EIGHTH CHAPTER
PAULA MAKES SEVERAL DISCOVERIES IN THE CHARTER HEART-COUNTRY, AND ISDELIGHTED BY HIS LETTERS TO THE SKYLARK
The morning paper stated that Dr. Bellingham had suffered a fracture ofthe skull and internal injury, but might live. A note to Paula fromMadame Nestor late the next day contained the following paragraph: "Icalled at the hospital to inquire. A doctor told me that the case islikely to become a classic one. Never in his experience, he stated, hadhe witnessed a man put up such a fight for life. It will be long,however, before he is abroad again. He must have been following youquite madly, because there never was a man more careful in the midst ofcity-dangers than Bellingham. Why, a scratched finger completely upsethim--in the earlier days. Inscrutable, but thrilling--isn't it, my dearPaula?"
* * * * *
"Did you follow _Moby Dick's_ whale tracks around the wet wastes of theworld?" Reifferscheid asked several mornings later, as Paula entered.
Her face was flushed. A further letter from Quentin Charter had justbeen tucked into her bag. "Yes, and Mr. Melville over trans-continentaldigressions," she answered. "He surely is Neptune's own _confrere_."
"Did you get the leviathan alongside and study the bewildering chaos ofa ninety-foot nervous system?" Reifferscheid went on with delight.
"Exactly, and colored miles of sea-water with the emptyings of his vastheart. Then, there was an extended process of fatty degeneration, whichI believe they called--blubber-boiling."
They laughed together over the old whale-epic.
"They remember Melville up in Boston and Nantucket," he added, "but he'sabout as much alive as a honey-bee's pulse elsewhere. The trouble is,you can't rectify this outrage by law. It isn't uxoricide orsheep-stealing--not to know Melville--but it's the deadly sin ofingratitude. This is a raw age, we adorn--not to rock in the boat ofthat man's soul. Why, he's worthy to stand with the angels on the pointof the present."
The big editor always warmed her when he enthused. Here, in the midst ofholiday books pouring in by scores, he had time to make a big personaland public protest against a fifty-year-old novel being forgotten.
"But isn't Melville acknowledged to be the headwaters of inspiration forall later sea-books?" Paula asked.
"Yes, to the men who do them, he's the big laughing figure behind theirwork, but the public doesn't seem to know.... Of course, Herman hasfaults--Japan currents of faults--but they only warm him to a whiteman's heart. Do you know, I like to think of him in a wide, windy room,tearing off his story long-hand, upon yard square sheets, grinning likean ogre at the soul-play, the pages of copy settling ankle-deep upon thefloor. There's no taint of over-breeding in the unborn thing, no curseof compression, no aping Addison--nothing but Melville, just blown inwith the gale, reeking with a big story which must be shed, before heblows out again, with straining cordage booming in his ears. Heharnesses Art. He man-handles Power, makes it grovel and play circus.'Here it is,' he seems to say at the end. 'Take it or leave it. I'mrotting here ashore.'"
"You ought to dictate reviews like that, Mr. Reifferscheid," Paula couldnot help saying, though she knew he would be disconcerted.
He colored, turned back to his work, directing her to take her choicefrom the shelf of fresh books.... On the car going back, Paula openedCharter's letter. Her fingers trembled, because she had been in a happyand daring mood five or six days before when she wrote the letter towhich this was the reply.
... Do you know, I really like to write to you? I feel untrammelled--turned loose in the meadows. It seems when I start an idea--that you've grasped it as soon as it is clear to me. Piled sentences after that are unnecessary. It's a real joy to write this way, as spirits commune. It wouldn't do at all for the blessed multitude. You have to be a mineral and a vegetable and an animal, all in a paragraph, to get the whole market. But how generous the dear old multitude is--(if the writer has suffered enough)--with its bed and board and lamplight....
I have been scored and salted so many times that I heal like an earth-worm. Tell me, can scar-tissue ever be so fine? Fineness--that's the one excellent feature of being human! There's no other reason for being--no other meaning or reason for atomic affinity or star-hung space. True, the great Conceiver of Refining Thought seems pleased to take all eternity to play in....
You've made me think of you out of all proportion. I don't want to help it. I'm very glad we hailed each other across the distance. There's something so entirely blithe and wise and finished about the personality I've builded from three little letters and a critique--that I refresh myself very frequently from them.... I think we must be old playmates. Perhaps we plotted ghost-stories and pegged oranges at each other in Atlantean orchards millenniums ago. I begin to feel as if I deserve to have my playmate back.... Then, again, it is as though these little letters brought to my garret window the Skylark I have heard far and faintly so long in the higher moments of dream. Just a note here and there used to come to me from far-shining archipelagoes of cloud-land. I listen now and clearly understand what you have sung so long in the Heights.... You are winged--that's the word! Wing often to my window--won't you? Life is peppering me with good things this year, I could not be more grateful.
Letters like these made Paula think of that memorable first afternoonwith Grimm; and like it, too, the joy was so intense as to hold thesuggestion that there must be something evil in it all. She laughed atthis. What law, human or divine, was disordered by two human grown-upswith clean minds communing together intimately in letters? QuentinCharter might have been less imperious, or less precipitous, in writingsuch pleasing matters about herself, but had he not earned the boon ofsaying what he felt? Still, Paula would not have been so entirelyfeminine, had she not repressed somewhat. She even may have known thatartful repression from without is stimulus to any man. Occasionally,Charter forgot his sense of humor, but the woman five years younger,never. The inevitable thought that in the ordinary sequence of events,they should meet face to face, harrowed somewhat with the thought thatshe must keep his ideals down--or both were lost. What could a mind likehis _not_ build about months of communion (eyes and ears strained towardflashing skies) with a Skylark ideal?... She reminded Charter thatskylarks are little, brown, tame-plumaged creatures that only sing whenthey soar. She could not forbear to note that he was a bit sky-larky,too, in his letters, and observed that she had found it wise, mainly tokeep one's wings tightly folded in New York. She signed her next letter,nevertheless, with a small pen-picture of the name he had givenher--full-throated and ascending. Also she put on her house address.Some of the paragraphs from letters which came in the following weeks,she remembered without referring to the treasured file:
... Bless the wings! May they never tire for long--since I cannot be there when they are folded.... Often, explain it if you can, I think of you as some one I have seen in Japan, especially in Tokyo--hurrying through the dusk in the Minimasakurna-cho, wandering through the tombs of the Forty-seven Ronins. or sipping tea in the Kameido among the wistaria blooms. Some time--who knows? I have made quite a delightful romance about it.... Who is so wise as positively to say, that we are not marvellously related from the youth of the world? Who dares declare we have not climbed cliffs of Cathay to stare across the sky-blue water, nor whispered together in orient casements under constellations that swing more perilously near than these?... We may be a pair of foolish dreamers, but Asia must have a cup of tea for us--Asia, because she is so far and so still. We shall _remember_ then....
And so you live alone? How strange, I have always thought of you so? From the number, I think you must overlook the Park--don't you?... It may strike you humorously, but I feel like ordering you not to take too many meals alone. One is apt to be neglectful, and women lose their appetites easier than men. I use
d to be graceless toward the gift of health. Perhaps I enjoy perfectly prepared food altogether too well for one of inner aspirations. The bit of a soul in which you see such glorious possibilities, packs rather an imperious animal this trip, I fear. However, I don't let the animal carry _me_--any more.
I see a wonderful sensitiveness in all that you write--that's why I suggest especially that you should never forget fine food and plentiful exercise. Psychic activity in America is attained so often at the price of physical deterioration. This is an empty failure, uncentering, deluding. Remember, I say in America.... Pray, don't think I fail to worship sensitiveness--those high, strange emotions, the sense of oneness with all things that live, the vergings of the mind toward the intangible, the light, refreshing sleep of asceticism, subtle expandings of solitude and the mystical launchings,--anything that gives spread of wing rather than amplitude of girth--but I have seen these very pursuits carry one entirely out of rhythm with the world. The multitudes cannot follow us when there are stars in our eyes--they cannot see.
A few years ago I had a strange period of deep-delving into ancient wisdom. A lot of big, simple treasures unfolded, but I discovered great dogmas as well--the steel shirts, iron shields, mailed fists and other junk which lesser men seem predestined to hammer about the gentle spirit of Truth. I vegetarianed, lived inside, practiced meditate, and became a sensitive, as it seems now, in rather a paltry, arrogant sense. The point is I lost the little appeal I had to people through writing. It came to me at length with grim finality that if a man means to whip the world into line at all, he must keep a certain brute strength. He must challenge the world at its own games _and win_, before he can show the world that there are finer games to play. You can't stand above the mists and call the crowd to you, but many will _follow_ you up through them.... I truly hope, if I am wrong in this, that you will see it instantly, and not permit the edge and temper of your fineness to be coarsened through me. You are so animate, so delicately strong, and seem so spiritually unhurt, that it occurs to me now that there may be finer laws for you, than are vouchsafed to me. I interpreted my orders--to win according to certain unalterable rules of the world. Balzac did that. I think some Skylark sang to him at the last, when he did his Seraphita....
I cannot help but tell you again of my gratitude. I am no impressionable boy. I know what the woman must be who writes to me.... Isn't this an excellent world when the finer moments come; when we can think with gentleness of past failures of the flesh and spirit, and with joy upon the achievements of others; when we feel that we have preserved a certain relish for the rich of all thought, and a pleasure in innocence; when out of our errors and calamities we have won a philosophy which makes serene our present voyaging and gives us keen eyes to discern the coast-lights of the future?... With lifted brow--I harken for your singing.
Paula knew that Quentin Charter was crying out for his mate of fire. Sheremembered that she had strangely felt his strength before there wereany letters, but she could not deny that it since had become a greaterand more intimate thing--her tower, white and heroic, cutting cleanthrough the films of distance, and suggesting a vast, invisible city atits base. That she was the bright answer in the East for such a towerwas incredible. She could send a song over on the wings of themorning--make it shine like ivory into the eyes of the new day, but shedared not think of herself as a corresponding fixture. A man likeCharter could form a higher woman out of dreams and letter-pages thanthe world could mold for him from her finest clays. Always she saidthis--and forgot that the man was clay. A pair of dreamers, truly, andyet there was a difference in their ideals. If Charter's vision of herlifted higher, it was also flexible to contain a human woman. As forhers--Paula had builded a tower. True, there were moments of flying fogin which she did not see it, but clean winds quickly brushed away theobscurations, and not a remnant clung. When seen at all, her tower waspure white and undiminished.
Of necessity there were reactions. His familiarity with the pettyintensities of the average man often startled her. He seemed capable ofdropping into the parlance of any company, not as one who had listenedand memorized, but as an old familiar who had served time in allsocieties. In the new aspect of personal letters, his book revealed acomprehension of women--that dismayed. Of course, his printed work wasfilled with such stuff as her letters were made of, but between a bookand a letter, there is the same difference of appeal as the lines readby an actor, however gifted, are cold compared to a friend's voice.Though she wondered at Charter giving his time to write such letters toher, this became very clear, if his inclination were anything like herown to answer them. All the thinking of her days formed itself intocompressed messages for him; and all the best of her sprang to her penunder his address. The effort then became to repress, to keep her pageswithin bounds, and the ultimate effort was to wait several days beforewriting again. His every sentence suggested pleasure in writing; and asa matter of fact, he repressed very little.... Was it through letterslike hers in his leisure months that Charter amassed his tremendousarray of poignant details; was it through such, that he reared hisimposing ranges of feminine understanding? This was a question requiringa worldlier woman than Paula long to hold in mind. In the man's writing,regarded from her critical training, there was no betrayal of theliterary clerk dependent upon data.
"I am no impressionable boy. I know what the woman must be who writes tome." There was something of seership in his thus irrevocably affixinghis ideal to the human woman who held the pen.... His photograph wasfrequently enough in the press--a big browed, plain-faced young man witha jaw less aggressive than she would have imagined, and a mouth ratherfinely arched for a reformer who was to whip the world into line. Andthen there was a discovery. In a magazine dated a decade before, she ranupon his picture among the advertising pages. Verses of his wereannounced to appear during the year to come. He could not have been overtwenty for this picture, and to her it was completely charming--a boyout of the past calling blithely; a poetic face, too, reminding her ofprints she had seen of an early drawing of Keats's head now inLondon--eager, sensitive, all untried!... It was not without resistancethat she acknowledged herself _closer to the boy_--that something of theman was beyond her. There was a mystery left upon the face by theintervening years, "while the tireless soul etched on...." Should sheever know? Or must there always be this dim, hurting thing? Was it allthe etching of the _soul_--that this later print revealed?... These werebut bits of shadow--ungrippable things which made her wings falter for amoment and long for something sure to rest upon, but Reifferscheid'sfirst talk about Charter, the latter's book, and the letters--out ofthese were reconstructed her tower of shining purity.
There were times when Paula's heart, gathering all its tributarysympathies, poured out to the big figure in the West in a deep andrushing torrent. Her entire life was illuminated by these moments ofardor. Here was a giving, in which the thought of actual possession hadlittle or no part. Her finest elements were merged into one-pointedexpression. It is not strange that she was dismayed by the triumphantforce of the woman within her, nor that she recalled one of the first ofMadame Nestor's utterances, "Nonsense, Paula, the everlasting feminineis alive in every movement of you." Yet this outpouring was lofty, andnoon-sky clear. An emotion like this meant brightness to every life thatcontacted it.... But ruthlessly she covered, hid away even from her ownthoughts, illuminations such as these. Here was a point of tragicsignificance. Out of the past has come this great fear to strongwomen--the fear to let themselves love. This is one of the sorriestevolutions of the self-protecting instinct. So long have women met thetragic fact of fickleness and evasion in the men of their majesticconcentrations--that fear puts its weight against the doors that lovewould open wide.
Almost unconsciously the personal tension of the correspondencei
ncreased. Not infrequently after her letters were gone, Paula becameafraid that this new, full-powered self of hers had crept into herwritten pages with betraying effulgence, rising high above the lightlaughter of the lines. How she cried out for open honesty in the worldand rebelled against the garments of falsity which society insists mustcover the high as well as the low. Charter seemed to say what was in hisheart; at least, he dared to write as the woman could not, as she darednot even to think, lest he prove--against the exclaiming negatives ofher soul--a literary craftsman of such furious zeal that he could tearthe heart out of a woman he had not seen, pin the quivering thing underhis lens, to describe, with his own responsive sensations.
So the weeks were truly emotional. Swiftly, beyond any realization ofher own, Paula Linster became full-length a woman. Reifferscheid foundit harder and harder to talk even bossily to her, but cleared his voicewhen she entered, vented a few booky generalities, and cleared his voicewhen she went away. Keen winter fell upon his system of emptied lakes;gusty winter harped the sound of a lonely ship in polar seas among thenaked branches of the big elms above his cottage; indeed, gray winterwould have roughed it--in the big chap's breast, had he not buckled hisheart against it.... For years, Tim Reifferscheid had felt himself alooffrom all such sentiment. Weakening, he had scrutinized his new assistantkeenly for the frailties with which her sex was identified in his mind.In all their talks together, she had verified not one, so that he wasforced to destroy the whole worthless edition. She was a discovery,thrillingly so, since he had long believed such a woman impossible. Nowhe felt crude beside her, remembered everything that he had done amiss(volumes of material supposed to be out of print). Frankly, he wasirritated with any one in the office who presumed to feel himself anequal with Miss Linster.... But all this was Reifferscheid's, and noother--as far from any expression of his, as thoughtless kisses orthundering heroics.