1
THE hard thing was to get Honolulu behind. The first seven days at
sea was like a voyage to another planet. Bellair could lose himself
in the universe, between the banging of the Chinese gongs that called
passengers willingly, for the most part, to meals on the British ship
_Suwarrow_.... They had crawled out of the harbour in the dusk, a
southwest wind waiting at the gate, like an eager lover for a maiden to
steal forth. She was in his arms shamelessly, before the dusk closed,
the voices from the land hardly yet having died away. Bellair watched
their meeting in the offing. The blusterer came head on; the _Suwarrow_
veered coquettishly and started to run, knowing him the swifter and
the stronger, as all woman-things love to know. Presently he had her,
and they made a night of it--the moon breaking out aghast from time
to time, above black and flying garments of cloud. Bellair enjoyed the
game, the funnels smoking the upper decks straight forward. They were
making a passage that night, in the southward lift of that lover.
He had found a little leaf of cigars in a German shop in Honolulu;
the same reminding him of Stackhouse. They were _Brills_, with a
Trichinopoli flavour, a wrapping from the States, the main filler
doubtless from the Island plantations. The German had talked of them
long, playing with the clotty little fellows in his hands, for they
were moist enough, not easily to be broken. “You sink your teeth in
one of these after a good dinner,” he said, “and if you do not enjoy
tobacco, it is because you have been smoking other plants. These are
made by a workman----”
Bellair smoked to the workman; also he smoked to Stackhouse. Something
kindly had come over him for the Animal. Lot & Company had helped him
to it.... Yes, he thought, the animal part is right enough. It is only
when the human adult consciousness turns predatory that the earth is
laid waste and the stars are fogged.... These were but back-flips
of Bellair’s mind. In the main he was held so furiously ahead, that
body and brain ached with the strain. As nearly as he could describe
from the sensation, there was a carbon-stick upstanding between his
diaphragm and his throat. Every time he thought of Auckland, it turned
hot.
... He knew better where to begin now. The beginning was not in New
York. The wallet was heavy upon him; he must not waste it; nor allow
it to waste itself through bad management. Auckland was a desirable
centre for the Stackhouse operations. He could travel forth from one
agency to another. The fundamental ideas of trade, together with large
knowledge of how trade should not be conducted, was his heritage from
Lot & Company. He would begin slowly and sincerely to work out his big
problems--holding the fruits loosely in his hands; ready to give them
up to another, if that other should appear; contenting himself only
with the simplest things; preparing always to be poorer, instead of
richer.... He would earn the right to be poor. The thought warmed him,
something of the natural strength of youth about it.
Standing out of the wind with an expensive cigar, a superb
course-dinner finished less than an hour back, Bellair smiled at the
ease of poverty, welcoming all the details of clean, austere denial.
Yet he was not so far from it as would appear. He had always taken
these matters of luxury and satiety with tentative grasp; even the
dinners of Stackhouse were but studies of life. His ideal was closely
adjusted to the Faraway Woman’s in these things. One of the dearest of
her sayings had to do with renting the two front rooms of the stone
cottage. Yet now he hoped furiously that she had not yet done so.
His thoughts turned again out among the Islands. He would meet the
agents of Stackhouse. They would be bewildered at first; they would
think he had come to peer and bite. He would lift and help and pass
on--making the circles again and again, gaining confidence, not saying
much. No, the thing he had in mind had little to do with words.... What
a masonry among men--here and there one giving his best secretly.
_No words about it._ Bellair halted and filled his lungs from the good
breeze. This thought had repeated itself like a certain bright pattern
through all the weave of his conception. It had a familiar look, and
a prod that startled him now. The whole meaning of it rushed home, so
that he laughed.
He had reached in his own way, the exact point that Fleury had set out
with. He was determined to act. He had ceased to talk.... Just then
looking up from his laughing reverie, he saw a star. It was ahead, not
high, very brilliant and golden. It had only escaped a moment between
the flying black figures of the night, but more brilliant for that. It
was vast and familiar--the meaning tried the throat and struck at his
heart with strange suffering.... Yes, the _Suwarrow_ was lifting the
southern stars. There could be no doubt. He had looked at that mighty
sun too often from the open boat to mistake. Fleury had said if it were
as near to earth as our sun, this little planet would be dried to a
cinder in ten seconds. It was the great golden ball, _Canopus_.... A
hand was placed softly in his. Bellair was startled. He had been far
away, yet the gladness was instant, as he turned down to the face of
Davy Acton.
“She’s better,” the boy said. “I’ve been trying to get her to come up
on deck. She told me to ask you, if you thought it best.”
“Sure, Davy--I’ll go with you to get her.”
2
He had seen very little of Mrs. Acton during the voyage. Sailing was
not her feat, but the lady was winsome after her fast. Bellair had
found her very brave, and there had not been such an opportunity to
tell her so, as this night. He wanted enough light to see her face, and
enough air to keep her above any qualm. They found a cane-table, on the
lee-side, toward America, the light of a cabin passage upon it. Bellair
ordered an innocuous drink for Davy and himself, and whispered along a
pint of champagne, having heard it spoken well of as an antidote for
those emerging from the sickness of the sea.
“... It’s a little charged, cidery sort of a drink--just made for
people convalescent from the first days out of ’Frisco,” he said.
She drank with serene confidence, and leaned back to regard the glass
and the two.
“It’s not unlike a wine I drank long ago,” she observed, and her eyes
warmed with the memory.
“A wine?” he said.
“Just so, but it’s no crutch for the poor, I should say, by the way it
comes----”
She pointed to the service-tub, which, unfortunately, was of silver.
“They like to keep it cold,” Bellair suggested.
“It would need ice to keep that cold,” she replied.
There was a lyrical lilt to her words that he had not known before; in
fact he hadn’t quite known Mrs. Acton before. She was lifted from the
stratum of the submerged. She had her hands, her health, and the days
now and ahead were novel in aspect. A little seasickness was nothing
to one who had met the City, and for years prevented it from taking
her boy. The heart for adventure was not dead within her.... In fact,
Bellair, surveying the little plump white creature in new black, with
a sparkle in her eye, her hand upon the thin stem of a glass, entered
upon a pleasant passage.
“You see, Mrs. Acton--I’ve been struck ever since we sailed by the
courage you showed in crossing the world like this, at the word from a
stranger----”
“Stranger,” she repeated.
“I wanted you to take me up on that, but the fact is, you came at my
word.”
“’Twas not much I had to leave----”
“I liked it better than the hotel.”
“Do you know, Mr. Bellair, I never gave up the hope of travel--a bit of
travel before I passed? But I thought it would be alone from Davy----”
Her eyes glistened.
Bellair was wondering if there were others in that tenement-house who
had kept a hope.
“You know,” he said, “when I decided to ask you to come--because I was
far from finished with our lad--I anticipated that it would be somewhat
of a struggle. I saw how hard it was for you at first--the night we
told you about his loss of a place----”
“We were on the edge so long--the least bump ready to push us over,”
she murmured.
“I made a little arrangement with the express company to furnish you
with a return ticket--you and Davy, or cheques to secure them, and
enough beside to get you back to New York at any time----”
Her eyes widened. She turned to her boy to see if he were in this great
business. Wonders had not ceased for him, since the first evening at
the hotel. Davy was intent upon her now, even more than upon his friend.
“So I had it all fixed in your name. There’s an agency in Auckland--one
in every city--so you can’t go broke. And no one can cash these things
but you--after you call and register your signature. You’ll find enough
and to spare for your passage (though I hope you won’t use it for many
a year), and expenses for you and the boy----”
There were tears in her eyes. Bellair poured her wineglass full in the
excitement.
“You didn’t need to do anything like that----”
“That’s a point I am particularly proud of,” he answered.
“I’ll put this away for you,” she said, taking the proffered envelope.
The face of dusty wax-work sped past his inner eyes.
“It’s all one,” she added. “It’s easy for me to say this, having
nothing but what you give me. Did you hear of the house where every one
put what they had in a basket hanging from the ceiling?”
“No,” he said.
“’Twas mainly empty. The poor are great-hearted, and those who have
nothing.... This, I’ll put in no basket, but the bank, and you’ll have
it when you get through giving away the rest. I’ll trust in the Lord,
sure, to take me home----”
“I haven’t been very successful in giving away much,” he said. “That’s
our problem down here among the Islands. Davy is to grow up and help
me. You are to help us. There is another to help us.”
Mrs. Acton finished her glass. “Is it as much as that, then?”
Davy was regarding her with fine pride in his eyes.
Bellair sent him to the cabin for a book that would be hard to find,
and turned to the boy’s mother:
“I’ve got something to say to you about Davy. I brought back a story
and a fortune from my other trip down here. The story was more
important by a whole lot. It changed everything for me. I thought I’d
only have to tell it, to change others. That didn’t work. But Davy
listened, and he wasn’t the same afterward.
“I didn’t understand him at first. I used to think when he didn’t
speak, he was bored. I used to think I had to entertain him, buy him
with gifts. But I was wrong. He was thinking things out for himself all
the time. He was puzzled at first why any one cared to be good to him
and be a friend to him--God, what a price the world must pay for making
boys as strange to kindness as that.... But this is what I want to say.
He believed in me long ago in Lot & Company’s. I succeeded in making
him believe in me again. And because he believed in me, he believed in
my story, and when he heard that--he wasn’t the same afterward.
“I tell you, boys are full of wonderful things, but the world has shut
the door on them. All we’ve got to do is to be patient and kind and
keep the door open, and we’ll have human heroes about us presently,
instead of wolves and foxes and parrots and apes.... I learned that
from Davy Acton. After he accepted me, he got my story--and that showed
me that my work is with boys, and that first I’ve got to make them
believe in me. I’ve got to be the kind of a man to win that. We’ll all
pull together--you and Davy and that other and I.
“I’m going to help Davy, and I’m going to help boys. They’re not set.
They change. They are open to dreams and ready for action. They can
forget themselves long enough to listen. The world has treated them
badly; the world has been a stupid fool in bringing up its children.
Why, it’s half luck if we manage to amount to anything! I think I know
now how to do better. I’m going to try. Why, I’d spend five years and
all I have to give one boy his big, deep chance of being as human as
God intended. I’ll help boys to find their work, show them how to be
clean and fit and strong. I’ll show them that _getting_ is but an
incident, and when carried too far becomes the crime and the hell of
the world.... He’s coming back--and he’s found the book, too. I must
use it----”
He had told his story in a kind of gust, and the little woman had
listened like a sensitive-plate, her eyes brimming, her son moving
higher and higher in a future that was safe and green and pure.... It
had come out at last for Bellair. He was happy, for he knew that this
which had been born to-night, with the help of the mother’s listening,
was the right good thing--the thing that had come home from hard
experience to the heart of a simple man.
“Davy,” he said, “I’ve got a suspicion that your mother could eat
something. Call a steward, lad.”
She started and fumbled for her handkerchief.
“Do you know--that is--I might try a bite, Mr. Bellair----”
The man was smiling. Davy returned and sat down wonderingly between
them. His mother kept her mouth covered, but her eyes were wells of joy.
“I don’t know whether it’s that cider that needs keeping so cold,” she
began steadily, “or this which Mr. Bellair has been saying, but the
truth is, Davy, I haven’t been so happy since a girl----”
“A little lunch will fix that,” Bellair suggested absently.
“If it will,” she returned, “tell the man that it’s nothing I wish for,
this night.”
3
Auckland passengers were not to be landed until the morning, but the
_Suwarrow_ sent one boat ashore that night. By some law unknown to the
outsider, a few top bags of mail were discriminately favoured, and they
were in the boat. The second officer, with a handful of telegrams to
be filed; a travelling salesman called home from the States on account
of family illness, also Bellair were in the boat. He had told Davy
and his mother that he was going to prepare a place for them; that he
would be back on the deck of the _Suwarrow_ before nine in the morning.
Because the little landing party was out of routine, an hour or more
was required for Bellair to obtain release to the streets. It was now
midnight.
Three months away, and there had been no word from the woman who had
remained. In fact, no arrangement for writing had been agreed upon,
except in case New York should hold him. He had never seen the writing
of the Faraway Woman.... He believed with profound conviction that
within an hour’s ride by trolley from the place in the street where
he moved so hastily now, there was a bluff, a stone cottage, a woman
waiting for him, and a child near her; that all was well with the two
and the place. Yet he lived and moved now in a wearing, driving terror.
All his large and little moments of the past three months passed before
him like dancers on a flash-lit stage, some beautiful, some false and
ugly, but each calling his eyes, something of his own upon them.
The world had shown him well that man is not ready for joy when he
fears, yet Bellair was afraid. Man deserves that which he complains of.
Still, he was afraid. He was exultant, too. Cities might change and
nations and laws, but not that woman’s heart. He did not believe she
could love him, but he knew of her fondness hoped for that again. She
was in a safe place--as any place in the world is safe. She was well,
with a health he had never known in another, and the child was flesh
of her. Yet he feared, his heart too full to speak. He did not deserve
her, but he hoped for the miracle, hoped that the driving laws of the
human heart might be merciful, hoped for her fondness again.
He would stand before her at his worst--all weakness and commonness
of the man, Bellair, open before her. Perhaps she would see his love
because of that, but he would not be able to tell her. Never could he
ask for her. If it were made known, it would not be through words. It
could only come from him in a kind of delirium. _He_ must be carried
away, a passion must take him out of self. Very far he seemed from
passion; rather this was like a child in his heart, with gifts, deep
and changeless, but inarticulate, as a child is. It had been long in
coming, quietly fulfilling itself, and this was the rising.
... The last car was gone, but he found a carriage--an open carriage, a
slow horse, a cool and starry night. The city was growing silent, the
edges darkened. There were high trees, a homing touch about them after
the sea, and a glimpse of the harbour to the left. Bellair had not even
a bag with him. He would take off his hat for a way, and then put it
on again. Sometimes he would let his ungloved hand hang overside, as
one would do in a small boat. There was a leathery smell from the seat
of the carriage, with a bit of stable flavour, that would get into a
man’s clothes if he stayed long enough. It was dusty, too, something
like a tight room full of old leather-bound books.
The horse plumped along, a little lurch forward at every fourth beat.
Hunched and wrapped, the driver sat, and extraordinarily still--a man
used to sitting, who gave himself utterly to it, a most spineless and
sunken manner. Every little while he coughed, and every little while
he spat.... Once they passed a motor-car--two men and a girl laughing
between them; then the interurban trolley going back--the car he had
missed. His heart thumped. It was the same car that he had known, the
same tracks, no upheaval of the earth here so far.
Meanwhile, Bellair was rounding the Horn in the _Jade_; they struck
rock or derelict, were lost for ages in an open boat; they came to
Auckland and found a little stone house on the bluff, paused there....
He was away at sea again, from Auckland to ’Frisco, across the States,
to _Brandt’s_, to _Pastern’s_, to Lot & Company’s and the tenements,
to the _Castle_ and the Landlady’s House; then trains and the long
southern sweep of the _Suwarrow_, down the great sea again to this
... plumping along on the high, rocky shore. The brine came up to him,
almost as from the open boat. His eyes smarted, his throat was dry, and
the driver coughed.
Bellair had paper money in his hand. He meant to look at it under the
carriage-light, when he stepped forth near the Gate. He leaned forward
and touched the great coat.
“_Whoa_,” said the man, loud enough to rouse the seven sleepers, and
the horse came up with a teeter.
“Don’t stop,” said Bellair. “It’s a little ahead yet. I’ll tell you
when to stop.... Yes, let him walk----”
Now, Bellair surveyed what he had said. He was like that, just about as
coherent as that. The _whoa_ had shaken him empty for the most part....
He would not know what to say to her. He would sit or stand like a fool
and grin.... But she was great-hearted. She would help him.... Awe and
silence crept into him again.
“Now, pull up----”
“_Whoa_,” was the answer, shaking the trees.
“There, that will do,” Bellair said tensely. He stepped out and passed
over the money, forgetting to look at it. He was afraid the man would
roar again.
It was nearer than he thought, but a step to the Gate; its latch lifted
softly and he crossed the gravel, held by the voice of the rig turning
behind. It turned slowly as a ship in a small berth, and the voice
carried like the cackle of geese.... There was no light. He was on the
step. Something sweet was growing at the door.... Something brushed
him at his feet. He leaned down in the darkness, and touched the
tabby-puss, knocked softly.
“Yes----” came from within.
“It is I, Bellair----”
The door was opened to absolute blackness. She was not in his arms.
Rather he was in her arms. She seemed to tower above him. Around was
the softness and fragrance of her arms and her breast.... Not the
cottage--her arms made the home of man. She held him from her, left him
standing bewildered in the centre of the room. He heard her match, and
her voice like a sigh, trailing to him almost like a spirit-thing:
“Oh,--I--am--so--happy!”
The lamp was lit, but she left it in the alcove, came to him again, a
shawl about her. Lights were playing upon his shut eye-lids, fulfilment
in his arms that a man can only know when he has crossed the world to a
woman, not a maiden; a plenitude that a maiden cannot give.
And now she brought the light, and looked into his face--her own
gleaming behind it, full of rapture, the face of a love-woman, some
inspired training of the centuries upon it, all the mystery and
delicacy for a man’s eyes that he can endure and live....
“What is it?”
He could only look at her.
“What is it?” more softly.
As if the thing had been left over in his mind, and required clearing
away, he answered:
“Are--are the rooms rented?”
She laughed, came closer than the light.
“We are alone--only the child. I could not let any one come--the rooms
seemed yours.... I thought you would come. It was time enough to change
when I heard from you----”
“The little Gleam----”
“Yes, he is here.... Oh, did you know what it meant to us--when you
went away?”
“I knew what it meant to me----”
“After the open boat and the days together here--you knew all?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it would be easier.... And you are changed! You are like a
man who has found his Quest.”
She was about him like magic. They were moving toward the little room.
She stopped and put the lamp back in the alcove.
“We will not take it in there. It would wake him.”
... It was dark upon the threshold. She took his hand. He heard her
heart beating, or was it his own?... They heard the little breathing.
She guided his hand to the warm little hand.
“Yes, he is well,” she whispered. “Everything is perfect with your
coming.... There.... You hurried home to me, didn’t you?... Yes, I
hoped. I felt the ship. I could not sleep. I wondered if I could be
wrong.... Oh, to think of the dawn coming in--finding us here together
... and the little Gleam....”
* * * * *
Gray light was coming in. Her face was shadowed, but the gray was
faint about her hair. His heart had taken something perfect from her;
something of the nature of that peace which had come to him at the
_Jade’s_ rail crossing the Line, but greater than that, the fulfilment
of that. Because it was perfect, it could not last in its fulness.
That was the coolness of the Hills, but his love was glowing now like
noon sunlight in a valley, the redolence of high sunlight in the river
lowlands. Mother Earth had taken them again.
It was the tide of life; it was as she had told him it must be with
her, akin to the loveliest processes of nature, like the gilding of a
tea-rose, like the flight of swans. He watched her as the dawn rose, as
a woman is only to be seen in her own room; watched her without words,
until from the concentration, that which had been bound floated free
within him.... A sentence she had spoken (it may have been an hour, or
a moment ago) returned to his consciousness. “Oh, how I wanted you to
come home to-night!”
His mind was full of pictures and power. It may have been the
strangeness of the light, but his eyes could not hold her face, nor
his mind remember the face that had welcomed him in the lamplight.
Different faces moved before his eyes, a deep likeness in the plan of
them, as pearls would be sorted and matched for one string, a wonderful
sisterhood of faces, tenderness, fortitude, ardour, joy, renunciation.
It was like a stroke. He had loved them all--facets of one jewel. And
was the jewel her soul?
He arose, without turning from her, and moved to the far corner of the
room, where there was neither chair nor table. As he moved, he watched
her with tireless thirsting eyes.
She arose and came to him, moving low.... This figure that came,
thrilled him again with the old magic of the river-banks. He could not
pass the wonder of her crossing the room to follow him.... And now he
saw her lips in the light--a girl’s shyness about her lips. She was a
girl that instant--as if a veil had dropped behind her. It had never
been so before--a woman always, wise and finished with years, compared
to whom that other was a child. And yet she was little older than
that other--in years. He loved the shyness of her lips. It was like
one familiar bloom in the midst of exotic wonders. It seemed he would
fall--before she touched him.
She was low in his arms, as if her knees were bent, as if she would
make herself less for her lord.... And something in that, even as he
held her, opened the long low roads of the past--glimpses from that
surging mystery behind us all--as if they had sinned and expiated and
aspired together.
“... That you would come to me----” he whispered.
“I have wanted to come to you so long.”
“I thought--I could not tell you--I thought I would stand helpless
without words before you. Why, everything I thought was wrong. I can
tell you--but there is no need----”
“There is little need of words between us.”
... That which she wore upon her feet was heel-less, and all the cries
and calls and warnings and distances of the world were gone from
between them, as they stood together.... And once her arms left him and
were upheld, as if to receive a perfect gift. A woman could command
heaven with that gesture.
* * * * *
They had reached the end of the forest, and found the dawn. The sounds
of the world came back to them like an enchanter’s drone.
“Come,” she said, taking his hand, “it is day. We must return to the
village. And oh, to our little Gleam! He is awakening. He will speak
your name.”