She Buildeth Her House Part 7

SEVENTH CHAPTER

PAULA BEGINS TO SEE MORE CLEARLY THROUGH MADAME NESTOR'S REVELATIONS, AND WITNESSES A BROADWAY ACCIDENT

In mid-afternoon Paula obeyed an impulse to call upon Madame Nestor. She wanted to talk with the only human being in New York who could quite understand. Madame's room was west of Eighth Avenue in Forty-fourth Street--the servant's quarter in a squalid suite, four flights up. The single window opened upon a dim shaft, heavy with emanations from many kitchens. There was not even a closet. Madame's moulted plumage was hung upon the back of the outer and only door. Books were everywhere, on the floor, in boxes, on the cot.

"My dear Paula, you felt the need of me?... I should have come to you.

This does very well for me, but I dislike my poverty to be known, dear.

It is not that I am the least proud, but the psychic effects of pity are depressing."

"Please, Madame Nestor, don't think of me pitying anybody! I did feel the need of you. The day has been horrible. But first, I want to tell you that I am very sorry for what I said--when you were in my rooms the other day----"

The elder woman leaned forward and kissed Paula's dress at the shoulder.

There was something sweet and mild and devotional in the action, something suggestive of a wise old working-bee pausing an instant to caress its queen.

"You have been impelled to go to him, Paula?"

"Yes. It came over me quite irresistibly. I could not have been altogether myself.... I think I shall leave the city!"

Madame Nestor asked several questions, bringing out all she cared to know of Paula's experience that day. Her eyes became very bright as she said:

"I dare not advise you _not_ to go away. Still, don't you see it--how wonderful was your victory to-day?"

"I can't always defeat him!" Paula cried. "His power comes over me and I move toward him--just as reptiles must follow a blind impulse started from without. Each time I follow, I must be weaker."

"But, Paula, each time something happens to restore you to yourself, thwarting his purpose, his projections are weakened."

"But if I should go far away?"

"He could only put it in your mind to return."

When Paula remembered the accidents which had preserved her, even when in the same city with the Destroyer, she could not doubt the salvation in putting a big stretch of the planet's curve between her and this dynamo.... Certain unfinished thinking could only be cleared through a friend like Madame Nestor.

"This physical consciousness which he has made me feel seems indescribably more sinister in erect human beings than the mating instinct in animals and birds," Paula declared with hesitation. "Can it be that women in general encounter influences--of this kind?"

"It is man's fault that women have broken all seasons," the Madame said bitterly. "Man has kept woman submerged since the beginning of time.

Always eager to serve; and blest--or cursed--with the changeless pa.s.sion to be _all_ to one man--her most enduring hope to hold the exclusive love of one man--woman has adapted herself eagerly to become the monogamic answer to man's polygamic nature. Bellingham is but the embodiment of a desire which exists in greater or less degree in every man. This desire of man has disordered women. We have lost the true meaning of ourselves--I mean, as a race of women--and have become merely physical mates."

"I can hardly believe it--that even women of the streets should ever be degraded by such a horrible force," Paula said desperately. "And the sweet calm faces of some of the women we know----"

"Behind the mask of innocence, often, is a woman's terrible secret, Paula. For most women obey. Even the growth of the maid is ruthlessly forced by hot breaths of pa.s.sion, until motherhood--so often a domestic tragedy--leaves the imprint of shame in her arms. The man of unlit soul has made this low play of pa.s.sion his art. Woman as a race has fallen, because it is her way to please and obey. Man has taught us to believe that when he comes to our arms, we are at our highest.... And, listen, Paula, certain men of to-day, a step higher in evolution, blame woman because she has not suddenly _unlearned_ her training of the ages--lessons man has graven in the very bed-rock of her nature. In the novelty of their new-found austerity, they exclaim: 'Avoid woman. She is pa.s.sion rhythmic. It is she who draws us down from our lofty regions of endeavor.'"

Terrific energy of rebellion stirred Paula's mind. "But the promise is that woman's time shall come!" she exclaimed. "The Child, Jesus, said to his Mother, 'Thy time is not yet come,' but it is promised that the heel of woman shall crush the head of the Serpent. We have always borne the sin, the agony, the degradation, but our time must be close at hand! I think this is the age--and this the country--of the Rising Woman!"

Madame Nestor arose from the cot and stood before Paula, her eyes shining with emotion.

"Bless you, my beloved girl, my whole heart leaps to sanction that! I have symbolized the whole struggle of our race in your personal struggle--don't you see this, Paula?... Bellingham is the concentrate of devourers--and you the evolved woman who overcomes him! My hope for the race lies in you, and your victory to-day has filled my cup with happiness!... You say you do not dare to pray. I tell you, child,--the G.o.d of women gave you strength to-day. He is close to harken unto your need--for you are among the first of the elect to bring in the glory of the new day!... The animal in man has depleted the splendid energies of the Spirit. Pa.s.sions of the kind you defeated to-day are overpowering women everywhere at this hour--lesser pa.s.sions of lesser Bellinghams.

Man's course to G.o.d has been a crawl through millenniums, instead of a flight through decades, because woman has bowed--obeyed. G.o.d is patient, but woman is aroused!... Above the din of wars, the world has heard the wailing of the women; out of the ghostly silence of famine and from beneath the debris of fallen empires--always the world has heard her cry for pity--her cry for pity now _become a Voice of Power_! All her tortured centuries have been for this--and the signs are upon us!

Woman's demand for knowledge, her clamor for suffrage, her protest against eternally paying for man's l.u.s.t with unblessed babes--all these are signs! But you, Paula Linster,--and what I know of this day--is the most thrilling sign of all to me!... Ah, woman is evolving; she is aroused! How shall she repay man for brutalizing her so long?"

"By bringing him back to G.o.d!" Paula answered.

They wept together and whispered, while the night fell about and covered the squalid room.

It was one of her emanc.i.p.ated nights. Paula's spirit poured out over the city, for her mind was lit with thoughts of the ultimate redemption of her race. Bellingham could not have found her in his world that hour....

Emerging from Broadway to Forty-fourth Street, at eight in the evening, she pa.s.sed under the hot brilliance of a famous hotel-entrance. As it never would have occurred to her to do in a less exalted moment, Paula glanced at a little knot of men standing under the lights. The eyes of one were roving like an unclean hand over her figure. Suddenly encountering her look, a bold, eager, challenge stretched itself upon his face. In the momentary panic, her glance darted to the others instinctively for protection--and found three smiling corpses.... Here were little Bellinghams; here, the s.e.xual drunkenness which has made Man's course "a crawl through millenniums" to G.o.d, instead of a flight through decades. What a pitiless revelation!... She clung to her big Ideal in the West. It came to her for a second like a last and single hope--that Charter was not like that.... "G.o.d is patient and woman is aroused!" she whispered.

And farther up, a little way into Forty-seventh, Paula found a Salvation Army circle under the torch. A man with a pallid, shrunken face turned imploring eyes from one to another of the company, exclaiming: "I tell you, man's first work here below is to save his soul! I pray you--men and women, here to-night--to save your souls!"

Paula tossed her purse upon the big drum, as she pa.s.sed swiftly. Luckily there was carfare in her glove, for she had not thought of that. Never before had she felt in such fullness her relation to the race....

A hansom-cab veered about the edge of the Salvation circle, swift enough to attract her eye. The horse had started before the driver was in the seat. The latter was fat and apoplectic. It was all he could do to regain his place, so that the reins still dangled. The possibility of a cab-horse becoming excited held only humor for the crowd, which parted to let the vehicle by. The horse, feeling his head, started to run just as the driver seized one of the lines and jerked his beast into the curb. There was an inhuman scream. A strange, boneless effigy of a man with twisted, waving arms--went down before the plunging horse, so suddenly swerved.... A hush seemed to have fallen upon the noisy Broadway corner. Paula was not blind in the brief interval which followed, but the world seemed gray and still, like a spectral dawn, or the unearthly setting of a dream.

"The shaft bored into him, and the horse struck him after he fell," a voice explained.

They lifted him. There was particular dreadfulness in the quant.i.ty of fluid evenly sheeted on the pavement as from a pail carefully overturned. Startling effrontery attached to the thought of man's heaven-aspiring current swimming like this upon a degraded city road.

The horse, now held by the bit, snorted affrightedly at the odor. They had carried the unfortunate to the sidewalk under the lights of a tobacco-shop window. The upper part of his head and face was indefinite like a crushed tin of dark paint. But mouth and nose and chin of the upturned face left an imperishable imprint upon her mind. It was Bellingham.... Paula fled, her lips opening in a sick fashion. It seemed hours before she could reach the sanctuary of her room, where she sobbed in the dark.

EIGHTH CHAPTER

PAULA MAKES SEVERAL DISCOVERIES IN THE CHARTER HEART-COUNTRY, AND IS DELIGHTED BY HIS LETTERS TO THE SKYLARK

The morning paper stated that Dr. Bellingham had suffered a fracture of the skull and internal injury, but might live. A note to Paula from Madame Nestor late the next day contained the following paragraph: "I called at the hospital to inquire. A doctor told me that the case is likely to become a cla.s.sic one. Never in his experience, he stated, had he witnessed a man put up such a fight for life. It will be long, however, before he is abroad again. He must have been following you quite madly, because there never was a man more careful in the midst of city-dangers than Bellingham. Why, a scratched finger completely upset him--in the earlier days. Inscrutable, but thrilling--isn't it, my dear Paula?"

"Did you follow _Moby d.i.c.k's_ whale tracks around the wet wastes of the world?" Reifferscheid asked several mornings later, as Paula entered.

Her face was flushed. A further letter from Quentin Charter had just been tucked into her bag. "Yes, and Mr. Melville over trans-continental digressions," she answered. "He surely is Neptune's own _confrere_."

"Did you get the leviathan alongside and study the bewildering chaos of a ninety-foot nervous system?" Reifferscheid went on with delight.

"Exactly, and colored miles of sea-water with the emptyings of his vast heart. Then, there was an extended process of fatty degeneration, which I believe they called--blubber-boiling."

They laughed together over the old whale-epic.

"They remember Melville up in Boston and Nantucket," he added, "but he's about as much alive as a honey-bee's pulse elsewhere. The trouble is, you can't rectify this outrage by law. It isn't uxoricide or sheep-stealing--not to know Melville--but it's the deadly sin of ingrat.i.tude. This is a raw age, we adorn--not to rock in the boat of that man's soul. Why, he's worthy to stand with the angels on the point of the present."

The big editor always warmed her when he enthused. Here, in the midst of holiday books pouring in by scores, he had time to make a big personal and public protest against a fifty-year-old novel being forgotten.

"But isn't Melville acknowledged to be the headwaters of inspiration for all later sea-books?" Paula asked.

"Yes, to the men who do them, he's the big laughing figure behind their work, but the public doesn't seem to know.... Of course, Herman has faults--j.a.pan currents of faults--but they only warm him to a white man's heart. Do you know, I like to think of him in a wide, windy room, tearing off his story long-hand, upon yard square sheets, grinning like an ogre at the soul-play, the pages of copy settling ankle-deep upon the floor. There's no taint of over-breeding in the unborn thing, no curse of compression, no aping Addison--nothing but Melville, just blown in with the gale, reeking with a big story which must be shed, before he blows out again, with straining cordage booming in his ears. He harnesses Art. He man-handles Power, makes it grovel and play circus.