CHAPTER IV
THE CITY OF DEATH
Presently Beatrice grew calmer. For though grief and terrorstill weighed upon her soul, she realized that this was no fit time toyield to any weakness--now when a thousand things were pressing foraccomplishment, if their own lives, too, were not presently to besnuffed out in all this universal death.
"Come, come," said Stern reassuringly. "I want you, too, to get acomplete idea of what has happened. From now on you must know all,share all, with me." And, taking her by the hand he led her along thecrumbling and uncertain platform.
Together, very cautiously, they explored the three sides of theplatform still unchoked by ruins.
Out over the incredible mausoleum of civilization they peered. Now andagain they fortified their vision by recourse to the telescope.
Nowhere, as he had said, was any slightest sign of life to bediscerned. Nowhere a thread of smoke arose; nowhere a sound echoedupward.
Dead lay the city, between its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted inthe sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently with plumy jets of steam, noliner idled at anchor or nosed its slow course out to sea.
The Jersey shore, the Palisades, the Bronx and Long Island all layburied in dense forests of conifers and oak, with only here and theresome skeleton mockery of a steel structure jutting through.
The islands in the harbor, too, were thickly overgrown. On Ellis, nosign of the immigrant station remained. Castle William was quite gone.And with a gasp of dismay and pain, Beatrice pointed out the fact thatno longer Liberty held her bronze torch aloft.
Save for a black, misshapen mass protruding through the tree-tops, thehuge gift of France was no more.
Fringing the water-front, all the way round, the mournful remains ofthe docks and piers lay in a mere sodden jumble of decay, with anoccasional hulk sunk alongside.
Even over these wrecks of liners, vegetation was growing rank andgreen. All the wooden ships, barges and schooners had utterlyvanished.
The telescope showed only a stray, lolling mast of steel, here oryonder, thrusting up from the desolation, like a mute appealing handraised to a Heaven that responded not.
"See," remarked Stern, "up-town almost all the buildings seem to havecrumbled in upon themselves, or to have fallen outward into thestreets. What an inconceivable tangle of detritus those streets mustbe!
"And, do you notice the park hardly shows at all? Everything's soovergrown with trees you can't tell where it begins or ends. Naturehas her revenge at last, on man!"
"The universal claim, made real," said Beatrice. "Those rather clearerlines of green, I suppose, must be the larger streets. See how theavenues stretch away and away, like ribbons of green velvet?"
"Everywhere that roots can hold at all, Mother Nature has set up herflags again. Hark! What's that?"
A moment they listened intently. Up to them, from very far, rose awailing cry, tremulous, long-drawn, formidable.
"Oh! Then there _are_ people, after all?" faltered the girl, graspingStern's arm.
He laughed.
"No, hardly!" answered he. "I see you don't know the wolf-cry. Ididn't till I heard it in the Hudson Bay country, last winter--thatis, last winter, plus X. Not very pleasant, is it?"
"Wolves! Then--there are--"
"Why not? Probably all sorts of game on the island now. Why shouldn'tthere be? All in Mother Nature's stock-in-trade, you know.
"But come, come, don't let that worry you. We're safe, for thepresent. Time enough to consider hunting later. Let's creep aroundhere to the other side of the tower, and see what we can see."
Silently she acquiesced. Together they reached the southern part ofthe platform, making their way as far as the jumbled rocks of thefallen railing would permit.
Very carefully they progressed, fearful every moment lest the supportbreak beneath them and hurl them down along the sloping side of thepinnacle to death.
"Look!" bade Stern, pointing. "That very long green line there used tobe Broadway. Quite a respectable Forest of Arden now, isn't it?" Heswept his hand far outward.
"See those steel cages, those tiny, far-off ones with daylight shiningthrough? You know them--the Park Row, the Singer, the Woolworth andall the rest. And the bridges, look at those!"
She shivered at the desolate sight. Of the Brooklyn Bridge only thetowers were visible.
The watchers, two isolated castaways on their island in the sea ofuttermost desolation, beheld a dragging mass of wreckage that droopedfrom these towers on either shore, down to the sparkling flood.
The other bridges, newer and stronger far, still remained standing.But even from that distance Stern could quite plainly see, without thetelescope, that the Williamsburg Bridge had "buckled" downward andthat the farther span of the Blackwell's Island Bridge was in ruinousdisrepair.
"How horrible, how ghastly is all this waste and ruin!" thought theengineer. "Yet, even in their overthrow, how wonderful are the worksof man!"
A vast wonder seized him as he stood there gazing; a fierce desire torehabilitate all this wreckage, to set it right, to start the wheelsof the world-machinery running once more.
At the thought of his own powerlessness a bitter smile curled hislips.
Beatrice seemed to share something of his wonder.
"Can it be possible," whispered she, "that you and--and I--are reallylike Macaulay's lone watcher of the world-wreck on London Bridge?"
"That we are actually seeing the thing so often dreamed of by prophetsand poets? That 'All this mighty heart is lying still,' atlast--forever? The heart of the world, never to beat again?"
He made no answer, save to shake his head; but fast his thoughts wererunning.
So then, could he and Beatrice, just they two, be in stern reality thesole survivors of the entire human race? That race for whose materialwelfare he had, once on a time, done such tremendous work?
Could they be destined, he and she, to witness the closing chapter inthe long, painful, glorious Book of Evolution? Slightly he shiveredand glanced round.
Till he could adjust his reason to the facts, could learn the truthand weigh it, he knew he must not analyze too closely; he felt he musttry not to think. For _that_ way lay madness!
Far out she gazed.
The sun, declining, shot a broad glory all across the sky. Purple andgold and crimson lay the light-bands over the breast of the Hudson.
Dark blue the shadows streamed across the ruined city with itscrowding forests, its blank-staring windows and sagging walls, itsthousands of gaping vacancies, where wood and stone and brick hadcrumbled down--the city where once the tides of human life had ebbedand flowed, roaring resistlessly.
High overhead drifted a few rosy clouds, part of that changelessnature which alone did not repel or mystify these two beleagueredwaifs, these chance survivors, this man, this woman, left alonetogether by the hand of fate.
They were dazed, fascinated by the splendor of that sunset over aworld devoid of human life, for the moment giving up all efforts tojudge or understand.
Stern and his mate peered closer, down at the interwoven jungles ofUnion Square, the leafy frond-masses that marked the one-time courseof Twenty-Third Street, the forest in Madison Square, and thetruncated column of the tower where no longer Diana turned herhuntress bow to every varying breeze.
They heard their own hearts beat. The intake of their breath soundedstrangely loud. Above them, on a broken cornice, some resting swallowstwittered.
All at once the girl spoke.
"See the Flatiron Building over there!" said she. "What a hideouswreck!"
From Stern she took the telescope, adjusted it, and gazed minutely atthe shattered pile of stone and metal.
Blotched as with leprosy stood the walls, whence many hundreds ofblocks had fallen into Broadway forming a vast moraine that for somedistance choked that thoroughfare.
In numberless places the steel frame peered through. The whole roofhad caved in, crushing down the upper stories, of which only a fewsparse upstandi
ng metal beams remained.
The girl's gaze was directed at a certain spot which she knew well.
"Oh, I can even see--into some of the offices on the eighteenthfloor!" cried she. "There, _look?_" And she pointed. "That one nearthe front! I--I used to know--"
She broke short off. In her trembling hands the telescope sank. Sternsaw that she was very pale.
"Take me down!" she whispered. "I can't stand it any longer--I can't,possibly! The sight of that wrecked office! Let's go down where Ican't see _that!_"
Gently, as though she had been a frightened child, Stern led her roundthe platform to the doorway, then down the crumbling stairs and so tothe wreckage and dust-strewn confusion of what had been his office.
And there, his hand upon her shoulder, he bade her still be of goodcourage.
"Listen now, Beatrice," said he. "Let's try to reason this thing outtogether, let's try to solve this problem like two intelligent humanbeings.
"Just what's happened, we don't know; we can't know yet a while, tillI investigate. We don't even know what year this is.
"Don't know whether anybody else is still alive, anywhere in theworld. But we can find out--after we've made provision for theimmediate present and formed some rational plan of life.
"If all the rest _are_ gone, swept away, wiped out clean like figureson a slate, then why _we_ should have happened to survive whatever itwas that struck the earth, is still a riddle far beyond ourcomprehension."
He raised her face to his, noble despite all its grotesquedisfigurements; he looked into her eyes as though to read the verysoul of her, to judge whether she could share this fight, could bravethis coming struggle.
"All these things may yet be answered. Once I get the proper data forthis series of phenomena, I can find the solution, never fear!
"Some vast world-duty may be ours, far greater, infinitely more vitalthan anything that either of us has ever dreamed. It's not our place,now, to mourn or fear! Rather it is to read this mystery, to meet itand to conquer!"
Through her tears the girl smiled up at him, trustingly, confidingly.And in the last declining rays of the sun that glinted through thewindow-pane, her eyes were very beautiful.