She Buildeth Her House Part 27

Believe me, I do not suffer."

"One must not labor until he falls and dies, Father."

"If it be the will of the good G.o.d, I ask nothing fairer than to fall in His service. Death is only terrible from afar off in youth, my dear child. When we are old and perceive the glories of the Reality, we are p.r.o.ne to forget the illusion here. In remembering immortality, we forget the cares and ills of flesh.... I am only troubled for my people, stifling in the gray curse of the city, and for my brave young friend.

My mind was clouded when he asked me certain questions last night; and to-day, they say he has gone to the craters of the mountain."

"What for?" she whispered quickly.

"Ah, how should I know? But he tells me of people who make pilgrimages of sanctification to strange cities of the East--to Mecca and Benares----"

"But they go to Benares to die, Father!"

"I did not know, my daughter," he a.s.sured her, drawing his hand across his brow in a troubled fas.h.i.+on. "He has not gone to the mountain for that, though I see storms gathering about him, storms of the mountain and hatreds of men. But I see you with him afterward--as I saw him with you--when you first spoke to me."

She told him all, and found healing in the old man's smile.

"It is well, and it is wonderful," he whispered at last. "Much that my life has misunderstood is made clear to me--by this love of yours and his----"

"'And his,' Father?"

"Yes."

There was silence. She would not ask if Quentin Charter had also told his story. Father Fontanel arose and said he must go back, but he took the girl's hands, looked deeply into her eyes, saying with memorable gentleness:

"Listen, child,--the man who cannot forget a vision that is lost, will be a brave mate for the envisioned reality that he finds."

At intervals all that afternoon she felt the influence of Bellingham. It was not desire. Dull and impersonal, it appealed, as one might hear a child in another house repeatedly calling to its mother. Within her there was no response, save that of loathing for a spectre that rises untimely from a past long since expiated. She did not ask herself whether she was lifted beyond him, or whether he was debased and weakened, or if he really called with the old intensity. Glimpses of the strange place in which he lodged occasionally flashed before her inner mind, but it was all far and indefinite, easily to be banished. To her, he had become inextricable from the reptiles. There was so much of living fear and greater glory in her mind that afternoon, that these were but evil shadows of slight account.

The torturing hours crawled by, until the day turned to a deeper gray, and the North was reddened by Pelee's cone which the thick vapor dimmed and blurred. Paula was suffered to fight out her battle alone. She could not have asked more than this. A thousand times she paced across her room; again and again straining her eyes northward, along the road, over the city into the darkness, and the end of all things--the mountain....

There was a moment in the half-light before the day was spent, in which she seemed to see Quentin Charter, as Father Fontanel had told her, hemmed in by all the storms and hates of the world. Over the surface of her brain was a vivid track for flying futile agonies.

The rumbling that had been incessant was punctuated at intervals now by an awesome and deeper vibration. Altogether, the sound was like a steady stream of vehicles, certain ones heavier and moving more swiftly than others, pounding over a wooden bridge. To her, there was a pang in each phase of the volcano's activity, since Quentin Charter had gone up into that red roar.... She did not go down for dinner. When it was eight by her watch, she felt that she could not live, if he did not return before another hour. Several minutes had pa.s.sed when there was a tapping at her door, and Paula answering, was confronted by a sumptuous figure of native womanhood. It was Soronia.

"Mr. Charter is at the wine-shop of Pere Rabeaut in _Rue Rivoli_," she said swiftly, hatefully, as though she had been forced to carry the message, and would not utter a word more than necessary. "He has been hurt--we do not think seriously--but he wants you to come to him at once."

"Thank you. I will go to him at once," Paula said, turning to get her hat. "Pere Rabeaut's wine-shop in the _Rue Rivoli_?... You say he is not seriously hurt----"

She had not turned five seconds from the door, but the woman was gone.

There was much that was strange in this; many thoughts occurred apart from the central idea of glad obedience, and the fullness of grat.i.tude in that Pelee had not murdered him.... The _Rue Rivoli_ was a street of the terraces, she ascertained on the lower floor; also that it would be impossible to procure a carriage. Mr. Stock had been forced to buy one outright, her informer added, and to use one of his sailors for a driver.... So she set out alone and on foot, hurrying along the sea-road toward the slope where _Rue Victor Hugo_ began. The strangeness of it all persistently imposed upon her mind, but was unreckonable, compared to the thought that Quentin Charter would not have called for her, had he been able to come. From this, the fear of a more serious wound than the woman had said, was inevitable.

Paula had suffered enough from doubting; none should mar her performance now. Unerringly, the processes of mind throughout the day had borne her to such an action. She would have gone to any red-lit door of the torrid city.... Vivid terrors of some dreadful crippling accident hurried her steps into running....

Pelee, a baleful changing jewel in the black North, reminded her that Charter would not have gone up to that sink of chaos, had she spoken the word yesterday. The thought of that wonderful hour brought back the brooding romance in tints almost ethereal. Higher in her heart than he had reached in any moment of the day's fluctuations, the image of Charter wounded, was upraised now and sustained, as she turned from _Rue Victor Hugo_ into the smothering climb to the terraces. All she could feel was a prayer that he might live; all the trials and conflicts and hopes of the past six months hovered afar from this, like navies crippled in the roadstead....

She must be near the _Rue Rivoli_, she thought, suddenly facing an empty cliff. It was at this moment that she heard the soft foot-falls of a little native mule, and encountered Quentin Charter....

Quickly out of the great gladness of the meeting arose the frightful possibilities from which she had just escaped. They were still too imminent to be banished from mind at once. Again Charter had saved her from the Destroyer. She would have wept, had she ventured to speak as he lifted her into the saddle. Charter was silent, too, for the time, trying to adjust and measure and proportion.

Constantly she kept her eyes upon him as he walked slightly ahead, for she needed this steady a.s.surance that he was there and well. She felt her arms where his stiffened fingers had been, as he lifted her so easily upon the mule. She wanted to reach forward and touch his helmet.

They had descended almost to _Rue Victor Hugo_, when he said:

"As I looked down the fiery throat of that dragon up there to-day, everything grew black and still for a minute, like a vacuum.... Will you please tell me if I came back all right, or are we 'two hurrying shapes in twilight land--in no man's land?'"

His amusing appeal righted her. "I have not heard of donkey shapes in twilight-land," she answered.... And then in the new silence she tried to bring her thoughts to the point of revelation, but she needed light for that--light in which to watch his face. Moreover, revelations contained Bellingham, and she was not quite ready to speak of this. It was dreadful to be forced to think of the occultist, when her heart cried out for another moment such as that of yesterday, in which she could watch his eyes and whisper, "I am very proud to be the Skylark you treasure so...."

"Do you think it kind to frighten your friends?" she asked finally.

"When they told me you had gone to the craters--it seemed such a reckless thing to do----"

"You see, I rode around behind the mountain. It's very different to approach from the north. I wished you were there with me in the clean air. Pelee's muzzle is turned toward the city----"

"I sent you many cheers and high hopes--did they come?"

"Yes, more than you know----" He checked himself, not wis.h.i.+ng to frighten her further with the story of Jacques, "You said you were looking for the little wine-shop. Did some one send for you?"

"Yes."

"Some one you know?"

"They told me you were there--hurt. That's why I came, Mr. Charter."

He drew up the mule and faced her. "I was there this morning, but not since.... There's something black about this. Pere Rabeaut was rather officious in furnis.h.i.+ng a guide for me. I'd better find out----"

"I don't want you to go back there to-night!" she said intensely. "I think we are both half-dead. I don't feel coherent at all. It has been a life--this day."

"I am sorry to have made it harder for you. Certainly I shall not add to your worry to-night. I was thinking, though, it's rather a serious thing to call you out alone at this hour, through a city disordered like this--in my name."

"There's much need of a talk. We shall soon understand it all.... That must be Mr. Stock coming. He has the only carriage moving in Saint Pierre, they say."

Charter pulled the mule up on the walk to let the vehicle pa.s.s, but the capitalist saw them and called to his driver to stop.

"Well," he said gratefully, "I'm glad to get down to earth again. You two have had me soaring.... Charter, you don't mean to tell me you called Miss Wyndam to meet you in the wine-shop?"

"No. There's a little matter there which must be probed later. I had the good fortune to meet Miss Wyndam before she reached there."

Paula watched Charter as he spoke. Light from the carriage-lamp fell upon him. His white clothing was stained from the saddle, his hair and eyebrows whitened with dust. His eyes shone in a face haggard unto ghastliness.

"I'd go there now," Stock declared, after asking one or two questions further, "but I have to report with sorrow that Father Fontanel is in a very weak condition and has asked for you. I just came from the _Palms_, hoping that you had returned, and learned that Miss Wyndam was mysteriously abroad. My idea is to make the good old man go out to the s.h.i.+p to-night. That's his only chance. He just shakes his head and smiles at me, when I start in to boss him, but I think he'll go for you.

The little parish-house is like a shut-oven--literally smells of the burning.... The fact is, I'm getting panicky as an old brood-biddy, among all you wilful chicks.... Miss Wyndam has promised for to-morrow, however."

Her heart went out to the substantial friend he had proved to every one, though it was all but unthinkable to have Quentin Charter taken from the _Palms_ that night.

"I'll go with you at once, but we must see Miss Wyndam safely back....

She'll be more comfortable in the carriage with you, and we can hurry,"

Charter declared.

He held his arms to her and lifted her down.

"How I pity you!" she whispered. "You are weary unto death, but I am so glad--so glad you are safely back from the mountain."