Darkness and Dawn (20 page)

Where the grim ruin of Grant's Tomb looked down upon the river, they
came at length upon a strange, rude boat, another, then a third—a
whole flotilla, moored with plaited ropes of grass to trees along the
shore.

"These must certainly be the canoes of the attacking force from
northward, the force that fought the Horde the night before
we
took
a hand in the matter; fought, and were beaten, and—devoured," said
Stern.

And with a practical eye, wise and cool even despite the pain of his
wounded arm, he examined three or four of the boats as best he could
by moonlight.

The girl and he agreed on one to use.

"Yes, this looks like the most suitable," judged the engineer,
indicating a rough, banca-like craft nearly sixteen feet long, which
had been carved and scraped and burned out of a single log.

He helped Beatrice in, then cast off the rope. In the bottom lay six
paddles of the most degraded state of workmanship. They showed no
trace of decoration whatsoever, and the lowest savages of the
pre-cataclysmic era had invariably attempted some crude form of art on
nearly every implement.

The girl took up one of the paddles.

"Which way? Up-stream?" asked she. "No, no, you mustn't even try to
use that arm."

"Why paddle at all?" Stern answered. "See here."

He pointed where a short and crooked mast lay, unstopped, along the
side. Lashed to it was a sail of rawhides, clumsily caught together
with thongs, heavy and stiff, yet full of promise.

Stern laughed.

"Back to the coracle stage again," said he. "Back to Caesar's time,
and way beyond!" And he lifted one end of the mast. "Here we've got
the Seuvian pellis pro velis, the 'skins for sails' all over
again—only more so. Well, no matter. Up she goes!"

Together they stepped the mast and spread the sail. The engineer took
his place in the stern, a paddle in his left hand. He dipped it, and
the ripples glinted away.

"Now," said he, in a voice that left no room for argument, "now,
you
curl up in the tiger-skin and go to sleep! This is my job."

The sail caught the breath of the breeze. The banca moved slowly
forward, trailing its wake like widening lines of silver in the
moonlight.

And Beatrice, strong in her trust of him, her confidence and love, lay
down to sleep while the wounded man steered on and on, and watched her
and protected her. And over all the stars, a glory in the summer sky,
kept silent vigil.

Dawn broke, all a flame of gold and crimson, as they landed in a
sheltered little bay on the west shore.

Here, though the forest stood unbroken in thick ranges all along the
background, it had not yet invaded the slope that led back from the
pebbly beach. And through the tangle of what once must have been a
splendid orchard, they caught a glimpse of white walls overgrown with
a mad profusion of wild roses, wisterias and columbines.

"This was once upon a time the summer-place, the big concrete bungalow
and all, of Harrison Van Amburg. You know the billionaire, the wheat
man? It used to be all his in the long ago. He built it for all time
of a material that time can never change. It was his. Well, it's ours
now. Our home!"

Together they stood upon the shelving beach, lapped by the river.
Somewhere in the woods behind them a robin was caroling with liquid
harmony.

Stern drew the rude boat up. Then, breathing deep, he faced the
morning.

"You and I, Beatrice," said he, and took her hand. "Just you—and I!"

"And love!" she whispered.

"And hope, and life! And the earth reborn. The arts and sciences,
language and letters, truth, 'all the glories of the world' handed
down through us!

"Listen! The race of men, our race, must live again—shall live! Again
the forests and the plains shall be the conquest of our blood. Once
more shall cities gleam and tower, ships sail the sea, and the world
go on to greater wisdom, better things!

"A kinder and a saner world this time. No misery, no war, no poverty,
woe, strife, creeds, oppression, tears—for we are wiser than those
other folk, and there shall be no error."

He paused, his face irradiate. To him recurred the prophecy of
Ingersoll, the greatest orator of that other time. And very slowly he
spoke again:

"Beatrice, it shall be a world where thrones have crumbled and where
kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness shall reign no more! A
world without a slave. Man shall at last be free!

"'A world at peace, adorned by every form of art, with music's myriad
voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth. A
world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which
the gibbet's shadow shall not fall.

"'A race without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the
wedded harmony of form and function. And as I look, life lengthens,
joy deepens, and over all in the great dome shines the eternal star of
human hope!'"

"And love?" she smiled again, a deep and sacred meaning in her words.
Within her stirred the universal motherhood, the hope of everything,
the call of the unborn, the insistent voice of the race that was to
be.

"And love!" he answered, his voice now very tender, very grave.

Tired, yet strong, he looked upon her. And as he looked his eyes grew
deep and eager.

Sweet as the honey of Hymettus was the perfume of the orchard, all a
powder of white and rosy blooms, among which the bees, pollen-dusted,
labored, at their joyous, fructifying task. Fresh, the morning breeze.
Clear, warm, radiant, the sun of June; the summer sun uprising far
beyond the shining hills.

Life everywhere—and love!

Love, too, for them. For this man, this woman, love; the mystery, the
pleasure and the eternal pain.

With his unhurt arm he circled her. He bent, he drew her to him, as
she raised her face to his.

And for the first time his mouth sought hers.

Their lips, long hungry for this madness, met there and blended in a
kiss of passion and of joy.

A thousand years of darkness and decay! A thousand years of
blight, brutality, and atavism; of Nature overwhelming all man's work,
of crumbling cities and of forgotten civilization, of stupefaction, of
death! A thousand years of night!

Two human beings, all alone in that vast wilderness—a woman and a
man.

The past, irrevocable; the present, fraught with problems, perils, and
alarms; the future—what?

A thousand years!

Yet, though this thousand years had seemingly smeared away all
semblance of the world of men from the cosmic canvas, Allan Stern and
Beatrice Kendrick thrilled with as vital a passion as though that
vast, oblivious age lay not between them and the time that was.

And their long kiss, there in sight of their new home-to-be—alone
there in that desolated world—was as natural as the summer breeze,
the liquid melody of the red-breast on the blossomy apple-bough above
their heads, the white and purple spikes of odorous lilacs along the
vine-grown stone wall, the gold and purple dawn now breaking over the
distant reaches of the river.

Thus were these two betrothed, this sole surviving pair of human
beings.

Thus, as the new day burned to living flame up the inverted bowl of
sky, this woman and this man pledged each other their love and loyalty
and trust.

Thus they stood together, his left arm about her warm, lithe body,
clad as she was only in her tiger-skin. Their eyes met and held true,
there in the golden glory of the dawn. Unafraid, she read the message
in the depths of his, the invitation, the command; and they both
foreknew the future.

Beatrice spoke first, flushing a little as she drew toward him.

"Allan," she said with infinite tenderness, even as a mother might
speak to a well-loved son, "Allan, come now and let me dress your
wound. That's the first thing to do. Come, let me see your arm."

He smiled a little, and with his broad, brown hand stroked back the
spun silk of her hair, its mass transfixed by the raw gold pins he had
found for her among the ruins of New York.

"No, no!" he objected. "It's nothing—it's not worth bothering about.
I'll be all right in a day or two. My flesh heals almost at once,
without any care. You don't realize how healthy I am."

"I know, dear, but it must hurt you terribly!"

"Hurt? How could I feel any pain with your kiss on my mouth?"

"Come!" she again repeated with insistence, and pointed toward the
beach where their banca lay on the sand.

"Come, I'll dress your wound first. And after I find out just how
badly you're injured—"

He tried to stop her mouth with kisses, but she evaded him.

"No, no!" she cried. "Not now—not now!"

Allan had to cede. And now presently there he knelt on the fine white
sand, his bearskin robe opened and flung back, his well-knit shoulder
and sinewed arm bare and brown.

"Well, is it fatal?" he jested. "How long do you give me to survive
it?" as with her hand and the cold limpid water of the Hudson she
started to lave the caked blood away from his gashed triceps.

At sight of the wound she looked grave, but made no comment. She had
no bandages; but with the woodland skill she had developed in the past
weeks of life in close touch with nature, she bound the cleansed wound
with cooling leaves and fastened them securely in place with lashings
of leather thongs from the banca.

Presently the task was done. Stern slipped his bearskin back in place.
Beatrice, still solicitous, tried to clasp the silver buckle that held
it; but he, unable to restrain himself, caught her hand in both of his
and crushed it to his lips.

Then he took her perfect face between his palms, and for a long moment
studied it. He looked at her waving hair, luxuriant and glinting rich
brown gleams in the sunlight; her thick, arched brows and hazel eyes,
liquid and full of mystery as woodland pools; her skin, sun-browned
and satiny, with abundant tides of life-blood coursing vigorously in
its warm flush; her ripe lips. He studied her, and loved and yearned
toward her; and in him the passion leaped up like living flames.

His mouth met hers again.

"My beloved!" breathed he.

Her rounded arm, bare to the shoulder, circled his neck; she hid her
face in his breast.

"Not yet—not yet!" she whispered.

On the white and pink flowered bough above, the robin, unafraid,
gushed into a very madness of golden song. And now the sun, higher
risen, had struck the river into a broad sheet of spun metal, over
which the swallows—even as in the olden days—darted and spiraled,
with now and then a flick and dash of spray.

Far off, wool-white winding-sheets of mist were lifting, lagging along
the purple hills, clothed with inviolate forest.

Again the man tried to raise her head, to burn his kisses on her
mouth. But she, instilled with the eternal spirit of woman, denied
him.

"No, not now—not yet!" she said; and in her eyes he read her meaning.
"You must let me go now, Allan. There's so much to do; we've got to be
practical, you know."

"Practical! When I—I love—"

"Yes, I know, dear. But there's so much to be done first." Her womanly
homemaking instinct would not be gainsaid. "There's so much work!
We've got the place to explore, and the house to put in order,
and—oh, thousands of things! And we must be very sensible and very
wise, you and I, boy. We're not children, you know. Now that we've
lost our home in the Metropolitan Tower, everything's got to be done
over again."

"Except to learn to love you!" answered Stern, letting her go with
reluctance.

She laughed back at him over her fur-clad shoulder as her sandaled
feet followed the dim remnants of what must once have been a broad
driveway from the river road along the beach, leading up to the
bungalow.

Through the encroaching forest and the tangle of the degenerate
apple-trees they could see the concrete walls, with here or there a
bit of white still gleaming through the enlacements of ancient vines
that had enveloped the whole structure—woodbine, ivy, wisterias, and
the maddest jungle of climbing roses, red and yellow, that ever made a
nest for love.

"Wait, I'll go first and clear the way for you," he said cheerily. His
big bulk crashed down the undergrowth. His hands held back the thorns
and briers and the whipping hardbacks. Together they slowly made way
toward the house.

The orchard had lost all semblance of regularity, for in the thousand
years since the hand of man had pruned or cared for it Mother Nature
had planted and replanted it times beyond counting. Small and gnarled
and crooked the trees were, as the spine-tree souls in Dante's
dolorosa selva.

Here or there a pine had rooted and grown tall, killing the lesser
tribe of green things underneath.

Warm lay the sun there. A pleasant carpet of last year's leaves and
pine-spills covered the earth.

"It's all ready and waiting for us, all embowered and carpeted for
love," said Allan musingly. "I wonder what old Van Amburg would think
of his estate if he could see it now? And what would he say to our
having it? You know, Van was pretty ugly to me at one time about my
political opinion—but that's all past and forgotten now. Only this is
certainly an odd turn of fate."

He helped the girl over a fallen log, rotted with moss and lichens.
"It's one awful mess, sure as you're born. But as quick as my arm gets
back into shape, we'll have order out of chaos before you know it.
Some fine day you and I will drive our sixty horse-power car up an
asphalt road here, and—"

"A car? Why, what do you mean? There's not such a thing left in the
whole world as a car!"

The engineer tapped his forehead with his finger.