in my mind before beginning. You know it's tricksome for one accustomed
mainly to men's affairs.... There's one--I won't pinch--and the
second--anytime you can't find a maid, Mrs. Wordling--I'm in the Club a
good deal--there they are, if they don't fly open----" and his hands
fell with a pat on each of her shoulders.
Facing him, Mrs. Wordling encountered a perfectly unembarrassed young
man, and a calm depth of eye that seemed to have come and gone from her
world, and taken away nothing to remember that was wildly exciting....
At least three women of her acquaintance were raving about Andrew
Bedient, two artists with a madness for sub-surface matters having to
do with men. Mrs. Wordling believed herself a more finished artist in
these affairs. She wanted to prove this, while Bedient was the dominant
man-interest of the Club.
And now he surprised her. He was different from the man she had
pictured. Equally well, she could have located him--had he kissed her,
or appeared confused with embarrassment. Most men of her acquaintance
would have kissed her; others would have proved clumsy and abashed, but
none could have passed through the test she offered with both denial
and calm.... She wanted the interest of Bedient, because the other
women fancied him; she wanted to show them and "that hag, Kate Wilkes,"
what a man desires in a woman; and now a third reason evolved. Bedient
had proved to her something of a challenging sensation. He was
altogether too calm to be inexperienced. Every instinct had unerringly
informed her of his bounteous ardor, yet he had refrained. That which
she had seen first and last about him--the excellence of his masculine
attractions--had suddenly become important because no longer
impersonal. Mrs. Wordling was fully equipped to carry out her ideas.
"You did that very well," she said, dropping her eyes before his steady
gaze, "for one experienced only with men-matters. And now, I suppose
you want to know why I took the pains to ask you here; oh, no, not to
hook me up.... I didn't know you would get back so soon; I had just
left word a few moments before you came.... Wasn't it great the way a
dreadful disaster was averted at the _Hedda Gabler_ performance last
night?... Did you see the morning paper?"
"No," said Bedient. "I was out early."
"Why, it appears that after the explosion, when everyone was crushing
toward the doors, some man in the audience took the words of _Hedda_
and steadied the crowd with them, as men and women struggled in the
darkness.... 'Now's the time for vine-leaves!' he called out. An
unknown--wasn't he lovely?"
She placed the paper before him, and he read a really remarkable
account of "the vine-leaf man" magnetizing the mob and carrying out a
fainting girl. It was absurd to him, though Ibsen's subtlety, queerly
enough, gave the story force.... No face of the audience had impressed
him; none had appeared to notice him in the dark. He wondered how the
newspaper had obtained the account.... There was a light, quick knock
at the door.
"It isn't very often that a newspaper story is gotten up so
effectively," Mrs. Wordling was saying. Apparently she had not heard
the knock. Her voice, however, had fallen in a half-whisper, more
penetrating than her usual low tones. "Do you suppose the hero will
permit his name to be known?"
The knock was repeated in a brief, that-ends-it fashion. Mrs. Wordling
with a sudden streak of clumsiness half overturned a chair, as she sped
to the door. Bedient did not at once penetrate the entire manoeuver,
but his nerve and will tightened with a premonition of unpleasantness.
Beth Truba was admitted. Quite as he would have had her do, the artist
merely turned from one to the other a quick glance, and ignored the
matter; yet that glance had stamped him with her conception of his
commonness.
"I could just as well have sent the poster over," Beth said, "but, as I
'phoned, it is well to see, if it suits exactly, before putting it out
of mind----"
"Lovely of you, dear. I'm so glad Mr. Bedient is here to see it!" Mrs.
Wordling's brown eyes swam with happiness.
Beth was in brown. Her profile was turned to Bedient, as she unrolled
the large, heavy paper.... The work was remarkable in its effect of
having been done in a sweep. The subtle and characteristic appeal of
the actress (so truly her own, that she would have been the last to
notice it) had been caught in truth and cleverly, the restlessness of
her empty arms and eager breast. The face was finer, and the curves of
the figure slightly lengthened; the whole in Beth's sweeping way,
rather masterful.
"Splendid!" Mrs. Wordling exclaimed, and to Bedient added: "It's for
the road. Isn't it a winner?"
"Yes, I do like it," Bedient said.
Beth was glad that he didn't enlarge.
"I must be on my way, then," she said. "I'm going into the country
to-morrow for the week-end.... We're getting the old house fixed up for
the winter. Mother writes that the repairs are on in full blast, and
that I'm needed. Last Saturday when I got there the plumbers had just
come. Very carefully they took out all the plumbing and laid it on the
front lawn; then put it back.... Good-by."
"Good-by, and thank you, Beth."
"I am glad that it pleases you, Mrs. Wordling." Her tone was pleasantly
poised.
Bedient missed nothing now. He did not blame Mrs. Wordling for using
him. He saw that she was out of her element with the others; therefore
not at her best trying to be one with them. In her little strategies,
she was quite true to herself. He could not be irritated, though he was
very sorry. Of course, there could be no explanation. His own innocence
was but a humorous aspect of the case. The trying part was that look in
Beth Truba's eyes, which told him how bored she was by this sort of
commonness.
Then there was to-morrow and Sunday with her away. In her brown dress
and hat, glorious and away.
Bedient went away, too.
THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
ABOUT SHADOWY SISTERS
Beth Truba hadn't the gift of talking about the things that hurt her.
She had met all her conflicts in solitudes of her own finding; and
there they had been consummated, like certain processes of nature, far
from the gaze of man. She had found the world deranged from every
girlish ideal. Full grown young men could be so beautiful to her
artist's eyes, that years were required to realize that these splendid
exteriors held more often than not, little more than strutting
half-truths and athletic vanities.
Whistler, the master, had entered the class-room unannounced, where
Beth was studying, as a girl in Paris. Glancing about the walls, his
eyes fastened upon a sketch of hers. He asked the teacher for the pupil
who did it, and uplifted Beth's face to his, touching her chin and
forehead lightly.
Then he whistled and said: "Off hand, I should say that you are to
become an artist; but now that I look closely into your face, I am
afraid you will become a woman."
Tentatively, she was an artist; she would not grant more.... A little
while before, she had been very close to becoming a woman. None but the
Shadowy Sister knew how near. (The Shadowy Sister was an institution of
Beth's--her conscience, her spirit, her higher self, or all three in
one. She came from an old fairy-book. A little girl had longed for a
playmate, even as Beth, and one day beside a fountain appeared a
Shadowy Sister. She could stay a while, for she loved the little girl,
but confessed it was much happier where _she_ lived.)... Shadowy
Sisters for little girls who have no playmates, and for women who have
no confidantes.
Under Beth's mirth, during the recent talk with David Cairns, had been
much of verity. She was carrying an unhealed wound, which neither he
nor the world understood. In Andrew Bedient she had discerned a fine
and deeply-endowed nature--glimpses--as if he were some great woman's
gift to the world, her soul and all. But Beth's romantic nature had
been desolated so short a time ago, that she despised even her
willingness to put forth faith again.... Such fruit must perish on the
vine, if only common hands attend the harvest.
Women like Beth Truba learn in bitterness to protect themselves from
possibilities of disillusionment. They hate their hardness, yet
hardness is better than rebuilding sanctuaries that have been brutally
stormed. For one must build of faith, radium-rare to those who have
lost their intrinsic supply.
The Other Man had been a find of Beth's. He had come to her mother's
house years ago--a boy. He had seemed quick to learn the ways of real
people, and the things a man must know to delight a woman's
understanding. In so many ways, the finishing touches of manhood were
put upon him gracefully, that Beth gloried in the work of adding
treasures of mind and character. She had even made his place in the
world, through strong friends of her own winning.
Beth was a year or two older. The boy had grown splendid in appearance,
when she discovered she was giving him much that he must hold sacredly,
or inflict havoc upon the giver.... In moments when she was happiest,
there would come a thought that something would happen.... The young
man did not fully understand what caused the break. This may be the key
to the very limitation which made him impossible--this lack of delicacy
of perception. Certainly he did not know the greatness of Beth's
giving, nor the fineness she had come to expect from him.... She did
not exactly love him less, but rather as a mother than a maid, since
she had to forgive.
A woman may love a man whom she is too wise to marry. There are
man-comets, splendid, flashing, unsubstantial, who sweep into the zones
of attraction of all the planet sisterhood; but better, if one cannot
have a sun all to oneself, is a little cold moon for the companion
intimate.... Something that the young man had said or done was pure
disturbance to Beth, compatible with no system of development. She had
sent him from her, as one who had stood before her rooted among the
second-rate.
Only Beth knew the depth of the hurt. All the feminine of her had
turned to aching iron. The Shadowy Sister seemed riveted to a hideous
clanking thing, and all the dream-children crushed.
Her friends said: "Who would have thought that after making such a
_man_ of her protégé, Beth would refuse to marry him? Ah, Beth loves
her pictures better than she could love any mere man. She was destined
to be true to her work. Only the great women are called upon to make
this choice. Nature keeps them virgin to reveal at the last unshadowed
beauty. This refusal is the signet of her greatness."
Beth heard a murmur of this talk and laughed bitterly.
"No," she said to her studio-walls. "It's only because Beth is a bit
choosey. She isn't a very great artist, and if she were, she wouldn't
hesitate to become Mrs. Right Man, though it made her falter forever,
eye and hand."
In her own heart, she would rather have had her visions of happiness in
children, than to paint the most exquisite flowers and faces in the
comprehension of Art.... For days, for weeks, she had remained in her
studio seeing no one. Some big work was rumored, and she was left alone
with understanding among real people, just as was Vina Nettleton....
But she was too maimed within to work. She wanted to rush off to Asia
somewhere, and bury herself alive, but pride kept her at home. As soon
as she was able to move and think coherently, she sought her few
friends again. Even her dearest, Vina Nettleton, had realized but a
tithe of the tragedy.
* * * * *
Beth Truba reached her studio again Monday noon. Among the letters in
her post-box, was one she felt instinctively to be from Andrew Bedient,
though it was post-marked Albany. She hesitated to open the letter at
first, for fear that he had attempted to explain his presence in Mrs.
Wordling's room. This would affix him eternally to commonness in her
mind. He had a right to go to Mrs. Wordling's room, but she had thought
him other than the sort which pursues such obvious attractions.
Especially after what Cairns had said, she was hurt to meet him
there.... Beth found herself thinking at a furious rate, on the mere
hazard that the letter was from Bedient....
Were there really such men in the world as the Bedient whom Cairns
pictured, and believed in? Personally, she didn't care to experiment,
but there was a strange reliance in the thought that there _were_ such
men.... The fine nature she wanted to believe in--wouldn't have
written!... This one letter alone remained unopened--when the telephone
rang.
It was Cairns, who inquired if she had heard aught of his friend.... "I
reached town Saturday morning," Cairns went on, "and found a note that
he would be away for the day and possibly Sunday; didn't say where nor
why. He left no word at the Club. In fact, Mrs. Wordling called me just
now to inquire, volunteering that Bedient had been in her world Friday.
Excuse me for bothering you. I've an idea this is his way when a gale
is blowing in his brain. He pushes out for solitude and sea-room."
Beth had not offered to assist. The Albany letter might not be his. It
stared at her now from the library-table, full-formed black writing.
There were no two ways about a single letter. It was the writing of a
man who had not covered continents of white paper. "Miss Beth Truba"
had been put there to stay, with a full pen, and as if pleasing to his
sight. She was thinking--it would be well if Mrs. Wordling were always
inquiring; and that the day would be spoiled if he had undertaken to
explain things in this letter....
Beth crossed to the table, placed the paper-cutter under the flap and
slit it across. Just at this moment, the door of the elevator-shaft
opened on her floor--and her knocker fell. She tossed the letter under
the leather cover of the table, and admitted Vina Nettleton.
FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
THIS CLAY AND PAINT AGE
A new light had come into the studio of Vina Nettleton; and only when
at last the light became too strong, and the struggle too close, had
she left it to seek her friend Beth Truba. She had not been sleeping,
nor remembering to eat; but she had been thinking enough for seven
artists, in the long hours, when the light was bad for work. And now
the packing was worn from her nerve-ends, so that she wept easily, like
a nervous child, or a man undone from drink.
The new force of Andrew Bedient had found in her a larger sensitiveness
than even in David Cairns. That long afternoon which he had spent in
her place of working and living was to her a visitation, high above the
years. She had been amazed at the Grey One, for preserving a semblance
of calm. The gratefulness that she had faltered was but a sign of what
she felt.
The figures of Jesus in her room, she had been unable to touch. Bedient
had made her see the _Godhood_ of the Christ. John the Baptist, who had
attained the apex of manhood and prophecy, had called himself unworthy
to loose the latchet of His shoes, and this before Jesus had put on the
glory of the Father.
All the others were amazingly nearer to her. She saw the bleak Iscariot
as never before, and his darkened mother emerged a step out of the
gloom of ages. The Romans moved, as upon a stage, before her, unlit
battling faces, clashing voices and armor; and the bearded Jews heavily
collecting and confuting. She saw the Eleven, and nearest the light,
the frail John, the brother of James,--sad young face and ascetic
pallor.... And in the night, she heard that great Voice crying in the
wilderness, that mighty Forerunner, the returned Elias; next to Christ
Himself, this Baptist, who leaped in the womb of the aged Elizabeth,
when the Mother of the Saviour entered her house in the hill country!
This cataclysmic figure, not of the "Stations," was dominant in the
background of them all. She saw him second to the Christ (for was he
not a prophet in the elder Scripture?) in being called to the Father's
Godhood; and Saint Paul, of that nameless thorn in the flesh, following
gloriously on the Rising Road!
There was a new and loving friendliness in the Marys. She could pray to
_them_, and wait for greater purity to image the Saviour, as they saw
Him.... And one night from her fire-frame, staring down into the lurid
precipices of the city, the awful question preyed upon her lips, "Are
you Jews and Romans that you must have again the blood of the Christ,
to show you the way to God?"... She was weeping, and would have
swooned, but something in her consciousness bade her look above. There
were the infinite worlds, immensities of time and space and evolving
souls; and urging, weaving, glorifying all, was the Holy Spirit, Mystic
Motherhood.... And back in the dark of her studio, she turned among
creations and visions and longings. Next morning she sat upon the floor
and wept, because she could not have her child of soul, only children
of clay.... Hours afterward she was fashioning a cross with her
fingers, and was suddenly crushed with anguish because she had not been
there to carry the cross for Him, to confront the soldiery and take the
cruel burden, and hear His Voice, Whom she knew now to be the Son of
God.
* * * * *
The women embraced in that rare way which is neither formal nor an
affectation. They had long liked and admired each other.
"Why, Vina,--it has been weeks--how did you manage to leave?"
"I haven't done much--for days," Vina said, ducking from under her huge
hat, and tossing it with both hands upon the piano-top. "Not since he
came up with the Grey One and spoiled my little old ideas. Let's have
some tea?"
Beth laughed at the other, until Vina moved into the circle of light,
and her face showed paler and more transparent than ever. She sat down
upon Beth's working-stool, elbows on knees, and stared trance-like at
her friend.
"Why, you dear little dreamer, what's the matter?" Beth asked quickly.
"Who is the destructive _he_?"
"The sailor-man David Cairns called us together to see. He's been in
the shadows among the panels ever since. What he said I keep hearing
again and again----"
Beth laughed at the remarkable way Bedient was besieging her own
studio, without appearing in person. "But Vina, you've been living like
a Hindu holy man, and no one can do that in New York, not even Hindus.
I order you to eat thrice daily and tire yourself physically----"
"I eat," Vina said, looking bored and helpless at the thought. "I eat
and I do enough physical work to tire a stone-mason----"
"But I can see through you to the bone! I think you only imagine you
take nourishment. Oh, Vina, I know your life--handling huge hard things
and making them lovely with pure spirit. I must take better care of
you. Tell me all about it, if it will help."
"Beth, please don't talk about pure spirit, meaning me. I used to be
able to stand it, but not any more. The Grey One does that. I seem to
suggest it to flesh and blood people.... I'm sure he didn't see me so.
He looked at me, as if to say, oh, I don't know what!... I wish I
_were_ fish-cold! I'm all overturned.... I just met Mary McCullom on
the way over."
Beth had forgotten the name for the moment. She thought Vina was about
to tell her of Bedient.
"Don't you remember Mary McCullom, who tried painting for awhile,
painted one after another, discolored and shapeless children, wholly
bereft and unfortunate children?"
"Oh, yes," said Beth. "I heard she had married----"
"That's just it.... Do you remember how she used to look--pinched,
evaporated, as one looks in a factory blue-light? I remember calling
upon her, as she was giving up her last studio. We sat on a
packing-case, while they took out her pictures, one child after
another, foundlings which had come to her, and which no one would take
nor buy----"
"Vina, you're cruel to her!"
"Listen, and you'll see whom I'm cruel to.... I remember telling her
that day what a fearsome, ineffectual thing art is anyway.... How
spooky thin she looked, and her face was yellow in patches! My heart
was wrung with her, the image of a little woman with no place, no heart
to go to, all her dreams of girlhood turned to ghosts, fit only to run
from. Then she admitted that she might marry, that a man wanted her,
but her wail was that she was mean and helpless, a failure; as such it
was cowardly to let the man have her, hardly a square thing for a girl
to do. Well, I perked her up on that.... She took him; I don't even
know him by sight, but he's a man, Beth Truba! Mind you, here was a
woman who said she was so dismayed and distressed and generally bowled
over by living twenty-seven years, that she hadn't the heart left to
love anybody. But he took her, and he's a man----"
"That seems to charm you," Beth ventured. "'He took her, and he's a
man.'"
"It does, for I just left her, and she's a wicked flaunt of womanly
happiness. I tell you, she has been playing with angels, all daintily
plumped out, eyes shining, hands soft and white, her neck all round and
new, lips red, and her voice low and ecstatic with the miracle of it
all. And 'Oh, Vina,' she whispered, 'I almost die to think I might have
refused him! You helped me not to. He loves me, and oh, he's so
wonderful!'... I kissed her in an awed way--and asked about him....
'Oh, he's just a nurseryman--trees, you know, but he lo--we're so
happy!'... Oh, Beth," Vina finished in a lowered voice, "something
eternal, something immortal happens, when a man brings love to a
thirsting woman!"
"Not tea, but strong tea," Beth observed. "Perhaps you think that's a
pretty story--and perhaps it is," she added indefinitely.
Vina seemed hardly to hear. Many matters were revolving in her tired
mind, and as soon as she caught a loose end, she allowed words to come,
for there was some relief in thinking aloud.
"Hasn't the world done for us perfectly, Beth?" she demanded finally.
"Everything is arranged for men, to suit men--it's a man's world--and
we're foreigners. We're forced to stand around and _mind_, before we
understand. If we speak our own language, we're suspected of sedition.
And then we don't stand together. We're continually looking for some
kind male native, and only now and then one of us is lucky.... Hideous
and false old shames are inflicted upon us. We are hungry for many
things, but appear shameless, if we say so... Beth, has it ever
occurred to you that we come--I mean fair and normal women--we come
from a country where there are lots of little children--?"
"The kingdom of heaven, you mean, Vina?"
"Possibly that's it. And when we get here we miss them--want them
terribly. It's all _through_ us--like an abstraction. We know the way
better than the natives here, but they have laws which make us
dependent upon them for the way.... It has not lifted to an abstraction
with our teachers, Beth. A crude concrete thing to them, a matter of
rules broken or not. We must submit, or remain lonely, reviled
foreigners.... Sometimes we discover a native who _could_ bring us back
our own, but he's probably teaching the nearest...."
"We've got to stand together, we foreigners," Beth said laughingly.
"All our different castes must stand together first--and keep the
natives waiting--until in their very eagerness, they suddenly perceive
that we know best----"
"It's not for us--that happy time," Vina added hopelessly. "We are the
sit-tight, hold-fast pilgrims. We belong to the clay-and-paint age----"
"It's something to see that----"
"Oh, how truly _he_ sees it!"
"Your Sailor-man, does he see that, too?"
"Has he been _seeing_ other things--in your studio?" Vina asked
hastily.
"Oh, no, he hasn't been here, but he has been telling David Cairns
things about writing.... David has really been born again."
"Do you know, Beth," Vina declared with intensity, "he has been such an
inspiration to me, that I'm afraid my 'Stations' will look like a
repaired wall, half new and half old plaster."
"My work will stand an inspiration, too."
"Beth----"
"Yes."
"You know what I think of your work, but I believe the Sailor-man could
give you that inspiration----"
"Perhaps I can get it through you and David Cairns," remarked Beth, who
was beginning to see, and with no little amazement, that to Vina the
inspiration was spiritual, impersonal. This made Bedient's influence
all the more exciting.