Darkness and Dawn (2 page)

Dumfounded by all this, and by the universal crumbling of every
perishable thing, the girl ran, shuddering, back into the office.
There in the dust her foot struck something hard.

She stooped; she caught it up and stared at it.

"My glass ink-well! What? Only such things remain?"

No dream, then, but reality! She knew at length that some catastrophe,
incredibly vast, some disaster cosmic in the tragedy of its sweep, had
desolated the world.

"Oh, my mother!" cried she. "My mother—
dead?
Dead, now, how long?"

She did not weep, but just stood cowering, a chill of anguished horror
racking her. All at once her teeth began to chatter, her body to shake
as with an ague.

Thus for a moment dazed and stunned she remained there, knowing not
which way to turn nor what to do. Then her terror-stricken gaze fell
on the doorway leading from her outer office to the inner one, the one
where Stern had had his laboratory and his consultation-room.

This door now hung, a few worm-eaten planks and splintered bits of
wood, barely supported by the rusty hinges.

Toward it she staggered. About her she drew the sheltering masses of
her hair, like a Godiva of another age; and to her eyes, womanlike,
the hot tears mounted. As she went, she cried in a voice of horror.

"Mr. Stern! Oh—Mr. Stern! Are—are
you
dead, too? You
can't
be—it's too frightful!"

She reached the door. The mere touch of her outstretched hand
disintegrated it. Down in a crumbling mass it fell. Thick dust bellied
up in a cloud, through which a single sun-ray that entered the
cobwebbed pane shot a radiant arrow.

Peering, hesitant, fearful of even greater terrors in that other room,
Beatrice peered through this dust-haze. A sick foreboding of evil
possessed her at thought of what she might find there—yet more afraid
was she of what she knew lay behind her.

An instant she stood within the ruined doorway, her left hand resting
on the moldy jam. Then, with a cry, she started forward—a cry in
which terror had given place to joy, despair to hope.

Forgotten now the fact that, save for the shrouding of her messy hair,
she stood naked. Forgotten the wreck, the desolation everywhere.

"Oh—thank Heaven!" gasped she.

There, in that inner office, half-rising from the wrack of many things
that had been and were now no more, her startled eyes beheld the
figure of a man—of Allan Stern!

He lived!

At her he peered with eyes that saw not, yet; toward her he groped a
vague, unsteady hand.

He lived!

Not quite alone in this world-ruin, not all alone was she!

The joy in Beatrice's eyes gave way to poignant wonder as she
gazed on him. Could this be
he?

Yes, well she knew it was. She recognized him even through the
grotesquery of his clinging rags, even behind the mask of a long, red,
dusty beard and formidable mustache, even despite the wild and staring
incoherence of his whole expression.

Yet how incredible the metamorphosis! To her flashed a memory of this
man, her other-time employer—keen and smooth-shaven, alert,
well-dressed, self-centered, dominant, the master of a hundred complex
problems, the directing mind of engineering works innumerable.

Faltering and uncertain now he stood there. Then, at the sound of the
girl's voice, he staggered toward her with outflung hands. He stopped,
and for a moment stared at her.

For he had had no time as yet to correlate his thoughts, to pull
himself together.

And while one's heart might throb ten times, Beatrice saw terror in
his blinking, bloodshot eyes.

But almost at once the engineer mastered himself. Even as Beatrice
watched him, breathlessly, from the door, she saw his fear die out,
she saw his courage well up fresh and strong.

It was almost as though something tangible were limning the man's soul
upon his face. She thrilled at sight of him.

And though for a long moment no word was spoken, while the man and
woman stood looking at each other like two children in some dread and
unfamiliar attic, an understanding leaped between them.

Then, womanlike, instinctively as she breathed, the girl ran to him.
Forgetful of every convention and of her disarray, she seized his
hand. And in a voice that trembled till it broke she cried:

"What is it? What does all this mean? Tell me!"

To him she clung.

"Tell me the truth—and save me! Is it
real?
"

Stern looked at her wonderingly. He smiled a strange, wan, mirthless
smile.

All about him he looked. Then his lips moved, but for the moment no
sound came.

He made another effort, this time successful.

"There, there," said he huskily, as though the dust and dryness of the
innumerable years had got into his very voice. "There, now, don't be
afraid!

"Something seems to have taken place here while—we've been asleep.
What? What is it? I don't know yet. I'll find out. There's nothing to
be alarmed about, at any rate."

"But—
look!
" She pointed at the hideous desolation.

"Yes, I see. But no matter. You're alive. I'm alive. That's two of us,
anyhow. Maybe there are a lot more. We'll soon see. Whatever it may
be, we'll win."

He turned and, trailing rags and streamers of rotten cloth that once
had been a business suit, he waded through the confusion of wreckage
on the floor to the window.

If you have seen a weather-beaten scarecrow flapping in the wind, you
have some notion of his outward guise. No tramp you ever laid eyes on
could have offered so preposterous an appearance.

Down over his shoulders fell the matted, dusty hair. His tangled beard
reached far below his waist. Even his eyebrows, naturally rather
light, had grown to a heavy thatch above his eyes.

Save that he was not gray or bent, and that he still seemed to have
kept the resilient force of vigorous manhood, you might have thought
him some incredibly ancient Rip Van Winkle come to life upon that
singular stage, there in the tower.

But little time gave he to introspection or the matter of his own
appearance. With one quick gesture he swept away the shrouding tangle
of webs, spiders, and dead flies that obscured the window. Out he
peered.

"Good Heavens!" cried he, and started back a pace.

She ran to him.

"What is it?" she breathlessly exclaimed.

"Why, I don't know—yet. But this is something big! Something
universal! It's—it's—no, no, you'd better not look out—not just
yet."

"I must know everything. Let me see!"

Now she was at his side, and, like him, staring out into the clear
sunshine, out over the vast expanses of the city.

A moment's utter silence fell. Quite clearly hummed the protest of an
imprisoned fly in a web at the top of the window. The breathing of the
man and woman sounded quick and loud.

"All
wrecked!
" cried Beatrice. "But—then—"

"Wrecked? It looks that way," the engineer made answer, with a strong
effort holding his emotions in control. "Why not be frank about this?
You'd better make up your mind at once to accept the very worst. I see
no signs of anything else."

"The worst? You mean—"

"I mean just what we see out there. You can interpret it as well as
I."

Again the silence while they looked, with emotions that could find no
voicing in words. Instinctively the engineer passed an arm about the
frightened girl and drew her close to him.

"And the last thing I remember," whispered she, "was just—just after
you'd finished dictating those Taunton Bridge specifications. I
suddenly felt—oh, so sleepy! Only for a minute I thought I'd close my
eyes and rest, and then—then—"

"
This?
"

She nodded.

"Same here," said he. "What the deuce
can
have struck us? Us and
everybody—and everything? Talk about your problems! Lucky I'm sane
and sound, and—and—"

He did not finish, but fell once more to studying the incomprehensible
prospect.

Their view was towards the east, but over the river and the reaches of
what had once upon a time been Long Island City and Brooklyn, as
familiar a scene in the other days as could be possibly imagined. But
now how altered an aspect greeted them!

"It's surely all wiped out, all gone, gone into ruins," said Stern
slowly and carefully, weighing each word. "No hallucination about
that
." He swept the sky-line with his eyes, that now peered keenly
out from beneath those bushy brows. Instinctively he brought his hand
up to his breast. He started with surprise.

"What's this?" he cried. "Why, I—I've got a full yard of whiskers. My
good Lord! Whiskers on
me?
And I used to say—"

He burst out laughing. At his beard he plucked with merriment that
jangled horribly on the girl's tense nerves. Suddenly he grew serious.
For the first time he seemed to take clear notice of his companion's
plight.

"Why,
what
a time it must have been!" cried he. "Here's some
calculation all cut out for me, all right. But—you can't go that way,
Miss Kendrick. It—it won't do, you know. Got to have something to put
on. Great Heavens what a situation!"

He tried to peel off his remnant of a coat, but at the merest touch it
tore to shreds and fell away. The girl restrained him.

"Never mind," said she, with quiet, modest dignity. "My hair protects
me very well for the present. If you and I are all that's left of the
people in the world, this is no time for trifles."

A moment he studied her. Then he nodded, and grew very grave.

"Forgive me," he whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. Once more
he turned to the window and looked out.

"So then, it's all gone?" he queried, speaking as to himself. "Only a
skyscraper standing here or there? And the bridges and the
islands—all changed.

"Not a sign of life anywhere; not a sound; the forests growing thick
among the ruins? A dead world if—if all the world is like this part
of it! All dead, save
you
and
me!
"

In silence they stood there, striving to realize the full import of
the catastrophe. And Stern, deep down in his heart, caught some
glimmering insight of the future and was glad.

Suddenly the girl started, rebelling against the evidence of
her own senses, striving again to force upon herself the belief that,
after all, it
could not
be so.

"No, no, no!" she cried. "This can't be true. It mustn't be. There's a
mistake somewhere. This simply
must
be all an illusion, a dream!

"If the whole world's dead, how does it happen
we're
alive? How do
we know it's dead? Can we see it all from here? Why, all we see is
just a little segment of things. Perhaps if we could know the truth,
look farther, and know—"

He shook his head.

"I guess you'll find it's real enough," he answered, "no matter how
far you look. But, just the same, it won't do any harm to extend our
radius of observation.

"Come, let's go on up to the top of the tower, up to the
observation-platform. The quicker we know all the available facts the
better. Now, if I only had a telescope—!"

He thought hard a moment, then turned and strode over to a heap of
friable disintegration that lay where once his instrument case had
stood, containing his surveying tools.

Down on his ragged knees he fell; his rotten shreds of clothing tore
and ripped at every movement, like so much water-soaked paper.

A strange, hairy, dust-covered figure, he knelt there. Quickly he
plunged his hands into the rubbish and began pawing it over and over
with eager haste.

"Ah!" he cried with triumph. "Thank Heaven, brass and lenses haven't
crumbled yet!"

Up he stood again. In his hand the girl saw a peculiar telescope.

"My 'level,' see?" he exclaimed, holding it up to view. "The wooden
tripod's long since gone. The fixtures that held it on won't bother me
much.

"Neither will the spirit-glass on top. The main thing is that the
telescope itself seems to be still intact. Now we'll see."

Speaking, he dusted off the eye-piece and the objective with a bit of
rag from his coat-sleeve.

Beatrice noted that the brass tubes were all eaten and pitted with
verdigris, but they still held firmly. And the lenses, when Stern had
finished cleaning them, showed as bright and clear as ever.

"Come, now; come with me," he bade.

Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl
followed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more
closely about her.

In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how
little the conventions counted!

Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the
rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a
thousand places, they cautiously climbed.

Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed
down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the
intruders passed.

A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well
toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows
which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken balustrade.

At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they
reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.

Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading,
testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow
platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.

Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and of
this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.