Darkness and Dawn

by George Allan England

  CHAPTER XXI

  ALLAN RETURNS NOT

  Five days dragged past, then six, then seven, and still no signof Allan came to lighten the terrible and growing anguish of thewoman.

  All day long now she would watch for him--save at such times as thecare and nursing of her child mercifully distracted her attention alittle while from the intolerable grief and woe consuming her.

  She would stand for hours on the rock terrace, peering into thenorthwest; she would climb the steep path a dozen times a day, and indistraction pace the cliff-top inside the palisaded area, where nowsome few wild sheep and goats were penned in process of domestication.

  Here she would walk, calling in vain his name to the uncaring winds ofheaven. With the telescope she would untiringly sweep the far reachesof the horizon, hoping, ever hoping, that at each moment a vague anddistant speck might spring to view, wing its swift way southeastward,resolve itself into that one and only blessed sight her whole soulcraved and burned for--the Pauillac and her husband!

  And so, till night fell, and her strained eyes could no longerdistinguish anything but swimming mists and vapors, she would watch,her every thought a prayer, her every hope a torment--for each hopewas destined only to end in disappointment bitterer far than death.

  And when the shrouding dark had robbed her of all possibility forfurther watching she would descend with slow and halting steps,grief-broken, dazed, half-maddened, to the home-cavern--empty now, inspite of her child's presence there--empty, and terrible, and drear!

  Then would begin the long night vigil. Daylight gave some simulacrumof relief in action, some slight deadening of pain in the verysearching of the sky, the strong, determined hope against what had nowbecome an inner conviction of defeat and utter loss. But night--

  Night! Nothing, then, but to sit and think, and think, and think, tomadness! Sleep was impossible. At most, exhausted nature snatched onlya few brief spells of semi-consciousness.

  Even the sight of the boy, lying there sunk in his deep and healthyslumber, only kindled fresh fires of woe. For he was Allan's child--hespoke to her by his mere presence of the absent, the lost, perhaps thedead man.

  And at thought that now she might be already widowed and her boyfatherless, she would pace the rock-floor in terrible, writhen crisesof agony, hands clenched till the nails pierced the delicate flesh,eyes staring, face waxen, only for the sake of the child suppressingthe sobs and heart-torn cries that sought to burst from heroverburdened soul.

  "Oh, Allan! Allan!" she would entreat, as though he could know andhear. "Oh, come back to me! What has happened? Where are you? Comeback, come back to your boy--to me!"

  Then, betimes, she would catch up the child and strain it to herbreast, even though it awakened. Its cries would mingle with heranguished weeping; and in the firelit gloom of the cave they two--shewho knew, and he who knew not--would in some measure comfort oneanother.

  On the eighth day she sustained a terrible shock, a sudden joyfollowed by so poignant a despair that for a moment it seemed to herhuman nature could endure no more and she must die.

  For, eagerly watching the cloud-patched sky with the telescope, fromthe cliff-top--while on the terrace old Gesafam tended the child--shethought suddenly to behold a distant vision of the aeroplane!

  A tiny spot in the heavens, truly, was moving across the field ofvision!

  With a cry, a sudden flushing of her face, now so wan and colorless,she seemed to throw all her senses into one sense, the power of sight.And though her hand began to shake so terribly that she could onlywith a great effort hold the glass, she steadied it against afern-tree and thus managed to find again and hold the moving speck.

  The Pauillac! Was it indeed the Pauillac and Allan?

  "Merciful Heaven!" she stammered. "Bring him back--to me!"

  Again she watched, her whole soul aflame with hope and eagerness andtremulous joy, ready to burst into a blaze of happiness--and then camedisillusion and despair, blacker than ever and more terrible.

  For suddenly the moving speck turned, wheeled and rose. One second shecaught sight of wings. She knew now it was only some huge, tropicbird, afar on the horizon--some condor, vulture, or other creature ofthe air.

  Then, as with a quick swoop, the vulture slid away and vanished behinda blue hill-shoulder, the woman dropped her glass, sank to earth,and--half-fainting--burst into a terrible, dry, sobbing plaint. Hertears, long since exhausted, would not flow. Grief could pass nofurther limits.

  After a time she grew calmer, arose and thought of her child oncemore. Slowly she returned down the via dolorosa of the terrace-path,the walk where she and Allan had so often and so gaily trodden; thepath now so barren, so hateful, so solitary.

  To her little son she returned, and in her arms she cherished him--inher trembling arms--and the tears came at last, welcome andheart-stilling.

  Old Gesafam, gazing compassionately with troubled eyes that blinkedbehind their mica shields, laid a comforting hand on the girl'sshoulder.

  "Do not weep, O Yulcia, mistress!" she exclaimed in her own tongue."Weep not, for there is still hope. See, all things are going on, asbefore, in the colony!" She gestured toward the lower caves, whencethe sounds of smithy-work and other toil drifted upward. "All is yetwell with us. Only our Kromno is away. And he will yet come! He willcome back to us--to the child, to you, to all who love and obey him!"

  Beatrice seized the old woman's hand and kissed it in a burst ofgratitude.

  "Oh--if I could only believe you!" she sobbed.

  "It will be so! What could happen to him, so strong, so brave? He mustcome back! He will!"

  "What could happen? A hundred things, Gesafam! One tiny break in theflying boat and he might be hurled to earth or down the Abyss, todeath! Or, among your Folk, he may have been defeated, for many of theFolk are still savage and very cruel! Or, the Horde--"

  "The Horde? But the Horde, of which you have so often spoken, is nowafar."

  "No, Gesafam. Even to-day I saw their signal-fires on the horizon."

  The old woman drew an arm about the girl. All barbarian that she was,the eternal, universal spirit of the feminine, pervading her, made herakin with the sorrowing wife.

  "Go rest," she whispered. "I understand. I, too have wept and mourned,though that was very long ago in the Abyss. My man, my Nausaak, a verybrave and strong catcher of fish, fought with the Lanskaarn--and hedied. I understand, Yulcia! You must think no more of this now. Thechild needs your strength. You must rest. Go!"

  Gently, yet with firmness that was not to be disputed, she forcedBeatrice into the cave, made her lie down, and prepared a drink forher.

  Though Beta knew it not, the wise old woman had steeped therein a fewleaves of the ronyilu weed, brought from the Abyss, a powerfulsoporific. And presently a certain calm and peace began to winpossession of her soul.

  For a time, however, distressing visions still continued to floatbefore her disordered mind. Now she seemed to behold the Pauillac,flaming and shattered, whirling down, over and over, meteor-swift,into the purple mists and vapors of the Abyss.

  Now the scene changed; and she saw it, crushed and broken, lying onsome far rock-ledge, amid impenetrable forests, while from beneath aformless tangle of wreckage protruded a hand--his hand--and a thin,dripping stream of red.

  Gasping, she sought to struggle up and stare about her; but thedrugged draft was too potent, and she could not move. Yet still thevisions came again--and now it seemed that Allan lay there, in thewoods, somewhere afar, transfixed with an envenomed spear, while in acrowding, hideous, jabbering swarm the distorted, beast-likeanthropoids jostled triumphantly all about him, hacked at him withflints and knives, flayed and dismembered him, inflicted unimaginablemutilations--

  She knew no more. Thanks to the wondrous beneficence of the ronyilu,she slept a deep and dreamless slumber. Even the child being laid onher breast by the old woman--who smiled, though in her eyes stoodtears--even this did not arouse her.

  She slept. And for a few bl
essed hours she had respite from woe andpain unspeakable.

  At last her dreams grew troubled. She seemed caught in athunder-storm, an earthquake. She heard the smashing of the lightningbolts, the roaring shock of the reverberation, then the crash ofshattered buildings.

  A sudden shock awoke her. She thought a falling block of stone hadstruck her arm. But it was only old Gesafam shaking her in terror.

  "_Oh, Yulcia, noa!_" the nurse was crying in terror. "Up! Waken! Thecliff falls! Awake, awake!"

  Beatrice sat up in bed, conscious through all the daze of dreams quickbroken, that some calamity--some vast and unknown peril--had smittenthe colony at Settlement Cliffs.