Chapter XVII: “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!”