Mr. Stock had risen from the table and moved to a window which faced the North. All was vague about them. Paula had been carried by Charter's voice toward far-shining mountains.... In the silence, she met the strange, steady eyes ofthe boy, and looked away to find that the room had darkened.
"It is getting dark," he said.
She would have said it, if he hadn't.
The mountain rumbled.
"The North is a mass of swirling grays and blacks," Peter Stock announced from the window. "It isn't a thunderstorm——"
A sharp detonation cleaved the darkening air, and from the rear of the house the answer issued—quavering cries of children, sharp calling of mothers, and the sullen undertone of men. A subdued drumming came from the North now, completing the tossing currents of sound about the house. The dismal bellowing of cattle and the stamping of ponies was heard from the barns. All this was wiped out by a series of terrific crashes, and the floor stirred as if intaking a deep breath. The dining-room filled with a crying, crouching gray-lipped throng of servants. A deluge of ash complicated the half-night outside, and the curse of sulphur pressed down.
Paula arose. Charter had taken his place close beside her, but spoke no word.
In theRue Rivolithere 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 theRue 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 hismerebrain was alarmed and called it scandalous), fused together into a great, glowing ardent Star of Bethlehem....
Again, themerebrain 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 RiverBlancheoverflowed 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 RiverBlanchemight 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 withPere 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 afille 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 thePalms.... By the way, how'd you like to take a little cruise—feel theSaragossaunder 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 theMorne d'Orangemight 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 thePalmsreflected 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 thePalms. 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 thePanther. 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 thatthe manshould 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 theZoroaster, 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. TheSaragossawas 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.
"Do you know what I discovered this morning?" Peter Stock asked, after the three had found a table together. "M. Mondet is trying to keep the people in town for political reasons. It appears that there is to be an election in a few days. All my efforts, and, by non-parishioners, the efforts of Father Fontanel, are regarded as a political counter-stroke—to rush a certain element of the suffrage out of the town.... This is certainly Ash-Wednesday, isn't it?"
Charter laughed. "My theory that the Guerin disaster might relieve the craters and give surcease to Saint Pierre—doesn't seem to work out. The air is getting thicker, even."
"It isn't really ash, you know," explained Mr. Stock, "but rock, ground fine as neat in the hell-mills under the mountain and shot out by steam through Pelée's valves——"
"Intensely graphic," said Paula.
"It has been rather a graphic morning," Charter remarked. "Friend Stock is virile from his activities with Father Fontanel."
"Well, I didn't make a covenant with the mountain—as you did this morning in the wine-shop. You should have seen him, Miss Wyndam, staring away at the volcano and, muttering, 'Hang on, old chap, hang on!....' My dear young woman, doesn't a ride on the ocean sound good for this afternoon? You can sit on deck and hold the little black babies. TheSaragossatakes another load to Fort de France in two or three hours."
She shook her head. "Not just yet. You don't realize how wonderful the drama is to me—you and Father Fontanel, playing Cassandra down in the city—the groaning mountain, and the pity of it all. I confess a little inconvenience of the weather isn't enough to drive me out. It isn't very often given to a woman to watch the operations of a destiny so big as this."
The capitalist turned to Charter. "You know Empress Josephine was born in Martinique and has become a sort of patron saint for the Island. A beautiful statue of her stands in the square at Fort de France where our refugees are encamped. I was only thinking that the map of Europe and the history of France might have been altered greatly if our beloved Josephine had been gifted with a will like this—of Miss Wyndam's."
Her pale, searching face regarded Charter for a second, and his eyes said plainly as words, "Don't you think you'd better consider this more seriously?"
"Maybe you'll like the idea better for the evening, when theSaragossais back in the roadstead again, comparatively empty," Peter Stock added presently. "Father Fontanel and I have a lot to do in the meantime. Can you imagine our first parents occupying themselves when the first tornado was swooping down—our dear initial mother, surpassingly wind-blown, driving the geese to shelter, propping up the orchards, getting out the rain-barrels, and tightening tent-pins?"
"Vividly," said Paula.
"That's just how busy we are—Father Fontanel and I."
It was to be expected that a sophomoric pointlessness should characterize the sayings of the two in the midst of Peter Stock's masculinity and the thrilling magnitude of the marvel each was to the other.... They were left together presently, and the search for treasure began at once:
"... The present is a time of readjustment between men and women," he was saying. "It seems to me that the great mistake people make—men and women alike—is that each sex tries to raise itself by lowering the other. It hardly could be any other way just now, and at first—with woman filled with the turmoil of emerging from ages of oppression—fighting back the old and fitting to the new. But in man and woman—not in either alone—lies completion. If the two do not quite complete each other, a Third often springs from them with an increased spiritual development."
"Yes," she answered, leaning forward, her chin fitted to her palms. "TheI-amand theYou-are-notwill soon be put away. I like to think of it—that man and woman are together in the complete human. There is a glorious, an arch-feminine ideal in the nature of the Christ——"
"Even in the ineffable courage," he added softly. "That is woman's—the finer courage that never loses its tenderness.... His Figure sometimes, as now, becomes an intimate passion to me——"
"As if He were near?"
"As if He were near—still loving, still mediating—all earth's struggle and anguish passing through Him and becoming glorified with His pity and tenderness—before it reaches the eyes of the Father.... There is no other way. Man and woman must be One in Two—before Two in One. They must not war upon each other. Woman is receptive; man the origin. Woman is a planet cooled to support life; man, still an incandescent sun, generates the life."
"That is clear and inspiring," she said. "I have always wanted it said just like that—that one is as important as the other in the evolution of the Individual——"
"And for that Individual are swung the solar systems.... Look at Job—denuded of all but the Spirit. There is an Individual, and his story is the history of an Initiation.... We are coming to a time when Mind will operate in man and womanconsciousof the Soul. When that time comes true, how the progress to God will be cleared and speeded! It will be a flight——"
"Instead of a crawl," she finished.
They were alone in the big dining-room. Their voices could not have reached the nearest empty table. It was like a communion—their first communion.
"I have felt it," she went on in a strange, low tone, "and heard the New Voices—Preparers of the Way. Sometimes it came to me in New York—the stirring of a great, new spiritual life. I have felt the hunger—that awful hollowness in the breasts of men and women, who turn to each other in mute agony, who turn to a thousand foolish sensations—because they do not realize what they hunger for. Their breasts cry out to be filled——"
"And the Spirit cries out to flood in."
"Yes, and the Spirit asks only for Earth-people to listen to their inner voices and love one another," she completed. "It demands no macerations, no fetters, no fearful austerities—only fineness and loving kindness."
"How wonderfully they have come to me, too—those radiant moments—as I sat by my study window, facing the East," he whispered, not knowing what the last words meant to her. "How clear it is that all great and good things come with this soul-age—this soul-consciousness. I have seen in those lovely moments that Mother Earth is but one of many of God's gardens; that human life is but a day in a glorious culture-scheme which involves many brighter and brighter transplantings; that the radiance of the Christ, our Exemplar, but shows us the loveliness which shall be ours when we approach that lofty maturity of bloom——"
A waiter entered with the word that a man from the city, Pere Rabeaut, desired to see Mr. Charter. Each felt the dreadfulness of returning so abruptly to sordid exterior consciousness—each felt the gray ghost of Pelée.
"I shall go and see what is wanted, Miss Wyndam, and hurry back—if I may?" he said in a dull, tired tone.
It was the first time he had said "Wyndam," and it hurt cruelly at this moment.... "No, no," she said rising hastily. "It would spoil it to come back. We could not forget ourselves like that—so soon again. It always spoils—oh, what am I saying? I think our talk must have interested me very much."
"I understand," he said gently. "But we shall talk again—and for this little hour, my whole heart rises to thank you."
Pere Rabeaut was waiting upon the veranda. Peculiarly, at this moment he seemed attached to the crook of wine-shop servitude, which Charter had never noticed with such evidence among the familiar casks. Moreover, disorder was written upon the gray face.
"Mon Dieu, what a day, M. Charter!—a day of judgment! Soronia's little birds are dying!"
Charter regarded the sharp, black eyes, which darted over his own face, but would not be held in any gaze.
"I heard from my daughter that you are going to the craters of the mountain," the old man said. "'He will need a guide,' said I at once. 'And guides are scarce just now, for the people are afraid of Pelée. Still, he's an old patron,' I said to Soronia. 'He cannot go to the mountain without a guide, so I shall do this little thing for him. He must have our Jacques.'"
Charter drew him away. He did not care to have it known at thePalmsthat he was projecting a trip to the summit. Perhaps the inscrutable Pere Rabeaut was conferring a considerable favor. It was arranged that if he decided to make the journey, the American should call at the wine-shop for Jacques early the following morning. Pere Rabeaut left him none the poorer for his queer errand.
Charter avoided Miss Wyndam for the rest of the day. Beyond all the words of their little talk, had come to him a fullness of womanhood quite beyond the dreamer. As he remembered the lustrous face, the completion of his sentences, the mutual sustaining of their thoughts, their steady, tireless ascent beyond the need of words; as he remembered her calms, and the glimpses of cosmic consciousness, her grasp, her expression, her silences, the exquisite refinement of her face, and the lingering adoration in her eyes—the ideal of the Skylark was so clearly and marvellously personified that for moments at a time the vision was lost in the living woman. And for this, Quentin Charter proposed to suffer—and to suffer alone.
So he supped down-town, and waited for Father Fontanel at the parish-house. The priest came in during the evening and Charter saw at once, what the other never could have admitted, that the last few days had borne the good man to the uttermost edges of his frail vitality. Under the lamp, the beautiful old face had the whiteness of that virgin wax of Italian hives in which the young queens lie until the hour of awakening. The tired, smiling eyes, deeply shadowed under a brow that was blest, gazed upon the young man with a light in his eyes not reflected from the lamp, but from his great love—in that pure fatherhood of celibacy....
"Ah, no, I'm not weary, my son. We must have our walks and talks together on theMorneagain.... When old Father Pelée rests once more from his travail, and the people are happy again, you and I shall walk under the stars, and you shall tell me of those glorious saints, who felt in the presence of God that they must put such violent constraint upon themselves.... When I think of my suffering people—it comes to me that the white ship was sent like a good angel—and how I thank that noble lady for taking me at once to this great rock of an American, who bluffs me about so cheerily and grants all things before they are asked. What wonderful people you are from America! But it is always so—always these good things come to me. Indeed, I am very grateful.... Weary?—what a poor old man I should be to fall weary in the midst of such helpers...."
Charter sat down beside him under the lamp and told him what an arena his mind had become for conflict between a woman and a vision. Even with the writer's trained designing, the tale drew out with an oriental patience of weaving and coloring. Charter had felt a woman's need for the ease of disclosure, and indeed there was no other man whom he would have told. He had a thought, too, that if by any chance Pelée should intervene—both the woman and the Skylark might learn. He did not tell of his plan to go to the mountain—lest he be dissuaded. In his mind the following day was set apart—as a sort of pilgrimage sacred to Skylark.
"Old Pelée has shadowed my mind," Father Fontanel said, when the story was done. "I see him before and between all things, but I shall meditate and tell you what seems best in my sight. Only this, my son, you may know, that when first the noble lady filled my eyes—I felt you near her—as if she had come to me from you, whom I always loved to remember."
Charter bowed and went his way, troubled by the shadow of Pelée in the holy man's mind; and yet glad, too, that the priest had felt him near when he first saw Miss Wyndam. It was late when he reached thePalmsyet sleeplessness ranged through his mind, and he did not soon go to his room. The house and grounds were all his own. He paced the veranda, the garden paths and drives; crossed the shadowy lawns, brooded upon the rumbling mountain and the foggy moon high in the south.... At the side of the great house to the north, there was a trellis heavily burdened with lianas. Within, he found the orifice of an old cistern, partially covered by unfixed planking. A startling thought caused him to wonder why he had not explored the place before. The moonlight, faint at best, gave but ghostly light through the foliage, yet he kicked away a board and lit a match. A heavy wooden bar crossed the rim and was set stoutly in the masonry. His mind keenly grasped each detail at the exterior. A rusty chain depended from the thick cross-piece. He dropped several ignited matches into the chamber. Slabs of stone from the side-walls had fallen into the cistern, which seemed to contain little or no water.... From one of the native cabins came the sound of a dog barking. A shutter clicked in one of the upper windows of the plantation-house.
Charter left thePalmsearly to join his guide at the wine-shop. He had kept apart from Peter Stock for two reasons. The old capitalist easily could have been tempted to accompany him. Personally, Charter did not consider a strong element of danger, and a glimpse into the volcano's mouth would give him a grasp and handling of the throes of a sick world, around which all natural phenomena would assume thereafter an admirable repression. To Peter Stock it would be an adventure, merely. More than all this, he wanted to go to the mountain alone. It was the Skylark's day; and for this reason, he hurried out of thePalmsand down to the city without breakfast.... A last look from theMorne, as it dipped into theRue Victor Hugo—at a certain upper window of the plantation-house, where it seemed he was leaving all the bright valiant prodigies of the future. He turned resolutely toward Pelée—but the Skylark's song grew fainterbehind.
Pere Rabeaut's interest in the venture continued to delight him. Procuring a companion was no common favor, since inquiries in the town proved that the regular guides were in abject dread of approaching the Monster now. Soronia, Pere Rabeaut, and his new servant awaited him in theRue Rivoli. The latter was a huge Creole, of gloomy visage. They would not find any one to accompany them in the lower part of the city, he said, as the fear there was greater than ever since the Guerin disaster. In Morne Rouge, however, they would doubtless be able to procure mules, food, and other servants if necessary, for a day's trip to the craters. All of which appeared reasonable to Charter, though he wondered again at the vital interest of Pere Rabeaut, and the general tension of the starting.
The two passed down through the city, and into the crowd of the market-place, where a blithesome little drama unfolded. Peter Stock had apparently been talking to the people about their volcano, urging them, no doubt, to take the advice of Father Fontanel and flee to Fort de France, when he had perceived M. Mondet passing in his carriage. Charter saw his friend dart quickly from the crowd and seize the bridle. Despite the protestations of the driver, the capitalist drew the vehicle into view of all. His face was red with the heat and ashine with laughter and perspiration. Alarm and merriment mingled in the native throng. All eyes followed the towering figure of the American who now swung open the door of the carriage and bowed low to M. Mondet.
"This, dear friends," Peter Stock announced, as one would produce a rabbit from a silk hat,—"this, you all perceive, is your little editor ofLes Colonies. Is he not bright and clean and pretty? He is very fond of American humor. See how the little editor laughs!"
M. Mondet's smile was yellowish-gray and of sickly contour. His article relative to the American appealed to him now entirely stripped of the humor with which it was fraught a few days before, as he had composed it in the inner of inner-offices. This demon of crackling French and restless hands would stop at nothing. M. Mondet pictured himself being picked up for dead presently. As the blow did not fall on the instant, the sorry thought tried him that he was to be played with before being dispatched.
"This is the man who tells you that Saint Pierre is in no danger—who scoffs at those who have already gone—who inquires in his paper, 'Where on the Island could a more secure place than Saint Pierre be found in the event of an earthquake visitation?' M. Mondet advises us to flee with all dispatch to the live craters of a volcano to escape his hypothetical earthquake." Peter Stock was now holding up the Frenchman's arm, as a referee upraises the whip of a winning fighter. "He says there's no more peril from Pelée than from an old man shaking ashes out of his pipe. I proposed to wager my ship against M. Mondet's rolled-top desk that he was wrong, but there was a difficulty in the way. Do you not see, my friends of Saint Pierre, that, if I won the wager, I should not be able to distinguish between M. Mondet's rolled-top desk and M. Mondet's cigarette case in the ruins of the city——"
There had been a steady growling from the mountain.
"Ah!" Stock exclaimed after a pause, "Pelée speaks again! 'I will repay—verily, I will repay!' growls the Monster. Let it be so, then, friends of mine. I will turn over my little account to the big fire-eater yonder who will collect all debts. I tell you, we who tarry too long will be buying political extras and last editions in hell from this bit of a newspaper man!"
Charter laughingly turned away to avoid being seen, just as M. Mondet was chucked like a large, soft bundle into the seat of his carriage and the door slammed forcibly, corking whatever wrath appertained. In any of the red-blooded zones, a foreigner who performed such antics at the expense of a portly and respected citizen would have encountered a quietus quick and blasting, but the people of Martinique are not swift to anger nor forward in reprisal.
Charter's physical energy was imperious, but the numbness of his scalp was a pregnant warning against the perils of heat. There were moments in which his mind moved in a light, irresponsible fashion, as if obsessed at quick intervals, one after another, by mad kings who dared anything, and whom no one dared refuse. Somehow his brain contrived with striking artifices to keep the Wyndam-Skylark conflict in the background; yet, as often as he became aware of old Vulcan muttering his agonies ahead, just so often did the reality rise that the meaning and direction of his life was gone, if he was not to see again the woman at thePalms.
Jacques, his guide, followed in sullen silence. They crossed the Roxelane, and presently were ascending toward Morne Rouge. Saint Pierre was just still enough now to act like a vast sounding-board. Remote voices reached them, even from the harbor-front to the left, and from shut shops everywhere.... It was nearly mid-day, when he rode out from Morne Rouge, with three more companions.
The ash-hung valley was far behind, and Charter drank deeply of the clean, east wind from the Atlantic. There was a rush of bitterness, too, because the woman was not there to share these priceless volumes of sunlit vitality. All the impetus of enterprise was needed now to turn the point of conflict, and force it into the background again.... They pushed through Ajoupa Boullion to the gorge of the Falaise, the northward bank of which marked the trail which Jacques chose to the summit.
And now they moved upward in the midst of the old glory of Martinique. The brisk Trades blowing evenly in the heights, wiped the eastern slope of the mountain clear of stone-dust and whipped the blasts of sulphur down into the valley toward the shore. Green lakes of cane filled the valleys behind, and groves of cocoa-palms, so distant and so orderly that they looked like a city garden set with hen and chickens.... Northward, through the rifts, glistened the sea, steel-blue and cool. Before them rose the vast, green-clad mass of the mountain, its corona dim with smoke and lashed by storm. Down in the southwest lay the ghastly pall, the hidden, tortured city, tranced under the cobra-head of the volcano and already laved in its poison.
The trail became very steep at two thousand feet, and this fact, together with the back-thresh of the summit disturbance, forced Charter to abandon the animals. It transpired that two of the three later guides felt it their duty, at this point, to stay behind with the mules. A little later, when the growling from the prone, upturned face of the Monster suddenly arose to a roar that twisted the flesh and outraged the senses of man, Charter looked back and found that only one native was faltering behind, instead of two. And this one was Jacques, of the savage eyes. Pere Rabeaut was praised again.
Fascination for the dying Thing took hold of him now and drew him on. Charter was little conscious of fear for his life, but of a fixed terror lest he should be unable to go on. He found himself tearing up a handkerchief and stuffing the shreds in his ears to deaden the hideous vibrations. With the linen remaining, he filled his mouth, shutting his jaws together upon it, as the wheels of a wagon are blocked on an incline.
The titanic disorder placated his own. He became unconscious of passing time. From the contour of the slope, remembered from a past visit, he was aware of nearing theLac des Palmists, which marked the summit-level. Yet changes, violent changes, were everywhere evidenced. The shoulder of the mountain was smeared with a crust of ash and seamed with fresh scars. The crust was made by the dry, whirling winds playing upon the paste formed of stone-dust and condensed steam. The clicking whir, like a clap of wings, heard at intervals, accounted for the scars. Bombs of rock were being hurled from the great tubes. Here he shouted to Jacques to stay behind; that he would be back in a few moments. There was a nod of assent from the evil head.
That he was in the range of a raking volcano-fire impressed with a sort of laughing awe this ant clinging to the beard of a giant. Up, knees and hands, now, he crawled—up over the throbbing chin, to the black, pounded lip of the Monster. Out of the old lake coiled the furious tower of steam and rock-dust which mushroomed in high heaven, like a primal nebula from which worlds are made. It was this which fell upon the city. Pockets of gas exploded in the heights, rending the periphery, as the veil of the temple was rent. Only this horrible torrent spreading over Saint Pierre to witness, but sounds not meant for the ear of man, sounds which seemed to saw his skull in twain—the thundering engines of a planet.
The rocky rim of the lake was hot to his hands and knees, but a moment more he lingered. A thought in his brain held him there with thrilling bands. It was only a plaything of mind—a vagary of altitude and immensity. "Did ever the body of a man clog the crater of a live volcano?" was his irreverent query. "Did ever suicidal genius conceive of corrupting such majesty of force with his pygmy purpose?"
There he lay, sprawled at the edge of the universal mystery, at the secret-entrance to the chamber of earth's dynamos. The edge of the pit shook with the frightful work going on below, yet he was not slain. The torrent burst past and upward with a southward inclination, clean as a missing bullet. The bombs of rock canted out from sheer weight and fell behind. That which he comprehended—although his eyes saw only the gray, thundering cataclysm—was never before imagined in the mind of man.
The gray blackened. The roar dwindled, and his senses reeled. With a rush of saliva, the linen dropped from his open mouth. Charter was sure there was a gaping cleft in his skull, for he could feel the air blowing in and out, cold and colder. He tried to lift his hands to cover the sensitive wound, but they groped in vain for his head. With the icy draughts of air, he seemed to hear faintly his name falling upon bare ganglia. For a second he feared that the lower part of his body would not respond; that he was uncoupled like a beast whose spine is broken.... It was only a momentary overcoming of the gas, or altitude, or the dreadful disorder, or all three. Yet he knew how he must turn back if he lived.... His name was called again. He thought it was the Reaper, calling forth his ghost.
"Quentin Charter! Quentin Charter!"
Then he saw the Wyndam woman on the veranda of thePalms, her face white with agony, her eyes straining toward him.... Turning hastily—he missed death in a savage, sordid reality. Jacques had crept upon him, a maniac in his eyes, dog's slaver on his lips. A rock twice as large as his head was upraised in both arms. With a muscular spasm one knows in a dream, Charter's whole body united in a spring to the side—escaping the rock. Jacques turned and fled like a goat, leaping from level to level.
Charter managed to follow. He felt weak and ill for the time, as though Pelée had punished him for peering into matters which Nature does not thank man for endeavoring to understand.... The three natives pressed about him far down on the slope. Jacques had vanished. The sun was sinking seaward. Charter mounted his mule, turning the recent incident over in his mind for the manieth time. His first thought had been that the indescribable gripping of the mountain had turned mad a decent servant, but this did not stand when he recalled how Pere Rabeaut had importuned him to accept Jacques, and how the latter had fled from hisfailure. Yet, so far as he could see, there was no reason in the world why a conspiracy to murder him should have origin in the little wine-shop ofRue Rivoli. It was all baffling even at first, that a rock had been chosen, when a knife or a pistol would have been effective. This latter, he explained presently. There was a possibility of his body being found; a smashed head would fall to the blame ofPere Pelée, who was casting bombs of rock upon the slopes; while a knife or a bullet-wound on his body would start the hounds indeed.
He rode down the winding trail apart from the guides. Darkness was beginning, and the lights of Ajoupa Boullion showed ahead. The mountain carried on a frightful drumming behind. Coiling masses of volcanic spume, miles above the craters, generated their own fire; and lit in the flashes, looked like billows of boiling steel. Charter rode upon sheer nerve—nerve at which men had often wondered. At length a full-rigged thought sprang into his mind, which had known but the passing of hopeless derelicts since the first moment of descent. It was she who had called to save him. The woman of flesh had become a vision indeed. The little Island mule felt the heel that moment.... Charter turned back to the red moiled sky—a rolling, roaring Hades in the North.
"I can't help it, Skylark," he murmured, "if youwillmerge into this woman. She may never know that a man fled from her to the mountain to-day, and is hurrying back—as to the source of all beauty!... Charter, Charter, your thoughts are boiling over——"
He rode into the streets of Morne Rouge, so over-crowded now with the frightened from the lower city, that many were huddled upon the highway where they would be forced to sleep. Here he paid the three guides, but retained his mule.... On the down trail again, he re-entered the bank of falling ash and the sulphurous desolation. Evil as it was, the taint brought a sense of proximity to theMorneand thePalms. Saint Pierre was dark and harrowingly still under the throbbing volcano. The hoof-beats of the mule were muffled in ash, as if he pounded along a sandy beach. Often a rousing fetor reached the nostrils of the rider, above the drying, cutting vapor from Pelée, and the little beast shied and snorted at untoward humps on the highway. War and pestilence, seemingly, had stalked through Saint Pierre that day and a winter storm had tried to cover the aftermath.... He passed throughRue Rivoli, but was far too eager to reach thePalmsto stop at the wine-shop. The ugly mystery there could be penetrated afterward. Downward, he turned toward the next terrace, where the solitary figure of a woman confronted him.
"Mr. Charter!" she cried. "And—you are able to ride?"
"Why, what do you mean, Miss Wyndam?" he said, swiftly dismounting. "What are you doing 'way up here alone—in this dreadful suffocation?"
"I was looking for a little stone wine-shop——" She checked herself, a scroll of horrors spreading open in her brain.
"It's just a little way back," he said, in a repressed tone. "I have an errand there, too. Shall I show you?"
"No," she answered shuddering. "I'll walk with you back to thePalms. I must think.... Oh, let us hurry!"
He lifted her to the saddle, and took the bridle-rein.
Peter Stock was abroad in thePalmsshortly after Charter left for the wine-shop to join Jacques, for the day's trip. The absence of the younger man reminded him of the project Charter had twice mentioned in the wine-shop.
"I can't quite understand it," he said to Miss Wyndam as he started for the city, "if he really has gone to the craters. He had me thinking it over—about going along. Why should he rush off alone? I tell you, it's not like him. The boy's troubled—got some of the groan-stuff of Pelée in his vitals."
The day began badly for Paula. Her mind assumed the old dread receptivity which the occultist had found to his advantage; terrors flocked in as the hours drew on. One pays for being responsive to the finer textures of life. Under the stimulus of heat, good steel becomes radiant with an activity destructive to itself, but quite as marvellous in its way as the starry heavens. What a superior and admirable endowment, this, though it consumes, compared to the dead asbestos-fabric which will not warm. Paula felt the city in her breast that day—the restless, fevered cries of children and the answering maternal anguish, the terror everywhere, even in bird-cries and limping animals—that cosmic sympathy.
She knew that Charter would not have rushed away to the mountain without a "good morning" for her, had she told him yesterday. She saw him turn upon theMorne, look steadily at her window, almost as if he saw the outline of her figure there—as the call went to him from her inner heart.... She had reconstructed his last week in New York, from the letter of Selma Cross and his own; and in her sight he had achieved a finer thing than any warrior who ever broadened the borders of his queen. Not a word from her; encountering a mysterious suspicion from Reifferscheid; avoiding Selma Cross by his word and her own; vanquishing, who may know how many devils of his own past; and then summoning the courage and gentleness to write such a letter as she had received—a letter sent out into the dark—this was loyalty and courage to woo the soul. With such a spirit, she could tramp the world's highway with bruised feet, but a singing heart.... And only such a spirit could be true to Skylark; for she knew as "Wyndam" she had quickened him for all time, though he ran from her—to commune with Pelée. She felt his strength—strength of man such as maidens dream of, and, maturing, put their dreams away.
"... as I sat by my study window, facing the East!" Well she knew those words from his letters; and they came to her now, from the talk of yesterday in the high light of an angelic visitation. Always in memory the dining-room at thePalmswould have an occult fragrance, for she saw his great love for Skylark there, as he spoke of "facing the East." How soon could she have told him after that, but for the evil old French face that drew him away.... "You deserve to suffer, Paula Linster," she whispered. "You let him go away,—without a tithe of your secret, or a morsel of your mercy."
Inevitable before such a conception of manhood—Paula feared her unworthiness. She saw herself back in New York, faltering under the power of Bellingham; swayed by those specialists, Reifferscheid in books, Madame Nestor in occultism; and, above all blame-worthily, by Selma Cross of the passions. She seemed always to have been listening. Selma Cross had been strong enough to destroy her Tower; and this, when the actress herself had been so little sure of her statements that she must needs call Charter to prove them. Nothing that she had done seemed to carry the stamina of decision.... So the self-arraignment thickened and tightened about her, until she cried out:
"But I would have told him yesterday—had not that old man called him away!"
Peter Stock returned at noon, imploring her to go out to the ship, for even on theMorne, Pelée had become a plague. He pointed out that she was practically alone in thePalms; that nearly all of Father Fontanel's parishioners had taken his word and left for Fort de France or Morne Rouge, at least; that he, Peter Stock, was a very old man who had earned the right to be fond of whom he pleased, and that it seriously injured an old man's health when he couldn't have his way.
"There are big reasons for me to stay here to-day—big only to me," she told him. "If I had known you for years, I couldn't be more assured of your kindness, nor more willing to avail myself of it, but please trust me to know best to-day. Possibly to-morrow."
So the American left her, complaining that she was quite as inscrutable as Charter.... An hour or more later, as she was watching the mountain from her room, a little black carriage stopped before the gate of thePalms, and Father Fontanel stepped slowly out. She hurried downstairs, met him at the door, and saw the rare old face in its great weariness.
"You have given too much strength to your work, Father," she said, putting her arm about him and helping him toward the sitting-room.
"I am quite well," he panted. "I was among my people in the city, when our amazing friend suddenly appeared with a carriage, bustled me in and sent me here, saying there were enough people in Saint Pierre who refused to obey him, and that he didn't propose that I should be one."
"I think he did very well," she answered, laughing. "What must it be down in the city—when we suffer so here? We cannot do without you——"
"But there is great work for me—the great work I have always asked for. Believe me, I do not suffer."
"One must not labor until he falls and dies, Father."
"If it be the will of the good God, 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 prone 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 assured her, drawing his hand across his brow in a troubled fashion. "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 Pelée'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 passed 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 inRue 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 theRue 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 gratitude in that Pelée had not murdered him.... TheRue Rivoliwas 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 whereRue Victor Hugobegan. 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....
Pelée, 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 fromRue Victor Hugointo 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 theRue 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 assurance 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 toRue 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. Pelée'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 wishing 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 furnishing 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 pass, 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 thePalms, 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 ship 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 thePalmsthat 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."
"Thank you.... You, too, are trembling with weariness. It would not do, not to go to Father Fontanel—would it?"
"No, no!"
At the hotel, Charter took a few moments to put on fresh clothing. Paula waited with Peter Stock on the lower floor until he appeared. The capitalist did not fail to see that they wanted a word together, and clattered forth to see the "pilot of his deep-sea hack."
"You'd better go aboard to-morrow morning," Charter said.
"Yes, to-morrow, possibly,—we shall know then. You will be here in the morning—the first thing in the morning?"
"Yes." There was a wonder-world of emotion in his word.
"And you will not go to the wine-shop, before you see me—in the morning?"
He shook his head. His inner life was facing the East, listening to a Skylark song.
"There is much to hear and say," she whispered unsteadily. "But go to Father Fontanel—or I—or you will not be in time! He must not die without seeing you—and take my love and reverence——"
They were looking into each other's eyes—without words.... Peter Stock returned from the veranda. Charter shivered slightly with the return to common consciousness, clenched his empty left hand where hers had been.
"The times are running close here," he whispered huskily. "Sometimes I forget that we've only just met. Father Fontanel alone could call me from here to-night. Somehow, I dread to leave you. You'll have to forgive me for saying it."
"Yes.... But in the morning—oh, come quickly.... Good-night."
She turned hastily to the staircase, and Charter's remarks as he rode townward with the other, were shirred, indeed....