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!”