The Afterglow

CHAPTER XXXV. THE AFTERGLOW

Evening!

Far in the west, beyond the cañon of the New Hope River--now a beautifully terraced park and pleasure-ground--the rolling hills, fertile and farm-covered, lay resting as the sun died in a glory of crimson, gold and green.

The reflections of the passing day spread a purple haze through the palm and fern-tree aisles of the woodland. Only a slight breeze swayed the branches. Infinite in its serenity brooded a vast peace from the glowing sky.

A few questing swallows shot here and there like arrows, blackly outlined with swift and crooked wing against the vermilion of the west.

Over the countryside, the distant farms and hills, a thin and rosy vapor hovered, fading slowly as the sun sank lower still.

Scarcely moved by the summer breeze, a few slow clouds drifted away--away to westward--gently and calmly as the first promises of night stole up the world.

An arbor, bowered with wistarias and the waxen spikes of the new fleur de vie, stood near the woodbine-covered wall edging the cliff. Among its leaves the soft air rustled very lovingly. A scent of many blossoms hung over the perfumed evening.

Upon the lawn one last, belated robin still lingered. Its mate called from a sycamore beyond the hedge, and with an answering note it rose and winged away; it vanished from the sight.

Allan and Beatrice, watching it from the arbor, smiled; and through the smile it seemed there might be still a trace of deeper thought.

“How quickly it obeyed the call of love!” said Allan musingly. “When that comes what matters else?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” she answered presently. “That call is still supreme. Our Frances--”

She paused, but her eyes sought the half-glimpsed outlines of another cottage there beyond the hedge.

“We never realized, did we?” said Allan, voicing her thought. “It came so suddenly. But we haven't lost her, after all. And there are still the others, too. And when grandchildren come--”

“That means a kind of youth all over again, doesn't it? Well--”

Her hand stole into his, and for a while they sat in silence, thinking the thoughts that “do sometime lie too deep for tears.”

The flaming red in the west had faded now to orange and dull umber. Higher in the sky yellows and greens gave place to blue as deep as that in the Aegean grottos. The zenith, a dark purple, began to show a silver twinkle here and there of stars.

A whirring, roaring sound grew audible to eastward. It strengthened quickly. And all at once, far above the river, a long, swift train, its windows already lighted, sped with a smooth, rapid flight.

Allan watched the monorail vanish beyond the huge north tower of the cable bridge, sink through the trees, and finally fade into the gathering gloom.

“The Great Lakes Express,” said he. “In the old days we thought seventy miles an hour something stupendous. Now two hundred is mere ordinary schedule-time. Yes--something has been accomplished even now. The greater time still to be--we can't hope to see it.

“But we can catch a glimpse of what it shall be, here and there. We must be content to have built foundations. On them those who shall come in the future shall raise a fairer and a mightier world than any we have ever dreamed.”

Again he relapsed into silence; but his arm drew round Beatrice, and together they sat watching the age-old yet ever-new drama of the birth of night.

Half heard, mingled with the eternal turmoil of the rapids, rose the far purring of the giant dynamos in the power-houses below the cliff. Here, there, lights began to gleam in the city; and on the rolling farmlands to northward, too, little winking eyes of light opened one by one, each one a home.

Suddenly the man spoke again.

“More than a hundred thousand of us already!” he exulted. “Over a tenth of a million--and every year the growth is faster, ever faster, in swift progressions. A hundred thousand English-speaking people, Beta; a civilization already, even in a material sense, superior to the old one that was swept away; in a spiritual, moral sense, how vastly far ahead!

“A hundred thousand! Some time, before long, it will be a million; then two, five, twenty, a hundred, with no racial discords, no mutual antipathies, no barriers of name or blood; but for the first time a universal race, all sound and pure, starting right, living right, striving toward a goal which even we cannot foresee!

“Not only shall this land be filled, but Europe, Asia, Africa and all the islands of the Seven Seas shall know the hand of man again, and own his sovereignty, from pole to pole!”

His clasp about Beatrice tightened; she felt his heart beat strong with deep emotion as he spoke again:

“Already the cities are beginning to arise from their ashes of a thousand oblivious years. Already a score of thriving colonies have scattered from the capital, all yet bound to it with monorail cables, with electric wires and with the ether-borne magic of the wireless.

“Already our boy, our son--can you imagine him really a man of thirty, darling?--elected President on our last Council Day, guides a free people--a people self-reliant and strong, energetic, capable, dominant.

“Already the inconceivable fertility of the earth is yielding its bounties a hundred fold; and trade-routes circle the ends of the great Abyss; and all the vast territory once the United States has begun to open again before the magic touch of man!

“Of man--now free at last! No more slavery! No more the lash of hunger driving men to their tasks. No more greed and grasping; no lust of gold, no bitter cry of crushed and hopeless serfdom! No buying and selling for the lure of profit; no speculating in the people's means of life; no squeezing of their blood for wealth! But free, strong labor, gladly done. The making of useful and beautiful things, Beatrice, and their exchange for human need and service--this, and the old dream of joy in righteous toil, this is the blessing of our world to-day!”

He paused. A little, swift-moving light upon the far horizon drew his eye. It seemed a star, traveling among its sister stars that now already had begun to twinkle palely in the darkening sky. But Allan knew its meaning.

“Look!” cried he and pointed. “Look, Beatrice! The West Coast Mail--the plane from southern California. The wireless told us it had started only three hours ago--and here it is already!”

“And but for you,” she murmured, “none of all this could ever possibly have been. Oh, Allan, remember that song--our song? In the days of our first love, there on the Hudson, remember how I sang to you:

“Stark wie der Fels,

Tief wie das Meer,

Muss deine Liebe,

Muss deine Liebe sein?”

“I remember! And it has been so?”

Her answer was to draw his hand up to her lips and print a kiss there, and as she laid her cheek upon it he felt it wet with tears.

And night came; and now the wind lay dead; and upon the brooding earth, spangled with home-lights over hill and vale, the stars gazed calmly down.

The steady, powerful droning of the power-plant rose, blent with the soothing murmur of the rapids and the river.

“Seems like a lullaby--doesn't it, dearest?” murmured Allan. “You know--it won't be long now before it's good-by and--good night.”

“I know,” she answered. “We've lived, haven't we? Oh, Allan, no one ever lived, ever in all this world--lived as much as you and I have lived! Think of it all from the beginning till now. No one ever so much, so richly, so happily, so well!”

“No one, darling!”

“But, after toil, rest--rest is sweet, too. I shall be ready for it when it summons me. I shall go to it, content and brave and smiling. Only--”

“Yes?”

“Only this I pray, just this and nothing more--that I mayn't have to stay awake, alone, after--after you're sleeping, Allan!”

A long time they sat together, silent, in the sweet-scented gloom within the flower-girt arbor.

At last he spoke.

“The wonder and the glory of it all!” he whispered. “Oh, the wonder of a dream, a vision come to pass, before our eyes!

“For, see! Has not the prophecy come true? What was then only a yearning and a hope, is it not now reality? Is it not now all even as we dreamed so very, very long ago, there in our little bungalow beside the broad, slow-moving Hudson?

“Is this not true?”

I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.

I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's forces have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.

I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth--a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward--where work and worth go hand in hand!

I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.

I see a race without disease of flesh or brain, shapely and fair, the married harmony of form and function; and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth--and over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope!