She Buildeth Her House. Will Levington Comfort

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ On the surface of all his sayings, and all comment about him, was the bland, deadly insinuation that the soul expands in the pursuit of bodily health. About his name was the mystery of his age, whispers of his physical perfection, intimations of romantic affairs, the suggestion of his miraculous performances upon the emotions—the whole gamut of activities designed to make him the instant aversion of any normal member of his own sex. Yet the flock of females had settled about him, as they have settled about every black human plague—and glorious messiah—since the birth of days.

      The thrilled, expectant look on several faces brought to Paula's mind the type of her sisters who relish being shocked; whose exaltations are patently those of emotional contact; who call physical excitement the glorifying of their spirit, and cannot be persuaded to confess otherwise. Woman as a negation for man to play upon never distressed her before with such direct and certain pressure. Here were women intent upon encountering a new sensation; women who devoutly breathed the name of Motherhood next to Godhood, and yet endured their pregnancy with organic rebellion and mental loathing; women who could not conceive of love apart from the embrace of man, and who imagine a "message" in deformed and salacious novels, making such books popular; women of gold-leaf culture whose modesty fastens with a bow—narrow temples of infinite receptivity. …

      Why had they come? In the perfect feminine system of information, the whisper had run: "Bellingham is wonderful. Bellingham tells you how to live forever. Bellingham teaches the renewal of self and has esoteric classes—for the few!" They had the sanction of one another. There was no scandal in being there openly, nor any instinct, apparently, to warn them that secret classes to discover how to live forever, had upon the surface no very tonic flavor. The digest of the whole matter was that revelations sooner or later would be made to a certain few, and that these revelations, which would be as fine oil upon the mental surfaces of many women near her, would act as acid upon the male mind generally.

      In the sickening distaste for herself and for those who had to make no concession to themselves for coming, inasmuch as society permitted; and who would be heartfully disappointed in a lecture on hygiene that did not discuss the more intimate matters of the senses, Paula did not appraise the opposite sex at any higher value. She merely reviewed matters which had come to her vividly as some of the crowning frailties of her own kind. The centre of the whole affair, Dr. Bellingham, was now introduced.

      He looked like a Dane at first glance. His was the size, the dusty look and the big bone of a Dane; the deep, downy paleness of cheek, the tumbled, though not mussy hair. He was heavy without being adipose, lean, but big-boned; his face was lined with years, though miraculously young in the texture of skin. The lips of a rather small and feminine mouth were fresh and red as a girl's. In the softness of complexion and the faintest possible undertone of color, it was impossible not to think of perfected circulation and human health brought to truest rhythm. The costliest lotions cannot make such a skin. It is organic harmony. Exterior decoration does not delude the seeing eye any more than a powder-magazine becomes an innocent cottage because its walls are vine-clad. … Directly behind her, Paula now heard a slow whisper:

      "I knew him twenty-five years ago, and he is not a moment older to look at."

      She seemed to have heard the voice before, and though the sentence surged with a dark significance through her mind, she did not turn. Bellingham's words were now caressing the intelligence of his audience. To Paula, his soft mouth was indescribably odious with cultured passion, red with replenishment, fresh with that sinister satisfaction which inevitably brings to mind a second figure, fallen, drained. His presence set to quivering within her, fears engendered from the great occult past. Strange deviltries would always be shadowed about the Bellingham image in her mind. … Here was a man who made a shrine of his body, invested it with a heavy hungering God, and taught others—women—to bow and to serve.

      To her the body was but a nunnery which enclosed for a time an eternal element. This was basic, incontrovertible to her understanding. All that placated the body and helped to make fleshly desires last long, was hostile to the eternal element. Not that the body should be abused or neglected, but kept as nearly as possible a clean vessel for the spirit, brought to a fine automatic functioning. It was as clear to Paula Linster as the faces of the women about her, that the splendid sacrifice of Jesus was not that He had died upon the Cross, but that He put on flesh in the beginning for the good of infant-souled men. … To eat sparingly of that which is good; to sleep when weary; to require cleanliness and pure air—these were the physical laws which worked out easily for decent minds. Beyond such simple affairs, she did not allow the body often to rule her brain. When, indeed, the potentialities of her sex stirred within, Paula felt that it was the down-pull of the old brood-mother, Earth, and not the lifting of wings.

      Bellingham's voice correlated itself, not with the eyes and brow, but with the Lilith mouth—that strangely unpunished mouth. It was soft, suave. There was in it the warmth of breath. The high white forehead and the tousled brown hair, leonine in its masculinity—seemed foreign as another man's. She hearkened to the voice of a doctor used to women; one who knows women without illusion, whom you could imagine saying, "Why bless you, women never say 'no.'"

      The eyes were blue-gray, but toned very darkly. The iris looked small in contrast to the expanse of clear white. They were fixed like a bird's in expression, incapable of warming or softening, yet one did not miss the impression that they could brighten and harden, even to shining in the dark. Heavy blonde brows added a look of severity.

      Paula's spirit, as if recognizing an old and mortal enemy, gathered about itself every human protecting emotion. Frankly hateful, she surveyed the man, listening. He talked marvellously; even in her hostility, she had to grant that. The great sunning cat was in his tones, but the words were joined into clean-thought expression, rapid, vivid, unanswerable. He did not speak long; the first meeting was largely formative. Paula knew he was studying his company, and watched him peer into the faces of the women. His mouth occasionally softened in the most winsome and engaging way, while his words ran on with the refined wisdom of ages. And always to her, his eyes stood out cold, hard, deadly.

      Finally, she was conscious that they were roving near her; moving left to right, from face to face, as a collection-plate might have been passed. Her first thought was to leave; but fear never failed to arouse an impulse to face out the cause. The second thought was to keep her eyes lowered. This she tried. His words came clearly now, as she stared down into the shadow—the perfectly carved thoughts, bright and swift like a company of soldiers moving in accord. As seconds passed, this down-staring became insufferable as though some one were holding her head. She could not breathe under repression. Always it had been so; the irresistible maddened the very centres of her reason—a locked room, a hand or a will stronger than her own.

      Raising her head with a gasp, as one coming to the surface from a great depth of water, she met Bellingham's glance unerringly as a shaft of light. He had waited for this instant. The eyes now boring into her own, seemed lifted apart from all material things, veritable essences of light, as if they caught and held the full rays of every arc-lamp in the Hall. Warmth and smiling were not in them; instead, the spirit of conquest aroused; incarnate preying-power, dead to pity and humor. Here was Desire toothed, taloned, quick with every subtle art of nature. Something at war with God, his eyes expressed to her. Failing to master God, failing to foul the centres of creative purity, this Something devoured the souls of women. Continually his voice sought to drug her brain. The fine edge was gone from her perceptions; dulled, she was, to all but his sayings. There was a chill behind and above her eyes; it swept backward and seemed to converge in the coarser ganglia at the base of her brain. Once she had seen a bird hop and flutter lower and lower among the branches of a lilacbush. On the ground below was a cat with head twisted upward—its vivid and implacable eyes distending. Paula could understand now the crippling magnetism the bird felt. … Finally she could hear only the words of Bellingham, and feel only his power. What he was saying now to her was truth, the unqualified truth of more-than-man.

      When his eyes turned away, СКАЧАТЬ