THIRD CHAPTER
CERTAIN DEVELOPING INCIDENTS ARE CAUGHT INTO THE CURRENT OFNARRATIVE--ALSO A SUPPER WITH REIFFERSCHEID
In the week that followed, Paula's review of Quentin Charter's new bookappeared. As a bit of luxury reading, she again went over "A Damsel Cameto Peter." It stood up true and strong under the second reading--thetest of a real book. The Western writer became a big figure in her mind.She thought of him as a Soul; with a certain gladness to know that hewas Out There; that he refused to answer the call of New York; that hehad waited until he was an adult to make his name known, and could notnow be cramped and smothered and spoiled. There was a sterilized purityabout parts of his work--an uncompromising thunder against the fleshlytrends of living--to which she could only associate asceticism,celibacy, and mystic power. He was altogether an abstraction, but shewas glad that he lived--in the West and in her brain.
Also her mind was called to lower explorations of life; moments in whichit seemed as if every tissue within her had been carried from arcticrepressions to the springing verdures of the Indies. A sound, an odor, aman's step, the voice of a child, would start the spell, especially inmoments of receptivity or aimless pondering. Thoughts formed in a livelyfascinating way, tingling dreamily over her intelligence, dilating hernostrils with indescribable fragrance, brushing her eyelidshalf-closed,--until she suddenly awoke to the fact that this was notherself, but Bellingham's thirst playing upon her. Beyond words dreadfulthen, it was to realize this thing in her brain--to feel it spreadhungrily through her veins and localize in her lips, her breast, and thehollow of her arms. Bellingham crushed the trained energies of histhought-force into her consciousness, rendering her helpless. Though hewas afterward banished, certain physical forces which he aroused did notfall asleep.... Frequently came that malignant efflorescence. Her namewas called; the way shown her. Once when she was summoned to the 'phone,she knew that it was he, but could not at first resist. Reason came atthe sound of her own hoarse and frightened voice. Again one night,between nine and ten, when Bellingham was in power, she had reached thestreet and was hurrying toward the surface-car in Central Park West. Hername was jovially called by Reifferscheid. He accompanied her throughthe Park and back to her door. He said he thought that she was workingtoo hard, confessed himself skeptical about her eating enough.
One thought apart from these effects, Paula could not shake from hermind: Were there human beings with dead or dying souls? Did she pass onthe street men and women in whom the process of soul-starvation wascomplete or completing? Could there be human mind-cells detached fromhope, holiness, charity, eternity, and every lovely conception; infectedthroughout with earth's descending destructive principle? The thoughtterrorized her soul, so that she became almost afraid to glance into theface of strangers. To think of any man or woman without one hope! Thiswas insufferable. Compared with this, there is no tragedy, and thewildest physical suffering is an easy temporal thing. She felt likecrying from the housetops: "Listen to pity; love the good; cultivate atender conscience; be clean in body and humble in mind! Nothing mattersbut the soul--do not let that die!"
Then she remembered that every master of the bright tools of art haddepicted this message in his own way; every musician heard it among thesplendid harmonies that winged across his heaven; every prophet strippedhimself of all else, save this message, and every mystic was ordered upto Nineveh to give it sound. Indeed, every great voice out of themultitude was a cry of the soul. It came to her as never before, thatall uplift is in the words, _Love One Another_. If only the world wouldsee and hear!
And the world was so immovable--a locked room that resisted herstrength. This was her especial terror--a locked room or a lockedwill.... Once when she was a little girl, she released a caged canarythat belonged to a neighbor, and during her punishment, she keptrepeating:
"_It has wings--wings!_"
* * * * *
Liberty, spaces of sky, shadowed running streams, unbroken woods wherethe paths were so dim as not to disturb the dream of undiscovereddepths--in the midst of these, Paula had found, as a girl, a startlingkind of happiness. She was tireless in the woods, and strangely slow tohunger. No gloomy stillness haunted her; the sudden scamper of asquirrel or rabbit could not shake her nerves, nor even the degradedspiral of a serpent gliding to cover. Her eyelids narrowed in the midstof confinements. School tightened her lips; much of it, indeed, put alook of hopeless toleration in her eyes, but the big, silent woodsquickly healed her mind; in them she found the full life.
At one time, her father essayed to lock her in a closet. Paula told himshe would die if he did, and from the look upon the child's face, hecould not doubt.... He had directly punished her once, and for yearsafterward, she could not repress a shudder at his touch. She would servehim in little things, bring him the choicest fruits and flowers; sheanticipated his wants in the house and knew his habits as a caged thinglearns the movements of its keepers; invariably, she was respectful andapt--until her will was challenged. Then her mother would weaken and herfather passed on with a smile. "Paula does not permit me to forget thatI have the honor to be her father," he once said.
Reading grew upon her unconsciously. There was a time when she could notread, another when she could. She did not remember the transition, butone afternoon, when she was barely five, she sat for hours in the parlorstill as a mole, save for the turning leaves--sat upon a hassock withGrimm. It was _The Foster Brother_ which pioneered her mind. Thatafternoon endured as one of the most exquisite periods of her life. Thepleasure was so intense that she felt she must be doing wrong.
Grimm explained the whole world, in proving the reality of fairies. Thesoul of the child had always been awake to influences her associatesmissed. Wonderful Grimm cleared many mysteries--the unseen activities ofthe woods, the visitors of the dark in her room before she was quiteasleep; the invisible weaving behind all events. Later, books inevitablybrought out the element of attraction between man and woman, but suchwere the refinements of her home that nothing occurred to startle hercuriosity. It was left to the friendly woods to reveal a mystery andcertain ultimate meanings.... She was sick with the force of herdivining; the peace and purity of her mind shattered. The accruingrevelations of human origin were all that she could bear. She rebelledagainst the manner of coming into the world, a heaven-high rebellion.Something of pity mingled with her reverence for her mother. For years,she could not come to a belief that the Most High God had any interestin a creature of such primal defilement. Queerly enough, it was thegreat preparer, Darwin, who helped her at the last. Man having come upthrough dreadful centuries from an earth-bent mouth and nostril, to apitying heart and a lifted brow--has all the more hope of becoming anangel....
There was something of the nature of a birthmark in Paula's loathing forthe animal in man and woman. Her mother had been sheltered in girlhoodto such an extent that the mention of a corsage-ribbon would haveoffended. Very early, she had married, and the first days of therelation crushed illusions that were never restored. The birth of Paulaended a period of inordinate sorrow, which brought all the fine threadsof her life into wear, gave expression to the highest agony of which shewas capable, and ravelled out her emotions one by one. As a mother, shewas rather forceless; the excellent elements of her lineage seemed allexpended in the capacities of the child. Her limitations had not widenedin the dark months, nor had her nature refined. It was as if the heartof the woman had lost all its color and ardor. The great sweep ofPaula's emotions; her strangeness, her meditative mind and heart-hungerfor freedom; her love for open spaces, still groves and the prophylactictrends of running water--all expressed, without a doubt, the mysteriousexpiration of her mother's finer life. But something beyond heredity,distances beyond the reach of human mind to explain, was the loftyquality of the child's soul. Very old it was, and wise; very strange andvery strong.
Paula never failed afterward in a single opportunity to spare youngergirl-friends from the savagery of revelation, as it ha
d come to her. Thebare truth of origin, she made radiant with illimitable humanpossibilities.... Her dream beyond words was some time to give the worlda splendid man or woman. Loving, and loved by a strong-souled,deep-thinking man; theirs the fruit of highest human concord; beautifulcommunions in the midst of life's nobilities, and the glory of these onthe brow of their child--such was her dream of womanhood, whitenedthrough many vicissitudes.
Her mother died when Paula was twenty. The call came in the night. Inthe summons was that awful note which tells the end. Her mother was onthe border and crossing swiftly. Paula screamed.
There was no answer, but a faint ruffle on the brow that had beenserene.
"Mother!... Mother!" a last time--then the answer:
"Don't--call--me,--Paula! Oh, it--hurts--so--to be--called--back!"
After that, the dying was a matter of hours and great pain. Had she cometo her in silence, the tired spirit would have lifted easily. So Paulalearned, by terrible experience, the inexpressible value of silence in aroom with death. She had been very close to the mystery. Holding hermother's hand and praying inaudibly at the last, she had felt the finalwrench to the very core of her being.... Departure, indeed; Paula wasnever conscious of her mother's spirit afterward. It is probably futileto inquire if a child of one's flesh is invariably one's spiritualoffspring.... An ineffectual girl, the mother became a hopeless woman.In the interval, out of the grinding of her forces, was produced afervent heat.... Did blind negative suffering make her receptive to agifted child, or did Paula's mother merely give, from her own lovelyflesh, a garment for a spirit-alien from a far and shining country?
* * * * *
Three or four mornings after the Charter critique, Paula brought furtherwork down-town. Reifferscheid swung about in his chair and stared at herfully thirty seconds. Then he spoke brusquely, possibly to hide hisembarrassment:
"Take these three books home, but don't bother with them to-day. I wantyou back here at four o'clock. You are to go out to supper with me."
The idea was not exactly pleasant. She had seen Reifferscheid only a fewtimes apart from his desk, where she liked him without reservation. Shehad always pictured him as a club-man--a typically successful NewYorker, with a glitter of satire and irreverent humor about all hissayings. The thought of a supper with Reifferscheid had a bit of supperheaviness about it. The club type she preferred to know from a sort ofmiddle distance....
"Won't you, please?"
His change of manner was effective. All brusqueness was gone. Paula sawhis real earnestness, and the boyish effort of its expression. There wasno reason for her to refuse, and she hesitated no longer. Yet shewondered why he had asked her, and searched her mind to learn why shecould not see him at leisure, apart from a club-window's leather chair;at some particular table in a grill or buffet, or enlivening a game ofbilliards with his inimitable characterizations. One of the finest andmost effective minds she had ever contacted belonged to this editor. Hisdesk was the symbol to her of concentrated and full-pressurestrenuousness; in his work was all that was sophisticated andworld-weathered, but she could neither explain nor overcome theconviction that his excellence was in spite of, rather than the resultof his life outside.... She met him on the stroke of four in theentrance to _The States_ building, and he led the way at once to SouthFerry, where they took the Staten Island boat. She felt that he was notat ease in the crowds, but it was a fact, also, that he did not appearso huge and froggy in the street, as in the crowded office she knew sowell.
"Yes, I live over yonder," he said, drawing two stools to the extremeforward of the deck. "I supposed you knew. The nearest way out of NewYork, this is. Besides, you get full five cents' worth of sea voyage,and it's really another country across the bay. That's the mainthing--not a better country, but different."
Little was said on the boat. It was enough to breathe the sea andcontemplate the distances. She scarcely noticed which of thetrolley-cars he helped her into at the terminal; but they were out oftown presently, where there were curving country roads, second-growthhills, and here and there a dim ravine to cool the eye. Then against thesky she discovered a black ribbon of woods. It was far and big to hereyes, full of luring mysteries that called to her--her very owntemples.... Turning to Reifferscheid, she found that he had beenregarding her raptly. He coughed and jerked his head the other way,delightfully embarrassed.
"Guess you like it here," he said after a moment. "I knew you would. Iknew I ought to make you come, somehow. You see, you're a little toofit--drawn just a trifle too fine. It isn't that you're out ofcondition; just the contrary. When one's drawn so fine as you are, onewears--just from living at joy speed.... We get off here."
"It's incredible that you should have a house all to yourself!"
They were walking on the grass that edged the road. It had taken an hourand a half to come. Dusk was beginning to crowd into the distances.Ahead on either side of the road were a few houses with land between.
"Whatever you call it," said Reifferscheid, "it's all in one piece.There it is yonder--'A wee cot, a cricket's chirr--Sister Annie and theglad face of her----'"
"A little white house under big trees!" Paula exclaimed joyously. "Andwhat's that big dug-out thing behind?"
Reifferscheid chuckled. "Dug-out is excellent. That's the aquarium andthe lily-lakes. I made those Sierras and clothed their titanic flankswith forests of sod."
"Don't ask me to speak.... All this is too wonderful for words...." Tothink that she had imagined this man-mammoth sitting in a club-window.In truth, she was somewhat perturbed for wronging him, though delightedwith the whole expedition. Sister Annie was startling, inasmuch as herface was as fresh and wholesome as a snow-apple, and yet she could notleave her invalid's chair unassisted. She was younger thanReifferscheid.
"I'm so glad to have you come, Miss Linster," she said. "Tim was reallyset upon it. He speaks of you so frequently that I wanted to meet youvery much. I can't get over to the city often."
"Tim." This was the name of names. Paula had known nothing beyond "T.Reifferscheid." One after another, little joys like this unfolded.
"It will be too dark after supper," the sister added. "Tim won't becontent until you see his system of ponds. You better go with him now."
Reifferscheid already filled the side-door. Evidently inspection was thefirst and only formality demanded of the guest at the cottage. Paulafollowed him up a tiny gravel path to the rim of the top pond--a saucerof cement, eighteen inches deep and seven or eight feet across. It wasfilled with pond-weed and nelumbo foliage. Gold fish and stickle-backsplayed in the shadowed water.
"It isn't the time of year, you know," he said apologetically. "Thelilies are through blossoming, and in a week or two, I'll have to takemy fishes back to winter-quarters. You see my water supply comes fromSilver Lake. The great main empties here." (Paula followed his finger tothe nozzle of a hose that hung over the rim of cement on the top pond.)"The stream overflows in Montmorency Falls yonder,"--(this, a trickledown the gravel to the second pond)--"from which, you can hear the roarof the cataracts into the lower lake, which waters the lands of plentyall about."
His look of surprise and disappointment at her laughter wasirresistible.
"The saurians are all in the depths, but you can see some of my snails,"he went on. "You'd be surprised how important my herd of snails is inthe economy of this whole lake country."
He picked up a pebble from the edge of the water, pointing out the greenslime that covered it. "These are spores of a very influentialvegetable, called _algae_, which spreads like cholera and vegetatesanywhere in water that is not of torrential temperament. Without mysnails, the whole system would be a thick green soup in a month. It'sgetting a little dark to see the stickle-back nests. They domesticatevery curiously. Next year, I'll have a fountain.... The second-tankcontains a frail, northern variety of water-hyacinths, some rock bass,and a turtle or two. Below are the cattails and ferns and mosses. In thesummer, that lower pond is a ju
ngle, but the lilies and lotuses up hereare really choice when in blossom. The overflow of water rejoices thebugs and posies generally. Annie likes the yard-flowers."
Paula would not have dared to say how enchantingly these toy-lakes andlily-beds had adjusted, in her mind, to the nature of the big man besideher, whose good word was valued by every sincere and important literaryworker in the country. Tim Reifferscheid turning out his tremendoustasks in New York, would never be quite the same to her again, since shehad seen him playing with his hose in his own back yard, and heard himtalk about his snails and lilies, and the land posies that Sister Annieliked. Down-town, he had always stimulated her, but here with histoy-engineering and playful watersheds, he was equally bracing and justas admirable.
Darkness was covering them. "I must see it all again," she said. "I wantto come when the lilies are blossoming. I could watch the fishes andthings--for hours. Really, I will never call it a dug-out again."
She saw him grinning in the dusk.
"Come in to supper," he said. "You see, anything smaller than a StatenIsland back-yard would hardly do for me to play in. Then there's astillness about here that I like. It makes your ears ache a little atfirst. You wake up in the middle of the night and think you're under theearth somewhere, or disembodied. Finally it comes to you that there'snothing to be afraid of except the silence. A man's head gets to need itafter a time. As a matter of fact, there's no place across the bay for afat man after working hours."
"Miss Linster," called Sister Annie as they entered.
Paula followed the voice into a speckless spare room.
"Supper will be served in a moment," the other said. "I just wanted totell you--Tim will take you back to the city to-night, grateful for thechance, but do you really have to go? This little room is yours, and youcan go over together in the morning. Then a night in this stillness willcalm you back into a little girl. Tim doesn't know I'm asking you.Please do just as you want----"
Paula didn't have the heart to drag the big brother back to town.
"Why," she said laughingly, "I'd much rather stay than not. Think howgood this all is to me! I didn't have an idea when he asked me, otherthan a restaurant somewhere in New York."
"I am so glad.... Tim----"
He tried not to look relieved at the announcement. "Really, I didn't putAnnie up to this, but if you are content to stay, I think it will smoothyou out a bit."
After supper the three sat out in the yard. There was a heavy richnessin the air, a soft sea-wind flavored with wood-fires and finishedfields. Reifferscheid smoked his pipe and did most of the talking.
"I glanced over Bertram Lintell's new book--out to-day," he said. "Itsort of hurts. Two or three months ago, I dropped in on him while he wasdoing it.... I have always had a certain interest in Lintell because Iaccepted his first story seven or eight years ago, as a magazinereader.... You may not know that nine-tenths of the unsolicited fictionmaterial in a magazine's mail is a personal affront to intelligence atlarge. Nowhere does a man show the youth of his soul so pitifully aswhen first alone with white paper and an idea. He shakes down a crow'srookery and believes in his heart it's an eagle's nest. That there aremen in the world paid to open his package, inspect and return samerespectfully--and do it again--is an uncommercial peculiarity of a mostcommercial age. Editors rely upon the more or less technically flawlessproducts of the trained, the "arrived"; writers who have forgotten theirdreams--rung the bell once or twice--and show a willingness to takemoney for the echoes.
"An expensive reading staff is not necessary for these contributors;their stuff goes to the heart of things at once. But what sorry caravanshalt in the outer courts of a magazine-office; what sick, empty,unwashed confusion is impounded there! Yet a company of men moves everthrough and about, peering into the unsightly, unsavory packs--everordering away, ever clearing the court, lest the mess rise to heaven....But perfect pearls have been found in these restless, complainingtrash-heaps, and will be found again. Men are there to glance at all,because one of these pearls is worth a whole necklace of seconds.There's no way out of it. To make lasting good in the literary game, onemust be steeled to reverses--long, ugly corroding reverses. This is theprice which a man pays for the adjustment of his brain and hand to theneeds of the time. As flesh needs bone, he needs these reverses. Theyclear the fat from the brain; increase the mental circuits, and lend tothe fibres that firm delicacy which alone can carry live hot emotionswithout blowing out, and big voltage ideas swift and true to theirappointed brilliance of expression.
"I'm gabbing a lot, but I was going to tell you about Bertram Lintell. Iwas first in the office to get his manuscript, and I raised the cry of'Pearl.' It was faulty, but full of the arrogance of unhurt youth. Theface of Twenty-one with all its unlined audacity stared out from thepages, and every page was an excursion. Here was a true subconsciousebullition--a hang-over from a previous incarnation, like as not. It washard, glassy, but the physical prowess of it stimulated. Frank, brutalboyishness--that was the attraction. I shouldn't have taken it."
"You what?" Paula asked.
"It was a shame to take it," Reifferscheid mused, "but someone else--thenext man, would have. You see, he needed buffeting--seven years atleast. I knew he didn't have the beam and displacement to stand makinggood so young. It was doing him an evil turn, but we sent him the brasstag that shines like gold. Lintell was not adult enough to twig thecounterfeit, not mellowed enough to realize that nothing is so sordid,nothing labeled so securely to Failure, as conscious success. As I say,I saw him at work two or three months ago. He was a patch-haired, babylion still, dictating stories first draft to a stenographer, supplyingdemand like a huckster--the real treasure-house of his soul locked forlife and the key thrown away.... Even money turns the head of themultitude, but money is small beer compared to the fiery potential wineof literary recognition. Long hammering, refining reverses, aloneprepare a man for this. Quentin Charter said something of the kind: thata young writer should live his lean years full length, and if he reallycraters the mountain, he will praise every god in the Pantheon becausehis achievements were slow.
"Lintell's present stuff is insufferable. The point is he may have hadin the beginning no less a gift than Charter's. That's why the new booksickens me so.... By the way, I got a letter from Charter thisafternoon. I meant to bring it along, but I'll pass it over to you inthe morning. It's yours, Miss Linster, though he did me the honor tothink that I had written his critique. He says you crawled right insidehis book. We don't usually answer letters of this kind. There arewriters, you know, glad to turn a review office into an AdmirationExchange. But you'll want to write to Charter, I'm sure. He's different."
Paula did not answer, but she was pleased and excited that her reviewhad been a joy to this thunderer of the West, and that he had answeredher tidings of high hope for the future.