The Last New Yorkers | Page 5

showed as bright and clear as ever.
"Come, now; come with me," he bade.
Out through the doorway into the hall he made his way while the girl
followed. As she went she gathered her wondrous veil of hair more
closely about her.
In this universal disorganization, this wreck of all the world, how little
the conventions counted!
Together, picking their way up the broken stairs, where now the
rust-bitten steel showed through the corroded stone and cement in a
thousand places, they cautiously climbed.
Here, spider-webs thickly shrouded the way, and had to be brushed
down. There, still more bats bung and chippered in protest as the
intruders passed.
A fluffy little white owl blinked at them from a dark niche; and, well
toward the top of the climb, they flushed up a score of mud-swallows
which had ensconced themselves comfortably along a broken
balustrade.

At last, however, despite all unforeseen incidents of this sort, they
reached the upper platform, nearly a thousand feet above the earth.
Out through the relics of the revolving door they crept, he leading,
testing each foot of the way before the girl. They reached the narrow
platform of red tiling that surrounded the tower.
Even here they saw with growing amazement that the hand of time and
of this maddening mystery had laid its heavy imprint.
"Look!" he exclaimed, pointing. "What this all means we don't know
yet. How long it's been we can't tell. But to judge by the appearance up
here, it's even longer than I thought. See, the very tiles are cracked and
crumbling.
"Tilework is usually considered highly recalcitrant--but this is gone.
There's grass growing in the dust that's settled between the tiles.
And--why, here's a young oak that's taken root and forced a dozen slabs
out of place."
"The winds and birds have carried seeds up here, and acorns," she
answered in an awed voice. "Think of the time that must have passed.
Years and years.
"But tell me," and her brow wrinkled with a sudden wonder, "tell me
how we've ever lived so long? I can't understand it.
"Not only have we escaped starvation, but we haven't frozen to death in
all these bitter winters. How can that have happened?"
"Let it all go as suspended animation till we learn the facts, if we ever
do," he replied, glancing about with wonder.
"You know, of course, how toads have been known to live embedded in
rock for centuries? How fish, hard-frozen, have been brought to life
again? Well--"
"But we are human beings."

"I know. Certain unknown natural forces, however, might have made
no more of us than of non-mammalian and less highly organized
creatures.
"Don't bother your head about these problems yet a while. On my word,
we've got enough to do for the present without much caring about how
or why.
"All we definitely know is that some very long, undetermined period of
time has passed, leaving us still alive. The rest can wait."
"How long a time do you judge it?" she anxiously inquired.
"Impossible to say at once. But it must have been something
extraordinary--probably far longer than either of us suspect.
"See, for example, the attrition of everything up here exposed to the
weather." He pointed at the heavy stone railing. "See how that is
wrecked, for instance."
A whole segment, indeed, had fallen inward. Its debris lay in confusion,
blocking all the southern side of the platform.
The bronze bars, which Stern well remembered--two at each corner,
slanting downward and bracing a rail--had now wasted to mere
pockmarked shells of metal.
Three had broken entirely and sagged wantonly awry with the
displacement of the stone blocks, between which the vines and grasses
had long been carrying on their destructive work.
"Look out!" Stern cautioned. "Don't lean against any of those stones."
Firmly he held her back as she, eagerly inquisitive, started to advance
toward the railing.
"Don't go anywhere near the edge. It may all be rotten and undermined,
for anything we know. Keep back here, close to the wall."
Sharply he inspected it a moment.

"Facing stones are pretty well gone," said he, "but, so far as I can see,
the steel frame isn't too bad. Putting everything together, I'll probably
be able before long to make some sort of calculation of the date. But for
now we'll have to call it 'X,' and let it go at that."
"The year X!" she whispered under her breath. "Good Heavens, am I as
old as that?"
He made no answer, but only drew her to him protectingly, while all
about them the warm summer wind swept onward to the sea, out over
the sparkling expanses of the bay--alone unchanged in all that universal
wreckage.
In the breeze her heavy masses of hair stirred luringly.