She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

PAULA AND CHARTER IN SEVERAL SETTINGS FEEL THE ENERGY OF THE GREAT GOOD THAT DRIVES THE WORLD

Charter roused, after an unknown time, to the realization that the woman was in his arms; later, that he was sitting upon a slimy stone in a subterranean cell filled with steam. The slab of stone held him free from the four or five inches of almost scalding water on the floor of the cistern. The vault was square, and luckily much larger than its circular orifice; so that back in the corner they were free from the volcanic discharge which had showered down through the mouth of the pit—the cause of the heated water and the released vapors. An earthquake years before had loosened the stone-lining of the vault. With every shudder of the earth now, under the wrath of Pelée, the walls, still upstanding, trembled.

Charter was given much time to observe these matters; and to reckon with mere surface disorders, such as a bleeding right hand, lacerated from the rusty chain; a torn shoulder, and a variety of burns which he promptly decided must be inconsequential, since they stung so in the hot vapor. Then, someone with a powerful arm was knocking out three-cushion caroms in his brain-pan. This spoiled good thinking results. It is true, he did not grasp the points of the position, with the remotest trace of the sequence in which they are put down. Indeed, his mind, emerging from the depths into which the shock of eruption had felled it, held alone with any persistence the all-enfolding miracle that the woman was in his arms....

Presently, his brain began to sort the side-issues. Her head had lain, upon his shoulder during that precipitous plunge, and her hair had fallen when he first caught her up. He remembered it blowing and covering his eyes in a manner of playful endearment quite impossible for an outsider to conceive. Meanwhile, the blast from Pelée was upon the city; traversing the six miles from the crater to the Morne, faster than its own sound; six miles in little more than the time it had taken him to cross the lawn from the veranda to the cistern. A second or two had saved them.

The fire had touched her hair.... Her bare arm brushed his cheek, and his whole nature suddenly crawled with the fear that she might not wake. His head dropped to her breast, and he heard her heart, light and steadily on its way. His eyes were straining through the darkness into her face, but he could not be sure it was without burns. There was cumulative harshness in the fear that her face, so fragile, of purest line, should meet the coarse element, burning dirt. His hands were not free, but he touched her eyes, and knew that they were whole.... She sighed, stirred and winced a little—breath of consciousness returning. Then he heard:

"What is this dripping darkness?"

The words were slowly uttered, and the tones soft and vague, as from one dreaming, or very close to the Gates.... In a great dark room somewhere, in a past life, perhaps, he had heard such a voice from someone lying in the shadows.

"We are in the old cistern—you and I——"

"I—knew—you—would—come—for—me."

It was murmured as from someone very weary, very happy—as a child falling asleep after a dream, murmurs with a little contented nestle under the mother-wing.