Up the cliff still roared the thunder of the rapids, to-day untamed by the many turbines and power-plants along the shore. But louder than the river rose the tumult of the rejoicing throng: “They come! They come!”
“Where?” questioned Beta. “See them, boy?”
“There! Look! How swift! My trained men can outfly me now--more luck to them!”
He pointed far to northwestward, over the wide and rolling sea of green, farm-dotted, that had sprung up with marvelous fecundity in the wake of the great fire.
Looking now out over the very same country where, five years and a month before, she had strained her tear-blinded eyes for some sign of Allan's return, Beatrice suddenly beheld three high, swift little specks skimming up the heavens with incredible velocity.
“Hurrah!” shouted Allan boyishly. “Here they come--the last of my Folk!”
He ran to the corner of the piazza and on the tall staff that dominated the cañon and the river-valley dipped the stars and stripes three times in signal of welcome.
And already, ere the salute was done, the rushing planes had slipped full half the distance from the place where they had first been sighted.
A messenger ran down the gravel driveway and saluted.
“O Kromno!” he began. “Master--”
“Master no longer!” Allan interrupted. “Brother now, only!”
The lad stared, amazed.
“Well, what is it?” smiled Allan.
“The Council of the Elders prays you to come to help greet the last-comers. And after that the feast!”
“I come!” he answered. The lad bowed and vanished.
“They aren't going to let me out of it, after all,” he sighed. “I'd so much rather let them run their own festival to-day. But no--they've got to ring me in, as usual! You'll come, too, of course?”
She nodded, and a moment later they were walking over the fine lawn toward the plaza.
On the far side, in a wide, open stretch that served the children sometimes as a playground, stood the great hangars of the community's air-fleet. Beyond them rose workshops, their machinery driven by electric power from the turbines at the rapids.
Even as Allan and Beatrice passed through the cheering crowd, now drifting toward the hangars, a sound of music wafted down-wind--a little harsh at times, but still with promise of far better things to be.
Many flags fluttered in the air, and even the rollicking children on the lawns paused to wonder as swift shadows cut across the park.
On high was heard the droning hum of the propellers. It ceased, and in wide, sure, evenly balanced spirals the great planes one by one slid down and took the earth as easily as a gull sinks to rest upon the bosom of a quiet sea.
“They do work well, my equilibrators!” murmured Allan, unable to suppress a thrill of pride. “Simple, too; but, after all, how wonderfully effective!”
The crowd parted to let him through with Beatrice. Two minutes later he was clasping the hands of the last Folk ever to be brought from the strange, buried village under the cliff beside the Sunless Sea.
He summoned Zangamon and Frumuos, together with Sivad and the three aviators.
“Well done!” said he; and that was all--all, yet enough. Then, while the people cheered again and, crowding round, greeted their kinsfolk, he gave orders for the housing and the care of the travel-wearied newcomers.
Through the summer air drifted slow smoke. Off on the edge of the grove that flanked the plaza to southward the crackling of new-built fires was heard.
Allan turned to Beta with a smile.
“Getting ready for the barbecue already!” said he, “With that and the games and all, they ought to have enough to keep them busy for one day. Don't you think they'll have to let us go a while? There are still a few finishing touches to put to the new laws I'm going to hand the Council this afternoon for the Folk to hear. Yes, by all means, they'll have to let us go.”
Together they walked back to their bungalow amid its gardens of palm-growths, ferns and flowers. Here they stopped a moment to chat with some good friend, there to watch the children and--parentlike--make sure young Allan was safe and only normally dirty and grass-stained.
They gained their broad piazza at length, turned, and for a while watched the busy, happy scene in the shaded street, the plaza and the playground.
Then Beta sat down by the cradle--still in that same low chair Allan had built for her five years ago, a chair she had steadily refused to barter for a finer one.
He drew up another beside her. From his pocket he drew a paper--the new laws--and for a minute studied it with bent brows.
The soft wind stirred the woman's hair as she sat there half dreaming, her blue-gray eyes, a little moist, seeing far more than just what lay before them. On his head a shaft of sunlight fell, and had you looked you might have seen the crisp, black hair none too sparingly lined with gray.
But his gaze was strong and level and his smile the same as in bygone years, as with his left hand he pressed hers and, with a look eloquent of many things, said:
“Now, sweetheart, if you're quite ready--?”
CHAPTER XXXIV. HISTORY AND ROSES
Allan sat writing in his library. Ten years had now slipped past since the last of the Folk had been brought to the surface and the ancient settlement in the bowels of the earth forever abandoned. Heavily sprinkled with gray, the man's hair showed the stress of time and labors incredible.
Lines marked his face with the record of their character-building, even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long.
Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden. Farther away sounded the comfortable gossip of hens as they breasted their soft feathers into the dust-baths behind the stables. A dog barked.
Came voices from without. Along the street growled a motor. Laughter of children echoed from the playground. Allan ceased writing a moment, with a smile, and gazed about him as though waking from a dream.
“Can this be true?” he murmured. “After having worked over the records of the earlier time they still seem the reality and this the dream!”
On the garden-path sounded footfalls. Then the voice of Beatrice calling:
“Come out, boy! See my new roses--just opened this morning!”
He got up and went to the window. She--matronly now and of ampler bosom, yet still very beautiful to look upon--was standing there by the rose-tree, scissors in hand.
Allan, Junior, now a rugged, hardy-looking chap of nearly sixteen--tall, well built and with his father's peculiar alertness of bearing--was bending down a high branch for his mother.
Beyond, on the lawn, the ten-year-old daughter, Frances, had young Harold in charge, swinging him high in a stout hammock under the apple-trees.
“Can't you come out a minute, dear?” asked Beatrice imploringly. “Let your work go for once! Surely these new roses are worth more than a hundred pages of dry statistics that nobody'll ever read, anyhow!”
He laughed merrily, threw her a kiss, and answered:
“Still a girl, I see! Ah, well, don't tempt me, Beta. It's hard enough to work on such a day, anyhow, without your trying to entice me out!”
“Won't you come, Allan?”
“Just give me half an hour more and I'll call it off for to-day!”
“All right; but make it a short half-hour, boy!”