Bellairs

“ Bellairs as to Job Stallion in the accents of one who means they shall be carried out.
“You will kindly ride a hundred paces behind me, Mr. Bellairs. I have no notion of having my name mixed up with yours or Sir Jasper’s this night. As for you, Job, hand me over that tablet. You can keep the guinea for yourself. And you will drop me, if you please, in the courtyard at Standish Hall, for ’tis not too late to [128] join the dancers in the barn. ”

“ Neither did Tritton.
"You are uncommunicative, my friend," observed Bellairs.
"What's the good of talking?" grumbled Tritton, who carried throughout life the air of one nursing a grievance.
"Talking is a recognized medium of intercourse," explained Bellairs sententiously. "It is one of the few proofs we possess that we are in any way removed above the beasts of the field. You surely wouldn't deprive us of our little conceit?"
"Then talk sense."
Bellairs sighed, and drew his knees closer to his chin.
"I will," he said. "Now that we are on Ono, what do we do?" ”

“ He said a great deal more, and the brief tropical twilight had descended on Ono when the partners emerged from the Polynesian.
"A most informative person," was Bellairs's verdict as he strolled along the beach toward the harbour with Tritton in anxious attendance. ”

“ The Buli of Niama tugged a horny foot closer to his groin.
"I do not savvy, Mr. Bellairs," he said in his precise mission English, and with a perplexed wrinkling of the brow. "I send my daughter to sell you pearls because I run a curio store in Levuka for many year, and know how the white man loves them. I learn many things at my curio store in the great city; but what I do not learn is why, when I send you pearls, you will not buy but send me other pearls in exchange. ”

“ Suppose he was now rolling on the road to Stallbridge-le-Carthew? or perhaps there already and laying before a very white-faced auditor his threats and propositions? A hasty person might have instantly pursued. Whatever I am, I am not hasty, and I was aware of three grave objections. In the first place, I could not be certain that Bellairs was gone. In the second, I had no taste whatever for a long drive at that hour of the night and in so merciless a rain. In the third, I had no idea how I was to get admitted if I went, and no idea what I should say if I got admitted. ”

“ He, with his handsome lady on his arm, up from Windsor for the day, to buy her a stylish head for a Christmas present. And, ‘What are you doing, looking in at a hat-shop window, Bellairs,’ says he, laughing and joking (’tis his way, my dear, a very agreeable [83] gentleman!) ‘Gad,’ says he, ‘you’ve not got a wife to run you up bills! Your chinkers goes hopping out on hosses and dice and cards, and what not! Selfish fellows you bachelors are!’ And Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs, bowing to Mr. Stafford and declaring he only wished he had other people’s luck—and indeed, Miss Smithson, Mrs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At this moment a young man emerged from the harbour-front door of the Hatmos office, locking it after him. Bellair came up from his dream. Such realities of the city man are mainly secret. It was the worn surface that Bellair presented to the stranger, a sophisticated and imperturbable surface, and one employed so often that its novelty was gone. ”

“ There was no joyousness and peace in the lower runways, but pain and heavy pressures.... Bellair saw himself moving among those halls again, not a stranger, but with a hand, a smile, a dollar. No one would moan for days without his knowing. [Pg 163] He would find day-work for the little telephone miss, and send orders for hats to the milliner. He would awaken that shadow of all the shadows, the landlady, with kindness and healing. ”

“ But he found another horse and left the village, following the Lady Louise to the coast and carrying with him both her moneys and his. A ship brought them to America and they made a home in New Orleans. There they sought and found exiles of their own station, making about them a circle as brilliant as Louis's court. And here Bellaire prospered until after my father was born. Then there came other trouble, a game in Paul Bellaire's own home over which there were hot dispute and pistol shots. ”

“ It was of a large gray house, moated, a town beside it, yet not far from woods and standing in rough fields, pure Angevin, Tourmélière, the Manor house of Liré, his home, that Du Bellay wrote this, the most dignified and perhaps the last of his sonnets. The sadness which is the permanent, though sometimes the unrecognized, moderator of his race, which had pierced through in his latter misfortunes, and which had tortured him to the cry that has been printed on the preceding page, here reached a final and a most noble form: something much higher than melancholy, and more majestic than regret. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bellair eased his agony by letting him go—the money gripped in his hands, his limbs hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of it—lost in the grimmest of all tragedies—that here we are, a [Pg 257] human family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was released—shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,” on the trembling lips. ”

“ En route once more from New York to Bellaire it seemed but a few minutes' run, when finally they drew up to the big rustic house, set back in a rocky nook against the mountain.
"Oh, isn't it lovely!" exclaimed Madaline, "and everything is so clear after smoky Pennsylvania."
"Yes, Bellaire is beautiful," Cleo replied, with a show of pride that her relation should be the benefactor. "I know we'll have a wonderful time. Aunt Audrey is like a girl herself, and she knows what girls enjoy."
"Oh, her husband is the author, isn't he?" Grace remembered. ”

“ In the afternoon he passed Bellair brusquely, and drank the night away with Stackhouse. The next day both face and figure had a new burden; the real man was now imprisoned more effectively than even his sobriety could accomplish.... Then the descent day by day—the narrow, woman’s waist and the broad, lean shoulders becoming a hunched unit, face averted, hands thick. Bellair always felt that Stackhouse was in a way responsible—for the old Master had known what would come and lured it on. He had foretold each stage—even to the last of McArliss drinking alone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ruin!'
'Ruin?' quoth Bellarion.
'Of all our hopes,' Barbaresco explained in petulance.
'Can't you see it? Can you understand nothing for yourself, animal, save the things you were better for not understanding? And can't you see that you have ruined yourself with us? With your face and shape and already close in the Lady Valeria's confidence as you are, there are no heights in the State to which you might not have climbed.'
'I had not thought of it,' said Bellarion, sighing. ”

“ The flesh was dying, but this that had risen in Fleury could not die. Their other companion had gone down, clothed in hair and filth and the desire of a beast, taking the remnant of the man with it.
Thus it had come to Bellair—the vivid contrast of cavern and high noon. It was all in the two deaths, the enactment of the second, as yet unfinished.... New York and all life moved with countless tricks and lures to make a man lose his way, lose his chance to rise and die with grace like this. New York was like one vast Lot & Company. ”

“ Bellair smoked to the workman; also he smoked to Stackhouse. Something kindly had come over him for the Animal. Lot & Company had helped him to it.... Yes, he thought, the animal part is right enough. It is only when the human adult consciousness turns predatory that the earth is laid waste and the stars are fogged.... These were but back-flips of Bellair’s mind. ”

“ It had been as if he were out under the stars again,—Fleury talking from the shadows near the woman—the rest, vastness and starlight.
“It’s the too-great light, Bellair. It came when I could stand it. As soon as I could love you enough I could pray. It is the loss of the sense of self that made it wonderful. ”

“ His face turned toward Fleury, but did not meet the preacher’s eyes.
“The Jade brought a sweet cargo to Ameriga, and Stackhouse does not bank in New York.... Bellair, I want to drink—so the talk will come——”
So absurd was the sound of cargo and banking that Bellair thought his mind had wandered again, yet he said:
“You are better. You cannot drink each hour. If this is to help you, you must be sane.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fleury whispered.
The ship’s bell struck twice; the cane-chair [Pg 88] creaked; they turned by habit to note the appearance of the Japanese woman with drink. She did not fail. Stackhouse came to with a prolonged snore, a sound unlike a pair of pit-terriers at work.
“A considerable brute,” muttered the preacher.
“He has been much of a man in his way,” said Bellair.
“He talks much—that is weakness.”
Their eyes met. Bellair began to understand how deeply the other’s experience had bitten him.
“He’s afraid of death,” Fleury added.
“I wonder,” Bellair mused. “He talks always of death. ”

“ All right, Davy. I’ve told ’em where to find it on the back of the note.... And now Bellair—you were saying——”
2
Bellair watched for the turn on the part of Broadwell that would reveal the character of his message, for he did not believe the matter of the copy for the printer. The chill was thick between them, yet Bellair managed to say:
“I’m not here for reprisal or trouble-making. It’s rather a novelty to be innocent, yet charged with a thing; certainly one sees a look from the world that could come no other way. I want to see you again—soon. I’ve got a story to tell you. ”