CHAPTER XV
LABOR AND COMRADESHIP
Four days later, having hastened all their preparations andworked with untiring energy, they broke camp for the long, periloustrek in quest of the ruins of a dead and buried city.
It was at daylight that they started from the little shack in the edgeof the forest. Both were refreshed by a long sleep and by a plunge inthe curling breakers that now, at high tide, were driven up the beachby a stiff sea-breeze.
The morning, which must have been toward the end of September--Sternhad lost accurate count but reckoned the day at about thetwenty-fifth--dawned clear and bracing, with just a tang of winelikeexhilaration in the air. Before them the beach spread away and away toeastward, beyond the line of vision, a broad and yellow road to bidthem travel on.
"Come, girl, _en marche!_" cried the man cheerily, as he adjustedBeta's knapsack so that the platted cord should not chafe hershoulders, then swung his own across his back. And with a buoyantsense of conquest, yet a regret at leaving the little camp which,though crude and rough, had yet been a home to them for a week, theyturned their faces to the rising sun and set out on the journey intothe unexplored.
Much altered were they now from those days at Hope Villa, when theyhad been able to restore most of the necessities and even some of therefinements of civilization. Now the girl's hair hung in two thickbraids down over her worn tiger-skin, each braid as big as a strongman's wrist, for she lacked any means to do it up; she had not so muchas a comb, nor could Stern, without a knife, fashion one for her.Their sandals hung in tatters. Stern had tried to repair them withstrips of squirrel-skin clumsily hacked out with the sharp clam-shell,but the result was crude.
Long were his hair and beard, untrimmed now, unkempt and red. Clad inhis ragged fur garment, bare legged and bare armed, with thegrass-cloth sack slung over his sinewy shoulder and the heavy stone-axin his hand, he looked the very image of prehistoric man--as she, too,seemed the woman of that distant age.
But though their outward guise was that of savages far cruder than theNorth American Indian was when Columbus first beheld him, yet in theirbrains lay all the splendid inheritance of a world-civilization. Andas the fire-materials in Stern's sack contained, in germ, all themechanic arts, so their joint intelligence presaged everything thatyet might be.
They traveled at an easy pace, like voyagers who foresee many harddays of journeying and who are cautious not at first to drain theirstrength. Five hours they walked, with now and then a pause. Sterncalculated they had made twelve miles or more before they campedbeside a stream that flowing thinly from the wood, sank into the sandand was lost before it reached the sea.
Here they ate and rested till the sun began to pass its meridian, whenonce more they started on their pilgrimage. That night, after a daywherein they had met no other sign of life than gulls and crowsravaging the mussel-beds, they slept on piles of sun-dried kelp whichthey heaped into some crevices under an overhanging brow of low cliffson a rocky point. And dawn found them again, traveling steadilyeastward, battle-axes swinging, hopes high, in perfect comradeship andfaith.
Toward what must have been about ten o'clock of that morning theyreached the mouth of a river, something like half a mile wide where itjoined the sea. By following this up a mile or so they reached anarrow point; but even here, burdened as they were, swimming was outof the question.
"The only thing to do," said Stern, "will be to wait till the tidebacks up and gives us quiet water, then make our way across on a logor two"--a plan they put into effect with good success. Mid-afternoon,and they were on their way again, east-bound.
"Was that the Connecticut?" asked Beatrice. "Car do you think we'vepassed that already?"
"More likely to be the Thames," he answered. "I figure that what usedbe New London is less than five miles from here."
"Why not visit the ruins? There might be something there."
"Not enough to bother with. We mustn't be diverted from the mainissue, Boston! Forward, march!"
Next day Stern descried a point jutting far out to sea, which hedeclared was none other than Watch Hill Point, on the Rhode Islandboundary. And on the afternoon of the following day they reached whatwas indisputably Point Judith and Narragansett Bay.
Here they were forced to turn northward; and when camping time came,after they had dug their due allowance of clams and gathered theirbreadfruit and made their fire in the edge of the woods, they heldconclave about their future course.
The bay was, indeed, a factor neither Stern nor she had reckoned on.To follow its detours all the way around would add seventy to ahundred miles to their journey, according as they hugged the shore ormade straight cuts across some of the wooded promontories.
"And from Providence, at the head of the bay, to Boston, is only fortymiles in a direct line northwest-by-north," said he, poking the firecontemplatively.
"But if we miss our way?"
"How can we, if we follow the remains of the railroad? The cuts andembankments will guide us all the way."
"I know; but the forest is so thick!"
"Not so thick but we can make at least five miles a day. That is,inside of eight days we can reach the Hub. And we shall have the helpof tools and guns, remember. In a place the size of Providence theremust be a few ruins still containing something of value. Yes, by allmeans the overland route is best, from now on. It means forty milesinstead of probably two hundred."
Thus they agreed upon it; and, having settled matters, gave them nomore thought, but prepared for rest. And sunset came down once more;it faded, smoldering along the forest-line to westward; it burned todull timbers and vague purples, then went out. And "the wind that runsafter the sun awoke and sang softly among the tree-tops, a while, likethe intoning of a choir invisible, and was silent again."
There by the firelight he half saw, half sensed her presence, vagueand beautiful despite the travel-worn, tattered skin that clothed her.He felt her warm, vital nearness; his hand sought hers and pressed it,and the pressure was returned. And with a thrill of overwhelmingtenderness he realized what this girl was to him and what his lovemeant and what it all portended.
Until long after dark they sat and talked of the future, and of lifeand death, and of the soul and of the great mystery that had swept theearth clean of all of their kind and had left them, alone, of allthose fifteen hundred million human creatures.
And overhead, blotting out a patch of sky and stars, moved slowly thedark object which had so puzzled Stern since the first time he hadobserved it--the thing he meant to know about and solve, once he couldreach the Cambridge Observatory. And of this, too, they talked; butneither he nor she could solve the riddle of its nature.
Their talk together, that night, was typical of the relationship thathad grown up between them in the long weeks since their awakening inthe Tower. Almost all, if not quite all, the old-time idea of sex hadfaded--the old, false assumption on the part of the man that he was byhis very nature the superior of woman.
Stern and Beatrice now stood on a different footing; their friendship,comradeship and love were based on the tacit recognition of absoluteequality, save for Stern's accidental physical superiority. It was asthough they had been two men, one a little stronger and larger thanthe other, so far as the notion of equality went; though this by nomeans destroyed that magnetic sex-emotion which, in other aspects,thrilled and attracted and infused them both.
Their love never for a moment obscured Stern's recognition of the girlas primarily a human being, his associate on even terms in this greatgame that they were playing together, this tremendous problem theywere laboring to solve--the vastest and most vital problem that everyet had confronted the human race, now represented in its totality bythese two living creatures.
And as Beatrice recalled the world of other times, with all its falseconventions, limitations and pettily stupid gallantries, she shudderedwith repulsion. In her heart she knew that, had the choice been hers,she would not have gone back to that former state of half-ch
attelpatronage, half-hypocritical homage and total misconception.
Contrasting her present state with her past one, and comparing thisman--all ragged, unshaven and long-haired as he was, yet a true man inevery inch of his lithe, virile body--with others she remembered, shefound up-welling in her a love so deep and powerful, grounded on suchbroad bases of respect and gratitude, mutual interest and latentpassion, that she herself could not yet understand it in all itsphases and its moods.
The relation which had grown up between them, comrades and partners inall things, partook of a fine tolerance, an exquisite andnever-failing tenderness, a wealth of all intimate, yet respectfuladoration. It held elements of brotherhood and parenthood; it was thelove of coworkers striving toward a common goal, of companions in lifeand in learning, in striving, doing, accomplishing, even failing.Failure mattered nothing; for still the comradeship was there.
And on this soil was growing daily and hourly a love such as neversince the world began had been equaled in purity and power, faith,hope, integrity. It purified all things, made easy all things, bravedall things, pardoned all things; it was long-suffering and very kind.
They had no need to speak of it; it showed in every word and look andact, even in the humblest and most commonplace of services each foreach. Their love was lived, not talked about.
All their trials and tremendous hardships, their narrow passes withdeath, and their hard-won escapes, the vicissitudes of a savage lifein the open, with every imaginable difficulty and hard expedient,could not destroy their illusions or do aught than bind them in closerbonds of unity.
And each realized when the time should ripen for another and a morevital love, that, too, would circle them with deeper tenderness,binding them in still more intense and poignant bonds of joy.