Joanne’s white lips spoke first.
“The tunnel is closed!” she whispered.
Her voice was strange. It was
not Joanne’s voice. It was unreal, terrible,
and her eyes were terrible as they looked steadily
into his. Aldous could not answer; something
had thickened in his throat, and his blood ran cold
as he stared into Joanne’s dead-white face and
saw the understanding in her eyes. For a space
he could not move, and then, as suddenly as it had
fallen upon him, the effect of the shock passed away.
He smiled, and put out a hand to her.
“A slide of rock has fallen
over the mouth of the tunnel,” he said, forcing
himself to speak as if it meant little or nothing.
“Hold the lantern, Joanne, while I get busy.”
“A slide of rock,” she repeated after
him dumbly.
She took the lantern, her eyes still
looking at him in that stricken way, and with his
naked hands John Aldous set to work. Five minutes
and he knew that it was madness to continue.
Hands alone could not clear the tunnel. And yet
he worked, tearing into the rock and shale like an
animal; rolling back small boulders, straining at
larger ones until the tendons of his arms seemed ready
to snap and his veins to burst. For a few minutes
after that he went mad. His muscles cracked,
he panted as he fought with the rock until his hands
were torn and bleeding, and over and over again there
ran through his head Blackton’s last words-Four
o’clock this afternoon!-Four o’clock
this afternoon!
Then he came to what he knew he would
reach very soon, a solid wall! Rock and shale
and earth were packed as if by battering rams.
For a few moments he fought to control himself before
facing Joanne. Over him swept the grim realization
that his last fight must be for her. He steadied
himself, and wiped the dust and grime from his face
with his handkerchief. For the last time he swallowed
hard. His soul rose within him almost joyously
now in the face of this last great fight, and he turned-John
Aldous, the super-man. There was no trace of
fear in his face as he went to her. He was even
smiling in that ghostly glow of the lantern.
“It is hard work, Joanne.”
She did not seem to hear what he had
said. She was looking at his hands. She
held the lantern nearer.
“Your hands are bleeding, John!”
It was the first time she had spoken
his name like that, and he was thrilled by the calmness
of her voice, the untrembling gentleness of her hand
as it touched his hand. From his bruised and bleeding
flesh she raised her eyes to him, and they were no
longer the dumb, horrified eyes he had gazed into
fifteen minutes before. In the wonder of it he
stood silent, and the moment was weighted with an
appalling silence.
It came to them both in that instant-the
tick-tick-tick of the watch in his pocket!
Without taking her eyes from his face she asked:
“What time is it. John?”
“Joanne -”
“I am not afraid,” she
whispered. “I was afraid this afternoon,
but I am not afraid now. What time is it, John?”
“My God-they’ll
dig us out!” he cried wildly. “Joanne,
you don’t think they won’t dig us out,
do you? Why, that’s impossible! The
slide has covered the wires. They’ve got
to dig us out! There is no danger-none
at all. Only it’s chilly, and uncomfortable,
and I’m afraid you’ll take cold!”
“What time is it?” she repeated softly.
For a moment he looked steadily at
her, and his heart leaped when he saw that she must
believe him, for though her face was as white as an
ivory cross she was smiling at him-yes!
she was smiling at him in that gray and ghastly death-gloom
of the cavern!
He brought out his watch, and in the
lantern-glow they looked at it.
“A quarter after three,”
he said. “By four o’clock they will
be at work-Blackton and twenty men.
They will have us out in time for supper.”
“A quarter after three,”
repeated Joanne, and the words came steadily from
her lips. “That means -”
He waited.
“We have forty-five minutes in which to live!”
she said.
Before he could speak she had thrust
the lantern into his hand, and had seized his other
hand in both her own.
“If there are only forty-five
minutes let us not lie to one another,” she
said, and her voice was very close. “I know
why you are doing it, John Aldous. It is for
me. You have done a great deal for me in these
two days in which one ‘can be born, and live,
and die.’ But in these last minutes I do
not want you to act what I know cannot be the truth.
You know-and I know. The wires are
laid to the battery rock. There is no hope.
At four o’clock-we both know what
will happen. And I-am not afraid.”
She heard him choking for speech. In a moment
he said:
“There are other lanterns-Joanne.
I saw them when I was looking for the scarf.
I will light them.”
He found two lanterns hanging against
the rock wall. He lighted them, and the half-burned
candle.
“It is pleasanter,” she said.
She stood in the glow of them when
he turned to her, tall, and straight, and as beautiful
as an angel. Her lips were pale; the last drop
of blood had ebbed from her face; but there was something
glorious in the poise of her head, and in the wistful
gentleness of her mouth and the light in her eyes.
And then, slowly, as he stood looking with a face torn
in its agony for her, she held out her arms.
“John-John Aldous -”
“Joanne! Oh, my God!-Joanne!”
She swayed as he sprang to her, but
she was smiling-smiling in that new and
wonderful way as her arms reached out to him, and the
words he heard her say came low and sobbing:
“John-John, if you
want to, now-you can tell me that my hair
is beautiful!”
And then she was in his arms, her
warm, sweet body crushed close to him, her face lifted
to him, her soft hands stroking his face, and over
and over again she was speaking his name while from
out of his soul there rushed forth the mighty flood
of his great love; and he held her there, forgetful
of time now, forgetful of death itself; and he kissed
her tender lips, her hair, her eyes-conscious
only that in the hour of death he had found life,
that her hands were stroking his face, and caressing
his hair, and that over and over again she was whispering
sobbingly his name, and that she loved him. The
pressure of her hands against his breast at last made
him free her. And now, truly, she was glorious.
For the triumph of love had overridden the despair
of death, and her face was flooded with its colour
and in her eyes was its glory.
And then, as they stood there, a step
between them, there came-almost like the
benediction of a cathedral bell-the soft,
low tinkling chime of the half-hour bell in Aldous’
watch!
It struck him like a blow. Every
muscle in him became like rigid iron, and his torn
hands clenched tightly at his sides.
“Joanne-Joanne, it
is impossible!” he cried huskily, and he had
her close in his arms again, even as her face was
whitening in the lantern-glow. “I have
lived for you, I have waited for you-all
these years you have been coming, coming, coming to
me-and now that you are mine-mine-it
is impossible! It cannot happen -”
He freed her again, and caught up
a lantern. Foot by foot he examined the packed
tunnel. It was solid-not a crevice
or a break through which might have travelled the
sound of his voice or the explosion of a gun.
He did not shout. He knew that it would be hopeless,
and that his voice would be terrifying in that sepulchral
tomb. Was it possible that there might be some
other opening-a possible exit-in
that mountain wall? With the lantern in his hand
he searched. There was no break. He came
back to Joanne. She was standing where he had
left her. And suddenly, as he looked at her,
all fear went out of him, and he put down the lantern
and went to her.
“Joanne,” he whispered,
holding her two hands against his breast, “you
are not afraid?”
“No, I am not afraid.”
“And you know -”
“Yes, I know,” and she
leaned forward so that her head lay partly against
their clasped hands and partly upon his breast.
“And you love me, Joanne?”
“As I never dreamed that I should love a man,
John Aldous,” she whispered.
“And yet it has been but two days -”
“And I have lived an eternity,” he heard
her lips speak softly.
“You would be my wife?”
“Yes.”
“To-morrow?”
“If you wanted me then, John.”
“I thank God,” he breathed
in her hair. “And you would come to me without
reservation, Joanne, trusting me, believing in me-you
would come to me body, and heart, and soul?”
“In all those ways-yes.”
“I thank God,” he breathed again.
He raised her face. He looked
deep into her eyes, and the glory of her love grew
in them, and her lips trembled as she lifted them ever
so little for him to kiss.
“Oh, I was happy-so
happy,” she whispered, putting her hands to his
face. “John, I knew that you loved me,
and oh! I was fighting so hard to keep myself
from letting you know how happy it made me. And
here, I was afraid you wouldn’t tell me-before
it happened. And John-John -”
She leaned back from him, and her
white hands moved like swift shadows in her hair,
and then, suddenly, it billowed about her-her
glorious hair-covering her from crown to
hip; and with her hands she swept and piled the lustrous
masses of it over him until his face, and head, and
shoulders were buried in the flaming sheen and sweet
perfume of it.
He strained her closer. Through
the warm richness of her tresses his lips pressed
her lips, and they ceased to breathe. And up to
their ears, pounding through that enveloping shroud
of her hair came the tick-tick-tick of the
watch in his pocket.
“Joanne,” he whispered.
“Yes, John.”
“You are not afraid of-death?”
“No, not when you are holding me like this,
John.”
He still clasped her hands, and a sweet smile crept
over her lips.
“Even now you are splendid,”
she said. “Oh, I would have you that way,
my John!”
Again they stood up in the unsteady glow of the lanterns.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He drew out his watch, and as they both looked his
blood ran cold.
“Twelve minutes,” she
murmured, and there was not a quiver in her voice.
“Let us sit down, John-you on this
box, and I on the floor, at your feet-like
this.”
He seated himself on the box, and
Joanne nestled herself at his knees, her hands clasped
in his.
“I think, John,” she said
softly, “that very, very often we would have
visited like this-you and I-in
the evening.”
A lump choked him, and he could not answer.
“I would very often have come and perched myself
at your feet like this.”
“Yes, yes, my beloved.”
“And you would always have told
me how beautiful my hair was-always.
You would not have forgotten that, John-or
have grown tired?”
“No, no-never!”
His arms were about her. He was drawing her closer.
“And we would have had beautiful
times together, John-writing, and going
adventuring, and-and -”
He felt her trembling, throbbing, and her arms tightened
about him.
And now, again up through the smother of her hair,
came the
tick-tick-tick of his watch.
He felt her fumbling at his watch
pocket, and in a moment she was holding the timepiece
between them, so that the light of the lantern fell
on the face of it.
“It is three minutes of four, John.”
The watch slipped from her fingers,
and now she drew herself up so that her arms were
about his neck, and their faces touched.
“Dear John, you love me?”
“So much that even now, in the
face of death, I am happy,” he whispered.
“Joanne, sweetheart, we are not going to be separated.
We are going-together. Through all
eternity it must be like this-you and I,
together. Little girl, wind your hair about me-tight!”
“There-and there-and
there, John! I have tied you to me, and you are
buried in it! Kiss me, John -”
And then the wild and terrible fear
of a great loneliness swept through him. For
Joanne’s voice had died away in a whispering
breath, and the lips he kissed did not kiss him back,
and her body lay heavy, heavy, heavy in his arms.
Yet in his loneliness he thanked God for bringing her
oblivion in these last moments, and with his face
crushed to hers he waited. For he knew that it
was no longer a matter of minutes, but of seconds,
and in those seconds he prayed, until up through the
warm smother of her hair-with the clearness
of a tolling bell-came the sound of the
little gong in his watch striking the Hour of Four!
In space other worlds might have crumbled
into ruin; on earth the stories of empires might have
been written and the lives of men grown old in those
first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held
his breath and waited after the chiming of the hour-bell
in the watch on the cavern floor. How long he
waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing
Joanne to his breast he did not realize. Seconds,
minutes, and other minutes-and his brain
ran red in dumb, silent madness. And the watch!
It ticked, ticked, ticked! It was like a hammer.
He had heard the sound of it first
coming up through her hair. But it was not in
her hair now. It was over him, about him-it
was no longer a ticking, but a throb, a steady, jarring,
beating throb. It grew louder, and the air stirred
with it. He lifted his head. With the eyes
of a madman he stared-and listened.
His arms relaxed from about Joanne, and she slipped
crumpled and lifeless to the floor. He stared-and
that steady beat-beat-beat-a hundred
times louder than the ticking of a watch-pounded
in his brain. Was he mad? He staggered to
the choked mouth of the tunnel, and then there fell
shout upon shout, and shriek upon shriek from his
lips, and twice, like a madman now, he ran back to
Joanne and caught her up in his arms, calling and
sobbing her name, and then shouting-and
calling her name again. She moved; her eyes opened,
and like one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she
looked into the face of John Aldous, a madman’s
face in the lantern-glow.
“John-John -”
She put up her hands, and with a cry
he ran with her in his arms to the choked tunnel.
“Listen! Listen!”
he cried wildly. “Dear God in Heaven, Joanne-can
you not hear them? It’s Blackton-Blackton
and his men! Hear-hear the rock-hammers
smashing! Joanne-Joanne-we
are saved!”
She did not sense him. She swayed,
half on her feet, half in his arms, as consciousness
and reason returned to her. Dazedly her hands
went to his face in their old, sweet way. Aldous
saw her struggling to understand-to comprehend;
and he kissed her soft upturned lips, fighting back
the excitement that made him want to raise his voice
again in wild and joyous shouting.
“It is Blackton!” he said
over and over again. “It is Blackton and
his men! Listen!-you can hear their
picks and the pounding of their rock-hammers!”