The Afterglow

CHAPTER V. THE SEARCH FOR THE RECORDS

Morning found them early astir, to greet the glory of June sunlight over the shoulder of Storm King. A perfect morning, if ever any one was perfect since the world began--soft airs stirring in the forest, golden robins' full-throated song, the melody of the scarlet tropic birds they had named “fire-birds” for want of any more descriptive title, the chatter of gray squirrels on the branches overhead, all blent, under a sky of wondrous azure, to tell them of life, full and abundant, joyous and kind.

Two of the squirrels had to die, for breakfast, which Beta cooked while Allan quested the edges of the wood for the ever-present berries. They drank from a fern-embowered spring a hundred yards or so to south of their camp in the forest, and felt the vigorous tides of life throb hotly through their splendid bodies.

Allan got together the few simple implements at their disposal for the expedition--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, and a skin bag of the rude matches he had manufactured in the village of the Folk.

“Now then, en marche!” said he at length. “The old cathedral and the records are awaiting a morning call from us--and there are all the wedding 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 and conquest, as in the good old days!”

“The good new days will have better and higher standards,” he answered gravely. “To-day, one age is closed, another opened for all time.”

Hand in hand they ascended the barren spur to eastward, and presently reached the outposts of the forest that rose in close-ranked majesty over the brow of Storm King.

The going proved hard, for with the warmer climate that now favored the country, undergrowth had sprung up far more luxuriantly than in the days of the old-time civilization; but Stern and Beatrice were used to labor, and together--he ahead to break or cut a path--they struggled through the wood.

Half an hour's climb brought them to their first dim sight of the massive 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 slowly explored 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, débris-littered steps and drew breath. “Brick and stone have long since perished. Even steel has crumbled. But concrete seems eternal. Why, the building's practically intact even to-day, after ten centuries of absolute abandonment. A week's work with a force of men would quite restore it. The damage it's suffered is absolutely insignificant. Concrete. A lesson to be learned, is it not, in our rebuilding of the world?”

The mighty temple stood, in fact, almost as men had left it in the long ago, when the breath of annihilation had swept a withering blast over the face of the earth. The broad grounds and driveways that had led up to the entrance had, of course, long since absolutely vanished under rank growths.

Grass flourished in the gutters and on the Gothic finials; the gargoyles were bearded with vines and fern-clusters; the flying buttresses and mullions stood green with moss; and in the vegetable mold that had for centuries accumulated on the steps and in the vestibule--for the oaken doors had crumbled to powder--many a bright-flowered plant raised its blossoms to the sun.

The tall memorial windows and the great rose-window in the eastern facade had long since been shattered out of their frames by hail and tempest. But the main body of the cathedral seemed yet as massively intact as when the master-builders of the twentieth century had taken down the last scaffold, and when the gigantic organ had first pealed its “Laus Deo” through the vaulted apse.

Together they entered the vast silent space, and--awed despite themselves--gazed in wonder at the beauties of this, the most magnificent temple ever built in the western hemisphere.

The marble floor was covered now with windrows of dead leaves and pine-spills, and with the litter from myriads of birds'-nests that sheltered themselves on achitraves and galleries, and on the lofty capitals of the fluted pillars which rose, vistalike, a hundred feet above the clear-story, spraying out into a wondrous complexity of ribs to sustain the marvelous concrete vaultings full two hundred feet in air.

Through the shattered windows broad slants of sunshine fell athwart the walls and floor. Swallows chirped and twittered far aloft, or winged their swift way through the dusky upper spaces, passing at will in or out the mullioned gaps whence all the painted glass had long since fallen.

An air of mystery, of long expectancy seemed brooding everywhere; it seemed almost as though the spirit of the past were waiting to receive them--waiting now, as it had waited a thousand years, patiently, inexorably, untiringly for those to come who should some day reclaim the hidden secrets in the crypt, once more awaken human echoes in the vault, and so redeem the world. “Waiting!” breathed Stern, as if the thought hung pregnant in the very air. “Waiting all these long centuries--for us! For you, Beatrice, for me! And we are here, at last, we of the newer time; and here we shall be one. The symbol of the pillars, mounting, ever mounting toward the infinite, the hope of life eternal, the majesty and mystery of this great temple, welcome us! Come!”

He took her hand again and now in silence they walked forward noiselessly over the thick leaf-carpet on the pavement of rare marble.

“Oh, Allan, I feel so very small in here!” she whispered, drawing close to him. “You and I, all alone in this tremendous place built for thousands--”

“You and I are the world to-day!” he answered very gravely; and so together they made way toward the vast transept, arched with a bewildering lacery of vaultings.

All save the concrete had long vanished. No traces now remained of pews, or railings, altars, pulpits, or any of the fittings of the vast cathedral.

Majestic in its naked strength, the building stood in light and shadow, here banded with strong sun, there lost in cool purple shade that foiled the eye far up among the hanging miracles of the roof.

At the transept-crossing they stood amazed; for here the flutings ran up five hundred feet inside the stupendous central spire, among a marvelous filigree of windows which diminished toward the top--a lacework as of frost-patterns etched into the solid substance of the flèche.

“Higher than that, more massive and more beautiful the buildings of the future shall arise,” said Allan slowly after a pause. “But they shall not serve creed or faction. They shall be for all mankind, for the 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! We mustn't stand here admiring architecture and dreaming dreams while those records are still undiscovered. Down into the crypt we go, to dig 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 I followed the plans with some care--the entrance is back of the main southern cluster of pillars over there at the transept-crossing. Come on, Beta. In a minute we can see whether thousand-year-old memories are any good or not!”

Quickly he led the way, ax and torch in hand, and as they rounded the group of massive buttresses whence sprang the pillars for the groin-vaults aloft, a cry of satisfaction escaped him, followed by a word 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 began pawing over the little heap of vegetable drift that had accumulated along the wall.

“It's here, all right,” said he. “There's the door, right in front of us--but what I don't understand is--this!”

“What, Allan? Is there anything wrong?”

“Not wrong, perhaps, but devilish peculiar!”

Speaking, he raised his hand to her. The fingers held an arrow-head of flint.

“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 proved how 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 who fell 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 gold crown. Any one can see that, in spite of the patina that's formed over the metal. Why--what can it all mean?”

“Search me! The patriarch's record gave the impression that this eastern expedition set out within thirty years or so of the catastrophe. Well, in that short time it doesn't seem possible there could have developed savages fighting with flints and so on. But that there certainly was a battle here at this door, and that the cathedral was used as a fort against some kind of invasion is positively certain.

“Why, look at the chips of concrete knocked off the jamb of the door here! Must have been some tall mace-work where you're standing, Beta! If we could know the complete story of this expedition, its probable failure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and the inevitable tragedy of its end--starvation, sorties, repulses, hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at the crypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below--then defeat and slaughter and extinction--what a tremendous drama we could formulate!”

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 in the rubbish of a distant tragedy. Real work awaits us. Come!”

He picked up the torch, and with his primitive but serviceable matches lighted it. The smoke rose through the silent air of the cathedral, up into a broad sunlit zone from a tall window in the transept, where it writhed blue and luminous.

A single blow of Allan's ax shattered the last few shreds of oaken plank that still hung from the eroded hinges of the door. In front of the explorers a flight of concrete steps descended, winding darkly to the crypt beneath.

Allan went first, holding the torch high to light the way.

“The records!” he exclaimed. “Soon, soon we shall know the secrets of the past!”