Darkness and Dawn (21 page)

"Oh, yes, there is. I've got several models right here. You just wait
till you see the workshop I'm going to install on the bank of the
river with current-power, and with an electric light plant for the
whole place, and with—"

Beatrice laughed.

"You dear, big, dreaming boy!" she interrupted. Then with a kiss she
took his hand.

"Come," said she. "We're home now. And there's work to do."

Together, in the comradeship of love and trust and mutual
understanding, they reached the somewhat open space before the
bungalow, where once the road had ended in a stone-paved drive.
Allan's wounded arm, had he but sensed it, was beginning to pain more
than a little. But he was oblivious. His love, the fire of spring that
burned in his blood, the lure of this great adventuring, banished all
consciousness of ill.

Parting a thicket, they reached the steps. And for a while they stood
there, hand in hand, silent and thrilled with vast, strange thoughts,
dreaming of what must be. In their eyes lay mirrored the future of the
human race. The light that glowed in them evoked the glories of the
dawn of life again, after ten centuries of black oblivion.

"Our home now!" he told her, very gently, and again he kissed her, but
this time on the forehead. "Ours when we shall have reclaimed it and
made it ours. See the yellow roses, dear? They symbolize our golden
future. The red, red roses? Our passion and our pain!"

The girl made no answer, but tears gathered in her eyes—tears from
the deepest wells of the soul. She brought his hand to her lips.

"Ours!" she whispered tremblingly.

They stood there together for a little space, silent and glad. From an
oak that shaded the porch a squirrel chippered at them. A
sparrow—larger now than the sparrows they remembered in the time that
was—peered out at them, wondering but unafraid, from its nest under
the eaves; at them, the first humans it had ever seen.

"We've got a tenant already, haven't we?" smiled Allan. "Well, I guess
we sha'n't have to disturb her, unless perhaps for a while, when I cut
away this poison ivy here." He pointed at the glossy triple leaf. "No
poisonous thing, whether plant, snake, spider, or insect, is going to
stay in this Eden!" he concluded, with a laugh.

Together, with a strange sense of violating the spirit of the past,
they went up the concrete steps, untrodden now by human feet for ten
centuries.

The massive blocks were still intact for the most part, for old Van
Amburg had builded with endless care and with no remotest regard for
cost. Here a vine, there a sapling had managed to insinuate a tap-root
in some crack made by the frost, but the damage was trifling. Except
for the falling of a part of a cornice, the building was complete. But
it was hidden in vines and mold. Moss, lichens and weeds grew on the
steps, flourishing in the detritus that had accumulated.

Allan dug the toe of his sandal into the loose drift of dead leaves
and pine-spills that littered the broad piazza.

"It'll need more than a vacuum cleaner to put this in shape!" said he.
"Well, the sooner we get at it, the better. We'd do well to take a
look at the inside."

The front door, one-time built of oaken planks studded with
hand-worked nails and banded with huge wrought-iron hinges, now hung
there a mere shell of itself, worm-eaten, crumbling, disintegrated.

With no tools but his naked hands Stern tore and battered it away. A
thick, pungent haze of dust arose, yellow in the morning sunlight that
presently, for the first time in a thousand years, fell warm and
bright across the cob-webbed front hallway, through the aperture.

Room by room Allan and Beatrice explored. The bungalow was practically
stripped bare by time.

"Only moth and rust," sighed the girl. "The same story everywhere we
go. But—well, never mind. We'll soon have it looking homelike. Make
me a broom, dear, and I'll sweep out the worst of it at once."

Talking now in terms of practical detail, with romance for the hour
displaced by harsh reality, they examined the entire house.

Of the once magnificent furnishings, only dust-piles, splinters and
punky rubbish remained. Through the rotted plank shutters, that hung
drunkenly awry from rust-eaten hinges, long spears of sunlight wanly
illuminated the wreck of all that had once been the lavish home of a
billionaire.

Rugs, paintings, furniture,
bibelots
, treasures of all kinds now lay
commingled in mournful decay. In what had evidently been the music
room, overlooking the grounds to southward, the grand piano now was
only a mass of rusted frame, twisted and broken fragments of wire and
a considerable heap of wood-detritus, with a couple of corroded pedals
buried in the pile.

"And
this
was the famous hundred-thousand-dollar harp of Sara, his
daughter, that the papers used to talk so much about, you remember?"
asked the girl, stirring with her foot a few mournful bits of rubbish
that lay near the piano.

"Sic transit gloria mundi!" growled Stern, shaking his head. "You
and she were the same age, almost. And now—"

Silent and full of strange thoughts they went on into what had been
the kitchen. The stove, though heavily bedded in rust, retained its
form, for the solid steel had resisted even the fearful lapse of
vanished time.

"After I scour that with sand and water," said Stern, "and polish up
these aluminum utensils and reset that broken pane with a piece of
glass from up-stairs where it isn't needed, you won't know this place.
Yes, and I'll have running water in here, too—and electricity from
the power-plant, and—"

"Oh, Allan," interrupted the girl, delightedly, "this must have been
the dining room." She beckoned from a doorway. "No end of dishes left
for us! Isn't it jolly? This is luxury compared to the way we had to
start in the tower!"

In the dining-room a good number of the more solid cut-glass and china
pieces had resisted the shock of having fallen, centuries ago, to the
floor, when the shelves and cupboards of teak and mahogany had rotted
and gone to pieces. Corroded silverware lay scattered all about; and
there was gold plate, too, intact save for the patina of extreme
age—platters, dishes, beakers. But of the table and the chairs,
nothing remained save dust.

Like curious children they poked and pried.

"Dishes enough!" exclaimed she. "Gold, till you can't rest. But how
about something to put
on
the dishes? We haven't had a bite since
yesterday noon, and I'm about starved. Now that the fighting's all
over, I begin to remember my healthy appetite!"

Stern smiled.

"You'll have some breakfast, girlie," promised he. "There'll be the
wherewithal to garnish our 18-k, never fear. Just let's have a look
up-stairs, and then I'll go after something for the larder."

They left the down-stairs rooms, silent save for a fly buzzing in a
spider's web, and together ascended the dusty stairs. The railing was
entirely gone; but the concrete steps remained.

Stern helped the girl, in spite of the twinge of pain it caused his
wounded arm. His heart beat faster—so, too, did hers—as they gained
the upper story. The touch of her was, to him, like a lighted match
flung into a powder magazine; but he bit his lip, and though his face
paled, then flushed, he held his voice steady as he said:

"So then, bats up here? Well, how the deuce do they get in and out?
Ah! That broken window, where the elm-branch has knocked out the
glass—I see! That's got to be fixed at once!"

He brushed webs and dust from the remaining panes, and together they
peered out over the orchard, out across the river, now a broad sheet
of molten gold. His arm went about her; he drew her head against his
heart, fast-beating; and silence fell.

"Come, Allan," said the girl at length, calmer than he. "Let's see
what we've got here to do with. Oh, I tell you to begin with," and she
smiled up frankly at him, "I'm a tremendously practical sort of woman.
You may be an engineer, and know how to build wireless telegraphs and
bridges and—and things; but when it comes to home—building—"

"I admit it. Well, lead on," he answered; and together they explored
the upper rooms. The sense of intimacy now lay strong upon them, of
unity and of indissoluble love and comradeship. This was quite another
venture than the exploration of the tower, for now they were choosing
a home,
their
home, and in them the mating instinct had begun to
thrill, to burn.

Each room, despite its ruin and decay, took on a special charm, a
dignity, the foreshadowing of what must be. Yet intrinsically the
place was mournful, even after Stern had let the sunshine in.

For all was dark desolation. The rosewood and mahogany furniture,
pictures, rugs, brass beds, all alike lay reduced to dust and ashes. A
gold clock, the porcelain fittings of the bath-room, and some fine
clay and meerschaum pipes in what had evidently been Van Amburg's
den—these constituted all that had escaped the tooth of time.

In a front room that probably had been Sara's, a mud-swallow had built
its nest in the far corner. It flew out, frightened, when Stern thrust
his hand into the aperture to see if the nest were tenanted, fluttered
about with scared cries, then vanished up the broad fireplace.

"Eggs—warm!" announced Stern. "Well, this room will have to be shut
up and left. We've got more than enough, anyhow. Less work for you,
dear," he added, with a smile. "We might use only the lower floor, if
you like. I don't want you killing yourself with housework, you
understand."

She laughed cheerily.

"You make me a broom and get all the dishes and things together," she
answered, "and then leave the rest to me. In a week from now you won't
know this place. Once we clear out a little foothold here we can go
back to the tower and fetch up a few loads of tools and supplies—"

"Come on, come on!" he interrupted, taking her by the hand and leading
her away. "All such planning will do after breakfast, but I'm
starving! How about a five-pound bass on the coals, eh? Come on, let's
go fishing."

With characteristic resourcefulness Stein soon manufactured
adequate tackle with a well-trimmed alder pole, a line of leather
thongs and a hook of stout piano wire, properly bent to make a barb
and rubbed to a fine point on a stone. He caught a dozen young frogs
among the sedges in the marshy stretch at the north end of the
landing-beach, and confined them in the only available receptacle, the
holster of his automatic.

All this hurt his arm severely, but he paid no heed.

"Now," he announced, "we're quite ready for business. Come along!"

Together they pushed the boat off; it glided smoothly out onto the
breast of the great current.

"I'll paddle," she volunteered. "You mustn't, with your arm in the
condition it is. Which way?"

"Up—over there into that cove beyond the point," he answered, baiting
up his hook with a frog that kicked as naturally as though a full
thousand years hadn't passed since any of its progenitors had been
handled thus. "This certainly is far from being the kind of tackle
that Bob Davis or any of that gang used to swear by, but it's the best
we can do for now. When I get to making lines and hooks and things in
earnest, there'll be some sport in this vicinity. Imagine water
untouched by the angler for ten hundred years or more!"

He swung his clumsy line as he spoke, and cast. Far across the shining
water the circles spread, silver in the morning light; then the
trailing line cut a long series of V's as the girl paddled slowly
toward the cove. Behind the banca a rippling wake flashed metallic;
the cold, clear water caressed the primitive hull, murmuring with soft
cadences, in the old, familiar music of the time when there were men
on earth. The witchery of it stirred Beatrice; she smiled, looked up
with joy and wonder at the beauty of that perfect morning, and in her
clear voice began to sing, very low, very softly, to herself, a song
whereof—save in her brain—no memory now remained in the whole
world—

"Stark wie der Fels,
Tief wie das Meer,
Muss deine Liebe, muss deine Liebe sein—"

"
Ah!
" cried the man, interrupting her.

The alder pole was jerking, quivering in his hands; the leather line
was taut.

"A strike, so help me! A big one!"

He sprang to his feet, and, unmindful of the swaying of the banca,
began to play the fish.

Beatrice, her eyes a-sparkle, turned to watch; the paddle lay
forgotten in her hands.

"Here he comes! Oh,
damn!
" shouted Stern. "If I only had a reel
now—"

"Pull him right in, can't you?" the girl suggested.

He groaned, between clenched teeth—for the strain on his arm was
torture.

"Yes, and have him break the line!" he cried. "There he goes, under
the boat, now! Paddle! Go ahead—paddle!"

She seized the oar, and while Stern fought the monster she set the
banca in motion again. Now the fish was leaping wildly from side to
side, zig-zagging, shaking at the hook as a bull-dog shakes an old
boot. The leather cord hummed through the water, ripping and
vibrating, taut as a fiddle-string. A long, silvery line of bubbles
followed the vibrant cord.

Flash!

High in air, lithe and graceful and very swift, a spurt of green and
white—a long, slim curve of glistening power—a splash; and again the
cord drew hard.

"Maskalonge!" Stern cried. "Oh, we've got to land him—got to! Fifteen
pounds if he's an ounce!"

Beatrice, flushed and eager, watched the fight with fascination.

"If I can bring him close, you strike—hit hard!" the man directed.
"Give it to him! He's our breakfast!"