Chapter 26

It was hard to have known the joy of communion with his warm heart, and deeply seeing mind--and now to accept the solitude again. She felt that his going marked the end of her growth; that now it was a steady downgrade, body and mind.... Some time, long hence, she would meet him again.... She would be "Beth-who-used-to-paint-so-well." They would talk together. The moment would come to speak of what they might have been to each other, save for the Wordlings of this world. She would weep--no, she would burst into laughing, and never be able to stop! It would be too late. A woman must not be drained by the years if she would please a man of flesh. She could not keep her freshness after this; she had not the heart to try.... Thus at times her brain kept up a hideous grinding.... She could feel the years!... Jim Framtree saw them.

She had found a note from him two days old under her studio-door. He had telephoned repeatedly, and taken the trip over to Dunstan to see her.... Would she not allow him to call? And now Beth discovered an amazing fact:

She had been unable to keep her mind upon him, even during the moment required to read his single page of writing. She wrote that he might come....

She heard his voice in the hall. The old janitor of the building had remembered him. Beth's hands, which had lain idle, began leaping strangely from the inner turmoil. She wished now she had met him somewhere apart from the studio. His tone brought back thoughts too fast to be tabulated, and his accent was slightly English. She divined from this he had been out of the country--possibly had returned to New York on a British ship. How well she knew his plastic intelligence! It was so characteristic and easy for him--this little affectation.... She was quite cold to him. Bedient had put him away upon the far-effacing surfaces of her mind.

The knocker fell. Rising, she learned her weakness. As she crossed the room the mirror showed her a woman who has met many deaths.

He greeted her with excited enthusiasm, but the tension which her change in appearance caused, was imperfectly concealed by his words and manner.... She knew his every movement, his every thought before it was half-uttered, as a mother without illusions knows her grown son, who has failed to become the man she hoped. They talked with effort about earlier days. He treated her with a consideration he had never shown before. The challenge of sex was missing. Duty, and an old and deep regard--these Beth felt from him. She attributed it to the havoc of a few weeks upon her face. She wished he would not come again; but he did.

It was the next morning--and she was painting. Again the knocker and his cheery greeting. Beth sat down to work--and then thoughts of the two men came to her. She should not have tried to paint, with Framtree in the room.... Thoughts arose, until she could not have borne another. The colors of her canvas flicked out, leaving a sort of welted gray of flesh, from which life is beaten. She rubbed her eyes.

"Jim," she said at last, "why did you come back?"

He came forward, and stood over her. "I wanted to see if there was any change, Beth,--any chance."

She regarded him, noted how effective is humility with such magnificent proportions of strength.

"There isn't, Jim," she answered. "At least, not the change you look for. I'm sorry if you really wanted it, but I think in time you'll be glad----"

"Never, Beth."

She smiled.

Framtree hesitated, as if there were something further he would like to say. He refrained, however.... Beth gave her hand, which he kissed for old love's sake.

* * * * *

On the following Sunday morning, Adith Mallory's Equatorian news-feature appeared. The entire truth and all the names were not needed to make this as entertaining a Sunday newspaper story as ever drew forth her fanciful and flowing style. It was Equatoria that caught and held Beth's eye, and she saw Andrew Bedient in large movement behind the tale. The feature was dated in Coral City ten days before. Beth was so interested that she wanted to meet the correspondent, and wondered if Miss Mallory had returned to New York. She dropped a card with her telephone number, and the next morning Miss Mallory 'phoned. Her voice became bright with animation upon learning that Beth was upon the wire.

"There's no one in New York whom I'd rather talk with this moment, Miss Truba."

"And why?"

"That portrait at the _Smilax Club_--I saw it yesterday. I'm writing about it.... The face I know--and you have done it tremendously! I can't tell you how it affected me. Don't bother to come down here. Let me go to you."

"I shall be glad to see you, Miss Mallory,--this afternoon?"

"Yes, and thank you."

The call had brightened Beth's mood somewhat. A bundle of letters had been dropped through her door as she talked. Beth saw the quantity of them and remembered it was Monday's first mail. She busied about the studio for a moment.... Letters, she thought,--these were all she had to represent her great investments of faith. Letters--the sum of her longings and vivid expectations. No matter what she wanted or deserved--a voice, a touch or a presence--it had all come to this, the crackle of letter paper. What a strange thing to realize! A fold of paper instead of a hand--a special delivery instead of a step upon the stair--a telegram instead of a kiss!...

"I belong in a cabinet," she sighed. "I guess I'm a letter-file instead of a lady."...

There was a large square envelope from Equatoria.... With stinging cheeks, Beth resented the buoyant happiness of the first few lines. Until a clearer understanding came, it seemed that he was blessing her refusal of him. How unwarranted afterward this thought appeared! The letter lifted her above her own suffering. Her mind was held by the great vital experience of a soul, a soul faring forth on its supreme adventure. He did not say what had happened in words, but she saw his descent in the flesh and his upward flight of spirit--the low ebb and the flashing heights.... How well she knew the cool brightness of his eyes, as he wrote! The god she had liberated that sunlit day was dead--not dead to her alone, but to any woman of Shore or Mountain or Isle.... With a gasp, she recalled Vina Nettleton's first conception, that Bedient was past, or rapidly passing beyond the attraction of a single woman.

Beth saw that she had helped to bring him to this greater dimension. There was a thrill in the thought. There would have been a positive and enduring joy, had he not gone from her to another. Truly, that was an inauspicious beginning for Illumination--but miracles happened. This thought fascinated her now: Had she seen clearly and made the great sacrifice of withholding herself--that he might rise to prophecy--there would have been gladness in that! She felt she could have done that--the iron Beth--given him to the world and not retained him for her own heart. He said that other women had done so. What an instrument!

But strength did come from his letter; there was a certain magic in his praise and blessing. It gave her something like the natural virtues of mountain coolness and ocean air. Austerely pure, it was. Plainly, pleasure had not made him tarry long.

* * * * *

Beth and Miss Mallory had talked an hour before the name of Jim Framtree was innocently mentioned by the newspaperwoman. It was not Beth's way to betray her fresh start of interest, even though she gained her first clue to the meaning of the fine light she had seen in Bedient's eyes at parting.... The blood seemed to harden in her heart. The familiar sounds of the summer street came up through the open windows with a sudden horror, as if she were a captive on cannibal shores.

"No one knows why he wanted this talk with Mr. Framtree," Miss Mallory was saying. "He wanted it vitally--and you see what came of it--a revolution averted--the fortunes of the whole Island altered for the better--and yet, those were only incidents. He was so ill--that another man would have fallen--and yet he went to _The Pleiad_--and aboard the Spaniard's yacht, as you read.... I knew his courage before--from the _Hedda Gabler_ night--but it was true, he didn't know me! The only result I know was that Mr. Framtree came to New York----"

It seemed to Beth that her humanity was lashed and flung and desecrated.... "But he did not know," she thought. "He did not know. He could not have hurt me this way. He thought I could not change, that I should always worship the beauty of exteriors. I told him the parable--and he went away--to send me what he thought I wanted!..."

Miss Mallory had come with a tribute of praise to a great artist. She found a woman who was suffering, as she had suffered, in part. A great mystery, too, she found. It was almost too sacred for her to try to penetrate, because it had to do with him.... She wondered at Miss Truba's inability to speak, or to help herself in any way with the things that pressed her heart to aching fullness.... She had found it wonderfully restoring to talk of him--with a woman who knew him--and who granted his greatness from every point.

The long afternoon waned, but still the women were together. All that had taken place was very clear to Beth--even this woman's ministerings.

"And he is better--beyond words, better!" Miss Mallory added. "I received a note from him this morning. The _Hatteras_ arrived yesterday. I came up on the _Henlopen_ eight days ago. So it was my first word. Something great has happened. He is changed and lifted."

"Has Mr. Framtree finished his mission?" Beth asked.

"Yes. He intends to go back to-morrow afternoon. He finished sooner than he thought. He is going to help Mr. Bedient in the administration of the vast property.... It seems that no one ever touches Mr. Bedient, but that some great good comes to him. I am going back, too----"

"To live?"

"Yes." Miss Mallory explained what Dictator Jaffier had done for her, adding:

"It was all Mr. Bedient's doing.... You see what I mean, about the wonderful things that happen to others--where he is.... Yet I would rather have that picture of him you painted--than all Equatoria--but even that should not belong to one----"

"You love him then?" Beth asked softly.

"I dared that at first, but I didn't understand. He is too big to belong that way.... I would rather be a servant in his house--than the wife of any other man I ever knew. I am that--in thought--and I shall be near him!"

After a moment, Beth _heard_ the silence--and drew her thoughts back to the hour. She seemed to have gone to the utmost pavilions of tragedy--far beyond the sources of tears--where only the world's strongest women may venture. The Shadowy Sister was there.... Beth had come back with humility, which she could not reveal.

The dusk was closing about them.

"You have been good to come--good to tell me these things," Beth said. "Some time I shall paint a little copy of the portrait for you. I'm sure he would be glad."

THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER

A SELF-CONSCIOUS WOMAN

Two days later Beth answered a 'phone call from David Cairns.... He was just back from Nantucket ... for a few days.... Very grateful to find her in.... Yes, Vina had come over, too.

Beth was instantly animate. Vina had planned to be gone a month at least.

"I'd like to come over alone first--may I, Beth?" Cairns asked.

"Yes."

"Within a half-hour?"

"Yes.... I shall prepare to listen to great happiness."

... Beth reflected that she looked a belated forty; that she had lost her charm for the eye of Jim Framtree, who had treated her like a relative. She was ashamed to show her suffering to David Cairns--ashamed that she cared--but it was part of her. Happiness was in the air. She must listen. She marveled at her capacity to endure....

The dews of joy were upon David Cairns. Between Bedient and Vina, he had been born again. He looked at her--as all who knew her did now--and then again in silence. It always made her writhe--that second stare. It gave her the sense of some foreign evil in her body--like the discovery of a malady with its threat of death in every vein.

He told her that Vina and he were to be married at once. Beth gave to the story all that listening could add to the telling of happiness.

"And, David," she said. "I claim a little bit of credit for this glorious thing----"

"Credit, Beth!" he said rousingly. "I told Vina I could worship you for it!"

"Don't, please--David. I don't need it. I'm too happy over you both.... And then, it wasn't all mine, you know. I think Mr. Bedient saw you together in his mind. I think he meant me to startle you to your real empire----"

"Did he?" Cairns asked eagerly.

"Hasn't it turned out perfectly?"

Beth did not miss the gladness which this hint gave him. She knew that Bedient's thought of it would be like an authority to Vina as well.... She felt herself drawing farther and farther back from the lives of the elect, but joyously she urged David to tell about their house in Nantucket.

"And, Beth," he said intensely. "That was Bedient's doing, too. I have--all I have seems to be the happiness part."

"Poor dear boy--how hard!"

"...I was telling him how Vina loved Nantucket," Cairns went on, "some of the rare things she said about the Island and the houses in Lily Lane, and how I planned to go over and find her there this month. He knew we were coming on very well.... One night at the Club, he asked me why I didn't buy one of those houses in Lily Lane, fix up a studio in one of the upper rooms, and then show it to her some summer morning and let it seep in slowly that it was hers--and my heart, too----"

"Beautiful!" Beth exclaimed. A trace of color came to her face.

"I'm telling it badly. Vina will tell you better. Anyway, he wouldn't let me go over alone. You remember when we went away together--for three or four days early in June?"

"I didn't know you--were you with him?"

"Yes, we went together--found the house in Lily Lane----"

"And he went back to Equatoria--right after that?"

Her tone had risen, the words rapid.

"Yes--and without letting me know."

Cairns noted vaguely that Beth's face seemed farther away.

"David, you were with him--those three days, beginning Monday, the first week in June--you--were--with--with--him----?"

"Every minute, Beth----"

"David, how did Mrs. Wordling know--you were going?"

"Why, Beth, she didn't. No one knew----"

"Are you sure? Isn't there some way she could have heard--at the Club?"

He hesitated. He had caught her eyes. They horrified him.... He remembered.

"Why, yes. We were talking--it was the night he first spoke of going over to Nantucket with me. Mrs. Wordling was behind at a near table. I told him we'd better talk lower----"

No sound escaped her. Cairns sprang up at the sight of her uplifted face.... Her eyes turned vaguely toward the door of the little room. He was standing before it. She seemed only to know--like some half-killed creature--that she was hunted and must hide. She couldn't pass him into the little room, but turned behind the screen. He did not hear her step, but something like the rush of a skirt, or a sigh.

There was no sound from the kitchenette. Cairns could not think in this furious stress. After a moment he called.

No answer.

It did not occur to him to go to her. Scores of times he had been in the studio, but he had never passed that screen.

He called again.... Not a breath nor movement in answer. He did not think of her as dead, but stricken with some awful madness. She had stood transfixed.... Yet her old authority was about her. He feared her anger.

"Dear--Beth,--won't you let me come--or do something?... In God's name--what is it?"

He listened intently.

"Beth, I'll go and get Vina--shall I?"

Terrible seconds passed; then her voice came to him--trailed forth, high-pitched, slow--an eerie thing in his brain:

"_I thought I was a good queen, but I have been hard and wicked as hell. I'm Bloody Beth.... He asked for bread and I gave him a stone.... Bloody Beth of the Middle Ages_."

"Beth--please!" he cried.

"Go away--oh, go away!"

Cairns' only thought was to bring Vina to her. Some awful hatred for himself came forth from the back room. He turned to the outer door, saying, aloud:

"Yes, Beth, I'll go."

The door shut and clicked after him--without his touch--it seemed very quickly. He descended the steps--a sort of slave to the routine of death--as one who finds death, must run to perform certain formalities. At the front door he stopped a second or two, as if his name had been called faintly. He thought it a delusion--and went out. Crossing the street, he heard it again:

"David!"

It was just enough for him to hear--a queer high quality.

He glanced up. Beth was leaning out of the lofty window.... More than ever it was like death to him--the old newspaper days when he was first at death--the mute face aloft, the gesture, the instant vanishing, when he was seen to comprehend.

Her door was ajar. She called for him to come in, as he halted in the hall. Beth came forth from the little room, after a moment, and stood before him, leaning against the piano. Her face was grayish-white, but she was controlled.

"Once you told me you loved me," she said. "A happy man should be ready to do something for a woman he once told that."

"Anything, Beth."

"It came forth from your happiness--so suddenly. You have found me out.... You made me see--that I believed the lie of a worthless woman----"

She halted. The last words had a familiar ring.

"I believed a despicable thing of Andrew Bedient--and sent him away.... He must never know. I could not live and have him know that I believed it. I am paying. I shall pay. I only ask you to keep it, forever--all that you saw--all that was said--to-day----"

"I will keep it, Beth."

"Even from Vina. Vina is pure. He would read it in her eyes--if she knew. I wonder that he loved me.... God!... You have enough of the world left--to bury this evil thing--for me. I am glad of your happiness."

"Vina will want to see you to-day."

"She may come.... You may say I have been ill. It is true.... I shall stay and be with you for your marriage. You want me----"

"We came back to New York for that."

"Yes.... And then I shall go away."

Cairns lingered. "But Beth, Bedient will always love you. He will come back----"

"It is not the same. You will see when he writes. I made him suffer--until a great light came--and he is the world's--not mine."

"Beth," he said humbly, "you are Absolute!"

"I shall come back--strong enough to meet him--as one of the world's women--or I shall stay away," she said.

THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER

ANOTHER SMILAX AFFAIR

The _Hatteras_ was warping into a New York slip the day before Christmas. Bedient was aboard. There was to be a little party for him, given by Cairns and Vina at the _Smilax Club_ that night. The Cairns' had come over from Nantucket for the winter, and were living at the Club. This was Bedient's third trip to New York in the half-year preceding. He had not seen Beth, but there had been letters between them--of late, important letters, big with reality and understanding. She had been in Europe since July, but had promised to be home for the holidays. Vina's last letter told him that Beth would be at their affair of greeting to-night.

Adith Mallory saw Jim Framtree in New York, after her hours with Beth Truba. It was the day before he sailed for Equatoria. Framtree asked her not to tell Mr. Bedient that the name of Framtree was spoken in her conversation with Beth. This request gave her a clearer understanding.

Bedient may have guessed that the mystery of the return of Jim Framtree was penetrated by Beth, but he did not ask Miss Mallory, nor mention Framtree in his letters to the lustrous lady. He doubtless wondered at the hasty return of his young friend, but it was a privilege of Beth to return his gifts--one of the glowing mysteries of Beth.

Just now, Bedient caught the waving hand of David Cairns in the small crowd below. Fifteen minutes later they were in a cab together.... Beth had returned to New York. This was the answer to Bedient's first question.

"Are you going to stay with us this time, Andrew?" Cairns asked, raptly studying his friend.

"Yes. Several weeks at least."

"At the Club?"

"No. I shall go back to Broderick Street to-morrow."

This was a broken arrow of black sorrows near the East River, straight East from Gramercy. Bedient had found it in the summer, where it had lain rotting in its wound.

"So the New York office of the Carreras plantations is to be in Broderick Street," Cairns said thoughtfully.

"But I'll be with you often.... And, David, I've brought up a small manuscript which I want you to read. After that we'll advise together about its publishing----"

"That _is_ important--if the stuff is anything like your letters to me.... Have you thought of attaching your name to this beginning?"

"Not more than _A.B._"

* * * * *

"Is everything bright down yonder?" Cairns asked after a moment.

"Bright past any idea you can have. Framtree is doing greatly--indispensable--and loves the life. Miss Mallory still unfolds. She's a Caribbean of buried treasure----"

"And _they_?" Cairns asked.

"Are friends."

...Vina met them in her studio. The three stood for a moment in silence among the panels. It was not yet four in the afternoon, but the dusk was thickening.... Vina put on her hat.

"I've just received word from Mary McCullom," she said. "She's in Union Hospital--I don't know--but I must hurry. The word said that Mary McCullom wanted me--nothing more. That was her maiden-name. I knew her so. Her husband died recently, but I didn't hear in time to find her. She must have left New York for a time. They were _so_ happy.... I'm afraid----"

David went to her.

"No, you mustn't go with me, David. There are too many things to do--for to-night----"

"Let me go, Vina," Bedient said.

In the cab, she told him the story of Mary McCullom's failure as an artist and conquest as a woman--the same story she had told Beth Truba--and what meant the love of the nurseryman--to Mary McCullom.

Vina's voice had a strange sound in the shut cab. She felt Bedient's presence, as some strength almost too great for her vitality to sustain. He did not speak.

"Sometimes it seems almost sacrilege," she said in a trembling tone, "to be so happy as we have been.... I should have persevered until I found her--after her ... oh, what that must have meant to her!... And she used to rely upon me so----"

* * * * *

"... Oh, Vina!" the woman whispered, holding out her arms. "I have wanted you!... I have waited for you to come.... I knew you would. I always loved you, because you made me take him!... We were so happy.... Draw the coverlet back----"

A new-born child was sleeping at her breast.

Vina had knelt. Her head bent forward in silent passion.

"Won't you, Vina--won't _you_ take him?"

Vina covered her face, but made no sound.

* * * * *

"She will take the little one," said the voice above them.

Both women turned their eyes to Bedient. Mary McCullom smiled shyly.

"I remember--David--Cairns," she said, in an awed tone. "This is not----"

"No, dear, but it is enough. I will take your--baby."

The smile brightened.... "Oh, we were so happy," she whispered.... "And Vina--tell him when he is older--how his father and I loved--the thought of him!"

"He will bless you," Bedient said.

A glow had fallen upon the weary face of the mother.... "Yes," she answered. "He will bless us ... and I shall be with my husband.... Oh, now, I can go to my husband!"

* * * * *

Hours afterward, when it was over, Vina looked into Bedient's face, saying:

"You may ask David--why I hesitated--that first moment."

"I know, Vina--God love you!"