“And they boasted of a work for all time!” whispered he, awed by the horror of it. “They boasted—like the financiers, the churchmen, the merchants, everybody! Boasted of their institutions, their city, their country. And now—”
Out he clambered presently, terribly depressed by what he had witnessed, and set to work laying in still more supplies from the wrecked shops. Now for the first time, his wonder and astonishment having largely abated, he began to feel the horror of this loneliness.
“No life here! Nobody to speak to—except the girl...” he exclaimed aloud, the sound of his own voice uncanny in that woodland street of death. “All gone, everything! My Heavens, suppose I didn’t have her? How long could I go on alone, and keep my mind?”
The thought terrified him. He put it resolutely away and went to work. Wherever he stumbled upon anything of value he eagerly seized it.
The labor, he found, kept him from the subconscious dread of what might happen to Beatrice or to himself if either should meet with any mishap. The consequences of either one dying, he knew, must be horrible beyond all thinking for the survivor.
Up Broadway he found much to keep—things which he garnered in the up-caught hem of his bearskin, things of all kinds and uses. He found a clay pipe—all the wooden ones had vanished from the shop—and a glass jar of tobacco.
These he took as priceless treasures. More jars of edibles he discovered, also a stock of rare wines. Coffee and salt he came upon. In the ruins of the little French brass-ware shop, opposite the Flatiron, he made a rich haul of cups and plates and a still serviceable lamp.
Strangely enough, it still had oil in it. The fluid hermetically sealed in, had not been able to evaporate.
At last, when the lengthening shadows in Madison Forest warned him that day was ending, he betook himself, heavy laden, once more back past the spring, and so through the path which already was beginning to be visible back to the shelter of the Metropolitan.
“Now for a great surprise for the girl!” thought he, laboriously toiling up the stair with his burden: “What will she say, I wonder, when she sees all these housekeeping treasures?” Eagerly he hastened.
But before he had reached the third story he heard a cry from above. Then a spatter of revolver-shots punctured the air.
He stopped, listening in alarm.
“Beatrice! Oh, Beatrice!” he hailed, his voice falling flat and stifled in those ruinous passages.
Another shot.
“Answer!” panted Stern. “What’s the matter now?”
Hastily he put down his burden, and, spurred by a great terror, bounded up the broken stairs.
Into their little shelter, their home, he ran, calling her name.
No reply came!
Stern stopped short, his face a livid gray.
“Merciful Heaven!” stammered he.
The girl was gone!
CHAPTER XI
A THOUSAND YEARS!
Sickened with a numbing anguish of fear such as in all his life he had never known, Stern stood there a moment, motionless and lost.
Then he turned. Out into the hall he ran, and his voice, re-echoing wildly, rang through those long-deserted aisles.
All at once he heard a laugh behind him—a hail.
He wheeled about, trembling and spent. Out his arms went, in eager greeting. For the girl, laughing and flushed, and very beautiful, was coming down the stair at the end of the hall.
Never had the engineer beheld a sight so wonderful to him as this woman, clad in the Bengal robe; this girl who smiled and ran to meet him.
“What? Were you frightened?” she asked, growing suddenly serious, as he stood there speechless and pale. “Why—what could happen to me here?”
His only answer was to take her in his arms and whisper her name. But she struggled to be free.
“Don’t! you mustn’t!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. Didn’t even know you were here!”
“I heard the shots—I called—you didn’t answer. Then—”
“You found me gone? I didn’t hear you. It was nothing, after all. Nothing—much!”
He led her back into the room.
“What happened? Tell me!”
“It was really too absurd!”
“What was it?”
“Only this,” and she laughed again. “I was getting supper ready, as you see,” with a nod at their provision laid out upon the clean-brushed floor. “When—”
“Yes?”
“Why, a blundering great hawk swooped in through the window there, circled around, pounced on the last of our beef and tried to fly away with it.”
Stern heaved a sigh of relief. “So that was all?” asked he. “But the shots? And your absence?”
“I struck at him. He showed fight. I blocked the window. He was determined to get away with the food. I was determined he shouldn’t. So I snatched the revolver and opened fire.”
“And then?”
“That confused him. He flapped out into the hall. I chased him. Away up the stairs he circled. I shot again. Then I pursued. Went up two stories. But he must have got away through some opening or other. Our beef’s all gone!” And Beatrice looked very sober.
“Never mind, I’ve got a lot more stuff down-stairs. But tell me, did you wing him?”
“I’m afraid not,” she admitted. “There’s a feather or two on the stairs, though.”
“Good work!” cried he laughing, his fear all swallowed in the joy of having found her again, safe and unhurt. “But please don’t give me another such panic, will you? It’s all right this time, however.
“And now if you’ll just wait here and not get fighting with any more wild creatures, I’ll go down and bring my latest finds. I like your pluck,” he added slowly, gazing earnestly at her.
“But I don’t want you chasing things in this old shell of a building. No telling what crevice you might fall into or what accident might happen. Au revoir!”
Her smile as he left her was inscrutable, but her eyes, strangely bright, followed him till he had vanished once more down the stairs.
*
Broad strokes, a line here, one there, with much left to the imagining—such will serve best for the painting of a picture like this—a picture wherein every ordinary bond of human life, the nexus of man’s society, is shattered. Where everything must strive to reconstruct itself from the dust. Where the future, if any such there may be, must rise from the ashes of a crumbling past.
Broad strokes, for detailed ones would fill too vast a canvas. Impossible to describe a tenth of the activities of Beatrice and Stern the next four days. Even to make a list of their hard-won possessions would turn this chapter into a mere catalogue.
So let these pass for the most part. Day by day the man, issuing forth sometimes alone, sometimes with Beatrice, labored like a Titan among the ruins of New York.
Though more than ninety per cent. of the city’s onetime wealth had long since vanished, and though all standards of worth had wholly changed, yet much remained to harvest.
Infinitudes of things, more or less damaged, they bore up to their shelter, up the stairs which here and there Stern had repaired with rough-hewn logs.
For now he had an ax, found in that treasure-house of Currier & Brown’s, brought to a sharp edge on a wet, flat stone by the spring, and hefted with a sapling.
This implement was of incredible use, and greatly enheartened the engineer. More valuable it was than a thousand tons of solid gold.
The same store yielded also a well-preserved enameled water-pail and some smaller dishes of like ware, three more knives, quantities of nails, and some small tools; also the tremendous bonanza of a magazine rifle and a shotgun, both of which Stern judged would come into shape by the application of oil and by careful tinkering. Of ammunition, here and elsewhere, the engineer had no doubt he could unearth unlimited quantities.
“With steel,” he reflected, “and with my flint spearhead, I can make fire at any time. Wood i
s plenty, and there’s lots of ‘punk.’ So the first step in reestablishing civilization is secure. With fire, everything else becomes possible.
“After a while, perhaps, I can get around to manufacturing matches again. But for the present my few ounces of phosphorus and the flint and steel will answer very well.”
Beatrice, like the true woman she was, addressed herself eagerly to the fascinating task of making a real home out of the barren desolation of the fifth floor offices. Her splendid energy was no less than the engineer’s. And very soon a comfortable air pervaded the place.
Stern manufactured a broom for her by cutting willow withes and lashing them with hide strips onto a trimmed branch. Spiders and dust all vanished. A true housekeeping appearance set in.
To supplement the supply of canned food that accumulated along one of the walls, Stern shot what game he could—squirrels, partridges and rabbits.
Metal dishes, especially of solid gold, ravished from Fifth Avenue shops, took their place on the crude table he had fashioned with his ax. Not for esthetic effect did they now value gold, but merely because that metal had perfectly withstood the ravages of time.
In the ruins of a magnificent store near Thirty-First Street, Stern found a vault burst open by frost and slow disintegration of the steel.
Here something over a quart of loose diamonds, big and little, rough and cut, were lying in confusion all about. Stern took none of these. Their value now was no greater than that of any pebble.
But he chose a massive clasp of gold for Beatrice, for that could serve to fasten her robe. And in addition he gathered up a few rings and onetime costly jewels which could be worn. For the girl, after all, was one of Eve’s daughters.
Bit by bit he accumulated many necessary articles, including some tooth-brushes which he found sealed in glass bottles, and a variety of gold toilet articles. Use was his first consideration now. Beauty came far behind.
In the corner of their rooms, after a time, stood a fair variety of tools, some already serviceable, others waiting to be polished, ground and hefted, and in some cases retempered. Two rough chairs made their appearance.
The north room, used only for cooking, became their forge and oven all in one. For here, close to a window where the smoke could drift out, Stern built a circular stone fireplace.
And here Beatrice presided over her copper casseroles and saucepans from the little shop on Broadway. Here, too, Stern planned to construct a pair of skin bellows, and presently to set up the altars of Vulcan and of Tubal Cain once more.
Both of them “thanked whatever gods there be” that the girl was a good cook. She amazed the engineer by the variety of dishes she managed to concoct from the canned goods, the game that Stern shot, and fresh dandelion greens dug near the spring. These edibles, with the blackest of black coffee, soon had them in fine fettle.
“I certainly have begun to put on weight,” laughed the man after dinner on the fourth day, as he lighted his fragrant pipe with a roll of blazing birch-bark.
“My bearskin is getting tight. You’ll have to let it out for me, or else stop such magic in the kitchen.”
She smiled back at him, sitting there at ease in the sunshine by the window, sipping her coffee out of a gold cup with a solid gold spoon.
Stern, feeling the May breeze upon his face, hearing the bird-songs in the forest depths, felt a well-being, a glow of health and joy such as he had never in his whole life known—the health of outdoor labor and sound sleep and perfect digestion, the joy of accomplishment and of the girl’s near presence.
“I suppose we do live pretty well,” she answered, surveying the remnants of the feast. “Potted tongue and peas, fried squirrel, partridge and coffee ought to satisfy anybody. But still—”
“What is it?”
“I would like some buttered toast and some cream for my coffee, and some sugar.”
Stern laughed heartily.
“You don’t want much!” he exclaimed, vastly amused, the while he blew a cloud of Latakia smoke. “Well, you be patient, and everything will come, in time.
“You mustn’t expect me to do magic. On the fourth day you don’t imagine I’ve had time enough to round up the ten thousandth descendant of the erstwhile cow, do you?
“Or grow cane and make sugar? Or find grain for seed, clear some land, plow, harrow, plant, hoe, reap, winnow, grind and bolt and present you with a bag of prime flour? Now really?”
She pouted at his raillery. For a moment there was silence, while he drew at his pipe. At the girl he looked a little while. Then, his eyes a bit far-away, he remarked in a tone he tried to render casual:
“By the way, Beatrice, it occurs to me that we’re doing rather well for old people—very old.”
She looked up with a startled glance.
“Very?” she exclaimed. “You know how old then?”
“Very, indeed!” he answered. “Yes, I’ve got some sort of an idea about it. I hope it won’t alarm you when you know.”
“Why—how so? Alarm me?” she queried with a strange expression.
“Yes, because, you see, it’s rather a long time since we went to sleep. Quite so. You see, I’ve been doing a little calculating, off and on, at odd times. Been putting two and two together, as it were.
“First, there was the matter of the dust in sheltered places, to guide me. The rate of deposition of what, in one or two spots, can’t have been anything less than cosmic or star-dust, is fairly certain.
“Then again, the rate of this present deterioration of stone and steel has furnished another index. And last night I had a little peek at the pole-star, through my telescope, while you were asleep.
“The good old star has certainly shifted out of place a bit. Furthermore, I’ve been observing certain evolutionary changes in the animals and plants about us. Those have helped, too.”
“And—and what have you found out?” asked she with tremulous interest.
“Well, I think I’ve got the answer, more or less correctly. Of course it’s only an approximate result, as we say in engineering. But the different items check up with some degree of consistency.
“And I’m safe in believing I’m within at least a hundred years of the date one way or the other. Not a bad factor of safety, that, with my limited means of working.”
The girl’s eyes widened. From her hand fell the empty gold cup; it rolled away across the clean-swept floor.
“What?” cried she. “You’ve got it, within a hundred years! Why, then—you mean it’s more than a hundred?”
Indulgently the engineer smiled.
“Come, now,” he coaxed. “Just guess, for instance, how old you really are—and growing younger every day?”
“Two hundred maybe? Oh surely not as old as that! It’s horrible to think of!”
“Listen,” bade he. “If I count your twenty-four years, when you went to sleep, you’re now—”
“What?”
“You’re now at the very minimum calculation, just about one thousand and twenty-four! Some age, that, eh?”
Then, as she stared at him wide-eyed he added with a smile.
“No disputing that fact, no dodging it. The thing’s as certain as that you’re now the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world!”
CHAPTER XII
DRAWING TOGETHER
Days passed, busy days, full of hard labor and achievement, rich in experience and learning, in happiness, in dreams of what the future might yet bring.
Beatrice made and finished a considerable wardrobe of garments for them both. These, when the fur had been clipped close with the scissors, were not oppressively warm, and, even though on some days a bit uncomfortable, the man and woman tolerated them because they had no others.
Plenty of bathing and good food put them in splendid physical condition, to which their active exercise contributed much. And thus, judging partly by the state of the foliage, partly by the height of the sun, which Stern determined with considerable accuracy by means of a simp
le, home-made quadrant—they knew mid-May was past and June was drawing near.
The housekeeping by no means took up all the girl’s time. Often she went out with him on what he called his “pirating expeditions,” that now sometimes led them as far afield as the sad ruins of the wharves and piers, or to the stark desolation and wreckage of lower Broadway and the onetime busy hives of newspaperdom, or up to Central Park or to the great remains of the two railroad terminals.
These two places, the former tide-gates of the city’s life, impressed Stern most painfully of anything. The disintegrated tracks, the jumbled remains of locomotives and luxurious Pullmans with weeds growing rank upon them, the sunlight beating down through the caved-in roof of the Pennsylvania station “concourse,” where millions of human beings once had trod in all the haste of men’s paltry, futile affairs, filled him with melancholy, and he was glad to get away again leaving the place to the jungle, the birds and beasts that now laid claim to it.
“Sic transit gloria mundi!” he murmured, as with sad eyes he mused upon the down-tumbled columns along the facade, the overgrown entrance-way, the cracked and falling arches and architraves. “And this, they said, was builded for all time!”
It was on one of these expeditions that the engineer found and pocketed—unknown to Beatrice—another disconcerting relic.
This was a bone, broken and splintered, and of no very great age, gnawed with perfectly visible tooth-marks. He picked it up, by chance, near the west side of the ruins of the old City Hall.
Stern recognized the manner in which the bone had been cracked open with a stone to let the marrow be sucked out. The sight of this gruesome relic revived all his fears, tenfold more acutely than ever, and filled him with a sense of vague, impending evil, of peril deadly to them both.
This was the more keen, because the engineer knew at a glance that the bone was the upper end of a human femur—human, or, at the very least, belonging to some highly anthropoid animal. And of apes or gorillas he had, as yet, found no trace in the forests of Manhattan.
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