CHAPTER XXXIII
FIVE YEARS LATER
Long before daybreak that morning, the thriving village ofSettlement Cliffs, capital and market-town of the New Hope Colony, wasawake and astir.
For the great festival day was at hand, the fifth anniversary of thefounding of the colony, to be celebrated by the arrival of the lastMerucaans from the depths of the Abyss.
The old caves, now abandoned save for grain, fruit and fishstorehouses were closed and silent. No labor was going forward there.The nets hung dry. From the forges, smithies and work-shops along theriver-bank at the rapids arose no sounds of the accustomed industry.
The road and bridge-builders were idle; and from the farms now dottingthe rich brule across the river--each snug stone house, tiledwith red or green, standing among its crops and growing orchards--theFolk were coming in to town for the feast-day.
The broad wooden trestle-bridge across the New Hope echoed with hollowverberations beneath the measured tread of two and four-ox teamshauling creaking wains heaped high with meats, fruits, casks of cider,generous wines, and all the richness of that virgin soil.
On the summer morning air rose laughter from the youths and maidenscoming in afoot. Sounded the cries of the teamsters, the barking ofdogs, the mingled murmur of speech--English speech again; and thefresh wind, bearing away a fine, golden dust from the long roads,swayed the palm-tops and the fern-trees with a gentle and caressingtouch.
All up and down the broad, well-paved street of the village--a streetlined with stone cottages, bordered with luxuriant tropic gardens, andbranching into a dozen smaller thoroughfares--a happy throng wasidling.
Well clad in plain yet substantial weaves from the vine-festoonedwork-shops below the cliff, abundantly fed, vigorous and strong, notone showed sickness or deformity, such as had scourged the human racein the old, evil days of long ago.
Loose-belted garb, sandals and a complete absence of hats all hadtheir part in this abounding health. Open-air life and rational foodcompleted the work.
No drugs, save three or four essential ones, and no poisons, ever hadcrept in to menace life. Wine there was, rich and unfermented; but thecurse of alcohol existed not. And in the Law it was forever banned.
On the broad porch of their home, a boulder-built cottage facing thebroad plaza where palms shaded the graveled paths, and purple, yellowand scarlet blooms lured humming-birds and butterflies, stood Beatriceand Allan.
Both were smiling in the clear June sunlight of that early morning. Acradle rocked by Gesafam--a little older and more bent, yet stillhardy--gave glimpses of another olive-branch, this one a girl.
The piazza was littered at its farthest end with serviceable,home-made playthings; but Allan, Junior, had no use for them to-day.Out there on the lawn of the plaza he was rolling and running with atroop of other children--many, many children, indeed.
As Beatrice and Allan watched the play they smiled; and through theman's arm crept the woman's hand, and with the confidence of perfecttrust she leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Whoever could have thought," said he at last, "that all this reallycould come true? In those dark hours when the Horde had all butswallowed us, when we fell into the Abyss, when those terribleadventures racked our souls down beside the Sunken Sea, and later,here, when everything seemed lost--who could have foreseen _this?_"
"You could and did!" she answered. "From the beginning you plannedeverything, Allan. It was all foreseen and nothing ever stopped you,just as the future beyond this time is all foreseen by you and mustand 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 thevast plaza where once the palisade had been. Now the old woodenstockade had long vanished. Cleared land and farms extended far beyondeven Newport Heights, where the Pauillac had first come to earth atNew Hope.
Well-kept roads connected them all with the settlement. And for somemiles to southward the primeval forests had been vanquished by theever-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 youwould--if you came in contact with them as I do in the schools, to seethe 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 ourswere really civilized in essence, despite all the overlying ages ofbarbarism. Civilization was latent in them, that's all. Just as allthe children born here under normal conditions have reverted topigmented skin and hair and eyes, so even the grown-ups have thrownback to civilization. Two or three years at the outside have put backthe 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 generalcraning of necks, a drift toward the north side of the square, theriver 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 certainlydo surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days thePauillac wouldn't have been here before noon from the Abyss!"
Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear ofthe bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement andboulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable,where half a dozen horses--caught on the northern savannas andcarefully tamed--disputed their master's favor with the touring car hehad built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta andother cities.
Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed bythe many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder thanthe river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: "They come! Theycome!"
"Where?" questioned Beta. "See them, boy?"
"There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly _me_ now--more luckto them!"
He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea ofgreen, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in thewake of the great fire.
Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and amonth before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign ofAllan's return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift littlespecks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.
"Hurrah!" shouted Allan boyishly. "Here they come--the last of myFolk!"
He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff thatdominated the canyon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripesthree times in signal of welcome.
And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slippedfull half the distance from the place where they had first beensighted.
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 thelast-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 somuch rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no--they'vegot to ring me in, as usual! You'll come, too, of course?"
She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawntoward the plaza.
On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the childrensometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community'sair-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven byelectric power from the turbines at the rapids.
Even as Allan and Beatrice passed through the cheering crowd, nowdrifting toward the hangars, a sound of music wafted down-wind--alittle harsh at times, but still with promise of far better
things tobe.
Many flags fluttered in the air, and even the rollicking children onthe lawns paused to wonder as swift shadows cut across the park.
On high was heard the droning hum of the propellers. It ceased, and inwide, sure, evenly balanced spirals the great planes one by one sliddown and took the earth as easily as a gull sinks to rest upon thebosom of a quiet sea.
"They _do_ work well, my equilibrators!" murmured Allan, unable tosuppress a thrill of pride. "Simple, too; but, after all, howwonderfully effective!"
The crowd parted to let him through with Beatrice. Two minutes laterhe was clasping the hands of the last Folk ever to be brought from thestrange, buried village under the cliff beside the Sunless Sea.
He summoned Zangamon and Frumuos, together with Sivad and the threeaviators.
"Well done!" said he; and that was all--all, yet enough. Then, whilethe people cheered again and, crowding round, greeted their kinsfolk,he gave orders for the housing and the care of the travel-weariednewcomers.
Through the summer air drifted slow smoke. Off on the edge of thegrove that flanked the plaza to southward the crackling of new-builtfires was heard.
Allan turned to Beta with a smile.
"Getting ready for the barbecue already!" said he, "With that and thegames and all, they ought to have enough to keep them busy for oneday. Don't you think they'll have to let us go a while? There arestill a few finishing touches to put to the new laws I'm going to handthe 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 ofpalm-growths, ferns and flowers. Here they stopped a momentto chat with some good friend, there to watch the childrenand--parentlike--make sure young Allan was safe and only normallydirty and grass-stained.
They gained their broad piazza at length, turned, and for a whilewatched the busy, happy scene in the shaded street, the plaza and theplayground.
Then Beta sat down by the cradle--still in that same low chair Allanhad built for her five years ago, a chair she had steadily refused tobarter for a finer one.
He drew up another beside her. From his pocket he drew a paper--thenew 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 laybefore them. On his head a shaft of sunlight fell, and had you lookedyou might have seen the crisp, black hair none too sparingly linedwith gray.
But his gaze was strong and level and his smile the same as in bygoneyears, as with his left hand he pressed hers and, with a look eloquentof many things, said:
"Now, sweetheart, if you're quite ready--?"
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