paula is drawn deeper into the selma cross past and is bravely wooed through further messages from the west
selma cross frequently filled the little place of books across the hall with her tremendous vibrations before the trial trip of her new play on the road. paula liked to have her come in, delighted in the great creature's rapture over the hunch-back, stephen cabot, author of the thing. there was an indescribably brighter luster in the waxing and waning of romantic tides, than the eyes of paula had ever before discovered, so that the confidences of the other were of moment. selma was terrified by some promise she had made years before in kentucky. it was gradually driven deep into the listener's understanding that no matter how harsh and dreadful the intervening years had been, here was a woman to whom a promise meant a promise. paula was moved almost to tears by the other's description of stephen cabot, and the first time she saw him.
"i wonder if the long white face with the pain-lit eyes could ever mean to any one else what it does to me?" selma whispered raptly when they talked together one sunday night. "why, to see him sitting there before me at rehearsal—the finest, lowest head in all the chairs—steadies, exalts me! i hold fast to repression.... it it was vhruebert who brought me to him, and the first words stephen said were: 'your manager is a wizard, miss cross, to get you for this. why, you are the woman i wrote about in the thing!'"
"tell me more," paula had whispered.
"we met in vhruebert's office and forgot the manager entirely. i guess two hours passed, as we talked, and went over the play together that first time. vhruebert sent in his office-boy finally to remind us that he was still in the building. how we three laughed about it!... then as we started out for luncheon together, stephen and i, vhruebert took his place at the door before us, and delivered himself of something like this:
"'you two listen to the father of what you are to be,'" selma cross went on, roughening her voice and tightening her nasal passages, to imitate the old hebrew star-maker. "'listen to the soulless vhruebert, who brudalizes the great amerigan stage. you two are art. very well, listen to commerce. it took me twenty-five years to learn that there must be humor in a blay. this t'ing would not lift the lip of a ganary-bird. it took me twenty-five years to learn there must be joy at the end of a blay—and wedding-bells. this t'ing ends just about—over the hills to the mad-house. twenty-five years proved to me what i know the first day—that women of the stage must be beautiful. miss gross is not. i say no more. here i have neither dramatist nor star. i could give the blay by gabot to ellen terry—or to miss gross, if ibsen write it. as it is, i have no name. there are five thousand people in this country writing blays with humor and habby endings. there are ten thousand beautiful women exbiring to spend it on the stage. yet you two are the chosen of vhruebert. when you look into each other's eye and visper how von-der-ful you are, with rising inflection; and say, "to hell with gommerce and the binhead bublic!" remember vhruebert who advances the money!'"
"and did you remember vhruebert in that fairy luncheon together?" paula asked happily.
"no, i only saw the long white face of stephen cabot. i wanted to take him in my arms and make him whole!"
for ten weeks bellingham lay in one of the new york hospitals. "a woman attends him," madame nestor informed. "she is young and has been very beautiful. how well do i know her look of impotence and apathy—that look of unresisting obedience." to paula, the magician seemed back among the dead ages, although madame nestor did not regard the present lull without foreboding. paula could not feel that her real self had been defiled. the dreadful visitations were all but erased, as pass the spectres of delirium. what was more real, and rocked the centres of her being, was the conception of this outcast's battle for life. she could not forget that it was in pursuing her, that he had been injured. facing not only death, but extinction, this idolater of life had, as one physician expressed it, held together his shattered vitality by sheer force of will, until healing set in. the only thought comparable in terror to such a conflict, had to do with the solitudes and abject frigidity of inter-stellar spaces.
the skylark letters, as she came to call them, were after all, the eminent feature of the fall and winter weeks. there was a startling paragraph in one of the december series: "i think it is fitting for you to know (though, believe me, i needed no word regarding you from without), that i am not entirely in the dark as to how you have impressed another. i know nothing of the color of your hair or eyes, nothing of your size or appearance,—only just how you impressed another. this information, it is needless to say, was unsolicited...." just that, and no further reference. it was as though he had felt it a duty to incorporate those lines. portions of some of the later letters follow:
did you know, that without the upward spread of wings—there can be no song from the skylark? this, for me, has a fragrant and delicate significance. it is true that the poor little caged-birds sing, but how sorry they are, since they have to flutter their wings to give forth sound, and cling with their claws to the bars to hold themselves down!... i think you must have been a little wing-weary when you wrote your last letter to me. perhaps the dusk was crowding into the heights. no one knows as i do how the skylark has sung and sung!... you did not say it, but i think you wanted the earth-sweet meadows. it came to me like needed rain—straight to the heart of mine that little plaint in the song. it made me feel how useless is the strength of my arms.... you see, i manage pretty well to keep you up there. i must. and because you are so wonderful, i can.... an enthralling temperament rises to me from your letters. i love to let it flood through my brain....
i do not feel at all sure that you know me truly. what a man's soul appears to be, through the intimations of his higher moments, is not the man altogether that humans must reckon with. nor must they reckon with the trampling violences of one's past. i truly believe in the soul. i believe it is an essence fundamentally fine; that great mothers brood it beautifully into their babes; that it is nourished by the good a man does and thinks. i believe in the ultimate victory of the soul, against the tough, twisted fibres of flesh which rise to demand a thousand sensations. i would have you think of me as one lifting; happy in discoveries, the crown of which you are; conscious of an integrating spirit; that sometimes in my silences i answer your song as one glorified. but then, i remember that you must not judge me by the brightest of my work. such are the trained, tense bursts of speed—the swift expiration of the best. i think a man is about half as good as his best work and half as bad as his most lamentable leisure. midway between his emotions and exaltations—is indicated his valuation.... all men clinging to the sweep of the upward cycle, must know the evil multitude at some time. perhaps few men have met and discarded so many personal devils as i, in a single life. but i say to you as i write to-night, those devils cast out seem far back among cannibal centuries. i worship the fine, the pure,—thoughts and deeds which are expanded and warmed by the soul's breath. and you are the anchorage of this sweeter spirit which is upon me. now, out of the logic which life burns into the brain, comes this thought: (i set it down only to fortify the citadel of truth in which our momentous relation alone can prosper.) are there fangs and hackles and claws which i have not yet uncovered? am i given the present serenity as a resting-time before meeting a more subtle and formidable enemy? has my vitality miraculously been preserved for some final battle with a champion of champions of the flesh? is it because the sting is gone from my scar-tissues that i feel so strong and so white to-night? i cannot think this, because i have heard—because i still hear—my skylark sing.
the personal element of the foregoing and the hint of years of "wrath and wanderings," which she saw in his second photograph, correlated themselves in paula's mind. they frightened her cruelly, but did not put charter farther away. remembering the effect of the passion which bellingham had projected into her own brain, helped her vaguely to understand charter's earlier years. his splendid emancipation from past evils lifted her soul. and when he asked, if his present serenity might not be a preparation for a mightier struggle, the serious reflection came—might she not ask the same question of herself? the old flesh-mother does not permit one to rest when one is full of strength.... paula perceived that quentin charter was bravely trying to get to some sort of rational adjustment her ideal of him and the blooded reality—and to preserve her from all hurt. doubts could not exist in a mind besieged by such letters.... one of her communications must have reflected something of her terror at the vague forms of his past, which he partially unveiled, for in answer he wrote:
do not worry again about the big back time. perhaps i was over assertive about the shadowed years. the main thing is that this is the wonderful present—and you, my white ally of nobler power and purpose. a gale of good things will come to us—hopes, communions and inspirations. we shall know each other—grow so fine together—that mother earth at last will lose her down-pull upon us—as upon perfumes and sunbeams. you have come with mystical brightening. you are the new era. there is healing in gethsemanes since you have swept with grace and imperiousness into possession of the charter heart-country so long undiscovered. the big area is lit, redeemed from chaos. it is thrilling—since you are there. never must you wing away.... sometime you shall know with what strength and truth and tenderness i regard you. the spirit of spring is in my veins. it would turn to summer if we were together, but there could be no reacting winter because you have evolved a mind and a soul.... body and mind and soul all evenly ignited—what a conception of woman!
paula begged him not to try to fit such an ideal of the finished feminine to a little brown tame-plumaged skylark. since they might some time meet, she wrote, it was nothing less than unfair for his mind, trained to visualize its images so clearly, to turn its full energies upon an ideal, and expect a human stranger—a happening—in the workaday physical vesture (such as is needed for new york activities) to sublimate the vision. she told him that he would certainly flee away from the reality, and that he would have no one but himself to blame. visions, she added, do not review books nor write to authors whom they have not met. all of which, she expressed very lightly, though she could not but adore the spirit of ideality to which she had aroused his faculties.
at this time paula encountered one of the imperishable little books of the world, bracing to her spirit as a day's camp among mountain-pines. nor could she refrain from telling charter about "the practice of the presence of god," as told in the conversations of brother lawrence, a bare-footed carmelite of the seventeenth century. "no wilderness wanderings seem to have intervened between the red sea and the jordan of his experience," she quoted from the preface, and told him how simple it was for this unlearned man to be good—a mere "footman and soldier" whose illumination was the result of seeing a dry and leafless tree in mid-winter, and the thought of the change that would come to it with the spring. his whole life thereafter, largely spent in the monastery kitchen—"a great awkward fellow, who broke everything"—was conducted as if god were his constantly advising companion. it was a life of supernal happiness—and so simple to comprehend. charter's reply to this letter proved largely influential in an important decision paula was destined to make.
yes, i have communed with brother lawrence—carried the little volume with me on many voyages. i commend a mind that is fine enough to draw inspiration from a message so chaste and simple. you will be interested to hear that i have known another brother lawrence—a man whose holiness one might describe as "humble" or "lofty," with equal accuracy. this man is a catholic priest, father fontanel of martinique. his parish is in that amazing little port, saint pierre—where africa and france were long ago transplanted and have fused together so enticingly. lafcadio hearn's country—you will say. i wonder that this inscrutable master, hearn, missed father fontanel in his studies.... i was rough from the seas and a long stretch of military campaigning, when my ship turned into that lovely harbor of saint pierre. finding father fontanel, i stayed over several ships, and the healing of his companionship restores me even now to remember.
we would walk together on the morne d'orange in the evening. his church was on the rise of the morne at the foot of rue victor hugo. he loved to hear about my explorations in books, especially about my studies among the religious enthusiasts. i would tell him of the almost incredible austerities of certain mystics to refine the body, and it was really a sensation to hear him exclaim in his french way: "can it be possible? i am very ignorant. all that i know is to worship the good god who is always with me, and to love my dear children who have so much to bear. i do not know why i should be so happy—unless it is because i know so very little. tell me why i live in a state of continual transport...." i can hear his gentle latin tones even now at night when i shut my eyes—see the lights of the shipping from that cliff road, hear the creoles' moaning songs from the cabins, and recall the old volcano, la montagne peleé, outlined like a huge couchant beast against the low, northern stars.
father fontanel has meant very much to me. in all my thinking upon the ultimate happiness of the race, he stands out as the bright achievement. at the time i knew him, there was not a single moment of his life in which the physical of the man was supreme. what his earlier years were i do not know, of course, but i confess now i should like to know.... the presence of god was so real to him, that father fontanel did not understand at all his own great spiritual strength. nor do his people quite appreciate how great he is among the priests of men. he has been in their midst so long that they seem accustomed to his power. only a stranger can realize what a pure, shining garment his actual flesh has become. to me there was healing in the very approach of this man.
dear father fontanel! all i had to do was to substitute "higher self" for "god" and i had my religion—the practice of the presence of the higher self. does it not seem very clear to you?... to me, god is always an abstraction—something of vaster glory than the central sun, but one's spiritual body, the real being, integrated through interminable lives, from the finest materials of thought and action—this higher self is the presence i must keep always with me, and do i not deserve that it should stand scornfully aloof, when, against my better knowledge, i fall short in the performance?... i think it is his higher self which is so lustrous in father fontanel, and the enveloping purity which comes from you is the same. about such purity there is nothing icy nor fibrous nor sterile.... you are singing in my heart, skylark.
the picture charter had drawn of father fontanel of saint pierre appealed strongly to paula; and her mind's quick grasp of the charter religion—the practice of the presence of the higher self—became one of her moments of illumination. this was ground-down simplicity. true, every idea of charter's was based upon reincarnation. indeed, this seemed so familiar to him, that he had not even undertaken to state it as one of his fundamentals. but had she cared, she could have discarded even that, from the present concept. so to live that the form of the best within be not degraded; the days a constant cherishing of this invisible friend; the conduct of life constantly adjusted to please this companion of purity and wisdom—here was ethics which blew away every cloud impending upon her heights. years of such living could not but bring one to the uplands. as to charter, god had always been to her the ineffable—source of solar, aye, universal energy—the unseen all. "walking with god," "talking with god," "a personal god," "presence of god,"—these were forms of speech she could never use, but the higher self—this white charioteer—the soul-body that rises when the clay falls—here was a personal god, indeed.
