Authors: George England
Not now were he and Beatrice entrenched in a strong tower, with
terrible explosives. Now they were in the open, armed only with
revolvers. For the present there was no redress.
"Beta," cried he, "we're up against it this time for fair—and we
can't hit back!"
"Our bungalow! Our precious home!"
"I know." He saw that she was crying: "It's a rotten shame and all
that, but it isn't fatal."
He brought the Pauillac down-wind again, coasting high over the
bungalow, whence smoke now issued ever more and more thickly.
"We're simply hamstrung this time, that's all. Where those devils have
come from and how many there may be, God knows. Thousands, perhaps;
the woods may be full of em. It's lucky for us they didn't attack
while we were there!
"Now—well, the only thing to do is let 'em have their way for the
present. Eventually—"
"Oh, can't we
ever
get rid of the horrid little beasts for good?"
"We can and will!" He spoke very grimly, soaring the machine still
higher over the river and once more coming round above the upper end
of the beach. "One of these days there's got to be a final reckoning,
but not yet!"
"So it's good-by to Hope Villa, Allan? There's no way?"
"It's good-by. Humanly speaking, none."
"Couldn't we land, blockade ourselves in the boat-house, and—"
Her eyes sparkled with the boldness of the plan—its peril, its
possibilities. But Allan only shook his head.
"And expose the Pauillac on the beach?" he asked. "One good swing with
a war-club into the motor and then a week's siege and slow starvation,
with a final rush—interesting, but not practical, little girl. No,
no; the better part of valor is to recognize force majeure and
wait!
Remember what we've said already? 'Je recule pour mieux
sauter?' Wait till we get a fresh start on these hell-hounds; we'll
jump 'em far enough!"
The bungalow now lay behind. The whole clearing seemed alive with the
little blue demons, like vermin crawling everywhere. Thicker and
thicker now the smoke was pouring upward. The scene was one of utter
desolation.
Then suddenly it faded. The plane had borne its riders onward and away
from the range of vision. Again only dense forest lay below, while to
eastward sparkled the broad reach where, in the first days of their
happiness at Hope Villa, the girl and Allan had fished and bathed.
Her tears were unrestrained at last; but Allan, steadying the wheel
with one hand, drew an arm about her and kissed and comforted her.
"There, there, little girl! The world's not ended yet, even if they
have
burned up our home-made mission furniture! Come, Beatrice, no
tears—we've other things to think of now!"
"Where away, since our home's gone?" she queried pitifully.
"Where away? Why, Storm King, of course! And the cathedral and the
records, and—
and
—"
Purple and gold the light of that dying day still glowed across
the western sky when the stanch old Pauillac, heated yet throbbing
with power, skimmed the last league and swung the last great bend of
the river that hid old Storm King from the wanderers' eager sight.
Stern's eyes brightened at vision of that vast, rugged headland,
forest-clad and superb in the approaching twilight. Beatrice, weary
now and spent—for the long journeys, the excitements and griefs of
the day had worn her down despite her strength—paled a little and
grew pensive as the massive structure of the cathedral loomed against
the sky-line.
What thoughts were hers now that the goal lay near—what longings,
fears and hopes, what exultation and what pain? She shivered slightly;
but perhaps the evening coolness at that height had pierced her cloak.
Her hands clasped tightly, she tried to smile but could not.
Allan could notice nothing of all this. His gaze was anxiously bent on
the earth below, to find a landing for the great machine. He skimmed
the broad brow of the mountain, hardly a hundred feet above the spires
of the massive concrete pile that still reared itself steadfastly upon
the height facing the east.
All about it the dense unbroken forest spread impenetrable to the eye.
Below the bold breast of the cliff a narrow strip of beach appeared.
"Hard job to land, that's one sure thing!" exclaimed the man, peering
at the inhospitable contours of the land. "No show to make it on top
of the mountain, and if we take the beach it means a most tremendous
climb up the cliff or through the forest on the flank. Here
is
a
situation, Beatrice! Now—ah—see there? Look! that barren ridge to
westward!"
Half a mile back from the river on the western slope of the highlands,
a spur of Storm King stretched water-worn and bare, a sandy spit
dotted only sparsely with scrub-pine.
"It's that, or nothing!" cried the man, banking in a wide sweep.
"Can you make it? Even the clearest space at this end is terribly
short!"
Allan laughed and cut off power. In the old days not for ten thousand
dollars would he have tried so ticklish a descent, but now his mettle
was of sterner stuff and his skill with the machine developed to a
point where man and biplane seemed almost one organism.
With a swift rush the Pauillac coasted down. He checked her at
precisely the right moment, as the sand seemed whirling up to meet
them, swerved to dodge a fire-blasted trunk, and with a shout took the
earth.
The plane bounced, creaked, skidded on the long runners he had fitted
to her, and with a lurch came to rest not ten yards from an ugly stump
dead ahead.
"Made it, by Heaven!" he exulted. "But a few feet more and it wouldn't
have been—well, no matter. We're here, anyhow. Now, supper and a good
sleep. And to-morrow, the cathedral!"
He helped the girl alight, for she was cramped and stiff. Presently
their camp-fire cheered the down-drawing gloom, as so many other times
in such strange places. And before long their evening meal was in
course of preparation, close by a great glacial boulder at the edge of
the sand-barren.
In good comradeship they ate, then wheeled the biplane over to the
rock, and under the shelter of its wide-spreading wings made their
camp for the night. An hour or so they sat talking of many
things—their escape from the Abyss, the patriarch's death, their trip
east again, the loss of their little home, their plans, their hopes,
their work.
Beatrice seemed to grieve more than Stern over the destruction of the
bungalow. So much of her woman's heart had gone into the making of
that nest, so many thoughts had centered on a return to it once more,
that now when it lay in ruins through the spiteful mischief of the
Horde, she found sorrow knocking insistently at the gates of her soul.
But Allan comforted her as best he might.
"Never you mind, little girl!" said he bravely. "It's only an
incident, after all. A year from now another and a still more
beautiful home will shelter us in some more secure location. And
there'll be human companionship, too, about us. In a year many of the
Folk will have been brought from the depths. In a year miracles may
happen—even the greatest one of all!"
Her eyes met his a moment by the ruddy fire-glow and held true.
"Yes," answered she, "even the greatest in the world!"
A sudden tenderness swept over him at thought of all that had been and
was still to be, at sight of this woman's well-loved face irradiated
by the leaping blaze—her face now just a little wan with long
fatigues and sad as though with realization, with some compelling
inner sense of vast, impending responsibilities.
He gathered her in his strong arms, he drew her yielding body close,
and kissed her very gently.
"To-morrow!" he whispered. "Do you realize it?"
"To-morrow," she made answer, her breath mingling with his.
"To-morrow, Allan—one page of life forever closed, another opened.
Oh, may it be for good—may we be very strong and very wise!"
Neither spoke for the space of a few heart-beats, while the wind made
a vague, melancholy music in the sentinel tree-tops and the snapping
sparks danced upward by the rock.
"Life, all life—just dancing sparks—then gone!" said Beatrice
slowly. "And yet—yet it is good to have lived, Allan. Good to have
lighted the black mystery of the universe, formless and endless and
inscrutable, by even so brief a flicker!"
"Is it my little pessimist to-night?" he asked. "Too tired, that's
all. In the morning things will look different. You must smile, then,
Beta, and not think of formless mystery or—or anything sad at all.
For to-morrow is our wedding-day."
He felt her catch her breath and tremble just a bit.
"Yes, I know. Our wedding-day, Allan. Surely the strangest since time
began. No friends, no gifts, no witnesses, no minister, no—"
"There, there!" he interrupted, smiling. "How can my little girl be so
wrong-headed? Friends? Why, everything's our friend! All nature is our
friend—the whole life-process is our friend and ally! Gifts? What
need have we of gifts? Aren't you my gift, surely the best gift that a
man ever had since the beginning of all things? Am I not yours?
"Minister? Priest? We need none! The world-to-be shall have got far
away from such, far beyond its fairy-tale stage, its weaknesses and
fears of the Unknown, which alone explain their existence. Here on
Storm King, under the arches of the old cathedral our clasped hands,
our—mutual words of love and trust and honor—these shall suffice.
The river and the winds and forest, the sunlight and the sky, the
whole infinite expanse of Nature herself shall be our priest and
witnesses. And never has a wedding been so true, so solemn and so holy
as yours and mine shall be. For you are mine, my Beatrice, and I am
yours—forever!"
A little silence, while the flames leaped higher and the shadows
deepened in the dim aisles of the fir-forest all about them. In the
vast canopy of evening sky clustering star-points had begun to
shimmer.
Redly the camp-fire lighted man and woman there alone together in the
wild. For them there was no sense of isolation nor any loneliness. She
was his world now, and he hers.
Up into his eyes she looked fairly and bravely, and her full lips
smiled.
"Forgive me, Allan!" she whispered. "It was only a mood, that's all.
It's passed now—it won't come back. Only forgive me, boy!"
"My dear, brave girl!" he murmured, smoothing the thick hair back from
her brow. "Never complaining, never repining, never afraid!"
Their lips met again and for a time the girl's heart throbbed on his.
Afar a wolf's weird, tremulous call drifted down-wind. An owl,
disturbed in its nocturnal quest, hooted upon the slope above to
eastward; and across the darkening sky reeled an unsteady bat, far
larger than in the old days when there were cities on the earth and
ships upon the sea.
The fire burned low. Allan arose and flung fresh wood upon it, while
sheaves of winking light gyrated upward through the air. Then he
returned to Beatrice and wrapped her in his cloak.
And for a long, long time they both talked of many things—intimate,
solemn, wondrous things—together in the night.
And the morrow was to be their wedding-day.
Morning found them early astir, to greet the glory of June
sunlight over the shoulder of Storm King. A perfect morning, if ever
any one was perfect since the world began—soft airs stirring in the
forest, golden robins' full-throated song, the melody of the scarlet
tropic birds they had named "fire-birds" for want of any more
descriptive title, the chatter of gray squirrels on the branches
overhead, all blent, under a sky of wondrous azure, to tell them of
life, full and abundant, joyous and kind.
Two of the squirrels had to die, for breakfast, which Beta cooked
while Allan quested the edges of the wood for the ever-present
berries. They drank from a fern-embowered spring a hundred yards or so
to south of their camp in the forest, and felt the vigorous tides of
life throb hotly through their splendid bodies.
Allan got together the few simple implements at their disposal for the
expedition—his ax, a torch made of the brown weed of the Abyss,
oil-soaked and bound with wire that fastened it to a metal handle, and
a skin bag of the rude matches he had manufactured in the village of
the Folk.
"Now then, en marche!" said he at length. "The old cathedral and the
records are awaiting a morning call from us—and there are all the
wedding preparations to make as well. We've got no time to lose!"
She laughed happily with a blush and gave him her hand.
"Lead on, Sir Knight!" she jested. "I'm yours by right of capture and
conquest, as in the good old days!"
"The good new days will have better and higher standards," he answered
gravely. "To-day, one age is closed, another opened for all time."
Hand in hand they ascended the barren spur to eastward, and presently
reached the outposts of the forest that rose in close-ranked majesty
over the brow of Storm King.
The going proved hard, for with the warmer climate that now favored
the country, undergrowth had sprung up far more luxuriantly than in
the days of the old-time civilization; but Stern and Beatrice were
used to labor, and together—he ahead to break or cut a path—they
struggled through the wood.
Half an hour's climb brought them to their first dim sight of the
massive towers of the cathedral, rising beyond the tangle of trees,
majestic in the morning sun.
Soon after they had made their way close up to the huge,
lichen-crusted walls, and in the shadow of the gigantic pile slowly
explored round to the vast portals facing eastward over the Hudson.
"Wonderful work, magnificent proportions and design," Stern commented,
as they stopped at last on the broad, debris-littered steps and drew
breath. "Brick and stone have long since perished. Even steel has
crumbled. But concrete seems eternal. Why, the building's practically
intact even to-day, after ten centuries of absolute abandonment. A
week's work with a force of men would quite restore it. The damage
it's suffered is absolutely insignificant. Concrete. A lesson to be
learned, is it not, in our rebuilding of the world?"