SECOND CHAPTER
PAULA CONTEMPLATES THE WALL OF A HUNDRED WINDOWS, AND THE MYSTERIOUSMADAME NESTOR CALLS AT THE _ZOROASTER_
Paula had never felt such a consciousness of vitality as the nextforenoon, after three or four hours' sleep. She was just _un_restedenough to be alive with tension. Her physical and mental capacitiesseemed expanded beyond all common bounds, and her thoughts tumbled aboutplayfully in full arenic light, as athletes awaiting the beginning ofperformance. She plunged into a tub of cool water with such delight asthoroughly to souse her hair, so it became necessary to spend ahalf-hour in the sunlight by the open window, combing and fanning, hermind turning over wonderful things.
If you ever looked across a valley of oaks and maples and elms in thefull morning glow of mid-October, you can divine the glory of red andbrown and gold which was this fallen hair. One must meditate long tosuggest with words the eyes of Paula Linster; perhaps the best herchronicler can do is to offer a glimpse from time to time. Just now youare asked for the sake of her eyes to visualize that lustrous valleyonce more--only in a dusk that enriches rather than dims. A memorablybeautiful young woman, sitting there by the open window--one of theelect would have said.
The difficulty in having to do with Linster attractions is to avoidrising into rhapsody. One thinks of stars and lakes, angels and autumnlands, because his heart is full as a country-boy's, and highclean-clipped thinking is choked. Certainly, once having known such awoman, you will never fall under the spell of Weininger, or any otherscale-eyed genius. There is an inspiring reach to that hard-handledword, Culture, when it is used about a woman like this. It means so purea fineness as neither to require nor to be capable of ostentation; andyet, a fineness that wears and gives and associates with heroisms. Youthink of a lineage that for centuries has not been fouled by brutalityor banality, and has preserved a glowing human warmth, too, to retainthe spirit of woman. When men rise to the real and the worthy, one byone, each will find his Paula Linster, whom to make happy is happiness;whose companionship inevitably calls forth his best; whom to be withconstantly means therefore that all within him, not of the best, mustsurely die. Clearly when a man finds such a woman, all his roads areclosed, save one--to the Shining Heights! And who can say that his royalmate will not laughingly unfold wings for him, when they stand togetherin the radiant altitude?
She was thinking of Charter's book as she brushed her hair dry. Hissentences played brightly in her mind, fastening themselves to commentof her own for the review. Deep was the appeal of the rapt, sunlit face,as she looked away across the rear-court. The colored hall-boy of herown house might have missed the exquisite lines of lip, eyelid, nostril,brow, temple and chin, but his head uncovered in her presence, and thechoicest spirit of service sprang within him. In all about her,to an enlightened vision, was the unconscious repression ofbeauty--art-stirring lines of mental and spiritual awakening; that lookof deep inner freshness and health, the mere sight of which disgusts aman with all he has done to soil and sicken his body. Full and easilyshe breathed, as one who relishes sweet air like the taste of purewater. You could imagine Paula exclaiming with joy at the tonic delightof a wind from the sea, but not from the steaming aroma of a grill. Itwas all an aesthetic attraction--not an over-rounded arc, not a tissuestretched shiny from uneven plumpness, not a drowsy sag or fold tosuggest the easy content of a mere feeding and breeding animal.
The rear-view of a great granite-ridge of rooming-houses across thecourt had often fascinated her with the thought of the mysteries within.Once she had spoken to Reifferscheid about the splendid story of NewYork yet to be written by someone who watched, as she often did, one ofthese walls of a hundred windows.
"Yes," he had said. "It's great to be poor. Best blood of New York is inthose back rooms. Everyone needs his poverty-stage of growth--aboutseven years will do. It teaches you simplicity. You step into yourneighbor's room and find him washing his stockings with shaving-soap. Heexplains that it is better than tooth-powder for textile fabrics. Also,he intimates that he has done a very serious thing in wetting down thesesmall garments, having looked in his bag since, and learned that he hasnot another pair. However, he wrings them very tight and puts them onwith the remark that this is a certain way to prevent shrinkage."
Even now, a man stood by his window in a sleeveless garment and a ruffof lather, shaving with a free hand, and a song between strokes. His wasa shining morning face, indeed.... A bare feminine arm leaped quicklyforth from behind a tightened curtain nearby and adjusted a flower-potbetter to the sunlight. From somewhere came a girlish voice in Wagner's_Walkure Call_. There was not a thought of effort in her carrying thatlofty elaborate music--just a fine heart tuned to harmony on a raremorning. The effect is not spoiled by the glimpse of a tortured feminineface igniting a cigarette over a gas-flame that has burned all night.The vibrations of New York are too powerful for many, but there is moreof health and hope than not.... A good mother cleanses a sauce-pan fromher water-pitcher and showers with the rinsing a young heaven-tree farbelow. Then she lifts in a milk-bottle from the stone ledge--and blowsthe dust from the top....
Often at night when Paula awakened she could hear the drum of atypewriter winging across the precipice--one of the night-shift helpingto feed the insatiable maw of print. Had New York called him? Would theCity crush him into a trifler, with artificial emotions, or was this aDaniel come to interpret her evil dreams?... In a corner-room with twowindows, sat a lame young man before an easel. Almost always he wasthere, when there was light. Heaven be with him, Paula thought, if hispicture failed.... And in one of the least and darkest, an old man satwriting. Day after day, he worked steadily through the hours. To whatgod or devil had he sold his soul that he was thus condemned to eternalscrivening? This was the harrowing part. The back-floors of New York arenot for the old men. Back-rooms for the young men and maidens, stillstrong in the flight of time and the fight of competition--back-roomsfor young New York. Nature loses interest in the old. Civilizationshould be kinder.
From an unseen somewhere a canary poured out a veritable fire-hosetorrent of melody; and along one of the lower window ledges opposite, anold gray cat was crouched, a picture of sinister listening. Here was adragon, indeed, for small, warm birds.
Directly opposite a curtain was lifted, and a woman, no longer young,appeared to breathe the morning. Many New Yorkers knew this woman forher part in children's happiness. There was a whisper that she had oncebeen an artist's model--and had loved the artist.... There was one womanlong ago--a woman with a box of alabaster--who was forgiven because sheloved much.... The lady across the way loved children now, children ofmost unhappy fortunes. To those who came, and there were many, she gavemusic lessons; often all day long helping grimy fingers to falter overthe keys. So she awakened poetry and planted truth-seedlings in shadedlittle hearts. To the children, though the lady was poor as any--inspite of her piano and a wall of books--she was Lady Bountiful,indeed.... Paula smiled. Two windows, strangely enough side by side,were curtained with stockings out to dry. In one, there weremany--cerise and lavender, pink and baby blue. In the next there werebut two pair, demurely black. What a world of suggestion in thecontrast!... So it was always--her wall of a hundred windows, a changingpanorama of folly, tragedy, toil that would not bow to hopelessness,vanity, art, sacrifice. Blend them all together above the traffic'sroar--and you have the spirit of young New York.
She put on the brass kettle at length, crossing the room for anoccasional glance into the mirror as she finished her hair.... Thestrange numbing power she had felt the night before crept suddenly backfrom her eyes now to the base of her brain, striving to cripple hervolition. Bellingham was calling her.... The sunlight was gone. Therewas a smell of hot metal in the air, as if some terrific energy hadburned out the vitality. Her heart hurt her from holding her breath solong. Beyond all expression she was shocked and shamed. The mirrorshowed now a spectral Paula with crimson lips and haggard eyes.... Anindescribable fertility stirred within her--almost mystic, l
ike awhisper from spiritland where little children play, waiting to be born.She could have fallen in a strange and subtle thrall of redolentimaginings, except that thought of the source of it all, theoccultist--was as acid in her veins.
She drank tea and crossed the street to the Park for an hour. Theradiance of autumn impressed her rarely; not as the death of a year, butrather as a glorious pageant of evening, the great energies of natureall crowned with fruition and preparing for rest. Back in her room, shewrote the Charter critique, wrote as seldom before. The cool spirit ofthe essayist seemed ignited with a lyric ardor. In her momentary powershe conceived a great literary possibility of the future--an effulgentBurns-vine blossoming forth upon the austere cliff of a Carlyle. She hadfinished, and it was dusk when Madame Nestor called.
For several years, at various philosophical gatherings and brotherhoods,Paula, invariably stimulated by the unusual, had encountered thisremarkable woman. Having very little to say as a rule, Madame Nestor wasa figure for comment and one not readily forgotten because of occasionalmemorable utterances. In all the cults of New York, there was likely noindividual quite so out of alignment with ordinary life. Indefinitely,she would be called fifty. Her forehead was broad, her mouth soft. Theface as a whole was heavy and flour-white. There was a distention ofeyeballs and a pulpy shapelessness to her body which gave the impressionof advanced physical deterioration--that peculiar kind of breaking down,often noticeable among psychics of long practice. Her absoluteincapacity to keep anything of value was only one characteristic ofinterest. Madame Nestor's record of apparently thoughtless generositywas truly inspiriting.
"I had to see you to-day," she said, sinking down with a sigh of relief."I sat behind you last night in Prismatic Hall."
The younger woman recalled with a start--the whisper she had heard. Sheleaned forward and inquired quickly: "So it was you, Madame Nestor, whoknew--this Bellingham"--she cleared her throat as she uttered thename--"as he is now--a quarter of a century ago?"
"Yes. How very strange that you should have heard what I said.... Youwill join one of his classes, I presume?"
"I can imagine doing no such thing."
"Dear Paula, do you think it will really turn out--that you are to haveno relation with Bellingham?"
Paula repressed the instant impulse to answer sharply. The fact that shehad already felt Bellingham's power made the other's words a harshirritation.
"What relation could I have? He is odious to me."
"I suppose I should have been a cinder long since, dear, if these weredays for burning witches," Madame Nestor said. "When I saw Bellingham'seyes settle upon you last night--it appeared to me that you are to knowhim well. I came here to give you what strength I could--because he isthe chief of devils."
"I'm only one of the working neuters of the human hive," Paula managedto declare.
The elder woman said a strange thing: "Ah, no. The everlasting feminineis alive in your every movement. A man like Bellingham would cross theworld for you. Some strong-souled woman sooner or later must encompasshis undoing, and last night it came to me in a way to force myconviction--that you are the woman."
Paula bent toward her. Darkness covered the centres of her mind and shewas afraid. She could not laugh, for she had already met the magician'swill. "But I loathe him," she whispered. "About the very name when Ifirst heard it yesterday was an atmosphere which aroused all myantagonism."
"Even that--he has overcome, but it may help you to endure."
"What does the man want?"
"He wants life--life--floods of young, fine vitality to renew his ownflesh. He wants to live on and on in the body which you have seen. It isall he has, for his soul is dead--or feeble as a frog's. He fears death,because he cannot come back. He renews his life from splendid sources ofhuman magnetism--such as you possess. It is Bellingham's hell to knowthat, once out of the flesh, he has not soul enough, if any, to commanda human body again. You see in him an empty thing, which has lived, Godknows how many years, hugging the warmth of his blood--a creature whoknows that to die means the swift disintegration of an evil principle."
"Do you realize, Madame Nestor," Paula asked excitedly, "that you aretalking familiarly of things which may exist in books of ancient wisdom,but that this is New York--New York packed about us? New York does notreckon with such things."
"The massed soul of this big city does not reckon with such things,Paula. That is true, but we are apart. Bellingham is apart. He is wiserthan the massed soul of New York."
"One might believe, even have such a religious conviction, but you speakof an actual person, the terrible inner mystery of a man, whom we haveseen--a man who frightened me hideously last night--and to-day! Youbring the thing home to a room in a New York apartment ... Can't you seehow hard to adjust, this is? I don't mean to stop or distract you, butthis has become--you are helping to keep it so--such an intimate,dreadful thing!"
Madame Nestor had been too long immersed in occultism to grasp theworld's judgment of her sayings. "Listen, Paula, this that I tell you isinherent in every thinking man. You are bewildered by the personalnature it has assumed.... To every one of us shall come the terriblemoment of choice. Man is not conceived blindly to be driven. Imagine aman who is become a rapidly evolving mind. On the one side is theanimal-nature, curbed and obedient; on the other, his gatheringsoul-force. The mind balances between these two--soul and body. The timehas come for him to choose between a lonely path to the Heights, or thebroad diverging highway, moving with pomp, dazzling with the glare ofvain power, and brooded over by an arrogant materialism which slays thesoul.... The spirit of man says, 'Take the rising road alone.' The oldworld-mother sings to him from the swaying throng, 'Come over and be myking. Look at my arts, my palaces, my valiant young men and my gloriouswomen. I will put worship in the hearts of the strong--for you! I willput love in the hearts of the beautiful--for you! Come over and be myking! Later, when you are old and have drunk deep of power--you may takethe rising road alone.'"
Paula invariably qualified a dogmatic statement as a possibility in herown mind; but something of this--man reaching a moment of choice--hadalways appealed to her as a fundamental verity. Man must conquer notonly his body, but his brain, with its subtle dreams of power, a moreformidable conflict, before the soul assumes supremacy in the mind, andman's progress to the Uplands becomes a conscious and glorious ascent.
"You put it with wonderful clearness, Madame Nestor," she said.
"I am an old woman who has thought of these things until they are clear.This is the real battle of man, beside which victory over mere appetitesof the body is but a boyish triumph. The intellect hungers for power andpossession; to hold the many inferior intellects in its own despoticdestiny. Against this glittering substance of attraction is the stillintangible faith of the soul--an awful moment of suspense. God orMammon--choose ye!... Listen, Paula, to New York below--treading theempty mill of commerce----"
"New York has not chosen yet?"
"No, dear, but hundreds, thousands, are learning in preparation for thatmoment of choice--the falseness and futility of material possessions."
"That is a good thought--an incorruptible kind of optimism!" Paulaexclaimed.... "You think this Bellingham has made the evil choice?"
"Yes. Long ago."
"Yet to have arisen to the moment of choosing, you say he must haveconquered the flesh."
"Yes."
"But you depict him--I find him--Desire Incarnate!"
"Exactly, Paula, because he has reverted. _The animal controls his mind,not the soul._ Bellingham is retracing his way back to chaos, with ahuman brain, all lit with magic! Out of the gathered knowledge of theages, he has drawn his forces, which to us are mystery. He uses thesesecret forces of Nature to prolong his own life--which is all he has.The mystic cord is severed within him. He is a body, nothing but abody--hence the passion to endure. Out of the craft of the past, he haslearned--who knows how long ago?--to replenish his own vitality withthat of others. He gives nothing, but
drains all. Ah, Paula, this I knowtoo well. He is kin with those creatures of legend, the _loup-garou_,the vampire. I tell you he is an insatiable sponge for human magnetism."
"Past all doubt, can't Bellingham turn back?" Paula asked tensely. "Withall his worldly knowledge, and knowing his own doom, can he not turnback--far back, a lowly-organized soul, but on the human way?"Hopelessness, anywhere, was a blasting conception to her.
"No. I tell you he is a living coffin. There is nothing in him toenergize a pure motive. He might give a fortune to the poor, but itwould be for his own gain. He could not suffer for the poor, or lovethem. Dead within, he is detached from the great centres of virtue andpurity--from all that carries the race forward, and will save us at thelast. You see his frightful dependence upon this temporal physicalinstrument, since all the records of the past and the unwritten pages ofthe future are wiped out? Isn't it a sheer black horror, Paula,--to knowthat from the great tide of hopeful humanity, one is set apart; to knowthat the amazing force which has carried one from a cell in the ooze tothinking manhood must end with this red frightened heart; to be forced,for the continuance of life, to feed upon the strength of one womanafter another--always fairer and finer----" The look of hatred in thespeaker's face had become a banner of havoc.
"Can he not stop that kind of devouring?" Paula exclaimed. "Would therenot be hope--if he battled with that--put _that_ vampirism behind?"
Madame Nestor regarded the other steadily, until all distortion offeature had given away to her accustomed mildness. Then she uttered anunforgettable question:
"_Can a tiger eat grains?_"
Vast ranges of terrible understanding were suggested.
"It is my duty, if I ever had a duty," the caller went on, "to make youknow Bellingham as I know him. You must have no pity."
"Is there really no fact by which his age can be determined?"
"None that I know. Twenty-five years ago, when he left me hideously wiseand pitifully drained, he looked as he does now."
"But why, oh why, do you always think of me with Bellingham?" Paulaasked hopelessly.
"I watched his face when he regarded you last night. I knew the look."
"What is to prevent me from never seeing him? He cannot force himselfupon me here--in the flesh.... Certainly you would not tell him where Iam, where I go--if I begged you not to!"
Madame Nestor shuddered. "No, Paula. It is because you are frightenedand tormented that such a thought comes. It is I who am showing you thereal Bellingham. He menaces my race. None but big-souled women areuseful to him now. He is drawn to them, as one hungry, as one alwayshungry. It is he first who is drawn. Then they begin to feel and respondto his occult attraction. The time might have come when you wouldworship him--had I not warned you. I did. I was quite his--until Ilearned. A woman knows no laws in the midst of an attraction like this.No other man suffices----"
"But why--why do you prepare _me_? Do you think I cannot resist?" Paulaasked furiously. She felt the bonds about her already. The blood rosehot and rebellious at the thought of being bound. It was the old hideousfear of a locked room--the shut-in horror which meant suffocation.
"If I thought you could not resist, Paula," Madame Nestor said, "Ishould advise you to flee to the remotest country--this moment. I shouldimplore you never to allow from your side your best and strongestfriend. But I have studied your brain, your strength, your heart. I loveyou for the thought that has come to me--that it is you, Paula Linster,who is destined to free the race from this destroyer."
Often in the last half-hour had come a great inward revolt against thetrend of her caller's words. It passed through Paula again, yet sheinquired how she could thus be the means.
"By resisting him. Bellingham once told me--trust him, this was after Iwas fully his--that if I had matched his force with a psychic resistanceequally as strong--it would mortally have weakened him. So if he seeksto subvert your will and fails, this great one-pointed power of his,developed who knows how long--will turn and rend itself. This is anoccult law."
Paula could understand this--the wild beast of physical desire rendingitself at the last--but not the conception of hopelessness--Bellinghamcut off from immortality. The woman divined her thoughts.
"Again I beg of you," she said in excitement, "not to let a thought ofpity for him insinuate itself in your brain--not the finest point of it!Think of yourself, of the Great Good which must sustain you, of thebenefit to your race--think of the women less strong! Fail in this, andBellingham will absorb your splendid forces, and let you fall back intothe common as I did--to rise again, ah, so bitterly, so wearily!... ButI cannot imagine you failing, you strong young queen, and the women likeme, the legion of emptied shells he has left behind--we shall canonizeyou, Paula, if you shatter the vampire's power."
Thoughts came too fast for speech now. They burned Paula's mind--adestructive activity, because ineffectual. She wanted to speak of theshameful experience of the morning, but she could not bring the words toconfession.
"I had almost forgotten," she said lightly at length, "that it is wellfor one to eat and drink. Stay, won't you please, and share a bite ofsupper with me, Madame Nestor? We'll talk of other things. I am deadlytired of Bellingham."
A hungry man would have known no repletion from the entire offeringwhich sufficed for these two, forgotten of appetite. Wafers of darkbread, a poached egg, pickles, a heart of lettuce and a divided melon,cake and tea--yet how fully they fared!... They were talking aboutchildren and fairy tales over the teacups, when Paula encountered againthat sinister mental seizure--the occultist's influence creeping backfrom her reason to that part of the brain man holds in common withanimals.... The lights of the room dimmed; her companion becameinvisible. Bellingham was calling: "Come to me--won't you come and helpme in my excellent labors? Come to me, Paula. We can lift the worldtogether--you and I. Wonderful are the things for me to show you--youwho are already so wise and so very beautiful. Paula Linster,--come tome!"
Again and again the words were laid upon her intelligence, until sheheard them only. All the rest was an anterior murmuring, as of wind andrivers. The words were pressed down upon the surfaces of her brain, likeleaf after leaf of gold-beaters' film--and hammered and hammeredthere.... He was in a great gray room, sitting at a desk, but staring ather, as if there were no walls or streets between--just a little bit ofblackness.... She seemed to know just where to go. She felt the placefor her was there in the great gray room--a wonderful need for herthere.... But a door opened into the room where he sat--a door she hadnot seen, for she had not taken her eyes from his face. A woman came in,a pale woman, a shell of beauty. The huge tousled head at the deskturned from her to the woman who entered. Paula saw his profile alterhideously....
Her own bright room filled her eyes again, and the ashen horror on thecountenance of Madame Nestor, who seemed vaguely to see it all.
"I think I should have gone to him," Paula murmured, in the slow, flattone of one not yet quite normally conscious.
"There is but one way, you poor distressed child--to build about you afortress of purity--which he cannot penetrate----"
"I think I should have known the car to take--the place to enter," Paulawent on, unheeding, "the elevator entrance--the door of the room----"
Madame Nestor continued to implore her to pray. Paula shivered finally,and stared at the other for a few seconds, as if recalling the words thevisitor had spoken, and the past she had lived with Bellingham. Herterrible rage toward herself spread and covered Madame Nestor. Did notthe latter still dip here, there, and everywhere in the occult andweird? Might she not have something to do with the projectiles ofDesire?
"I think I'd better be alone now," she said hoarsely. "One does not feellike invoking the Pure Presence--when one is chosen for suchdefilement."