Part 16

He had been regarding the new moon, low and to the left of the Carbet peaks. It had none of the sharpness of outline peculiar to the tropics, but was blurred and of an orange hue, instead of silvery. "It's the ash-fog in the air which has the effect of a fine wire screen," he explained. "We'll have a white world to-morrow, if it doesn't rain."

They turned to the north where a low rumbling was heard. It was like distant thunder, but the horizon beyond Pelee was unscathed by lightning.

"Are you really worried, Mr. Stock?"

"Why, it's as I said. The fact that Pelee is acting out of the ordinary is quite enough to make any one skeptical regarding his intentions."

He discussed familiarly certain of the man-eaters among the mountains of the world--Krakatoa, Bandaisan, Cotopaxi, Vesuvius, AEtna, calling them chronic old ruffians, whom Time doesn't tame.

"A thousand years is nothing to them," he added. "They wait, still as crocodiles, until seers have built their temples in the high rifts and cities have formed on their flanks. They have tasted blood, you see, and the madness comes back. Twenty years is only a siesta. Pelee is a suspect."

"I think I should prefer to hear you tell the treachery of volcanoes outside of the fire-zone," she declared. "It's like listening to ghost stories in a haunted house."

Pelee rumbled again, and Paula's fingers involuntarily started toward his sleeve. The heavy wooden shutters of the great house rattled in the windless night; the ground upon which they stood seemed to wince at the Monster's pain. She was conscious of the fragrance of roses and magnolia blooms above the acrid taint of the air. Some strange freak of the atmosphere exerted a pressure upon the flowers, forcing a sudden expulsion of perfume. The young moon was a formless blotch now in the fouled sky. A sigh like the whimpering of many sick children was audible from the servants' cabins behind the hotel.... Later, from her own room, she saw the double chain of lights out in the harbor--the _Saragossa_ pulling at her moorings among the lesser craft, like a bright empress in the midst of dusky maid-servants; and in the north was Vulcan struggling to contain the fury of his fluids. She was a little afraid of Pelee.

Very early abroad, Paula set out on her first pilgrimage to _Notre Dame des Lourdes_. Rain had not fallen in the night, and she regarded a white world, as Stock had promised, and the source of the phenomenon with the pastelle tints of early morning upon his huge eastern slope. She had slept little and with her face turned to the north. A cortege had passed before her in dream--all the destroyers of history, each with a vivid individuality, like the types of faces of all nations--the story of each and the desolation it had made among men and the works of men.

Most of them had given warning. Pelee was warning now. His warning was written upon the veins of every leaf, painted upon the curve of every blade of grass, sheeted evenly-white upon the red tiles of every roof. Gray dust blown by steam from the bursting quarries of the mountain clogged the gutters of the city and the throats of men. It was a moving, white cloud in the river, a chalky shading that marked the highest reach of the harbor tide. It settled in the hair of the children, and complicated the toil of bees in the nectar-cups. With league-long cerements, and with a voice that caused to tremble his dwarfed companions, the hills and _mornes_, great Pelee had proclaimed his warning in the night.

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER

PAULA IS INVOLVED IN THE RENDING FORTUNES OF SAINT PIERRE AND _THE PANTHER_ CALLS WITH NEW YORK MAIL

Father Fontanel was out in the parish somewhere. One of the washer-women told her this, at the door of the church. There were many sick in the city from the great heat and the burned air--many little children sick. Father Fontanel always sought the sick in body; those who were sick in soul, sought him.... So the woman of the river-banks, in her simple way, augmented the story of the priest's love for his people. Paula rested for a few moments in the dim transept. Natives moved in and out for a breath of coolness, some pausing to kneel upon the worn tiles of the nave. Later she walked among the lower streets of the suffering city, her heart filled with pity for the throngs housed on the low breathless water-front. Except when the wind was straight from the volcano, the hotel on the _Morne d'Orange_ was made livable by the cool Trades.

The clock in the _Hopital l'Militaire_ struck the hour of nine. Paula had just hired a carriage at the Sugar Landing, when her eye was attracted by a small crowd gathering near the water's edge. The black cassock of a priest in the midst drew her hurrying forward. A young man, she thought at first, from the frail shoulders and the slender waist.... A negress had fallen from the heat. Her burdens lay together upon the shore--a tray of cakes from her head, and a naked babe from her arms.... A glimpse at the priest's profile, and she needed not to be told that this was the holy man of Saint Pierre.

Happiness lived in the face above the deep pity of the moment. It was an attraction of light, like the brow of Mary in Murillo's _Immaculate Conception_; or like that instant ethereal radiance which shines from the face of a little child passing away without pain. The years had put an exquisite nobility upon the plain countenance, and the inner life had added the gleam of adoration--"the rapture-light of holy vigils kept."

Paula rubbed her eyes, afraid lest it were not true; afraid for a moment that it was her own meditations that had wrought this miracle in clay. Lingering, she ceased to doubt the soul's transfiguration.... Father Fontanel beckoned a huge negro from a lighter laden with molasses-casks--a man of strength, bare to the waist.

"Take the little mother to my house," he said.

A young woman standing by was given charge of the child.... "Lift her gently, Strong Man. The woman will show you the way to the door." Then raising his voice to the crowd, the priest added, "You who are well--tell others that it is yet cool in the church. Carry the ailing ones there, and the little children. Father Pelee will soon be silent again.... Does any one happen to know who owns the beautiful ship in the harbor?"

His French sentences seemed lifted above a pervasive hush upon the shore. The native faces wore a curious look of adulation; and Paula marvelled in that they seemed unconscious of this. She was not a Catholic; yet she uttered his name with a thrilling rapture, and with a meaning she had never known before:

"Father Fontanel----"

He turned, instantly divining her inspiration.

"Mr. Stock, who owns the ship yonder, is staying at the _Hotel des Palms_," she said quickly. "I have a carriage here. I was thinking that the sick woman and her child might be taken to your house in that. Afterward, when she is cared for, you might wish to ride with me to the Hotel--where I also live."

"Why, yes, Child--who are you?"

"Just a visitor in Saint Pierre--a woman from the States."

Her arrangement was followed, and the negro went back to his work. Father Fontanel joined her behind the carriage.

"But you speak French so well," he observed.

"Not a few Americans do. I was grateful that it came back to me here."

"Yes, for I do not speak a word of English," he said humbly.

They walked for a moment in silence, his head bowed in thought. Paula, glancing at him from time to time, studied the lines of pity and tenderness which shadowed the eyes. His mouth was wonderful to her, quite as virgin to the iron of self-repression as to the soft fullness of physical desire. This was the marvel of the face--it was above battle. Here were eyes that had seen the Glory and retained an unearthly happiness--a face that moved among the lowly, loved, pitied, abode with them; yet was beautiful with the spiritual poise of Overman.

"It was strange that you did not meet Lafcadio Hearn when he was here," she said at length.

He shook his head, asked the name again and the man's work.

"A writer who tarried here; a mystic, too, strange and strong."

"I know no writer by that name--but how did you know that I did not meet him, Child?"

"I was thinking he would write about you in his book of Martinique sketches--had he known."

He accepted the explanation innocently. "There was a writer here--a young man very dear to me--of whom you reminded me at once----"

"Of whom I reminded you, Father?" she repeated excitedly. "You mean because I spoke of another writer?"

"No, I saw a resemblance--rather some relationship of yours to my wonderful young friend.... He said he would come again to me."

She had spoken of Hearn in the hope that Father Fontanel would be reminded of another writer whose name she did not care to mention. His idea of relationship startled her to the heart; yet when she asked further, the good man could not explain. It had merely been his first thought, he said,--as if she had _come_ from his friend.

"You thought much of him then, Father Fontanel?"

He spoke with power now. "A character of terrible thirsts, Child,--such thirsts as I have never known. Some moments as he walked beside me, I have felt him--like a giant with wolves pulling at his thighs, and angels lifting his arms. Great strength of mind, his presence endowed me, so that I would have seen more of him, and more,--but he will come back! And I know that the wolves shall have been slain, when he comes again----"

"And the angels, Father?" she whispered.

"Such are the companions of the Lifted, my daughter.... It is when I meet one of great conflicts that I am suffused with the spirit of worship in that I am spared. God makes my way so easy that I must wonder if I am not one of His very weak. It must be so, for my mornings and evenings are made lovely by the Presence. My people hearken unto my prayers for them; they love me and bring their little children for my blessing--until I am so happy that I cry aloud for some great work to do that I may strive heroically to show my gratitude to God--and lo, the doors of my work are opened, but there are no lions in the way!"

She knew now all that Charter had meant. In her breast was a silent mystic stirring--akin to that endearing miracle enacted in a conservatory of flowers, when the morning sun first floods down upon the glass.... The initial doubt of her own valor in suffering Selma Cross to shatter her Tower, sprang into being now. Father Fontanel loved him, and had looked within.

That the priest had perceived a "relationship" swept into the woman's soul. Low logic wrought from the physical contacts of Selma Cross trembled before the other immaterial suggestion--that Quentin Charter would come back to Saint Pierre triumphantly companioned, his wolves slain.... She forgot nothing of the actress's point of view; nor that the Westerner did not reach her floor in the _Zoroaster_ and encounter an old attraction by accident. He was not one to force his way there, if the man at the elevator told him Miss Linster was not in. All of these things which had driven her to action were still inexplicable, but final condemnation was gone from the evidence--as the stone rolled away.

Bellingham?... The mystery now, as she stood within this radiant aura, was that any point of his desire could ever have found lodgment within. Her sense of protection at this moment was absolute. She had done well to come here.... Again swept into mind, Quentin Charter's silent part in saving her from the Destroyer--the book, the letter, the voice; even to this sanctuary she had come through a sentence from him. For a moment the old master-romance shone glorious again--like a lone, valiant star glimpsed in the rift of storm-hurled clouds.

They had reached the low street door of Father Fontanel's house, a wing of the church. A native doctor had been summoned and helped to carry the woman in. She was revived presently.

"Father," Paula said, remembering the words of the washer-woman, as they emerged into the street, "when one is sick of soul--does one knock here?"

"One does not knock, but enters straightway," he answered. "The door is never locked.... But you look very happy, my daughter."

"I am happy," she answered.

* * * * *

They drove together to the _Hotel des Palms_. Paula did not ask, though she had something of an idea regarding the priest's purpose in asking for Peter Stock. Though she had formed a very high opinion of the American, it occurred to her that he would hardly approve of any one directing arteries of philanthropy to his hand. He had been one of those ruffian giants of the elder school of finance who began with the axe and the plow; whose health, character and ethics had been wrought upon the anvil of privation; whose culture began in middle life, and, being hard-earned, was eminent in the foreground of mind--austere and inelastic, this culture, yet solidly founded. Stock was rich and loved to give, but was rather ashamed of it. Paula could imagine him saying, "I hate the whining of the strong." For twenty years since his retirement, he had voyaged about the world, learning to love beautiful things, and giving possibly many small fortunes away; yet he much would have preferred to acknowledge that he had knocked down a brute than endowed an asylum. Mr. Stock was firm in opinion, dutiful in appreciation for the fine. His sayings were strongly savored, reliant with facts; his every thought was the result of a direct physical process of mind,--a mind athletic to grip the tangible, but which had not yet contracted for its spiritual endowment. In a word a splendid type of American with which to blend an ardently artistic temperament.... Paula, holding something of this conception of the capitalist, became eager to see what adjustment could follow a meeting with his complement in characteristic qualities--her revered mystic. Mr. Stock was pacing up and down the mango grove. Leaving Father Fontanel on the veranda, she joined the American.

"I found a holy man down on the water-front, mildly inquiring who owned the _Saragossa_," she said laughingly, "and asked him to share my carriage. He has not told me what he wants, but he's a very wonderful priest."

She noted the instant contraction of his brows, and shrank inwardly at the hard, rapid tone, with which he darted the question:

"Are you a Catholic?"

"No, Mr. Stock."

"Yes. I'll see him." It was as if he were talking to his secretary, but Paula liked him too well to mind. They drew near the veranda.

"... Well, sir, what is it?" he spoke brusquely, and in French, studying the priest's upturned face. Mr. Stock believed he knew faces. Except for the years and the calling, he would have decided that Father Fontanel was rather too meek and feminine--at first glance.

"What I wished to ask depends upon your being here for a day or two," the priest said readily. "Father Pelee's hot breath is killing our children in the lower quarters of the city, and many of the poor women are suffering. The ship out in the harbor looked to me like a good angel with folded wings, as I walked the water-front this morning. I thought you would be glad to let me send some mothers and babies--to breathe the good air of the offing. A day, or a night and a day, may save lives."

Paula had felt a proprietary interest in Father Fontanel's mission, no matter what it proved to be. She was pleased beyond measure to find that he was entirely incapable of awe or cringing, before a man of stern and distinguished mien and of such commanding dignity. Moreover, he stated the favor quite as if it were an advantage which the American had not thought of for himself. So interested was she in the priest's utterance, that when her eyes turned from his face to Stock's--the alteration there amazed her. And like the natives of the water-front, the American did not seem to be _aware_ of the benign influence. He had followed the French sentences intently at first, but caught the whole idea before the priest was finished.

"Did you know I wasn't a Catholic?" he asked. The question apparently had been in his mind before he felt himself responding to the appeal.

"No," Father Fontanel answered sincerely. "The truth is, it didn't occur to me whether you were or not."

"Quite right," Mr. Stock said quickly. "It has no place, whatever, so long as you don't think so. You've got a good idea. I'll be here for a day or two. You'll need money to hire boats; then my first officer will have to be informed. My launch is at the Sugar Landing.... On second thought, I'll go back down-town with you.... Miss Wyndam--later in the day--a chat with you?"

"Of course."

Father Fontanel turned, thanking her with a smile. "And the name is 'Wyndam,'" he added. "I had not heard it before."

Paula watched them walking down the driveway to the carriage which she had retained for Father Fontanel. The inclination was full-formed to seek the solitude of her room and there review the whole delightful matter.... She was glad that the priest had not asked her name, for under his eyes--she could not have answered "Wyndam."

It was not until the following evening, after a day of actual physical suffering from Pelee and the heat, even on the _Morne_, that she had the promised talk with Peter Stock.

"I like your priest," he said, "He works like a man, and he hasn't got a crook in his back. What he wants he seems to get. I have sent over a hundred natives out yonder on the _Saragossa_, negotiated for the town's whole available supply of fresh milk, and Laird, my chief officer, is giving the party a little cruise to-night----"

"Do you know--I think it is splendid?" she exclaimed.

"What?"

"The work--your ship filled with gasping unfortunates from the city!"

"Do you happen to know of any reason why an idle ship should not be used for some such purpose?"

"None, whatever," she said demurely, quite willing that he should adjust the matter to suit himself. His touchiness upon the subject of his own benefactions remanded her pleasurably of Reifferscheid. Her inward joy was to study in Peter Stock the unacknowledged influence of Father Fontanel--or was it an unconscious influence? The American's further activities unfolded:

"By the way, have you been reading the French paper here--_Les Colonies_?"

Paula had not.

"The editor, M. Mondet, is the smug authority for a statement yesterday that Saint Pierre is in absolutely no danger from the mountain. Now, of course, this may be true, but he doesn't know it--unless he should have the Dealer in Destiny on the wire. There is always a big enough percentage of foolish virgins in a city, so it peeved me to find one in the sole editorial capacity. My first impulse was to calk up the throat of M. Mondet with several sheets of his abominable assurances. This I restrained, but nevertheless I called upon him to-day. His next issue appears day after to-morrow, and my idea is for him to print a vigorous warning against Pelee. Why, he could clear the town of ten thousand people for a few days--until the weather settles. Incidentally, if the mountain took on a sudden destroying streak--just see what he would have done! Some glory in saving lives on that scale."

"Vine leaves, indeed," said Paula, "Did M. Mondet tell you he would print this warning?"

"Not exactly. He pointed out the cost of detaching a third of the city's inhabitants. I told him how this cost could be brought down within reason, and showed myself not unwilling to back the exodus. I'm a practical man, Miss Wyndam, and these things look bigger than they really are. But you never can tell what a tubby little Frenchman will do. It's atrocious for a man in his position to say that a volcano won't volcane--sorely tempting to old Father Pelee--a sort of challenge. It would be bad enough to play Pilate and wash his hands of the city's danger--but to be a white-lipped, kissing Judas at the last supper of Saint Pierre----"

"Did you tell him that?" Paula asked hastily.

"Not in those words, Miss Wyndam, but he seemed to be a bit afraid of me--kept watching my hands and pulling at his cravat. When he finally showed me to the door, his was the delicacy of one who handles dynamite. At all events, I'm waiting for his next issue to see if my call 'took!' I really do wish that a lot of these people would forget their clothes, chickens, coals, coins, and all such, for a few days and camp somewhere between here and Fort de France."

Paula was thrilled by the American's zeal. He was not content, now that he had begun, to deal with boatloads, but wanted to stir the city. She would have given much to know the exact part of Father Fontanel in this rousing ardor of her new friend. "And you really think Pelee may not hold out?" she asked.

"I'm not a monomaniac--at least, not yet," he replied, and his voice suggested a certain pent savagery in his brain. "Call it an experiment that I'm sufficiently interested in to finance. The ways of volcanoes are past the previsions of men. I'd like to get a lot of folks out of the fire-zone, until Pelee is cool--or a billion tons lighter. This ordered-up-to-Nineveh business is out of my line, but it's absorbing. I don't say that Pelee will blow his head off this week or this millennium, but I do say that there are vaults of explosives in that monster, the smallest of which could make this city look like a leper's corpse upon the beach. I say that the internal fires are burning high; that they're already playing about the vital cap; that Pelee has already sprung several leaks, and that the same force which lifted this cheerful archipelago from the depths of the sea is pressing against the craters at this moment. I say that Vesuvius warned before he broke; that Krakatoa warned and then struck; that down the ages these safety valves scattered over the face of the earth have mercifully joggled before giving way; that Pelee is joggling now."

"If M. Mondet would write just that," Paula said softly, "I think you would have your exodus."

She sought her room shortly afterward. Pelee's moods had been variable that day. The north had been obscured by a fresh fog in the afternoon. The ash and sulphur fumes, cruel to the lungs on the breezy _Morne_, six miles from the craters, gave her an intimation of the anguish of the people in the intervening depression where the city lay. The twilight had brought ease again and a ten-minute shower, so there was real freshness in the early evening. Rippling waves of merriment reached her from the darky quarters, as the young men from the fields came forth to bathe in the sea. Never before was the volatile tropic soul so strongly evidenced for her understanding, as in that glad hour of reaction--simple hearts to glow at little things, whose swift tragedies come and go like blighting winds which, though they may slay, leave no wound; instant to gladden in the groves of serenity, when a black cloud has blown by.

Her mind was sleepless.... Once, long after midnight, when she fell into a doze, it was only to be awakened by a dream of a garrote upon her throat. The ash had thickened again, and the air was acrid. The hours seemed to fall asleep in passing. From her balcony she peered into the dead-black of the North where Pelee rumbled at intervals. Back in the south, the blurred moon impended with an evil light. A faint wailing of children reached her from the servants' cabins. The sense of isolation was dreadful for a moment. It seemed to rest entirely with her that time passed at all; that she must grapple with each moment and fight it back into the past....