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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.
TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
CHARTER MAKES A PILGRIMAGE TO THE CRATERS OF PELÉE—ONE LAST DAY DEVOTED TO THE SPIRIT OF OLD LETTERS
Charter left the Palms early 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 the Palms and down to the city without breakfast.... A last look from the Morne, as it dipped into the Rue 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 fainter behind.
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 the Rue 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 of Les 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 the Palms.
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 the Lac 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 the Palms, 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 his failure. 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 of Rue 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 of Pere 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 you will merge 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 the Morne and the Palms. 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 through Rue Rivoli, but was far too eager to reach the Palms to 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 the Palms. I must think.... Oh, let us hurry!"
He lifted her to the saddle, and took the bridle-rein.
TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
CHARTER AND STOCK ARE CALLED TO THE PRIEST'S HOUSE IN THE NIGHT, AND THE WYNDAM WOMAN STAYS AT THE PALMS
Peter Stock was abroad in the Palms shortly 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 the Morne, 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 the Palms would 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 the Morne, Pelée had become a plague. He pointed out that she was practically alone in the Palms; 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 the Palms, 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 in Rue Rivoli," she said swiftly, hatefully, as though she had been forced to carry the message, and would not utter a word more than necessary. "He has been hurt—we do not think seriously—but he wants you to come to him at once."
"Thank you. I will go to him at once," Paula said, turning to get her hat. "Pere Rabeaut's wine-shop in the Rue Rivoli?... You say he is not seriously hurt——"
She had not turned five seconds from the door, but the woman was gone. There was much that was strange in this; many thoughts occurred apart from the central idea of glad obedience, and the fullness of gratitude in that Pelée had not murdered him.... The Rue Rivoli was a street of the terraces, she ascertained on the lower floor; also that it would be impossible to procure a carriage. Mr. Stock had been forced to buy one outright, her informer added, and to use one of his sailors for a driver.... So she set out alone and on foot, hurrying along the sea-road toward the slope where Rue Victor Hugo began. The strangeness of it all persistently imposed upon her mind, but was unreckonable, compared to the thought that Quentin Charter would not have called for her, had he been able to come. From this, the fear of a more serious wound than the woman had said, was inevitable.
Paula had suffered enough from doubting; none should mar her performance now. Unerringly, the processes of mind throughout the day had borne her to such an action. She would have gone to any red-lit door of the torrid city.... Vivid terrors of some dreadful crippling accident hurried her steps into running....
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 from Rue Victor Hugo into the smothering climb to the terraces. All she could feel was a prayer that he might live; all the trials and conflicts and hopes of the past six months hovered afar from this, like navies crippled in the roadstead....
She must be near the Rue Rivoli, she thought, suddenly facing an empty cliff. It was at this moment that she heard the soft foot-falls of a little native mule, and encountered Quentin Charter....
Quickly out of the great gladness of the meeting arose the frightful possibilities from which she had just escaped. They were still too imminent to be banished from mind at once. Again Charter had saved her from the Destroyer. She would have wept, had she ventured to speak as he lifted her into the saddle. Charter was silent, too, for the time, trying to adjust and measure and proportion.
Constantly she kept her eyes upon him as he walked slightly ahead, for she needed this steady 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 to Rue Victor Hugo, when he said:
"As I looked down the fiery throat of that dragon up there to-day, everything grew black and still for a minute, like a vacuum.... Will you please tell me if I came back all right, or are we 'two hurrying shapes in twilight land—in no man's land?'"
His amusing appeal righted her. "I have not heard of donkey shapes in twilight-land," she answered.... And then in the new silence she tried to bring her thoughts to the point of revelation, but she needed light for that—light in which to watch his face. Moreover, revelations contained Bellingham, and she was not quite ready to speak of this. It was dreadful to be forced to think of the occultist, when her heart cried out for another moment such as that of yesterday, in which she could watch his eyes and whisper, "I am very proud to be the Skylark you treasure so...."
"Do you think it kind to frighten your friends?" she asked finally. "When they told me you had gone to the craters—it seemed such a reckless thing to do——"
"You see, I rode around behind the mountain. It's very different to approach from the north. I wished you were there with me in the clean air. 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 the Palms, hoping that you had returned, and learned that Miss Wyndam was mysteriously abroad. My idea is to make the good old man go out to the 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 the Palms that night.
"I'll go with you at once, but we must see Miss Wyndam safely back.... She'll be more comfortable in the carriage with you, and we can hurry," Charter declared.
He held his arms to her and lifted her down.
"How I pity you!" she whispered. "You are weary unto death, but I am so glad—so glad you are safely back from the mountain."
"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....
TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
HAVING TO DO ESPECIALLY WITH THE MORNING OF THE ASCENSION, WHEN THE MONSTER, PELÉE, GIVES BIRTH TO DEATH
The old servant met them at the door with uplifted finger. Father Fontanel was sleeping. They did not wish to disturb him but sat down to wait in the anteroom, which seemed to breathe of little tragedies of Saint Pierre. On one side of the room was the door that was never locked; on the other, the entrance to the sleeping-room of the priest. Thus he kept his ear to the city's pulse. Peter Stock drowsed in the suffocating air. Charter's mind slowly revolved and fitted to the great concept.... The woman was drawn to him, and there had been no need of words.... Each moment she was more wonderful and radiant. There had not been a glance, a word, a movement, a moment, a breath, an aspiration, a lift of brow or shoulder or thought, that had not more dearly charmed his conception of her triune beauty.
The day had left in his brain a crowd of unassimilated actions, and into this formless company came the thrilling mystery of his last moment with her—a shining cord of happiness for the labyrinth of the late days.... There had been so much beyond words between them—an overtone of singing. He had seen in her eyes all the eager treasure of brimming womanhood, rising to burst the bonds of repression for the first time. Dawn was a far voyage, but he settled himself to wait with the will of a weathered voyager whose heart feels the hungry arms upon the waiting shore.
The volcano lost its monstrous rhythm again, and was ripping forth irregular crashes. Father Fontanel awoke and the Rue Victor Hugo became alive with voices, aroused by the rattling in the throat of the mountain. Charter went into the room where the priest lay.
"Come, Father," he said, "We have waited long for you. I want you to go out to the ship for the rest of the night. You must breathe true air for an hour. Do this for me."
"Ah, my son!" the old man murmured, drawing Charter's head down to his breast. "My mind was clouded, and I could not see you clearly in the travail of yesterday."
"Many of your people are in Fort de France, Father," the young man added. "They will be glad to see you. Then you may come back here—even to-morrow, if you are stronger. Besides, the stalwart friend who has done so much for your people, wants you one night on his ship."
"Yes, my son.... I was waiting for you. I shall be glad to breathe the dawn at sea."
Peter Stock pressed Charter's hand as they led Father Fontanel forth. The mountain was quieter again. The bells of Saint Pierre rang the hour of two.... The three reached the Sugar Landing where the Saragossa's launch lay.
"Hello, Ernst," Stock called to his man. "I've kept you waiting long, but top-speed to the ship—deep water and ocean air!"
The launch sped across the smoky harbor, riding down little isles of flotsam, dead birds from the sky and nameless mysteries from the roiled bed of the harbor. The wind was hot in their faces, like a stoke-hold blast. Often they heard a hissing in the water, like the sound of a wet finger touching hot iron. A burning cinder fell upon Charter's hand, a messenger from Pelée. He could not feel fire that night.... He was living over that last moment with her—gazing into her eyes as one who seeks to penetrate the mystery of creation, as if it were any clearer in a woman's eyes than in a Nile night, a Venetian song, or in the flow of gasolene to the spark, which filled the contemplation of Ernst.... He remembered the swift intaking of her breath at the last, and knew that she was close to tears.
The launch was swinging around to the Saragossa's ladder. Father Fontanel had not spoken. Wherever the ship-lights fell, the sheeting of ash could be seen—upon mast and railing and plates. They helped the good man up the ladder, and Stock ordered Laird, his first officer, to steam out of the blizzard, a dozen miles if necessary. The anchor chain began to grind at once, and three minutes later, the Saragossa's screws were kicking the ugly harbor tide. Charter watched, strangely disconcerted, until only the dull red of Pelée pierced the thick veil behind. A star, and another, pricked the blue vault ahead, and the air blew in fragrant as wine from the rolling Caribbean, but each moment was an arraignment now.... He wanted none of the clean sea; and the mere fact that he would not rouse her before daylight, even if he were at the Palms, did not lessen the savage pressure of the time.... Father Fontanel would not sleep, but moved among his people on deck. The natives refused to stay below, now that the defiled harbor was behind. There was a humming of old French lullabies to the little ones. Cool air had brought back the songs of peace and summer to the lowly hearts. It was an hour before dawn, and the Saragossa was already putting back toward the roadstead, when Father Fontanel called Charter suddenly.
"Make haste and go to the woman, my son," he said strangely.
Charter could not answer. The priest had spoken little more than this, since they led him from the parish-house. The Saragossa crept into the edge of the smoke. The gray ghost of morning was stealing into the hateful haze. They found anchorage. The launch was in readiness below. It was not yet six. Ernst was off duty, and another sailor,—one whose room was prepared in the dim pavilion—waited at the tiller. Charter waved at the pale mute face of the priest, leaning overside, and the fog rushed in between.
The launch gained the inner harbor, and the white ships at anchor were vague as phantoms in the vapor—French steamers, Italian barques, and the smaller West Indian craft—all with their work to do and their way to win. Charter heard one officer shout to another a whimsical inquiry—if Saint Pierre were in her usual place or had switched sites with hell. The day was clearing rapidly, however, and before the launch reached shore, the haze so lifted that Pelée could be seen, floating a pennant of black out to sea. In the city, a large frame warehouse was ablaze. The tinder-dry structure was being destroyed with almost explosive speed.
A blistering heat rushed down from the expiring building to the edge of the land. Crowds watched the destruction. Many of the people were in holiday attire. This was the Day of Ascension, and Saint Pierre would shortly pray and praise at the cathedral; and at Notre Dame des Lourdes, where Father Fontanel would be missed quite the same as if they had taken the figure of Saint Anne from the altar.... Even now the cathedral bells were calling, and there was low laughter from a group of Creole maidens. Was it not good to live, since the sun was trying to shine again and the mountain did not answer the ringing of the bells? It was true that Pelée poured forth a black streamer with lightning in its folds; true that the people trod upon the hot, gray dust of the volcano's waste; that the heat was such as no man had ever felt before, and many sat in misery upon the ground; true, indeed, that voices of hysteria came from the hovels, and the weaker were dying too swiftly for the priests to attend them all—but the gala-spirit was not dead. The bells were calling, the mountain was still, bright dresses were abroad—for the torrid children of France must laugh.
A carriage was not procurable, so Charter fell in with the procession on the way to the cathedral. Many of the natives nodded to him; and may have wondered at the color in his skin, the fire in his eyes, and the glad ring of his voice. Standing for a moment before the church, he hurled over the little gathering the germ of flight; told them of the food and shelter in Fort de France, begged them laughingly to take their women and children out of this killing air.... It was nearly eight—eight on the morning of Ascension Day.... She would be ready. He hoped to find a carriage at the hotel.... At nine they would be in the launch again, speeding out toward the Saragossa.
Twenty times a minute she recurred to him as he walked. There was no waning nor wearing—save a wearing brighter, perhaps—of the images she had put in his mind. Palaces, gardens, treasure-houses—with the turn of every thought, new riches of possibility identified with her, were revealed. Thoughts of her, winged in and out his mind like bright birds that had a cote within—until he was lifted to heights of gladness which seemed to shatter the dome of human limitations—and leave him crown and shoulders emerged into illimitable ether.
The road up the Morne stretched blinding white before him. The sun was braver. Panting and spent not a little, he strode upward through the vicious pressure of heat, holding his helmet free from his head, that air might circulate under the rim. Upon the crest of the Morne, he perceived the gables of the old plantation-house, above the palms and mangoes, strangely yellowed in the ashen haze.
Pelée roared. Sullen and dreadful out of the silence voiced the Monster roused to his labor afresh. Charter darted a glance back at the darkening North, and began to run.... The crisis was not past; the holiday darkened. The ship would fill with refugees now, and the road to Fort de France turn black with flight. These were his thoughts as he ran.
The lights of the day burned out one by one. The crust of the earth stretched to a cracking tension. The air was beetling with strange concussions. In the clutch of realization, Charter turned one shining look toward the woman hurrying forward on the veranda of the Palms.... Detonations accumulated into the crash of a thousand navies.
She halted, her eyes fascinated, lost in the North. He caught her up like a child. Across the lawn, through the roaring black, he bore her, brushing her fingers and her fallen hair from his eyes. He reached the curbing of the old well with his burden, crawled over and caught the rusty chain. Incandescent tongues lapped the cistern's raised coping. There was a scream as from the souls of Night and Storm and Chaos triumphant—a mighty planetary madness—shocking magnitudes from the very core of sound! Air was sucked from the vault, from their ears and lungs by the shrieking vacuums, burned through the cushion of atmosphere by the league-long lanes of electric fire.... Running streams of red dust filtered down.
It was eight on the morning of Ascension Day. La Montagne Pelée was giving birth to death.
TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
THE SARAGOSSA ENCOUNTERS THE RAGING FIRE-MISTS FROM PELÉE EIGHT MILES AT SEA, BUT LIVES TO SEND A BOAT ASHORE
Peter Stock stared long into the faint film of smoke, until the launch bearing Charter ashore was lost in the shipping. The pale, winding sheet was unwrapped from the beauty of morning. There was an edging of rose and gold on the far dim hills. His eyes smarted from weariness, but his mind, like an automatic thing, swept around the great circle—from the ship to the city, to the plantation-house on the Morne and back to the ship again. He was sick of the shore, disgusted with people who would listen to M. Mondet and not to him. Miss Wyndam had refused him so often, that he was half afraid Charter would not be successful, but he was willing to wait two hours longer, for he liked the young woman immensely, liked her breeding and her brain.... He joined Laird, his first officer, on the bridge. The latter was scrutinizing through the glass a blotch of smoke on the city-front.
"What do you make of it, sir?" Laird asked.
The lenses brought to the owner a nucleus of red in the black bank. The rest of Saint Pierre was a gray, doll-settlement, set in the shelter of little gray hills. He could see the riven and castellated crest of Pelée weaving his black ribbon. It was all small, silent, and unearthly.
"That's a fire on the water-front," he said.
"That's what I made of it, sir," Laird responded.
Shortly afterward the trumpetings of the Monster began. The harbor grew yellowish-black. The shore crawled deeper into the shroud, and was lost altogether. The water took on a foul look, as if the bed of the sea were churned with some beastly passion. The anchor-chain grew taught, mysteriously strained, and banged a tattoo against its steel-bound eye. Blue Peter drooping at the foremast, livened suddenly into a spasm of writhing, like a hooked lizard. The black, quivering columns of smoke from the funnels were fanned down upon the deck, adding soot to the white smear from the volcano.
"Better get the natives below—squall coming!" Peter Stock said, in a low tone to Laird, and noted upon the quiet, serious face of this officer, as he obeyed, an expression quite new. It was the look of a man who sees the end, and does not wince.
The women wailed, as the sailors hurried them below and sealed the ways after them. A deep-sea language passed over the ship. There were running feet, bells below, muffled cries from the native-women, quick oaths from the sailors; and then, Peter Stock felt the iron-fingers of fear about his heart—not for himself and his ship eight miles at sea, but for his good young friend and for the woman who had refused to come.
A hot, fetid breath charged the air. The ship rose and settled like a feather in a breeze; in a queer light way, as though its element were heavily charged with air, the water danced, alive with the yeast of worlds. The disordered sky intoned violence. Pelée had set the foundations to trembling. A step upon the bridge-ladder caused the American to turn with a start. Father Fontanel was coming up.
"Oh, this won't do at all," Peter Stock cried in French. "We're going to catch hell up here, and you don't belong."
He dashed down the ladder, and led the old man swiftly back to the cabin, where he rushed to the ports and screwed them tight with lightning fingers, led the priest to a chair and locked it in its socket. Father Fontanel spoke for the first time.
"It's very good of you," he said dully, "but what of my people?"
Stock did not answer, but rushed forth. Six feet from the cabin-door, he met the fiery van of the cataclysm, and found strength to battle his way back into the cabin.... From out the shoreward darkness thundered vibrations which rendered soundless all that had passed before. Comets flashed by the port-holes. The Saragossa shuddered and fell to her starboard side.
Eight bells had just sounded when the great thunder rocked over the gray-black harbor, and the molten vitals of the Monster, wrapped in a black cloud, filled the heavens, gathered and plunged down upon the city and the sea. As for the ship, eight miles from the shore and twelve miles from the craters, she seemed to have fallen from a habitable planet into the firemist of an unfinished world. She heeled over like a biscuit-tin, dipping her bridge and gunwales. She was deluged by blasts of steam and molten stone. Her anchor-chain gave way, and, burning in a dozen places, she was sucked inshore.
Laird was on the bridge. Plass, the second officer, on his way to the bridge, to relieve or assist Laird as the bell struck, was felled at the door of the chart-room. A sailor trying to drag the body of Plass to shelter, was overpowered by the blizzard of steam, gas, and molten stone, falling across the body of his officer. The ship was rolling like a runaway-buoy.
Peter Stock had been hurled across the cabin, but clutched the chair in which the priest was sitting, and clung to an arm of it, pinning the other to his seat. Several moments may have passed before he regained his feet. Though badly burned, he felt pain only in his throat and lungs, from that awful, outer breath as he regained the cabin. Firebrands still screamed into the sea outside, but the Saragossa was steadying a trifle, and vague day returned. Stock was first to reach the deck, the woodwork of which was burning everywhere. He tried to shout, but his throat was closed by the hot dust. The body of a man was hanging over the railing of the bridge. It was Laird, with his face burned away. There were others fallen.
The shock of his burns and the terrible outer heat was beginning to overpower the commander when Pugh, the third officer, untouched by fire, appeared from below. In a horrid, tongueless way, Stock fired the other to act, and staggered back into the cabin. Pugh shrieked up the hands, and set to the fires and the ship's course. Out of two officers and three sailors on deck when Pelée struck, none had lived. Peter Stock owed his life to the mute and momentary appearance of Father Fontanel.
The screaming of the native-women reached his ears from the hold. Father Fontanel stared at him with the most pitiful eyes ever seen in child or woman. Black clouds were rolling out to sea. Deep thunder of a righteous source answered Pelée's lamentations. The sailors were fighting fire and carrying the dead. The thin shaken voice of Pugh came from the bridge. The engines were throbbing. Macready, Stock's personal servant, entered with a blast of heat.
"Thank God, you're alive, sir!" he said, with the little roll of Ireland on his tongue. "I was below, where better men were not.... Eight miles at sea—the long-armed divil av a mountain—what must the infightin' have been!"
Peter Stock beckoned him close and called huskily for lint and oils. Macready was back in a moment from the store-room, removed the cracked and twisted boots; cleansed the ashes from the face and ears of his chief; administered stimulant and talked incessantly.
"It's rainin' evenchooalities out.... Ha, thim burns is not so bad, though your shoes were pretty thin, an' the deck's smeared with red-hot paste. It's no bit of a geyser in a dirt-pile, sure, can tell Misther Stock whin to come and whin to go."
The cabin filled with the odor of burnt flesh as he stripped the coat from Stock's shoulder, where an incandescent pebble had fallen and burned through the cloth. Ointments and bandages were applied before the owner said:
"We must be getting pretty close in the harbor?"
This corked Macready's effervescence. Pugh had been putting the Saragossa out to sea, since he assumed control. It hadn't occurred to the little Irishman that Mr. Stock would put back into the harbor of an island freshly-exploded.
"I dunno, sir. It's hard to see for the rain."
"Go to the door and find out".
The rain fell in sheets. Big seas were driving past, and the steady beat of the engines was audible. There was no smoke, no familiar shadow of hills, but a leaden tumult of sky, and the rollers of open sea beaten by a cloudburst. The commander did not need to be told. It all came back to him—Laird's body hanging over the railing of the bridge; Plass down; Pugh, a new man, in command.
"Up to the bridge, Macready, and tell Pugh for me not to be in such a damned hurry—running away from a stricken town. Tell him to put back in the roadstead where we belong."
Macready was gone several moments, and reported, "Pugh says we're short-handed; that the ship's badly-charred, but worth savin'; in short, sir, that he's not takin' orders from no valet—meanin' me."
Nature was righting herself in the brain of the American, but the problems of time and space still were mountains to him. Macready saw the gray eye harden, and knew what the next words would be before they were spoken.
"Bring Pugh here!"
It was rather a sweet duty for Macready, whose colors had been lowered by the untried officer. The latter was in a funk, if ever a seaman had such a seizure. Pugh gave an order to the man at the wheel and followed the Irishman below, where he encountered the gray eye, and felt Macready behind him at the door.
"Turn back to harbor at once—full speed!"
Pugh hesitated, his small black eyes burning with terror.
"Turn back, I say! Get to hell out of here!"
"But a firefly couldn't live in there, sir——"
"Call two sailors, Macready!" Stock commanded, and when they came, added, "Put him in irons, you men!... Macready, help me to the bridge."
It was after eleven when the Saragossa regained the harbor. The terrific cloudburst had spent itself. Out from the land rolled an unctuous smudge, which bore suggestions of the heinous impartiality of a great conflagration. The harbor was cluttered with wreckage, a doom picture for the eyes of the seaman. Dimly, fitfully, through the pall, they began to see the ghosts of the shipping—black hulls without helm or hope. The Saragossa vented a deep-toned roar, but no answer was returned, save a wailing echo—not a voice from the wreckage, not even the scream of a gull. A sailor heaved the lead, and the scathed steamer bore into the rising heat.
Ahead was emptiness. Peter Stock, reclining upon the bridge, and suffering martyrdoms from his burns, gave up his last hope that the guns of Pelée had been turned straight seaward, sparing the city or a portion of it. Rough winds tunnelling through the smoke revealed a hint of hills shorn of Saint Pierre. A cry was wrung from the American's breast, and Macready hastened to his side with a glass of spirits.
"I want a boat made ready—food, medicines, bandages, two or three hundred pounds of ice covered with blankets and a tarpaulin," Stock said. "You are to take a couple of men and get in there. Get the steward started fitting the boat, and see that the natives are kept a bit quieter. Make 'em see the other side—if they hadn't come aboard."
"Mother av God," Macready muttered as he went about these affairs. "I could bake a potatie here, sure, in the holla av my hand. What, thin, must it be in that pit of destruction?" He feared Pelée less, however, than the gray eye, and the fate of Pugh.
The launch had not returned from taking Charter ashore, so one of the life-boats was put into commission. The German, Ernst, and another sailor of Macready's choice, were shortly ready to set out.
"You know why I'm not with you, men," the commander told them at the last moment. "It isn't that I couldn't stand it in the boat, but there's a trip ashore for you to make, and there's no walking for me on these puff-balls for weeks to come. Macready, you know Mr. Charter. He had time to reach the Palms before hell broke loose. I want you to go there and bring him back alive—and a woman who'll be with him! Also report to me regarding conditions in the city. That's all. Lower away."
A half-hour later, the little boat was forced to return to the ship. The sailor was whimpering at the oars; the lips of Ernst were twisted in agony; while Macready was silent, sign enough of his failing endurance. Human vitality could not withstand the withering draughts of heat. At noon, another amazing downpour of rain came to the aid of Peter Stock who, granting that the little party had encountered conditions which flesh could not conquer, had, nevertheless, been chafing furiously. At two in the afternoon, a second start was made.
Deeper and deeper in toward the gray low beach the little boat was pulled, its occupants the first to look upon the heaped and over-running measure of Saint Pierre's destruction. The three took turns at the oars. Fear and suffering brought out a strange feminine quality in the sailor, not of cowardice; rather he seemed beset by visionary terrors. Rare running-mates were Macready and Ernst, odd as two white men can be, but matched to a hair in courage. The German bent to his work, a grim stolid mechanism. Macready jerked at the oars, and found breath and energy remaining to assail the world, the flesh and the devil, which was Pugh, with his barbed and invariably glib tongue. How many times the blue eyes of the German rolled back under the lids, and his grip relaxed upon the oars; how many times the whipping tongue of Macready mumbled, forgetting its object, while his senses reeled against the burning walls of his brain; how many times the sailor hoarsely commanded them to look through the fog for figures which alone he saw—only God and these knew. But the little boat held its prow to the desolate shore.
They gained the Sugar Landing at last, or the place where it had been, and strange sounds came from the lips of Ernst, as he pointed to the hulk of the Saragossa's launch, burned to the water-line. It had been in his care steadily until its last trip. Gray-covered heaps were sprawled upon the shore, some half-covered by the incoming tide, others entirely awash. Pelée had brought down the city; and the fire-tiger had rushed in at the kill. He was hissing and crunching still, under the ruins. The sailor moaned and covered his face.
"There's nothing alive!" he repeated with dreadful stress.
"What else would you look for—here at the very fut av the mountain?" Macready demanded. "Wait till we get over the hill, and you'll hear the birds singin' an' the naygurs laughin' in the fields an' wonderin' why the milkman don't come."
The market-place near the shore was filled with the stones from the surrounding buildings, hurled there as dice from a box. Smoke and steam oozed from every ruin. The silence was awful as the sight of death. The streets of the city were effaced. Saint Pierre had been felled and altered, as the Sioux women once altered the corpses of the slain whites. There was no discernible way up the Morne. Breathing piles of debris barred every passage. Under one of these, a clock suddenly struck three—an irreverent survival carrying on its shocking business beneath the collapsed walls of a burned and beaten city, frightening them hideously. It would have been impossible to traverse Rue Victor Hugo had the way been clear, since a hundred feet from the shore or less, they encountered a zone of unendurable heat.
"I could die happy holdin' Pugh here," Macready gasped. "Do you think hell is worse than this, Ernst, barrin' the effrontery of the question? Ha—don't step there!"
He yanked the German away from a puddle of uncongealed stuff, hot as running metal.... The sailor screamed. He had stepped upon what seemed to be an ash-covered stone. It was soft, springy, and vented a wheezy sigh. Rain and rock-dust had smeared all things alike in this gray roasting shambles.
"Won't somebody say something?" the sailor cried in a momentary silence.
"It looks like rain, ma'm," Macready offered.
They had been forced back into the boat, and were skirting the shore around by the Morne. Saint Pierre had rushed to the sea—at the last. The volcano had found the women with the children, as all manner of visitations find them—and the men a little apart. Pelée had not faltered. There was nothing to do by the way, no lips to moisten, no voice of pain to hush, no dying thing to ease. There was not an insect-murmur in the air, nor a crawling thing upon the beach, not a moving wing in the hot, gray sky—a necropolis, shore of death absolute.
They climbed the cliffs to the north of the Palms, glanced down through the smoke at the city—sunken like a toothless mouth. Even the Morne was a husk divested of its fruit. Pelée had cut the cane-fields, sucked the juices and left the blasted stalks in his paste. The old plantation-house pushed forth no shadow of an outline. It might be felled or lost in the smoky distance. The nearer landmarks were gone—homes that had brightened the heights in their day, whose windows had flashed the rays of the afternoon sun as it rode down oversea—levelled like the fields of cane. Pelée had swept far and left only his shroud, and the heaps upon the way, to show that the old sea-road, so white, so beautiful, had been the haunt of man. The mangoes had lost their vesture; the palms were gnarled and naked fingers pointing to the pitiless sky.
Macready had known this highway in the mornings, when joy was not dead, when the songs of the toilers and the laughter of children glorified the fields; in the white moonlight, when the sea-winds met and mingled with the spice from tropic hills, and the fragrance from the jasmine and rose-gardens.... He stared ahead now, wetting his puffed and tortured lips. They had passed the radius of terrific heat, but he was thinking of the waiting gray eye, when he returned without the man and the woman.
"It'll be back to the bunkers for Dinny," he muttered.... "Ernst, ye goat, you're intertainin', you're loquenchus."
They stepped forward swiftly now. There was not a hope that the mountain had shown mercy at the journey's end.... They would find whom they sought down like the others, and the great house about them. Still, there was a vague God to whom Macready had prayed once or twice in his life—a God who had the power to strike blasphemers dead, to still tempests, light volcanic fuses and fell Babylons. To this God he muttered a prayer now....
The ruins of the plantation house wavered forth from the fog. The sailor plucked at Macready's sleeve, and Ernst mumbled thickly that they might as well get back aboard.... But the Irishman stood forth from them; and in that smoky gloom, desolate as the first day, before Light was turned upon the Formless Void, bayed the names of Charter and the woman.
Then the answer:
"In the cistern—in the old cistern!"
Macready made a mental appointment with his God, and yelled presently: "Didn't I tell you 'twould take more than the sphit of a mountain to singe the hair of him?... Are you hurted, sir?"