The Afterglow

CHAPTER XXXIII. FIVE YEARS LATER

Long before daybreak that morning, the thriving village of Settlement Cliffs, capital and market-town of the New Hope Colony, was awake and astir.

For the great festival day was at hand, the fifth anniversary of the founding of the colony, to be celebrated by the arrival of the last Merucaans from the depths of the Abyss.

The old caves, now abandoned save for grain, fruit and fish storehouses were closed and silent. No labor was going forward there. The nets hung dry. From the forges, smithies and work-shops along the river-bank at the rapids arose no sounds of the accustomed industry.

The road and bridge-builders were idle; and from the farms now dotting the rich brûlé across the river--each snug stone house, tiled with red or green, standing among its crops and growing orchards--the Folk were coming in to town for the feast-day.

The broad wooden trestle-bridge across the New Hope echoed with hollow verberations beneath the measured tread of two and four-ox teams hauling 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 maidens coming in afoot. Sounded the cries of the teamsters, the barking of dogs, the mingled murmur of speech--English speech again; and the fresh wind, bearing away a fine, golden dust from the long roads, swayed the palm-tops and the fern-trees with a gentle and caressing touch.

All up and down the broad, well-paved street of the village--a street lined with stone cottages, bordered with luxuriant tropic gardens, and branching into a dozen smaller thoroughfares--a happy throng was idling.

Well clad in plain yet substantial weaves from the vine-festooned work-shops below the cliff, abundantly fed, vigorous and strong, not one showed sickness or deformity, such as had scourged the human race in the old, evil days of long ago.

Loose-belted garb, sandals and a complete absence of hats all had their part in this abounding health. Open-air life and rational food completed the work.

No drugs, save three or four essential ones, and no poisons, ever had crept in to menace life. Wine there was, rich and unfermented; but the curse of alcohol existed not. And in the Law it was forever banned.

On the broad porch of their home, a boulder-built cottage facing the broad plaza where palms shaded the graveled paths, and purple, yellow and scarlet blooms lured humming-birds and butterflies, stood Beatrice and Allan.

Both were smiling in the clear June sunlight of that early morning. A cradle rocked by Gesafam--a little older and more bent, yet still hardy--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 a troop of other children--many, many children, indeed.

As Beatrice and Allan watched the play they smiled; and through the man's arm crept the woman's hand, and with the confidence of perfect trust she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Whoever could have thought,” said he at last, “that all this really could come true? In those dark hours when the Horde had all but swallowed us, when we fell into the Abyss, when those terrible adventures 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 planned everything, Allan. It was all foreseen and nothing ever stopped you, just as the future beyond this time is all foreseen by you and must and 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 the vast plaza where once the palisade had been. Now the old wooden stockade had long vanished. Cleared land and farms extended far beyond even Newport Heights, where the Pauillac had first come to earth at New Hope.

Well-kept roads connected them all with the settlement. And for some miles to southward the primeval forests had been vanquished by the ever-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 you would--if you came in contact with them as I do in the schools, to see the 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 ours were really civilized in essence, despite all the overlying ages of barbarism. Civilization was latent in them, that's all. Just as all the children born here under normal conditions have reverted to pigmented skin and hair and eyes, so even the grown-ups have thrown back to civilization. Two or three years at the outside have put back the 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 general craning of necks, a drift toward the north side of the square, the river 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 certainly do surprise me with their speed and power. In the old days the Pauillac wouldn't have been here before noon from the Abyss!”

Together, Beatrice and he walked round the wide piazza to the rear of the bungalow. The home estate sloped gently down toward the cement and boulder wall edging the cliff. In its broad garden stood the stable, where half a dozen horses--caught on the northern savannas and carefully tamed--disputed their master's favor with the touring car he had built up from half a dozen partly ruined machines in Atlanta and other cities.

Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed by the many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder than the river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: “They come! They come!”

“Where?” questioned Beta. “See them, boy?”

“There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly me now--more luck to them!”

He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea of green, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in the wake of the great fire.

Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and a month before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign of Allan's return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift little specks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.

“Hurrah!” shouted Allan boyishly. “Here they come--the last of my Folk!”

He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff that dominated the cañon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripes three times in signal of welcome.

And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slipped full half the distance from the place where they had first been sighted.

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 the last-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 so much rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no--they've got to ring me in, as usual! You'll come, too, of course?”

She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawn toward the plaza.

On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the children sometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community's air-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven by electric power from the turbines at the rapids.

Even as Allan and Beatrice passed through the cheering crowd, now drifting toward the hangars, a sound of music wafted down-wind--a little harsh at times, but still with promise of far better things to be.

Many flags fluttered in the air, and even the rollicking children on the lawns paused to wonder as swift shadows cut across the park.

On high was heard the droning hum of the propellers. It ceased, and in wide, sure, evenly balanced spirals the great planes one by one slid down and took the earth as easily as a gull sinks to rest upon the bosom of a quiet sea.

“They do work well, my equilibrators!” murmured Allan, unable to suppress a thrill of pride. “Simple, too; but, after all, how wonderfully effective!”

The crowd parted to let him through with Beatrice. Two minutes later he was clasping the hands of the last Folk ever to be brought from the strange, buried village under the cliff beside the Sunless Sea.

He summoned Zangamon and Frumuos, together with Sivad and the three aviators.

“Well done!” said he; and that was all--all, yet enough. Then, while the people cheered again and, crowding round, greeted their kinsfolk, he gave orders for the housing and the care of the travel-wearied newcomers.

Through the summer air drifted slow smoke. Off on the edge of the grove that flanked the plaza to southward the crackling of new-built fires was heard.

Allan turned to Beta with a smile.

“Getting ready for the barbecue already!” said he, “With that and the games and all, they ought to have enough to keep them busy for one day. Don't you think they'll have to let us go a while? There are still a few finishing touches to put to the new laws I'm going to hand the 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 of palm-growths, ferns and flowers. Here they stopped a moment to chat with some good friend, there to watch the children and--parentlike--make sure young Allan was safe and only normally dirty and grass-stained.

They gained their broad piazza at length, turned, and for a while watched the busy, happy scene in the shaded street, the plaza and the playground.

Then Beta sat down by the cradle--still in that same low chair Allan had built for her five years ago, a chair she had steadily refused to barter for a finer one.

He drew up another beside her. From his pocket he drew a paper--the new 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 lay before them. On his head a shaft of sunlight fell, and had you looked you might have seen the crisp, black hair none too sparingly lined with gray.

But his gaze was strong and level and his smile the same as in bygone years, as with his left hand he pressed hers and, with a look eloquent of many things, said:

“Now, sweetheart, if you're quite ready--?”