She Buildeth Her House Part 4

"You what?" Paula asked.

"It was a shame to take it," Reifferscheid mused, "but someone else--the next man, would have. You see, he needed buffeting--seven years at least. I knew he didn't have the beam and displacement to stand making good so young. It was doing him an evil turn, but we sent him the bra.s.s tag that shines like gold. Lintell was not adult enough to twig the counterfeit, not mellowed enough to realize that nothing is so sordid, nothing labeled so securely to Failure, as conscious success. As I say, I saw him at work two or three months ago. He was a patch-haired, baby lion still, dictating stories first draft to a stenographer, supplying demand like a huckster--the real treasure-house of his soul locked for life and the key thrown away.... Even money turns the head of the mult.i.tude, but money is small beer compared to the fiery potential wine of literary recognition. Long hammering, refining reverses, alone prepare a man for this. Quentin Charter said something of the kind: that a young writer should live his lean years full length, and if he really craters the mountain, he will praise every G.o.d in the Pantheon because his achievements were slow.

"Lintell's present stuff is insufferable. The point is he may have had in the beginning no less a gift than Charter's. That's why the new book sickens me so.... By the way, I got a letter from Charter this afternoon. I meant to bring it along, but I'll pa.s.s it over to you in the morning. It's yours, Miss Linster, though he did me the honor to think that I had written his critique. He says you crawled right inside his book. We don't usually answer letters of this kind. There are writers, you know, glad to turn a review office into an Admiration Exchange. But you'll want to write to Charter, I'm sure. He's different."

Paula did not answer, but she was pleased and excited that her review had been a joy to this thunderer of the West, and that he had answered her tidings of high hope for the future.

FOURTH CHAPTER

PAULA ENCOUNTERS HER ADVERSARY WHO TURNS PROPHET AND TELLS OF A STARRY CHILD SOON TO BE BORN

Paula went upstairs to the editorial rooms with Reifferscheid the following morning for Charter's letter. This she carried into the city-office to be alone. Forenoon is the dead time of a morning newspaper. The place seemed still tired from the all-night struggle to spring a paper to the streets. She thrust up a window for fresh air and sat down in a reporter's chair to read.... The letter was big with boyish delight. "When a man spends a couple of years growing and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a pile of stuff into a sizable book," he had written, "and the first of the important reviews comes in with such a message of enthusiasm, it is the heart's 'well-done' long waited for." Beyond this, there was only a line or two about the book. It had been in the publisher's hands six months, and he was cold to it now. _The States_ had interested him, however, because there was an inclination in the article to look at his work to come. In fact, some of the thoughts of the reviewer, he wrote, were sympathetic with the subject-matter simmering in his mind. Naturally, the coincidence had thrilled him.

Charter, believing that Reifferscheid had done the work, wrote with utmost freedom. This attracted Paula, as it gave her a glimpse of a certain fineness between men who admire each other. The issue was not closed.... She wanted to answer the letter then and there at the reporter's desk, but Reifferscheid knew she had not gone. He might come in--and laugh at her precipitation.

After a night of perfect rest, Paula's mind was animated with thoughts of work--until she reached the _Zoroaster_. Something of Bellingham's tormenting energy was heavy in the atmosphere of her rooms. When pa.s.sing the full-length mirror, she turned her face away in fear. Impatiently she caught up one of the new books (and Charter's letter for a marker), and hurried across to the Park. The fall days were still flawless.

It was not yet ten in the morning, and few people were abroad. She sat down upon one of the weathered k.n.o.bs of Manhattan rock which had worn through the thin skin of soil, and allowed herself to think of the formidable affliction. To all intents, the magician had dispossessed her of the rooms, identified for years with her personality and no other.

She could not put away the truth that the full forces of her mind were at bay before the psychic advances of the dreadful stranger. This was not long to be endured. Inasmuch that his power did not harmlessly glance from her, she felt that there must be great potentialities of evil within herself. This conviction made her frightened and desperate.

She should have known that it was her inner development, her sensitiveness which had made her so potent an attraction for Bellingham.

The substance of her whole terror was that there had been moments under his spell, when she had not been at all the mistress of her own will.

The suggestions which he projected had seemed to her the good and proper actions. She knew it as a law--that every time her own divine right to the rule of her faculties was thus usurped by an evil force, her resistance was weakened. Yet there was a shocking unfairness in the thought that she was not given a chance. In the throne-room of her mind, she was not queen. All the sacred fortifications of self seemed broken, even the soul's integrity debased, when Bellingham crushed his way in and forced her to obey. This is the great psychological crime. When one has broken into the sacred precincts, the door is left open for other malignant, earth-bound ent.i.ties foully to enter and betray....

There was no one in whom she could confide, but Madame Nestor. Almost any professional man, a physician especially, would have called her revelations hysterical.... Her constant and growing fear was of the time when she should be called by Bellingham--and nothing would supervene to save her. Some time the spell might not be broken. She became ill with tension and shame as this unspeakable possibility seethed through her mind.... Better death than to continue in being pa.s.sion-ridden by this defiler, in the presence of whom she became so loathsome in her own sight--that she dared not pray....

Somewhere far off children were talking. Their voices warmed and cleansed her mind. There was a stimulating thud of hoofs on the turf-roads. She tried to read now. Her eyes travelled dutifully along the lines of her book, without bringing forth even the phase of a thought from the page of print. A swift step drew her glance down the foot-path. Bellingham was approaching. His shoulders were thrown back, his long arms swinging so that every muscle was in play, striding forward at incredible speed. He filled his lungs with every cubic inch of morning air they could contain, and expelled the volume with gusto.

She had once seen a rugged Englishman take his exercise as seriously as this, on the promenade of an Atlantic liner before the breakfast-gong.

To all appearances, Bellingham did not have a thought apart from his const.i.tutional.

Paula sat very still on the rock. Her slightest movement now would attract his attention. It occurred to her afterwards that she had been like a crippled squirrel huddled in the fork of a tree--the hunter and his dog below....

At the point where the path was nearest her, he halted. The thing happened exactly as she might have conceived it in a story. For a moment he seemed to be searching his mind for the meaning of his impulse to stop. An unforgettable figure, this, as he stood there with lifted head, concentrating upon the vagary which had brought him to a standstill....

Paula may have been mistaken in her terror, but she never relinquished the thought that her proximity was known to him--before his face turned unerringly to the rock and his bright gray eyes filled with her presence.

"You are Miss Linster?" he asked, smiling agreeably.

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"You attended the first of my Prismatic Hall lectures ten days ago?... I seldom forget a face, and I remember asking one of my committee your name."

Paula found it rather a unique effort to hold in mind the truth that she had never spoken to this man before. Then the whole trend of her mental activity was suddenly complicated by the thought that all her past terrors might be groundless. Possibly Madame Nestor was insane on this subject. "It may be that her mad words and my stimulated imagination have reared a monster that has no actuality."

The bracing voices of the children, the brilliance of mid-forenoon, the man's kingly figure, agreeable courtesy, and commanding health--indeed, apart from the eyes in which she hardly dared to glance, there was nothing to connect him even vaguely with the sinister persecutions which bore his image. The whole world-mind was with him. What right had she to say that the world-mind was in error and she normal--she and the unreckonable Madame Nestor?... Paula recalled the strange intensity of her mental life for years, and the largeness of her solitudes. The world-mind would say she was beside herself from much study.... More than all, no power was exerted upon her now. Who would believe that this Bellingham, with miles of the metropolis between them, had repeatedly over-ridden her volition, when she felt no threatening influence at the present moment, almost within his reach--only the innate repulsion and the fear of her fears?

"I hope to see you again at the meetings, Miss Linster."

"They do not attract me."

"That is important, if unpleasant to learn," he remarked, as if genuinely perturbed. "I have been studying for a long time, and perhaps I have taken a roundabout road to discovery. It is quite possible that the values of my instruction are over-estimated by many.... Do you mind if I sit down a moment? I have walked a hundred squares and will start back from here." From his manner it was impossible to imagine irony covert in his humbleness.

"Certainly not, though I must return to my apartment in a moment.... I did not like the atmosphere--the audience--that first night," Paula added.

"Nor did I, altogether," he said quickly. "But how can one choose the real, if all are not admitted at first? With each lecture you will find a more select company, and there will be very few when the actual message is unfolded."

He glanced away as if to determine the exact point through the trees from which the children's voices came. His profile was unquestionably that of an aristocrat. The carriage of his head, the wonderful development of his figure, his voice and the gentle temper of his answers, even the cut of his coat and the elegance of his shoes suggested an unconscious and invariable refinement which controverted the horror he had once seemed.

"It may be that I am not quite like other people," she said, "but I cannot think of physical perfection as the first aim in life."

"Nor can I," he answered; "still I think that after the elimination of poisons from the physical organism, one's mental and spiritual powers are quickened and freer to develop."

"Do you always shape your philosophy to meet the objections of your disciples--so?"

"You are stimulating, Miss Linster, but I have made no concession to adapt myself to your views. I only declared that I weed out my cla.s.ses before real work begins, and that physical disease r.e.t.a.r.ds mental growth. I might add that I do not lecture for money."

"Why do you teach only women?"

"There are several reasons," he replied readily enough. "I have found that a mixed audience is not receptive; there is a self-consciousness, sometimes worse, something of a scoffing spirit, which breaks the point of my appeal. Women are aroused to interest when a man appeals directly to them. They do not like to betray a profound interest in any subject apart from the household--when their lords are present. Man instinctively combats any source which tends toward mental emanc.i.p.ation on the part of women. It is only a few decades ago that women were forced to abide entirely within their domestic circle. Instead of using a superior physical strength now to keep her there, man's tendency is to ridicule her outside interests. So I have found that women prefer to study alone."

Bellingham answered thus circuitously, but his manner suggested that he was grateful for the inquiry, since it gave him an opportunity to express matters which had only been half-formed in his mind. Paula, whose every question had come from an inclination to confound him, began to realize that the spirit was unworthy and partook of impertinence.

"I believe in automatic health," she said impatiently. "It seems to me that refinement means this: that in real fineness all such things are managed with a sort of unconscious art. For instance, I should not have health at the price of walking twice a hundred blocks in a forenoon----"

"The point is eminently reasonable, Miss Linster," Bellingham remarked with a smile. "But what I find it well to do, I rarely advise for others. I am from a stock of powerful physical men. My fathers were sailors and fishermen. They gave me an organism which weakens if I neglect exercise, and I seem to require about five times as much physical activity as many men of the present generation. I have absolutely no use for this tremendous muscular strength; in fact, I should gladly be less strong if it could be accomplished without a general deterioration. The point is, that a man with three or four generations of gentle-folk behind him, can keep in a state of glowing health at the expense of about one-fifth the physical energy that I burn--who come from rough men of mighty outdoor labors."

This was very reasonable, except that he seemed far removed in nature from the men of boats and beaches. She had dared to glance into his face as he spoke, and found an impression from the diamond hardness of his eyes, entirely different from that which came through listening merely.

But for this glance, it never would have occurred to her, that her questions had stretched his faculties to the slightest tension. She would have arisen to go now, but he resumed:

"I cannot bear to have you think that my energies are directed entirely in the interests of lifting the standards of health, Miss Linster.

Really, this is but a small part of preparation. It was only because I felt you ready for the important truths--that I regretted your absence after the first night. Do you know that we live in the time of a spiritual high-tide? It is clear to me that the whole race is lifting with a wonderful inner animation. In the next quarter of a century great mystic voices shall be heard. And there shall be One above all.... I tell you people are breaking down under the tyranny of their material possessions. After desire--comes the burden of holding. We are approaching the great _ennui_ which Carlyle prophesied. There is no longer a gospel of materialism. The great English and German teachers whose work was regarded as supreme philosophy by the people ten years ago, are shown to be pitiful failures in our colleges to-day--or at best, specialists of one particular stage of evolution, who made the mistake of preaching that their little division in the great cosmic line was the whole road. Materialism died out of Germany a few years ago--with a great shock of suicide. The mystics are teaching her now. I a.s.sure you the dawn is breaking for a great spiritual day such as the world has never seen. Soon a great light shall cover the nations and evil shall crawl into the holes of the earth where it is dark.... There is shortly to be born into the world--a glorious Child. While He is growing to celestial manhood--New Voices shall rise here and everywhere preparing the way. One of these New Voices--one of the very least of these--is Bellingham to whom you listen so impatiently."

Every venture into the occult had whispered this Child-promise in Paula's ears. There was such a concerted understanding of this revelation among the cults, that the thought had come to her that perhaps this was a delusion of every age. Yet she had seen a Hindu record dated a hundred years before, prophesying the birth of a Superman in the early years of the Twentieth Century. There was scarcely a division among the astrologers on this one point. She had even been conscious in the solitudes of her own life of a certain mystic confidence of such a fulfillment.... She dared not look into Bellingham's face at such a moment. The ghastly phase of the whole matter was to hear this prophecy repeated by one to whom the ill.u.s.trious prospect (if he were, as she had believed) could become only an awful illumination of the h.e.l.l to which he was condemned. It was--only unspeakably worse--like hearing a parrot croak, "Feed our souls with the bread of life!..." Paula stirred in her seat, and Charter's letter dropped from the book in her lap. She seized it with a rush of grateful emotion. It was a stanchion in her mind now filled with turbulence.

"There never was a time when woman's intelligence was so eager and rational; never a time," Bellingham went on, "when men were so tired of metals and meals and miles. The groan for the Absolutely New, for the utmost in sense and the weirdest of sensations, for speed to cover distances and to overcome every obstacle, even thin air--all these express the great weariness of the flesh and make clear to the prophetic understanding that man is nearing the end of his lessons in three dimensions and five senses. There is a stirring of the spirit-captive in the worn mesh of the body."

The woman traced her name with her forefinger upon the cover of the book in her lap; again and again, "Paula--Paula--Paula." It was a habit she had not remembered for years. As a little girl when she fought against being persuaded contrary to her will, she would hold herself in hand thus, by wriggling "Paula" anywhere. All that Bellingham said was artfully calculated to inspire her with hope and joy in the world. So marvelously were the words designed to carry her high in happiness, that there was a corresponding tension of terror in remembering that Bellingham uttered them. Yet she would have felt like a lump of clay had she not told him:

"What you say is very wonderful to me."

"And it is the women who are most sensitive to the Light--women who are already unfolding in the rays, yet so far-flung and dim." Bellingham's voice was a quick emotionless monotone. "Perhaps you have noted the great amalgamation of clubs and cla.s.ses of women which each year turns its power to more direct effort and valuable study. Another thing, let the word Genius be whispered about any child or youth, and he becomes at once the darling of rich matrons. What does this mean--this desire of woman to bring out the latent powers of a stranger's child? This veiled, beautiful quality is the surest sign of all. It is the spirit of Rebecca--which, even in the grief for her own dead babe, turns thrillingly to mother a wayfarer's Starry Child. Verily, when a woman begins to dream about bringing prophets into the world--the giants of those other days are close to her, crowding closer, eager to be born again."

Paula turned to him and arose. His face was not kindled. It was as if he were an actor reading lines to memorize, not yet trying to simulate the contained emotions. There is a glow of countenance where fine thought-force is in action, but Bellingham's face was not lit with the expiration of mind-energy, though his eyes glittered with set, bird-like brightness.

"I must hurry away now," she told him hastily. "I must think upon what you have said."