CHAPTER I
DEATH, LIFE, AND LOVE
Life! Life again, and light, the sun and the fresh winds ofheaven, the perfect azure of a June sky, the perfume of the passionatered blooms along the lips of the chasm, the full-throated song ofhidden birds within the wood to eastward--life, beauty, love--such,the sunrise hour when Allan and the girl once more stood side by sidein the outer world, delivered from the perils of the black Abyss.
Hardly more real than a disordered nightmare now, the terrible fallinto those depths, the captivity among the white barbarians, thebattles and the ghastly scenes of war, the labors, the perilousescape.
All seemed to fall and fade away from these two lovers, all save theirjoy in life and in each other, their longing for the inevitablegreater passion, pain and joy, their clear-eyed outlook into the vastand limitless possibilities of the future, their future and theworld's.
And as they stood there, hand in hand beside the body of the fallenpatriarch--he whose soul had passed in peace, even at the moment ofhis life's fulfilment, his knowledge of the sun--awe overcame themboth. With a new tenderness, mingled with reverent adoration, Sterndrew the girl once more to him.
Her face turned up to his and her arms tightened about his neck. Hekissed her brow beneath the parted masses of her wondrous hair. Hislips rested a moment on her eyes; and then his mouth sought hers andburned its passion into her very soul.
Suddenly she pushed him back, panting. She had gone white; shetrembled in his clasp.
"Oh, your kiss--oh, Allan, what is this I feel?--it seems to chokeme!" she gasped, clutching her full bosom where her heart leaped likea prisoned creature. "Your kiss--it is so different now! No, no--notagain--_not yet!_"
He released her, for he, too was shaking in the grip of new, fiercepassions.
"Forgive me!" he whispered. "I--I forgot myself, a moment. Notyet--no, not yet. You're right, Beatrice. A thousand things arepressing to be done. And love--must wait!"
He clenched his fists and strode to the edge of the chasm, where, fora while, he stood alone and silent, gazing far down and away,mastering himself, striving to get himself in leash once more.
Then suddenly he turned and smiled.
"Come, Beta," said he. "All this must be forgotten. Let's get to work.The whole world's waiting for us, for our labor. It's eager for ourtoil!"
She nodded. In her eyes the fire had died, and now only the light ofcomradeship and trust and hope glowed once again.
"Allan?"
"Yes?"
"Our first duty--" She gestured toward the body of the patriarch,nobly still beneath the rough folds of the mantle they had drawn overit.
He understood.
"Yes," murmured he. "And his grave shall be for all the future ages aplace of pilgrimage and solemn thought. Where first, one of lost Folkissued again into the world and where he died, this shall be amonument of the new time now coming to its birth.
"His grave shall lie here on this height, where the first sun shalleach day for ages fall upon it, supreme in its deep symbolism. Foreverit shall be a memorial, not of death, but life, of liberty, of hope!"
They kept a moment's silence, then Stern added.
"So now, to work!" From the biplane he fetched the ax. With this hecut and trimmed a branch from a near-by fir. He sharpened it to a flatblade three or four inches across. In the deep red sand along the edgeof the Abyss he set to work, scooping the patriarch's grave.
In silence Beatrice took the ax and also labored, throwing the sandaway. Together, in an hour, they had dug a trench sufficiently deepand wide.
"This must do, for now," said Stern, looking up at last. "Some time heshall have fitting burial, but for the present we can do no more. Letus now commit his body to the earth, the Great Mother which createdand which waits always to give everlasting sleep, peace, rest."
Together, silently, they bore him to the grave, still wrapped in thecloak which now had become his shroud. Once more they gazed upon thenoble face of him they had grown to love in the long weeks of theAbyss, when only he had understood them or seemed near.
"What is this, Allan?" asked the girl, touching a fine chain of goldabout the patriarch's neck, till now unnoticed.
Allan drew at the chain, and a small golden cylinder was revealed,curiously carven. Its lightness told him it was hollow.
"Some treasure of his, I imagine," judged he.
"Some record, perhaps? Oughtn't we to look?"
He thought a moment in silence, then detached the chain.
"Yes," said he. "It can't help him now. It may help us. He himselfwould have wanted us to have it."
And into the pocket of his rough, brown cassock, woven of theweed-fiber of the dark sea, he slid the chain and golden cylinder.
A final kiss they gave the patriarch, each; then, carefully wrappinghis face so that no smallest particle of sand should come in contactwith it, stood up. At each other they gazed, understandingly.
"Flowers? Some kind of service?" asked the girl.
"Yes. All we can do for him will be too little!"
Together they brought armfuls of the brilliant crimson and purpleblooms along the edge of the sands, where forest and barrenirregularly met; and with these, fir and spruce boughs, the longer tokeep his grave freshly green.
All about him they heaped the blossoms. The patriarch lay at restamong beauties he never had beheld, colors arid fragrances that to himhad been but dim traditions of antiquity.
"I can't preach," said Stern. "I'm not that kind, anyway, and in thisnew world all that sort of thing is out of place. Let's just saygood-by, as to a friend gone on a long, long journey."
Beatrice could no longer keep back her grief. Kneeling beside thegrave, she arranged the flowers and the evergreens, on which her tearsfell shining.
"Dust unto dust!" Stern said. "To you, oh Mother Nature, we give backthe body of this friend, your son. May the breeze blow gently here,the sun shine warm, and the birds forever sing his requiem. And maythose who shall come after us, when we too sleep, remember that in himwe had a friend, without whom the world never again could have hopedfor any new birth, any life! To him we say good-by--eternally! Dustunto dust; good-by!"
"Good-by!" whispered the girl. Then, greatly overcome, she arose andwalked away.
Stern, with his naked hands, filled the shallow grave and, this done,rolled three large boulders onto it, to protect it from the prowlingbeasts of the wild.
Beatrice returned. They strewed more flowers and green boughs, and insilence stood a while, gazing at the lowlier bed of their one friendon earth.
Suddenly Stern took her hand and drew her toward him.
"Come, come, Beatrice," said he, "he is not dead. He still lives inour memories. His body, aged and full of pain, is gone, but his spiritstill survives in us--that indomitable sold which, buried alive inblindness and the dark, still strove to keep alive the knowledge andtraditions of the upper world, hopes of attaining it, and visions of abetter time to be!
"Was ever greater human courage, faith or strength? Let us not grieve.Let us rather go away strengthened and inspired by this wonderful lifethat has just passed. In us, let all his hopes and aspirations come toreality.
"His death was happy. It was as he wished it, Beatrice, for his onegreat ambition was fully granted--to know the reality of the upperworld, the winds of heaven and the sun! Impossible for him to havesurvived the great change. Death was inevitable and right. He wantedrest, and rest is his, at last.
"We must be true to all he thought us, you and I--to all he believedus, even demigods! He shall inspire and enlighten us, O my love; andwith his memory to guide us, faith and fortitude shall not be lacking.
"Now, we must go. Work waits for us. Everything is yet to be plannedand done. The world and its redemption lie before us. Come!"
He led the girl away. As by mutual understanding they returned towhere the biplane lay, symbol of their conquest of nature, epitome ofhopes.
Near it, on the edge of the Abyss, they r
ested, hand in hand. Insilence they sat thinking, for a space. And ever higher and morewarmly burned the sun; the breeze of June was sweet to them, long-usedto fogs and damp and dark; the boundless flood of light across theazure thrilled them with aspiration and with joy.
Life had begun again for them and for the world, life, even there inthe presence of death. Life was continuing, developing,expanding--life and its immortal sister, Love!
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