keeping even decently white, here in New York. I found out, at the same
time, that I couldn't meet him half-way, when he brought the talk
close. Back yonder in Luzon, I used to. Here, after the years, I
couldn't. Something inside is green and untrained. It shied before real
man-talk.... Bedient came into a fortune recently, the result of saving
a captain during a long-ago typhoon. His property is down in Equatoria,
where he has been for some months. So he has had a windfall that would
be unmanning to most, yet he comes up here, just as unspoiled as he
used to be----"
"David," Bedient pleaded, "you're swinging around in a circle. Be easy
with me."
"You've kept your boy's heart, that's what I'm trying to get at,"
Cairns added briefly.
Kate Wilkes dropped her hand upon Bedient's arm, and said, "Don't
bother him. It looks to me as if truth were being born. You'd have to
be a city man or woman to understand how rare and relishable such an
event is."
"Thanks, Kate," said Cairns. "It's rather difficult to express, but I
see I'm beginning to get it across."
"Go on, please."
Cairns mused absently before continuing:
"Probably it doesn't need to come home to anyone else, as it did to
me.... I've been serving King Quantity here in New York so long that
I'd come to think it the proper thing to do. Bedient has kept to the
open--the Bright Open--and kept his ideals. I listened to him last
night and the night before, ashamed of myself. His dreams came forth
fresh and undefiled as a boy's--only they were man-strong and
flexible--and his voice seemed to come from behind the intention of
Fate.... I wouldn't talk this way, only I chose the people here. I
think without saying more, you've got what I've been encountering since
Bedient blew up Caribbean way."
Cairns leaned back in his chair with a glass of _moselle_ in his hand
and told about the big lands in Equatoria, about the two Spaniards,
Jaffier and Rey, trying to assassinate each other under the cover of
courtesy; about the orchestrelle, the mines and the goats. Cleverly, at
length, he drew Bedient into telling the typhoon adventure.
It was hard, until Beth Truba leaned forward and ignited the story.
After that, the furious experience _lived_ in Bedient's mind, and most
of it was related into her eyes. When he described the light before the
break of the storm, how it was like the hall-way of his boyhood, where
the yellow-green glass had frightened him, Beth became paler if
possible, and more than ever intent. Back in her mind, a sentence of
Cairns' was repeating, "His voice seemed to come from behind the
intention of Fate."... Finally when Bedient told of reaching Equatoria,
and of the morning when Captain Carreras nudged bashfully--wanting his
arm a last time--Beth Truba exclaimed softly:
"Oh, no, that really can't all be true, it's too good!" and her
listening eyes stirred with ecstasy....
She liked, too, his picture of the _hacienda_ on the hill.... The party
talked away up into the top of the night and over; and always when
Bedient started across (in his heart) to tame the wine-dark eyes--lo,
they were gone from him.
TENTH CHAPTER
THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS
Kate Wilkes lived at the _Smilax Club_, as did Vina Nettleton, and, for
the present, Mrs. Wordling. The actress was recently in from the road.
Her play had not run its course, merely abated for the hot months. She
was an important satellite, if not a stellar attraction. About noon, on
the day following the party for Bedient, Mrs. Wordling appeared in the
breakfast room, and sat down at the table with Kate Wilkes, who was
having her coffee.
"What an extraordinary evening we had," the actress remarked. "David's
party was surely a success."
"Rather," assented Miss Wilkes, who felt old and nettled. She seemed of
endless length, and one would suppose that her clothes were designed so
that not one bone should be missed. Mrs. Wordling was not an especial
favorite with her.
"They made it up beautifully between them, didn't they?" the actress
observed, as she squeezed orange-juice into her spoon.
"What?"
"That story."
"Who?"
"Why, that story--that friendship, storm-at-sea, Equatoria story--done
jointly by Messrs. Cairns and Bedient."
"You think they rehearsed it, then?" Kate Wilkes asked softly.
"Why, of course. It unfolded like a story--each piling on clever
enthusiasm for the other."
There was a slight pause.
"And so you think David Cairns simulated that fine touch, about
discovering through his friend, what damage New York was doing him?"
Kate Wilkes' manner was lightly reflective.
"Of course. Don't you remember how he stumbled until you helped him
going?"
"You think--as I understand it----" Miss Wilkes had become queerly
penetrative, and spoke in a way that made one think of a beetle being
pinned through the thorax, "----that David Cairns merely used his
artistic intelligence for our entertainment; that Andrew Bedient is
merely an interesting type of sailor and wanderer who has struck it
rich?"
"Why, yes, Kate, that's the way it got over to me. We all know David
Cairns is selling everything he writes at a top-figure; that he is
eminently successful, quite the thing in many periodicals, finely
pleased with himself as a successful man----"
"Wordling," said Kate Wilkes, leaning toward her, "what kind of people
do you associate with in your work?"
"The best, dear,--always the best. People who think, and who love their
work."
Slowly and without passion the elder woman now delivered herself:
"People who _think_ they think and who love themselves!... I have tried
to make myself believe you were different. You are not different,
Wordling. You are true to your kind, and not distinguished from them.
David Cairns never rehearsed a part with Andrew Bedient. Men as full of
real things as these two do not need rehearsals. Bedient came up from
his Island, and all unconsciously made his old companion realize that
he was not breathing the breath of life here in New York. Cairns wept
over it, and made up his mind to try again; and fine chap that he is,
he called a few of his friends together, to give us a chance to see the
thing as he saw it. I call it an honor that he invited me. I see you do
not. Unfortunately this is one of those differences of opinion which
are at the base of things.... Luck to you, Wordling," she finished,
rising. "I feel seedy and have a busy afternoon ahead."
Mrs. Wordling laughed delightedly, though boiling lava ran within and
pressed against the craters. Alone, she asked herself what Kate Wilkes
had done to get away with eccentricities, to which only those of
stardom are entitled.
"Hag," she muttered, after such conning.
* * * * *
Bedient was early abroad in the city, having felt entirely above the
need of sleep. He was less serene than usual, but with compensations.
There was a peculiar fear in his mind that New York was laughing at him
a bit. Perhaps, Cairns had pressed down a little too hard on the queer
unhurt quality he was alleged to possess. In a word, Bedient sensed the
humor of Mrs. Wordling, and could not yet know that she, of the entire
company, monopolized the taint.
The _Smilax Club_ pleased him, and he had permitted Cairns to put him
up there.
That flame of a woman, Beth Truba, was the spirit of his every thought.
Her listening had drawn the soul from him. The great thing had
happened; and yet it was different from the way he had visioned it....
Never had a woman so startled him with the sense of the world's
fullness--in that she was in the world. That he had found her was his
first achievement, true reward of deathless faith; and yet it was all
so different. She was different. She had not known him.
In the amplitude of his wanderings, one conception had grown slightly
out of proportion. He saw this now, and smiled affectionately at the
old thought: "When The Woman appears, I shall not be alone in the
gladness of the moment."... Those were mountain-tops of dreaming upon
which he strode without reckoning. It would have been absurd, had Beth
Truba given him a sign. This was not India, nor the Dream Ranges....
She had faced life, lived it among the teeming elements of this vast
city. The world had wrought upon her, while she wrought her place in
the world. She was finished, an artist, a woman of New York, wise,
poised, brilliant. It was the world's ideals, and not those of the
silence and the spirit, altogether, that governed her manner and dress
and movement. She had not lived in the silence; therefore that which
was of the silence had been kept among the deep inner places of her
life. The secrets of her heart were deeper than mere man's leaden
fathomings. Even had he appeared unto her as an illumination--only Beth
Truba would have known.
He did not come into great peace in her presence. No matter what she
dreamed of, or desired, the lover could only come to her in the world's
approved ways. So, all the accumulated beauty of idealism counted
nothing in this first stage of Bedient's quest. Instead of the peace of
her presence, he was filled with restless energies, past all precedent.
Quite in a boyish way, he wanted to do things for her, huge and little
things, forgetting not the least, and performing each succeeding action
with a finer art.
Beth Truba was the first woman who ever appealed to Bedient, without
recalling in some way the Adelaide passion. There was hardly a trace of
that element in the new outpouring. If it is true that a woman calls
from man a love-token in her own image, Beth Truba was marble cold. The
larger part of his first giving was above the flesh, a passion to
bestow beautiful things, the happiness of others. That she might ever
have any meaning to him beyond receiving these gifts, scarcely entered,
as yet, his thrilled consciousness. It _had_ startled him that she was
seemingly free; that she had reached full womanhood in solitary empire.
He dared be glad of this, but he could not grasp it, unless she were
vowed to spinsterhood by some irrevocable iron of her will; or perhaps
some king of men had come, and she had given her word.... Bedient could
not understand how any discerning masculine mind could look upon Beth
Truba, and go his way without determining his chance. He felt (and here
he was "warm," as they say in the children's game) that David Cairns
must be one of the men who had seen Beth Truba and not conquered.
Perhaps Cairns would tell him regarding these things, but they were
altogether too sacred to broach, except in the finest possible moment.
He had returned to the club early in the afternoon, and was standing at
one of the windows, his eyes turned toward the green square opposite.
He was thinking of the enchantress, and how she would admire the
shower-whipped hills of Equatoria and all that wild perfumed beauty....
His name was softly spoken by one of the regal shadows of the night
before, Marguerite Grey.
"If I hadn't seen you or Mr. Cairns again," she began, "I'd have come
to think of last night almost as a dream."
"That's queer, Miss Grey," he answered, taking her hand. "It's like a
dream to me, too."
"I didn't feel like working to-day," she said. "The routine appalled
me, so I came over to look in upon Vina Nettleton. Her studio is above.
Have you seen her 'Stations of the Cross'?"
"No."
"Her four years' task--for the great Quebec cathedral?... You really
must. It's an experience to watch her work, and Vina's worth
knowing--pure spirit.... Would you like to go up with me?"
Alternating fascinations possessed Bedient, as the elevator carried
them upward.... These were his real playmates, these people of pictures
and statues. He had come a long way through different lights and
darkness to find them. He did not know their ways of play, but well
knew he should like them when he learned, and that their play would
prove prettier than any he had ever known.... And this tall, still
woman beside him--almost as tall as he, of rarest texture, and with a
voice sensuously soft, having that quality of softness which
distinguishes a charcoal from a graphite line--this woman seemed
identified in some remoteness of mind with long-ago rainy days, of
which there had been none too many.... Her voice seemed to lose
direction in his fancy, loitering there, strangely enticing.... _"Would
you like to go up with me?"_... And these were Beth Truba's friends....
A bell was touched in the high hall, and Vina Nettleton's plaintive
tone trailed forth:
"Won't you come right in--please--into my muddy room?"
A large room opening upon a steel fire-frame, where two could sit, and
a view of the city to the North. Commandingly near on the left arose
the Metropolitan Tower. The studio itself had an unfinished look, with
its step-ladders and scaffolding and plaster-panels. In the midst of
such ponderous affairs, stood a frail creature in a streaky blouse,
exhibiting her clayey hands and smiling pensively. It was only when you
looked at the figures in the panels, and at the models in clay, that
Vina Nettleton appeared to belong to these matters of a contractor.
Marguerite Grey was saying:
"When I get too weary, or heart-sick, tired of my own work, in the
sense of being bored by its commonness----"
"Wicked woman," murmured Vina.
"When the thought comes that I should be a cashier in a restaurant,"
the other went on, in her sadly smiling way, speaking altogether to
Bedient, "I come to this place. Here is an _artist_, Mr. Bedient. Vina
has been working at these things for two years. She has still two years
to finish within her contract. These are her prayers; they will live in
the transept of a great cathedral."
"Don't mind the Grey One, Mr. Bedient," Vina Nettleton said lightly.
"We are dear friends."
Bedient lost himself in the study of the veins which showed through the
delicate white skin of Vina's temples. He was moved to personal
interest by this woman's work. The room was intense with the figures
about, and the artist's being. He was sure Marguerite Grey did not know
all that concerned her friend, the full meaning, for instance, of the
shadows that began at the inner corners of her eyes and flared like
dark wings outward. There was something tremendous in the frail, small
creature, an inner brightness that shone forth through her white skin,
as light through porcelain. Bedient granted quickly that there was
power here to make the world remember the name of Vina Nettleton; but
he knew she was not giving _all_ to these creatures of clay. He had
never sensed such a mingling of emotions and spirit.... "Pure spirit,"
the Grey One had said. Possibly it was so to the world, but he would
have said that the spirit of Vina Nettleton was fed by emotion--seas,
woods, fields, skies and rivers of emotion--and that mighty energies,
unused by the great task, roamed in nightly anguish.
Bedient moved raptly among the panels. He wondered how the artist had
made the light fall upon the dull clay, always where the Christ stood
or walked or hung.... "And how did you know He had such beautiful
hands?" he asked.
Vina Nettleton looked startled, and the Grey One came closer, saying:
"I'm glad you see that. To me the hands are a particular achievement.
Do you notice the fine modelling at the outer edges of the palms, and
the trailing length of the fingers?"
"Yes," said Bedient, "as if you could not quite tell where the flesh
ended and the healing magnetism began."
Vina Nettleton sat down upon one of the steps of a ladder and stared at
him. The Grey One added:
"And yet you cannot say they are overdone. They are the hands of an
artist, but not assertively so."
"It is my limitation that I don't know," he said, "but how is that
effect obtained, that suggestion of psychic power?"
"Part is your sensitiveness of eye and understanding," the Grey One
answered, "and the rest comes from our little woman making a prayer of
her work; from taking an image of Him and the Others into the dark; of
light, ascetic sleep and putting away the dreams of women----"
Scarlet showed under the transparent skin of the Nettleton temples
now--as if putting away the dreams of women were not an unqualified
success.
"It is all interesting. I am grateful to you both for letting me come,"
Bedient said with strange animation, eager yet full of hesitancy. "More
wonderful than the hands, is the Face, which Miss Nettleton has kept
averted throughout her entire idea. That's the way the Face appears to
me. The disciples and the multitudes must have seen it so, except on
rare, purposeful occasions.... He must have been slight and not tall,
and delicate as you see Him. It was not that He lacked physical
endurance, but He was worn, as those about Him did not understand, with
constant inner agony. That was His great weariness.... It was not an
imposing Figure. Nothing about Him challenged the Romans. They were but
abandoned boys who bowed to the strength that roars, and the bulk that
makes easy blood-letting. Even in custody, He was beneath the notice of
most Romans, so inflamed and brutish from conquest were they; and
Pilate, though the Tragic Instrument, was among the least ignoble of
them----'"
Bedient felt vaguely the interest of Vina Nettleton in what he was
saying. It was a remarkable moment. His mind was crowded with a hundred
things to say; yet he was startled, diffident, in spite of the joy of
speaking these things aloud.
"What a hideous time of darkness!" he added in the silence. "The Jews
were but little better than the Romans. They were looking for a king, a
Solomon sort of king with temples and trappings and sizable
authorities. Isn't it divine irony, that the Messianic Figure should
appear in the very heart of this racial weakness of the Jews? And their
lesson seems still unlearned. New York brings this home to-day.... So,
to the Jews and the Romans, He was insignificant in appearance. His
beauty was spiritual, which to be recognized, requires spirituality--a
feminine quality.
"And among the disciples: Hasn't it occurred to you again and again how
their doubting egos arose, when His face was turned away? Poor fellows,
they were bothered with their stomachs and their places to sleep; they
quarrelled with the different villagers, and doubtless wished
themselves back a hundred times to their fishing-banks and kindred
employments, when the Christ moved a little apart from them. I can see
them (behind His back), daring each other to approach and make known
their fancied injustices and rebellions. It was so with the multitudes
before they looked upon His countenance.
"But when He turns, whether in sorrow or in anger, the look is
invincible.... That is always true, whether the Face is turned upon
one, or the Twelve, or the multitude--in the crowded market-place, or
by the sea where the many were fed, or on the Mount--perfect tributes
of silence answered His direct attention, and all spiteful, petty ego
outcroppings vanished.... So there were two Figures: One, a man,
slender, tired and tortured; and an Angel Countenance, before whose
lustrous communications all men were abased according to their spirit."
He paused, but the women did not speak....
"Dear God, how lonely He was!" Bedient said after a moment, as he
regarded a picture of the Christ alone on the Mount, and the soldiers
ascending to make the arrest "There were two who might have sustained
in His daily death agonies. I have always wished they could have been
near Him throughout the Passion. _They_ would not have slept, that
darkest of nights while He prayed! I mean Saint Paul, who of course did
not see the Jesus of history, and John the Baptist, who was given to
know Him but an hour at the beginning. They were the greatest mortals
of those days.... They were above the attractions of women of flesh. Do
you see what I mean? They were humanly complete, beyond sex! Their
grandeur of soul meant a _union within themselves_ of militant manhood
and mystic womanhood. Illumination really means that. They could have
sustained and ministered unto the Christ with real tenderness.
"Invariably, I think, this is true: It is a woman, or _the woman in
man_ that recognizes a Messiah.... Look at those males of singing
flesh--the ultra-masculine Romans--how blind and how torpid they were
to Him; and the materialistic Jews, ponderously confronting each other
with stupid forms and lifeless rituals, while their Marys and Magdalens
and Miriams followed the Master and waited upon Him!... I always found
a kind of soulful feminine in John, the apostle--not the Forerunner,
but the brother of James. He was weak in those days of the Passion, but
became mighty afterward, and divinely tender, the apostle whom Jesus
loved, to whom he intrusted His Mother.... But look into the
arch-feminine ideal of the Christ Himself--that night on the Mount of
Olives, when all Earth's struggle and anguish passed through Him,
clothing itself with His pity and tenderness, before it reached the eye
of the Father. What ineffable Motherhood!"
The room wrought strangely upon Bedient. He had never spoken at such
length before, nor so eagerly. Vina Nettleton spoke for the first time
almost, since she had welcomed him. "You help me greatly," she said
with difficulty. "I cannot tell you exactly. I didn't know why, but
last night I hoped you would come here. Oh, it wasn't to help me with
this--not selfishly in the work, not that--but I seemed to know you
knew the things you have said just now."
Bedient was thrilled by her sincerity.... The low voice of the Grey One
now repeated:
"Spirituality, a feminine quality?"
"To me, always," said Bedient, his eyes lit with sudden enthusiasm.
"The Holy Spirit _is_ Mystic Motherhood. It is divinely the feminine
principle.... Look at the world's prophets, or take Saint Paul, for he
is in finished perspective. Completely human he is, unconquerable
manhood ignited by the luminous feminine quality of the soul. There he
stands, the man born again of the Holy Spirit, or Mystic Motherhood....
Now look at Jesus, a step higher still, and beyond which our vision
cannot mount. Here is the prophet risen to Godhood--the union of Two,
transcendent through that heavenly mystery--the adding of a Third!
Doesn't it clear for you startlingly now? It did for me. Here is the
_Three in One in Jesus_--the Godhood of the Father, the manhood of the
Son, and the Mystic Motherhood of the Holy Spirit. So in the radiance
of the Trinity--Jesus arose--'the first fruits of them that slept.'"
There was a light knock at the door. The face of the Grey One was like
a wraith, motionless and staring at him. Vina Nettleton looked up from
her soiled hands, which had streaked her face.... She moved suddenly to
the door, but did not touch it.
"Go away," she said intensely. "I can see no one."
Her eyes seemed to burn along the frame. There was no answer from
without, but a light step turning away.... Assured that the visitor was
gone, Vina turned back to Bedient.
"We mustn't be interrupted--nor must you go yet," she said with effort.
"I don't think anything ever happened to me so important. Oh, I don't
mean for my work; believe me in _that_, won't you? Since a little girl,
I have thought of these things. And here for two years they have been
about me. To me the Third of the Trinity has been as a voice calling
out of darkness. They told me when I was a bit of a girl that It was
not for me to understand, and that terrible men committed the deadly
sin of blasphemy through It----"
"Poor child," Bedient said, smiling at her. "They didn't know. Could
anything be lovelier for one to think about? The Holy Spirit as the
source of the divine principle in Woman, and Woman ever so eager to
give the spiritual loaf to man! That's the richest thought to me. After
_that_ is realized, all one's thinking must adjust itself to it; as in
Hindu minds, all thoughts adjust to reincarnation, and flow from it....
There is a tender glow of spirit, a sort of ignition of the narrative,
in every instance where a woman approaches the Christ in His mission on
earth. And men seem to find no meaning in these wonderful things....
The women of this world _are_ the symbols and the vessels of the Holy
Spirit. It is only through woman's love that It can be given to the
race. I like to think of it this way: _As a woman brings a child to her
husband, the father, so the Holy Spirit--Mystic Motherhood--is bringing
the World to God, the Father. And Jesus is the first fruits_."
The women regarded each other in silence. Bedient stayed, until the
tardy May dusk effaced the city, all but the myriad points of light.
ELEVENTH CHAPTER