“Good-bye, Mr. Bellair.”
He was ill. The side-door of a famous hotel yawned to him directly across the street from his step. He was not sure they would take him. Registering, he stopped to think where he was from, adding Auckland, N. Z.... Yes, his bags would be brought from the station. They gave him a room, and Bellair stood in the centre of it.
For a few moments he actually weakened—limbs and mind. It wasn’t New York alone, nor the sordid incident across the street, reminding him so ruthlessly of Lot & Company and all that had been and was still to do; rather it was a giving way to a loneliness that had been rising for almost a month, wearing him to a shadow of himself, and giving him battle night and morning. Like many another solitary young man, he had brooded much upon what a certain woman might be. He had found that in those women he met, certain spaces must be filled in by his own compassion—and these spaces did not endure. Always in a test they separated from the reality. But the Faraway Woman day by day had fulfilled; even where his idealism failed, she completed the picture of the woman above him and of irresistible attraction.
She had come nearer and nearer. She was magic in this way. He had regarded her at first distantly and askance at the rail of the Jade. A gasp now came from him. That was so impossible and long ago.... She had not called him any more than a peasant woman. And yet one after another her rarities had unfolded; it would always be so. She was the very fountain of romance to him; the essence of whose attraction is variableness of days. Of all the days together, there had been no two alike—no two hours alike. He had watched her face under the light—never twice the same. The child, the maiden, the mother, the love-woman, the saint—lips passional, devotional ... then those wonder-moments when the old tragedies came back to her eyes.
They stirred him as if he had known her long ago; and yet nothing of this had come to him at first. How crude and coarse he had been not to see. Lot & Company and New York had covered her from his eyes. He had to fast and pray and concentrate upon her being, as a devotee upon the ball of crystal to begin upon her mysteries. Every man has his Lot & Company, his New York—the forces that bind him to the world. A man bound to the world can see but the body of a thing—the paint of a picture, just the outline and pigment of a picture or a bit of nature—just the body of a woman.
Something came to him that instant—of the perfect law of all things. Those caught in the body of events see but that, hear but that, anticipate but that—the very secret of all the misery and shortsightedness in the world. A man must rise, lift the centre of consciousness above the body of things, even to see physical matters in their true relation. It was all so thrillingly true to him in this glimpse—that a man can never see properly the sequence of his actions unless he can rise above them—that those in the ruck never know what they are about....
He tried to remember her face, as he stood in the hotel room. Failing, his mind returned to their days together. He was apart now and could view them, one by one, in their wonder and beauty. He was torn with them. At different times on the long voyage he had dwelt separately upon the episodes. Some had worn him to exhaustion. People on the ship had believed him a man with a great grief. At first, he looked about from face to face searching for some one whom he might tell, but there was no reception for his story. He had to stop and think that he was different and apart.... She had always been apart.
He had carried it alone, moving hushed and alone with his story; lying open-eyed in his berth through the hours of night, and often through the afternoons, an open book face downward upon his chest, his pipe cold ... living again the different moments in the rooms of the stone cottage, in the garden, on the shore; their journeys together, their breakfasts and luncheons and evenings together.
The boy was gone from him, from face and body. He did not know what had come instead, but he knew that he carried a creative image in his heart; something of the fragrance of her lingering about him. It had come to him at night alone on deck—the sweetness of her—on the wind. All that he wanted, all that he dreamed best of life and labour and love ... and yet after all, what had he to do with her in relation to these intimate things? Friend, companion, confidante—she was everything that a woman could be, except—— Had not the substance of that kind of giving died for her in the passing of the preacher?... Something of her story frightened him. She had learned the ultimate realness of loving. The man who entered her heart now would have to come with an immortal seal upon him. There was but one who could take up the fatherhood of the Gleam.... Bellair did not feel the man; did not know what she had given him; did not know what had come to him—to his face and carriage and voice. He had not yet lifted himself above so that he could see. Those whom he met, however, were struck with a different Bellair, and those who could not understand thought him touched a little queerly—as a man after sunstroke or any great light.
... It was now noon. He thought of his old friend, Broadwell, of the advertising-desk at Lot & Company. Perhaps Broadwell would dine with him. He called. The voice came back to him.... Yes, he would come at once. Bellair asked him to the hotel. In the interval he called the Trust company in whose keeping the thousand dollar surety had been, inquiring if Lot & Company had collected the amount. The answer was returned presently to the effect that Lot & Company had presented his release and collected the amount with interest four days after his departure.