Darkness and Dawn (58 page)

With trembling fingers Stern slit the canvas wrappings.

"What a treasure! What a find!" he exulted. "Look, Beta—see what
fortune has put into our hands!"

Even as he spoke he was lifting the great phonograph from the space
where, absolutely uninjured and intact, it had reposed for ten
centuries. A silver plate caught his eye. He paused to read:

METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE,
New York City.

This Phonograph and these Records were immured in the vault of this
building September 28, 1918, by the Philavox Society, to be opened in
the year 2000.

Non Pereat Memoria Musicae Nostrae.

"Let not the memory of our music perish!" he translated. "Why, I
remember well when these records were made and deposited in the
Metropolitan! A similar thing was done in Paris, you remember, and in
Berlin. But how does this machine come
here?
"

"Probably the expedition reached New York, after all, and decided to
transfer this treasure to a safer place where it might be absolutely
safe and dry," she suggested. "It's here, anyhow; that's the main
thing, and we've found it. What fortune!"

"It's lucky, all right enough," the man assented, setting the
magnificent machine down on the floor of the crypt. "So far as I can
see, the mechanism is absolutely all right in every way. They've even
put in a box of the special fiber needles for use on the steel plates,
Beta. Everything's provided for.

"Do you know, the expedition must have been a much larger one than we
thought? It was no child's play to invade the ruins of New York,
rescue all this, and transport it here, probably with savages dogging
their heels every step. Those certainly were determined, vigorous men,
and a goodly number at that. And the fight they must have put up in
the cathedral, defending their cache against the enemy, and dying for
it, must been terrifically dramatic!

"But all that's done and forgotten now, and we can only guess a bit of
it here and there. The tangible fact is this machine and these
records, Beatrice. They're real, and we've got them. And the quicker
we see what they have to tell us the better, eh?"

She clapped her hands with enthusiasm.

"Put on a record, Allan, quick! Let's hear the voices of the past once
more—human voices—the voices of the age that was!" she cried,
excited as a child.

"All right, my darling," he made answer. "But not here. This is no
place for melody, down in this dark and gloomy crypt, surrounded by
the relics of the dead. We've been buried alive down here altogether
too long as it is.
Brrr!
The chill's beginning to get into my very
bones! Don't you feel it, Beta?"

"I do, now I stop to think of it. Well, let's go up then. We'll have
our music where it belongs, in the cathedral, with sunshine and air
and birds to keep it company!"

Half an hour later they had transported the magnificent phonograph and
the steel records out of the crypt and up the spiral stairway, into
the vast, majestic sweep of the transept.

They placed their find on the broad concrete steps that in the old
days had led up to the altar, and while Allan minutely examined the
mechanism to make sure that all was right, the girl, sitting on the
top step, looked over the records.

"Why, Allan, here are instrumental as well as vocal masterpieces," she
announced with joy. "Just listen—here's Rossini's 'Barbier de
Seville,' and Grieg's 'Anitra's Dance' from the 'Peer Gynt Suite,' and
here's that most entrancing 'Barcarolle' from the 'Contes
d'Hoffman'—you remember it?"

She began to hum the air, then, as the harmony flowed through her
soul, sang a few lines, her voice like gold and honey:

Belle nuit, o nuit d'amour, souris a nos ivresses!
Nuit plus douce que le jour, o belle nuit d'amour!
Le temps fuit et sans retour emporte nos tendresses;
Loin de cet heureux sejour le temps fuit sans retour!
Zephyrs embrases, versez-nous vos caresses!
Ah! Donnez-nous vos baisers!

The echoes of Offenbach's wondrous air, a crystal stream of harmony,
and of the passion-pulsing words, died through the vaulted heights. A
moment Allan sat silent, gazing at the girl, and then he smiled.

"It lives in you again, the past!" he cried. "In you the world shall
be made new once more! Beatrice, when I last heard that 'Barcarolle'
it was sung by Farrar and Scotti at the Metropolitan, in the winter of
1913. And now—you waken the whole scene in me again!

"I seem to behold the vast, clear-lighted space anew, the tiers of
gilded galleries and boxes, the thousands of men and women hanging
eagerly on every silver note—I see the marvelous orchestra, many, yet
one; the Venetian scene, the moonlight on the Grand Canal, the
gondolas, the merrymakers—I hear Giulietta and Nicklausse blending
those perfect tones! My heart leaps at the memory, beloved, and I
bless you for once more awakening it!"

"With my poor voice?" she smiled. "Play it, play the record, Allan,
and let us hear it as it should be sung!"

He shook his head.

"No!" he declared. "Not after you have sung it. Your voice to me is
infinitely sweeter than any that the world of other days ever so much
as dreamed of!"

He bent above her, caressed her hair and kissed her; and for a little
while they both forgot their music. But soon the girl recalled him to
the work in hand.

"Come, Allan, there's so much to do!"

"I know. Well now—let's see, what next?"

He paused, a new thought in his eyes.

"Beta!"

"Well?"

"You don't find Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March,' do you? Look, dearest,
see if you can find it. Perhaps it may be there. If so—"

She eyed him, her gaze widening.

"You mean?"

He nodded.

"Just so! Perhaps, after all, you and I can—"

"Oh, come and help me look for it, Allan!" she cried enthusiastic as a
child in the joy of his new inspiration. "If we only
could
find it,
wouldn't that be glorious?"

Eagerly they searched together.

"'Ich Grolle Nicht,' by Schumann, no," Stern commented, as one by one
they examined the records. "'Ave Maria,' Arcadelt-Liszt—no, though
it's magnificent. That's the one you sing best of all, Beta. How often
you've sung it to me! Remember, at the bungalow, how I used to lay my
head in your lap while you played with my Samsonesque locks and sang
me to sleep? Let's see—Brahms's 'Wiegenlied.' Cradle-song, eh? A
little premature; that's coming later. Eh? Found it, by Jove! Here we
are, the March itself, so help me! Shall I play it now?"

"Not yet, Allan. Here, see what
I've
found!"

She handed him a record as they sat there together in a broad ribbon
of mid-morning sunlight that flooded down through one of the
clearstory windows.

"'The Form of the Solemnization of Matrimony, by Bishop Gibson,'" he
read. And silence fell, and for a long minute their eyes met.

"Beatrice!"

"I know; I understand! So, after all, these words—"

"Shall be spoken, O my love! Out of the dead past a voice shall speak
to us and we shall hear! Beatrice, the words your mother heard, my
mother heard, we shall hear, too. Come, Beatrice, for now the time is
at hand!"

She fell a trembling, and for a moment could not speak. Her eyes grew
veiled in tears, but through them he saw a bright smile break, like
sunlight after summer showers.

She stood up and held out her hand to him.

"My Allan!"

In his arms he caught her.

"At last!" he whispered. "Oh, at last!"

When the majesty and beauty of the immortal
marriage hymn climbed the high vaults of the cathedral, waking the
echoes of the vacant spaces, and when it rolled, pealing triumphantly,
she leaned her head upon his breast and, trembling, clung to him.

With his arm he clasped her; he leaned above her, shrouding her in his
love as in an everlasting benison. And through their souls thrilled
wonder, awe and passion, and life held another meaning and another
mystery.

The words of solemn sacredness hallowed for centuries beyond the
memory of man, rose powerful, heart-thrilling, deep with symbolism,
strong with vibrant might—and, hand in hand, the woman and the man
bowed their heads, listening:

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join together this man and
this woman in holy matrimony—reverently, discreetly, advisedly,
soberly. Into this holy estate these two persons present now come to
be joined."

His hand tightened upon her hand, for he felt her trembling. But
bravely she smiled up at him and upon her hair the golden sunlight
made an aureole.

The voice rose in its soul-shaking question—slow and powerful:

"Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together in
the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor,
and keep her in sickness and in health, and keep thee only unto her,
so long as ye both shall live?"

Allan's "
I will!
" was as a hymn of joy upon the morning air.

"Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together in
the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou serve him, love, honor, and
keep him in sickness and in health, and keep thee only unto him, so
long as ye both shall live?"

She answered proudly, bravely:

"I will!"

Then the man chorused the voice and said:

"I, Allan, take thee, Beatrice, to my wedded wife, to have and to
hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, till death
us do part, and thereto I plight thee my troth."

Her answer came, still led by the commanding voice, like an antiphony
of love:

"I, Beatrice, take thee, Allan, to my wedded husband, to have and to
hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for
poorer, in sickness and in health to love and to cherish, till death
us do part, and thereto I give thee my troth!"

Already Allan had drawn from his little finger the plain gold ring he
had worn there so many centuries. Upon her finger he placed the ring
and kissed it, and, following the voice, he said:

"With this ring I thee wed, and with all my worldly goods I thee
endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Amen."

Forest, river, sky and golden sunlight greeted them as they stood on
the broad porch of the cathedral, and the clear song of many birds,
unafraid in the virgin wilderness, made music to their ears such as
must have greeted the primal day.

Suddenly Allan caught and crushed her in his arms.

"My wife!" he whispered.

The satin of her skin from breast to brow surged into sudden flame.
Her eyes closed and between her eager lips the breath came fast.

"Oh, Allan—
husband!
I feel—I hear—"

"The voice of the unborn, crying to us from out the dark, 'O father,
mother, give us life!'"

Ten days later the two lovers—now man and wife—were back
again at the eastern lip of the Abyss. With them on the biplane they
had brought the phonograph and records, all securely wrapped in oiled
canvas, the same which had enveloped the precious objects in the
leaden chest.

They made a camp, which was to serve them for a while as headquarters
in their tremendous undertaking of bringing the Merucaans to the
surface, and here carefully stored their treasure in a deep cleft of
rock, secure from rain and weather.

They had not revisited the bungalow on the return trip. The sight of
their little home and garden, now totally devastated, they knew would
only sadden them unnecessarily.

"Let it pass, dearest, as a happy memory that was and is no more,"
Stern cheered the girl as he held her in his arms the first night of
their stay in the new camp, and as together they watched the purple
haze of sunset beyond the chasm. "Some day, perhaps, we may go back
and once more restore Hope Villa and live there again, but for the
present many other and far more weighty matters press. It will be
wisest for a while to leave the East alone. Too many of the Horde are
still left there. Here, west of the Ohio River Valley, they don't seem
to have penetrated—and what's more, they never shall! Just now we
must ignore them—though the day of reckoning will surely come! We've
got our hands full for a while with the gigantic task ahead of us.
It's the biggest and the hardest that one man and one woman ever
tackled since the beginning of time!"

She drew his head down and kissed him, and for a little while they
kept the silence of perfect comradeship. But at last she questioned:

"You've got it all worked out at last, Allan? You know just the steps
to take? One false move—"

"There shall be no false moves. Reason, deliberation, care will solve
this problem like all the others. Given some fifteen hundred people,
at a depth of five hundred miles, and given an aeroplane and plenty of
time—"

"Yes, of course, they can be brought to the surface. But after that,
what? The dangers are tremendous! The patriarch died at the first
touch of sunlight. We can't afford to take chances with the rest!"

"I've planned on all that. Our first move must be to locate a rocky
ledge, a cave, or something of the sort, where the transplanting
process can be carried out. There mustn't be any exposure to the
actual daylight for a long time after they're on the surface. The
details of food and water have all got to be arranged, too. It means
work, work,
work!
God, what work! But—it's our task, Beta, all our
own. And I glory in it. I thank Heaven for it—a man's-size labor! And
if we're strong and brave enough, patient and wise enough, we're bound
to win."

"Win? Of course we'll win!" she answered, her faith in him touching
the sublime. "We must! The life of the whole world's at stake!"