upon it, drinks it in, and that that is why it is
immortal! He knows; curse him, he knows, he knows!”
He was raging, wildly; his words came in a tumbled fury of sound like
the fall of waters down a rocky cliff; his body grew tense to the last
muscle, and then shook again as with an ague. Paula, upon her feet now,
her hands clasped in a mute agony of suspense, turned frightened eyes
from him to Sheldon.
Slowly the wreck that was Charles Francis Hamilton, one time man of
scientific note, straightened up; the tall, gaunt form, swaying
dangerously, stood erect. A terribly attenuated arm was flung up, then
the forearm drawn across the brow as though with the motion which pushed
back the streaming white hair he would clear the burning brain too.
Then, just as Sheldon was prepared for a mad attack of the pitifully
broken figure, the pale lips parted to a cry such as he had never in all
his life heard. It was a cry of pure triumph; the voice was wonderfully
clear now and went ringing through the silence like a bell’s tinkling
notes. The eyes, too, were clear, bright as before, but now triumphant,
like the voice, untroubled, filled with the sheer ecstasy of perfect
gladness.
“Look!” cried the madman. “It is the Golden Emperor of Infinity! Look!
He is coming—to _me_!”
Erect, he no longer swayed. The long right arm thrown out, pointed
toward the western sky and was rigid, unshaken. For the moment the
figure was dominant, masterful; the gesture demanded and received
obedience. In his final moment, Charles Francis Hamilton stood clothed
in conscious power, unshaken in a great faith—triumphant. There was no
other word for him then.
“Look!” cried the madman.
But was he mad?
For both Paula and John Sheldon turned and looked—and saw what the old
man saw. There in the strange, weird light in the west, clear against
the sky, were a great pair of wings flashing like pure beaten gold, as a
graceful, speeding body described a long, sweeping curve, seemed for a
moment to be dropping below the mountain-tops, then rose, climbing
higher and higher.
Higher and higher—until it was gone, until, as the wide wings trembled
in the vault of the clearing heavens, John Sheldon saw that they were no
longer beaten gold, but just the feathered wings of a great eagle,
metamorphosed for an instant by a trick of sun.
But it was gone. Gone with it the soul of a madman. Without a cry, his
old lips forming into a smile indescribably sweet, his eyes still bright
with victory, he stooped, stooped farther, his legs weakened under him,
he settled down, rested a moment, fell backward. His Golden Emperor of
the Infinite had borne away upon its golden wings the soul which craved
and now won—immortality!
* * * * *
“He is dead!” said Paula lifelessly. “He is dead!”
More moved than he had thought to be, Sheldon knelt by the quiet body.
The fretful pulse was still, the tired heart was at rest, the
fever-ridden brain slept.
“Yes,” he said quietly as, kneeling, he removed his hat and looked up
pityingly into Paula’s set face. “He is dead. Poor little Paula!”
She stared at him with her eyes widening in eloquent expression of the
new emotions in her breast. She stood very still, her hands clasped as
they had been when the old man rose to his feet. Her brown fingers were
slowly going white from their own steady pressure. Sheldon could only
wonder gropingly what this tragedy would mean to her. Other girls had
lost fathers before now; but when had a girl lost every one she knew in
the world as Paula had lost now?
There was nothing for Sheldon to say, so he remained a little kneeling,
his head bowed in spontaneous reverence, waiting for the burst of tears
from her which would slacken the tense nerves. But it did not come.
Presently Paula drew nearer, knelt like Sheldon, put her two warm hands
upon the cold forehead. Sheldon saw a shiver run through her. She drew
back with a sharp cry.
“Dead!” she whispered. “Dead!”
“Poor little Paula,” he said again in his heart. Aloud he said nothing.
After a while he got to his feet and went away from her, dabbing at his
own eyes as he went, grumbling under his breath. He wanted to take her
into his arms—as he did the twins, Bill and Bet—to hold her close and
let her cry, and pat her shoulder and say, “There, there!” There was
much of kindness and gentleness and sympathy under the rough outside
shell of John Sheldon, and it went out unstintedly to a slip of a girl
who was alone as no other girl in all the world.
When he came back she was sitting very still, her hand patting softly
one of the cold, lifeless hands. She looked up curiously, speaking in a
quiet whisper:
“He will never wake up?”
“Not in this world,” answered Sheldon gently. “But maybe the soul of him
is already awake in another world.”
“Where the Golden Butterfly went?” whispered Paula.
“You saw it?”
“Yes. With beautiful wings all of gold. Father knew it was like that.
Has his soul gone away with it? Up and up and beyond the clouds and
through the sky and to the other world?”
And John Sheldon answered simply, saying:
“Yes, my dear.”
Paula was very still again, her eyes thoughtful.
“What will we do with—him?” she asked after a long silence, the first
hint of tears in her eyes.
Then he told her, explaining as he would to Bill and Bet, as one talks
with a credulous child, hiding those things upon which man is so prone
to look as horrible, showing as best he knew that there is beauty in
death. He spoke softly, very gently with her, and her eyes, lifted to
him, might have been those of little Bet.
“You will get flowers for him,” he said at the end. “Hundreds and
hundreds of flowers. You will put them all about him; we will make him a
pretty, soft bed of them; we will cover him with them. And every year,
in the spring, other flowers will grow here and blossom and drop their
leaves on his place. And—and, little Paula, maybe he will be watching
you and smiling at you and happy—”
It spite of him his voice grew hoarse. Paula sat now with her face
hidden in her crossed arms. He could see a tear splash to her knee.
* * * * *
When the sun rose after the long night it shone upon a great mound of
field flowers hiding a lesser mound of newly turned earth, and upon a
golden-brown maiden lying face down in the grass, sobbing—and upon a new
John Sheldon.
For into his life had come one of those responsibilities which make men
over and, together with the responsibility, a tumult of emotions born no
longer ago than the dewdrops which the morning had hung upon the grass.