She Buildeth Her House
FIRST CHAPTER
PAULA ENCOUNTERS THE REMARKABLE EYES OF HER FIRST GIANT, AND HEARKENS TOTHE SECOND, THUNDERING AFAR-OFF
Paula Linster was twenty-seven when two invading giants entered thecountry of her heart. On the same day, these hosts, each unconscious ofthe other, crossed opposite borders and verged toward the preparedcitadel between them.
Reifferscheid, though not one of the giants, found Paula a distractionin brown, when she entered his office before nine in the morning, duringthe fall of 1901. He edited the rather distinguished weekly book-page of_The States_, and had come to rely upon her for a paper or two in eachissue. There had been rain in the night. The mellow October sunlight wasstrange with that same charm of maturity which adds a glow of attractionto motherhood. The wonderful autumn haze, which broods over our zone asthe spirit of ripening grains and tinting fruits, just perceptiblyshaded the vivid sky. A sentence Paula had heard somewhere in a play,"My God, how the sun does shine!" appealed to her as particularlyfitting for New York on such a morning. Then in the streets, so latelyflooded, the brilliant new-washed air was sweet to breathe.
Paula had felt the advisability the year before of adding somewhat toher income. Inventory brought out the truth that not one of her talentshad been specialized to the point of selling its product. She had therare sense to distinguish, however, between a certain joyous inclinationto write and a marked ability for producing literature; and to recognizeher own sound and sharp appreciation of what was good in the stirringtide of books. Presenting herself to Reifferscheid, principally onaccount of an especial liking for the book-page of _The States_, she neverforgot how the big man looked at her that first time over hisspectacles, as if turning her pages with a sort of psychometric faculty.He found her possible and several months won her not a littledistinction in the work.
Reifferscheid was a fat, pondrous, heavy-spectacled devourer of work. Hecompelled her real admiration--"the American St. Beuve," she called him,because he was so tireless, and because he sniffed genius from afar.There was something unreservedly charming to her, in his sense ofpersonal victory, upon discovering greatness in an unexpected source.Then he was so big, so common to look at; kind as only a bear of a mancan be; so wise, so deep, and with such a big smoky factory of a brain,full of fascinating crypts. Subcutaneous laughter that rested herinternally for weeks lingered about certain of the large man's sayings.Even in the auditing of her account, she felt his kindness.
"Now here are some essays by Quentin Charter--a big man, a young man anda slow worker," he said. "Charter's first volume was a thunderer. Wegreeted it with a whoop two years ago. Did you see it?"
"No," Paula replied. "I was too strong for literary trifles then."
"Anyway, look out for Charter. He didn't start to appear until he was anadult. He's been everywhere, read everything and has a punch like aprojectile. An effective chap, this Charter. He dropped in to see me afew weeks after my review. He confessed the critics had made him veryglad.... 'I am doing a second book,' he confided to me. 'Down on myknees to it. Work-shop stripped of encomiums; no more dinner-parties orany of that fatness. Say, it's a queer thing about making a book. Younever can tell whether it's to be a boy or a girl....'"
Paula smiled reservedly.
"I asked him what his second book was to be about," Reifferscheid wenton. "'Women,' said he. 'How novel!' said I. He grinned genially.'Reifferscheid,' he declared, in his snappy way, 'women are interesting.They're doing the thinking nowadays. They're getting there. One of thesemornings, man will wake up to the fact that he's got to be born again toget in a class with his wife. Man is mixed up with altogether too muchof this down-town madness. Women don't want votes, public office, orfirst-hand dollars. _They want men!_' ... I always remembered thatlittle bit of stuff from Charter. He says the time will come when classygirls will get their heads together and evolve this ultimatum, whichwill be handed intact to adorers: 'No, boys, we can't marry you. Wehaven't any illusions about celibacy. It isn't nice nor attractive, butit's better than being yoked with hucksters and peddlers who comeup-town at night--mental cripples in empty wagons. Go away and learnwhat life means, what it means to be men--_what it means to us for youto be men_! Learn how to live--and oh, boys, hurry back!'"
"Splendid!" Paula exclaimed.
"Oh, yes, Charter is a full deck and a joker. He's lived. He makes youfeel him. His years are veritable campaigns. He has dangled in thevortices of human action and human passion--and seemed to come outwhole!..." Reifferscheid chuckled at a memory. "'Women are interesting,'Charter finished in his dry fashion. 'I just got to them lately. I wishI could know them all.'"
"I love the book already," Paula said. Reifferscheid laughed inwardly atthe feminine way she held the volume in both hands, pressing it close.
"It's the only book on my table this morning that I'd like to read," headded. "Therefore I give it to you. There's no fun in giving somethingyou don't want.... Are you going to hear Bellingham to-night?"
She was conscious of an unaccountable dislike at the name, a sense ofinward chill. It was almost as reckonable as the pleasure she felt inthe work and personality of Quentin Charter.
"Who's Bellingham?" Paula swallowed dryly after the first utterance ofthe name.
"Mental magician. I only mentioned him, because you so seldom miss theunusual, and are so quick to hail a new cult or odd mental specimen."
"Magician--surely?" she asked.
"He comes rather stoutly recommended as such," Reifferscheid replied,"though personally mine is more than a healthy skepticism. There's anotice this morning of his lectures. He recently hypnotized a man towhom the medical profession was afraid to administer ananaesthetic--held him painless during a long and serious operation. ThenBellingham is the last word in alchemy, feminine emotions, causes ofhysteria, longevity, the proportions of male and female in each person;also he renews the vital principle, advises unions, makes you beautiful,and has esoteric women's classes. A Godey's Ladies' man. Some provincialhusband will shoot him presently."
Paula took the surface car home, because the day was so rare and thecrowd was still downward bent. The morning paper contained anannouncement of Quentin Charter's new book, and a sketch of the author.A strange, talented figure, new in letters, the article said. Theparagraphs had that fresh glow of a publisher's perennial high hope.Here was the book of a man who had lived; who drew not only upon art,history, and philosophy for his prisms of thought, but who had roamedand worked and ridden with men, keeping a sensitive finger ever at thepulse of nature; a man who had never in the most insignificant degreelowered the import or artificially raised the tension of his work toadjust it to the fancied needs of the public. In spite of theenthusiastic phrasing, everything about Charter fascinated her; even themake-up of the unread book in her hand, and the sentences that gleamedfrom the quickly turned pages.
She had ridden many squares, when the name of Dr. Bellingham stood outbefore her eyes in the newspaper. The chill in her arteries wasperceptible as before, when Reifferscheid spoke the name. It was as thelatter had said--the famous healer and telepathist was to start a seriesof classes for women.
Paula lived alone in a small apartment at the _Zoroaster_, "Top-side o'Park." Few friends, many books, within a car ride of the world's bestfruition in plays, lectures, music, and painting--yet the reality of itall was the expansion of her mind in the days and nights alone. Thesubtle relations of things encroached upon her intelligence with asteady and certain trend. She never had to pass, like so many of crudernature, through the horrid trials of materialism; nor to be painfullybruised in mind from buffeting between manhandled creeds and the pureethics of the Lord Christ. Hers was not an aggressive masculineoriginality, but the complement of it--that inspiring, completingfeminine intelligence, elastic to a man's hard-won concepts and readywith a crown for them.
Something of this type of woman, the big-brained brothers of men havewritten and chiselled, painted, sung and dreamed of, since human thoughtfirst lifted above the appeti
tes. There must be a bright answer for eachman's particular station of evolution in the world's dumfounding snarlof the sexes--one woman to lighten his travail and accelerate hispassage to the Uplands. For we are but half-men, man and woman alike.The whole is two, whose union forms One.... This is the key to Nature'sarcanum; this, the one articulate sentence from all the restlessmurmuring out of the past; this, the stupendous Purpose weaving themillion thrilling and truant activities of the present hour--the cleandesire for completion--the union of two which forms One.
The search for this completing woman is the secret of man's roving inthe gardens of sense. His frequent falls into abysmal depravity are butresults incidental to the occultations of his Guide Star. From reptilesin the foul smoke of chaos, to the lifted spines of manhood on a risingroad, Man has come; and by the interminable torture of the paths whichsink behind, he has the other half of eternity to reach the Top.
From a child whose fairies were only enchanted into books for day-timeconvenience, darkness to Paula meant visions, indeed. Often now atnight, though she never spoke of it, the little apartment was peopled bythe spirits of her reading and her ideals--mystics, priests, prophets,teachers, ascetics. To the congenial dark they came--faces unlike anyshe had ever seen, but quite unmistakable in her dreamings. Once whenshe pampered a natural aversion to meat for several months, softfoot-falls and low voices (which had nothing whatever to do with herneighbors across the hall, or the elevator-man in any passage) began torouse her in the night. New York is no place for such refinements ofsense, and she checked these manifestations through physical exerciseand increased diet. She was seldom afraid, but there was a tension inall her imaginings, and she grew marvellously in this twenty-eighthyear--furnishing her mind more sumptuously than she knew. Reifferscheidsaw this in her eyes and in her work.
Throughout the swiftly passing day, Paula realized that she would go toPrismatic Hall in West Sixty-seventh Street, where Dr. Bellingham was toorganize his lecture-course that night. Against this foreknowledge was awell-defined distaste for the man and his work. Between the two, thethought of the evening crowded frequently into mind until she becameimpatient with herself at the importance it assumed. It was with acertain feminine manipulation of conscience, so deft as almost to beunconscious, that she excused her own curiosity on the ground that herdisfavor for the doctor and his message would be strengthened by thefirst meeting, beyond the need of further experience.
One concession she made to her natural aversion--that of going late. Shewas in a mood poignantly critical. The real Paula Linster, she fancied,was at home, "Top-side o' Park"; here was just a sophisticatedprofessional surface, such as reporters carry about. The Hall was packedwith women; the young and the jaded; faces of pup-innocence; facesbitten from terrible expeditions to the poles of sense; faces tired andthick from the tread of an orient of emotions; slow-roving eyes whichsaid, "I crave--I crave! I have lost the sense of reality, but sevensick and pampered organs crave within me!"
The thought came to Paula--to be questioned afterward--that man's evil,after all, is rudimentary compared to a worldly woman's; man's soul notso complicated, nor so irrevocably identified with his sensual organism.She could not avoid pondering miserably upon woman's innate love for farventures into sensation, permitting these ventures to be called (if theworld would) searches for the holy grail. The inevitable attraction forwomen which specialists of the body possess, actually startled her.Bellingham was one of these. On the surface of all his sayings, and allcomment about him, was the bland, deadly insinuation that the soulexpands in the pursuit of bodily health. About his name was the mysteryof his age, whispers of his physical perfection, intimations of romanticaffairs, the suggestion of his miraculous performances upon theemotions--the whole gamut of activities designed to make him the instantaversion of any normal member of his own sex. Yet the flock of femaleshad settled about him, as they have settled about every black humanplague--and glorious messiah--since the birth of days.
The thrilled, expectant look on several faces brought to Paula's mindthe type of her sisters who relish being shocked; whose exaltations arepatently those of emotional contact; who call physical excitement theglorifying of their spirit, and cannot be persuaded to confessotherwise. Woman as a negation for man to play upon never distressed herbefore with such direct and certain pressure. Here were women intentupon encountering a new sensation; women who devoutly breathed the nameof Motherhood next to Godhood, and yet endured their pregnancy withorganic rebellion and mental loathing; women who could not conceive oflove apart from the embrace of man, and who imagine a "message" indeformed and salacious novels, making such books popular; women ofgold-leaf culture whose modesty fastens with a bow--narrow temples ofinfinite receptivity....
Why had they come? In the perfect feminine system of information, thewhisper had run: "Bellingham is wonderful. Bellingham tells you how tolive forever. Bellingham teaches the renewal of self and has esotericclasses--_for the few_!" They had the sanction of one another. There wasno scandal in being there openly, nor any instinct, apparently, to warnthem that secret classes to discover how to live forever, had upon thesurface no very tonic flavor. The digest of the whole matter was thatrevelations sooner or later would be made to a certain few, and thatthese revelations, which would be as fine oil upon the mental surfacesof many women near her, would act as acid upon the male mind generally.
In the sickening distaste for herself and for those who had to make noconcession to themselves for coming, inasmuch as society permitted; andwho would be heartfully disappointed in a lecture on hygiene that didnot discuss the more intimate matters of the senses, Paula did notappraise the opposite sex at any higher value. She merely reviewedmatters which had come to her vividly as some of the crowning frailtiesof her own kind. The centre of the whole affair, Dr. Bellingham, was nowintroduced.
He looked like a Dane at first glance. His was the size, the dusty lookand the big bone of a Dane; the deep, downy paleness of cheek, thetumbled, though not mussy hair. He was heavy without being adipose,lean, but big-boned; his face was lined with years, though miraculouslyyoung in the texture of skin. The lips of a rather small and femininemouth were fresh and red as a girl's. In the softness of complexion andthe faintest possible undertone of color, it was impossible not to thinkof perfected circulation and human health brought to truest rhythm. Thecostliest lotions cannot make such a skin. It is organic harmony.Exterior decoration does not delude the seeing eye any more than apowder-magazine becomes an innocent cottage because its walls arevine-clad.... Directly behind her, Paula now heard a slow whisper:
"I knew him twenty-five years ago, and he is not a moment older to lookat."
She seemed to have heard the voice before, and though the sentencesurged with a dark significance through her mind, she did not turn.Bellingham's words were now caressing the intelligence of his audience.To Paula, his soft mouth was indescribably odious with cultured passion,red with replenishment, fresh with that sinister satisfaction whichinevitably brings to mind a second figure, fallen, drained. His presenceset to quivering within her, fears engendered from the great occultpast. Strange deviltries would always be shadowed about the Bellinghamimage in her mind.... Here was a man who made a shrine of his body,invested it with a heavy hungering God, and taught others--women--to bowand to serve.
To her the body was but a nunnery which enclosed for a time an eternalelement. This was basic, incontrovertible to her understanding. All thatplacated the body and helped to make fleshly desires last long, washostile to the eternal element. Not that the body should be abused orneglected, but kept as nearly as possible a clean vessel for the spirit,brought to a fine automatic functioning. It was as clear to PaulaLinster as the faces of the women about her, that the splendid sacrificeof Jesus was not that He had died upon the Cross, but that He put onflesh in the beginning for the good of infant-souled men.... To eatsparingly of that which is good; to sleep when weary; to requirecleanliness and pure air--these were the physical laws which worked outeasi
ly for decent minds. Beyond such simple affairs, she did not allowthe body often to rule her brain. When, indeed, the potentialities ofher sex stirred within, Paula felt that it was the down-pull of the oldbrood-mother, Earth, and not the lifting of wings.
Bellingham's voice correlated itself, not with the eyes and brow, butwith the Lilith mouth--that strangely unpunished mouth. It was soft,suave. There was in it the warmth of breath. The high white forehead andthe tousled brown hair, leonine in its masculinity--seemed foreign asanother man's. She hearkened to the voice of a doctor used to women; onewho knows women without illusion, whom you could imagine saying, "Whybless you, women never say 'no.'"
The eyes were blue-gray, but toned very darkly. The iris looked small incontrast to the expanse of clear white. They were fixed like a bird's inexpression, incapable of warming or softening, yet one did not miss theimpression that they could brighten and harden, even to shining in thedark. Heavy blonde brows added a look of severity.
Paula's spirit, as if recognizing an old and mortal enemy, gatheredabout itself every human protecting emotion. Frankly hateful, shesurveyed the man, listening. He talked marvellously; even in herhostility, she had to grant that. The great sunning cat was in histones, but the words were joined into clean-thought expression, rapid,vivid, unanswerable. He did not speak long; the first meeting waslargely formative. Paula knew he was studying his company, and watchedhim peer into the faces of the women. His mouth occasionally softened inthe most winsome and engaging way, while his words ran on with therefined wisdom of ages. And always to her, his eyes stood out cold,hard, deadly.
Finally, she was conscious that they were roving near her; moving leftto right, from face to face, as a collection-plate might have beenpassed. Her first thought was to leave; but fear never failed to arousean impulse to face out the cause. The second thought was to keep hereyes lowered. This she tried. His words came clearly now, as she stareddown into the shadow--the perfectly carved thoughts, bright and swiftlike a company of soldiers moving in accord. As seconds passed, thisdown-staring became insufferable as though some one were holding herhead. She could not breathe under repression. Always it had been so; theirresistible maddened the very centres of her reason--a locked room, ahand or a will stronger than her own.
Raising her head with a gasp, as one coming to the surface from a greatdepth of water, she met Bellingham's glance unerringly as a shaft oflight. He had waited for this instant. The eyes now boring into her own,seemed lifted apart from all material things, veritable essences oflight, as if they caught and held the full rays of every arc-lamp in theHall. Warmth and smiling were not in them; instead, the spirit ofconquest aroused; incarnate preying-power, dead to pity and humor. Herewas Desire toothed, taloned, quick with every subtle art of nature.Something at war with God, his eyes expressed to her. Failing to masterGod, failing to foul the centres of creative purity, this Somethingdevoured the souls of women. Continually his voice sought to drug herbrain. The fine edge was gone from her perceptions; dulled, she was, toall but his sayings. There was a chill behind and above her eyes; itswept backward and seemed to converge in the coarser ganglia at the baseof her brain. Once she had seen a bird hop and flutter lower and loweramong the branches of a lilacbush. On the ground below was a cat withhead twisted upward--its vivid and implacable eyes distending. Paulacould understand now the crippling magnetism the bird felt.... Finallyshe could hear only the words of Bellingham, and feel only his power.What he was saying now to her was truth, the unqualified truth ofmore-than-man.
When his eyes turned away, she felt ill, futile, immersed in anindescribable inner darkness. Her fingers pained cruelly, and sherealized she had been clutching with all her strength the book in herhand--Quentin Charter's book--which she had begun since morning. Shecould not remember a single one of his sentences which had impressedher, for her brain was tired and ineffectual, as after a prolongedfever, but she held fast to the bracing effect of an optimisticphilosophy. Then finally out of the helplessness of one pitifullystricken, a tithe of her old vitality returned. She used it at once,rose from her seat to leave the Hall. Into the base of her brain again,as she neared the door, penetrated the protest of his eyes. Had she beenunable to go on, she would have screamed. She felt the eyes of thewomen, too; the whole, a ghastly experience. Once outside, she wanted torun.
Not the least astonishing was the quick obliteration of it all. This wasbecause her sensations were the result of an influence foreign to herown nature. In a few moments she felt quite well and normal again, andwas conscious of a tendency to make light of the whole proceeding. Shereached home shortly after ten, angered at herself--inexplicableperversity--because she had taken Bellingham and the women soseriously.... That night she finished one of the big books of herlife--Quentin Charter's "A Damsel Came to Peter." When the dawn stoleinto the little flat, her eyes were stinging, and her temples feltstretched apart from the recent hours.