Will Levington Comfort

“ This was New York—among men—food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures—such were the surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the arch of it all—the arch of the old home, New York,—not this Bessie, but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to make and mould. ”

“ He knew that considerable canvas was still spread between California, Australia and the Islands, but what a well-kept if ancient maiden of the Jade’s species was doing here in New York harbour, A. D. Nineteen hundred and odd, was not disclosed to Bellair until afterward, and not clearly then.
He knew her for a barkentine, and in the intensely personal appeal of the moment he was a bit sorry for the blend. To his eyes the schooner-rig of mizzen and main masts was not to be compared for beauty to the trisected fore. ”

“ It was this—that the old man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s.
Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his hand. ”

“ What a mother she was; and what a little girl lived in that story, and now!... That little girl was still in her heart. The recent days in the open boat had not spoiled her; nor the recent years of loneliness and tragedy. Out of it all had come certain perfect works—the babe in her arms, her own fortitude and fearlessness of death; the little girl still in her eyes and heart. Bellair saw that a man loves the child in a woman, quite as much as a woman loves the boy in a man.... She had said that Fleury and he were brothers and heroes. ”

“ Strangely that instant he thought of her story—the coming of The Guest—the thought she had held all the years, the strange restless beauty of its ideal—the mothering beauty of it that seemed to him now endless in power. Such a mystery came to him from her arms—as if she were holding them up to receive perfection, some great spiritual [Pg 205] gift.... It was startlingly native to her, this expectancy—the pure receptivity of it, and the thought of beauty in her mind. A woman could command heaven with that gesture, he thought, and call to earth an archangel—if her ideal were pure enough. ”

“ They were beneath the monster. Bellair felt more than the crush of the weight of flesh, a force kindred to electricity, but not electric, a smothering defiling dynamics, that despoiled him by the low, cold depth of its vibration, rather than by the fierce fury of it. Then he thought of the woman’s child. It came to him like a pure gleam. The child must live. The thought was very real, out of the self, but not for self.... It seemed that he heard the heart of Stackhouse break, and the demon hiss away. ”

“ They were a full day at sea, before Bellair was called to sit down before the great cane chair. There was a warm land wind; November already forgotten. The Jade had gathered up her skirts and was swinging along with a low music of her own. Stackhouse waddled back to his chair from the land-rail, a remarkable mass of crumpled silks, the canes marked in the general effusion of dampness along his back and legs, the silks caught up behind by a system of wrinkles and imprints, and one hitched pantaloon revealing the familiar muff of fur above the selvage of his fallen sock. ”

“ There was no murder in their hearts.... Stackhouse drew his feet under him, helping them with his hands; his eyeballs turned upward from the agony of cramps in his limbs; then he sank forward on his knees. The craft of desire had turned from fighting to speech. The moon was grey upon his breast and gleamed from his eyes.
[Pg 129]
“You will listen to a man who is dying. Yes, Bellair, you will listen—who listened to me so much.... Give me drink, so I can talk——”
“It may save you—but not if you take it all at once.”
The creature winced, but his passion moved to its appointed ends. ”

“ He must be carried away, a passion must take him out of self. Very far he seemed from passion; rather this was like a child in his heart, with gifts, deep and changeless, but inarticulate, as a child is. It had been long in coming, quietly fulfilling itself, and this was the rising.
... The last car was gone, but he found a carriage—an open carriage, a slow horse, a cool and starry night. The city was growing silent, the edges darkened. There were high trees, a homing touch about them after the sea, and a glimpse of the harbour to the left. Bellair had not even a bag [Pg 334] with him. ”

“ For months, Bellair had not touched the little orbit of the trodden lives. The story was not true, for no single group of ten words hinged upon what had been said, or folded into the next statement. The old man was not simple, but his guile was simple, and the simplicity of that was obscene. Begging might be a fine art, but men chose or fell into their work without thought of making an art of it. The old man did not know his own tremendous drama. Had he dared plainly to be true, he would have captivated the world with his own poor faculties. ”

“ And all the time that they were searching widely from Auckland for their house, a little Englishwoman, growing old, sat waiting for them within an hour’s ride from the city. They found her at last and her stone cottage, rarely attractive in its neglect; and from the door-yard, an Odessian vista of sky and harbour and lifted shore-line.... They had even passed it before, their eyes turned farther afield. Bellair couldn’t ignore the analogy of the nearest woman, nor the stories of all the great spiritual quests—how the fleeces on a man’s doorstep turn golden, if he can only see. ”

“ Picturesqueness and personality were gone from him; romance and the strange culture of the man, for the eyes of Bellair; the old wonder, too, which the seas and the islands of the seas had given him. Bellair could not forget the ankles, the moving of those bare masses up and down, as Stackhouse had clung at the same time to the small boat and the gunwale of the Jade. What a poison to past tales—this present passion and method of self-salvation. [Pg 108] He was less than a beast, in retaining the effigy of a man. ”

“ There is hell for me, but for all alike. You may live days—but the longer, the more hell. And you will all come at last—to the long deep drink of the brine——”
“Oh, come now, Stackhouse,” said Bellair. “It may not turn out so badly. You’ve had luck before. You’ve talked much to me of luck—and deaths of others. If it’s your turn—face it as your innumerable friends faced it.”
The man was undone before them. The flesh of his jaws stood out, as if pulled by invisible fingers. His heavy lips rubbed together, so that they turned from the sight of them. ”

“ Bessie dressed for the world, not for herself, certainly not for Bellair. Without, in the world—streets, restaurants, theatres—there existed an abstraction which must be satisfied. She had not yet entered upon that perilous adventure of dressing for the eyes of one man. She did not think of Bellair as she lifted her arms to her hair. On no other morning could she have been so far from the sense of him in her room. Empires have fallen because a woman has lifted her naked arms to her hair with a man in the room. ”

“ But Bessie became blurred. He did not understand. Either his brain had another picture, or the original of the singing girl was fading.... A New York voice, no passion, but ambition, an excellent voice—and such a beautiful, girlish breast.... Bellair tried to shake this coldness from him. This was not being true. He had a faint suspicion that a man’s woman is more apt to depart from him while he is at her side than when he is away. It is because another has come, if passion for the old dies, when one is away. Alone and apart, man is more ardent, in fact, unless a new picture composes.... ”

“ The body of Stackhouse was lifted to its knees—the different face looking out of the eyes. They sat before it like terrified children; the eyes found them one after another, steadily, with unearthly frigid humour, like some creative force of evil, integrated of the ages, charged with intrepid will, a ruling visitant that would tarry but an instant for the climax.
It was not human, save in the shape and feature for their recognition; its difference from the human was its frank knowing destructiveness. Humanity is mainly unconscious of the processes of evil ”

“ Bellair never forgot that, or rather what she had meant to say.
“Singing is what drew me to you, Bessie. What I object to is what the world tries to do with its singers, and that so many singers fall for it.”
“The world lets you more or less alone—until you make good. Plenty of time after that to answer back.”
She yawned. It was as near reality as they had gotten, and Bellair, who asked so little, had a glimpse again of the loveliness he had first taken to sea—even to the kiss at the last. ”

“ Stackhouse himself would not have faltered before that voice of Fleury’s, but there was a force in it that prevailed for a moment upon the obsession. The air was full of strain.... They heard the heart in the poor body. The blue-tipped hands were upraised from the bottom of the boat—the face was toward them. Bellair and the Faraway Woman could see only the back of Fleury’s head. The strain was like a vice in the open boat. ”

“ To many, Lois was the loveliest of us—large, calm, dark and quiet, very well, slow of speech, but quick to smile. Had you visited our house then, you would have remembered my father’s patriarchal air, the smile of Lois, and the maternity that brooded over us all. The rest you would get afterward—a variety of young people with different faults and attractions—I the grey one, last to be noted. Lois was given credit for more than she was. I do not love brain or power, but I seem to love courage. Lois had something to take the place of these—not courage—and no, not power nor brain. ”

“ We must lose the sense of self in order to receive; and having received, we do not want the sense of self. This is the right and left hand of prayer—pure selfless receptivity, then tireless giving to others. It is the key to the whole scheme of life—mountain and valley, ebb and flow, night and day, winter and summer, the movement of the lungs and the heart and the soul. We cannot receive while our senses are hot with desire; therefore we must become delicate and sensitive. Having received, we [Pg 170] must make the gift alive through action. Dreaming is splendid; the dreamer receives. ”

“ Placing his pen behind his ear, he lifted the ledger from under Bellair’s eyes, his lips compressed with the effort. Then he placed it on his own desk to close it tenderly, after which it was taken to its niche in the vault.
The office was silent. Just now Bellair’s eyes turned as if subtly attracted to the place where Eben Wetherbee sat. The young man’s smileless eyes, almost insane with apprehension and sadness, were turned with extraordinary intent upon the place where his father sat. Bellair’s followed. The old man sat plumped in his chair; he gulped, tried to turn. ”

“ When we have understanding, we have everything. Those who in their childhood are made to suffer horribly are often the ones who reach understanding. Sometimes they suffer too much and become dulled and dumb. Sometimes in the very ache of their story, which can be so rarely told, they risk the telling to some one not ready. It aches so, as its stays and stays untold. Oh, the whole world craves understanding, and yet if we tell our story to one who is not ready—we hurt them and ourselves, and add unto our misery. ”

“ Fleury asked. “Could he not appreciate the Father’s House better than him who had not left it? Man is greater than angels—that’s hinted at everywhere in the Scriptures. Angels are unalloyed good. The man who has mastered matter becomes a creative force. All the great stories of the world tell the same story—the wanderings of Ulysses, the tasks of Hercules. The soul’s mastery of each task and escape from each peril and illusion is an added lesson—finally the puzzle breaks open. The adventurer sees the long journey of the soul, not this little earth-crossing. ”

“ Bellair surveyed his world as the dawn came up.... Thirst and fasting; possibly, the end.... The peculiar part of his open boat contemplations, no two were alike. Physical denial hurried him from one plane to another from which he regarded his world—his two worlds, for Stackhouse behind was one, and his friends forward, another; the one drawing his love, courage [Pg 116] and finest ideals; the other, repression of self, lest he wear himself out in hatred. They were not talkers in front. He had not seen quite the entire fulfilment of Fleury’s meaning about talking until late moments. ”

“ He fell to dreaming again and again of the Jade—the last misty glimpse of her at the Narrows, and the huge brown hands pushing Brooklyn away.... There is pathos in the city man’s love and need for fresh air. Bellair pulled his bed to the window at last, surveying the room without regard. Long afterward he dreamed that he was out on the heaving floor of the sea, and that a man-monster came down from the deck in pajamas, and pressing his hands against the walls of the cabin, made respiration next to impossible for the inmate. ”

“ A city man who had long dreamed of a country garden; or indeed, Bellair was a city man who had long dreamed of a full-rigged ship to fulfil in part the romance of his soul. The Jade had a dear inner life for him, satisfied him with her lines, her breathing, settling and repose. A fine [Pg 70] hunger began to animate the length and breadth of the man. ”

“ Like many another solitary young man, he had brooded much upon what a certain woman might be. He had found that in those women he met, certain spaces must be filled in by his own compassion—and these spaces did not endure. Always in a test they separated from the reality. But the Faraway Woman day by day had fulfilled; even where his idealism failed, she completed the picture of the woman above him and of irresistible attraction.
She had come nearer and nearer. She was magic in this way. He had regarded her at first distantly and askance at the rail of the Jade. ”

“ New York was first, and it became very clear to him, especially on this night, that New York must be entered upon without further delay. There was a thrill of dismay in the thought of the weeks that had passed, and the dreaming. Dreams were good. He had needed these days; great adjustments and healings had taken place. It had been the pleasant lull between the old and new, the only rest his life had known, in fact. All its beauty was massed into the period—but the dreams must be turned into action now.
A man may stay just so long in joy. ”