The wine-shop had partly fallen in front. The stone-arch remained, but the wooden-door had been levelled and was partially devoured by fire. A breath of coolness still lingered in the dark place, and the fruity odor of spilled wine mingled revoltingly with the heaviness of death. The ash-covered floor was packed hard, and still wet from the gusts of rain that had swept in through the open door and the broken-backed roof; stained, too, from the leakage of the casks. Charter's boot touched an empty bottle, and it wheeled and careened across the stones—until he thought it would never stop.... Steady as a ticking clock, came the "drip-drip" of liquor, escaping through a sprung seam from somewhere among the merciful shadows, where the old soldier of France had fallen from his chair.
He climbed over the heap of stones, which had been the rear-door, and entered the little court from which the song-birds had flown. Across the drifts of ash, he forced his steps—into the semi-dark of the living-room behind.
The great head that he had come to find, was rigidly erect, as if the muscles were locked, and faced the aperture through which he had entered. It seemed to be done in iron, and was covered with white dust—Pelée's dust, fresh-wrought from the fire in which the stars were forged. The first impression was that of calm, but Charter's soul chilled with terror, before his eyes fathomed the reality of that look. Under the thick dust, there suddenly appeared upon the features, as if invisible demons tugged at the muscles with hideous art, a reflection from the depths.... Bellingham was sitting beside a table. He had seen Death in the open door. The colossal energies of his life had risen to vanquish the Foe, yet again. His mind had realized their failure, and what failure meant, before the End. Out of the havoc of nether-planes, where Abominations are born, had come a last call for him. That glimpse of hell was mirrored in the staring dustless eyes.... Around his shoulders, like a golden vine, and lying across his knees, clung the trophy of defeat—Soronia. Denied the lily—he had taken the tiger-lily.... Under the unset stones of the floor, a lizard croaked.
Charter, who had fallen of old into the Caverns of Devouring, backed out into the court of the song-birds, in agony for clean light, for he had seen old hells again, in the luminous decay of those staring eyes.... He recalled the end of Father Fontanel and this—with reverent awe, as one on the edge of the mystery. Through the ends of these two, had some essential balance of power been preserved in the world?
TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
PAULA AND CHARTER JOURNEY INTO THE WEST; ONE HEARS VOICES, BUT NOT THE WORDS OFTEN, FROM RAPTURE'S ROADWAY
Peter Stock had cabled to New York for officers and men to make up a ship's company. The Saragossa was overhauled, meanwhile, in the harbor of Fort de France, and the owner expressed his intention of finishing his healing at sea. On the same ship, which brought his seamen from New York, arrived in Fort de France a corps of newspaper correspondents, who were not slow to discover that in the bandaged capitalist lay one of the great stones of the eruption from the American point of view. This literally unseated Peter Stock from his chair on the veranda of the hotel at the Capital. With his guests, he put to sea within thirty-six hours after the arrival of the steamer from New York; indeed, before the Saragossa's paint was dry. His vitality was not abated, but the great figures of Pelée and Fontanel, enriched by M. Mondet as a sort of clown-attendant, had strangely softened and strengthened this rarely-flavored personality. As for his two guests, that month of voyaging in the Caribbean and below, is particularly their own. The three were on deck as the Saragossa plied past Saint Pierre, five or six miles deep in the roadstead, a last time. The brute, Pelée, lay asleep in the sun before the gate of the whited sepulchre.
"Did I ever tell you about my last interview with M. Mondet?" Peter Stock inquired.
Charter had witnessed it, on his way to the craters that morning, but he did not say so, and was regaled with the story. "Bear witness," Peter Stock finished, pointing toward the city, "that I forgive M. Mondet. Doubtless he was writing a paragraph on the staunchness of Pelée—when his desk was closed for him."