She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

"Won't you tell me about that, too?"

"Yes, but not now. I must go down-town. There is a dress-maker—and we breakfast together.... Root for me—for us, to-night—won't you, dear girl?"

"With all my heart."

They passed out through the hall together—just as the elevator-man tucked a letter under the door.... Alone, Paula read this Spring greeting from Quentin Charter:

I look away this morning into the brilliant East. I think of you there—as glory waits. I feel the strength of a giant to battle through dragons of flesh and cataclysms of Nature.... Who knows what conflicts, what conflagrations, rage in the glowing distance—between you and me? Not I, but that I have strength—I do know.... By the golden glory of this wondrous Spring morning which spreads before my eyes a world of work and heroism blessed of the Most High God, I only ask to know that you are there—that you are there.... While eternity is yet young, we shall emerge out of time and distance; though it be from a world altered by great cosmic shattering—yet shall we emerge, serene man and woman.

You are there in the brilliant East. In good time I shall go to you. Meanwhile I have your light and your song. The dull dim brute is gone from me, forever. Even that black prince of the blood, Passion, stands beyond the magnetic circle. With you there, I feel a divine right kingship, and all the black princes of the body are afar off, herding with the beasts. I tell you, since I have heard the Skylark sing—there is no death.

That day became a vivid memory. Charter reached the highest pinnacle of her mind—a man who could love and who could wait. The message from the West exalted her. Here, indeed, was one of the New Voices. All through the afternoon, out of the hushes of her mind, would rise this pæan from the West—sentence after sentence for her.... No, not for her alone. She saw him always in the midst of his people, illustrious among his people.... She saw him coming to her over mountains—again and again, she caught a glimpse of him, configured among the peaks, and striding toward her—yet between them was a valley torn with storm.... It came to her that there must be a prophecy in this message; that he would not be suffered to come to her easily as his letters came. Yet, the strength he had felt was hers, and those were hours of ecstasy—while the gray of the Spring afternoon thickened into dark. Only The Thing could have called her out that night; for once, when it was almost time to go, the storm lifted from the valley between them. She saw his path to her, just for an instant, and she longed to see it again....

Paula entered the theatre a moment before the curtain rose, but in the remaining seconds of light, discovered in the fourth aisle far to the right—"the finest, lowest head" and the long white face of Stephen Cabot. If a man's face may be called beautiful, his was—firm, delicate, poetic,—brilliant eyes, livid pallor. And the hand in which the thin cheek rested, while large and chalky-white, was slender as a girl's.... In the middle of the first act, a tall, elderly man shuffled down the aisle and sank into the chair in front of Paula, where he sprawled, preparing to be bored. This was Felix Larch, one of the best known of the metropolitan critics, notorious as a play-killer.

The first-night crowd can be counted on. It meant nothing to Vhruebert that the house was packed. The venture was his up to the rise of the curtain. Paula was absorbed by the first two acts of the play, but did not feel herself fit to judge. She was too intensely interested in the career of Selma Cross; in the face of Stephen Cabot; in the attitudes of Felix Larch, who occasionally forgot to pose. It was all very big and intimate, but the bigger drama, up to the final curtain, was the battle for success against the blasé aspirations of the audience and the ultra-critical enemy personified in the man before her.

The small and excellent company was balanced to a crumb. Adequate rehearsals had finished the work. Then the lines were rich, forceful and flowing—strange with a poetic quality that "got across the footlights." Paula noted these exterior matters with relief. Unquestionably the audience forgot itself throughout the second act. Paula realized, with distaste, that her own critical sense was bristling for trouble. She had hoped to be as receptive to emotional enjoyment as she imagined the average play-goer to be. Though she failed signally in this, her sensibilities were in no way outraged, nor even irritated. On the contrary, she began to rise to the valor of the work and its performance. The acting of Selma Cross, though supreme in repression, was haunting, unforgettable. Felix Larch had twice disturbed her by taking his seat in the midst of the first and second acts. She had heard that he rarely sat out a whole performance, and took it therefore as a good omen when he returned, in quite a gentlemanly fashion, as the final curtain rose.

By some new mastery of style, Selma Cross had managed, almost throughout, to keep her profile to the audience. The last act was half gone, moreover, before the people realized that there were qualities in her voice, other than richness and flexibility. She had held them thus far with the theme, charging the massed consciousness of her audience with subtle passions. Now came the rising moments. Full into the light she turned her face.... She was quite alone with her tragedy. A gesture of the great bare arm, as the stage darkened, and she turned loose upon the men and women a perfect havoc of emptiness—in the shadows of which was manifesting a huge unfinished human. She made the people see how a mighty passion, suddenly bereft of its object, turns to devour the brain that held it. They saw the great, gray face of The Thing slowly rubbed out—saw the mind behind it, soften and run away into chaos. There was a whisper, horrible with exhaustion—a breast beaten in the gloom.