CHAPTER XVIII
THE ANNUNCIATION
A week later all was ready for Allan's second trip into theAbyss.
His arm had recovered its usual strength and suppleness, for hisflesh, healthy as any savage's, now had the power of healing with arapidity unknown to civilized men in the old days.
And his abounding vigor dictated action--always action, progress, andaccomplishment. Only one thing depressed him--idleness.
It was on the second day of July, according to the rude calendar theywere keeping, that he once more bade farewell to Beatrice and, borneby the Pauillac, headed for the village of the Lost Folk.
He left behind him all matters in a state of much improvement.Zangamon and Bremilu were now well installed in the new environmentand seemingly content. By night they fished in New Hope Pool, makinghauls such as their steaming sea had never yielded.
They wandered--not too far, however--in the forest, gradually makingthe acquaintance of the wondrous upper world, and with their strangelyacute instincts finding fruits, bulbs and plants that well agreed withthem for food.
Allan had carefully instructed them in the use of the wonderful"fire-bow"--the revolver--warning them, however, not to wasteammunition. They learned quickly, and now Beatrice found her lardersupplied each night with game, which they dressed and brought her inthe evening gloom, eager to serve their mistress in all possible ways.
They fished for her as well, and all the choicest fruits were herportion. She, in turn, cooked for them in their own cave. And for anhour or two each night she instructed them in English.
Short are the annals of peace--and peace reigned at Settlement Cliffsthose few days at least. Progress!
She could feel it, see it, every hour. And her thoughts of Allan, nowabandoning their melancholy hue, began to thrill with a new and evengreater pride.
"Only he, only he could have brought these things to pass!" shemurmured sometimes. "Only he could have planned all this, dreamed thisdream, and brought it to reality; only he could labor for the futureso strongly and so well!"
And in her heart the love that had been that of a girl became that ofa woman. It broadened, deepened and grew calmer.
Its fever cooled into a finer, purer glow. It strengthened day by day,transmuting to a perfect trust and confidence and peace.
Allan returned safely inside the week with two more of theFolk--warriors and fishers both. Beatrice would have welcomed thearrival of even one woman to bear her some kind of company, but sherealized the wisdom of his plan.
"The main thing at first," he explained, as they sat again on theterrace the evening of his return, "the very most essential thing isto build up even a small force of fighting men to hold the colony andprotect it--a stalwart advance-guard, as if this were a militaryexpedition. After that the women and children can come. But for thepresent there's no place for them."
Now that there were four Merucaans, all seemed more contented. Thelittle group settled down into some real semblance of a community.
Work became systematized. Life was beginning to take firm root in theworld again, and already the outlines of the future colony werecommencing to be sketched in.
So far as Stern could discover, no disaffection as yet existed. TheFolk, in any event, were singularly stolid, here as in their own home.If the colonists sometimes muttered together against conditions orconcerning the lie Allan had told about the patriarch, he could neverdiscover the fact.
He derived a singular sense of power and exaltation from watching hissettlers at their work.
Strange figures they made in the upper world, descending the cliff atnight, their torches flaring on their pure-white hair bound with goldornaments, their nets slung over their brown-clad shoulders.
Strange, too, were the sensations of Beta and Allan as they beheld theflambeaux gleaming silently along the pool or over the surface whenthe Folk put forth on the rude rafts Allan had helped them build.
And as, with the same weird song they had used in the under world, theheavy-laden Merucaans clambered again up the terraces to theirdwelling in the rock, something drew very powerfully at Allan's heart.
He analyzed it not, being a man of deeds rather than of introspection;yet it was "the strong man yearning toward his kind," the very love ofhis own race within him--the thrill, the inspiration of the masterbuilder laying the foundations for better things to be.
Allan and the girl had long talks about the character of the futurecivilization they meant to raise.
"We must begin right this time at all hazards," he told her. "Theworld we used to know just happened; it just grew up, hit-or-miss,without scientific planning or thought or care. It was partly theresult of chance, partly of ignorance and greed. The kind of humannature it developed was in essence a beast nature, with 'Grab!' forits creed.
"We must do better than that! From the very start, now, we must nipoff the evil bud that might later blossom into private property andwealth, exploitation and misery. There shall be no rich men in ourworld now and no slaves. No idlers and no oppressed. 'Service' must beour watchword, and our motto 'Each for all and all for each!'
"While there are fish within the river and fruit upon the palm, noneshall starve and none shall hoard. Superstition and dogma, fear andcruelty, shall have no place with us. We understand--you and I; andwhat we know we shall teach. And nothing shall survive of the worldthat was, save such things as were good. For the old order has passedaway--and the new day shall be a better one."
Thus for hours at a time, by starlight and moonlight on therock-terrace or by fire-glow in their cave--now homelike withrough-hewn furniture and mats of plaited grass--they talked anddreamed and planned.
And executed, too; for they drew up a few basic, simple laws, andthese they taught their little colony even now, for from the verybeginning they meant the germs of the new society should root in thehearts of the rescued race.
The third trip was delayed by a tremendous rain that poured withtropic suddenness and fury over the face of the world, driven on thebreath of a wild-shouting tempest.
For the space of two days heaven and earth were blotted out by thegray, hurling sheets of wind-driven water, while down the canyon NewHope River roared and foamed in thunder cadences.
Beta and Allan, warmly and snugly sheltered in their cave, carednothing for the storm. It only served to remind them of that othertorrential downpour, soon after they had reached the village of theFolk; but now how altered the situation! Captives then, they weremasters now; and the dread chasms of the Abyss were now exchanged forthe beauties and the freedom of the upper world.
No wind could shake, no deluge invade, their house among theeverlasting rock-ribs. Bright crackled their fire, and on the broaddivan of cedar he had hewn and covered thick with furs, they two couldlie and talk and dream, and let the storm rage, careless of itsimpotent fury.
"There's only one sorrow in my heart," whispered Beta, drawing hishead down on her breast and smoothing his hair with that familiar,well-loved caress. "Just one, dear--can you guess it?"
"No millinery shops to visit, you mean?" he rallied her.
"Oh, Allan, when I'm so much in earnest, how can you?"
"Well, what's the trouble, sweetheart?"
"When the storm ends you're going to leave me again! I wish--I almostwish it would rain forever!"
He made no answer, and she, as one who sees strange and sad visions,gazed into the leaping flames, and in her deep gray eyes lay tearsunshed.
"Sing to me!" he murmured presently.
Stroking his head and brow, she sang as aforetime at the bungalow uponthe Hudson:
Stark wie der Fels, Tief wie das Meer, Muss deine Liebe, Muss deine Liebe sein! ...
The third trip was made in safety, and others after it, and steadilythe colony took shape and growth.
More and more the caves came to be occupied. Stern set the Merucaansto work excavating the limestone, piercing tunnels and chimneys,making passageways and preparing for the ever-increasing
number ofsettlers.
Their native arts and crafts began to flourish. In the gloomy recessesfires glowed hot. Ores began to be smelted, with primitive bellows andtechnique as in the Under-world, and through the night--stillnesssounded the ring and clangor of anvils mightily smitten.
Palm-fibers yielded cordage for more nets or finer thread for thelooms that now began to clack--for at last some few women had arrived,and even a couple of the strong, pale children, who had traveledstowed in crates like the water-fowl.
By night the pool and river gleamed more and more brightly. Boatsnavigated even the rapids, for these were hardy water-people, whosewhole life had been semi-aquatic.
The strange fowl nested in the cliff below the settlement, hiding byday, flying abroad by night, swimming and diving in the river, evenrearing their broods of squawking, naked little monsters in roughnests of twigs and mud.
Some of the hardier of the first-arrived colonists had already--farsooner than Allan had hoped--begun to tolerate a little daylight.
Following his original idea, he prepared some sets of brown micaeye-shields, and by the aid of these a number of the Merucaans wereable to endure an hour or two of early dawn and late evening in theopen air.
The children, he found, were far less sensitive to light than theadults--a natural sequence of the atavistic principle well known toall biologists.
He hoped that in a year or so many of the Folk might even bear thenoon-day sun. Once he could get them to working with him by daylighthis progress would leap forward mightily in many lines of activitythat he had planned.
An occasional short raid with the Pauillac had stocked the colony withfirearms, chemicals and necessary drugs, cutlery, ammunition and someglassware, from the dismantled cities of Nashville, Cincinnati,Indianapolis and other places unidentified.
Allan foresaw almost infinite possibilities in these raids.Civilization he felt, would surge onward with amazing rapidityfostered by this detritus of the distant past.
He also unearthed and brought back to Settlement Cliffs thephonographs and records, sealed in their oiled canvas and hidden inthe rock-cleft near the patriarch's grave.
Thereafter of an evening the voices of other days sang in the cave.Around the entrance, now protected by stout and ample timber doors,gathered an eager, wondering, fascinated group, understanding theuniversal appeal of harmony, softened and humanized by the music ofthe world that was. And thus, too, was the education of the Folkmaking giant strides.
Progress, tremendous progress, toward the goal!
Autumn came down the world, and the sun paled alittle as it sank to southward in the heavens. Warmth and luxuriantfertility, fecundity without parallel, still pervaded the earth, but acertain change had even so become well marked. Slowly the year wasdying, that another might be born.
It was of a glorious purple evening late in October that Allan madethe great discovery.
He had come in from working with two or three of the hardier Folk onthe temporary hangar he was building for the Pauillac on NewportHeights, to which a broad and well-graded roadway now extended throughthe jungle.
Entering the home-cave suddenly--and it was home now indeed, with itsbroad stone fireplace, its comfortable furnishings, its furs, its matsof clean, sweet-smelling rushes--he stopped, toil-worn and weary, toview the well-loved place.
"Well, little wife! Busy, as usual? Always busy, sweetheart?"
At his greeting Beatrice looked up as though startled. She was sittingin a low easy-chair he had made for her of split bamboos cleverlylashed and softly cushioned.
At her left hand, on the palm-wood table, stood a heavy bronze lampfrom some forgotten millionaire's palace in Atlanta. Its soft radianceillumined her face in profile, making a wondrous aureole of herclustered hair, as in old paintings of the Madonna at theAnnunciation.
A presage gripped the man's heart, drawing powerfully at its stringswith pain, yet with delicious hope and joy as she turned toward him.
For something in her face, some new, beatified, maternal loveliness,not to be analyzed or understood, betrayed her wondrous secret.
With a little gasp, she dropped into her lap the bit of needlework andsought to hide it with her hands--a gesture wholly girlish yet--tohide and guard it with those hands, so useful and beautiful, soprecious and so dearly loved.
But Allan, breathing hard and deep, strode to her, his face aflamewith hope and adoration. He caught them up together in the gentlestrength of his rough hands and pressed them to his heart.
Beside her he knelt silently; he encircled her with his right arm.Then he took up the tiny garment, smiling.
For a long minute their eyes met.
His brimmed with sudden tears. Hers fell, and her head drooped downupon his breast, and--as once before, at the cathedral--an eloquenttide of crimson mounted from breast to throat, from cheek totendrilled hair.
About his neck her arms slid, trembled, tightened.
No word was uttered there under the golden lamp-glow; but the strongkiss he pressed, reverently, proudly, upon her brow, renewed withten-time depth their eternal sacrament of love.