TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
CHARTER COMMUNES WITH THE WYNDAM WOMAN, AND CONFESSES THE GREAT TROUBLEOF HIS HEART TO FATHER FONTANEL
"Do you know what I discovered this morning?" Peter Stock asked, afterthe three had found a table together. "M. Mondet is trying to keep thepeople in town for political reasons. It appears that there is to be anelection in a few days. All my efforts, and, by non-parishioners, theefforts of Father Fontanel, are regarded as a politicalcounter-stroke--to rush a certain element of the suffrage out of thetown.... This is certainly Ash-Wednesday, isn't it?"
Charter laughed. "My theory that the Guerin disaster might relieve thecraters and give surcease to Saint Pierre--doesn't seem to work out. Theair is getting thicker, even."
"It isn't really ash, you know," explained Mr. Stock, "but rock, groundfine as neat in the hell-mills under the mountain and shot out by steamthrough Pelee's valves----"
"Intensely graphic," said Paula.
"It has been rather a graphic morning," Charter remarked. "Friend Stockis virile from his activities with Father Fontanel."
"Well, I didn't make a covenant with the mountain--as you did thismorning in the wine-shop. You should have seen him, Miss Wyndam, staringaway at the volcano and, muttering, 'Hang on, old chap, hang on!....' Mydear young woman, doesn't a ride on the ocean sound good for thisafternoon? You can sit on deck and hold the little black babies. The_Saragossa_ takes another load to Fort de France in two or three hours."
She shook her head. "Not just yet. You don't realize how wonderful thedrama is to me--you and Father Fontanel, playing Cassandra down in thecity--the groaning mountain, and the pity of it all. I confess a littleinconvenience of the weather isn't enough to drive me out. It isn't veryoften given to a woman to watch the operations of a destiny so big asthis."
The capitalist turned to Charter. "You know Empress Josephine was bornin Martinique and has become a sort of patron saint for the Island. Abeautiful statue of her stands in the square at Fort de France where ourrefugees are encamped. I was only thinking that the map of Europe andthe history of France might have been altered greatly if our belovedJosephine had been gifted with a will like this--of Miss Wyndam's."
Her pale, searching face regarded Charter for a second, and his eyessaid plainly as words, "Don't you think you'd better consider this moreseriously?"
"Maybe you'll like the idea better for the evening, when the _Saragossa_is back in the roadstead again, comparatively empty," Peter Stock addedpresently. "Father Fontanel and I have a lot to do in the meantime. Canyou imagine our first parents occupying themselves when the firsttornado was swooping down--our dear initial mother, surpassinglywind-blown, driving the geese to shelter, propping up the orchards,getting out the rain-barrels, and tightening tent-pins?"
"Vividly," said Paula.
"That's just how busy we are--Father Fontanel and I."
It was to be expected that a sophomoric pointlessness shouldcharacterize the sayings of the two in the midst of Peter Stock'smasculinity and the thrilling magnitude of the marvel each was to theother.... They were left together presently, and the search for treasurebegan at once:
"... The present is a time of readjustment between men and women," hewas saying. "It seems to me that the great mistake people make--men andwomen alike--is that each sex tries to raise itself by loweringthe other. It hardly could be any other way just now, and atfirst--with woman filled with the turmoil of emerging from ages ofoppression--fighting back the old and fitting to the new. But in man andwoman--not in either alone--lies completion. If the two do not quitecomplete each other, a Third often springs from them with an increasedspiritual development."
"Yes," she answered, leaning forward, her chin fitted to her palms. "The_I-am_ and the _You-are-not_ will soon be put away. I like to think ofit--that man and woman are together in the complete human. There is aglorious, an arch-feminine ideal in the nature of the Christ----"
"Even in the ineffable courage," he added softly. "That is woman's--thefiner courage that never loses its tenderness.... His Figure sometimes,as now, becomes an intimate passion to me----"
"As if He were near?"
"As if He were near--still loving, still mediating--all earth's struggleand anguish passing through Him and becoming glorified with His pity andtenderness--before it reaches the eyes of the Father.... There is noother way. Man and woman must be One in Two--before Two in One. Theymust not war upon each other. Woman is receptive; man the origin. Womanis a planet cooled to support life; man, still an incandescent sun,generates the life."
"That is clear and inspiring," she said. "I have always wanted it saidjust like that--that one is as important as the other in the evolutionof the Individual----"
"And for that Individual are swung the solar systems.... Look atJob--denuded of all but the Spirit. There is an Individual, and hisstory is the history of an Initiation.... We are coming to a time whenMind will operate in man and woman _conscious_ of the Soul. When thattime comes true, how the progress to God will be cleared and speeded! Itwill be a flight----"
"Instead of a crawl," she finished.
They were alone in the big dining-room. Their voices could not havereached the nearest empty table. It was like a communion--their firstcommunion.
"I have felt it," she went on in a strange, low tone, "and heard the NewVoices--Preparers of the Way. Sometimes it came to me in New York--thestirring of a great, new spiritual life. I have felt the hunger--thatawful hollowness in the breasts of men and women, who turn to each otherin mute agony, who turn to a thousand foolish sensations--because theydo not realize what they hunger for. Their breasts cry out to befilled----"
"And the Spirit cries out to flood in."
"Yes, and the Spirit asks only for Earth-people to listen to their innervoices and love one another," she completed. "It demands no macerations,no fetters, no fearful austerities--only fineness and loving kindness."
"How wonderfully they have come to me, too--those radiant moments--as Isat by my study window, facing the East," he whispered, not knowing whatthe last words meant to her. "How clear it is that all great and goodthings come with this soul-age--this soul-consciousness. I have seen inthose lovely moments that Mother Earth is but one of many of God'sgardens; that human life is but a day in a glorious culture-scheme whichinvolves many brighter and brighter transplantings; that the radiance ofthe Christ, our Exemplar, but shows us the loveliness which shall beours when we approach that lofty maturity of bloom----"
A waiter entered with the word that a man from the city, Pere Rabeaut,desired to see Mr. Charter. Each felt the dreadfulness of returning soabruptly to sordid exterior consciousness--each felt the gray ghost ofPelee.
"I shall go and see what is wanted, Miss Wyndam, and hurry back--if Imay?" he said in a dull, tired tone.
It was the first time he had said "Wyndam," and it hurt cruelly at thismoment.... "No, no," she said rising hastily. "It would spoil it to comeback. We could not forget ourselves like that--so soon again. It alwaysspoils--oh, what am I saying? I think our talk must have interested mevery much."
"I understand," he said gently. "But we shall talk again--and for thislittle hour, my whole heart rises to thank you."
Pere Rabeaut was waiting upon the veranda. Peculiarly, at this moment heseemed attached to the crook of wine-shop servitude, which Charter hadnever noticed with such evidence among the familiar casks. Moreover,disorder was written upon the gray face.
"_Mon Dieu_, what a day, M. Charter!--a day of judgment! Soronia'slittle birds are dying!"
Charter regarded the sharp, black eyes, which darted over his own face,but would not be held in any gaze.
"I heard from my daughter that you are going to the craters of themountain," the old man said. "'He will need a guide,' said I at once.'And guides are scarce just now, for the people are afraid of Pelee.Still, he's an old patron,' I said to Soronia. 'He cannot go to themountain without a guide, so I shall do this little thing for him. Hemust have our Jacques.'"
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p; Charter drew him away. He did not care to have it known at the _Palms_that he was projecting a trip to the summit. Perhaps the inscrutablePere Rabeaut was conferring a considerable favor. It was arranged thatif he decided to make the journey, the American should call at thewine-shop for Jacques early the following morning. Pere Rabeaut left himnone the poorer for his queer errand.
Charter avoided Miss Wyndam for the rest of the day. Beyond all thewords of their little talk, had come to him a fullness of womanhoodquite beyond the dreamer. As he remembered the lustrous face, thecompletion of his sentences, the mutual sustaining of their thoughts,their steady, tireless ascent beyond the need of words; as he rememberedher calms, and the glimpses of cosmic consciousness, her grasp, herexpression, her silences, the exquisite refinement of her face, and thelingering adoration in her eyes--the ideal of the Skylark was so clearlyand marvellously personified that for moments at a time the vision waslost in the living woman. And for this, Quentin Charter proposed tosuffer--and to suffer alone.
So he supped down-town, and waited for Father Fontanel at theparish-house. The priest came in during the evening and Charter saw atonce, what the other never could have admitted, that the last few dayshad borne the good man to the uttermost edges of his frail vitality.Under the lamp, the beautiful old face had the whiteness of that virginwax of Italian hives in which the young queens lie until the hour ofawakening. The tired, smiling eyes, deeply shadowed under a brow thatwas blest, gazed upon the young man with a light in his eyes notreflected from the lamp, but from his great love--in that purefatherhood of celibacy....
"Ah, no, I'm not weary, my son. We must have our walks and talkstogether on the _Morne_ again.... When old Father Pelee rests once morefrom his travail, and the people are happy again, you and I shall walkunder the stars, and you shall tell me of those glorious saints, whofelt in the presence of God that they must put such violent constraintupon themselves.... When I think of my suffering people--it comes to methat the white ship was sent like a good angel--and how I thank thatnoble lady for taking me at once to this great rock of an American, whobluffs me about so cheerily and grants all things before they are asked.What wonderful people you are from America! But it is always so--alwaysthese good things come to me. Indeed, I am very grateful....Weary?--what a poor old man I should be to fall weary in the midst ofsuch helpers...."
Charter sat down beside him under the lamp and told him what an arenahis mind had become for conflict between a woman and a vision. Even withthe writer's trained designing, the tale drew out with an orientalpatience of weaving and coloring. Charter had felt a woman's need forthe ease of disclosure, and indeed there was no other man whom he wouldhave told. He had a thought, too, that if by any chance Pelee shouldintervene--both the woman and the Skylark might learn. He did not tellof his plan to go to the mountain--lest he be dissuaded. In his mind thefollowing day was set apart--as a sort of pilgrimage sacred to Skylark.
"Old Pelee has shadowed my mind," Father Fontanel said, when the storywas done. "I see him before and between all things, but I shall meditateand tell you what seems best in my sight. Only this, my son, you mayknow, that when first the noble lady filled my eyes--I felt you nearher--as if she had come to me from you, whom I always loved toremember."
Charter bowed and went his way, troubled by the shadow of Pelee in theholy man's mind; and yet glad, too, that the priest had felt him nearwhen he first saw Miss Wyndam. It was late when he reached the _Palms_yet sleeplessness ranged through his mind, and he did not soon go to hisroom. The house and grounds were all his own. He paced the veranda, thegarden paths and drives; crossed the shadowy lawns, brooded upon therumbling mountain and the foggy moon high in the south.... At the sideof the great house to the north, there was a trellis heavily burdenedwith lianas. Within, he found the orifice of an old cistern, partiallycovered by unfixed planking. A startling thought caused him to wonderwhy he had not explored the place before. The moonlight, faint at best,gave but ghostly light through the foliage, yet he kicked away a boardand lit a match. A heavy wooden bar crossed the rim and was set stoutlyin the masonry. His mind keenly grasped each detail at the exterior. Arusty chain depended from the thick cross-piece. He dropped severalignited matches into the chamber. Slabs of stone from the side-walls hadfallen into the cistern, which seemed to contain little or no water....From one of the native cabins came the sound of a dog barking. A shutterclicked in one of the upper windows of the plantation-house.