She Buildeth Her House. Will Levington Comfort

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СКАЧАТЬ inner darkness. Her fingers pained cruelly, and she realized she had been clutching with all her strength the book in her hand—Quentin Charter's book—which she had begun since morning. She could not remember a single one of his sentences which had impressed her, for her brain was tired and ineffectual, as after a prolonged fever, but she held fast to the bracing effect of an optimistic philosophy. Then finally out of the helplessness of one pitifully stricken, a tithe of her old vitality returned. She used it at once, rose from her seat to leave the Hall. Into the base of her brain again, as she neared the door, penetrated the protest of his eyes. Had she been unable to go on, she would have screamed. She felt the eyes of the women, too; the whole, a ghastly experience. Once outside, she wanted to run.

      Not the least astonishing was the quick obliteration of it all. This was because her sensations were the result of an influence foreign to her own nature. In a few moments she felt quite well and normal again, and was conscious of a tendency to make light of the whole proceeding. She reached home shortly after ten, angered at herself—inexplicable perversity—because she had taken Bellingham and the women so seriously. … That night she finished one of the big books of her life—Quentin Charter's "A Damsel Came to Peter." When the dawn stole into the little flat, her eyes were stinging, and her temples felt stretched apart from the recent hours.

SECOND CHAPTER

       Table of Contents

PAULA CONTEMPLATES THE WALL OF A HUNDRED WINDOWS, AND THE MYSTERIOUS MADAME NESTOR CALLS AT THE ZOROASTER

       Table of Contents

      Paula had never felt such a consciousness of vitality as the next forenoon, after three or four hours' sleep. She was just unrested enough to be alive with tension. Her physical and mental capacities seemed expanded beyond all common bounds, and her thoughts tumbled about playfully in full arenic light, as athletes awaiting the beginning of performance. She plunged into a tub of cool water with such delight as thoroughly to souse her hair, so it became necessary to spend a half-hour in the sunlight by the open window, combing and fanning, her mind turning over wonderful things.

      If you ever looked across a valley of oaks and maples and elms in the full morning glow of mid-October, you can divine the glory of red and brown and gold which was this fallen hair. One must meditate long to suggest with words the eyes of Paula Linster; perhaps the best her chronicler can do is to offer a glimpse from time to time. Just now you are asked for the sake of her eyes to visualize that lustrous valley once more—only in a dusk that enriches rather than dims. A memorably beautiful young woman, sitting there by the open window—one of the elect would have said.

      The difficulty in having to do with Linster attractions is to avoid rising into rhapsody. One thinks of stars and lakes, angels and autumn lands, because his heart is full as a country-boy's, and high clean-clipped thinking is choked. Certainly, once having known such a woman, you will never fall under the spell of Weininger, or any other scale-eyed genius. There is an inspiring reach to that hard-handled word, Culture, when it is used about a woman like this. It means so pure a fineness as neither to require nor to be capable of ostentation; and yet, a fineness that wears and gives and associates with heroisms. You think of a lineage that for centuries has not been fouled by brutality or banality, and has preserved a glowing human warmth, too, to retain the spirit of woman. When men rise to the real and the worthy, one by one, each will find his Paula Linster, whom to make happy is happiness; whose companionship inevitably calls forth his best; whom to be with constantly means therefore that all within him, not of the best, must surely die. Clearly when a man finds such a woman, all his roads are closed, save one—to the Shining Heights! And who can say that his royal mate will not laughingly unfold wings for him, when they stand together in the radiant altitude?

      She was thinking of Charter's book as she brushed her hair dry. His sentences played brightly in her mind, fastening themselves to comment of her own for the review. Deep was the appeal of the rapt, sunlit face, as she looked away across the rear-court. The colored hall-boy of her own house might have missed the exquisite lines of lip, eyelid, nostril, brow, temple and chin, but his head uncovered in her presence, and the choicest spirit of service sprang within him. In all about her, to an enlightened vision, was the unconscious repression of beauty—art-stirring lines of mental and spiritual awakening; that look of deep inner freshness and health, the mere sight of which disgusts a man with all he has done to soil and sicken his body. Full and easily she breathed, as one who relishes sweet air like the taste of pure water. You could imagine Paula exclaiming with joy at the tonic delight of a wind from the sea, but not from the steaming aroma of a grill. It was all an æsthetic attraction—not an over-rounded arc, not a tissue stretched shiny from uneven plumpness, not a drowsy sag or fold to suggest the easy content of a mere feeding and breeding animal.

      The rear-view of a great granite-ridge of rooming-houses across the court had often fascinated her with the thought of the mysteries within. Once she had spoken to Reifferscheid about the splendid story of New York yet to be written by someone who watched, as she often did, one of these walls of a hundred windows.

      "Yes," he had said. "It's great to be poor. Best blood of New York is in those back rooms. Everyone needs his poverty-stage of growth—about seven years will do. It teaches you simplicity. You step into your neighbor's room and find him washing his stockings with shaving-soap. He explains that it is better than tooth-powder for textile fabrics. Also, he intimates that he has done a very serious thing in wetting down these small garments, having looked in his bag since, and learned that he has not another pair. However, he wrings them very tight and puts them on with the remark that this is a certain way to prevent shrinkage."

      Even now, a man stood by his window in a sleeveless garment and a ruff of lather, shaving with a free hand, and a song between strokes. His was a shining morning face, indeed. … A bare feminine arm leaped quickly forth from behind a tightened curtain nearby and adjusted a flower-pot better to the sunlight. From somewhere came a girlish voice in Wagner's Walkure Call. There was not a thought of effort in her carrying that lofty elaborate music—just a fine heart tuned to harmony on a rare morning. The effect is not spoiled by the glimpse of a tortured feminine face igniting a cigarette over a gas-flame that has burned all night. The vibrations of New York are too powerful for many, but there is more of health and hope than not. … A good mother cleanses a sauce-pan from her water-pitcher and showers with the rinsing a young heaven-tree far below. Then she lifts in a milk-bottle from the stone ledge—and blows the dust from the top. …

      Often at night when Paula awakened she could hear the drum of a typewriter winging across the precipice—one of the night-shift helping to feed the insatiable maw of print. Had New York called him? Would the City crush him into a trifler, with artificial emotions, or was this a Daniel come to interpret her evil dreams? … In a corner-room with two windows, sat a lame young man before an easel. Almost always he was there, when there was light. Heaven be with him, Paula thought, if his picture failed. … And in one of the least and darkest, an old man sat writing. Day after day, he worked steadily through the hours. To what god or devil had he sold his soul that he was thus condemned to eternal scrivening? This was the harrowing part. The back-floors of New York are not for the old men. Back-rooms for the young men and maidens, still strong in the flight of time and the fight of competition—back-rooms for young New York. Nature loses interest in the old. Civilization should be kinder.

      From an unseen somewhere a canary poured out a veritable fire-hose torrent of melody; and along one of the lower window ledges opposite, an old gray cat was crouched, a picture of sinister listening. Here was a dragon, indeed, for small, warm birds.

      Directly opposite a curtain was lifted, and a woman, no longer young, appeared to breathe the morning. Many СКАЧАТЬ