CHARTER COMMUNES WITH THE WYNDAM WOMAN, AND CONFESSES THE GREAT TROUBLE
OF HIS HEART TO FATHER FONTANEL
"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 Pelee'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. The
_Saragossa_ takes 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 the _Saragossa_
is 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. "The
_I-am_ and the _You-are-not_ will 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 woman _conscious_ of 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
Pelee.
"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 Pelee.
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 the _Palms_
that 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 the _Morne_ again.... When old Father Pelee 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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 Pelee 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 the _Palms_
yet 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.