SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
PAULA SAILS INTO THE SOUTH, SEEKING THE HOLY MAN OF SAINT PIERRE, WHERE_LA MONTAGNE PELEE_ GIVES WARNING
Wonderfully strengthened, she was, by the voyage. Sorrow had destroyedlarge fields of verdure, and turned barren the future, but its devouringwas finished. Quentin Charter was adjusted in her mind to a duality withwhich Paula Linster could have no concern. Only to one mistress could hebe faithful; indeed, it was only in the presence of this mistress thathe became the tower of visions to another; in the midst of the work heworshipped, Quentin Charter had heard the Skylark sing. Paula did notwant to see him again, nor Selma Cross. To avoid these two, as well asthe place where the Destroyer had learned so well to penetrate, she hadmanaged not to return to her apartment during the two days beforesailing.... There would never be another master-romance--never again sorich a giving, nor so pure an ideal. Before this tragic reality, theinner glory of her womanhood became meaningless. It was this that madethe future a crossing of sterile tundras,--yet she would keep herfriends, and love her work, and try to hold her faith....
Bellingham did not call her at sea, but he had frightened her tooprofoundly to be far from mind. The face she had seen in the hall-waywas drawn and disordered by the dreadful tortures of nether-planes; andawful in the eyes, was that feline vacancy of soul. Once in a dream, shesaw him--a pale reptile-monster upreared from a salty sea, voiceless inthat oceanic isolation, a shameful secret of the depths. The ghastlybulk had risen with a mute protest to the sky against dissolution andcreeping decay--and sounded again....
To her, Bellingham was living death, the triumph of desire which rendsitself, the very essence of tragedy. She gladly would have died to makeher race see the awfulness of _just flesh_--as she saw it now.... Hispower seemed ended; she felt with the Reifferscheids and Madame Nestor,that her secret was hermetic, and there was a goodly sense of securityin the intervening sea....
And now there was a new island each day; each morning a fresh gardenarose from the Caribbean--sun-wooed, rain-softened isles with colorfullittle ports.... There was one tropic city--she could not recall thename--which from the offing had looked like the flower-strewn gateway toan amphitheatre of mountains.
The _Fruitlands_ had lain for a day in the hot, sharky harbor ofSantiago; had run into a real cloudburst off the Silver Reefs of SantoDomingo, and breathed on the radiant next morning before the stately andancient city of San Juan de Porto Rico--shining white as a dream-castleof old Spain, and adrift in an azure world of sky and sea. She spent aday and an evening in this isle of ripe fruits and riper amours; andtook away materials for a memory composite of interminable siestas,restless radiant nights, towering cliffs, incomparable courtesy, andsoft-voiced maidens with wondrous Spanish eyes that laugh and turn away.
Then for two days they had steamed down past the saintlyarchipelago--St. Thomas, St. Martin, St. Kitts; then Montserrat,Guadeloupe, Dominica, and a legion of littler isles--truncated peaksjutting forth from fragrant, tinted water. There were afternoons whenshe did not care to lift her voice or move about. Fruit-juices and thesimplest salads, a flexible cane chair under the awnings, a book to restthe eyes from the gorgeous sea and enchanted shores, somnolence ratherthan sleep--these are enough for the approach to perfection in theCaribbean, with the Lesser Antilles on the lee.... Then at last in lateafternoon, the great hulking shape of Pelee loomed watery green againstthe sky; in the swift-speeding twilight, the volcano seemed to swell andblacken until it was like the shadow of a continent, and the lights ofSaint Pierre pricked off the edge of the land.
At last late at night, queerly restless, she sat alone on deck in thewindless roadstead and regarded the illumined terraces of Saint Pierre.They had told her that the breath from Martinique was like the heavymoist sweetness of a horticultural garden, but the island must have beensick with fever this night, for a mile at sea the land-breeze was dry,devitalized, irritating the throat and nostrils.
There was no moon, and the stars were so faint in the north that themass of Pelee was scarcely shaped against the sky. The higher lights ofthe city had a reddish uncertain glow, as if a thin film of fog hungbetween them and the eye; but to the south the night cleared into purepurple and unsullied tropic stars. The harbor was weirdly hot.
Before her was the city which held the quest of her voyaging--FatherFontanel, the holy man of Saint Pierre.... _Only a stranger can realizewhat a pure shining garment his actual flesh has become. To me there washealing in the very approach of the man...._ This was the enduringfragment from the Charter letters; and in that dreadful Sunday nightwhen she began her flight from Bellingham, already deep within her mindFather Fontanel was the goal.... Paula set out for shore early the nextmorning. The second-officer of the _Fruitlands_ sat beside her in thelaunch. She spoke of the intense sultriness.
"Yes, Saint Pierre is glowing like a brazier," he said. "I was ashorelast night for awhile. The people blame the mountain. Old Pelee has beenacting up--showering the town with ash every little while lately. It'sthe taint of sulphur that spoils the air."
She turned apprehensively toward the volcano. _La Montague Pelee_, overthe red-tiled roofs of Saint Pierre, looked huge like an Emperor of theRomans. Paled in the intense morning light, he wore a delicate ruchingof white cloud about his crown. They stepped ashore on the Sugar Landingwhere Paula found a carriage to take her to the _Hotel des Palms_, arare old plantation-house on the _Morne d'Orange_, recently convertedfor public use.
The ponies were ascending the rise in _Rue Victor Hugo_, at the southernend of the city, when Paula discovered the little Catholic church shehad imaged for so many weeks, _Notre Dame des Lourdes_, niched away inthe crowded streets with a Quebec-like quaintness, and all the holierfrom its close association with the lowly shops. From these walls hadrisen the spiritual house of Father Fontanel--her far bright beacon....The _porteuses_, said to be the lithest, hardiest women of the occident,wore a pitiable look of fatigue, as they came down from the hill-trails,steadying the baskets upon their heads. The pressure of the heat, andthe dispiriting atmosphere revealed their effects in the distendedeyelids and colorless, twisted lips of the burden-bearers.
The ponies at length gained the eminence of the _Morne d'Orange_, andahead she saw the broad, white plantation-house--_Hotel des Palms_. Tothe right was the dazzling, turquoise sea where the _Fruitlands_ laylarge among the shipping, and near her a private sea-going yacht, nearlyas long and angelically white. The broad verandas of the hotel werealluring with palms; the walls and portcullises were cooled withembroidering vines. Gardens flamed with poinsettias and roses, and ashaded grove of mango and India trees at the end of the lawn, was edgedwith moon flowerets and oleanders. Back of the plantation-house wavedthe sloping seas of cane; in front, the Caribbean. On the south rose thepeaks of Carbet; on the north, the Monster.
Paula had hardly left the veranda of magnificent vistas two hours later,when the friendly captain of the _Fruitlands_ approached with an elderlyAmerican, of distinguished appearance, whom he presented--Mr. PeterStock, of Pittsburg.
"Since you are to leave us here, Miss Wyndam," the captain added, "Ithought you would be glad to know Mr. Stock, who makes an annual cruisearound these Islands--and knows them better than any American I'veencountered yet. Yonder is his yacht--that clipper-built beauty just abit in from the liner."
"I've already been admiring the yacht," Paula said, "and wondering hername. There's something Venetian about her dazzling whiteness in thesoft, deep blue."
"I get it exactly, Miss Wyndam--that 'mirage of marble' in the Italiansky.... My craft is the _Saragossa_." His eyelids were tightened againstthe light, and the voice was sharp and brisk. His face, tropicallytanned, contrasted effectively with the close-cropped hair and mustache,lustrous-white as his ship.... Paula having found the captain's courtesyand good sense invariable during the voyage, gladly accepted his friend,who proved most interesting on the matter of Pelee.
"I've stayed here in Saint Pierre longer now than usual," he told her,pointin
g toward the mountain, "to study the old man yonder. Pelee, youknow, is identified with Martinique, much the same as the memory ofJosephine; yet the people of the city can't seem to take his presentdisorder seriously. This is cataclysmic country. Hell--I use the word tosignify a geological stratum--is very close to the surface down here.All these lovely islands are merely ash-piles hurled up by the greatsubterranean fires. The point is, Lost Atlantis is apt to stir any timeunder the Caribbean--and rub out our very pretty panorama."
"You regard this as an entertainment worth waiting for?" Paula asked.
The vaguest sort of a smile passed over his eyes and touched his lips."Pelee and I are very old friends. I spoke of the volcanic origin ofthese islands in the way of suggesting that any seismic activity in thearchipelago--Pelee's present internal complaint, for instance,--shouldbe taken significantly. Saint Pierre would have been white thismorning--except for the heavy rain before dawn."
"You mean volcanic ash?"
"Exactly."
"That explains the white scum I saw in the gutters, driving through thecity.... But it isn't altogether a novelty, is it, for the mountain tobehave this way?"
"From time to time in the past ten days, Miss Wyndam, Pelee has had asession of grumbling."
"I mean as a usual thing----"
He turned to her abruptly and inquired, "Didn't you know that therehasn't been a sound from Pelee for twenty years before the month ofApril now ending?"
This gave intimacy to the disorder. Mr. Stock was called away just now,but after dinner that night he joined Paula again on the great veranda.
"Ever been in Pittsburg?" he asked.
"No."
"I've only to shut my eyes in this second-hand air--to think I'm backamong the steel mills of the lower Monongahela."
"The moon looks like beaten egg," Paula said with a slight shiver. "Theymust be suffering down in the city. You're the expert on Pelee, Mr.Stock, please tell me more about him."
He had been regarding the new moon, low and to the left of the Carbetpeaks. It had none of the sharpness of outline peculiar to the tropics,but was blurred and of an orange hue, instead of silvery. "It's theash-fog in the air which has the effect of a fine wire screen," heexplained. "We'll have a white world to-morrow, if it doesn't rain."
They turned to the north where a low rumbling was heard. It was likedistant thunder, but the horizon beyond Pelee was unscathed bylightning.
"Are you really worried, Mr. Stock?"
"Why, it's as I said. The fact that Pelee is acting out of the ordinaryis quite enough to make any one skeptical regarding his intentions."
He discussed familiarly certain of the man-eaters among the mountains ofthe world--Krakatoa, Bandaisan, Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, AEtna, calling themchronic old ruffians, whom Time doesn't tame.
"A thousand years is nothing to them," he added. "They wait, still ascrocodiles, until seers have built their temples in the high rifts andcities have formed on their flanks. They have tasted blood, you see, andthe madness comes back. Twenty years is only a siesta. Pelee is asuspect."
"I think I should prefer to hear you tell the treachery of volcanoesoutside of the fire-zone," she declared. "It's like listening to ghoststories in a haunted house."
Pelee rumbled again, and Paula's fingers involuntarily started towardhis sleeve. The heavy wooden shutters of the great house rattled in thewindless night; the ground upon which they stood seemed to wince at theMonster's pain. She was conscious of the fragrance of roses and magnoliablooms above the acrid taint of the air. Some strange freak of theatmosphere exerted a pressure upon the flowers, forcing a suddenexpulsion of perfume. The young moon was a formless blotch now in thefouled sky. A sigh like the whimpering of many sick children was audiblefrom the servants' cabins behind the hotel.... Later, from her own room,she saw the double chain of lights out in the harbor--the _Saragossa_pulling at her moorings among the lesser craft, like a bright empress inthe midst of dusky maid-servants; and in the north was Vulcan strugglingto contain the fury of his fluids. She was a little afraid of Pelee.
Very early abroad, Paula set out on her first pilgrimage to _Notre Damedes Lourdes_. Rain had not fallen in the night, and she regarded a whiteworld, as Stock had promised, and the source of the phenomenon with thepastelle tints of early morning upon his huge eastern slope. She hadslept little and with her face turned to the north. A cortege had passedbefore her in dream--all the destroyers of history, each with a vividindividuality, like the types of faces of all nations--the story of eachand the desolation it had made among men and the works of men.
Most of them had given warning. Pelee was warning now. His warning waswritten upon the veins of every leaf, painted upon the curve of everyblade of grass, sheeted evenly-white upon the red tiles of every roof.Gray dust blown by steam from the bursting quarries of the mountainclogged the gutters of the city and the throats of men. It was a moving,white cloud in the river, a chalky shading that marked the highest reachof the harbor tide. It settled in the hair of the children, andcomplicated the toil of bees in the nectar-cups. With league-longcerements, and with a voice that caused to tremble his dwarfedcompanions, the hills and _mornes_, great Pelee had proclaimed hiswarning in the night.