The Afterglow

CHAPTER XXXIV. HISTORY AND ROSES

Allan sat writing in his library. Ten years had now slipped past since the last of the Folk had been brought to the surface and the ancient settlement in the bowels of the earth forever abandoned. Heavily sprinkled with gray, the man's hair showed the stress of time and labors incredible.

Lines marked his face with the record of their character-building, even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long.

Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden. Farther away sounded the comfortable gossip of hens as they breasted their soft feathers into the dust-baths behind the stables. A dog barked.

Came voices from without. Along the street growled a motor. Laughter of children echoed from the playground. Allan ceased writing a moment, with a smile, and gazed about him as though waking from a dream.

“Can this be true?” he murmured. “After having worked over the records of the earlier time they still seem the reality and this the dream!”

On the garden-path sounded footfalls. Then the voice of Beatrice calling:

“Come out, boy! See my new roses--just opened this morning!”

He got up and went to the window. She--matronly now and of ampler bosom, yet still very beautiful to look upon--was standing there by the rose-tree, scissors in hand.

Allan, Junior, now a rugged, hardy-looking chap of nearly sixteen--tall, well built and with his father's peculiar alertness of bearing--was bending down a high branch for his mother.

Beyond, on the lawn, the ten-year-old daughter, Frances, had young Harold in charge, swinging him high in a stout hammock under the apple-trees.

“Can't you come out a minute, dear?” asked Beatrice imploringly. “Let your work go for once! Surely these new roses are worth more than a hundred pages of dry statistics that nobody'll ever read, anyhow!”

He laughed merrily, threw her a kiss, and answered:

“Still a girl, I see! Ah, well, don't tempt me, Beta. It's hard enough to work on such a day, anyhow, without your trying to entice me out!”

“Won't you come, Allan?”

“Just give me half an hour more and I'll call it off for to-day!”

“All right; but make it a short half-hour, boy!”

He returned to his desk. The library, like the whole house now, was fully and beautifully furnished. The spoils of twenty cities had contributed to the adornment of “The Nest,” as they had christened their home.

In time Allan planned even to bring art-works from Europe to grace it still further. As yet he had not attempted to cross the Atlantic, but in his seaport near the ruins of Mobile a powerful one hundred and fifty-foot motor-yacht was building.

In less than six months he counted on making the first voyage of discovery to the Old World.

Contentedly he glanced around the familiar room. Upon the mantel over the capacious fireplace stood rare and beautiful bronzes. Priceless rugs adorned the polished floor.

The broad windows admitted floods of sunlight that fell across the great jars of flowers Beta always kept there for him and lighted up the heavy tiers of books in their mahogany cases. Books everywhere--under the window-seats, up the walls, even lining a deep alcove in the far corner. Books, hundreds upon hundreds, precious and cherished above all else.

“Who ever would have thought, after all,” murmured he, “that we'd find books intact as we did? A miracle--nothing less! With our printing-plant already at work under the cliff, all the art, science and literature of the ages--all that's worth preserving--can be still kept for mankind. But if I hadn't happened to find a library of books in a New York bonded warehouse all cased up for transportation, the work of preservation would have been forever impossible!”

He turned back to his history, and before writing again idly thumbed over a few pages of his voluminous manuscript. He read:

“March 1, A. D. 2930. The astronomical observatory on Round Top Hill, one mile south of Newport Heights, was finished to-day and the last of the apparatus from Cambridge, Lick, and other ruins was installed. I find my data for reckoning time are unreliable, and have therefore assumed this date arbitrarily and readjusted the calendar accordingly.

“Our Daily Messenger, circulating through the entire community and educating the people both in English and in scientific thought, will soon popularize the new date.

“Just as I have substituted the metric system for the old-time chaotic hodge-podge we once used, so I shall substitute English for Merucaan definitely inside of a few years. Already the younger generation hardly understands the native Merucaan speech. It will eventually become a dead, historically interesting language, like all other former tongues. The catastrophe has rendered possible, as nothing else could have done, the realization of universal speech, labor-unit exchange values in place of money, and a political and economic democracy unhampered by ideas of selfish, personal gain.”

He turned a few pages, his face glowing with enthusiasm.

“April 15--The first ten-yearly census was completed to-day. Even with the aid of Frumuos and Zangamon, I have been at work on this nearly two months, for now our outlying farms, villages and settlements have pushed away fifteen or twenty miles from the original focus at the Cliffs, or ‘Cliffton,’ as the capital is becoming generally known.

“Population, 5,072, indicating a high birth-rate and an exceptionally low mortality. Our one greatest need is large families. With the whole world to reconquer, we must have men.

“Area now under cultivation, under grazing and under forests being actively exploited, 42,076 acres. Domestic animals, 26,011. Horses are already being replaced by motors, save for pleasure-riding. Power-plants and manufacturing establishments, 32. Aerial fleet, 17 of the large biplanes, 8 of the swifter monoplanes for scout work. One shipyard at Mobile.

“Total roads, macadamized and other, 832 miles. Air-motors and sun-motors in use or under construction, 41; mines being worked, 13; schools, 27, including the technical school at Intervale, under my personal instruction. Military force, zero--praise be! Likewise jails, saloons, penitentiaries, gallows, hospitals, vagrants, prostitutes, politicians, diseases, beggars, charities--all zero, now and forever!”

Allan turned to the unfinished end of the manuscript, poised his pen a moment, and then began writing once more where he had left off when called by Beatrice:

“The great monument in memory of the patriarch, first of all our people to perish in the upper world, was finished on June 18. Memorial exercises will be held next month.

“On June 22 the new satellite, which passes darkly among the stars every forty-eight hours, was named Discus. Its distance is 3,246 miles; dimensions, 720 miles by 432; weight, six and three-quarter billion tons.

“On July 2, I discovered unmistakable traces either of habitations or of their ruins on the new and till now unobserved face of the moon, hidden in the old days. This problem still remains for further investigation.

“July 4, our national holiday, a viva-voce election and Council of the Elders was held. They still insist on choosing me as Kromno. I weary of the task, and would gladly give it over to some younger man.

“At this Council, held on the great meeting-ground beyond the hangars, I again and for the third time submitted the question of trying to colonize from the races still in the Abyss. If feasible, this would rapidly add to our population. The Folk are now civilized to a point where they could rapidly assimilate outside stock.

“In addition to the Lanskaarn, a strong and active race known to exist on the Central Island in the Sunken Sea, there remain persistent traditions of a strange, yellow-haired race somewhere on the western coasts of that sea, beyond the Great Vortex. Two parties exist among us.

“The minority is anxious for exploration and conquest. The majority votes for peace and quiet growth. It may well be that the Lanskaarn and the other people never will be rescued. I, for one, cannot attempt it. I grow a little weary. But if the younger generation so decides, that must be their problem and their labor, like the rebuilding of the great cities and the reconquest of the entire continent from sea to sea.

“In the mean time--”

At the window appeared Beatrice. Smiling, she flung a yellow rose. It landed on Allan's desk, spilling its petals all across his manuscript.

He looked up, startled. His frown became a smile.

“My time's up?” he queried. “Why, I didn't know I'd been working five minutes!”

“Up? Long ago! Now, Allan, you just simply must leave that history and come out and see my roses, or--or--”

“No threats!” he implored with mock earnestness. “I'm coming, dearest. Just give me time--”

“Not another minute, do you hear?”

“--to put my work away, and I'm with you!”

He carefully arranged the pages of his manuscript in order, while she stood waiting at the window, daring not leave lest he plunge back again into his absorbing toil.

Into his desk-drawer he slid the precious record of the community's labor, growth, achievement, triumph. Then, with a boyish twinkle in his eyes, he left the library.

She turned, expecting him to meet her by the broad piazza; but all at once he stole quietly round the other corner of the bungalow, his footsteps noiseless in the thick grass.

Suddenly he seized her, unsuspecting, in his arms.

“My prisoner!” he laughed. “Roses? Here's the most beautiful one in our whole garden!”

“Where?” she asked, not understanding.

“This red one, here!”

And full upon the mouth he kissed her in the leaf-shaded sunshine of that wondrous summer day.