Chapter 17

Beth regarded him deeply for a moment. She could not adjust him to commonness. She was suffering. Bedient saw only the mystic light of that suffering. He had never loved her as at this moment.

"I always wish I could paint you, as you look when you are thinking about such things!" she said. "Just as you looked when you spoke about two people who have illumined each other, so that they turn their great anguish of loving upon the race.... Yes, I see it: prophets might indeed come from that kind of love."

Beth worked with uncommon energy for many minutes. All-forgetting--time, place, tension and the man near. Her spirit was strangely sustained under his eyes. The work flew, and left little traces of its processes in her mind--her concentration was deeper than memory.

* * * * *

"I'd like to ride with you," he said, rising to leave.

Beth had often spoken of her saddle-horse, which of late had been kept at her mother's country place. Bedient rented a very good mount in New York, but Beth remarked that her own had spoiled her for all others, adding that he would say so, too, if he could see Clarendon, the famous black she rode.

"I can't afford to keep him in the city long at a time," she explained. "Oh, it's not what he costs, but he's a devourer of daylight.... It breaks up half a day to get to the stables and change and all, and I haven't tried to ride after dark. We poor paint creatures are so dependent upon light for our work.... And yet riding adds to good health--just the right sparkle in my case."

"And that's royalty," Bedient declared.

Beth was thinking. He had spoken of riding with her before. He had been singularly appealing this day. Trouble had filled his eyes at the first sight of her, and she had felt his struggle with it.... Her mother had asked to see him, but there wasn't a good mate for Clarendon in or about Dunstan, where her home was.... She was so worn, mind and nerve and spirit, that the thought of a long ride lured strongly. She knew he would be different. Perhaps he might show, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was not identified with commonness.... He might bring the talk to the point of--Beth thrilled at this. She was far from ready, and yet with him before her, Wordling and the sea were remote and soundless.

"Could you get the good mare you ride--across to Jersey?"

"Yes," he said eagerly. "I could send a man over with her--a day ahead."

This was Thursday.

"I'll ride with you Saturday," she said finally. "You get your horse over to Dunstan Friday--to-morrow--and we'll start from here early Saturday morning. A day in the hills--and supper at night in my real home!"

She had never seen him so pleased, but Beth was a little startled at herself when she considered yesterday.... He was always so different when he came, from the creation of her mind when alone, and the doubts flew in and out. Then the little sacred book he had brought--so powerfully fathomed and marked--it was like bringing his youth to her, with all its thoughts and wanderings. He was particularly attractive to her in these little things, and she missed not a phase of such impulses. He delighted to see them in _her_ house, he said, and she knew they had been his riches in the years of loneliness and wandering.... Far back in her faculties, however, the battle was furious and constant. Every faltering advance of faith was met and assailed.

"I thank you," he said. "In fact, I can't thank you.... What a day it will be for me to live over.... There's a little thing that needs doing. It will take me away for three or four days next week."

Beth almost laughed. She caught the laugh of mockery in time. The ride just arranged seized and held her attention, like some baleful creature. There was abomination about it, to her thoughts--the ease with which he had managed, her abject softness.... She was trembling within, all her resistance settling, straining, like a tree before the final stroke of the axe. Her hands trembled crazily and were cold.... She had given her word; yes, they would ride together. She could not evade his eyes, his question, if she refused now.... He must not see that she was whipped.... But she would not see him after that. He could not come back to her from the Wordling arms. She would not see him to-morrow. But the picture----

She had turned from the easel to her desk, and was fumbling with papers there, her back turned to him. A half minute had passed since his last word... One word came from her:

"Yes?"

She had meant it to sound as if spoken absently, as if she were preoccupied in search for a certain paper. Instead it was an eldritch note in the room, like the croak of an evil bird... He was standing near the outer door. Something of her tumult must have come to him, she thought, for his voice was strangely altered when he asked:

"Will three or four days make any difference about the picture?"

... She would not see him again. He could not come back here to-morrow nor afterward. He must go away now... She thought of her wail to the Grey One that he would not go to the ocean with Wordling... It meant nothing to him; she could not punish _him_ by keeping him away... But the picture--that final inner lustre. It had come to her this morning--what havoc in the memory--and she had seen it that day in the great gallery before his _Race Mother_, but had been unable quite to hold it in mind until the working light of the following day... She must not add to her own punishment, after all her care and labor, by failing in the last touch. And yet he must not come again...

"The picture, did you say?"

He repeated his question.

"Why, the picture is practically done," she said. "I'll sign and deliver it to-morrow. I think it will get to you to-morrow. The long, ridiculously long, preliminary work gave me the modelling, as well as I could have it.... This weather makes one think of the ocean or the mountains----"

She had forgotten this gray day of winds. Her sentence, and the design of it, had been founded upon the recent run of superb spring days.

"There's a little thing that needs doing by the ocean--that's why I go." His words seemed to come from a distance.

"It would not do for you to look at the picture here. You'd feel expected to say something pretty--or most would. I want it out of its work-light, then you can judge and send it back if it's bad. I'll try to have it at the Club to-morrow.... You did not know this was the final sitting, did you?"

She was talking feverishly, in fear of his questions. She knew it must sound strange and unreasonable to his mind.

"No," he said gently. "You always surprise me. And the ride--Saturday?"

"Yes, the ride.... We must start----"

"Early?"

"Yes. We'll meet--at the Thirty-fourth Street boat--at seven."

"I thank you. And good-by."

There was something amazing to her in his capacity not to question. In her weakness she was grateful almost to tears. She would not show him her hurt, but crossed the room hastily, and extended her hand with a brave smile.... Listening, she heard him descend the stairs.... Then from the front window, she saw him reach the street, turn to the Avenue and mingle with men.

It was not like yesterday in the little room. That agony had worn her too much for another such crisis.... The thought fascinated, that there must be some hidden meaning to the queer promise she had been impelled to make--to ride with him Saturday.... The parting, his instant comprehension of some mood of hers, in which words had no place; his sad smile, and the look of gratitude when she came forward; his seeming content with all her decisions; his inability to question or ask favors--all these retained a remarkable hold upon her imagination. And even though, to her eyes, he stood as one fallen, there was poise in his presence.... Something about him brought back her dreams, whether or no, with all their ecstasy and dread. Already she was thinking of him--as one gone; and yet the studio seemed mystic with his comings and goings and gifts.... It came to her how her lips had quivered under his eyes, as she went forward to say good-by.... It was not three or four days, but "good-by," indeed.

* * * * *

Though she would have put the black mark of misery upon it, this was one of the greatest of Beth Truba's days. She had come into the world with a great faith to bestow--and some dreadful punishment, it seemed, made her bear it alone. It had long ached within to be given. It shamed her that she could not. With all her intellect, all her world-habit of mind, she believed that Andrew Bedient had fallen greatly--greatly, because he had shown himself so clean and wise. She granted to herself nothing but a thrilling admiration for him in his higher moments, but still she was associated with this fall, because she had permitted him to come to her, almost at will. And she had not been _enough_ for him--what poison in that thought!

Yet, the unseen Shadowy Sister endeavored to restore her faith again and again, and garland the Wanderer with it....

Every instant of passing daylight harried her with the thought of the work yet to do. It might prove much--and to-morrow--the thought came with heaviness and darkening--the portrait must go to him. And the day after--he would go.... She dreaded to look at the picture now. Many touches of love, she had put upon it. Her highest thinking it had called, as his words had done. It had even stimulated her to an old dream of really great work. Beth Truba had long put that away.

The rapt look in his eyes; the rapt smile upon his lips when he spoke of his great theme; just to paint that, would be greatness. Just to put it once upon the canvas, that would be enough. It would show that she had seen more than man--deeper than flesh. One song, one picture, one book, is enough for any artist. She had always said that....

These thoughts stilled and softened her spirit--held her moveless in the centre of the room; but again the world returned, with all its play upon her finished intelligence.... He had not found her sufficient to restrain him from this ocean episode; and pride uprose--a vindictive burning that scorched full-length.

"He is very brave and evolved," she whispered bitterly, "but the man within him was not to be denied.... Wordling has that.... God, it seems as if there is nothing of that--in red-haired Beth Truba!... No, he must run off to the ocean, quite as if he had been a poor, impatient boy, like the Other!"

Her face crimsoned. The shame and agony of the thought brought her to her knees before the picture she had painted.

"And perhaps it _is_ my fault," she whispered desperately. "Perhaps I have asked too much, and waited too long. Perhaps they see--what I do not--and women lie--and I only think I feel! Perhaps I _am_ weathered and inflexible, and hard and old and cold, and they know, and become afraid!"

But there was stern denial in the face before her--reproach in the eyes she had made of paint.... In her terror before these thoughts, which struck home in the hour of her weakness, the art of the thing suddenly prevailed--good work, the valiant rescuer.... She remembered how her presence had aroused the giant in the Other. Her spell had done that. She had felt the crush of his arms, and queer fires had laughed across her brain. Then she fell again with the thought, that even that had not sufficed. Her pride had sent him away even after that--his laugh, his Greek beauty, his passion and all.... And now it came to her with fierce reality, that should the Other ever return, it would only make these later hours and later memories burn the deeper.... A temptation came to hold Bedient--as a woman could--to keep him from going to another woman, but her eyes fell with swift shame from the picture.

"I have not made you common--how can I be common with you?" she cried. "Oh, why could you not always remember your best, you, who have helped others so?"

The light, though gray, was still strong. Fixed upon the canvas, as she had never seen it before, was a revelation of one of those high moments which had exalted Vina Nettleton, and changed David Cairns in the whole order of his being. She almost listened for him to speak of the natural greatness of women.

"But you are forgetting those higher moments," she whispered. "That's the way with men and boys--to forget--to run away for the little things beside the ocean----"

But the face denied; the face was of purity. It regarded her steadily in her long watching--a fixture of poise, happiness assured.... Then the need of haste and work, left deep in her mind, arose to the surface with a strong and sudden urging--the delivery to-morrow. Her heart, her flesh, her soul, all were at war and weary unto death. It was hideous to attempt to touch it again that day; yet to-morrow an evil light ... and now came the full realization of a remarkable fact.

The final inner lustre was there. The thing she had long been afraid to do, save in the exact perfect moment, was done. That Something of his was before her, its lifting valor not to be denied....

It was just before he had asked her to ride, she recalled now. An elate concentration had held her while she painted. She had not spoken; she had hardly known the world about her. It had been too big to leave a memory.... It was done. It pleaded for him. It was like the Shadowy Sister pleading for him. Swiftly, she signed the work. It was his. That was hard.

...In the veil of dusk she was still kneeling, her face ghastly with waiting.... And not until pride intervened again, and prevailed upon her to see him no more, after the last ride together, did she find some old friendly tears, almost as remote from the days she now lived, as Florentine springtimes of student memory.

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

Bedient arose at four on Saturday morning and looked out of his high window. June had come. The smell of rain was _not_ in the air. He was grateful and drew up a chair, facing the East. The old mystery of morning unfolded over sea, and there was no blemish.... Bedient had not slept, nor during the two preceding nights. While the abundance of his strength was not abated, deep grooves (that came to abrupt blind endings) were worn in his mind from certain thoughts, and he was conscious of his body, which may be the beginning of weariness; conscious, too, of a tendency of his faculties to mark time over little things.

Yesterday the picture had come. He had hoped hard against this. Its coming had brought to him a sense of separateness from the studio, that he tried not to dwell upon in mind, but which recurred persistently.... He could not judge a portrait of himself; yet he knew this was wonderful. Beth had caught him in an animate moment, and fixed him there. Her fine ideal had put on permanence.... "Hold fast to a soul-ideal of your friend," he remembered telling her once, "and you help him to build himself true to it. If your ideal is rudely broken, you become one of the disintegrating forces at work upon him."

He keenly felt the disorder in his relation to Beth. The thought that held together, against all others, was that Beth loved some one, just now out of her world. He wished she could see into his mind about this; instantly, he would have helped her; his dearest labor, to restore her happiness.

He had never been confident of winning. He loved far too well, and held Beth too high, ever to become familiar in his thoughts of her as a life companion. Power lived in her presence for him; great struggles and conquerings. He loved every year she had lived; every hour of life that had brought her to this supremacy of womanhood before which he bowed, was precious to him. In this instance he was myopic. He did not see Beth Truba as other women, and failed to realize this. His penetration faltered before her, for she lived and moved in the brilliant light of his love, blended with it, so that her figure, and her frailties, lost all sharpness of contour.

He had suffered in the past three days and nights. He was proud and glad to suffer. There was no service nor suffering that he would have hesitated to accept for Beth Truba.... This day amazed him in prospect, one of her beautiful gifts to him. It was almost as if she had come to his house, lovely, unafraid, and sat laughing before his fire. One of the loftiest emotions, this sense of companionship with her. There was something of distinct loveliness in every hour they had passed together. Not one of their fragrances had he lost. These memories often held him, like mysterious gardens.

...Bedient paced the big area in front of the ferry entrance long before seven. He saw her the instant she stepped from the cross-town car. The day was momentarily brightening, yet something of the early morning red was about her. His throat tightened at sight of her radiant swiftness. Her eyes were deeper, her lips more than ever red.... On the deck of the ferry, before the start, she said:

"I feel as if we were escaping from somewhere, and could not tolerate a moment's delay."

...At ten o'clock they were in the saddle, and Dunstan was far behind. The morning, as perfect as ever arose in Northern summer; the azure glorified with golden light, and off to the South, a few shining counterpanes of cloud lay still. The half had not been told about Beth's Clarendon, a huge rounded black, with a head slightly Roman, and every movement a pose. He was skimp of mane and tail; such fine grain does not run to hair. While there was sanity and breeding in his steady black eye, every look and motion suggested "too much horse" for a woman. Yet Beth handled him superbly, and from a side-saddle. Clarendon had in his temper, that gift of show aristocrats--excess of life, not at all to be confused with wickedness--which finds in plain outdoors and decent going, plentiful stimulus for top endeavor and hot excitement.

"I've had him long," Beth said, "and though he has sprung from a walk to a trot countless times without a word from me, he has yet to slow down of his own accord. He can do his twelve miles an hour, and turn around and do it back.... You see how he handles--for me."

She delighted in his show qualities, rarely combined with such excellent substance. She showed his gaits, but rode a trot by preference. Bedient, who had a good mare, laughed joyously when his mount was forced into a run to keep abreast. Clarendon, without the slightest show of strain, had settled to his trot.... All Bedient's thinking and imaging during the years alone, of the woman he should some time find, had never brought him anything so thrilling as this slightly flushed profile of Beth's now. What an anchorage of reality she was, after years of dream-stuff--a crown of discoveries, no less--and what an honor, her gift of companionship! He felt an expansion of power, and strength to count this day great with compensation, should the future know only the interminable dull aching of absence and distance.

Bedient had started to speak of the picture, but she bade him wait.... As they rode along a country road, they came to an old ruin of a farm-house, surrounded by huge barns, some new, and all in good repair. A little beyond was a calf tied to a post. It was lying down, its legs still being largely experimental--a pitifully new calf, shapeless and forlorn.

The mother was nowhere around. Sick in some far meadow, perhaps, sick of making milk for men.

"That's a veal calf," Beth said.

The note in her voice called his eyes. Something which the sight suggested was hateful to her. Bedient dismounted and led his chestnut mare up to the little thing, which stared, tranced in hope and fear. The mare dropped her muzzle benignantly. She understood and became self-conscious and uncomfortable. One of a group of children near the farmhouse behind them called:

"Show off! Show off!"

"They sell its rightful food," Beth said, "and feed the poor little thing on cheaper stuff until it hardens for the butcher. Men are so big with their business."

"There are veal calves tied to so many posts on the world's highway," Bedient said slowly.

"When I was younger," Beth went on, "and used to read about the men who had done great creative things, I often found that they had to keep away from men and crowds, lest they perish from much pitying, dissipate their forces in wide, aimless outpourings of pity, which men and the systems of men called from them. Then--this was long ago--I used to think this a silly affectation, but I have come to understand."

"Of course, you would come to understand," Bedient said.

"Men who do great things are much alone," she continued. "They become sensitive to sights and sounds and odors--they are so alive, even physically. The downtown man puts on an armor. He must, or could not stay. The world seethes with agony--for him who can see."

"That is what made the sacrifice of the Christ," Bedient declared. "Every day--he died from the sights on the world's highway----"

They looked back.

"It was not the Cross and the Spear, but the haggard agony of His Face that night on Gethsemane that brings to me the realization of the greatness of His suffering," he added.

"And the disciples were too sleepy to watch and pray with him----"

"How gladly would the women have answered His need for human companionship that night!" he exclaimed. "But it was not so ordained. It was His hour alone, the most pregnant hour in the world's history."

They reached the crest of a fine hill at noon, and dismounted in the shade of three big elms. They could see small towns in the valley distances, and the profile of hilltop groves against the sky. The slopes of the hill wore the fresh green of June pasture lands; and three colts trotted up to the fence, nickering as they came.... Beth was staring away Westward through the glorious light. Bedient came close to her; she felt his eyes upon her face, turned and looked steadily into them. She was the first to look down. Beth had never seen his eyes in such strong light, nor such power of control, such serenity, such a look of inflexible integrity.... She did not like that control. It was not designed in the least to take away the hate and burning which for three days had warred against the best resistance of her mind.

That cool lofty gaze was her portion. Another--on the shore--ignited the fires. A devil within--for days and nights--had goaded her: "Yes, Beth Truba, red haired and all that, but old and cold, just the same, and strange to men."

"I've wanted this day," he said. "It was some need deeper than impulse. I wanted it just this way: A hill like this, shade of great trees that whispered, distant towns and woods, horses neighing to ours. Something more ancient and authoritative than the thing we call Memory, demanded it this way. Why, I believe we have stood together before."

Beth smiled, for the goading devil had just whispered to her, "You were a vestal virgin doubtless--oh, severely chaste!"... She said, "You believe then we have come up through 'a cycle of Cathay'?"

"If I had heard your name, just your name, over there in India," he replied thoughtfully, "it would have had some deep meaning for me."

"The 'cycle of Cathay' wasn't enough to cure you?"

He turned quickly, but didn't smile. "I think there was always some distance between us, that we were never equal, a difference like that between Clarendon and the chestnut. Only you were always above me, and it was the better, the right way. Beth----"

She looked up.

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't tell you how great you are to me--just that--asking nothing?"

"We are both grown-ups," she answered readily. "You won't mind if I find it rather hard to believe--I mean, my greatness. You like my riding and the portrait----"