She smiled back at him, sitting there at ease in the sunshine by the window, sipping her coffee out of a gold cup with a solid gold spoon.
Stern, feeling the May breeze upon his face, hearing the bird-songs in the forest depths, felt a well-being, a glow of health and joy such as he had never in his whole life known—the health of outdoor labor and sound sleep and perfect digestion, the joy of accomplishment and of the girl’s near presence.
“I suppose we do live pretty well,” she answered, surveying the remnants of the feast. “Potted tongue and peas, fried squirrel, partridge and coffee ought to satisfy anybody. But still—”
“What is it?”
“I would like some buttered toast and some cream for my coffee, and some sugar.”
Stern laughed heartily.
“You don’t want much!” he exclaimed, vastly amused, the while he blew a cloud of Latakia smoke. “Well, you be patient, and everything will come, in time.
“You mustn’t expect me to do magic. On the fourth day you don’t imagine I’ve had time enough to round up the ten thousandth descendant of the erstwhile cow, do you?
“Or grow cane and make sugar? Or find grain for seed, clear some land, plow, harrow, plant, hoe, reap, winnow, grind and bolt and present you with a bag of prime flour? Now really?”
She pouted at his raillery. For a moment there was silence, while he drew at his pipe. At the girl he looked a little while. Then, his eyes a bit far-away, he remarked in a tone he tried to render casual:
“By the way, Beatrice, it occurs to me that we’re doing rather well for old people—very old.”
She looked up with a startled glance.
“Very?” she exclaimed. “You know how old then?”
“Very, indeed!” he answered. “Yes, I’ve got some sort of an idea about it. I hope it won’t alarm you when you know.”
“Why—how so? Alarm me?” she queried with a strange expression.
“Yes, because, you see, it’s rather a long time since we went to sleep. Quite so. You see, I’ve been doing a little calculating, off and on, at odd times. Been putting two and two together, as it were.
“First, there was the matter of the dust in sheltered places, to guide me. The rate of deposition of what, in one or two spots, can’t have been anything less than cosmic or star-dust, is fairly certain.
“Then again, the rate of this present deterioration of stone and steel has furnished another index. And last night I had a little peek at the pole-star, through my telescope, while you were asleep.
“The good old star has certainly shifted out of place a bit. Furthermore, I’ve been observing certain evolutionary changes in the animals and plants about us. Those have helped, too.”
“And—and what have you found out?” asked she with tremulous interest.
“Well, I think I’ve got the answer, more or less correctly. Of course it’s only an approximate result, as we say in engineering. But the different items check up with some degree of consistency.
“And I’m safe in believing I’m within at least a hundred years of the date one way or the other. Not a bad factor of safety, that, with my limited means of working.”
The girl’s eyes widened. From her hand fell the empty gold cup; it rolled away across the clean-swept floor.
“What?” cried she. “You’ve got it, within a hundred years! Why, then—you mean it’s more than a hundred?”
Indulgently the engineer smiled.
“Come, now,” he coaxed. “Just guess, for instance, how old you really are—and growing younger every day?”
“Two hundred maybe? Oh surely not as old as that! It’s horrible to think of!”
“Listen,” bade he. “If I count your twenty-four years, when you went to sleep, you’re now—”
“What?”
“You’re now at the very minimum calculation, just about one thousand and twenty-four! Some age, that, eh?”
Then, as she stared at him wide-eyed he added with a smile.
“No disputing that fact, no dodging it. The thing’s as certain as that you’re now the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world!”
CHAPTER XII. DRAWING TOGETHER
DAYS passed, busy days, full of hard labor and achievement, rich in experience and learning, in happiness, in dreams of what the future might yet bring.
Beatrice made and finished a considerable wardrobe of garments for them both. These, when the fur had been clipped close with the scissors, were not oppressively warm, and, even though on some days a bit uncomfortable, the man and woman tolerated them because they had no others.
Plenty of bathing and good food put them in splendid physical condition, to which their active exercise contributed much. And thus, judging partly by the state of the foliage, partly by the height of the sun, which Stern determined with considerable accuracy by means of a simple, home-made quadrant—they knew mid-May was past and June was drawing near.
The housekeeping by no means took up all the girl’s time. Often she went out with him on what he called his “pirating expeditions,” that now sometimes led them as far afield as the sad ruins of the wharves and piers, or to the stark desolation and wreckage of lower Broadway and the onetime busy hives of newspaperdom, or up to Central Park or to the great remains of the two railroad terminals.
These two places, the former tide-gates of the city’s life, impressed Stern most painfully of anything. The disintegrated tracks, the jumbled remains of locomotives and luxurious Pullmans with weeds growing rank upon them, the sunlight beating down through the caved-in roof of the Pennsylvania station “concourse,” where millions of human beings once had trod in all the haste of men’s paltry, futile affairs, filled him with melancholy, and he was glad to get away again leaving the place to the jungle, the birds and beasts that now laid claim to it.
“Sic transit gloria mundi!” he murmured, as with sad eyes he mused upon the down-tumbled columns along the facade, the overgrown entrance-way, the cracked and falling arches and architraves. “And this, they said, was builded for all time!”
It was on one of these expeditions that the engineer found and pocketed—unknown to Beatrice—another disconcerting relic.
This was a bone, broken and splintered, and of no very great age, gnawed with perfectly visible tooth- marks. He picked it up, by chance, near the west side of the ruins of the old City Hall.
Stern recognized the manner in which the bone had been cracked open with a stone to let the marrow be sucked out. The sight of this gruesome relic revived all his fears, tenfold more acutely than ever, and filled him with a sense of vague, impending evil, of peril deadly to them both.
This was the more keen, because the engineer knew at a glance that the bone was the upper end of a human femur—human, or, at the very least, belonging to some highly anthropoid animal. And of apes or gorillas he had, as yet, found no trace in the forests of Manhattan.
Long he mused over his find. But not a single word did he ever say to Beatrice concerning it or the flint spear-point. Only he kept his eyes and ears well open for other bits of corroborative evidence.
And he never ventured a foot from the building unless his rifle and revolver were with him, their magazines full of high-power shells.
The girl always went armed, too, and soon grew to be such an expert shot that she could drop a squirrel from the tip of a fir, or wing a heron in full flight.
Once her quick eyes spied a deer in the tangles of the one-time Gramercy Park, now no longer neatly hedged with iron palings, but spread in wild confusion that joined the riot of growth beyond.
On the instant she fired, wounding the creature.
Stern’s shot, echoing hers, missed. Already the deer was away, out of range through the forest. With some difficulty they pursued down a glen-like strip of woods that must have once been Irving Place.
