The Last New Yorkers | Page 6

He felt its silken
caress on his half-naked shoulder, and in his ears the blood began to
pound with strange insistence.
Quite gone now the daze and drowsiness of the first wakening. Stern
did not even feel weak or shaken. On the contrary, never had life
bounded more warmly, more fully, in his veins.
The presence of the girl set his heart throbbing heavily, but he bit his
lip and restrained every untoward thought.
Only his arm tightened a little about that warmly clinging body.
Beatrice did not shrink from him. She needed his protection as never
since the world began had woman needed man.
To her it seemed that come what might, his strength and comfort could
not fail. And, despite everything, she could not--for the moment--find
unhappiness within her heart.
Quite vanished now, even in those brief minutes since their awakening,
was all consciousness of their former relationship--employer and
employed.
The self-contained, courteous, yet unapproachable engineer had
disappeared.

Now, through all the extraneous disguise of his outer self, there lived
and breathed just a man, a young man, thewed with the vigor of his
plentitude. All else had been swept clean away by this great change.
The girl was different, too. Was this strong woman, eager-eyed and
brave, the quiet, low-voiced stenographer he remembered, busy only
with her machine, her file-boxes, and her carbon-copies? Stern dared
not realize the transmutation. He ventured hardly fringe it in his
thoughts.
To divert his wonderings and to ease a situation which oppressed him,
he began adjusting the "level" telescope to his eye.
With his back planted firmly against the tower, he studied a wide
section of the dead and buried world so very far below them. With
astonishment he cried:
"It is true, Beatrice! Everything's swept clean away. Nothing left,
nothing at all--no signs of life!
"As far as I can reach with these lenses, universal ruin. We're all alone
in this whole world, just you and I--and everything belongs to us!"
"Everything--all ours?"
"Everything! Even the future--the future of the human race!"
Suddenly he felt her tremble at his side. Down at her he looked, a great
new tenderness possessing him. He saw that tears were forming in her
eyes.
Beatrice pressed both hands to her face and bowed her head. Filled with
strange emotions, the man watched her for a moment.
Then in silence, realizing the uselessness of any words, knowing that in
this monstrous Ragnarok of all humanity no ordinary relations of life
could bear either cogency or meaning, he took her in his arms.
And there alone with her, far above the ruined world, high in the pure

air of mid-heaven, he comforted the girl with words till then
unthought-of and unknown to him.

CHAPTER IV
THE CITY OF DEATH
Presently Beatrice grew calmer. For though grief and terror still
weighed upon her soul, she realized that this was no fit time to yield to
any weakness--now when a thousand things were pressing for
accomplishment, if their own lives, too, were not presently to be
snuffed out in all this universal death.
"Come, come," said Stern reassuringly. "I want you, too, to get a
complete 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 the
crumbling and uncertain platform.
Together, very cautiously, they explored the three sides of the platform
still unchoked by ruins.
Out over the incredible mausoleum of civilization they peered. Now
and again they fortified their vision by recourse to the telescope.
Nowhere, as he had said, was any slightest sign of life to be discerned.
Nowhere a thread of smoke arose; nowhere a sound echoed upward.
Dead lay the city, between its rivers, whereon now no sail glinted in the
sunlight, no tug puffed vehemently with plumy jets of steam, no liner
idled at anchor or nosed its slow course out to sea.
The Jersey shore, the Palisades, the Bronx and Long Island all lay
buried in dense forests of conifers and oak, with only here and there
some skeleton mockery of a steel structure jutting through.
The islands in the harbor, too, were thickly overgrown. On Ellis, no

sign of the immigrant station remained. Castle William was quite gone.
And with a gasp of dismay and pain, Beatrice pointed out the fact that
no longer Liberty held her bronze torch aloft.
Save for a black, misshapen mass protruding through the tree-tops, the
huge gift of France was no more.
Fringing the water-front, all the way round, the mournful remains of
the docks and piers lay in a mere sodden jumble of decay, with an
occasional hulk sunk alongside.
Even over these wrecks of liners, vegetation was growing rank and
green. All the wooden ships, barges and schooners