Darkness and Dawn, Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  ON THE TOWER PLATFORM

  Suddenly the girl started, rebelling against the evidence ofher 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 amistake somewhere. This simply _must_ be all an illusion, a dream!

  "If the whole world's dead, how does it happen _we're_ alive? How dowe know it's dead? Can we see it all from here? Why, all we see isjust 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 howfar you look. But, just the same, it won't do any harm to extend ourradius of observation.

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

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

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

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

  "Ah!" he cried with triumph. "Thank Heaven, brass and lenses haven'tcrumbled 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 woodentripod's long since gone. The fixtures that held it on won't bother memuch.

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

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

  Beatrice noted that the brass tubes were all eaten and pitted withverdigris, but they still held firmly. And the lenses, when Stern hadfinished 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 girlfollowed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair moreclosely about her.

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

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

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

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

  At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, theyreached 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 narrowplatform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.

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

  "Look!" he exclaimed, pointing. "What this all means we don't knowyet. How long it's been we can't tell. But to judge by the appearanceup here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles arecracked and crumbling.

  "Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant--but _this_ isgone. There's grass growing in the dust that's settled between thetiles. And--why, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced adozen slabs out of place."

  "The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," sheanswered in an awed voice. "Think of the time that must have passed.Years and years.

  "But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell mehow we've ever lived so long? _I_ can't understand it.

  "Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to deathin all these bitter winters. How can _that_ have happened?"

  "Let it all go as suspended animation till we learn the facts, if weever do," he replied, glancing about with wonder.

  "You know, of course, how toads have been known to live embedded inrock for centuries? How fish, hard-frozen, have been brought to lifeagain? Well--"

  "But we are human beings."

  "I know. Certain unknown natural forces, however, might have made nomore of us than of non-mammalian and less highly organized creatures.

  "Don't bother your head about these problems yet a while. On my word,we've got enough to do for the present without much caring about howor why.

  "All we definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period oftime has passed, leaving us still alive. The rest can wait."

  "How long a time do you judge it?" she anxiously inquired.

  "Impossible to say at once. But it must have been somethingextraordinary--probably far longer than either of us suspect.

  "See, for example, the attrition of everything up here exposed to theweather." He pointed at the heavy stone railing. "See how _that_ iswrecked, for instance."

  A whole segment, indeed, had fallen inward. Its debris lay inconfusion, blocking all the southern side of the platform.

  The bronze bars, which Stern well remembered--two at each corner,slanting downward and bracing a rail--had now wasted to merepockmarked shells of metal.

  Three had broken entirely and sagged wantonly awry with thedisplacement of the stone blocks, between which the vines and grasseshad long been carrying on their destructive work.

  "Look out!" Stern cautioned. "Don't lean against any of those stones."Firmly he held her back as she, eagerly inquisitive, started toadvance toward the railing.

  "Don't go anywhere near the edge. It may all be rotten and undermined,for anything we know. Keep back here, close to the wall."

  Sharply he inspected it a moment.

  "Facing stones are pretty well gone," said he, "but, so far as I cansee, the steel frame isn't too bad. Putting everything together, I'llprobably be able before long to make some sort of calculation of thedate. But for now we'll have to call it 'X,' and let it go at that."

  "The year X!" she whispered under her breath. "Good Heavens, am I asold as that?"

  He made no answer, but only drew her to him protectingly, while allabout them the warm summer wind swept onward to the sea, out over thesparkling expanses of the bay--alone unchanged in all that universalwreckage.

  In the breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly. He felt itssilken caress on his half-naked shoulder, and in his ears the bloodbegan to pound with strange insistence.

  Quite gone now the daze and drowsiness of the first wakening. Sterndid not even feel weak or shaken. On the contrary, never had lifebounded more warmly, more fully, in his veins.

  The presence of the girl set his heart throbbing heavily, but he bithis lip and restrained every untoward thought.

  Only his arm tightened a little about that warmly clinging body.Beatrice did not shrink from him. She needed his protection as neversince the world began had woman needed man.

  To her it seemed that come what might, his strength and comfort couldnot fail. And, despite everything, she could not--for the moment--findunhappiness within her heart.

  Quite vanished now, even in those brief minutes since their awakening,was all consciousness of their former relationship--employer andemployed.

  The self-contained, courteous, yet unapproachable engineer haddisappeared.

  Now, through all the extraneous disguise of his outer self, therelived and breathed just a man, a young man, thewed with the vigor ofhis plentitude. All else had been swept clean away by this greatchange.

  The girl was different, too. Was this strong woman, eager-eyed andbrave, the quiet, low-voice
d stenographer he remembered, busy onlywith her machine, her file-boxes, and her carbon-copies? Stern darednot realize the transmutation. He ventured hardly fringe it in histhoughts.

  To divert his wonderings and to ease a situation which oppressed him,he began adjusting the "level" telescope to his eye.

  With his back planted firmly against the tower, he studied a widesection of the dead and buried world so very far below them. Withastonishment he cried:

  "It _is_ true, Beatrice! Everything's swept clean away. Nothing left,nothing at all--no signs of life!

  "As far as I can reach with these lenses, universal ruin. We're allalone in this whole world, just you and I--and everything belongs tous!"

  "Everything--all ours?"

  "Everything! Even the future--the future of the human race!"

  Suddenly he felt her tremble at his side. Down at her he looked, agreat new tenderness possessing him. He saw that tears were forming inher eyes.

  Beatrice pressed both hands to her face and bowed her head. Filledwith strange emotions, the man watched her for a moment.

  Then in silence, realizing the uselessness of any words, knowing thatin this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations oflife could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her in his arms.

  And there alone with her, far above the ruined world, high in the pureair of mid-heaven, he comforted the girl with words till thenunthought-of and unknown to him.