concluded. "Men in our own lives almost--Whitman, Lincoln, Thoreau,
Emerson, Carlyle, Wordsworth. See the poise and the service which came
from their greater gifts. Contrast them with the beautiful boys who
searched so madly, so vainly, among the senses--Burns, Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Poe. What noble elder brothers they are! More _con_tent, they
have, more soul-age, more of the visioning feminine principle.... And
see how flesh destroys! In the small matter of years they lived, the
prophets more than doubled the age of the singers. Their greatest work
was done in the years which the lyric-makers did not reach.... The
great masses of the world have not yet the spark which shows itself in
the singing poetic consciousness. Such men are mere males, leaning upon
matter, soldiers and money-makers, pitifully unlit, chance children,
without fastidiousness, but all on the road."
"There will be plenty, yes, more than plenty," said Beth, "to take the
places of those, who confine their parenthood to the race."
Bedient was gone, and though his incorruptible optimism was working
more than ever in her heart, that which she had sought to learn, had
not come. Prophet or not, his smile at the door had left something
volatile within her, something like girlhood in her heart. He had not
overlooked the picture upon the mantel. Twice she had looked up, and
found him regarding it.... It was the late still time of afternoon.
Beth felt emotional. She ran over several songs on the piano, while the
dusk thickened in the studio. One was about an Indian maiden who
yearned for the sky-blue water; another about an Irish Kathleen who
gave her lover to strike a blow for the Green; and still another
concerned a girl who would rather lie in the dust of her lord's chariot
than be the ecstasy of lesser man. Beth Truba's face was upturned to
the light--to the last pallor of day. She was like a wraith singing and
communing with the tuneful tragedies of women world-wide. But there was
gaiety in her heart.... Then the knocker, the scurrying of dreams away,
and the voice of Marguerite Grey in the dark.
"Most romantic--song, hour and all," she said, while Beth turned on the
lamps.
"Beth Truba is naturally so romantic----"
"Possibly the piano could tell tales; I know my 'cello could," said the
Grey One. "Beth, dear, I am touching wood, and praying to preserve 'an
humble and a contrite heart,' but reeking with commerce. Sold three
pictures--real pictures. The one that was hanging at Torvin's so long
was sold four days ago, and Torvin immediately took two more----"
"Margie Grey, there are few things you could tell to make me happier,"
Beth exclaimed, coming forward with both hands out.
"I know it. That's why I came."
"With Torvin interested, anything is liable to happen. He's one of the
few in New York who know, and those who buy carefully know he knows.
Really we should celebrate.... Let's get Vina to go with us, and we
three set out in search of an absurd supper----"
Beth phoned at once. Her part was utterly disconnected. She put up the
receiver, smiling.
"What have you to say--about those two going out to dinner?"
"Vina and David Cairns?"
"Exactly."
A long, low talk followed, but Beth did not tell that she had spurred
David to look deeply into Vina's case, through a remark made by Andrew
Bedient.... The Grey One was emancipated, restless. She bloomed like a
lily as she moved about the studio, above the shaded reading-lamps.
Beth felt her happiness, the intensity of it, and rejoiced with her.
Bedient came in for discussion presently, and the park episode. Beth,
who had not heard, grew cold, and remembered her own call at Mrs.
Wordling's apartment, with the poster.... The Grey One was speaking as
if Beth had heard about the later park affair:
"... Sometimes that woman seems so obvious, and again so deep."
"I have failed to see the deep part," Beth ventured, turning her face
from the light.
"Evidently she interests Mr. Bedient."
"I wonder if she really does?" Beth said idly. The Grey One was not a
tale-bearer. She would not have spoken at all, except granting Beth's
knowledge.
"I don't like to see him lose caste that way," the Grey One went on.
"He's too splendid, and yet she's the sort that twirls men. She knows
he has interested all of us, and doubtless wants to show _her_
strength. Possibly he hasn't thought twice about it. That's what Vina
says. And then Mrs. Wordling was one of those first asked to meet him.
I wish David Cairns hadn't done that----"
"David's idea was all right," Beth said slowly. "He thought one of her
kind would set us all off to advantage. Then, I was painting her
poster----"
"It would have been only a little joke in a man's club, but the
_Smilax_ took to it as something looked and yearned for long.... Two
things appear funny to me. Mrs. Wordling has lived at the Club part of
the year for three years, and yet didn't know the Park was locked at
midnight. And she, who has done all the crying about consequences, was
the one who told me----"
Beth was beginning to understand. Here was an opening such as she had
awaited: "What is her story?" she asked.
"Why, they met between eleven and twelve coming into the Club--one of
those perfect nights. Wordling dismissed her carriage and talked a
little while before going in. The Park looked inviting for a
stroll--full moon, you know. They crossed. Wordling didn't know or had
forgotten about midnight locking. 'His talk was so interesting,' she
said.... It was after one, when Mr. Bedient hailed a page at the Club
entrance."
"From inside the bars, across the street?" Beth asked.
"Of course. The boy came over with the keys."
"How clumsy and uninteresting, even innocence of that sort can be!"
Beth remarked. "And Mrs. Wordling was so zealous for you to hear that
she told you herself?"
"That _is_ rather humorous, isn't it?" the Grey One agreed. "Of course
she supposed I had heard, and wanted to be sure the truth came to me. I
think, too, she wanted me to know that Mr. Bedient had invited her to
go to the shore for a few days--later. She asked if I thought she had
better go----"
"And you told her?" Beth managed to say.
"Just as you would, that she was an adult and must use her own
judgment."
"Exactly," said Beth, and then a sentence got away from her, though she
contrived to garb it in a laugh. "He won't go to the shore with Mrs.
Wordling!... Wait until I get my hat."
* * * * *
In the little room alone, she saw that the long dark road must be
traversed again; the chains had fallen upon her anew--their former
wounds yet unhealed.... The old lies and acting; the old hateful
garment for the world to see; suffering beneath a smile. She must hear
the voice of Beth Truba lightly observing and answering, while
_she_--the heart of her--was deathly ill.
Her throat tightened; it seemed her breast must burst with old and new
agonies. Once more she had given her full faith. This was clear now.
She had been a weakling again, and tumultuously, in spite of an ugly
warning! Had she not called at Wordling's apartment with the poster?
Had she not heard the whispers, the overturned chair and scornfully
fathomed the delayed answering of the door?... And to think she had
almost succeeded in putting that rankling incident away, though he had
not been in New York a month. And the shame of it, the recent hours she
had spent, with this visionary thing; that _he_ was beyond mating with
a woman of flesh--beyond her best--a forerunner with glad tidings for
all women!... Forerunner, indeed, and twice caught in a second-rate
woman's net of beguilings! Twice caught, and how many times
uncaught?... And she had thought herself hard and sceptical in his
presence.
The old romance looked clean and fair compared to this--the old lover,
boyish and forgivable. He had not won by preaching.... Where was the
Shadowy Sister now?
There was no quarter for Beth. She was a modern product, a twentieth
century woman, an angry, solitary, world-trained woman, who could not
make a concession to imperfect manhood. This was the key to all her
agonies. She had asked manhood of mind, and could not accept less. The
awful part was that she must do over again all the hateful strategies,
all the concealing and worldliness--her body, mind and soul sorely
crippled from before. That she must thus use her womanhood, her
precious prime of strength. One experience had not hardened her enough.
With what corrosion of self-hatred did she turn upon herself that
moment!
Her intellect had faltered; the Shadowy Sister had betrayed; David
Cairns had been consummately stupid; Vina Nettleton was soft with
dreams, and not to be reckoned with in the world; Vina could tell her
woes, but she, Beth Truba, must not scream nor fall. She must face the
woman in the other room, sit across a lighted table for an hour, and
talk and laugh. Her heart cried out against this, but pride uprose to
whip--Beth's iron pride finished under the world's mastery. Slowly,
rhythmically, the blows fell. Beth could not run away.
She stretched out her fingers, which were biting into her palms,
drenched her face with cold water, breathed for a minute by the open
window like a doe in covert.... There was ammonia, and she inhaled the
potent fumes....
"_Pale hands I loved
Beside the Shalimar----"
hummed the Grey One, from the open sheet on the piano.
Beth faltered at the door, for the song hurled her back to an hour ago
with bruising force. She re-entered the little room--to fix her hat....
"You weren't long, Beth," the Grey One said.
"No?... I'm glad of that, but speaking of glad things, let us not
forget Torvin."
Beth was already turning out the lights.
"You look a little tired, dear," the Grey One said in the elevator.
"It's the time of day," Beth responded readily. After being in all day,
and suddenly deciding to go out, haven't you felt a tension come over
you as if you could hardly wait a minute?"
"Many times, dear, as if one must snatch hat and gloves and get into
the street at any cost."
* * * * *
Beth came in alone about ten, sighed as the latch clicked, and sat down
in the dark. But she rose again in a moment, for she didn't like the
dark. She was worn out, even physically; and yet it was different now
from the first reaction. Bedient had not continued to fit so readily to
commonness, as in those first implacable moments in the little room. He
had never judged anyone in her presence; had spoken well of everyone,
even of Mrs. Wordling. He was no intimidated New Yorker, who felt he
must conduct himself for the eyes of others.
Mrs. Wordling had not shown the quality to hold the fancy position she
aspired to, in the little circle of artists at the Club; and retaliated
by showing her power over the lion of this circle. She had challenged
him to cross the street, knowing they would be locked in and that the
Club would hear. She had desired this, having nothing to lose. For fear
the Grey One had not heard, she had told the story. The recent agony in
the little room was great, above the Wordling's expectations.... And
now Beth faltered. Had Andrew Bedient asked her to join him somewhere
on the shore? She could not see him asking this; and yet, regarded as a
fiction plunge, it seemed bigger and more formidable than Wordling
could devise.
This must wait. This must prove. If he went away--enough! She had been
hasty and implacable once--this time she would wait.
Beth would have liked to talk with David Cairns, but she could not
bring up such a subject. This was not her sort of talk-material with
him. Plainly he would not mention it, in the hope that her ears had
missed it entirely.
She had even felt a rage against the Grey One for bringing the news.
This helped to show how maddened and unjust she was, in those first
terrible moments. Piece by piece she had drawn the odious thing from
her caller, who was by no means inclined to spread and thicken the
shadow of an evil tale. Marguerite Grey was not a weigher of motives,
nor penetrative in the chemistry of scandal. So many testimonies had
come to her of the world's commonness that she had become flexible in
judgment. What had been so terrible at first was to identify Andrew
Bedient with these sordid things, so obvious and shallow. But was he
identified with them? Rather, did he not feel himself sufficiently an
entity to be safe in any company? Did he not trust her, and worth-while
people, to grant him this much?... This was the highest point in the
upsweep of her thoughts.
So the story extracted from the Grey One was held free from its fatal
aspect, until time should dissolve the matter of the shore.... After
all, the lamplight, usually soft and mellow in the gold-brown room,
held an alien, unearthly glitter for Beth's strained eyes.... Was it
that which kept the Shadowy Sister afar, as the light from the colored
pane in the hall of his boyhood had frightened _him_?
TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
THE SINGING DISTANCES
David Cairns was coming along. He had ridden his ego down stream, until
he heard the rapids. Now he was towing it back. He planned to go just
as far and as fast up stream as he could. The current, to him, had
become the crowd. One can see the crowd as it brushes past, as one can
never see it from the ruck.... Sometimes it came to him in a flash,
that this new David Cairns was but another lie and pose--but this
couldn't hold. It was a bit of deviltry that wouldn't stand scrutiny.
There had been too much unfolding o' nights; too many gifts found upon
the doorstep of his mind in the morning, revealing the sleepless
activity of something identified with him, but wiser than he; too much
cutting down of false cultures, and outpourings of sincere friendship,
and general joy of giving. Then, there was some real clean-cut thinking
that expressed itself with brevity and finish; and also, the
wonder-working in his heart--the happiest thing that had ever
befallen--his conception of the genius of woman in Vina Nettleton.
Cairns' experience with women was not nearly so large as it looked. He
had known many women, but impersonally. He was late to mature, and all
his younger energies were used for what he had believed to be the
world's work, but what he now perceived were the activities of a vain,
ego-driven intellect, that delighted to attract the passing eye by the
ring of the anvil and a great show of unsleeved muscle. Much of this
early work had kept him afield, and his calls home to New York had
inflicted upon him the fatal stimulus for quantity. His still earlier
years were passed in a home where a placid mother reigned, and a large
family of sisters served. He, therefore, met the world's women without
that mighty tang of novelty which features the young manhood of the
unsistered.
He had undergone his mannish period of treason to women generally.
These were the days when he believed in using force--punishing with
words--"punch," he called it. This is a mental indelicacy which the
ordinary man seldom outgrows. His crowning fact is that dynamite will
loosen stumps and break rock. Therefore, all that is not dynamite is
not proper man-stuff. Woman, to this sort, is something between "an
angel and an idiot." She must be guarded from herself in all that has
to do with thought and performance. As panderer and caterer, she
emphatically belongs. Young men grasp this. If they reach middle age
with it, only an angel can roll the stone away.
Cairns now realized he had been near to missing one of the greatest
moments that come into the life of man. What chance has the ordinary
male--half-grown, except physically--of ever glowing with real
chivalry? To him women are easy, common, plentiful, without mystery or
lofty radiance. How can the valor of humility brighten his quest? How
can _he_ be a lover--who does not realize his poverty, his evil, the
vastness of his need? What does it mean to the mere male, this highest
of earthly gifts, the glance from a woman which ends his quest of her,
the gift of herself? To be great and a man, and a lover, he must reach
that point of declaration which holds: _Without her, I am an outcast;
with her I can alter worlds!_ A transcendent moment of conquest is the
winning of a woman, to such a spirit....
A frightful void stretches between mere man and reality.... Mere man
must be baptized in spirit to feel the anguish that is woman's, to give
her _real_ treasures to some male. Which are the greater artists and
producers, the saviors of the race? Those heroines who survive the
heart-break of man's indelicacy, and manage alone to give their
treasures to their children. The art of such women lives, indeed. David
Cairns was coming along.
The work that Andrew Bedient began in the Cairns mind and heart was
being finished by Vina Nettleton. In great thirst of soul, he had come
to her and been restored. He was very eager to leave all he had in the
shelter of the palms.
"David," Bedient had said, "there is only one greater work for a man in
the world than making a woman happy; and that--making _all_ women
happier! It seems that an avatar must come for that soon. To-day the
great gifts of women are uncalled for by men. They cannot take each
other, save in physical arms. There is a barrier between the sexes. Man
has not learned, or has forgotten, the heart-language. What a need for
lovers! If one could look into the secret places of women, across the
world's table, into the minds of women who hate and are restless, and
whose desires rove; even into the minds of those who actually venture
beyond the man-made pale, he would see over all the need of lovers!...
Give a woman love, and she will give the world lovers, and we shall
have brotherhood singing in our ears.... David, I ask you only to look
at the genius born of woman, in and out of wedlock, during the first
days of her mating with a man whom she believes to be all that she has
cried out for. He may have destroyed every hope afterward, sacked every
sanctuary, but, if she trembled close to her great happiness in the
beginning, the child of such a beginning has glory upon his brow!"
Cairns was ready to see; ready to read this in the history of men. More
than this, he was ready to flood fresh dawns of light into the tired
eyes of Vina Nettleton, and upon her pallor make roses bloom. Moreover,
he could discern in her an immortal artist, the conception of which
changed him from a male to a man.
And of this seeing came another needed conception: that intellectual
arrogance is the true modern devil; that the ancient devil, desire of
flesh, is obvious, banal, and commonplace, compared to this.... He
dared to bring his realizations to a woman, and found that she had a
crown for each and every one. And he learned to talk to her about
things vital to men and women, and found that this was the strangest,
grandest and most providential hour in the world--this newest hour.
It was with a rich and encompassing delight that Cairns discovered
Vina's fineness, endurance, delicacy, and intuition. He was humble
before her spirit, for he had become sensitive to that which was mystic
and ineffable. He saw through her, a sanction and authority for his own
future years, her light upon the work he must do. The animation of his
mind in her presence was pure with service. And Vina awakened, for she
saw with trembling, what is a miracle to a modern woman's eyes, man's
delight to honor that which is most truly woman's. So her girlhood
crept back.
* * * * *
At first Vina thought he was using her for a study. They had long been
friends; she was glad to be of assistance; so he was free to come and
go, and she was free with him as only an old comrade can be--one who
expects nothing. They had great talks about Bedient; both revered him,
and were grateful for his coming. And Vina was not slow to see the
change in David Cairns; that it was in nowise momentary, but sound and
structural. She took a deep interest in his progress, mothered it, made
him glad to show her its phases.
"Things are looking so differently to me," he said, one of the first
days. "It makes me think of the American soldiers I met the first time
afield--the time I met Bedient. I praised the officers for their own
home papers. They looked so big and thrilling to me, as men. It was
easy. I remember riding with a cavalry leader one rough day--a long
day. He was hard and still with courage. He rolled a hundred cigarettes
that day. I thought him the genius of an officer. Then I saw him
afterward over here. It was the same with others. They seemed to have
left their glory out there among the swamps and the hills.... It's the
same way with the things I thought before Bedient came.... I can see
_your_ things a lot better."
It was true, he could. Vina had noted that. He could sense her
atmosphere, and divine her intents. Formerly, he had taken the word of
the others that she had power for her work.... Almost every afternoon
now he tapped at her door. Entering, he would take a seat by the
fire-frame, stare a bit at the city or the tower, or move about behind
her, regarding the freshly done work; and presently they would find
themselves talking. It was because David Cairns, as a lover, was out of
the question from her point of view in the first days, that such a
splendid companionship was established. He did not know that a woman
could be such a companion; and her unconsciousness of his deeper quest,
gave her an ease with him, that was one of the secrets of her great and
growing charm.
Heretofore, all feminine aspirants for Cairns' admiration had ranged
themselves in his mind against the paragon, Beth Truba (with whom he
had long comported himself with a rueful might-have-been manner, both
pretty and pleasant). Beth had easily transcended. Whatever was great
and desirable in woman was likely to wear a Beth Truba hall-mark for
his observation. Now, that was changed, not that Beth suffered eclipse,
nor that his admiration abated; indeed, his gratefulness for that word
of Beth's at just the proper moment, which had caused him gallantly to
take the road of Vina Nettleton, was a rare study; but another had
risen, not of Beth, but of more intimate meaning to the man, David
Cairns. Beth's great force of feminine energy and aspiration, he had
been unable to attract. Beth had demanded more than virtue from him,
and at a time when he was not finished enough to answer her many
restless dreams.
Cairns and Vina Nettleton had in reality just met, and at one of the
memorable crossings of eternity. To each, the other had just been
brought forth from a sumptuous shadow of nature. In the brighter light
they discerned each other. Cairns was first to see, for he had been
told, and he brought to the meeting all the fresh inspirations of his
maturity, and they rested upon the solid values earned through a life
of hard-held decency.
Among the May days there was one afternoon in which the conception of
summer was in the air. It was not the heat alone, but the stirring of
the year's tremendous energy everywhere, even under pavements. The
warmth of creation was kindly in old bones and old walls, and an
imperious quickening in the elastic veins of youth. Vina (half-way up a
step-ladder) turned about and sat down on one of the steps. Cairns had
asked her what plans she had for the summer.
"Oh, I shan't be a great way from New York. Maybe a trip or two over to
my beloved Nantucket."
This started her to thinking and presently to expatiating upon the
dearest place on earth to her mind.... She told him how the villagers
refused to have mail-service, as it threatened to destroy one of the
important social features of the day, that of going to the post office
for letters. Also he was informed that automobiles were forbidden in
Nantucket, and that a train started daily across the Island, a
nine-mile journey, and sometimes arrived. The conductor and engineer,
both old seamen, were much more interested in a change of weather, a
passing ship, or a school of fish, than in the immediate schedule or
right of way.... And Cairns was given another glimpse of the
enchantress that had been hidden so long in the workaday vesture of the
little artist, as she unfolded: