Darkness and Dawn (9 page)

Infinitudes of things, more or less damaged, they bore up to their
shelter, up the stairs which here and there Stern had repaired with
rough-hewn logs.

For now he had an ax, found in that treasure-house of Currier &
Brown's, brought to a sharp edge on a wet, flat stone by the spring,
and hefted with a sapling.

This implement was of incredible use, and greatly enheartened the
engineer. More valuable it was than a thousand tons of solid gold.

The same store yielded also a well-preserved enameled water-pail and
some smaller dishes of like ware, three more knives, quantities of
nails, and some small tools; also the tremendous bonanza of a magazine
rifle and a shotgun, both of which Stern judged would come into shape
by the application of oil and by careful tinkering. Of ammunition,
here and elsewhere, the engineer had no doubt he could unearth
unlimited quantities.

"With steel," he reflected, "and with my flint spearhead, I can make
fire at any time. Wood is plenty, and there's lots of 'punk.' So the
first step in reestablishing civilization is secure. With fire,
everything else becomes possible.

"After a while, perhaps, I can get around to manufacturing matches
again. But for the present my few ounces of phosphorus and the flint
and steel will answer very well."

Beatrice, like the true woman she was, addressed herself eagerly to
the fascinating task of making a real home out of the barren
desolation of the fifth floor offices. Her splendid energy was no less
than the engineer's. And very soon a comfortable air pervaded the
place.

Stern manufactured a broom for her by cutting willow withes and
lashing them with hide strips onto a trimmed branch. Spiders and dust
all vanished. A true housekeeping appearance set in.

To supplement the supply of canned food that accumulated along one of
the walls, Stern shot what game he could—squirrels, partridges and
rabbits.

Metal dishes, especially of solid gold, ravished from Fifth Avenue
shops, took their place on the crude table he had fashioned with his
ax. Not for esthetic effect did they now value gold, but merely
because that metal had perfectly withstood the ravages of time.

In the ruins of a magnificent store near Thirty-First Street, Stern
found a vault burst open by frost and slow disintegration of the
steel.

Here something over a quart of loose diamonds, big and little, rough
and cut, were lying in confusion all about. Stern took none of these.
Their value now was no greater than that of any pebble.

But he chose a massive clasp of gold for Beatrice, for that could
serve to fasten her robe. And in addition he gathered up a few rings
and onetime costly jewels which could be worn. For the girl, after
all, was one of Eve's daughters.

Bit by bit he accumulated many necessary articles, including some
tooth-brushes which he found sealed in glass bottles, and a variety of
gold toilet articles. Use was his first consideration now. Beauty came
far behind.

In the corner of their rooms, after a time, stood a fair variety of
tools, some already serviceable, others waiting to be polished, ground
and hefted, and in some cases retempered. Two rough chairs made their
appearance.

The north room, used only for cooking, became their forge and oven all
in one. For here, close to a window where the smoke could drift out,
Stern built a circular stone fireplace.

And here Beatrice presided over her copper casseroles and saucepans
from the little shop on Broadway. Here, too, Stern planned to
construct a pair of skin bellows, and presently to set up the altars
of Vulcan and of Tubal Cain once more.

Both of them "thanked whatever gods there be" that the girl was a good
cook. She amazed the engineer by the variety of dishes she managed to
concoct from the canned goods, the game that Stern shot, and fresh
dandelion greens dug near the spring. These edibles, with the blackest
of black coffee, soon had them in fine fettle.

"I certainly have begun to put on weight," laughed the man after
dinner on the fourth day, as he lighted his fragrant pipe with a roll
of blazing birch-bark.

"My bearskin is getting tight. You'll have to let it out for me, or
else stop such magic in the kitchen."

She smiled back at him, sitting there at ease in the sunshine by the
window, sipping her coffee out of a gold cup with a solid gold spoon.

Stern, feeling the May breeze upon his face, hearing the bird-songs in
the forest depths, felt a well-being, a glow of health and joy such as
he had never in his whole life known—the health of outdoor labor and
sound sleep and perfect digestion, the joy of accomplishment and of
the girl's near presence.

"I suppose we do live pretty well," she answered, surveying the
remnants of the feast. "Potted tongue and peas, fried squirrel,
partridge and coffee ought to satisfy anybody. But still—"

"What is it?"

"I
would
like some buttered toast and some cream for my coffee, and
some sugar."

Stern laughed heartily.

"You don't want much!" he exclaimed, vastly amused, the while he blew
a cloud of Latakia smoke. "Well, you be patient, and everything will
come, in time.

"You mustn't expect me to do magic. On the fourth day you don't
imagine I've had time enough to round up the ten thousandth descendant
of the erstwhile cow, do you?

"Or grow cane and make sugar? Or find grain for seed, clear some land,
plow, harrow, plant, hoe, reap, winnow, grind and bolt and present you
with a bag of prime flour? Now really?"

She pouted at his raillery. For a moment there was silence, while he
drew at his pipe. At the girl he looked a little while. Then, his eyes
a bit far-away, he remarked in a tone he tried to render casual:

"By the way, Beatrice, it occurs to me that we're doing rather well
for old people—very old."

She looked up with a startled glance.

"
Very?
" she exclaimed. "You know how old then?"

"Very, indeed!" he answered. "Yes, I've got some sort of an idea about
it. I hope it won't alarm you when you know."

"Why—how so? Alarm me?" she queried with a strange expression.

"Yes, because, you see, it's rather a long time since we went to
sleep. Quite so. You see, I've been doing a little calculating, off
and on, at odd times. Been putting two and two together, as it were.

"First, there was the matter of the dust in sheltered places, to guide
me. The rate of deposition of what, in one or two spots, can't have
been anything less than cosmic or star-dust, is fairly certain.

"Then again, the rate of this present deterioration of stone and steel
has furnished another index. And last night I had a little peek at the
pole-star, through my telescope, while you were asleep.

"The good old star has certainly shifted out of place a bit.
Furthermore, I've been observing certain evolutionary changes in the
animals and plants about us. Those have helped, too."

"And—and what have you found out?" asked she with tremulous interest.

"Well, I think I've got the answer, more or less correctly. Of course
it's only an approximate result, as we say in engineering. But the
different items check up with some degree of consistency.

"And I'm safe in believing I'm within at least a hundred years of the
date one way or the other. Not a bad factor of safety, that, with my
limited means of working."

The girl's eyes widened. From her hand fell the empty gold cup; it
rolled away across the clean-swept floor.

"What?" cried she. "You've got it, within a hundred years! Why,
then—you mean it's
more
than a hundred?"

Indulgently the engineer smiled.

"Come, now," he coaxed. "Just guess, for instance, how old you really
are—and growing younger every day?"

"Two hundred maybe? Oh surely not as old as that! It's horrible to
think of!"

"Listen," bade he. "If I count your twenty-four years, when you went
to sleep, you're now—"

"What?"

"You're now at the very minimum calculation, just about one thousand
and twenty-four! Some age, that, eh?"

Then, as she stared at him wide-eyed he added with a smile.

"No disputing that fact, no dodging it. The thing's as certain as that
you're now the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world!"

Days passed, busy days, full of hard labor and achievement,
rich in experience and learning, in happiness, in dreams of what the
future might yet bring.

Beatrice made and finished a considerable wardrobe of garments for
them both. These, when the fur had been clipped close with the
scissors, were not oppressively warm, and, even though on some days a
bit uncomfortable, the man and woman tolerated them because they had
no others.

Plenty of bathing and good food put them in splendid physical
condition, to which their active exercise contributed much. And thus,
judging partly by the state of the foliage, partly by the height of
the sun, which Stern determined with considerable accuracy by means of
a simple, home-made quadrant—they knew mid-May was past and June was
drawing near.

The housekeeping by no means took up all the girl's time. Often she
went out with him on what he called his "pirating expeditions," that
now sometimes led them as far afield as the sad ruins of the wharves
and piers, or to the stark desolation and wreckage of lower Broadway
and the onetime busy hives of newspaperdom, or up to Central Park or
to the great remains of the two railroad terminals.

These two places, the former tide-gates of the city's life, impressed
Stern most painfully of anything. The disintegrated tracks, the
jumbled remains of locomotives and luxurious Pullmans with weeds
growing rank upon them, the sunlight beating down through the caved-in
roof of the Pennsylvania station "concourse," where millions of human
beings once had trod in all the haste of men's paltry, futile affairs,
filled him with melancholy, and he was glad to get away again leaving
the place to the jungle, the birds and beasts that now laid claim to
it.

"Sic transit gloria mundi!" he murmured, as with sad eyes he mused
upon the down-tumbled columns along the facade, the overgrown
entrance-way, the cracked and falling arches and architraves. "And
this
, they said, was builded for all time!"

It was on one of these expeditions that the engineer found and
pocketed—unknown to Beatrice—another disconcerting relic.

This was a bone, broken and splintered, and of no very great age,
gnawed with perfectly visible tooth-marks. He picked it up, by chance,
near the west side of the ruins of the old City Hall.

Stern recognized the manner in which the bone had been cracked open
with a stone to let the marrow be sucked out. The sight of this
gruesome relic revived all his fears, tenfold more acutely than ever,
and filled him with a sense of vague, impending evil, of peril deadly
to them both.

This was the more keen, because the engineer knew at a glance that the
bone was the upper end of a human femur—human, or, at the very least,
belonging to some highly anthropoid animal. And of apes or gorillas he
had, as yet, found no trace in the forests of Manhattan.

Long he mused over his find. But not a single word did he ever say to
Beatrice concerning it or the flint spear-point. Only he kept his eyes
and ears well open for other bits of corroborative evidence.

And he never ventured a foot from the building unless his rifle and
revolver were with him, their magazines full of high-power shells.

The girl always went armed, too, and soon grew to be such an expert
shot that she could drop a squirrel from the tip of a fir, or wing a
heron in full flight.

Once her quick eyes spied a deer in the tangles of the one-time
Gramercy Park, now no longer neatly hedged with iron palings, but
spread in wild confusion that joined the riot of growth beyond.

On the instant she fired, wounding the creature.

Stern's shot, echoing hers, missed. Already the deer was away, out of
range through the forest. With some difficulty they pursued down a
glen-like strip of woods that must have once been Irving Place.

Two hundred yards south of the park they sighted the animal again. And
the girl with a single shot sent it crashing to earth.

"Bravo, Diana!" hurrahed Stern, running forward with enthusiasm. The
"deer fever" was on him, as strong as in his old days in the Hudson
Bay country. Hot was the pleasure of the kill when that meant food. As
he ran he jerked his knife from the skin sheath the girl had made for
him.

Thus they had fresh venison to their heart's content—venison broiled
over white-hot coals in the fireplace, juicy and savory—sweet beyond
all telling.

A good deal of the meat they smoked and salted down for future use.
Stern undertook to tan the hide with strips of hemlock bark laid in a
water pit dug near the spring. He added also some oak-bark, nut-galls
and a good quantity of young sumac shoots.

"I guess
that
ought to hit the mark if anything will," remarked he,
as he immersed the skin and weighed it down with rocks.

"It's like the old 'shotgun' prescriptions of our extinct doctors—a
little of everything, bound to do the trick, one way or another."

The great variety of labors now imposed upon him began to try his
ingenuity to the full. In spite of all his wealth of practical
knowledge and his scientific skill, he was astounded at the huge
demands of even the simplest human life.

The girl and he now faced these, without the social cooperation which
they had formerly taken entirely for granted, and the change of
conditions had begun to alter Stern's concepts of almost everything.

He was already beginning to realize how true the old saying was: "One
man is no man!" and how the world had
been
the world merely because
of the interrelations, the interdependencies of human beings in vast
numbers.