“You could and did!” she answered. “From the beginning you planned everything, Allan. It was all foreseen and nothing ever stopped you, just as the future beyond this time is all foreseen by you and must and shall be as you plan it!”
“Shall be, with your help!” he murmured, and silence came again. Together they watched the holiday crowd gradually congregating in the vast plaza where once the palisade had been. Now the old wooden stockade had long vanished. Cleared land and farms extended far beyond even Newport Heights, where the Pauillac had first come to earth at New Hope.
Well-kept roads connected them all with the settlement. And for some miles to southward the primeval forests had been vanquished by the ever-extending hand of this new, swiftly growing race.
“With my help and theirs!” she rejoined presently. “Never forget, dear, how wonderfully they’ve taken hold, how they’ve labored, developed and grown in every way. You’d be surprised—really you would—if you came in contact with them as I do in the schools, to see the marvelous way they learn—old and young alike. It’s a miracle, that’s all!”
“No, not exactly,” he explained. “It’s atavism. These people of ours were really civilized in essence, despite all the overlying ages of barbarism. Civilization was latent in them, that’s all. Just as all the children born here under normal conditions have reverted to pigmented skin and hair and eyes, so even the grown-ups have thrown back to civilization. Two or three years at the outside have put back the coloring matter in every newcomer’s iris and epidermis. Just so—”
A sudden and quickly-growing tumult in the plaza and down the long, broad street interrupted him. He saw a waving of hands, a general craning of necks, a drift toward the north side of the square, the river side.
The shouts and cheers increased and cries of “They come! They come!” rose on the morning air.
“Already?” exclaimed Allan in surprise. “These new machines certainly do surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days the Pauillac wouldn’t have been here before noon from the Abyss!”
Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear of the bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement and boulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable, where half a dozen horses—caught on the northern savannas and carefully tamed—disputed their master’s favor with the touring car he had built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta and other cities.
Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed by the many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder than the river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: “They come! They come!”
“Where?” questioned Beta. “See them, boy?”
“There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly me now—more luck to them!”
He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea of green, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in the wake of the great fire.
Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and a month before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign of Allan’s return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift little specks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.
“Hurrah!” shouted Allan boyishly. “Here they come—the last of my Folk!”
He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff that dominated the cañon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripes three times in signal of welcome.
And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slipped full half the distance from the place where they had first been sighted.
A messenger ran down the gravel driveway and saluted.
“O Kromno!” he began. “Master—”
“Master no longer!” Allan interrupted. “Brother now, only!”
The lad stared, amazed.
“Well, what is it?” smiled Allan.
“The Council of the Elders prays you to come to help greet the last-comers. And after that the feast!”
“I come!” he answered. The lad bowed and vanished.
“They aren’t going to let me out of it, after all,” he sighed. “I’d so much rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no—they’ve got to ring me in, as usual! You’ll come, too, of course?”
She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawn toward the plaza.
On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the children sometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community’s air-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven by electric power from the turbines at the rapids.
Even as Allan and Beatrice passed through the cheering crowd, now drifting toward the hangars, a sound of music wafted downwind—a little harsh at times, but still with promise of far better things to be.
Many flags fluttered in the air, and even the rollicking children on the lawns paused to wonder as swift shadows cut across the park.
On high was heard the droning hum of the propellers. It ceased, and in wide, sure, evenly balanced spirals the great planes one by one slid down and took the earth as easily as a gull sinks to rest upon the bosom of a quiet sea.
“They do work well, my equilibrators!” murmured Allan, unable to suppress a thrill of pride. “Simple, too; but, after all, how wonderfully effective!”
The crowd parted to let him through with Beatrice. Two minutes later he was clasping the hands of the last Folk ever to be brought from the strange, buried village under the cliff beside the Sunless Sea.
He summoned Zangamon and Frumuos, together with Sivad and the three aviators.
“Well done!” said he; and that was all—all, yet enough. Then, while the people cheered again and, crowding round, greeted their kinsfolk, he gave orders for the housing and the care of the travel-wearied newcomers.
Through the summer air drifted slow smoke. Off on the edge of the grove that flanked the plaza to southward the crackling of new-built fires was heard.
Allan turned to Beta with a smile.
“Getting ready for the barbecue already!” said he, “With that and the games and all, they ought to have enough to keep them busy for one day. Don’t you think they’ll have to let us go a while? There are still a few finishing touches to put to the new laws I’m going to hand the Council this afternoon for the Folk to hear. Yes, by all means, they’ll have to let us go.”
Together they walked back to their bungalow amid its gardens of palm-growths, ferns and flowers. Here they stopped a moment to chat with some good friend, there to watch the children and—parentlike—make sure young Allan was safe and only normally dirty and grass-stained.
They gained their broad piazza at length, turned, and for a while watched the busy, happy scene in the shaded street, the plaza and the playground.
Then Beta sat down by the cradle—still in that same low chair Allan had built for her five years ago, a chair she had steadily refused to barter for a finer one.
He drew up another beside her. From his pocket he drew a paper—the new laws—and for a minute studied it with bent brows.
The soft wind stirred the woman’s hair as she sat there half dreaming, her blue-gray eyes, a little moist, seeing far more than just what lay before them. On his head a shaft of sunlight fell, and had you looked you might have seen the crisp, black hair none too sparingly lined with gray.
But his gaze was strong and level and his smile the same as in bygone years, as with his left hand he pressed hers and, with a look eloquent of many things, said:
“Now, sweetheart, if you’re quite ready—?”
CHAPTER XXXIV
HISTORY AND ROSES
Allan sat writing in his library. Ten years had now slipped past since the last of the Folk had been brought to the surface and the ancient settlement in the bowels of the earth forever abandoned. Heavily sprinkled with gray, the man’s hair showed the stress of time and labors incredible.
Lines marked his face with the record of t
heir character-building, even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long.
Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden. Farther away sounded the comfortable gossip of hens as they breasted their soft feathers into the dust-baths behind the stables. A dog barked.
Came voices from without. Along the street growled a motor. Laughter of children echoed from the playground. Allan ceased writing a moment, with a smile, and gazed about him as though waking from a dream.
“Can this be true?” he murmured. “After having worked over the records of the earlier time they still seem the reality and this the dream!”
On the garden-path sounded footfalls. Then the voice of Beatrice calling:
“Come out, boy! See my new roses—just opened this morning!”
He got up and went to the window. She—matronly now and of ampler bosom, yet still very beautiful to look upon—was standing there by the rose-tree, scissors in hand.
Allan, Junior, now a rugged, hardy-looking chap of nearly sixteen—tall, well built and with his father’s peculiar alertness of bearing—was bending down a high branch for his mother.
Beyond, on the lawn, the ten-year-old daughter, Frances, had young Harold in charge, swinging him high in a stout hammock under the apple-trees.
“Can’t you come out a minute, dear?” asked Beatrice imploringly. “Let your work go for once! Surely these new roses are worth more than a hundred pages of dry statistics that nobody’ll ever read, anyhow!”
He laughed merrily, threw her a kiss, and answered:
“Still a girl, I see! Ah, well, don’t tempt me, Beta. It’s hard enough to work on such a day, anyhow, without your trying to entice me out!”
“Won’t you come, Allan?”
“Just give me half an hour more and I’ll call it off for to-day!”
“All right; but make it a short half-hour, boy!”
He returned to his desk. The library, like the whole house now, was fully and beautifully furnished. The spoils of twenty cities had contributed to the adornment of “The Nest,” as they had christened their home.
In time Allan planned even to bring art-works from Europe to grace it still further. As yet he had not attempted to cross the Atlantic, but in his seaport near the ruins of Mobile a powerful one hundred and fifty-foot motor-yacht was building.
In less than six months he counted on making the first voyage of discovery to the Old World.
Contentedly he glanced around the familiar room. Upon the mantel over the capacious fireplace stood rare and beautiful bronzes. Priceless rugs adorned the polished floor.
The broad windows admitted floods of sunlight that fell across the great jars of flowers Beta always kept there for him and lighted up the heavy tiers of books in their mahogany cases. Books everywhere—under the window-seats, up the walls, even lining a deep alcove in the far corner. Books, hundreds upon hundreds, precious and cherished above all else.
“Who ever would have thought, after all,” murmured he, “that we’d find books intact as we did? A miracle—nothing less! With our printing-plant already at work under the cliff, all the art, science and literature of the ages—all that’s worth preserving—can be still kept for mankind. But if I hadn’t happened to find a library of books in a New York bonded warehouse all cased up for transportation, the work of preservation would have been forever impossible!”
He turned back to his history, and before writing again idly thumbed over a few pages of his voluminous manuscript. He read:
“March 1, A. D. 2930. The astronomical observatory on Round Top Hill, one mile south of Newport Heights, was finished to-day and the last of the apparatus from Cambridge, Lick, and other ruins was installed. I find my data for reckoning time are unreliable, and have therefore assumed this date arbitrarily and readjusted the calendar accordingly.
“Our Daily Messenger, circulating through the entire community and educating the people both in English and in scientific thought, will soon popularize the new date.
“Just as I have substituted the metric system for the old-time chaotic hodge-podge we once used, so I shall substitute English for Merucaan definitely inside of a few years. Already the younger generation hardly understands the native Merucaan speech. It will eventually become a dead, historically interesting language, like all other former tongues. The catastrophe has rendered possible, as nothing else could have done, the realization of universal speech, labor-unit exchange values in place of money, and a political and economic democracy unhampered by ideas of selfish, personal gain.”
He turned a few pages, his face glowing with enthusiasm.
“April 15—The first ten-yearly census was completed to-day. Even with the aid of Frumuos and Zangamon, I have been at work on this nearly two months, for now our outlying farms, villages and settlements have pushed away fifteen or twenty miles from the original focus at the Cliffs, or ‘Cliffton,’ as the capital is becoming generally known.
“Population, 5,072, indicating a high birth-rate and an exceptionally low mortality. Our one greatest need is large families. With the whole world to reconquer, we must have men.
“Area now under cultivation, under grazing and under forests being actively exploited, 42,076 acres. Domestic animals, 26,011. Horses are already being replaced by motors, save for pleasure-riding. Power-plants and manufacturing establishments, 32. Aerial fleet, 17 of the large biplanes, 8 of the swifter monoplanes for scout work. One shipyard at Mobile.
“Total roads, macadamized and other, 832 miles. Air-motors and sun-motors in use or under construction, 41; mines being worked, 13; schools, 27, including the technical school at Intervale, under my personal instruction. Military force, zero—praise be! Likewise jails, saloons, penitentiaries, gallows, hospitals, vagrants, prostitutes, politicians, diseases, beggars, charities—all zero, now and forever!”
Allan turned to the unfinished end of the manuscript, poised his pen a moment, and then began writing once more where he had left off when called by Beatrice:
“The great monument in memory of the patriarch, first of all our people to perish in the upper world, was finished on June 18. Memorial exercises will be held next month.
“On June 22 the new satellite, which passes darkly among the stars every forty-eight hours, was named Discus. Its distance is 3,246 miles; dimensions, 720 miles by 432; weight, six and three-quarter billion tons.
“On July 2, I discovered unmistakable traces either of habitations or of their ruins on the new and till now unobserved face of the moon, hidden in the old days. This problem still remains for further investigation.
“July 4, our national holiday, a viva-voce election and Council of the Elders was held. They still insist on choosing me as Kromno. I weary of the task, and would gladly give it over to some younger man.
“At this Council, held on the great meeting-ground beyond the hangars, I again and for the third time submitted the question of trying to colonize from the races still in the Abyss. If feasible, this would rapidly add to our population. The Folk are now civilized to a point where they could rapidly assimilate outside stock.
“In addition to the Lanskaarn, a strong and active race known to exist on the Central Island in the Sunken Sea, there remain persistent traditions of a strange, yellow-haired race somewhere on the western coasts of that sea, beyond the Great Vortex. Two parties exist among us.
“The minority is anxious for exploration and conquest. The majority votes for peace and quiet growth. It may well be that the Lanskaarn and the other people never will be rescued. I, for one, cannot attempt it. I grow a little weary. But if the younger generation so decides, that must be their problem and their labor, like the rebuilding of the great cities and the reconquest of the entire continent from sea to sea.
“In the mean time—”
At the window appeared Beatrice. Smiling, she flung a yello
w rose. It landed on Allan’s desk, spilling its petals all across his manuscript.
He looked up, startled. His frown became a smile.
“My time’s up?” he queried. “Why, I didn’t know I’d been working five minutes!”
“Up? Long ago! Now, Allan, you just simply must leave that history and come out and see my roses, or—or—”
“No threats!” he implored with mock earnestness. “I’m coming, dearest. Just give me time—”
“Not another minute, do you hear?”
“—to put my work away, and I’m with you!”
He carefully arranged the pages of his manuscript in order, while she stood waiting at the window, daring not leave lest he plunge back again into his absorbing toil.
Into his desk-drawer he slid the precious record of the community’s labor, growth, achievement, triumph. Then, with a boyish twinkle in his eyes, he left the library.
She turned, expecting him to meet her by the broad piazza; but all at once he stole quietly round the other corner of the bungalow, his footsteps noiseless in the thick grass.
Suddenly he seized her, unsuspecting, in his arms.
“My prisoner!” he laughed. “Roses? Here’s the most beautiful one in our whole garden!”
“Where?” she asked, not understanding.
“This red one, here!”
And full upon the mouth he kissed her in the leaf-shaded sunshine of that wondrous summer day.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE AFTERGLOW
Evening!
Far in the west, beyond the cañon of the New Hope River—now a beautifully terraced park and pleasure-ground—the rolling hills, fertile and farm-covered, lay resting as the sun died in a glory of crimson, gold and green.
The reflections of the passing day spread a purple haze through the palm and fern-tree aisles of the woodland. Only a slight breeze swayed the branches. Infinite in its serenity brooded a vast peace from the glowing sky.
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