have asked too much, and waited too long. Perhaps they see--what I do
not--and women lie--and I only think I feel! Perhaps I _am_ weathered
and inflexible, and hard and old and cold, and they know, and become
afraid!"
But there was stern denial in the face before her--reproach in the eyes
she had made of paint.... In her terror before these thoughts, which
struck home in the hour of her weakness, the art of the thing suddenly
prevailed--good work, the valiant rescuer.... She remembered how her
presence had aroused the giant in the Other. Her spell had done that.
She had felt the crush of his arms, and queer fires had laughed across
her brain. Then she fell again with the thought, that even that had not
sufficed. Her pride had sent him away even after that--his laugh, his
Greek beauty, his passion and all.... And now it came to her with
fierce reality, that should the Other ever return, it would only make
these later hours and later memories burn the deeper.... A temptation
came to hold Bedient--as a woman could--to keep him from going to
another woman, but her eyes fell with swift shame from the picture.
"I have not made you common--how can I be common with you?" she cried.
"Oh, why could you not always remember your best, you, who have helped
others so?"
The light, though gray, was still strong. Fixed upon the canvas, as she
had never seen it before, was a revelation of one of those high moments
which had exalted Vina Nettleton, and changed David Cairns in the whole
order of his being. She almost listened for him to speak of the natural
greatness of women.
"But you are forgetting those higher moments," she whispered. "That's
the way with men and boys--to forget--to run away for the little things
beside the ocean----"
But the face denied; the face was of purity. It regarded her steadily
in her long watching--a fixture of poise, happiness assured.... Then
the need of haste and work, left deep in her mind, arose to the surface
with a strong and sudden urging--the delivery to-morrow. Her heart, her
flesh, her soul, all were at war and weary unto death. It was hideous
to attempt to touch it again that day; yet to-morrow an evil light ...
and now came the full realization of a remarkable fact.
The final inner lustre was there. The thing she had long been afraid to
do, save in the exact perfect moment, was done. That Something of his
was before her, its lifting valor not to be denied....
It was just before he had asked her to ride, she recalled now. An elate
concentration had held her while she painted. She had not spoken; she
had hardly known the world about her. It had been too big to leave a
memory.... It was done. It pleaded for him. It was like the Shadowy
Sister pleading for him. Swiftly, she signed the work. It was his.
That was hard.
...In the veil of dusk she was still kneeling, her face ghastly with
waiting.... And not until pride intervened again, and prevailed upon
her to see him no more, after the last ride together, did she find some
old friendly tears, almost as remote from the days she now lived, as
Florentine springtimes of student memory.
TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER
Bedient arose at four on Saturday morning and looked out of his high
window. June had come. The smell of rain was _not_ in the air. He was
grateful and drew up a chair, facing the East. The old mystery of
morning unfolded over sea, and there was no blemish.... Bedient had not
slept, nor during the two preceding nights. While the abundance of his
strength was not abated, deep grooves (that came to abrupt blind
endings) were worn in his mind from certain thoughts, and he was
conscious of his body, which may be the beginning of weariness;
conscious, too, of a tendency of his faculties to mark time over little
things.
Yesterday the picture had come. He had hoped hard against this. Its
coming had brought to him a sense of separateness from the studio, that
he tried not to dwell upon in mind, but which recurred persistently....
He could not judge a portrait of himself; yet he knew this was
wonderful. Beth had caught him in an animate moment, and fixed him
there. Her fine ideal had put on permanence.... "Hold fast to a
soul-ideal of your friend," he remembered telling her once, "and you
help him to build himself true to it. If your ideal is rudely broken,
you become one of the disintegrating forces at work upon him."
He keenly felt the disorder in his relation to Beth. The thought that
held together, against all others, was that Beth loved some one, just
now out of her world. He wished she could see into his mind about this;
instantly, he would have helped her; his dearest labor, to restore her
happiness.
He had never been confident of winning. He loved far too well, and held
Beth too high, ever to become familiar in his thoughts of her as a life
companion. Power lived in her presence for him; great struggles and
conquerings. He loved every year she had lived; every hour of life that
had brought her to this supremacy of womanhood before which he bowed,
was precious to him. In this instance he was myopic. He did not see
Beth Truba as other women, and failed to realize this. His penetration
faltered before her, for she lived and moved in the brilliant light of
his love, blended with it, so that her figure, and her frailties, lost
all sharpness of contour.
He had suffered in the past three days and nights. He was proud and
glad to suffer. There was no service nor suffering that he would have
hesitated to accept for Beth Truba.... This day amazed him in prospect,
one of her beautiful gifts to him. It was almost as if she had come to
his house, lovely, unafraid, and sat laughing before his fire. One of
the loftiest emotions, this sense of companionship with her. There was
something of distinct loveliness in every hour they had passed
together. Not one of their fragrances had he lost. These memories often
held him, like mysterious gardens.
...Bedient paced the big area in front of the ferry entrance long
before seven. He saw her the instant she stepped from the cross-town
car. The day was momentarily brightening, yet something of the early
morning red was about her. His throat tightened at sight of her radiant
swiftness. Her eyes were deeper, her lips more than ever red.... On the
deck of the ferry, before the start, she said:
"I feel as if we were escaping from somewhere, and could not tolerate a
moment's delay."
...At ten o'clock they were in the saddle, and Dunstan was far behind.
The morning, as perfect as ever arose in Northern summer; the azure
glorified with golden light, and off to the South, a few shining
counterpanes of cloud lay still. The half had not been told about
Beth's Clarendon, a huge rounded black, with a head slightly Roman, and
every movement a pose. He was skimp of mane and tail; such fine grain
does not run to hair. While there was sanity and breeding in his steady
black eye, every look and motion suggested "too much horse" for a
woman. Yet Beth handled him superbly, and from a side-saddle. Clarendon
had in his temper, that gift of show aristocrats--excess of life, not
at all to be confused with wickedness--which finds in plain outdoors
and decent going, plentiful stimulus for top endeavor and hot
excitement.
"I've had him long," Beth said, "and though he has sprung from a walk
to a trot countless times without a word from me, he has yet to slow
down of his own accord. He can do his twelve miles an hour, and turn
around and do it back.... You see how he handles--for me."
She delighted in his show qualities, rarely combined with such
excellent substance. She showed his gaits, but rode a trot by
preference. Bedient, who had a good mare, laughed joyously when his
mount was forced into a run to keep abreast. Clarendon, without the
slightest show of strain, had settled to his trot.... All Bedient's
thinking and imaging during the years alone, of the woman he should
some time find, had never brought him anything so thrilling as this
slightly flushed profile of Beth's now. What an anchorage of reality
she was, after years of dream-stuff--a crown of discoveries, no
less--and what an honor, her gift of companionship! He felt an
expansion of power, and strength to count this day great with
compensation, should the future know only the interminable dull aching
of absence and distance.
Bedient had started to speak of the picture, but she bade him wait....
As they rode along a country road, they came to an old ruin of a
farm-house, surrounded by huge barns, some new, and all in good repair.
A little beyond was a calf tied to a post. It was lying down, its legs
still being largely experimental--a pitifully new calf, shapeless and
forlorn.
The mother was nowhere around. Sick in some far meadow, perhaps, sick
of making milk for men.
"That's a veal calf," Beth said.
The note in her voice called his eyes. Something which the sight
suggested was hateful to her. Bedient dismounted and led his chestnut
mare up to the little thing, which stared, tranced in hope and fear.
The mare dropped her muzzle benignantly. She understood and became
self-conscious and uncomfortable. One of a group of children near the
farmhouse behind them called:
"Show off! Show off!"
"They sell its rightful food," Beth said, "and feed the poor little
thing on cheaper stuff until it hardens for the butcher. Men are so big
with their business."
"There are veal calves tied to so many posts on the world's highway,"
Bedient said slowly.
"When I was younger," Beth went on, "and used to read about the men who
had done great creative things, I often found that they had to keep
away from men and crowds, lest they perish from much pitying, dissipate
their forces in wide, aimless outpourings of pity, which men and the
systems of men called from them. Then--this was long ago--I used to
think this a silly affectation, but I have come to understand."
"Of course, you would come to understand," Bedient said.
"Men who do great things are much alone," she continued. "They become
sensitive to sights and sounds and odors--they are so alive, even
physically. The downtown man puts on an armor. He must, or could not
stay. The world seethes with agony--for him who can see."
"That is what made the sacrifice of the Christ," Bedient declared.
"Every day--he died from the sights on the world's highway----"
They looked back.
"It was not the Cross and the Spear, but the haggard agony of His Face
that night on Gethsemane that brings to me the realization of the
greatness of His suffering," he added.
"And the disciples were too sleepy to watch and pray with him----"
"How gladly would the women have answered His need for human
companionship that night!" he exclaimed. "But it was not so ordained.
It was His hour alone, the most pregnant hour in the world's history."
They reached the crest of a fine hill at noon, and dismounted in the
shade of three big elms. They could see small towns in the valley
distances, and the profile of hilltop groves against the sky. The
slopes of the hill wore the fresh green of June pasture lands; and
three colts trotted up to the fence, nickering as they came.... Beth
was staring away Westward through the glorious light. Bedient came
close to her; she felt his eyes upon her face, turned and looked
steadily into them. She was the first to look down. Beth had never seen
his eyes in such strong light, nor such power of control, such
serenity, such a look of inflexible integrity.... She did not like that
control. It was not designed in the least to take away the hate and
burning which for three days had warred against the best resistance of
her mind.
That cool lofty gaze was her portion. Another--on the shore--ignited
the fires. A devil within--for days and nights--had goaded her: "Yes,
Beth Truba, red haired and all that, but old and cold, just the same,
and strange to men."
"I've wanted this day," he said. "It was some need deeper than impulse.
I wanted it just this way: A hill like this, shade of great trees that
whispered, distant towns and woods, horses neighing to ours. Something
more ancient and authoritative than the thing we call Memory, demanded
it this way. Why, I believe we have stood together before."
Beth smiled, for the goading devil had just whispered to her, "You were
a vestal virgin doubtless--oh, severely chaste!"... She said, "You
believe then we have come up through 'a cycle of Cathay'?"
"If I had heard your name, just your name, over there in India," he
replied thoughtfully, "it would have had some deep meaning for me."
"The 'cycle of Cathay' wasn't enough to cure you?"
He turned quickly, but didn't smile. "I think there was always some
distance between us, that we were never equal, a difference like that
between Clarendon and the chestnut. Only you were always above me, and
it was the better, the right way. Beth----"
She looked up.
"Is there any reason why I shouldn't tell you how great you are to
me--just that--asking nothing?"
"We are both grown-ups," she answered readily. "You won't mind if I
find it rather hard to believe--I mean, my greatness. You like my
riding and the portrait----"
"I can judge your riding. As for the picture, it is an inspiration,
though I cannot judge that so well. But it is not those----"
"And what then, pray?"
"Beth Truba."
"A tired old artist whom nobody knows--really."
"I wish you wouldn't say that," he declared earnestly. "There is
nothing alive this moment, nothing in the great sun's light, that has
put on such a glory of maturity. Why, you are concentrated sunlight--to
me!"
"That's very pretty," she said, and turned a glance into his eyes....
The same cool deeps were there, though his face held a singular
happiness. She wondered if it were because she had not forbade him to
speak. Did he think she was ready, and that her heart was free?
There was no one on the sloping hill-road, either to the right or left,
and only the colts in the meadows. A good free thing--this elimination
of human beings--though at this height, they stood in the very eye of
the country-side. The chestnut mare was cropping the young grass by the
edge of the highway, but there were matters for Clarendon to
understand--far distances and movements not for human eyes. The colts
racing up and down the hill-fence were beneath his notice. The great
arched neck was lifted for far gazing and listening, and that which
came to his foreign senses, caused him to snort softly from time to
time....
Beth rode without hat. Her arms were bare to the elbows; her gray silk
waist open at the throat. She stretched out her arms, and the sunlight,
cut by the high elm boughs, fell upon her like a robe, woven of
shimmerings. She seemed to want her full portion of vitality from the
great upbuilding day.
"It's strong medicine--this high noon of June," she said. "One feels
like unfolding as flowers do."
And then came over him--over all his senses--something flower-like in
scent, yet having to do with no particular flower. It dilated his
nostrils, but more than that, all his senses awoke to the strange charm
of it.... The distance between them was gone that instant. Though it
may have endured for ages and ages, it was gone. He had overtaken
her.... A haunting influence; and yet of magic authority! Was it the
perfume of the lotos and the bees? It was more than that. It was the
sublimate of all his bewitchings--chaste mountains, dawns, the morning
glow upon great heights, the flock of flying swans red with daybreak;
more still, all the petals of the Adelaide passion restored in one drop
of fragrance, and lifted, a different fragrance, the essence of a
miracle! This was the perfume that came from her life, from her arms
and throat and red mouth....
It was new out of the years. All his strangely guarded strength arose
suddenly animate. A forgotten self had come back to him, all fresh and
princely out of long enchantment.... And there she stood with face
averted awaiting this Return!... This was the mysterious prince who had
wrought in darkness so long, the source of his dreams of woman's
greatness, the energy that had driven and held him true to his ideals,
the structure into which his spiritual life had been builded (was this
the world's mighty illusion possessing him?), and now the prince had
come, asking for his own.... And she was there, stretching out her
arms.
Mighty forces awoke from sleep. They were not of his mind, but deep
resolutions of all his life, forces of her own inspiring which she must
gladly, gloriously obey. Was it not her love token, this electric
power, as truly as his mind's ardor and his spiritual reverence?... The
miracle of her life's fragrance held him.... Even desire was beautiful
in a love like this. All nature trembles for the issue, when love such
as his perceives the ripe red fruit of a woman's lips.... But better
far not to know it at all, than to know the half.
* * * * *
And Beth was thinking of the cool depths in his eyes a moment before,
and of his words, "asking nothing."... "Why asks he nothing of me?...
Because I am old and cold."... Some terrific magnetism filled her
suddenly, as if she had drawn vitality from great spaces of sunlight,
and some flaming thing from the huge hot strength of Clarendon.... And
now the goading devil whispered:
"With another he would not ask, he would take! Only you--you do not
attract great passions. The source of such attraction is gone from you.
Mental interests and spiritual ideals are your sphere!... Second-rate
women whistle and the giants come! They know the lovers in men. _You_
know the sedate mental gardeners and the tepid priests. How you worship
that still, cool gazing in the eyes of men! Books and pictures are
quite enough--for your adventures in passion. In them, you meet your
great lovers--of other women. You are Beth Truba of street and studio.
You can send lovers away. You can make them afraid of your tongue,
strip them of all ardor with your nineteenth century bigotry.... You
have so many years to waste. Empty arms are so light and cool, _their_
veins are never scorched; they never dry with age!... Oh, red-haired
Beth Truba, all the spaces of sky are laughing at you! To-morrow or
next day, by the ocean, another woman will start the flames in those
cool eyes of his, and feel them singing around her!... Why do you let
him go? Only a nineteenth century mind with the ideas of a slave woman
would let him go!... Keep him with you. Show your power. Create the
giant. By no means is that the least of woman's work!"
She shuddered at such a descent.
"Would you go back and be the waiting spider forever in the
yellow-brown studio, breaking your heart in the little room when some
woman chooses to bring you news of men and the world? You would not
descend to woman's purest prerogative?... Greater women than you shall
come, and they shall avail themselves of that, and their children shall
be great in the land...."
"Oh, what a world, and what a fool!" Beth said aloud.
"Why?"
She turned at his quick, imperious tone.
"I don't--I don't know. It just came!"
Beth bit her lip, and shut her eyes. There was a booming in her brain,
as from cataracts and rapids. His face had made her suddenly weak, but
there was something glorious in being carried along in this wild
current. She had battled so long. She was no longer herself, but part
of him. The face she had seen was white; the eyes dark and piercing,
terrible in their concentration of power, but not terrible to her. All
the magic from the sunlight had come to them. They were the eyes which
command brute matter.... The Other had become a giant; this man a god.
"What a day!" she whispered.
"Let's ride on!" he said swiftly.
The horses whirled about at his word. As his hand touched hers, she
felt the thrill of it, in her limbs and scalp. He lifted her to the
saddle. There was something invincible in his arms. The strength he
used was nothing compared to that which was reserved....
She seemed the plaything of some furious, reckless happiness....
"Asking nothing! Asking nothing!" repeated again and again in her
brain. And what should he ask--and why?... Her thoughts flew by and
upward--intent, but swift to vanish, like bees in high noon. Atoms of
concentrated sunlight, sun-gold upon their wings.... The good hot sun,
all the earth stretched out for it, and giving forth green tributes.
The newest leaf and the oldest tree alike expanded with praise.... What
a splendor to be out of the city and the paint and the tragedy; to have
in her veins the warm brown earth and the good hot sun--and this mighty
dynamo beneath! She was mad with it all, and glad it was so.
Beth raised her eyes to the dazzling vault. One cannot sit a horse
so--well. She lost the rhythm of her posting, but loved the roughness
of it. The heights thralled her. Up, up, into the blue and gold, she
trembled with the ecstasy of the thought, like the bee princess in
nuptial flight--a June day like this--up, up, until the followers had
fallen back--all but two--all but one--which one?... There was a slight
pull at her skirt. She turned.
He was laughing. His hand held a fold of her dress against the cantle
of the saddle. She could not have fallen on the far side, and he was on
this.... A sudden plunge of a mount would unseat any rider, staring
straight up.... Yes, he was there!... How different the world
looked--with him there. She had ridden alone so long. She dared to look
at him again.
His eyes were fastened ahead. Could it be illusion--their fiery
intentness? She followed his glance.... The big woods--she knew them,
had ridden by them many times--how deep and green they looked!... But
what was the meaning of that set, inexorable line of his profile? What
was he battling? That was her word, her portion. For hours, days, years
she had been battling, but not now! No longer would she be one of the
veal calves tied to a post on the world's highway, to consume the pity
of poor avatars!... Avatars--the word changed the whole order of her
thoughts; and those which came were not like hers, but reckless
ventures on forbidden ground; and, too, there was zest in the very
foreignness of the thoughts: Avatars--did they not spring into being
from such instants as this--high noon, vitality rising to the sun, all
earth in the stillness of creation; and above, blue and gold, millions
and millions of leagues of sheer happiness; and behind--put far behind
for the hour--all crawling and contending creatures....
And now the yellow-brown studio would not remain behind, but swept
clearly into her thinking. Something was queer about it. Yes, the havoc
of loneliness and suffering was gone.... And there seemed a rustling in
the far shadows of the little room. Could it be the Shadowy Sister
returning? And that instant, with a realism that haunted her for years,
there came--to her human or psychic sense, she could never tell--_a
tiny cry!_... Beth almost swooned. His hand sustained ... and then she
saw again his laughing face; all the intensity gone. It was carved of
sunlight. Everything was sunlight.
Beth spoke to Clarendon. She would ride--show him, she needed no hand
in riding. The great beast settled down to his famous trot, pulling the
chestnut mare to a run. Clarendon was steady as a car; the faster his
trot, the easier to ride.... She turned and watched this magician
beside her; his bridle-arm lifted, the leather held lightly as a
pencil; laughing, asking nothing, needing not to ask. And she was
unafraid, rejoicing in his power. All fear and slavishness and
rebellion, all that was bleak and nineteenth century, far behind. This
was the Rousing Modern Hour--her high day.
Nearer and nearer--the big woods.... She was thinking of a wonderful
little path ahead. She had never ventured in alone, a deep, leafy
footpath, soft with moss and fern-embroidered.... There was no one on
the road ahead, nor behind; only young corn in the sloping field on the
left, and now the big woods closed in on the right, and Beth reined a
little.
There was no shade upon the highway, even with the wood at hand. The
horses were trampling their own shadows in this zenith hour.... She
watched his eye quicken as he noted the little path.
"Ah--let's go in!" he called, pulling up.
It was her thought. "I've always wanted to, but never dared, alone,"
she panted, bringing Clarendon down.