Captain. Dictator Jaffier sent his "abject bereavement" by pony
pack-train, which, having formed in a sort of hollow square, received
the thanks of Bedient, and assurances that his policy would continue in
the delightful groove worn by the late best of men. The reply of
Jaffier was the offer of a public funeral in Coral City, but Bedient
declined this, and the body of his friend was turned toward the East
upon the shoulder of his highest hill....
Presently Bedient read the Captain's documents. Falk and Leadley were
bountifully cared for; scores of natives were remembered; the policy
toward Jaffier outlined according to the best experience; and the bulk,
name, lands, bonds, capital and all--"to my beloved young friend,
Andrew Bedient."... At the request and expense of the latter, the New
York bankers sent down an agent to verify the transfer of this great
fortune. A month passed--a foretaste of what was to come. Bedient,
prepared for greater work than this, was lonely in the sunlight.
He knew that he must soon begin to live his own life. His every faculty
was deeply urging. Equatoria had little to do with the realities for
which he had gathered more than thirty years' equipment. He felt a
serious responsibility toward his fortune, though absolutely without
the thrill of personal possession. The just administration of these
huge forces formed no little part of his work, and in his entire
thinking on this subject, New York stood most directly in the need of
service. It was there that the Captain's accumulated vitality must be
used for good.
Early in the second month, Bedient came in at noon from a long ride
across the lands, and reaching the great porch of the _hacienda_, he
turned to observe a tropic shower across the valley. The torrent
approached at express speed. It was a clean-cut pouring, several acres
in extent. Bedient watched it fill the spaces between the little hills,
sweep from crest to crest, and bring out a subdued glow in the wild
verdure as it swept across the main valley. Sharp was the line of dry
sunlit air and gray slanting shower. Presently he heard its pounding,
and the dustless slopes rolled into the gray.... Now he sniffed the
acute fragrance that rushed before it in the wind, and then it climbed
the drive, deluged the _hacienda,_ and was gone.... In the moist,
sweet, yellow light that filled his eyes, Bedient, fallen into deeps of
contemplation, saw the face of a woman.
He went inside and looked up the Dryden sailings. The _Hatteras_ would
clear, according to schedule, in ten days. That meant that the
_Henlopen_ was now in port. His eyes had looked first for the former,
since it had brought him down, and was the Captain's favorite.... Yes,
the _Henlopen_ was due to sail to-morrow at daylight.... He told Falk
he would go.... In that upper room across from his own, he bowed his
head for a space, and the fragrance still there brought back the
heaving cabin of the _Truxton_.... Then he rode down to Coral City in
the last hours of daylight.
His devoirs were paid to Dictator Jaffier, who confided that he had
purchased a gunboat and search-light on behalf of the government. Its
delivery was but ten days off, and with it he expected to keep that old
sea-fighter, Celestino Rey, better in order.... Bedient had the evening
to himself. In one of the _Calle Real_ cafés, he was attracted by the
face and figure of a young white man, of magnificent proportions and
remarkably clean-cut profile. The stranger sipped iced claret, watched
the natives moving about, and seemed occasionally to forget himself in
his thinking.
He looked more than ever a giant in the midst of the little tropical
people, and seemed to feel his size in the general diminutive setting.
Yet there was balance and fitness about his splendid physical
organization, which suggested that he could be quick as a mink in
action. He chaffed the native who waited upon him, and his face
softened into charming boyishness as he laughed. His mouth was fresh as
a child's, but on a scale of grandeur. Bedient found himself smiling
with him. Then there was that irresistible folding about the eyes when
he laughed, which is Irish as sin, and quite as attractive. Left to
himself he fell to brooding, and his brow puzzled over some matter in
the frank bored way of one pinned to a textbook. Bedient sat down at
the other's table. Acquaintance was as agreeably received as offered.
The stranger's name was Jim Framtree. He had been on the Island for
several weeks, and intended to stay for awhile. He liked Equatoria well
enough--as well, in fact, as a man could like any place, when he was
barred from the real trophy-room in the house of the world, New York.
"I'm sailing for New York in the morning," Bedient said.
Framtree shivered and fell silent.
"You've found work that you like here?" Bedient asked simply.
The other glanced at him humorously, and yet with a bit of intensity,
too,--as if searching for the meaning under such an unadorned question.
"I seem to have caught on with Señor Rey at _The Pleiad_," he replied.
"Ah--"
"I'm afraid you're making a mistake, sir," Framtree added quickly. "I'm
not barred from New York on any cashier matter. You know when something
you want badly--and can't have--is in a town--that isn't the place for
you.... Even if you like that town best on earth.... What I mean is,
I'm not using _The Pleiad_ as a hiding proposition."
"I wasn't thinking of that," Bedient said.
"I suppose it would be natural--down here----"
"But I _saw you first_."
"Um-m."
"I was only thinking," Bedient resumed, "that if the establishment of
Señor Rey palled upon you at any time, I'd like to have you come up and
see me in the hills.... I'd be glad to have you come, anyway. I may not
be very long in New York--"
* * * * *
"That's mighty good of you," Framtree declared, and yet it was obvious
that he could not regard the invitation as purely a friendly impulse,
even if he wished to. "I remember now. I've heard of your big place up
there."
"Perhaps, I'd better explain that I wasn't thinking of Island
politics--when I asked you.... Queer how one has to explain things down
here. I've noticed that it's hard for folks to go straight at a thing."
Framtree laughed again, and tried hard to understand what was in the
other's mind. Bedient's simplicity was too deep for him. They talked
for an hour, each singularly attracted, but evading any subject that
would call in the matters of political unrest. Each felt that the other
wanted to be square, but Bedient saw that it would be useless to
impress upon Framtree how little hampered he was by Jaffier.... At
daybreak the next morning, the fruity old _Henlopen_ pointed out toward
the reefs, and presently was nudging her way through the coral passage,
as confidently as if the trick of getting to sea from Coral City was
part of the weathered consciousness of her boilers and plates.
II
NEW YORK
_Andante con moto_
NINTH CHAPTER
THE LONG-AWAITED WOMAN
Bedient went directly to the house-number of David Cairns in West
Sixty-seventh Street, without telephoning for an appointment. It
happened that the time of his arrival was unfortunate. Something of
this he caught, first from the look of the elevator attendant, who took
him to the tenth floor of a modern studio-building; and further from
the man-servant who answered his ring at the Cairns apartment.
"Mr. Cairns sees no one before two o'clock, sir," said the latter,
whose cool eye took in the caller.
Bedient hesitated. It was now twelve-forty-five. He felt that Cairns
would be hurt if he went away. "Tell him that Andrew Bedient is here,
and that I shall be glad to wait or call again, just as he prefers."
And now the servant hesitated. "It is very seldom we disturb him, sir.
Most of his friends understand that he is not available between nine
and two."
Bedient was embarrassed. The morning in the city had preyed upon him.
Realizing his discomfort, and the petty causes of it, he became
unwilling to leave. "I am not of New York and could not know. I think
you'd better tell Mr. Cairns and let him judge----"
The servant had reached the same conclusion. Bedient was shown into a
small room, furnished with much that was peculiarly metropolitan to
read.... He rather expected Cairns to rush from some interior, and
waited ten minutes, glancing frequently at the door through which the
servant had left.... His heart had bounded at the thought of seeing
David, and he smiled at his own hurt.... A door opened behind him. The
writer came forward quietly, with warm dignity caught him by both
shoulders and smilingly searched his eyes. Bedient was all kindness
again. "Doubtless his friends come in from Asia often," he thought.
"Andrew, it's ripping good to see you.... Why didn't you let me know
you were coming?"
"I didn't want you to alter your ways at all."
"You see, I have to keep these morning hours----"
"Go back--I'll wait gladly, or call when you like."
"Don't go away, pray, unless there is something you must do for the
next hour or so."
* * * * *
In waiting, Bedient did not allow himself to search for anything
theatric or unfeeling at the centre of the episode. Cairns had moved in
many of the world atmospheres, and had done some work which the world
noted with approval. Moreover, he had called from Bedient bestowals of
friendship which could not be forgotten.... "I have been alone and in
the quiet so much that _I_ can remember," Bedient mused, "while he has
been rushing about from action to action. Then New York would rub out
anybody's old impressions."
As the clock struck, Cairns appeared ready for the street. He was a
trifle drawn about the mouth, and irritated. Having been unable to work
in the past hour, the day was amiss, for he hated a broken session and
an allotment of space unfilled. Still, Cairns did not permit the other
to see his displeasure; and the distress which Bedient felt, he
attributed to New York, and not the New Yorker....
The mind of David Cairns had acquired that cultivated sense of
authority which comes from constantly being printed. He was a
much-praised young man. His mental films were altogether too many, and
they had been badly developed for the insatiable momentary markets to
which timeliness is all. Very much, he needed quiet years to synthesize
and appraise his materials.... Bedient, he regarded as a luxury, and
just at this moment, he was not in the mood for one. Cairns drove
himself and his work, forgetting that the fuller artist is driven....
Luzon and pack-train memories were dim in his mind. He did not forget
that he had won his first name in that field, but he did forget for a
time the wonderful night-talks. A multitude of impressions since, had
disordered these delicate and formative hours. Only now, in his
slow-rousing heart he felt a restlessness, a breath of certain lost
delights.
It was a sappy May day. The spring had been late--held long in wet and
frosty fingers--and here was the first flood of moist warmth to stir
the Northern year into creation. Cairns was better after a brisk walk.
Housed for long, unprofitable hours, everything had looked slaty at
first.
"Where are you staying, Andrew?"
"_Marigold_."
"Why do you live 'way down there? That's a part of town for business
hours only. The heart of things has been derricked up here."
"I'm very sure of a welcome there," Bedient explained. "My old friend
Captain Carreras had Room 50, from time to time for so many years, that
I fell into it with his other properties. Besides, all the pirates,
island kings and prosperous world-tramps call at the _Marigold._ And
then, they say--the best dinner----"
"That's a tradition of the Forty-niners----"
"I have no particular reason for staying down there, even if I keep the
room. I'll do that for the Captain's sake.... I'm not averse to
breezing around up-town."
"Ah----" came softly from Cairns.
"I'd like to know some _folks_," Bedient admitted.
Cairns was smiling at him. "You'll have to have a card at my clubs.
There's _Teuton's, Swan's_ and the _Smilax_ down Gramercy way....
Perhaps we'd better stop in at the _Swan's_ for a bite to eat. The idea
is, you can try them all, Andrew, and put up at the one you fit into
best----"
"Exactly," breathed Bedient.
"You won't like the _Smilax_ overmuch," Cairns ventured, "but you may
pass a forenoon there, while I'm at work. Stately old place, with many
paintings and virgin silence. The women artists are going there more
and more----"
"I like paintings," said Bedient.
They walked across _Times Square_ and toward the Avenue, through
Forty-second. Cairns waited for the quiet to ask:
"Andrew, you haven't found Her yet--The Woman?"
"No. Have you?"
"Did--I used to have one, too?"
"Yes."
"Andrew, do you think She's in New York?" Cairns asked.
"It's rather queer about that," Bedient answered. "I was watching a
rain-storm from the porch of the _hacienda_ seven or eight days ago,
when it came to me that I'd better take the first ship up. I sailed the
next morning."
This startled Cairns. He was unaccustomed to such sincerity. "You mean
it occurred to you that She was here--the One you used to tell me about
in Asia?"
"Yes."
Cairns now felt an untimely eagerness of welcome for the wanderer. A
renewal of Bedient's former attractions culminated in his mind, and
something more that was fine and fresh and permanent. He twinged for
what had happened at the apartment.... Bedient was a man's man, strong
as a platoon in a pinch--that had been proved. He was plain as a sailor
in ordinary talk, but Cairns knew now that he had only begun to
challenge Bedient's finer possessions of mind.... Here in
New York, a man over thirty years old, who could speak of the
Woman-who-must-be-somewhere. And Bedient spoke in the same ideal,
unhurt way of twenty, when they had spread blankets together under
strange stars... Cairns knew in a flash that something was gone from
his own breast that he had carried then. It was an altogether uncommon
moment to him. "So it has not all been growth," he thought. "All that
has come since has not been fineness."... He felt a bit denied, as if
New York had "gotten" to him, as if he had lost a young prince's
vision, that the queen mother had given him on setting out.... He was
just one of the million males, feathering nests of impermanence, and
stifling the true hunger for the skies and the great cleansing
migratory flights....
All this was a miracle to David Cairns. He was solid; almost English in
his up-bringing to believe that man's work, and established affairs,
thoughts and systems generally were right and unimpeachable. He heard
himself scoffing at such a thing, had it happened to another.... He
stared into Bedient's face, brown, bright and calm. He had seen only
good humor and superb health before, but for an instant now, he
perceived a spirit that rode with buoyancy, after a life of loneliness
and terror that would have sunk most men's anchorage, fathoms deeper
than the reach of the longest cable of faith.
"I think I'm getting to be--just a biped.... I'm glad you came up....
Here we are at _Swan's_," said Cairns.
* * * * *
Like most writers, David Cairns was intensely interesting to himself.
His sudden reversal from bleak self-complacence to a clear-eyed view of
his questionable approaches to real worth, was strong with bitterness,
but deeply absorbing. He was remarkable in his capacity to follow this
opening of his own insignificance. It had been slow coming, but
ruthlessly now, he traced his way back from one breach to another, and
finally to that night in the plaza at Alphonso, when he had been
enabled to see service from a unique and winning angle, through the
pack-train cook. That was the key to his catching on; that, and his boy
ideals of war had lifted his copy from the commonplace. He remembered
Bedient in China, in Japan, and in his own house--how grudgingly he had
appeared in his working hours. He felt like an office-boy who has made
some pert answer to an employer too big and kind to notice. Now and
then up the years, certain warm thoughts had come to him from those
island nights, but he had forgotten their importance in gaining his
so-called standing.
Andrew Bedient was nothing like the man he had expected to find. He
remembered now that he might have looked for these rare elements of
character, since the boyhood talks had promised them, and power had
emanated from them.... Still, Bedient had grown marvellously, in
strange, deep ways. Cairns could not fathom them all, but he realized
that nothing better could happen to him than to study this man. Indeed,
his mind was fascinated in following the rich leads of his friend's
resources. He consoled himself for his shortcomings with the thought
that, at least, he was ready to see....
They talked as of old, far into the night. Cairns found himself
endeavoring with a swift, nervous eagerness to show his _best_ to
Andrew Bedient, and to be judged by that best. He spoke of none of the
achievements which the world granted to be his; instead, the little
byway humanities were called forth, for the other to hear--buds of
thought and action, which other pressures had kept from fertilizing
into seed--the very things he would have delighted in relating to a
dear, wise woman. Something about Bedient called them forth, and Cairns
fell into new depths. "I thought it was pure sex-challenge which made a
man bring these things to a woman." (This is the way he developed the
idea afterward.) "But that can't be all, since I unfolded so to
Bedient.... He has me going in all directions like a steam-shovel."
Cairns was arranging a little party for his friend. In the meantime,
his productive quantity sank from torrent to trickle. His secretary,
who knew the processes of the writer's mind as the keys of his machine,
and had adjusted his own brain to them through many brisk sessions,
fell now through empty space. He had no resources in this room, where
he had been driven so long by the mental force of another. Having
suffered himself to be played upon, like the instrument before him, he
died many deaths from _ennui_.... So Cairns and the secretary stared
helplessly at each other across the emptiness; and New York rushed on,
with its mad business, singing spitefully in their ears: "You for the
poor-farms. You'll lose your front, and your markets. Your income is
suffering; the presses are waiting; editors dependent...."
Cairns left the house on the third morning after Bedient's coming,
having dictated two or three letters.... Bedient was across the street
from the _Smilax Club_ in the little fenced-in park--Gramercy. Cairns
told his work-difficulty.
"Don't you think it would be good for you, David," Bedient asked, "to
let the subconscious catch up?"
Cairns was interested at once. "What do you mean?"
"I've been thinking more than a little about you and New York. One
thing is sure: New York is pretty much wrong, or I'm insane----"
"You're happy about it," Cairns remarked. "Tell me the worst."
"People here use their reflectors and not their generators," Bedient
said. "They shine with another's light, when they should be
incandescent. The brain in your skull, in any man's skull, is but a
reflector, an instrument of his deeper mind. There's your genius,
infinitely wiser than your brain. It's your sun; your brain, the moon.
All great work comes from the subconscious mind. You and New York use
too much moonshine."
Both men were smiling, but to Cairns, nevertheless, it seemed that his
own conscience had awakened after a long sleep. This wanderer from the
seas had twigged the brain brass which he had long been passing for
gold value. He saw many bits of his recent work, as products of
intellectual foppery. He recalled a letter recently received from an
editor; which read: "That last article of yours has caught on. Do six
more like it." He hadn't felt the stab before. He had done the
six--multiplied his original idea by mechanical means....
All things considered, it was rather an important affair--the party
that night at the _Smilax Club_. Cairns began with the idea of asking
ten people, but the more he studied Bedient's effect upon himself, the
more particular he became about the "atmosphere." Just the men he
wanted were out of reach, so he asked none at all, but five women. Four
of these he would have grouped into a sentence as "the most interesting
women in New York," and the fifth was a romantic novelty in a minor
key, sort of "in the air" at the Club.
So there were seven to sit down to the round table in the historic
Plate Room. The curving walls were fitted with a lining of walnut
cabinets. Visible through their leaded-glass doors, were ancient
services of gold and silver and pewter. The table streamed with light,
but the faces and cabinets were in shadow.... Directly across from
Bedient sat Beth Truba, the most brilliant woman his visioning eyes
ever developed.
The sight of her was the perfect stimulus, an elixir too volatile to be
drunk, rather to be breathed. Bedient felt the door of his inner
chambers swing open before fragrant winds. The heart of him became
greatly alive, and his brain in grand tune. It is true, she played upon
his faculties, as the Hindus play upon the _vina_, that strange,
sensitive, oriental harp with a dozen strings, of which the musician
touches but one. The other strings through sympathetic vibration
furnish an undertone almost like an æolian harmony. You must listen in
a still place to catch the mystic accompaniment. So it was in Bedient's
mind. Beth Truba played upon the single string, and the others
glorified her with their shadings. And the plaint from all humanity was
in that undertone, as if to keep him sweet.
She was in white. "See the slim iceberg with the top afire!" Cairns had
whispered, as she entered. Other lives must explain it, but the Titian
hair went straight to his heart. And those wine-dark eyes, now cryptic
black, now suffused with red glows like a night-sky above a
prairie-fire, said to him, "Better come over and see if I'm tamable."
"I can see, it's just the place I wanted to be to-night," she said,
taking her chair. "We're going to have such a good time!"
And Kate Wilkes drawled this comment to Cairns: "In other words, Beth
says, 'Bring on your lion, for I'm the original wild huntress.'"
Kate Wilkes was a tall tanned woman rather variously weathered, and
more draped than dressed. She conducted departments of large feminine
interest in several periodicals, and was noted among the "emancipated
and impossible" for her papers on Whitman. The romantic novelty was
Mrs. Wordling, the actress, and the other two women were Vina
Nettleton, who made gods out of clay and worshipped Rodin, and
Marguerite Grey, tall and lovely in a tragic, flower-like way, who
painted, and played the 'cello.
"Meeting Bedient this time has been an experience to me," Cairns said,
toward the end of dinner. "I called together the very finest people I
knew, because of that. He had sailed for ten years before I knew him.
That was nearly thirteen years ago. Not that there's anything in miles,
nor sailing about from port to port.... He has ridden for the English
since, through the great Himalayan forests--years so strange that he
forgot their passing.... We are all good friends; in a sense, artists,
together, so I can say things. One wants to be pretty sure when one
lets go from the inside. I didn't realize before how rarely this
happens with us.
"The point is, Bedient has kept something through the years, that I
haven't. I'm getting away badly, but I trust what I mean will clear
up.... Bedient and I rode together with an American pack-train, when
there was fighting, there in Luzon. He was the cook of the outfit, and
he took me in, a cub-correspondent. I look back now upon some of those
talks (with the smell of coffee and forage and cigarettes in the night
air) as belonging to the few perfect things. And last night and the
night before, we talked again----"
Cairns' eye hurried past Mrs. Wordling, but he seemed to find what he
wanted in the glances of the others, before he resumed: