CHAPTER V
THE SEARCH FOR THE RECORDS
Morning found them early astir, to greet the glory of Junesunlight over the shoulder of Storm King. A perfect morning, if everany one was perfect since the world began--soft airs stirring in theforest, golden robins' full-throated song, the melody of the scarlettropic birds they had named "fire-birds" for want of any moredescriptive title, the chatter of gray squirrels on the branchesoverhead, all blent, under a sky of wondrous azure, to tell them oflife, full and abundant, joyous and kind.
Two of the squirrels had to die, for breakfast, which Beta cookedwhile Allan quested the edges of the wood for the ever-presentberries. They drank from a fern-embowered spring a hundred yards or soto south of their camp in the forest, and felt the vigorous tides oflife throb hotly through their splendid bodies.
Allan got together the few simple implements at their disposal for theexpedition--his ax, a torch made of the brown weed of the Abyss,oil-soaked and bound with wire that fastened it to a metal handle, anda skin bag of the rude matches he had manufactured in the village ofthe Folk.
"Now then, en marche!" said he at length. "The old cathedral and therecords are awaiting a morning call from us--and there are all thewedding preparations to make as well. We've got no time to lose!"
She laughed happily with a blush and gave him her hand.
"Lead on, Sir Knight!" she jested. "I'm yours by right of capture andconquest, as in the good old days!"
"The good new days will have better and higher standards," he answeredgravely. "To-day, one age is closed, another opened for all time."
Hand in hand they ascended the barren spur to eastward, and presentlyreached the outposts of the forest that rose in close-ranked majestyover the brow of Storm King.
The going proved hard, for with the warmer climate that now favoredthe country, undergrowth had sprung up far more luxuriantly than inthe days of the old-time civilization; but Stern and Beatrice wereused to labor, and together--he ahead to break or cut a path--theystruggled through the wood.
Half an hour's climb brought them to their first dim sight of themassive towers of the cathedral, rising beyond the tangle of trees,majestic in the morning sun.
Soon after they had made their way close up to the huge,lichen-crusted walls, and in the shadow of the gigantic pile slowlyexplored round to the vast portals facing eastward over the Hudson.
"Wonderful work, magnificent proportions and design," Stern commented,as they stopped at last on the broad, debris-littered steps and drewbreath. "Brick and stone have long since perished. Even steel hascrumbled. But concrete seems eternal. Why, the building's practicallyintact even to-day, after ten centuries of absolute abandonment. Aweek's work with a force of men would quite restore it. The damageit's suffered is absolutely insignificant. Concrete. A lesson to belearned, is it not, in our rebuilding of the world?"
The mighty temple stood, in fact, almost as men had left it in thelong ago, when the breath of annihilation had swept a withering blastover the face of the earth. The broad grounds and driveways that hadled up to the entrance had, of course, long since absolutely vanishedunder rank growths.
Grass flourished in the gutters and on the Gothic finials; thegargoyles were bearded with vines and fern-clusters; the flyingbuttresses and mullions stood green with moss; and in the vegetablemold that had for centuries accumulated on the steps and in thevestibule--for the oaken doors had crumbled to powder--many abright-flowered plant raised its blossoms to the sun.
The tall memorial windows and the great rose-window in the easternfacade had long since been shattered out of their frames by hail andtempest. But the main body of the cathedral seemed yet as massivelyintact as when the master-builders of the twentieth century had takendown the last scaffold, and when the gigantic organ had first pealedits "Laus Deo" through the vaulted apse.
Together they entered the vast silent space, and--awed despitethemselves--gazed in wonder at the beauties of this, the mostmagnificent temple ever built in the western hemisphere.
The marble floor was covered now with windrows of dead leaves andpine-spills, and with the litter from myriads of birds'-nests thatsheltered themselves on achitraves and galleries, and on the loftycapitals of the fluted pillars which rose, vistalike, a hundred feetabove the clear-story, spraying out into a wondrous complexity of ribsto sustain the marvelous concrete vaultings full two hundred feet inair.
Through the shattered windows broad slants of sunshine fell athwartthe walls and floor. Swallows chirped and twittered far aloft, orwinged their swift way through the dusky upper spaces, passing at willin or out the mullioned gaps whence all the painted glass had longsince fallen.
An air of mystery, of long expectancy seemed brooding everywhere; itseemed almost as though the spirit of the past were waiting to receivethem--waiting now, as it had waited a thousand years, patiently,inexorably, untiringly for those to come who should some day reclaimthe hidden secrets in the crypt, once more awaken human echoes in thevault, and so redeem the world. "Waiting!" breathed Stern, as if thethought hung pregnant in the very air. "Waiting all these longcenturies--for _us!_ For you, Beatrice, for me! And we are here, atlast, we of the newer time; and here we shall be one. The symbol ofthe pillars, mounting, ever mounting toward the infinite, the hope oflife eternal, the majesty and mystery of this great temple, welcomeus! Come!"
He took her hand again and now in silence they walked forwardnoiselessly over the thick leaf-carpet on the pavement of rare marble.
"Oh, Allan, I feel so very small in here!" she whispered, drawingclose to him. "You and I, all alone in this tremendous place built forthousands--"
"You and I are _the world_ to-day!" he answered very gravely; and sotogether they made way toward the vast transept, arched with abewildering lacery of vaultings.
All save the concrete had long vanished. No traces now remained ofpews, or railings, altars, pulpits, or any of the fittings of the vastcathedral.
Majestic in its naked strength, the building stood in light andshadow, here banded with strong sun, there lost in cool purple shadethat foiled the eye far up among the hanging miracles of the roof.
At the transept-crossing they stood amazed; for here the flutings ranup five hundred feet inside the stupendous central spire, among amarvelous filigree of windows which diminished toward the top--alacework as of frost-patterns etched into the solid substance of thefleche.
"Higher than that, more massive and more beautiful the buildings ofthe future shall arise," said Allan slowly after a pause. "But theyshall not serve creed or faction. They shall be for all mankind, forthe great race still to come. Beauty shall be its heritage, its right.
"'And loveliness shall crown the waiting world As with a garland of immortal joy!'
"But come, come, Beatrice--there's work to do. The records, girl! Wemustn't stand here admiring architecture and dreaming dreams whilethose records are still undiscovered. Down into the crypt we go, todig among the relics of a vanished age!"
"The crypt, Allan? Where is it?"
"If I remember rightly--and at the time this cathedral was built Ifollowed the plans with some care--the entrance is back of the mainsouthern cluster of pillars over there at the transept-crossing. Comeon, Beta. In a minute we can see whether thousand-year-old memoriesare any good or not!"
Quickly he led the way, ax and torch in hand, and as they rounded thegroup of massive buttresses whence sprang the pillars for thegroin-vaults aloft, a cry of satisfaction escaped him, followed by aword of quick astonishment.
"What is it, Allan?" exclaimed the girl. "Anything wrong? Or--"
The man stood peering with wide eyes; then suddenly he knelt and beganpawing over the little heap of vegetable drift that had accumulatedalong the wall.
"It's here, all right," said he. "There's the door, right in front ofus--but what I don't understand is--_this!_"
"What, Allan? Is there anything wrong?"
"Not wrong, perhaps, but devilish peculiar!"
Speak
ing, he raised his hand to her. The fingers held an arrow-head offlint.
"There's been a battle here, that's sure," said he. "Look,spear-points--shattered!"
He had already uncovered three obsidian blades. The broken tips provedhow forcibly they had been driven against the stone in the long ago.
"What? A--"
His fingers closed on a small, hollow shell of gold.
"A molar, so help me! All that's left of some forgotten white man whofell here, at the door, a thousand years ago!"
Speechless, the girl took the shell from him and examined it.
"You're right, Allan," she answered. "This certainly is a hollow goldcrown. Any one can see _that_, in spite of the patina that's formedover the metal. Why--what can it all mean?"
"Search _me!_ The patriarch's record gave the impression that thiseastern expedition set out within thirty years or so of thecatastrophe. Well, in that short time it doesn't seem possible therecould have developed savages fighting with flints and so on. But thatthere certainly was a battle here at this door, and that the cathedralwas used as a fort against some kind of invasion is positivelycertain.
"Why, look at the chips of concrete knocked off the jamb of the doorhere! Must have been some tall mace-work where you're standing, Beta!If we could know the complete story of this expedition, its probablefailure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and theinevitable tragedy of its end--starvation, sorties, repulses,hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at thecrypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below--then defeatand slaughter and extinction--what a tremendous drama we couldformulate!"
Beatrice nodded. Plain to see, the thought depressed her.
"Death, everywhere--" she began, but Allan laughed.
"Life, you mean!" he rallied. "Come, now, this does no good, poking inthe rubbish of a distant tragedy. Real work awaits us. Come!"
He picked up the torch, and with his primitive but serviceable matcheslighted it. The smoke rose through the silent air of the cathedral, upinto a broad sunlit zone from a tall window in the transept, where itwrithed blue and luminous.
A single blow of Allan's ax shattered the last few shreds of oakenplank that still hung from the eroded hinges of the door. In front ofthe explorers a flight of concrete steps descended, winding darkly tothe crypt beneath.
Allan went first, holding the torch high to light the way.
"The records!" he exclaimed. "Soon, soon we shall know the secrets ofthe past!"