The Fire Flower/Chapter 11

HE hope which stood high in John Sheldon’s breast was short lived. There was that one cry, undoubtedly Paula’s, then only the silence broken by Sheldon’s crashing through the bushes. Now and then when he stopped to listen he heard only his own heavy breathing.

But he pushed on, deeper into the woods. Her voice had floated to him clearly; she could not be very far away, and he knew the general direction. But when he came at last to the foot of the mountain where there were long lines of low cliffs he had found nothing. And, although he did not give up as the hours passed and the sun turned toward the west, his search went unrewarded.

He went back and forth along the base of the cliffs, fearing that she had fallen, that that scream had been whipped from her as she plunged over a precipice. He breathed more easily when he could be assured that this was not the case. After a while he even called out to her, crying “Paula! Where are you? I won’t hurt you.” But there was no answer.

Why had she cried out like that? One suspicion came early and naturally. Perhaps to draw him away from the cabin so that she or the madman could slip back to it. He had retraced his steps when the thought came to him, running. But as before there was no sign that another than himself had recently visited the house.

Late in the afternoon great black thunder clouds began to gather upon the mountain tops. They billowed up with the wind-driven swiftness of a summer storm, piling higher and higher until the sky was blotted out.

A peal of thunder, another—deep rumbles reverberating threateningly. A drop of rain splashed against his hand. He could hear the big drops pelting through the leaves of the trees; scattering drops kicked up little puffs of dust in dry, bare spaces. A forked tongue of lightning thrust into the bowels of the thick massed clouds seemed to rip them open. The rain came down in a mighty downpour. The rumble of the thunder was like the ominous growl of ten thousand hungering beasts.

The lightning stabbed again and again, the skies bellowed mightily, the forest shivered and moaned like a frightened thing under the hissing impact of the sudden wind. The dry ground drank the water thirstily, but even so, little rivulets and pools began to form everywhere. The rain, like a thick veil blown about by the wind, hid the mountains or gave brief views of them. For fifteen minutes the storm filled sky and forest noisily. Then it passed after the way of summer showers, and Sheldon came out from the makeshift shelter of a densely foliaged tree. He was a mile or more from Johnny’s Luck. The storm over, he turned back on his trail again, determined to gain the cabin before the daylight was gone, to wait there again for those for whom it was futile to search. Then the second time, unexpectedly, he heard Paula’s voice calling.

“Where are you?” it cried. “Oh, where are you?”

He stepped out of the trail, slipping behind a giant pine. She could not be a hundred yards away; he thought that she was coming on toward him, that she was running.

The world was filled with a strange light from the lowering sun shining through the wet air, a light which shone warmly like gold, which seemed to throb and quiver and thrill as it lay over the forest. It gave to grass and tree a new, vivid green, a yellow flower looked like a burning flame. Out of a fringe of trees into a wide open space Paula came.

She came on, running with her own inimitable, graceful swiftness, until she was not a score of paces from him. Here she stopped abruptly, looking this way and that eagerly, listening. Sheldon, his heart hammering from his own eagerness, stood still. If she came a little nearer—

“Where are you?” she called again. “Man from the world outside, where are you?”

Sheldon stared in amazement. She was calling him, she was seeking him, running to him!

Before he could answer, her quick eyes had found him out. With a strange look in them which he could not fathom, she ran to him. She was in the grip of some emotion so strong that she was no longer afraid of him, so that she laid her hand for the fraction of a second upon his arm as she cried brokenly:

“Come! Come quickly!”

“What is it?” he demanded, wondering. “What do you want? What is the matter?”

“You must help him,” she answered swiftly. “He says to bring you. But you must hurry. Run!”

Again she had touched him, was tugging at his sleeve. He looked at her curiously, even suspiciously, not unmindful of the bear-pit of this morning. But her eyes were wide with alarm not inspired by him, alarm too sincere to be mistrusted. Since all things are possible, it might be that the madman had sent her to lure Sheldon into some further danger. But there was only one way to know.

“Go on,” he said crisply. “I’m with you.”

She turned then and sped back the way she had come, Sheldon running at her heels, she turning her head now and then, accommodating her pace to his. This way and that they wove their way through the forest. In a little they were again under the cliffs standing upon the eastern rim of the valley. In the open now, he carried his rifle in two hands, ready.

But here at least was no trap set for him. Paula, running on ahead of him, now suddenly had dropped to her knees, and for the first time Sheldon saw the prone body of the madman. The girl had taken his head into her lap and was bending over him; the gaunt, hollow, burning eyes blazed full at Sheldon. And they were filled with malice, with lurking cunning, with suspicion, and unutterable hatred. But the man made no effort to rise. Sheldon came on until he stood over him.

“He fell from the cliffs?” he asked, looking down for a second into the eyes of Paula which, filled with anguish, were turned up to him.

She sought to answer, but her voice broke; she choked up and could only shake her head. He looked away from her to the head resting in her lap. There was reason enough for the dread in Paula’s breast; the man was dying!

“Tell me,” said Sheldon softly, “can I do anything for you? Is there any way I can help you?”

The burning eyes narrowed. The old man lifted a shaking hand and pushed the tangled beard away from his lips.

“Curse you!” he panted. “Why are you here?”

“Why, father!” cried Paula. “You told me to bring him!”

“Him?” It was a mutter, deep in the throat, labored and harsh. “You were to get a dotor [sic], girl! This man is a thief, like the others. He comes to steal our fortune from us.”

Both bewilderment and terror stared out of the girl’s eyes. Her hand on the old man’s brow drew the matted hair back, smoothed and smoothed the hot skin.

Fully realizing the futility of seeking to reason with unreason, nevertheless Sheldon said gently: “I didn’t come to steal anything. I was just loafing through the country, got lost, and came here.”

“Liar!” scoffed the other. “I know what you want. But you can’t have it; it is my secret!”

“But, Father,” pleaded Paula, her lips trembling, “why did you send me for him if he—”

“Mr. Hamilton,” began Sheldon.

The old man frowned.

“Hamilton?” he muttered. “Who is Hamilton? Where is Hamilton?”

“You are,” said Sheldon stoutly. “Don’t you remember? Charles Francis Hamilton, professor of entomology in Brownell University?”

“Brownell University?” There came a thoughtful pause. “Yes; of course. I am Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., M.D., professor of entomology. Who said that I wasn’t?”

“Then, Dr. Hamilton, you ought to be able to tell by looking at me,” and Sheldon grinned reassuringly, “that I am no scientist! I don’t know the difference betwen [sic] a bug and an insect; I swear I don’t! I’m just a mining engineer out of a job and down on the rocks.”

“Then,” querulously, “you didn’t come looking for—”

“For the Parnassius Aureus Giganticus?” smiled Sheldon. “No. And though you may not believe it, I don’t come looking for gold either!”

His words had a strange, unlooked-for effect. He had hoped that they might a little dispel suspicion. Instead, the madman jerked away from Paula’s hands, sought to spring to his feet, and achieved a position half-kneeling, half-squatting, his whole body shaken, a wild fury in his eyes.

“My Parnassius!” he shrieked. My Parnassius! He comes to steal it away from me; it and my immortality with it! Curse him and curse him and curse him! He knows; he has stolen my secret. He says ‘Parnassius Aureus Giganticus!’ He knows its name, the name I have given it. He says ‘Gold!’ He knows that the Parnassius is to be found only where the mother lode of the world is bared! That there is a little invisible mist, a vapory elixir, which rises from gold in the sun, and that my Parnassius lives upon it, drinks it in, and that that is why it is immortal! He knows; curse him, he knows, he knows!”

He was raging, wildly; his words came in a tumbled fury of sound like the fall of waters down a rocky cliff; his body grew tense to the last muscle, and then shook again as with an ague. Paula, upon her feet now, her hands clasped in a mute agony of suspense, turned frightened eyes from him to Sheldon.

Slowly the wreck that was Charles Francis Hamilton, one time man of scientific note, straightened up; the tall, gaunt form, swaying dangerously, stood erect. A terribly attenuated arm was flung up, then the forearm drawn across the brow as though with the motion which pushed back the streaming white hair he would clear the burning brain too.

Then, just as Sheldon was prepared for a mad attack of the pitifully broken figure, the pale lips parted to a cry such as he had never in all his life heard. It was a cry of pure triumph; the voice was wonderfully clear now and went ringing through the silence like a bell’s tinkling notes. The eyes, too, were clear, bright as before, but now triumphant, like the voice, untroubled, filled with the sheer ecstasy of perfect gladness.

“Look!” cried the madman. “It is the Golden Emperor of Infinity! Look! He is coming—to me!”

Erect, he no longer swayed. The long right arm thrown out, pointed toward the western sky and was rigid, unshaken. For the moment the figure was dominant, masterful; the gesture demanded and received obedience. In his final moment, Charles Francis Hamilton stood clothed in conscious power, unshaken in a great faith—triumphant. There was no other word for him then.

“Look!” cried the madman.

But was he mad?

For both Paula and John Sheldon turned and looked—and saw what the old man saw. There in the strange, weird light in the west, clear against the sky, were a great pair of wings flashing like pure beaten gold, as a graceful, speeding body described a long, sweeping curve, seemed for a moment to be dropping below the mountain-tops, then rose, climbing higher and higher.

Higher and higher—until it was gone, until, as the wide wings trembled in the vault of the clearing heavens, John Sheldon saw that they were no longer beaten gold, but just the feathered wings of a great eagle, metamorphosed for an instant by a trick of sun.

But it was gone. Gone with it the soul of a madman. Without a cry, his old lips forming into a smile indescribably sweet, his eyes still bright with victory, he stooped, stooped farther, his legs weakened under him, he settled down, rested a moment, fell backward. His Golden Emperor of the Infinite had borne away upon its golden wings the soul which craved and now won—immortality!

“He is dead!” said Paula lifelessly. He is dead!”

More moved than he had thought to be, Sheldon knelt by the quiet body. The fretful pulse was still, the tired heart was at rest, the fever-ridden brain slept.

“Yes,” he said quietly as, kneeling, he removed his hat and looked up pityingly into Paula’s set face. “He is dead. Poor little Paula!”

She stared at him with her eyes widening in eloquent expression of the new emotions in her breast. She stood very still, her hands clasped as they had been when the old man rose to his feet. Her brown fingers were slowly going white from their Own steady pressure. Sheldon could only wonder gropingly what this tragedy would mean to her. Other girls had lost fathers before now; but when had a girl lost every one she knew in the world as Paula had lost now?

There was nothing for Sheldon to say, so he remained a little kneeling, his head bowed in spontaneous reverence, waiting for the burst of tears from her which would slacken the tense nerves. But it did not come. Presently Paula drew nearer, knelt like Sheldon, put her two warm hands upon the cold forehead. Sheldon saw a shiver run through her. She drew back with a sharp cry.

“Dead!” she whispered. “Dead!”

“Poor little Paula,” he said again in his heart. Aloud he said nothing.

After a while he got to his feet and went away from her, dabbing at his own eyes as he went, grumbling under his breath. He wanted to take her into his arms—as he did the twins, Bill and Betto hold her close and let her cry, and pat her shoulder and say, “There, there!” There was much of kindness and gentleness and sympathy under the rough outside shell of John Sheldon, and it went out unstintedly to a slip of a girl who was alone as no other girl in all the world.

When he came back she was sitting very still, her hand patting softly one of the cold, lifeless hands. She looked up curiously, speaking in a quiet whisper:

“He will never wake up?”

“Not in this world,” answered Sheldon gently. “But maybe the soul of him is already awake in another world.”

“Where the Golden Butterfly went?” whispered Paula.

“You saw it?”

“Yes. With beautiful wings all of gold. Father knew it was like that. Has his soul gone away with it? Up and up and beyond the clouds and through the sky and to the other world?”

And John Sheldon answered simply, saying:

“Yes, my dear.”

Paula was very still again, her eyes thoughtful.

“What will we do with—him?” she asked after a long silence, the first hint of tears in her eyes.

Then he told her, explaining as he would to Bill and Bet, as one talks with a credulous child, hiding those things upon which man is so prone to look as horrible, showing as best he knew that there is beauty in death. He spoke softly, very gently with her, and her eyes, lifted to him, might have been those of little Bet.

“You will get flowers for him,” he said at the end. “Hundreds and hundreds of flowers. You will put them all about him; we will make him a pretty, soft bed of them; we will cover him with them. And every year, in the spring, other flowers will grow here and blossom and drop their leaves on his place. And—and, little Paula, maybe he will be watching you and smiling at you and happy—”

It spite of him his voice grew hoarse. Paula sat now with her face hidden in her crossed arms. He could see a tear splash to her knee.

When the sun rose after the long night it shone upon a great mound of field flowers hiding a lesser mound of newly turned earth, and upon a golden-brown maiden lying face down in the grass, sobbing—and upon a new John Sheldon.

For into his life had come one of those responsibilities which make men over and, together with the responsibility, a tumult of emotions born no longer ago than the dewdrops which the morning had hung upon the grass.