Darkness and Dawn (53 page)

And through her tears she smiled, while higher rose the warm,
life-giving sun of spring.

Life! Life again, and light, the sun and the fresh winds of
heaven, the perfect azure of a June sky, the perfume of the passionate
red blooms along the lips of the chasm, the full-throated song of
hidden birds within the wood to eastward—life, beauty, love—such,
the sunrise hour when Allan and the girl once more stood side by side
in the outer world, delivered from the perils of the black Abyss.

Hardly more real than a disordered nightmare now, the terrible fall
into those depths, the captivity among the white barbarians, the
battles and the ghastly scenes of war, the labors, the perilous
escape.

All seemed to fall and fade away from these two lovers, all save their
joy in life and in each other, their longing for the inevitable
greater passion, pain and joy, their clear-eyed outlook into the vast
and limitless possibilities of the future, their future and the
world's.

And as they stood there, hand in hand beside the body of the fallen
patriarch—he whose soul had passed in peace, even at the moment of
his life's fulfilment, his knowledge of the sun—awe overcame them
both. With a new tenderness, mingled with reverent adoration, Stern
drew the girl once more to him.

Her face turned up to his and her arms tightened about his neck. He
kissed her brow beneath the parted masses of her wondrous hair. His
lips rested a moment on her eyes; and then his mouth sought hers and
burned its passion into her very soul.

Suddenly she pushed him back, panting. She had gone white; she
trembled in his clasp.

"Oh, your kiss—oh, Allan, what is this I feel?—it seems to choke
me!" she gasped, clutching her full bosom where her heart leaped like
a prisoned creature. "Your kiss—it is so different now! No, no—not
again—
not yet!
"

He released her, for he, too was shaking in the grip of new, fierce
passions.

"Forgive me!" he whispered. "I—I forgot myself, a moment. Not
yet—no, not yet. You're right, Beatrice. A thousand things are
pressing to be done. And love—must wait!"

He clenched his fists and strode to the edge of the chasm, where, for
a while, he stood alone and silent, gazing far down and away,
mastering himself, striving to get himself in leash once more.

Then suddenly he turned and smiled.

"Come, Beta," said he. "All this must be forgotten. Let's get to work.
The whole world's waiting for us, for our labor. It's eager for our
toil!"

She nodded. In her eyes the fire had died, and now only the light of
comradeship and trust and hope glowed once again.

"Allan?"

"Yes?"

"Our first duty—" She gestured toward the body of the patriarch,
nobly still beneath the rough folds of the mantle they had drawn over
it.

He understood.

"Yes," murmured he. "And his grave shall be for all the future ages a
place of pilgrimage and solemn thought. Where first, one of lost Folk
issued again into the world and where he died, this shall be a
monument of the new time now coming to its birth.

"His grave shall lie here on this height, where the first sun shall
each day for ages fall upon it, supreme in its deep symbolism. Forever
it shall be a memorial, not of death, but life, of liberty, of hope!"

They kept a moment's silence, then Stern added.

"So now, to work!" From the biplane he fetched the ax. With this he
cut and trimmed a branch from a near-by fir. He sharpened it to a flat
blade three or four inches across. In the deep red sand along the edge
of the Abyss he set to work, scooping the patriarch's grave.

In silence Beatrice took the ax and also labored, throwing the sand
away. Together, in an hour, they had dug a trench sufficiently deep
and wide.

"This must do, for now," said Stern, looking up at last. "Some time he
shall have fitting burial, but for the present we can do no more. Let
us now commit his body to the earth, the Great Mother which created
and which waits always to give everlasting sleep, peace, rest."

Together, silently, they bore him to the grave, still wrapped in the
cloak which now had become his shroud. Once more they gazed upon the
noble face of him they had grown to love in the long weeks of the
Abyss, when only he had understood them or seemed near.

"What is this, Allan?" asked the girl, touching a fine chain of gold
about the patriarch's neck, till now unnoticed.

Allan drew at the chain, and a small golden cylinder was revealed,
curiously carven. Its lightness told him it was hollow.

"Some treasure of his, I imagine," judged he.

"Some record, perhaps? Oughtn't we to look?"

He thought a moment in silence, then detached the chain.

"Yes," said he. "It can't help him now. It may help us. He himself
would have wanted us to have it."

And into the pocket of his rough, brown cassock, woven of the
weed-fiber of the dark sea, he slid the chain and golden cylinder.

A final kiss they gave the patriarch, each; then, carefully wrapping
his face so that no smallest particle of sand should come in contact
with it, stood up. At each other they gazed, understandingly.

"Flowers? Some kind of service?" asked the girl.

"Yes. All we can do for him will be too little!"

Together they brought armfuls of the brilliant crimson and purple
blooms along the edge of the sands, where forest and barren
irregularly met; and with these, fir and spruce boughs, the longer to
keep his grave freshly green.

All about him they heaped the blossoms. The patriarch lay at rest
among beauties he never had beheld, colors arid fragrances that to him
had been but dim traditions of antiquity.

"I can't preach," said Stern. "I'm not that kind, anyway, and in this
new world all that sort of thing is out of place. Let's just say
good-by, as to a friend gone on a long, long journey."

Beatrice could no longer keep back her grief. Kneeling beside the
grave, she arranged the flowers and the evergreens, on which her tears
fell shining.

"Dust unto dust!" Stern said. "To you, oh Mother Nature, we give back
the body of this friend, your son. May the breeze blow gently here,
the sun shine warm, and the birds forever sing his requiem. And may
those who shall come after us, when we too sleep, remember that in him
we had a friend, without whom the world never again could have hoped
for any new birth, any life! To him we say good-by—eternally! Dust
unto dust; good-by!"

"Good-by!" whispered the girl. Then, greatly overcome, she arose and
walked away.

Stern, with his naked hands, filled the shallow grave and, this done,
rolled three large boulders onto it, to protect it from the prowling
beasts of the wild.

Beatrice returned. They strewed more flowers and green boughs, and in
silence stood a while, gazing at the lowlier bed of their one friend
on earth.

Suddenly Stern took her hand and drew her toward him.

"Come, come, Beatrice," said he, "he is not dead. He still lives in
our memories. His body, aged and full of pain, is gone, but his spirit
still survives in us—that indomitable sold which, buried alive in
blindness and the dark, still strove to keep alive the knowledge and
traditions of the upper world, hopes of attaining it, and visions of a
better time to be!

"Was ever greater human courage, faith or strength? Let us not grieve.
Let us rather go away strengthened and inspired by this wonderful life
that has just passed. In us, let all his hopes and aspirations come to
reality.

"His death was happy. It was as he wished it, Beatrice, for his one
great ambition was fully granted—to know the reality of the upper
world, the winds of heaven and the sun! Impossible for him to have
survived the great change. Death was inevitable and right. He wanted
rest, and rest is his, at last.

"We must be true to all he thought us, you and I—to all he believed
us, even demigods! He shall inspire and enlighten us, O my love; and
with his memory to guide us, faith and fortitude shall not be lacking.

"Now, we must go. Work waits for us. Everything is yet to be planned
and done. The world and its redemption lie before us. Come!"

He led the girl away. As by mutual understanding they returned to
where the biplane lay, symbol of their conquest of nature, epitome of
hopes.

Near it, on the edge of the Abyss, they rested, hand in hand. In
silence they sat thinking, for a space. And ever higher and more
warmly burned the sun; the breeze of June was sweet to them, long-used
to fogs and damp and dark; the boundless flood of light across the
azure thrilled them with aspiration and with joy.

Life had begun again for them and for the world, life, even there in
the presence of death. Life was continuing, developing,
expanding—life and its immortal sister, Love!

Practical matters now for a time thrust introspection, dreams
and sentiment aside. The morning was already half spent, and in spite
of sorrow, hunger had begun to assert itself; for since time was, no
two such absolutely vigorous and healthy humans had ever set foot on
earth as Beatrice and Allan.

The man gathered brush and dry-kye and proceeded to make a fire, not
far from the precipice, but well out of sight of the patriarch's
grave. He fetched a generous heap of wood from the neighboring forest,
and presently a snapping blaze flung its smoke-banner down the breeze.

Soon after Beatrice had raided the supplies on board the
Pauillac—fish, edible seaweed, and the eggs of the strange birds of
the Abyss—and with the skill and speed of long experience was getting
an excellent meal. Allan meantime brought water from a spring near by.
And the two ate in silence, cross-legged on the warm, dry sand.

"What first, now?" queried the man, when they were satisfied. "I've
been thinking of about fifteen hundred separate things to tackle, each
one more important than all the others put together. How are we going
to begin again? That's the question!"

She drew from her warm bosom the golden cylinder and chain.

"Before we make any move at all," she answered, "I think we ought to
see what's in this record—if it
is
a record. Don't you?"

"By Jove, you're right! Shall I open it for you?"

But already the massively chased top lay unscrewed in her hand. Within
the cylinder a parchment roll appeared.

A moment later she had spread it on her knee, taking care not to tear
the ancient, crackling skin whereon faint lines of writing showed.

Stern bent forward, eager and breathless. The girl, too, gazed with
anxious eyes at the dim script, all but illegible with age and wear.

"You're right, Allan," said she. "This
is
some kind of record, some
direction as to the final history of the few survivors after the great
catastrophe. Oh! Look, Allan—it's fading already in the sunlight.
Quick, read it quick, or we shall lose it all!"

Only too true. The dim lines, perhaps fifteen hundred years old,
certainly never exposed to sunlight since more than a thousand, were
already growing weaker; and the parchment, too, seemed crumbling into
dust. Its edges, where her fingers held it, already were breaking away
into a fine, impalpable powder.

"Quick, Allan! Quick!"

Together they read the clumsy scrawl, their eyes leaping along the
lines, striving to grasp the meaning ere it were too late.

TO ANY WHO AT ANY TIME MAY EVER REVISIT THE
UPPER WORLD: Be it known that two records have been left covering our
history from the time of the cataclysm in 1920 till we entered the
Chasm in 1957. One is in the Great Cave in Medicine Bow Range,
Colorado, near the ruins of Dexter. Exact location, 106 degrees, 11
minutes, 3 seconds west; 40 degrees, 22 minutes, 6 seconds north.
Record is in left, or northern branch of Cave, 327 yards from mouth,
on south wall, 4 feet 6 inches from floor. The other—

"Where? Where?" cried Beatrice. A portion of the record was gone; it
had crumbled even as they read.

"Easy does it, girl! Don't get excited," Allan cautioned, but his face
was pale and his hand trembled as he sought to steady and protect the
parchment from the breeze.

Together they pieced out a few of the remaining words, for now the
writing was but a pale blur, momently becoming dimmer and more dim.

... Cathedral on ... known as Storm King ... River ... crypt under ...
this was agreed on ... never returned but may possibly ... signed by
us on this 12th day ...

They could read no more, for now the record was but a disintegrating
shell in the girl's hands, and even as they looked the last of the
writing vanished, as breath evaporates from a window-pane.

Allan whirled toward the fire, snatched out a still-glowing stick, and
in the sand traced figures.

"Quick! What was that? 106-11-3, West—Forty—"

"Forty, 22, north," she prompted.

"How many seconds? You remember?"

"No." Slowly she shook her head. "Five, wasn't it?"

Eagerly he peered at the record, but every trace was gone.

"Well, no matter about the seconds," he judged. "I'll enter these data
on our diary, in the Pauillac, anyhow. We can remember the ruins of
Dexter and Medicine Bow Range; also the cathedral on Storm King. Put
the fragments of the parchment back into the case, Beta. Maybe we can
yet preserve them, and by some chemical means or other bring out the
writing again. As it is, I guess we've got the most important facts;
enough to go on, at any rate."

She replaced the crumbled record in the golden cylinder and once more
screwed on the cap. Allan got up and walked to the aeroplane, where,
among their scanty effects, was the brief diary and set of notes he
had been keeping since the great battle with the Lanskaarn.