“Of course, in detective stories, Hawkshaw can take the ashes right out of the grate and piece them together and pour chemicals on them and decipher the mystery of the lost rubies, and all that. But this isn’t a story, you see; and what’s more, Hawkshaw doesn’t have to work with ashes nearly a thousand years old. Ten centuries of dry-rot—that’s some problem!”
She stood aghast, hardly able to believe her eyes.
“But—but,” she finally articulated, “there’s the other cache out there in Medicine Bow Range. The cave, you know. And we have the bearings. And some time, when we’ve got all the leisure in the world and all the necessary appliances—”
“Yes, perhaps. Although, of course, you realize the earth is seventeen degrees out of its normal plane, and every reckoning’s shifted. Still, it’s a possibility. But for the present there’s strictly nothing doing, after all.”
“How about that leaden chest?”
She wheeled about and pointed at the other side of the alcove, where stood the metal box, sullen, defiant, secure.
“By Jove, that’s so, tool Why, I’d all but forgotten that! You’re a brick, Beta! The box, by all means. Perhaps the most important things of all are still in safety there. Who knows?”
“Open it, Allan, and let’s see!”
Her recent terror almost forgotten in this new excitement, the girl had begun to get back some of her splendid color. And now, as she stood gazing at the metal chest which still, perhaps, held the most vital of the records, she felt again a thrill of excitement at thought of all its possibilities.
The man, too, gazed at it with keen emotion.
“We’ve got to be careful this time, Beatrice!” said he. “No more mistakes. If we lose the contents of this chest, Heaven only knows when we may be able to get another glimpse into the past. Frankly, the job of opening it, without ruining the contents, looks pretty stiff. Still, with care it may be done. Let’s see, now, what are we up against here?”
He took the torch from her and minutely examined the leaden casket.
It stood on the concrete floor, massive and solid, about three and a half feet high by five long and four wide. So far as he could see, there were neither locks nor hinges. The cover seemed to have been hermetically sealed on. Still visible were the marks of the soldering-iron, in a ragged line, about three inches from the top.
“The only way to get in here is to cut it open,” said Allan at last. “If we had any means of melting the solder, that would be better, of course, but there’s no way to heat a tool in this crypt. I take it the men who did this work had a plumber’s gasoline torch, or something of that sort. We have practically nothing. As for building a fire in here and heating one of the aeroplane tools, that’s out of the question. It would stifle us both. No, we must cut. That’s the best we can do.”
He drew his hunting-knife from its sheath and, giving the torch back to Beatrice, knelt by the chest. Close under the line of soldering he dug the blade into the soft metal, and, boring with it, soon made a puncture through the leaden sheet.
“Only a quarter of an inch thick,” he announced, with satisfaction. “This oughtn’t to be such a bad job!”
Already he was at work, with infinite care not to shock or jar the precious contents within. In his powerful hands the knife laid back the metal in a jagged line. A quarter of an hour sufficed to cut across the entire front.
He rested a little while.
“Seems to be another chest inside, of wood,” he told the girl. “Not decayed, either. I shouldn’t wonder if the lead had preserved things absolutely intact. In that case this find is sure to be a rich one.”
Again he set to work. In an hour from the time he had begun, the whole top of the lead box—save only that portion against the wall—had been cut off.
“Do you dare to move it out, Allan?” queried the girl anxiously.
“Better not. I think we can raise the cover as it is.”
He slit up the front corners, and then with comparative ease bent the entire top upward. To the explorer’s eyes stood revealed a chest of cedar, its cover held with copper screws.
“Now for it!” said the man. “We ought to have one of the screw-drivers from the Pauillac, but that would take too much time. I guess the knife will do.”
With the blade he attacked the screws, one by one, and by dint of laborious patience in about an hour had removed all twenty of them.
A minute later he had pried up the cover, had quite removed it, and had set it on the floor.
Within, at one side, they saw a formless something swathed in oiled canvas. The other half of the space was occupied by eighty or a hundred vertical compartments, in each of which stood something carefully enveloped in the same material.
“Well, for all the world if it doesn’t look like a set of big phonograph records!” exclaimed the man. He drew one of the objects out and very carefully unwrapped it.
“Just what they are—records! On steel. The new Chalmers-Enemarck process—new, that is, in 1917. So, then, that’s a phonograph, eh?”
He pointed at the oiled canvas.
“Open it, quick, Allan!” Beatrice exclaimed. “If it is a phonograph, why, we can hear the very voices of the past, the dead, a full thousand years ago!”
With trembling fingers Stern slit the canvas wrappings.
“What a treasure! What a find!” he exulted. “Look, Beta—see what fortune has put into our hands!”
Even as he spoke he was lifting the great phonograph from the space where, absolutely uninjured and intact, it had reposed for ten centuries. A silver plate caught his eye. He paused to read:
METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE,
New York City.
This Phonograph and these Records were immured in the vault of this building September 28, 1918, by the Philavox Society, to be opened in the year 2000.
Non Pereat Memoria Musicae Nostrae.
“Let not the memory of our music perish!” he translated. “Why, I remember well when these records were made and deposited in the Metropolitan! A similar thing was done in Paris, you remember, and in Berlin. But how does this machine come here?”
“Probably the expedition reached New York, after all, and decided to transfer this treasure to a safer place where it might be absolutely safe and dry,” she suggested. “It’s here, anyhow; that’s the main thing, and we’ve found it. What fortune!”
“It’s lucky, all right enough,” the man assented, setting the magnificent machine down on the floor of the crypt. “So far as I can see, the mechanism is absolutely all right in every way. They’ve even put in a box of the special fiber needles for use on the steel plates, Beta. Everything’s provided for.
“Do you know, the expedition must have been a much larger one than we thought? It was no child’s play to invade the ruins of New York, rescue all this, and transport it here, probably with savages dogging their heels every step. Those certainly were determined, vigorous men, and a goodly number at that. And the fight they must have put up in the cathedral, defending their cache against the enemy, and dying for it, must been terrifically dramatic!
“But all that’s done and forgotten now, and we can only guess a bit of it here and there. The tangible fact is this machine and these records, Beatrice. They’re real, and we’ve got them. And the quicker we see what they have to tell us the better, eh?”
She clapped her hands with enthusiasm.
“Put on a record, Allan, quick! Let’s hear the voices of the past once more—human voices—the voices of the age that was!” she cried, excited as a child.
CHAPTER VIII
TILL DEATH US DO PART
“All right, my darling,” he made answer. “But not here. This is no place for melody, down in this dark and gloomy crypt, surrounded by the relics of the dead. We’ve been buried alive down here altogether too long as it is. Brrr! The chill’s beginning to get into my very bones! Don’t you feel it, Beta?”
“I do, now I stop to think of it. Well, let’s go
up then. We’ll have our music where it belongs, in the cathedral, with sunshine and air and birds to keep it company!”
Half an hour later they had transported the magnificent phonograph and the steel records out of the crypt and up the spiral stairway, into the vast, majestic sweep of the transept.
They placed their find on the broad concrete steps that in the old days had led up to the altar, and while Allan minutely examined the mechanism to make sure that all was right, the girl, sitting on the top step, looked over the records.
“Why, Allan, here are instrumental as well as vocal masterpieces,” she announced with joy. “Just listen—here’s Rossini’s ‘Barbier de Seville,’ and Grieg’s ‘Anitra’s Dance’ from the ‘Peer Gynt Suite,’ and here’s that most entrancing ‘Barcarolle’ from the ‘Contes d’Hoffman’—you remember it?”
She began to hum the air, then, as the harmony flowed through her soul, sang a few lines, her voice like gold and honey:
Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour, souris à nos ivresses!
Nuit plus douce que le jour, ô belle nuit d’amour!
Le temps fuit et sans retour emporte nos tendresses;
Loin de cet heureux séjour le temps fuit sans retour!
Zéphyrs embrasés, versez-nous vos caresses!
Ah! Donnez-nous vos baisers!
The echoes of Offenbach’s wondrous air, a crystal stream of harmony, and of the passion-pulsing words, died through the vaulted heights. A moment Allan sat silent, gazing at the girl, and then he smiled.
“It lives in you again, the past!” he cried. “In you the world shall be made new once more! Beatrice, when I last heard that ‘Barcarolle’ it was sung by Farrar and Scotti at the Metropolitan, in the winter of 1913. And now—you waken the whole scene in me again!
“I seem to behold the vast, clear-lighted space anew, the tiers of gilded galleries and boxes, the thousands of men and women hanging eagerly on every silver note—I see the marvelous orchestra, many, yet one; the Venetian scene, the moonlight on the Grand Canal, the gondolas, the merrymakers—I hear Giulietta and Nicklausse blending those perfect tones! My heart leaps at the memory, beloved, and I bless you for once more awakening it!”
“With my poor voice?” she smiled. “Play it, play the record, Allan, and let us hear it as it should be sung!”
He shook his head.
“No!” he declared. “Not after you have sung it. Your voice to me is infinitely sweeter than any that the world of other days ever so much as dreamed of!”
He bent above her, caressed her hair and kissed her; and for a little while they both forgot their music. But soon the girl recalled him to the work in hand.
“Come, Allan, there’s so much to do!”
“I know. Well now—let’s see, what next?”
He paused, a new thought in his eyes.
“Beta!”
“Well?”
“You don’t find Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March,’ do you? Look, dearest, see if you can find it. Perhaps it may be there. If so—”
She eyed him, her gaze widening.
“You mean?”
He nodded.
“Just so! Perhaps, after all, you and I can—”
“Oh, come and help me look for it, Allan!” she cried enthusiastic as a child in the joy of his new inspiration. “If we only could find it, wouldn’t that be glorious?”
Eagerly they searched together.
“‘Ich Grolle Nicht,’ by Schumann, no,” Stern commented, as one by one they examined the records. “‘Ave Maria,’ Arcadelt-Liszt—no, though it’s magnificent. That’s the one you sing best of all, Beta. How often you’ve sung it to me! Remember, at the bungalow, how I used to lay my head in your lap while you played with my Samsonesque locks and sang me to sleep? Let’s see—Brahms’s ‘Wiegenlied.’ Cradle-song, eh? A little premature; that’s coming later. Eh? Found it, by Jove! Here we are, the March itself, so help me! Shall I play it now?”
“Not yet, Allan. Here, see what I’ve found!”
She handed him a record as they sat there together in a broad ribbon of midmorning sunlight that flooded down through one of the clearstory windows.
“‘The Form of the Solemnization of Matrimony, by Bishop Gibson,’” he read. And silence fell, and for a long minute their eyes met.
“Beatrice!”
“I know; I understand! So, after all, these words—”
“Shall be spoken, O my love! Out of the dead past a voice shall speak to us and we shall hear! Beatrice, the words your mother heard, my mother heard, we shall hear, too. Come, Beatrice, for now the time is at hand!”
She fell a trembling, and for a moment could not speak. Her eyes grew veiled in tears, but through them he saw a bright smile break, like sunlight after summer showers.
She stood up and held out her hand to him.
“My Allan!”
In his arms he caught her.
“At last!” he whispered. “Oh, at last!”
When the majesty and beauty of the immortal marriage hymn climbed the high vaults of the cathedral, waking the echoes of the vacant spaces, and when it rolled, pealing triumphantly, she leaned her head upon his breast and, trembling, clung to him.
With his arm he clasped her; he leaned above her, shrouding her in his love as in an everlasting benison. And through their souls thrilled wonder, awe and passion, and life held another meaning and another mystery.
The words of solemn sacredness hallowed for centuries beyond the memory of man, rose powerful, heart-thrilling, deep with symbolism, strong with vibrant might—and, hand in hand, the woman and the man bowed their heads, listening:
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony—reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly. Into this holy estate these two persons present now come to be joined.”
His hand tightened upon her hand, for he felt her trembling. But bravely she smiled up at him and upon her hair the golden sunlight made an aureole.
The voice rose in its soul-shaking question—slow and powerful:
“Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health, and keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
Allan’s “I will!” was as a hymn of joy upon the morning air.
“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”
She answered proudly, bravely:
“I will!”
Then the man chorused the voice and said:
“I, Allan, take thee, Beatrice, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, till death us do part, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Her answer came, still led by the commanding voice, like an antiphony of love:
“I, Beatrice, take thee, Allan, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, till death us do part, and thereto I give thee my troth!”
Already Allan had drawn from his little finger the plain gold ring he had worn there so many centuries. Upon her finger he placed the ring and kissed it, and, following the voice, he said:
“With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Forest, river, sky and golden sunlight greeted them as they stood on the broad porch of the cathedral, and the clear song of many birds, unafraid in the virgin wilderness, made music to their ears such as must have greeted the primal day.
Suddenly Allan caught and crushed her in his arms.
“My wife!” he whispered.
The satin of
her skin from breast to brow surged into sudden flame. Her eyes closed and between her eager lips the breath came fast.
“Oh, Allan—husband! I feel—I hear—”
“The voice of the unborn, crying to us from out the dark, ‘O father, mother, give us life!’”
CHAPTER IX
AT SETTLEMENT CLIFFS
Ten days later the two lovers—now man and wife—were back again at the eastern lip of the Abyss. With them on the biplane they had brought the phonograph and records, all securely wrapped in oiled canvas, the same which had enveloped the precious objects in the leaden chest.
They made a camp, which was to serve them for a while as headquarters in their tremendous undertaking of bringing the Merucaans to the surface, and here carefully stored their treasure in a deep cleft of rock, secure from rain and weather.
They had not revisited the bungalow on the return trip. The sight of their little home and garden, now totally devastated, they knew would only sadden them unnecessarily.
“Let it pass, dearest, as a happy memory that was and is no more,” Stern cheered the girl as he held her in his arms the first night of their stay in the new camp, and as together they watched the purple haze of sunset beyond the chasm. “Some day, perhaps, we may go back and once more restore Hope Villa and live there again, but for the present many other and far more weighty matters press. It will be wisest for a while to leave the East alone. Too many of the Horde are still left there. Here, west of the Ohio River Valley, they don’t seem to have penetrated—and what’s more, they never shall! Just now we must ignore them—though the day of reckoning will surely come! We’ve got our hands full for a while with the gigantic task ahead of us. It’s the biggest and the hardest that one man and one woman ever tackled since the beginning of time!”
She drew his head down and kissed him, and for a little while they kept the silence of perfect comradeship. But at last she questioned:
“You’ve got it all worked out at last, Allan? You know just the steps to take? One false move—”
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