TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
PAULA AND CHARTER IN SEVERAL SETTINGS FEEL THE ENERGY OF THE GREAT GOODTHAT DRIVES THE WORLD
Charter roused, after an unknown time, to the realization that the womanwas in his arms; later, that he was sitting upon a slimy stone in asubterranean cell filled with steam. The slab of stone held him freefrom the four or five inches of almost scalding water on the floor ofthe cistern. The vault was square, and luckily much larger than itscircular orifice; so that back in the corner they were free from thevolcanic discharge which had showered down through the mouth of thepit--the cause of the heated water and the released vapors. Anearthquake years before had loosened the stone-lining of the vault. Withevery shudder of the earth now, under the wrath of Pelee, the walls,still upstanding, trembled.
Charter was given much time to observe these matters; and to reckon withmere surface disorders, such as a bleeding right hand, lacerated fromthe rusty chain; a torn shoulder, and a variety of burns which hepromptly decided must be inconsequential, since they stung so in the hotvapor. Then, someone with a powerful arm was knocking out three-cushioncaroms in his brain-pan. This spoiled good thinking results. It is true,he did not grasp the points of the position, with the remotest trace ofthe sequence in which they are put down. Indeed, his mind, emerging fromthe depths into which the shock of eruption had felled it, held alonewith any persistence the all-enfolding miracle that the woman was in hisarms....
Presently, his brain began to sort the side-issues. Her head had lain,upon his shoulder during that precipitous plunge, and her hair hadfallen when he first caught her up. He remembered it blowing andcovering his eyes in a manner of playful endearment quite impossible foran outsider to conceive. Meanwhile, the blast from Pelee was upon thecity; traversing the six miles from the crater to the _Morne_, fasterthan its own sound; six miles in little more than the time it had takenhim to cross the lawn from the veranda to the cistern. A second or twohad saved them.
The fire had touched her hair.... Her bare arm brushed his cheek, andhis whole nature suddenly crawled with the fear that she might not wake.His head dropped to her breast, and he heard her heart, light andsteadily on its way. His eyes were straining through the darkness intoher face, but he could not be sure it was without burns. There wascumulative harshness in the fear that her face, so fragile, of purestline, should meet the coarse element, burning dirt. His hands were notfree, but he touched her eyes, and knew that they were whole.... Shesighed, stirred and winced a little--breath of consciousness returning.Then he heard:
"What is this dripping darkness?"
The words were slowly uttered, and the tones soft and vague, as from onedreaming, or very close to the Gates.... In a great dark room somewhere,in a past life, perhaps, he had heard such a voice from someone lying inthe shadows.
"We are in the old cistern--you and I----"
"I--knew--you--would--come--for--me."
It was murmured as from someone very weary, very happy--as a childfalling asleep after a dream, murmurs with a little contented nestleunder the mother-wing.
"But how could you know?" he whispered quickly. "My heart was toofull--to take a mere mountain seriously--until the last minute----"
"_Skylarks--always--know!_"
* * * * *
Torrents of rain were descending. Pelee roared with the after-pangs.Though cooled and replenished by floods of black rain, the rising waterin the cistern was still hot.
"It was always hard for me to call you Wyndam----"
"Harder to hear, Quentin Charter...."
"But are you sure you are not badly burned?" he asked for the tenthtime.
"I don't feel badly burned.... I was watching for you from the window inmy room. I didn't like the way my hair looked, and was changing it whenI saw you coming--and the Black behind you. I tried to fasten it withone pin, as I ran downstairs.... It fell. It is very thick and kept thefire from me----"
"From us." He would have preferred his share of the red dust.
She shivered contentedly. "What little is burned will grow again. Redmops invariably do."
" ... And to think I should have found the old cistern in the night!...One night when I could not sleep, I walked out here and explored. Theidea came then----"
"I watched you from the upper window.... The shutter wiggled as you wentaway. It was the next day that the 'fraids got me. You rushed off to themountain."
Often they verged like this beyond the borders of rational quotation.One hears only the voices, not the words often, from Rapture's Roadway.
"Just as I begin to think of something Pelee erupts all over again in myskull----"
"I didn't know men understood headache matters.... Don't youthink--don't you really think--I might be allowed to stand a littlebit?"
"Water's still too hot," he replied briefly.
The cavern was not so utterly dark. The circle of the orifice wassharply lit with gray.... They lost track of the hours; for moments at atime forgot physical distress, since they had known only mystic journeysbefore.... They whispered the fate of Saint Pierre--a city's soul tornfrom the shrieking flesh; shadows lifted from the mystery of the littlewine-shop; clearly they saw how the occultist, his magnetism crippled,had used Jacques and Soronia; and Charter recalled now where he had seenthe face of Paula before--the photograph in the Bellingham-cabin on the_Panther_.... A second cloudburst cooled and eased them, though theystood in water.... It seemed that Peter Stock should have made an effortto reach them by this time. Save that the gray was unchangeable in theroof the world, Charter could not have believed that this was all oneday. The power which had devastated the city, and with unspent violenceswept the _Morne_, might have reached three leagues at sea!... Above allthese probabilities arose their happiness.
"It seems that I've become a little boy," he said, "on one of thoseperfect Christmas mornings. Don't you remember, the greatest moment ofall--coming downstairs, partly dressed, into the room _They_ had madeready? That moment, before you actually see--just as you enter themingled dawn and fire-light and catch the first glisten of the tree?...I'm afraid, Paula Linster, you have found----"
"A boy," she whispered. Her face was very close in the gray.... "Theloved dream-boy. The boy went away to meet sternness and suffering andmazes of misdirection--had to compromise with the world to fit at all.Ah, I have waited long, and the man has come back to me--a boy."
"_La Montagne Pelee_ is artistic."
"It may be in this marvellous world, where men carry on their wars andtheir wooings," she went on strangely, "some pursuing their little waysof darkness, some bursting into blooms of valor and tenderness;--it maybe that two of Earth's people, after a dreadful passage through agonyand terror, have been restored to each other--as we are. It may be thatin the roll of Earth's tableaux, another such film is curled away fromanother age and another cataclysm."
"Paula," he declared, after a moment, "I have found a Living Truth inthis happiness--the Great Good that Drives the World! I think I shallnot lose it again. Glimpses of it came to me facing the East--as I wroteand thought of you. One glimpse was so clear that I expressed it in aletter, 'I tell you there is no death, since I have heard the Skylarksing....' I lost the bright fragment, for a few days in NewYork--battled for the prize again both in New York and yesterday at themountain. To-day has brought it to me--always to keep. It is this: Wereyou to die, I should love you and know you were near. This is love aboveFlesh and Death--the old mystifying Interchangeables. This happiness isthe triumph over death. It is a revelation, a mighty adoring--not a merewoman in my arms, but an ineffable issue of eternity. A woman, butmore--Love and Labor and Life and the Great Good that Drives the World!This is the happiness I have and hold to-day: Though you died, I shouldknow that you lived and were mine."
"I see it--it is the triumph over death--but, Quentin Charter--I want_you_ still!"
"Don't you see, it is the strength you give me!--that girds me to saysuch things?"
So they had the
ir flights into silence, while the eternal gray lived intheir round summit of sky--until the voices of the rescuers and theirown grateful answers.... The sailor was sent back to the boat for rope,while Macready cheered them with a fine and soothing Gaelic oil.... Theylifted Paula, who steadied and helped herself by the chain; then sentthe noose down for Charter.
"Have you the strent', sir, to do the overhand up the chain?" Macreadyquestioned, and added in a ghost's whisper, "with the fairest of tinthousand waitin' at the top?"
Charter laughed. To lift his right arm was thrashing pain, but he madeit easy as he could for them; and in the gray light faced the woman.
She saw his lacerated hand, the mire, fire-blisters upon his face, theblood upon his clothing, swollen veins of throat and temples, and theglowing adoration in his eyes.... She had bound her hair, and there wasmuch still to bind. No mortal hurt was visible. Behind her was thefalling sea. On her right hand the smoking ruin of the _Palms_; to theleft, Pelee and his tens of thousands slain; above, the hot, leaden,hurrying clouds.... Ernst, Macready and the sailor moved discreetlyaway. Backs turned, they watched the puffs of smoke and steam that roselike gray-white birds from the valley of the dead city.
"Ernst, lad," said Macready, "the boss and the leadin' lady are havin'an intellekchool repast in the cinter av the stage by the old well. Bearin mind you're a chorus girl and conduct yourself in accord. Have you adrop left in the heel av the flask, Adele, dear?"
* * * * *
They were nearing the _Saragossa_ in the dusk, and their call had beenanswered with a rousing cheer from the ship....
"Please, sir, you said you would take me sailing," Paula called, as shereadied the head of the ladder.
Though he could not stand, Peter Stock had an arm for each; and theywere only released to fall into the embrace of Father Fontanel. They sawit now in the ship's light: Pelee had stricken the old priest, but notwith fire.... The two were together shortly afterward at supper, inclean dry make-shifts, very ludicrous.
"I came to you empty-handed, and soiled from the travail of thejourney," she whispered. "All but myself was in a certain room thatfaced the North."
"There are booties, flounces and ribands in the shops of Fort deFrance," Charter replied with delight. "Peter Stock shall be allowedcertain privileges, but not to make any such purchases. I carry circularnotes--and insist on straightening them out."
"Haven't you discovered that Skylarks are not of the insistingkind--even when they need new plumage? Anything that looks likeinsistence nearly scares the life out of them. Isn't it a dear world?"
All this was smoothly coherent to him.... Alone that night, they drewdeck-chairs close together forward; and snugly wrapped, would havenothing whatever to do with Peter Stock's sumptuous cabins. They neededfloods of rest, but were too happy, save just to take little sips ofsleep between talk.
"You must have been afraid at first," she said, "of turning a foolishperson's head with all that beauty of praise in your letters.... I thinkyou were writing to some image you wanted to believe lived somewhere,but had little hope ever really to find. I could not take it all home tome at first.... I felt that you were writing to a lovely, shadowy sisterwho was safely put away in a kind of twilight faery--a little figure bya well of magical waters. Sometimes I could go to her, reach the well,but I could not drink at first--only listen to the music of the water,watch it bubble and flash in the moon."
"I love your mind, Paula Linster," he said suddenly, "--every phase ofit. By the way--_love's_ a word I never used before to-day--not even inmy work, save as an abstraction."
She remembered that Selma Cross had said this of him--that he never usedthat word.
"You could not have said that to 'Wyndam'----"
"Yes--for Skylark was singing more and more about her. I soon shouldhave had to say it to 'Wyndam.'"
"I loved your fidelity to Skylark," she told him softly.
Dust of Pelee would fall upon the archipelago for weeks, but this ofstarless dark was their supreme night. "Feel the sting of the spray," hecommanded. "Hear the bows sing!... It's all for us--the loveliest ofearth's distances and the sky afterward----"
"But behind," she whispered pitifully.
"Yes--Pelee 'splashed at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet'shair.'"
* * * * *
The next night had fallen, and the two were through with the shops ofFort de France. Paula's dress was white and lustrous, a strange nativefabric which the man regarded with seriousness and awe. He was in white,too. His right hand was swathed for repairs, the arm slung, and athickness of lint was fitted under his collar. About his eyes and mouthwas a slight look of strain still, which could not live another daybefore the force of recuperative happiness.... Up through the streets ofthe Capital, they made their way. Casements were open to the night andthe sea, but the people were dulled with grief. Martinique had lost herfirst born, and Fort de France, the gentle sister of Saint Pierre, wasbowed with the spirit of weeping. They had loved and leaned on eachother, this boy and girl of the Mother Island.
Through the silent crowds, Charter and Paula walked, a part of thesilence, passing the groves and towers, where the laws of France areborn again for the little aliens; treading streets of darkness andmoaning. A field of fire-lights shone ahead--red glow shining upon newcanvas. This was the little colony of Father Fontanel, sustained by hisAmerican friend,--brands plucked from the burning of Saint Pierre. Theypassed the edge of the bivouac. A woman sat nursing her babe, fire-lightupon her face and breast, drowsy little ones about her. Coffee andnight-air and quavering lullabies; above all, ardent Josephine inmarble, smiling and dreaming of Europe among the stars.... It was apowerful moment to Quentin Charter. Great joy and thrilling tragedybreathed upon his heart. He saw a tear upon Paula's cheek, and heard thelow voice of Father Fontanel--like an echo across a stream. He saw themand hastened forward, more than white in the radiance.
"It is the moment of ten thousand years!" he exclaimed, grasping theirhands.
Paula started, and turned to Charter whose gaze sank into her brain....And so it came about unexpectedly; in the fire-light among the priest'sbeloved, under the Seven Palms and the ardent mystic smile of theEmpress....
_Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merryheart; for God hath already accepted thy works.... Let thy garments bealways white; and let not thy head lack ointment. Live joyfully with thewife whom thou lovest, all the days of thy life._
The words rang in their ears, when they were alone in the city'sdarkness, and the fire-lights far behind.
* * * * *
On the third day following, they stood together on the _Morned'Orange_--the three. Father Fontanel had been in feverish haste to gazeonce more upon his city; while Charter and Paula had a mission among theruins.... The _Saragossa_ was sitting for a new complexion in the harborof Fort de France, so they had been driven over from the Capital, alongthe old sea-road. The wind was still; the sun shone through silenttowers of smoke, and it was noon. Sunlight bathed the stripped fields ofcane, and, seemingly inseparable from the stillness, brooded upon theblue Caribbean. The wreck of the old plantation-house was hunched closerto the ground.
They left Father Fontanel in the carriage, and approached the cistern.Charter halted suddenly at the edge of the stricken lianas, graspingPaula's arm. The well-curbing was broken away, and the earth, for yardssurrounding, had caved into the vault. They stood there without speakingfor a moment or two, and then he led her back to the carriage.... FatherFontanel did not seem aware of their coming or going, but smiled whenthey spoke. His eyes, charmed with sunlight, were lost oversea.
At last they stood, the priest between them, at the very edge of the_Morne_ overlooking the shadowed _Rue Victor Hugo_--a collapsed arteryof the whited sepulchre.... The priest caught his breath; his handslifted from their shoulders and stretched out over the necropolis. Hisface was upraised.
"God
, love the World!" he breathed, and the flesh sank from him.... Muchdeath had dulled their emotions, but this was translation. For aninstant they were lifted, exalted, as by the rushing winds of a chariot.
* * * * *
They did not enter the city that day, but came again, the fourth dayafter the cataclysm. Out of the heat from the prone city, arose aforbidding breath, so that Paula was prevailed upon to stay behind onthe _Morne_.... Sickened and terrified by the actualities, dreadfulbeyond any imaging, Charter made his way up the cluttered road into _RueRivoli_. Saint Pierre, a smoky pestilential charnel, was only alive nowthrough the lamentations of those who had come down from the hills fortheir dead.
The wine-shop had partly fallen in front. The stone-arch remained, butthe wooden-door had been levelled and was partially devoured by fire. Abreath of coolness still lingered in the dark place, and the fruity odorof spilled wine mingled revoltingly with the heaviness of death. Theash-covered floor was packed hard, and still wet from the gusts of rainthat had swept in through the open door and the broken-backed roof;stained, too, from the leakage of the casks. Charter's boot touched anempty bottle, and it wheeled and careened across the stones--until hethought it would never stop.... Steady as a ticking clock, came the"drip-drip" of liquor, escaping through a sprung seam from somewhereamong the merciful shadows, where the old soldier of France had fallenfrom his chair.
He climbed over the heap of stones, which had been the rear-door, andentered the little court from which the song-birds had flown. Across thedrifts of ash, he forced his steps--into the semi-dark of theliving-room behind.
The great head that he had come to find, was rigidly erect, as if themuscles were locked, and faced the aperture through which he hadentered. It seemed to be done in iron, and was covered with whitedust--Pelee's dust, fresh-wrought from the fire in which the stars wereforged. The first impression was that of calm, but Charter's soulchilled with terror, before his eyes fathomed the reality of that look.Under the thick dust, there suddenly appeared upon the features, as ifinvisible demons tugged at the muscles with hideous art, a reflectionfrom the depths.... Bellingham was sitting beside a table. He had seenDeath in the open door. The colossal energies of his life had risen tovanquish the Foe, yet again. His mind had realized their failure, andwhat failure meant, before the End. Out of the havoc of nether-planes,where Abominations are born, had come a last call for him. That glimpseof hell was mirrored in the staring dustless eyes.... Around hisshoulders, like a golden vine, and lying across his knees, clung thetrophy of defeat--Soronia. Denied the lily--he had taken thetiger-lily.... Under the unset stones of the floor, a lizard croaked.
Charter, who had fallen of old into the Caverns of Devouring, backed outinto the court of the song-birds, in agony for clean light, for he hadseen old hells again, in the luminous decay of those staring eyes.... Herecalled the end of Father Fontanel and this--with reverent awe, as oneon the edge of the mystery. Through the ends of these two, had someessential balance of power been preserved in the world?