Chapter XIX: “he Is Not Here!”

As she stepped from the car, Rondah heard a chill, queer laugh. She glanced at the stranger. Was it he? He stood beside the car and was looking at her with a singular expression, half triumph, half intense apprehension.

As Rondah, looking at him, began to realize that he had brought her to the island and left Regan outside, the man touched the car. Its sails expanded. It flew away; striking the wall in the air, it fell a mass of cloth and fragments.

“It has returned—the wall,” said the man, composedly.

“Where is Regan? He is not here!”

“He waits outside the wall, I suppose! We were a little late!”

“Go after him!”

“I cannot go!”

Rondah fled toward the sea, only to be stopped by the invisible barrier. She ran aimlessly and helplessly about, sobbing and shrieking until she was worn out. Then she sank upon a bank and looked about her. Tossing her red hair from her face, she struck her gemmed coronet and it fell upon the rocks, where it looked like a piece of brass on the jewel-like surface of the Sun Island.

The amazing splendor almost blinded Rondah’s weeping eyes. The cliffs were of garnet and of yellow amber. They rose out of sight in the serene, changeless radiance. The canopy of clouds above the island was one sheen of rainbow hue.

The rock surface of the Sun Island was of the dazzling color and radiance of most brilliant polished sea shell. Spots of pink, blue, green and shades of emerald, gold, bronze, carmine and rose, chocolate-brown, dull yellow and purple—all these hues were so mingled as to produce an exquisite harmony.

In the deep ravines of the great riven cliffs there were forests of silver-bodied trees, whose leaves seemed metallic. They shone like diamonds and tinkled like glass. The shadow of their foliage was a pinkish hue, and the grass of the valleys was like the white waxen petals of the tuberose.

Beds of roses and lilies were in large banks and on mountain sides; there were other jewel-like blooms everywhere. The rivulets of liquid pearl flowed ’neath banks shadowed by silken reeds, which swayed like stray moonlight lost in the fields.

In the air was a musical thrill, which made a continual chord of harmony around her.

The stranger seemed gone. At least, he was nowhere to be seen.

Under the shadow of the magnificent trees Rondah sat to rest, and there was nothing in the whole heavenly sight which could even calm her grief. The island was beautiful, but Regan was not there!

The music of air and trees was supremely ethereal, but she was miserable because she could not hear Regan’s voice!

“Regan! Regan!” she called. “He laughed—that strange man—he laughed! I am certain! I do not believe he thought he could bring Regan here. I do not believe that Regan ever trusted him. I was so foolish as that!”

And along the paths where never woman had trod before, Rondah ran and searched, seeing nothing of the beauty, only searching for Regan.

She overlooked a valley which surpassed all dreams of beauty; beside the lakes was set a fairy-like palace built from the amber rocks, its decorations being only pillars of pale blue pearl.

Into this place she went, searching. No one was there. Upon the floors were draperies of soft gray and yellow of a queer, silky fabric. On the shelves were piled huge books, bound in the silver of the trees, written on leaves of pearl.

After turning the leaves a little, Rondah threw herself down upon the piles of gray cloth and sobbed herself to sleep, for she knew it was night outside and that Regan had returned to the fireless palace to find her gone. He was even then searching for her all through the winter snow.

She did not think that he could find her. She did not think that he would try to come to the island. A woman’s fortitude Rondah had not. She had only a child’s strength to endure her grief.

She woke to the same serene stillness, the same superb beauty, the same song in the air. She climbed to the tops of the garnet cliffs. Wild and terrible her voice rang over the island: “Regan! Regan! Regan! Regan!”

And in the day’s hours, when even outside the island all troubles were easier to bear, Rondah sat beside the books, which were so carefully stored, and, considering her strange fate, she said more calmly:

“I have made a mistake, but there is no death! I shall return to Regan after a time. He will fall into the winter’s sleep, but it will be spring soon!” and she turned the leaves of one of the books.

Glancing, she saw bewildering words; reading, she saw deep and awful meaning. Interested, she began to peruse the books, the books which Gregg Dempster had left for her. Nothing seemed omitted from their chronicles back into ages of a primeval chaos, which made “In the beginning” seem near by, back to the great cause of all causes, on through the series of destinies of human souls from where they started to Earth, from Earth to the eternal seas of ages, from realm to realm, from plane to plane, from power to power! All clear! All perfect! Mystery which troubled her all gone! Rondah read on and on.

“Possibly I was sent here to learn,” she said. “These books are wonderful!”

She laved her tear-stained face in the liquid pearl, braided her wind-blown hair into its smooth tresses, found her coronet and replaced it. Day and night passed outside the island; she consoled herself in the study of the strange, bewildering books, and read on, read on.

“It will be spring by and by,” she said, “it will be spring by and by!” and the strong peace of the Sun Island calmed her grief; her tears were dried, her heartache charmed into quiet, her loneliness was forgotten. In the pinkish shades by pearly streams, under diamond trees and ’neath a rainbow sky, she almost forgot Regan!