TWENTIETH CHAPTER

  CHARTER'S MIND BECOMES THE ARENA OF CONFLICT BETWEEN THE WYNDAM WOMANAND SKYLARK MEMORIES

  In the _Rue Rivoli_ there was a little stone wine-shop. The street wasshort, narrow, crooked, and ill-paved--a cleft in Saint Pierre'sterrace-work. Just across from the vault-like entrance to the shop, thewhite, scarred cliff arose to another flight of the city. Between theshop and the living-rooms behind there was a little court, shaded bymango-trees. Dwarfed banana-shrubs flourished in the shade of themangoes, and singing-birds were caged in the lower foliage. Since thesun could find no entrance, the wine-shop was dark as a cave, and ascool. One window, if an aperture like the clean wound of a thirteen-inchgun could be called a window, opened to the north; and from it, by thegrace of a crook in the _Rue Rivoli_, might be seen the mighty-calibredcone of Pelee.

  Pere Rabeaut's wine was very good, and some of it was very cheap. Theservice was much as you made it, for if you were known you werepermitted to help yourself. In this world there was no one of stationtoo lofty to go to Pere Rabeaut's; and since those of no stationwhatsoever drank rum, instead of wine, you would meet no one there towhom it was not a privilege to say "_Bon jour_."

  "Come and see my birds," the crafty Rabeaut would say if he approved ofyou.

  "Where do you live?" you might ask, being a stranger.

  "In the coolest hovel of Saint Pierre," was his invariable answer.

  And presently, if you were truly alive, you would find yourself in thelittle stone wine-shop, listening to the birds and looking over thestalled casks, demijohns, and bottles, filled with more or lessconcentrated soil and sun. In due course, Soronia would appear in theshadowy doorway (it would seem that the bird-songs were hushed as shecrossed the court), and she would show you a vintage of especially longago. After that, though you became a missionary in Shantung, or aremittance-man in Tahiti, you would never forget the bouquet of theRabeaut wines, the cantatas of the canaries, nor the witchery ofSoronia's eyes.... If the little stone wine-shop were transplanted inNew York, artists would find it, and you would be forced to fetch yourown goblet and have difficulty in getting in and out for the crowd o'nights.

  Thither Charter went the next morning and sat down in the cherishedcoolness. Peter Stock had reminded him of their former talks there, overa particular wine of Epernay, and had arranged to meet him thismorning.... In the foreground of Charter's mind a gritty depression hadsettled, but throughout the finer, farther consciousness, whererealities abide, there hung a mystic constellation, which every littlewhile (and with a shock of ecstasy, so wonderful that his _mere_ brainwas alarmed and called it scandalous), fused together into a great,glowing ardent Star of Bethlehem....

  Again, the _mere_ brain said: "What have you done with your three years?The actress knew you better than you knew yourself. All your letters,and the spirit of your letters, have fallen into ruin before the firstwoman you meet down here in a dreamy, tropic isle. How can you--you, whohave lived truly for a little while, and seemed to have felt the lovethat lifts--sink into the fragrant meshes of romance, through thebeautiful eyes of a stranger to your world and to your ways? And what ofSkylark, the lovely, the winged?..." And the soul of the man riding atits moorings in the bright calm of wisdom's anchorage, made laughinganswer: "This is the Skylark--ah, not that Wyndam is Linster,--but thisis the veiled queen who has waited so long for the House of Charter tobe ready. This is the forever-fairy that puzzled the nights and morningsof the long-ago Charter boy. It was her wing that held the last dart oflight in the gardens of boyhood before the frowning thunders came. Itwas her songs that made the youth's mind magic with lyrics, certain onesso very clear that they fitted into words. It was to find her dazzlingbrow that lured him to prodigious wanderings, until he fell fainting inthe dust of other women's chariots. It was the rustling of her wingsthat he heard from without, when he lay in the Caverns of Devouring,where the twain, Flesh and Death, hold ghastly carnival; the flash ofher wings again that lifted his eyes to the Rising Road. It was herspirit in the splendid East whose miracles of singing and shining madeglorious, with creative touch, his hours by the garret window.... It wasshe of exquisite shoulder and starry eyes and radiant sympathies--beforewhom the boy, the man and the spirit, bowed in thankfulnessyesterday...."

  And so he sat there thinking, thinking,--glimpsing the errant centuriesin the same high light of memory that this very morning recurred--anhour or two ago, when he had walked with her through the mango-grove inthe coolness following a dawn-shower that had washed the white weight ofPelee's ash-winter from the trees.... "What a chaos I must be," hemurmured in dull anguish, "with the finest of my life plighted to avision that is lost--while I linger desolate in the presence of wondrousreality!" ... Some one was moving and whispering in the little roomacross the court of the song-birds.... Peter Stock entered, his whitehair and mustache dulled with ash; his eyes red and angry.

  "Well, I think I've got Father Fontanel frightened," he said, sinkingdown across the little round table. "He's telling the people to shut uptheir houses and go to Fort de France. Sixty or seventy have started,and many more have gone up to Morne Rouge and Ajoupa Boullion, where ithappens to be cool, though they're just as close to the craters.Fontanel has come into a very proper spirit of respect for Pelee'sdestructive capacity. By the way, did you hear what happened yesterday,during the darkness and racket while we were at dinner?"

  "Not definitely. Tell me," Charter urged.

  "The extreme northern end of the city, or part of it, was flooded outlike an ant-hill under a kettle boiling over. The River _Blanche_overflowed her banks, and ran with boiling mud from the volcano. Thirtypeople were killed and the Usine Guerin destroyed."

  "I didn't think it was so bad as that."

  "I hope I'm wrong, but the Guerin disaster may be only a preliminarydemonstration--like the operator experimenting to find if it is darkenough to start the main fireworks. Nobody can complain to Saint Peterthat Pelee hasn't warned."

  "There's another way to look at it," Charter said. "The volcano'soverflow into the River _Blanche_ might have eased the pressure upon thecraters. I wonder if there is any authority or precedent for such ahope?"

  "If Pelee's fuse is burning shorter and shorter toward a Krakatoancataclysm," Peter Stock declared moodily, "it's not for man to say whatspark will shake the world.... I tried to see Mondet this morning--butcouldn't get in. You wouldn't think one white, small person couldcontain so much poison. I am haunted with the desire to commit physicaldepredations."

  "I think I'll take a little journey up toward the craters to-morrow,"Charter confided, after a moment. "They say that the weather is quietand clean to the north of the mountain. One might ride up and try toreason with _Pere Pelee_----"

  At this juncture Soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court, tofill the eyes and the goblets of the Americans. A dark, ardent, alluringface; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by the faintest tints of ripefruit; eyes that could melt and burn and laugh; a fragile figure, butradiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as a young palm in a richlyblossoming vine. She made one think of a strange, regal flower, anexperiment of Nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropicgarden.... She was gone. Charter laughed at the drained look in PeterStock's face.

  "An orchid----" the latter began.

  "Or a sunlit cathedral window."

  "Will the visitation be repeated? Do I wake or sleep?"

  "The years have dealt artistically in the little wine-shop,"said Charter. "They say old Pere Rabeaut married a _fille decouleur_--daughter of a former Governor-General of Martinique."

  "Some Daphne of the Islands, she must have been, since Pere Rabeaut doesnot seem designed to father a sunset.... It's my first glimpse ofSoronia this voyage. She was beautiful in a girlish way last year....She's in love, or she couldn't glow like that. I met Pere Rabeaut downin the city----"

  Charter arose. "Perhaps the lover is across the court. I heard awhispering through the bird-songs--and one could not fail to
note howshe hurried back.... I must go on. The water is no better here thanelsewhere."

  "But the wine is," said Peter Stock. "Wait luncheon for me at the_Palms_.... By the way, how'd you like to take a little cruise--feel the_Saragossa_ under you, running like a scared deer to hitch herself tothe solid old Horn, built of rock and sealed with icebergs----"

  "A clean thought, in this air--but the eventualities here attract. WhenFather Fontanel grows afraid for the city, well, it may not bescientific, but it's ominous.... I wanted to ask if it ever occurred toyou that even the _Morne d'Orange_ might fall into the sweeping range ofPelee's guns?"

  "In other words--if the mountain won't recede from Miss Wyndam, we'dbetter snatch up Miss Wyndam and make a getaway from the mountain?"

  From far within a "Yea" was acclaimed, yet there was a sullen Charterintegrity which had given its word to Skylark, and feared the test ofbeing shut on the same ship with a woman who endowed him with such powerthat he felt potent to go to the craters and remonstrate with theMonster.

  "It might be well to ask her," Charter replied gloomily, "but I'm ratherabsorbed in the action here and Father Fontanel's work. I want to lookat the craters from behind----"

  "Twice you've said that," said Peter Stock, "and each time it reminds methat I'm old, yet there's a lure about it. I'm thinking----"

  Their heads were together at the little round window for the mountainhad rumbled again, and they stared beyond the city into the ashenshroud.

  "Grand old martyr," Charter muttered, "hang on, hang on!... The flag oftruce still flies."

  * * * * *

  Paula at the _Palms_ reflected the Charter conflict that morning. Shehad seen it in his eyes and felt it in his heart, as they had walkedtogether in the mock-winter of the mango-grove before breakfast. Awayfrom him now, however, she could not be sure that "Wyndam," representingthe woman, altogether satisfied his vision of Skylark. Very strange, hewas, in his struggling, and it became harder, and a more delicate thingthan she had believed, to say, "I am Paula Linster." She had felt thisgreat restlessness of his spirit vaguely in the early letters--a stormy,battling spirit which his brain constantly labored to interpret. She hadseen his moments of calm, too, when the eyes and smile of the boyrendered his attractions so intimate to her, that she could have toldhim anything--but these calms did not endure even in her presence. Shedid not want the woman, Wyndam, despised, nor yet the Skylark put fromhim. It became a reality, that out of his struggle Truth would rise;meanwhile, though not with the entire sanction of a certain inner voice,she withheld her secret, remaining silent and watchful in the midst ofthe greatest drama the world could bring to her understanding....

  Paula did not fail to note that Peter Stock was somewhat surprised whenshe refused for the present his invitation to spend the nights at leastout in the cool Caribbean. She saw, moreover, that Quentin Charter wasbeginning to fear the mountain, because she remained at the _Palms_.Indeed, it was hard for all to remember that in form, at least, theywere mere acquaintances, so familiar had they become to each other inthe pressure of Pelee. Above all this, she was almost continuallyconscious of Bellingham since the receipt of Madame Nestor's letter. Itwas not that his power was formidable enough to disorder the unfoldingof the drama, but she felt his nearness, his strategies--all the morestrange, as there had been no sign of him since the arrival of the_Panther_. If for no other reason, she would have found it difficult todisclose her real name to Quentin Charter, while her mind was evendistantly the prey of the black giant.

  These were tremendous hours--when but a word from her withheld twohearts from bursting into anthems. Bravely, she gloried in these lastgreat refinings--longings, fears, exaltations, but never was she withoutthe loftiest hope of her life. The man who had come was so much that_the man_ should be. She saw his former years as the wobblings of a topthat has not yet gained its momentum. Only at its highest speed does thetop sing its peace with God.... Had not the finest glow of his powersbeen reserved until her coming?...

  In such moments as these, she could look back upon her own agonies withgratitude. She had needed a Bellingham. Should she not be thankful thata beyond-devil had been required to test her soul? In the splendidrenewals of her spirit, Paula felt that she could look into themagician's eyes now and command him from her. She was even grateful thatshe had been swept in the fury of The High Tide, nor would she have hadthat supreme night of trial when she fled from the _Zoroaster_, strickenfrom her past. Just as Quentin Charter, of the terrible thirsts, hadrequired his years of wrath and wandering, so her soul had needed thetest of a woman's revelations and man's sublimated passion. Deep withinlived a majestic happiness--earned.

  At one o'clock, as she was going below for luncheon, the sun gave uptrying to shine through the ash-fog, but volumes of dreadful heat foundthe earth. The _Saragossa_ was invisible in the roadstead; there was noline dividing shore and sea, nor sea and sky. It was all an illimitablemask, whose fabric was the dust which for centuries had lain upon thedynamos of Pelee.

 
Will Levington Comfort's Novels