Rondah; or, thirty-three years in a star

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.

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!”

“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!”

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!”

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!”

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!”

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!”