charter's mind becomes the arena of conflict between the wyndam woman and skylark memories
in the rue rivoli there was a little stone wine-shop. the street was short, narrow, crooked, and ill-paved—a cleft in saint pierre's terrace-work. just across from the vault-like entrance to the shop, the white, scarred cliff arose to another flight of the city. between the shop and the living-rooms behind there was a little court, shaded by mango-trees. dwarfed banana-shrubs flourished in the shade of the mangoes, and singing-birds were caged in the lower foliage. since the sun could find no entrance, the wine-shop was dark as a cave, and as cool. one window, if an aperture like the clean wound of a thirteen-inch gun could be called a window, opened to the north; and from it, by the grace of a crook in the rue rivoli, might be seen the mighty-calibred cone of pelée.
pere rabeaut's wine was very good, and some of it was very cheap. the service was much as you made it, for if you were known you were permitted to help yourself. in this world there was no one of station too lofty to go to pere rabeaut's; and since those of no station whatsoever drank rum, instead of wine, you would meet no one there to whom it was not a privilege to say "bon jour."
"come and see my birds," the crafty rabeaut would say if he approved of you.
"where do you live?" you might ask, being a stranger.
"in the coolest hovel of saint pierre," was his invariable answer.
and presently, if you were truly alive, you would find yourself in the little stone wine-shop, listening to the birds and looking over the stalled casks, demijohns, and bottles, filled with more or less concentrated soil and sun. in due course, soronia would appear in the shadowy doorway (it would seem that the bird-songs were hushed as she crossed the court), and she would show you a vintage of especially long ago. after that, though you became a missionary in shantung, or a remittance-man in tahiti, you would never forget the bouquet of the rabeaut wines, the cantatas of the canaries, nor the witchery of soronia's eyes.... if the little stone wine-shop were transplanted in new york, artists would find it, and you would be forced to fetch your own goblet and have difficulty in getting in and out for the crowd o' nights.
thither charter went the next morning and sat down in the cherished coolness. peter stock had reminded him of their former talks there, over a particular wine of epernay, and had arranged to meet him this morning.... in the foreground of charter's mind a gritty depression had settled, but throughout the finer, farther consciousness, where realities abide, there hung a mystic constellation, which every little while (and with a shock of ecstasy, so wonderful that his mere brain was alarmed and called it scandalous), fused together into a great, glowing ardent star of bethlehem....
again, the mere brain said: "what have you done with your three years? the actress knew you better than you knew yourself. all your letters, and the spirit of your letters, have fallen into ruin before the first woman you meet down here in a dreamy, tropic isle. how can you—you, who have lived truly for a little while, and seemed to have felt the love that lifts—sink into the fragrant meshes of romance, through the beautiful eyes of a stranger to your world and to your ways? and what of skylark, the lovely, the winged?..." and the soul of the man riding at its moorings in the bright calm of wisdom's anchorage, made laughing answer: "this is the skylark—ah, not that wyndam is linster,—but this is the veiled queen who has waited so long for the house of charter to be ready. this is the forever-fairy that puzzled the nights and mornings of the long-ago charter boy. it was her wing that held the last dart of light in the gardens of boyhood before the frowning thunders came. it was her songs that made the youth's mind magic with lyrics, certain ones so very clear that they fitted into words. it was to find her dazzling brow that lured him to prodigious wanderings, until he fell fainting in the dust of other women's chariots. it was the rustling of her wings that he heard from without, when he lay in the caverns of devouring, where the twain, flesh and death, hold ghastly carnival; the flash of her wings again that lifted his eyes to the rising road. it was her spirit in the splendid east whose miracles of singing and shining made glorious, with creative touch, his hours by the garret window.... it was she of exquisite shoulder and starry eyes and radiant sympathies—before whom the boy, the man and the spirit, bowed in thankfulness yesterday...."
and so he sat there thinking, thinking,—glimpsing the errant centuries in the same high light of memory that this very morning recurred—an hour or two ago, when he had walked with her through the mango-grove in the coolness following a dawn-shower that had washed the white weight of pelée's ash-winter from the trees.... "what a chaos i must be," he murmured in dull anguish, "with the finest of my life plighted to a vision that is lost—while i linger desolate in the presence of wondrous reality!" ... some one was moving and whispering in the little room across the court of the song-birds.... peter stock entered, his white hair and mustache dulled with ash; his eyes red and angry.
"well, i think i've got father fontanel frightened," he said, sinking down across the little round table. "he's telling the people to shut up their houses and go to fort de france. sixty or seventy have started, and many more have gone up to morne rouge and ajoupa boullion, where it happens to be cool, though they're just as close to the craters. fontanel has come into a very proper spirit of respect for pelée's destructive capacity. by the way, did you hear what happened yesterday, during the darkness and racket while we were at dinner?"
"not definitely. tell me," charter urged.
"the extreme northern end of the city, or part of it, was flooded out like an ant-hill under a kettle boiling over. the river blanche overflowed her banks, and ran with boiling mud from the volcano. thirty people were killed and the usine guerin destroyed."
"i didn't think it was so bad as that."
"i hope i'm wrong, but the guerin disaster may be only a preliminary demonstration—like the operator experimenting to find if it is dark enough to start the main fireworks. nobody can complain to saint peter that pelée hasn't warned."
"there's another way to look at it," charter said. "the volcano's overflow into the river blanche might have eased the pressure upon the craters. i wonder if there is any authority or precedent for such a hope?"
"if pelée's fuse is burning shorter and shorter toward a krakatoan cataclysm," peter stock declared moodily, "it's not for man to say what spark will shake the world.... i tried to see mondet this morning—but couldn't get in. you wouldn't think one white, small person could contain so much poison. i am haunted with the desire to commit physical depredations."
"i think i'll take a little journey up toward the craters to-morrow," charter confided, after a moment. "they say that the weather is quiet and clean to the north of the mountain. one might ride up and try to reason with pere pelée——"
at this juncture soronia entered the wine-shop from the little court, to fill the eyes and the goblets of the americans. a dark, ardent, alluring face; flesh like dull gold, made wonderful by the faintest tints of ripe fruit; eyes that could melt and burn and laugh; a fragile figure, but radiantly abloom, and as worthily draped as a young palm in a richly blossoming vine. she made one think of a strange, regal flower, an experiment of nature, wrought in the most sumptuous shadow of a tropic garden.... she was gone. charter laughed at the drained look in peter stock's face.
"an orchid——" the latter began.
"or a sunlit cathedral window."
"will the visitation be repeated? do i wake or sleep?"
"the years have dealt artistically in the little wine-shop," said charter. "they say old pere rabeaut married a fille de couleur—daughter of a former governor-general of martinique."
"some daphne of the islands, she must have been, since pere rabeaut does not seem designed to father a sunset.... it's my first glimpse of soronia this voyage. she was beautiful in a girlish way last year.... she's in love, or she couldn't glow like that. i met pere rabeaut down in the city——"
charter arose. "perhaps the lover is across the court. i heard a whispering through the bird-songs—and one could not fail to note how she hurried back.... i must go on. the water is no better here than elsewhere."
"but the wine is," said peter stock. "wait luncheon for me at the palms.... by the way, how'd you like to take a little cruise—feel the saragossa under you, running like a scared deer to hitch herself to the solid old horn, built of rock and sealed with icebergs——"
"a clean thought, in this air—but the eventualities here attract. when father fontanel grows afraid for the city, well, it may not be scientific, but it's ominous.... i wanted to ask if it ever occurred to you that even the morne d'orange might fall into the sweeping range of pelée's guns?"
"in other words—if the mountain won't recede from miss wyndam, we'd better snatch up miss wyndam and make a getaway from the mountain?"
from far within a "yea" was acclaimed, yet there was a sullen charter integrity which had given its word to skylark, and feared the test of being shut on the same ship with a woman who endowed him with such power that he felt potent to go to the craters and remonstrate with the monster.
"it might be well to ask her," charter replied gloomily, "but i'm rather absorbed in the action here and father fontanel's work. i want to look at the craters from behind——"
"twice you've said that," said peter stock, "and each time it reminds me that i'm old, yet there's a lure about it. i'm thinking——"
their heads were together at the little round window for the mountain had rumbled again, and they stared beyond the city into the ashen shroud.
"grand old martyr," charter muttered, "hang on, hang on!... the flag of truce still flies."
paula at the palms reflected the charter conflict that morning. she had seen it in his eyes and felt it in his heart, as they had walked together in the mock-winter of the mango-grove before breakfast. away from him now, however, she could not be sure that "wyndam," representing the woman, altogether satisfied his vision of skylark. very strange, he was, in his struggling, and it became harder, and a more delicate thing than she had believed, to say, "i am paula linster." she had felt this great restlessness of his spirit vaguely in the early letters—a stormy, battling spirit which his brain constantly labored to interpret. she had seen his moments of calm, too, when the eyes and smile of the boy rendered his attractions so intimate to her, that she could have told him anything—but these calms did not endure even in her presence. she did not want the woman, wyndam, despised, nor yet the skylark put from him. it became a reality, that out of his struggle truth would rise; meanwhile, though not with the entire sanction of a certain inner voice, she withheld her secret, remaining silent and watchful in the midst of the greatest drama the world could bring to her understanding....
paula did not fail to note that peter stock was somewhat surprised when she refused for the present his invitation to spend the nights at least out in the cool caribbean. she saw, moreover, that quentin charter was beginning to fear the mountain, because she remained at the palms. indeed, it was hard for all to remember that in form, at least, they were mere acquaintances, so familiar had they become to each other in the pressure of pelée. above all this, she was almost continually conscious of bellingham since the receipt of madame nestor's letter. it was not that his power was formidable enough to disorder the unfolding of the drama, but she felt his nearness, his strategies—all the more strange, as there had been no sign of him since the arrival of the panther. if for no other reason, she would have found it difficult to disclose her real name to quentin charter, while her mind was even distantly the prey of the black giant.
these were tremendous hours—when but a word from her withheld two hearts from bursting into anthems. bravely, she gloried in these last great refinings—longings, fears, exaltations, but never was she without the loftiest hope of her life. the man who had come was so much that the man should be. she saw his former years as the wobblings of a top that has not yet gained its momentum. only at its highest speed does the top sing its peace with god.... had not the finest glow of his powers been reserved until her coming?...
in such moments as these, she could look back upon her own agonies with gratitude. she had needed a bellingham. should she not be thankful that a beyond-devil had been required to test her soul? in the splendid renewals of her spirit, paula felt that she could look into the magician's eyes now and command him from her. she was even grateful that she had been swept in the fury of the high tide, nor would she have had that supreme night of trial when she fled from the zoroaster, stricken from her past. just as quentin charter, of the terrible thirsts, had required his years of wrath and wandering, so her soul had needed the test of a woman's revelations and man's sublimated passion. deep within lived a majestic happiness—earned.
at one o'clock, as she was going below for luncheon, the sun gave up trying to shine through the ash-fog, but volumes of dreadful heat found the earth. the saragossa was invisible in the roadstead; there was no line dividing shore and sea, nor sea and sky. it was all an illimitable mask, whose fabric was the dust which for centuries had lain upon the dynamos of pelée.
