Read Ebook: She Buildeth Her House by Comfort Will Levington Justice Martin Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 388 lines and 35985 words, and 8 pages

Paula was thrilled by the American's zeal. He was not content, now that he had begun, to deal with boatloads, but wanted to stir the city. She would have given much to know the exact part of Father Fontanel in this rousing ardor of her new friend. "And you really think Pel?e may not hold out?" she asked.

"I'm not a monomaniac--at least, not yet," he replied, and his voice suggested a certain pent savagery in his brain. "Call it an experiment that I'm sufficiently interested in to finance. The ways of volcanoes are past the previsions of men. I'd like to get a lot of folks out of the fire-zone, until Pel?e is cool--or a billion tons lighter. This ordered-up-to-Nineveh business is out of my line, but it's absorbing. I don't say that Pel?e will blow his head off this week or this millennium, but I do say that there are vaults of explosives in that monster, the smallest of which could make this city look like a leper's corpse upon the beach. I say that the internal fires are burning high; that they're already playing about the vital cap; that Pel?e has already sprung several leaks, and that the same force which lifted this cheerful archipelago from the depths of the sea is pressing against the craters at this moment. I say that Vesuvius warned before he broke; that Krakatoa warned and then struck; that down the ages these safety valves scattered over the face of the earth have mercifully joggled before giving way; that Pel?e is joggling now."

"If M. Mondet would write just that," Paula said softly, "I think you would have your exodus."

Her mind was sleepless.... Once, long after midnight, when she fell into a doze, it was only to be awakened by a dream of a garrote upon her throat. The ash had thickened again, and the air was acrid. The hours seemed to fall asleep in passing. From her balcony she peered into the dead-black of the North where Pel?e rumbled at intervals. Back in the south, the blurred moon impended with an evil light. A faint wailing of children reached her from the servants' cabins. The sense of isolation was dreadful for a moment. It seemed to rest entirely with her that time passed at all; that she must grapple with each moment and fight it back into the past....

"Did you arrange at the post-office to have your mail sent care of the Hotel?" the clerk inquired.

"Yes."

"Please send any letters for me to my room at once," she told him, and went there to wait, so that she might be alone to read.... Madame Nestor's writing was upon one envelope, and Reifferscheid's upon another, a large one, which contained mail sent to Paula Linster in his care to be forwarded to Laura Wyndam, among them letters from Selma Cross and Quentin Charter, as well as a note from the editor himself.

The latter she read first, since the pages were loose in the big envelope. It was a joyous, cheery message, containing a humorous account of those who called to inquire about her, a bit of the gospel of work and a hope for her health--the whole, brief, fine and tonic--like her friend.... Tearing open the Charter letter, she fell into a vortex of emotions:

Live in the sun and rest, Skylark; put away all shadowy complications--and you will bring back a splendid store of energy for the tenser New York life. I could not have written so calmly a few days ago, for to have you think evil of me drove straight and swiftly to the very centres of sanity--but I have won back through thoughts of you, a noon-day courage; and it has come to me that our truer relation is but beginning.

One moth has gone away. The other has curled up on my table like a faded cotton umbrella. So many murder the soul this way in the pursuit of dead intellectual brilliance....

Bless your warm heart that brims with singing--singing which I must hear again.... An old sensation comes to me now as I cease to write. My garret always used to grow empty and heartless--as I closed and sealed a letter to you.... You are radiant in the heart of Quentin Charter.

Paula felt that she could go down into the tortured city at this moment with healing for every woe. She paced the room, and with outstretched arms, poured forth an ecstasy of gratitude for his sake; for the restoration of her Tower; for this new and glorious meaning of her womanhood. The thought of returning to New York by the first boat occurred; and the advisability of cabling Quentin Charter for his ease of mind.... At all events, the time of the next steamer's leaving for New York must be ascertained at once. She was putting on her hat, when Madame Nestor's unopened letter checked her precipitation. The first line brought back old fears:

For a moment or two Paula was conscious of Pel?e, and the gray menace that charged the burnt-out air.

Then came the thought of Father Fontanel and the door that was never locked; and presently her new joy returned with ever-rising vibration--until the long-abated powers of her life were fully vitalized again.... She was wondering, as she stepped into the hall and turned the key in her door, if she would be considered rather tumultuous in cabling Charter.... At the stairway, she halted, fearing at first some new mental seizure; then every faculty furiously-nerved, she listened at the balustrade for the repetition of a voice that an instant before had thrilled her to the soul.... There had only been a sentence or two from the Voice. Peter Stock was now replying:

"He's a man-servant of the devil, this pudgy editor," he said striding up and down the lower hall in his rage. "A few days ago I called upon him, and in sweet modesty and limping French explained the proper policy for him to take about this volcano. To-day he devotes a half-column of insufferable humor to my force of character and alarmist views. Oh, the flakiness of the French mind! M. Mondet certainly fascinates me. I shall have to call upon him again."

Paula heard the low laugh of the other and the words:

Trailing her fingers along the wall to steady herself, Paula made her way back to the door of her room, which she fumblingly unlocked.

NINETEENTH CHAPTER

Charter whipped his wastrel tendencies one by one until on the fifth day his resistance hardened, and the brute within him was crippled from beating against it. His letter to Paula Linster was a triumph of repression. Probably one out of six of the thoughts that came to him were given expression. He felt that he had made of Selma Cross an implacable enemy, and was pursued by the haunting dread , that she might think better about "squaring" him. It was on this fifth day that for a moment the mystic attraction returned to his consciousness, and he heard the old singing. This was the first reward for a chastened spirit. Again and again--though never consciously to be lured or forced--the vision, unhurt, undiminished, returned for just an instant with a veiled, but exquisite refinement.

For several mornings he had studied the gaunt, striding figure of a fellow-passenger, who appeared to be religious in the matter of his constitutional; or, as a sailor softly remarked as he glanced up at Charter from his holy-stoning, "He seems to feel the need av walkin' off sivin or eight divils before answerin' the breakfast-gong...." In behalf of this stranger also, Charter happened to overhear the chief-steward encouraging one of the waiters to extra-diligence in service, Queerly, in the steward's mind, the interest seemed of a deeper sort than even an unusual fee could exact--as if he recognized in the stranger a man exalted in some mysterious masonry. And Charter noticed that the haggard giant enforced a sort of willing slavery throughout the ship--from the hands, but through the heads. This strange potentiality was decidedly interesting; as was the figure in itself, which seemed possessed of the strength of vikings, in spite of an impression, inevitable to Charter when he drew near--of one enduring a sort of Promethean dissolution. Charter reflected upon the man's eyes, which had the startling look of having penetrated beyond the formality of Death--into shadows where inquisition-hells were limned. It was not until he heard the steward address the other as "Doctor Bellingham," that the fanciful attraction weakened. His recollection crowded instantly with newspaper paragraphs regarding the Bellingham activities. Charter was rather normal in his masculine hatred for hypnotic artists and itinerary confessionals for women.

"This soft air would call a Saint Francis down from his spiritual meditations," the Doctor observed.

The voice put Charter on edge, and the manner affected him with inward humor. It was as if the other thought, "Why, there's that pleasant-faced young man again. Perhaps it would be just as well to speak with him." As he drew up his chair, however, Charter was conscious of an abrupt change in his mental attitude--an inclination to combat, verbally to rush in, seize and destroy every false utterance. His initial idea was to compel this man who spoke so glibly of meditations to explain what the word meant to him. This tense, nervous impatience to disqualify all the other might say became dominant enough to be reckoned with, but when Charter began to repress his irritation, a surprising inner resistance was encountered. His sensation was that of one being demagnetized. Thoughts and words came quickly with the outgoing energy of the current. Altogether he was extraordinarily affected.

"These Islands are not particularly adapted for one who pursues the austerities," he replied.

"Yet where can you find such temperamental happiness?" Bellingham inquired, plainly testing the other. His manner of speech was flippant, as if it were quite the same to him if his acquaintance preferred another subject.

"Anywhere among the less-evolved nations, when the people are warm and fed."

The Doctor smiled. "You will soon see the long, lithe coppery bodies of the Islanders, as they plunge into the sea from the Antillean cliffs. You will hear the soft laughter of the women, and then you will forget to deny their perfection." Sensuality exhaled from the utterance.

"You speak of the few brief zenith years which lie at the end of youth," Charter said. "This sort of perfection exists anywhere. In the Antilles it certainly is not because the natives have learned how to preserve life."

"That's just the point," said Bellingham, "Add to their natural gifts of beautiful young bodies--the knowledge of preservation."

"Take a poor, unread Island boy and inform him how to live forever," Charter observed. "Of course, he'll grasp the process instantly. But wouldn't it be rather severe on the other boys and girls, if the usual formula of perpetuating self is used? I mean, would he not have to restore his vitality from the others?"

Bellingham stared at him. Charter faced it out, but not without cost, for the livid countenance before him grew more and more ghastly and tenuous, until it had the effect of becoming altogether unsubstantial; and out of this wraith shone the eyes of the serpent. The clash of wills was quickly passed.

"You have encountered a different fountain of youth from mine," the Doctor said gently.

"Rather I have encountered a disgust for any serious consideration of immortality in the body."

"Interesting, but our good Saint Paul says that those who are in the body when the last call sounds, will be caught up--without disturbing the sleep of the dead."

"It would be rather hard on such bodies--if the chariots were of fire," Charter suggested.

He was inwardly groping for his poise. He could think well enough, but it disturbed him to feel the need to avoid the other's eyes. He liked the shaping of the conversation and knew that Bellingham felt himself unknown. Charter realized, too, that he would strike fire if he hammered long enough, but there was malevolence in the swift expenditure of energy demanded.

Bellingham smiled again. "Then you think it is inevitable that the end of man is--the clouds?"

"The aspiration of the spirit, I should say, is to be relieved of feet of clay.... Immortality in the body--that's an unbreakable paradox to me. I'm laminated, Harveyized against anything except making a fine tentative instrument of the body."

"You think, then, that the spirit grows as the body wastes?"

"Orientals have encountered starvation with astonishing results to philosophy," Charter remarked. "But I was thinking only of a body firmly helmed by a clean mind. The best I have within me declares that the fleshly wrapping becomes at the end but a cumbering cerement; that through life, it is a spirit-vault. When I pamper the body, following its fitful and imperious appetites, I surely stiffen the seals of the vault. In my hours in which the senses are dominant the spirit shrinks in abhorrence; just as it thrills, warms and expands in rarer moments of nobility."

"Then the old martyrs and saints who macerated themselves wove great folds of spirit?"

"You say, in ideal," Bellingham ventured quietly. "... But are not these great forces splendid fuel for the mind? Prodigious mental workers have said so."

"A common view," said Charter, who regarded the remark as characteristic. "Certain mental workers are fond of expressing this. You hear it everywhere with a sort of 'Eureka.' Strength of the loins is but a coarse inflammation to the mind. A man may use such excess strength, earned by continence, in the production of exotics, feverish lyrics, and in depicting summer passions, but the truth is, that so long as that force is not censored, shriven and sterilized--it is the same jungle pestilence, and will color the mind with impurity. It is much better where it belongs--than in the mind."

"You do not believe in the wild torrents, the forked lightnings, and the shocking thunders of the poets?"

"What an expression!" Bellingham observed abruptly. He had been staring away toward a low, cloudy film of land in the south. One would have thought that he had heard only the sentence which aroused his comment. Charter was filling with violence. The man's vanity was chained to him like a corpse. This experience of pouring out energy to no purpose aroused in Charter all the forces which had combined to force the public to his work. The thought came that Bellingham was so accustomed to direct the speech and thought of others, mainly women, that he had lost the listening faculty.

"My dear young man, you speak very clearly, prettily, and not without force, I may say,--a purely Platonistic gospel."

Charter's mental current was turned off for a second. True or false, the remark was eminently effective. A great man might have said it, or a dilettante.

"In which case, I have a firm foundation."

"But I am essentially of the moderns," said Bellingham.

"Perhaps I should have known that from your first remark--about the brown bodies of the Islanders, rejoicing in the sunlight and bathing in these jewelled seas."

"Do you honestly believe that--that which feels the attraction of earth, and becomes a part of earth after death--is the stuff of immortality?" he demanded.

"Processes which these poor Islanders could understand?"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet