"What is this, Allan?" asked the girl, touching a fine chain of gold
about the patriarch's neck, till now unnoticed.
Allan drew at the chain, and a small golden cylinder was revealed,
curiously carven. Its lightness told him it was hollow.
"Some treasure of his, I imagine," judged he.
"Some record, perhaps? Oughtn't we to look?"
He thought a moment in silence, then detached the chain.
"Yes," said he. "It can't help him now. It may help us. He himself
would have wanted us to have it."
And into the pocket of his rough, brown cassock, woven of the
weed-fiber of the dark sea, he slid the chain and golden cylinder.
A final kiss they gave the patriarch, each; then, carefully wrapping
his face so that no smallest particle of sand should come in contact
with it, stood up. At each other they gazed, understandingly.
"Flowers? Some kind of service?" asked the girl.
"Yes. All we can do for him will be too little!"
Together they brought armfuls of the brilliant crimson and purple
blooms along the edge of the sands, where forest and barren
irregularly met; and with these, fir and spruce boughs, the longer to
keep his grave freshly green.
All about him they heaped the blossoms. The patriarch lay at rest
among beauties he never had beheld, colors arid fragrances that to him
had been but dim traditions of antiquity.
"I can't preach," said Stern. "I'm not that kind, anyway, and in this
new world all that sort of thing is out of place. Let's just say
good-by, as to a friend gone on a long, long journey."
Beatrice could no longer keep back her grief. Kneeling beside the
grave, she arranged the flowers and the evergreens, on which her tears
fell shining.
"Dust unto dust!" Stern said. "To you, oh Mother Nature, we give back
the body of this friend, your son. May the breeze blow gently here,
the sun shine warm, and the birds forever sing his requiem. And may
those who shall come after us, when we too sleep, remember that in him
we had a friend, without whom the world never again could have hoped
for any new birth, any life! To him we say good-by--eternally! Dust
unto dust; good-by!"
"Good-by!" whispered the girl. Then, greatly overcome, she arose and
walked away.
Stern, with his naked hands, filled the shallow grave and, this done,
rolled three large boulders onto it, to protect it from the prowling
beasts of the wild.
Beatrice returned. They strewed more flowers and green boughs, and in
silence stood a while, gazing at the lowlier bed of their one friend
on earth.
Suddenly Stern took her hand and drew her toward him.
"Come, come, Beatrice," said he, "he is not dead. He still lives in
our memories. His body, aged and full of pain, is gone, but his spirit
still survives in us--that indomitable sold which, buried alive in
blindness and the dark, still strove to keep alive the knowledge and
traditions of the upper world, hopes of attaining it, and visions of a
better time to be!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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