Beth Truba awoke late. Goliath of Gath had just fallen with obituary
hiccoughs and a great clatter of armor.... She sat up, and reviewed
recent events backward. The stone had sunk into the forehead. David
came down to meet the giant smiling. There was no anger about it. The
stone had been slung leisurely. Before that, the boy had been brought
in from his sheep-herding to be anointed king. Samuel had seen it in a
vision, and not otherwise.... David found Saul's armor irksome, took up
his staff, and went to the brook for good, sizable stones, just as if
he had spied a wolf slavering at the herds from the brow of the
hill....
Beth laughed, and wondered why the Bible story had come back in her
dream. There seemed no clue, not even when she contemplated the events
of the rather remarkable evening preceding. Many minutes afterward,
however, arranging her hair, she found herself repeating:
"_Now he was ruddy, and withal, of a beautiful countenance."_ Finally
it came to her, and she was pleased and astonished: Throughout the
evening, Beth had felt that some Bible description exactly fitted in
her mind to the new impression of Bedient, but she could not think of
it then. Her effort had brought it forth in the night, and the whole
story that went with it.
Beth drank a bottle of milk, ashamed of the hour, though she had not
slept long. She loved mornings; New York could never change her delight
in the long forenoon. She was at work at two, and undisturbed for two
hours. Beth's studio was the garret of an old mansion, a step from
Fifth Avenue in the Thirties. Its effect, as one entered, was golden at
midday, and turned brown with the first shadows.
Mrs. Wordling called at four. For a woman who had been scornfully
analyzed by Kate Wilkes (who really could be vitriol-tongued) and
ordered away from Vina Nettleton's door like an untimely beggar, Mrs.
Wordling looked remarkably well. In point of fact, Mrs. Wordling was
ungovernably pretty. Moreover, she knew Kate Wilkes well enough to
understand that she was too busy to sketch the characters of other
women except for their own benefit. As for Vina Nettleton, the
cloistered, she could do as she liked, being great in her calling;
besides, a woman who had a man-visitor so rarely as Vina Nettleton,
might be expected to become snappy and excited. Bedient was proving a
rather stiff drug. Mrs. Wordling now wished to observe his action upon
Beth Truba. "I'll appear to regard it as a perfectly lady-like party,
which it was," she mused, in the dingy interminable stairways,--the
elevator being an uncertain quantity--"and run no risk of being thrown
three nights."
"Beth, you're looking really right," Mrs. Wordling enthused.
"So good of you," said Beth. "Must be lovely out, isn't it?... The
poster will be ready in three or four days.... Didn't we have a good
time at David's party?"
"Such a good time----"
"Really must have, since we stayed until an unconscionable hour.
Half-past two when we broke up----"
"All of that, Beth."
The artist looked up from her work. Mrs. Wordling's acquiescences
seemed modulated. The "Beths" were no more frequent than usual,
however. The artist had grown used to this from certain people. It
appeared that her name was so to the point, that many kept it juggling
through their conversation with her, like a ball in a fountain.... The
poster, Beth had consented to do in a weak moment. It was to be framed
for theatre-lobbies. People whom Beth painted were seldom quite the
same afterward to her. She seemed to learn too much. She had greatly
admired Mrs. Wordling's good nature at the beginning. There was no
objection now; only the actress had given her in quantity what had
first attracted, and quantity had palled. Beth often wished she did not
discern so critically.... Just now she divined that her caller wanted
to discuss Cairns' friend. The result was that Mrs. Wordling left after
a half-hour, with Bedient heavier and more undeveloped than ever in her
consciousness. Always a considerable social factor in her theatrical
companies, Mrs. Wordling was challenged by the people of the _Smilax
Club_. She was not getting on with them, and the thought piqued.
Bedient, who had not greatly impressed her, had apparently struck
twelve with the others. Therefore, he became at once both an object and
a means. There was a way to prove her artistry....
Beth went on with her painting, the face of another whom she had found
out. And painting, she smiled and thought. She was like a pearl in the
good North light. Across the pallor of her face ran a magnetic current
of color from the famous hair to the crimson jacket she wore, pinned at
the throat by a soaring gull, with the tiniest ruby for an eye....
David Cairns called. He seemed drawn and nervous. Obviously he had come
to say things. Beth knew his moods.
"David, we had a memorable time last night, you know that," she said.
"You know, too, that I have been, and am, friendly to Mrs. Wordling. As
the party turned out, I'm interested to know just how you came to
choose the guests. We drew rather close together for New Yorkers----"
"That's a fact."
"But the Grey One is engaged to be married. In theory, Kate Wilkes is a
man-hater. Dear little Vina is consecrated to her 'Stations' for two
years more. Eliminate me as, forborne, a spinster.... Yet you told me
two or three days ago that you wouldn't be surprised if your friend
took his lady back----"
"That may be true, Beth," he interrupted. "But I spoke hastily. It
sounds crude and an infringement now. I really didn't know Bedient----"
"When you invited your guests--Mrs. Wordling?"
"I should have consulted someone----"
"Not at all, David. It was eminently right. I am not criticising, just
interested."
"I've been revoluting inside. Mrs. Wordling happened three days ago,
when I was first thinking out the party. I didn't know we were to get
into real things. 'Ah, here's a ripe rounding influence,' said I. 'Do
come, Mrs. Wordling.' Maybe I _did_ figure out the contrast she
furnished. She's friendly and powerfully pretty and, why, I see it now,
one of the Wordlings of this world would have taken Andrew Bedient into
camp years ago, if he were designed for that kind of woman. Why, that's
the kind of woman he doubtless knows----"
"Do you know what I think?" Beth inquired. "I think you should be
punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. That's a
Wordl--a woman's strategy."
"I know it, Beth," Cairns said excitedly. "But I didn't think of it
until afterward. I wouldn't do it again."
She was startled, saw too late that this was no time for showing him
his crudities.
"You're a dear boy----" she began.
"No, I'm not, Beth. Oh, it isn't the only thing--that has been rammed
home to me.... _Me_; there's so much _me_ mixed up in my mind, so much
tiresome and squalid _me_, that I wonder every decent person hasn't cut
me long since for a bore and a nuisance. Why, I had become all puny and
blinded--_my_ stomach, _my_ desires, markets, memories, ambitions,
doubts, rages, rights, poses and conceits. I really need to tell some
one, to unveil before some one who won't wince, but treasure the little
moral residuum----"
"You have done well to come to Beth," she said, leaning forward and
patting his shoulder with the thin stem of her brush, though a woman
always feels her years when a man brings woes such as these to her....
It was Beth's weakness (or strength) that she could never reveal the
intimacies of her heart. Only sometimes in half-humorous generalities,
she permitted things to escape, thinking no one understood.
"Thanks, Beth. I'm grateful," Cairns said. "I seem to have missed for a
long time the bigger dimension in people, books, pictures, faces, even
in the heart. It's a long time since I set out this way, a down-grade,
and the last few days, I've heard the rapids. I'm going back, as far
and as fast as I can up-stream. And this is no lie; no pose."
"I repeat, you're a dear boy----"
"Oh, it's Bedient who jerked me up straight. I'd have gone on.... And
to think I made him wait over an hour, when he first called.... He's
the finest bit of man-stuff I've ever known, Beth."
She found herself relieved, that he had given to the stranger the
praise.
"... And, Beth, if you want to dig for his views, you'll get them. He
says New York plucks everything green; opinionates on the wing, makes
personal capital out of another's offering, refusing to wait for the
fineness of impersonal judgment. He asks nothing more stimulating than
the capacity to say on occasion, 'I don't know,' flat and unqualified.
He sees everywhere, the readiness to be clever instead of true. So many
New Yorkers, he says, are like fishes, that, knowing water, disclaim
the possibility of air.
"You know, Beth, Bedient never encountered what America was thinking
and reading, until a few months ago down on his Island.
We are editorialists in the writing game, he declares,
what-shall-I-write-about-to-day-folks! We don't wait for fulness, but
wear out brain thin bandying about what drops on it. If we would wait
until we were full men, we would _have_ to write, and not drive
ourselves to the work----"
"Oh, I do believe that!" Beth said. "We need to be reminded of that."
"That _we_ is very pretty, Beth," Cairns went on. "...Such a queer
finished incident happened yesterday. I hunted up Bedient at noon, and
we talked about some of these matters. And then we met Ritchold for
luncheon. It was at _Teuton's_. I took Bedient aside and whispered with
a flourish, 'One of our ten-thousand-a-year editors, Andrew.'... 'What
makes him worth that?' he asked. 'He knows what the people want,' I
replied. Can you see us, Beth?...
"The luncheon was interesting. Bedient and Ritchold got together
beautifully. The talk was brisk and big, just occasionally cutting the
edges of shop. Both men came to me afterward. 'Splendid chap, your
friend,' Ritchold said. 'A man who has seen so much and can talk so
well, ought to _write_. Thanks for meeting him.'
"'I was very glad to meet Mr. Ritchold,' Bedient remarked later--hours
later--after I had given up hope of hearing on the subject. 'I think he
shows where one trouble lies.... It's in _him_ and his kind, David. His
periodical sells to the great number. He is a very bright man, and his
art is in knowing what the great number wants. Being brighter, and of
finer discernment, than those who buy his product, he debases his taste
to make his organs relish the coarser article. That's the first
evil--prostituting himself.... Now a people glutted with what it wants
is a stagnant people. Its only hope is in such men as Ritchold leading
them to the higher ways. In refusing, he wrongs the public--the second
evil.... Again, in blunting his own sensibilities and catering to the
common, he stands as a barrier between the public and real creative
energy. He and the public are one. A prostituted taste and a stagnant
popular mind are alike repelled by reality. Rousing creative power
glances from them both. So his third evil is the busheling and harrying
of genius.... There he stands, forcing genius to be common, to appear,
paying well and swiftly only for that which is common. Genius writhes a
bit, starves a bit, but the terrible needs of this complicated life
have him by the throat until he cries "Enough," and presently is
common, indeed.'"
"He need not have spoken of writing only," Beth remarked. "_They_ must
have taught him to see things clearly in the Orient.... You know,
David, I found it hard last night, and a little now, to fix his point
of view and his power to express it, with the life of outdoor men, the
'enlisted,' as he says, rather than the 'commissioned' folk of this
world."
"He has done much reading, but more thinking," Cairns declared. "He has
been much alone, and he has lived. He sees inside. 'The great books of
the world are little books,' he said recently, 'books that a pocket or
a haversack will hold. You don't realize what they have given you,
until you sit down in a roomful of ordinary books and see how tame and
common the quantities are.' And it's true. Look at the big men of few
books. They learned to look _inside_ of books they had! He knows the
Bible, and the _Bhagavad Gita_."
"Oh, I'm beginning to understand," Beth exclaimed. "Nights alone with
the Bible and the _Bhagavad Gita_, and one's schooldays--a weathering
from the open and seasoning from the seas. Men have such chances to
learn the perils and passions of the earth, but so few do.... I see it
now. It isn't remarkable that we find him poised and finished, but that
he should have had the inclination naturally--a child among
sailors--for the great little books of the world, and through them and
his nights alone, to have kept his balance and builded his power."
"That's the point, Beth. New York is crowded with voyagers, and men of
mileage to the moon, but what made this powerful unlettered boy _look_
for the inside of things? What made him different from the packers and
cooks and sailors around the world, boys of the open who never become
men except physically?"
Beth answered: "I think we'll find that has to do with Mr. Bedient's
mother, David."
"I know he'd be thrilled to hear you say that."
"Is she still living?"
"No, or he'd be with her.... He has never spoken to me of her. And yet
I'm sure she is the unseen glow upon his life. I think he would tell
_you_ about her. Only a woman could draw that from him.... He saw no
one but you last night; did all his talking to you, Beth."
"I'm the flaringest, flauntingest posy in the garden. I call the bees
first," she said dryly, but there was a flitting of ghostly memories
through her mind. "And then I'm an extraordinary listener."
"Beth," he said solemnly, "no one knows better than I, that it is you
who send the bees away."
She laughed at him. "We found each other out in time, David.... Too
much artist between us. We'd surely taint each other, don't you see?"
"I never could see that----"
"That's being polite; and one must be polite.... We are really fine
friends, better than ever after to-day, and that's something for a pair
of incomplete New Yorkers."
There was a pause.
"Beth," said Cairns. "Shall I bring Bedient over to-morrow?"
"No, please. At least not to-morrow."
He was surprised. Beth saw it; saw, too, that he had observed how
Bedient talked to her last night. Mrs. Wordling had not missed comment
here.... Cairns must not think, however, that she would avoid Andrew
Bedient. She fell into her old resource of laughing at the whole
matter.
"I can't afford to take any chances, David. He's _too_ attractive.
Falling in love is pure dissipation to one of my temperament, and I
have too many contracts to fill. I'm afraid of your sailor-man. Think
of the character you built about him to-day in this room. If he didn't
prove up to that, what a pity for us all! And if he did, what a pity
for poor Beth, if he started coming here!... Anyway, I've ceased to be
a bachelor-girl. I'm a spinster.... That word hypnotizes me. I'm all
ice again. I shall know Mr. Bedient ethically and not otherwise."
Cairns laughed with her, but something within hurt. His relation with
Beth Truba had been long, and increasingly delightful, since the ordeal
of becoming just a friend was safely past. He realized that only a
beautiful woman could speak this way, even in fun to an old friend....
His work dealt with wars, diplomacy and politics; his fictions were
twenty-year-old appeals, so that Beth felt her present depth of mood to
be fathoms deeper than his story instinct.
"You know, David, I've said for years there were no real lovers in the
world," she went on lightly. "But your friend was full of touches last
night such as one dreams of: that colored pane in the hall-way, when he
was a little boy somewhere, and the light that frightened him from
it.... 'One of the Chinese knifed me, but he died.'... That big 'X' of
the _Truxton_ flung stern up, as she sank; ... and about the old
Captain wriggling his shoulder bashfully for his young friend's arm at
the last.... It is altogether enticing, in the light of what you have
brought to-day. Really you must take him away. Red-haired spinsters
mustn't be bothered, nor imprisoned in magic spring weather. When does
he return to his Island?"
"He hasn't spoken of that, but I do know, Beth, that Bedient will never
sink back into the common, from your first fine impressions. I've known
him for years, you see----"
She put down her brush and said theatrically, "I feel the fatal
premonitive impulses.... Spinster, spinster; Beth Truba, spinster!...
That's my salvation."
"You're the finest woman I know," Cairns said. "You know best, but I
doubt if Bedient will go back to Equatoria without seeing more of
you----"
"Did he speak of such a thing?"
"That isn't his way----"
"I am properly rebuked."
... Cairns was at the door. "Did you say, Beth, that the Grey One is
engaged to be married?"
"Pure tragedy. The man is fifty and financial.... She's a courageous
girl, but I think under her dear smile is a broken nerve. She has about
reached the end of her rope. The demand for her work has fallen off.
One of those inexplicable things. She had such a good start after
returning from Paris. And now with Handel's expensive studio, probably
not less than three thousand a year for that, debt and unsought
pictures are eating out her heart. There's much more to the story--I
mean leading up. Help her if you can, or she must go to the arms and
house of a certain rich man.... What a blithe thing is Life, and how
little you predatory men know about it!"
They regarded each other, their thoughts poised upon an _If_. Beth
spoke first:
"If your friend----"
"But Bedient didn't look into the eyes of the Grey One when he told his
tale of the sea," Cairns said, leaving.
TWELFTH CHAPTER
TWO LESSER ADVENTURES
A few nights after the party, Bedient was left to his own devices,
Cairns being appointed out of town. He attended the performance of a
famous actress in _Hedda Gabler_.... Bedient was early. The curtain
interested him. It pictured an ancient Grecian ruin, a gloomy, heavy
thing, but not inartistic. Beneath was a couplet from Kingsley:
"So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again,
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream."
Sensitive to such effects, he sat, musing and contemplative, when
suddenly his spirit was imperiously aroused by the orchestra. The
'celli had opened the _Andante_ from the C Minor Symphony. For ten
minutes, the music held his every sense.... It unfolded as of old, but
not its full message. There was a meaning in it _for him_! He heard the
three voices--man, woman and angel. It was the woman's tragedy. The
lustrous Third Presence was for her. The man's figure was obscure,
disintegrate.... Bedient was so filled with the mystery, that the play
had but little surface of his consciousness during the first act. He
enjoyed it, but could not give all he had. Finally, as _Hedda_ was
ordering the young writer to drink wine to get "vine-leaves in his
hair," there was an explosion back of the scenes. Bedient, as did many
others, thought at first it belonged to the piece. The faces of the
players fell away in thick gloom, the voices sank into crazy echoes,
and the curtain went down. Bedient's last look at the stage brought him
the impression of squirming chaos. Fire touched the curtain behind,
disfiguring and darkening the pictured ruin. Then a woman near him
screamed. The back of a chair snapped, and now scores took up the
woman's cry.
The crowd caught a succession of hideous ideas: of being trapped and
burned, of inadequate exits, murderous gases, bodies piled at the
doors--all the detailed news-horror of former theatre disasters. And
the crowd did all it could to repeat the worst of these. Bedient
encountered an altogether new strength, the strength of a frenzied
mass, and to his nostrils came a sick odor from the fear-mad. The
lights had not been turned on with the fall of the curtain. Untrained
to cities, Bedient was astonished at the fright of the people, the
fright of the men!... The lines of _Hedda_ recurred to him, and he
called out laughingly:
"Now's the time for 'vine-leaves in your hair,' men!"
He moved among the seats free from the aisle. A body lay at his feet.
Groping forward, his hand touched a woman's hair. He smiled at the
thought that here was one for _him_ to help, and lifted her, turning to
look at the glare through the writhing curtain. There were voices
behind in that garish furnace; and now the lights filled the theatre
again. Bedient quickly made his way with others to a side exit, the red
light of which had not attracted the crowd.
The woman was light in his arms. She wore a white net waist, and her
brown hair was unfastened. She had crushed a large bunch of English
violets to her mouth and nostrils, to keep out the smoke and gas. A
peculiar thing about it was, Bedient did not see her face. In the
alley, he handed his burden to a man and woman, standing together at
the door of a car, and went back. One of the actors had stepped in
front of the stage, and was calling out that the fire was under
control, that there was no danger whatever. The roar from the gallery
passages subsided. Only a few were hurt, since the theatre was modern
and the main exit ample.... Bedient returned to the side-door but the
woman he had carried forth was gone, probably with the pair in the car.
He decided to see the end of _Hedda Gabler_ another time. The
_Andante_, the Grecian ruin and vine-leaves were curiously blended in
his mind....
Though several days had passed since the Club affair, he had not seen
Beth Truba again. This fact largely occupied his thinking. He would not
telephone nor call, without a suggestion from her. The moment had not
come to bring up her name to David Cairns, who, since his talk with
Beth, had of course nothing to offer. So Bedient revolved in outer
darkness.... The morning after _Hedda Gabler_ he found a very good
chestnut saddle-mare in an up-town stable, and rode for an hour or two
in the Park, returning to the Club after eleven. At the office, he was
told that Mrs. Wordling had asked for him to go up to her apartment, as
soon as he came in. Five minutes later, he knocked at her door.
"Is that you, Mr. Bedient?" she called. The voice came seemingly from
an inner room; a cultivated voice, with that husky note in it which
charms the multitude. Had he not a good mental picture of Mrs.
Wordling, he would have imagined some enchanted Dolores.... "How good
of you to come! Just wait one moment."
The door opened partially after a few seconds, and he caught the gleam
of a bare arm, but the actress had disappeared when he entered. Bedient
was in a room where a torrential shower had congealed into photographs.
"I can't help it," she said at last, emerging from the inner room,
unhooked.... "I've been trying to get a maid up here for the past
half-hour.... I think there's only three or four between the
shoulder-blades--won't you do them for me?"
She backed up to him bewitchingly.... Mrs. Wordling was in the
twenty-nine period. If the thing can be imagined, she gave the
impression of being both voluptuous and athletic. There was a rose-dusk
tone under her healthy skin, where the neck went singing down to the
shoulder, singing of warm blood and plenteous. Hers was the mid-height
of woman, so that Bedient was amusedly conscious of the length of his
hands, as he stood off for a second surveying the work to do.
"What's the trouble; can't you?"
There was a purring tremble in her tone that stirred the wanderer, only
it was the past entirely that moved within him. The moment had little
more rousing for him, than if he were asked to fasten a child's
romper.... Yet he did not miss that here was one of the eternal types
of man's pursuit--as natural a man's woman as ever animated a roomful
of photographs--a woman who could love much, and, as Heine added,
_many_.
"I'll just throw a shawl around, if you can't," she urged, nudging her
shoulder.