“Isn’t that nearly all of them—?”
He bawled down two names …
“Father, father—!” sobbed two little voices in the depths.
“The devil take you, you couple of Jackanapes!” roared the man. He rummaged the children aside with his fists, as if he were shovelling rubbish on the dustheap. Then he gulped, snorted, clutched out, and had two children hanging around his neck, wet and shivering piteously, but alive—and their limbs stood more in danger of his fumbling fists than previously of the water and the tumbling stones.
With the children in both arms, Grot rolled over on his side. He sat up and planted the couple before him.
“You Goddamned pair of ragamuffins!” he said, amidst sobs. He wiped the tears from his eyes. And sprang up, hurling the children aside, like two little hay-stooks. With the furious roar of a lion, he ran to the door, from the depths of which Maria was emerging, with closed eyes, supported by Freder’s arm.
“You bloody—!” he howled out. He dragged Freder aside, shoved the girl back into the depths, slammed the trapdoor to, and slung his entire weight upon it, drumming the rhythm of his laughter upon it with clenched fists.
A grim effort had kept Freder on his feet. Beside himself, he fell upon the maniac to tug him from the trapdoor, fell over him and rolled with him, in furious embrace, among the ruins of the machines.
“Let me go, you dog, you mangy dog!” howled Gort, trying to bite at the angry fist which held him. “That woman murdered my machine—That damn woman led the rabble—!! That woman alone turned the lever to ‘12’—! I saw it when they were trampling on me—! The woman can drown down there—! I’m going to kill that woman—!”
With marvellous tension of all his muscles Grot drew himself up and heaved himself, with a jerk, away from the raving man—with such infuriated strength that he, Grot, shot, describing a curve, amidst the children.
Cursing ardently, he gathered himself up again; but, though he was uninjured, he could not move a limb. He stuck, an impotent spoon, in a porridge of children, which adhered to his arms, legs and fists. No steel fetters could have condemned him so effectually to helplessness, as did the little cold, wet hands, which were defending her who had rescued them all. Yes, his own children were standing before him, pommelling angrily upon his clenched fists, unscared by the blot-shot eyes with which the giant glared at the dwarves, cudgelling him.
“That woman murdered my machine—!” he howled out at last, more complainingly than angrily, looking at the girl, who was resting upon Freder’s arm, as though expecting her to bear him out.
“What does he mean?” asked Maria. “And what has happened?”
And she looked with eyes, the horror in which was only modified by the deepest of exhaustion, at the destruction round about, and at the snorting Grot.
Freder did not answer.
“Come,” he said. And he raised her up in his arms and carried her out. The children followed them like a flock of little lambs, and Grot had no alternative than to run along in the tracks of the tiny feet, whither the little, tugging hands drew him.
XIX
They had taken the children into the house and Freder’s eyes sought Maria, who was kneeling in the street, among the last remaining children, consoling them, and bestowing her loving smile upon weeping and bewildered eyes.
Freder ran across to them and carried Maria into the house.
“Don’t forget,” he said, letting her down upon a couch before the blazing fire in the entrance hall, and holding captive in his longing arms her half-lying, half-sitting, gently resisting form, “that Death and madness and something very like destruction of the world have passed very close by us—and that, after all that has happened, I do not even know the colour of your eyes—and that you have not yet kissed me once by your own free will …”
“Dearest,” said Maria, leaning towards him, so that her pure eyes, bathed in painless tears, were quite near to him, while, at the same time, a great, concentrated gravity kept her lips away from his, “are you sure that Death and madness have already passed by?”
“By us, beloved—yes!”
“And all the others—?”
“Are you sending me away, Maria?” he asked, lovingly. She did not answer, at least not in words. But, with a gesture which was at once frank and touching, she put her arms about his neck and kissed him on the mouth.
“Go along,” she said, stroking his bewildered face with her virginal, motherly hands. “Go to your father. That is the most hallowed way … I shall go to the children as soon as my clothes are a little dryer. For I’m afraid,” she added with a smile which made Freder blush to his eyes, “numerous as the women are who live in the ‘House of the Sons,’ and willing and eager as they may be, not one of them has a dress she could lend me … !”
Freder stood bending over her with lowered eyes. The flames of the huge fire glowed upon his handsome, open face, which wore an expression of shame and sadness. But when he raised his glance to meet Maria’s eyes, which were silently fixed upon him, without saying a word he took her hands and pressed them against his eyelids, remaining thus for a long time.
And all this while they both forgot that, on the other side of the wall which was protecting them, a city was throbbing in grisly conflict, and that among the ruins thousands of beings, themselves but ruins, hurled hither and thither, were losing their reason,
