Her face turned up to his and her arms tightened about his neck. He
kissed her brow beneath the parted masses of her wondrous hair. His
lips rested a moment on her eyes; and then his mouth sought hers and
burned its passion into her very soul.
Suddenly she pushed him back, panting. She had gone white; she
trembled in his clasp.
"Oh, your kiss--oh, Allan, what is this I feel?--it seems to choke
me!" she gasped, clutching her full bosom where her heart leaped like
a prisoned creature. "Your kiss--it is so different now! No, no--not
again--_not yet!_"
He released her, for he, too was shaking in the grip of new, fierce
passions.
"Forgive me!" he whispered. "I--I forgot myself, a moment. Not
yet--no, not yet. You're right, Beatrice. A thousand things are
pressing to be done. And love--must wait!"
He clenched his fists and strode to the edge of the chasm, where, for
a while, he stood alone and silent, gazing far down and away,
mastering himself, striving to get himself in leash once more.
Then suddenly he turned and smiled.
"Come, Beta," said he. "All this must be forgotten. Let's get to work.
The whole world's waiting for us, for our labor. It's eager for our
toil!"
She nodded. In her eyes the fire had died, and now only the light of
comradeship and trust and hope glowed once again.
"Allan?"
"Yes?"
"Our first duty--" She gestured toward the body of the patriarch,
nobly still beneath the rough folds of the mantle they had drawn over
it.
He understood.
"Yes," murmured he. "And his grave shall be for all the future ages a
place of pilgrimage and solemn thought. Where first, one of lost Folk
issued again into the world and where he died, this shall be a
monument of the new time now coming to its birth.
"His grave shall lie here on this height, where the first sun shall
each day for ages fall upon it, supreme in its deep symbolism. Forever
it shall be a memorial, not of death, but life, of liberty, of hope!"
They kept a moment's silence, then Stern added.
"So now, to work!" From the biplane he fetched the ax. With this he
cut and trimmed a branch from a near-by fir. He sharpened it to a flat
blade three or four inches across. In the deep red sand along the edge
of the Abyss he set to work, scooping the patriarch's grave.
In silence Beatrice took the ax and also labored, throwing the sand
away. Together, in an hour, they had dug a trench sufficiently deep
and wide.
"This must do, for now," said Stern, looking up at last. "Some time he
shall have fitting burial, but for the present we can do no more. Let
us now commit his body to the earth, the Great Mother which created
and which waits always to give everlasting sleep, peace, rest."
Together, silently, they bore him to the grave, still wrapped in the
cloak which now had become his shroud. Once more they gazed upon the
noble face of him they had grown to love in the long weeks of the
Abyss, when only he had understood them or seemed near.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account