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!”