his arm; then held up both hands to her.... Something made her hesitate
a second. He did not seem to consider her faltering.
"Oh, Beth, why should _we_ rush in there, as if we were afraid of the
light?... Come!"
She knew by his eyes what would happen; and yet she leaned forward,
until his hands fitted under her arms, and her eyelids dropped against
the blinding light....
"It had to be in the great sunlight--_that!_.... How glorious you are!"
"Please ... put me down!"
But again, he kissed her mouth, and the shut eyelids. And when her feet
at last touched the earth, he caught her up again, because her figure
swayed a little,--and laughed and kissed her--until the fainting
passed....
* * * * *
"... And--these--were--the--great--things--you asked permission to tell
me?" she said slowly, without raising her eyes.
The strange smile on her scarlet lips, and the lustrous pallor of her
face, so wonderfully prevailed, that he caught her in his arms again.
And they were quite alone in that mighty light, as if they had
penetrated dragons-deep in an enchanted forest.
"I cannot help it. You are stronger!" she said in the same trailing,
faery tone.... "And that distance--between us--that you always felt--in
'the cycle of Cathay'--you seem to have overcome that----"
"It was another century----"
"Oh----"
"And now to explore the wood!"
"But the horses, sir--"
"They will stand."
... She would not let him help, but loosened Clarendon's bridle, and
slipping out the bit, put the head-straps back. Bedient shook his head.
"It may slide askew that way, and worry him more than if the bit were
in," he said.
"If you command, I shall put it back."
"Let me."
"No."
Smiling, he watched her. The frail left hand parted the huge foamy
jaws, and held them apart--thumb and little finger--while the other
hand, behind Clarendon's ears, drew the bit home. The big fellow
decently bowed his head to take the steel from her. Then she patted the
mouse-colored muzzle, and gave the reins to the man, who, much
marvelling, tethered the two horses together.
Then they set forth into the wood.
TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
A PARABLE OF TWO HORSES
They were nearing Dunstan on the way back. The light had flattened out,
and the little town was stretching its shadows. They were silent....
Beth was trying to fit this day to days that had gone, but it was hard.
This had a brightness apart from them, but it seemed to her now that
the brightness was gone with the sun. She was tired--and _alone_. The
thoughts in her mind had brought the sense of separateness.
She must soon know from him, if the day had served her end. She thought
of her temptation in the studio--to hold him from the ocean, as a woman
might, as a Wordling might. She had not needed quite to do that, merely
to let herself go. The glorious lover in him had done more than she
dreamed, in making her Beth of the bestowals, this day.
In the sunlight, she had been one with him. Rather startlingly it came
to her now, that she could have asked anything _then_. But in those
incomparable moments of the high day, there had been nothing to ask.
How strange this was to her! How utterly had they put all commonness
behind.
She trembled at the thought of another woman rousing that lover in him,
looking upon the miracle she had evoked. She could not bear it, nor
could she suffer him to know this thought of hers.
They were riding down into the town. Brightenings from the West were
still upon the upper foliage of the trees, but vague dusk had fallen
between their faces. His features were white and haggard.... She was
afraid to ask him now. She would wait for the darkness. Had he heard a
tremble in her voice, Bedient would have caught her bridle-rein and
searched her face.
She clucked. Clarendon, with stables just ahead, was only too eager....
Bedient rejoined her after turning over his horse, and making the
change of clothes. Beth met him at the gate of her mother's house and
there was a smile in the evening light.
They did not sit opposite at supper. Bedient studied the little mother
at the head of the table, but with a fear in his heart. A sense of
disaster had come to him at the end of the ride. He knew nothing of
what had formed about the short sea journey in Beth's mind; he could
not have believed from her own lips that she had been tempted to hold
him with passion. He would have expected faith from her, had some
destroying tale come to her ears. He did not realize the effect upon
others, of his aptness to ignore all explanation. Especially in this
seagoing affair, he had nothing to say. It was not his way to discuss
his adventures into the happiness of others.... Beth felt his reserve
instinctively, a reason why it had been impossible for her to show him
the document of disorder.
The talk at the supper table had to do with the portrait she had
painted. Beth never forgot some of Bedient's sentences.... Then she
told him about the new life of the Grey One; of the latter's call on
Wednesday, with the great news about Torvin, and of the telephone
message yesterday.
"More buyers have been to her studio," Beth said. "You see, Torvin can
do anything. A whisper from him and they buy. The Grey One has disposed
of several of her little things at her vogue prices----"
"I'm glad," said Bedient.
"It came in the nick of time. It means more than money or pictures.
Margie Grey has won her race."
"I understand," he added.
After supper, they walked together outside. With her whole heart Beth
prayed that the day had changed him from going. She had put off until
the last moment any talk that would bring his answer. And now walking
with him in the darkness, she thought strangely of her parting with the
Other. All was forgotten save that moment of parting; all the old
intimacies had dropped from mind, banished by the sunlit god she had
met this day.... Bedient's defect would be quite as intrinsic as the
Other's--if he went to Wordling now. She could have forgiven a boyish
carelessness in either, but Beth could not forgive in any man that
unfinished humanity which has a love-token for the obviously common and
sensuous.... She was ill with terror and tension. And how pitifully
human she was! A greater faith or a lesser strength would have saved
her. Beth failed in the first. It was her madness; her mortal
enemy--this pride.
"I doubt if there could be such another day of June," she observed at
last, wondering if he caught the hard note in her voice.... This would
bring his word. She would cry aloud with happiness--if the day had
changed him.
"To-morrow----" he answered. "Beth, is there anything to prevent
to-morrow----?"
"Riding together?"
"Yes."
"Not to-morrow. The horses had better rest a day. We must have done
twenty-five miles to-day.... But early next week----"
She had turned away, as one averts the face from disaster. Even had she
not turned from him, it was too dark to see his queer troubled smile,
as he said:
"Monday, I go away. It's that ocean matter. Three days will finish it,
I'm sure."
So this was her answer. Beth of the bestowals had not prevailed. This
was the inner uprooting. Love-lady she had been--love-lady of thrilling
arts this day--and yet his determination to go to the other was not
altered.... She would not show him tears of rage and jealousy. She
would not see him again. She meant to show him that the day had not
stormed her heart of hearts. Her spirit was torn, and she was not above
hurting him.... "Three days will finish it, I'm sure." To her the
sentence had the clang of a prison door.... It was through the Other
that she proceeded now.... How he had struck her through another!....
They had walked for some time through the evergreens. His listening had
become like a furious draught, her brain burning intensely beneath it.
It had been hard for her to begin, but that was over.... "It was not
until to-day that there was any need to tell you," she was saying. "You
were inspiring in other ways. I would have been stupid, indeed, not to
have seen that, but somehow you seemed remote from everyday habiliments
and workday New York--somehow inseparable from silences--until
to-day--when you came singing _Invictus_. You did not let me tell
you--out there--in the sunlight. You didn't let me think of telling
you.... You mustn't judge me always so susceptible----"
She halted, lost for an instant in the emptiness.
"Please tell me about him," Bedient said.
"Why, he was only a working boy when he first came to our house--here,"
she went on. "I was just back from Paris--after years. I remember with
what a shock of surprise I noted the perfection of his face. The angle
was absolutely correct as the old Hellenic marbles, and to every curve
was that final warmth which stone can only distantly suggest. Then he
was tall, but so light and lithe----"
She knew he would not fail to see the flaw here--the artistic taint.
She had heard him deplore the worship of empty line, saying that nature
almost invariably travesties it.
"I was hasty, then, in my conclusion to-day," he said, questioning,
"when I asked if there was any reason why I should not tell you how
great you are to me?"
"It did not seem the time to tell you," she answered quickly. "I was
wrong, but--it was not wrong to him! Please don't think that! I sent
him away."
"Oh, I see better--thank you. And now go on, Beth, please----"
"You see, he was my work----"
Beth's mother now called from the front door. She was going upstairs
and would say good-night to Mr. Bedient.
"Go to her," Beth whispered. "I shall see her later."
... And now she stood alone by the gate, her mind seething. Forces
within falteringly implored her to go no further. She found in his few
brief questions that old fidelity to truth that had been one of his
first charms. This helped to unsteady her. Was she not wrong to judge
this man by the standards the world had made her accept for others?...
The day came back. Why had Wordling been so far from her mind out there
in the sunlight? Radiant with health, thrilling with mysteries, in the
summit of her womanhood, she had been above fear, and he above evil.
The Shadowy Sister, too, had gone forth to meet him, majestic and
unashamed. What spell was that which had come over her, a perfect
vein-dilation in the brilliant light? Why, it had seemed to her that
she could feel the pulse of flower-stems, and paint the nervous systems
of the bees. Painting--what a pitiful transaction was art (in the
divine stimulus at that hour) compared to the supernal happiness of
evolved motherhood! And what exquisite homage had he shown her! And the
long talk, his mind crowded with pictures like memories of a
world-voyage! Again and again, there had come over her, some inner
uplift, as if she were rising upon a wave.... She heard his tones now,
as he spoke to her mother on the porch, and his gentleness throughout
recurred.
The Other had gone from her world, and now he was going. Her mind
shrank from the new and utter desolation.... The night seemed closing
about her, as she stood beside the gate. Like some great foreign
elemental, it was, until she was near to screaming, and perceived
herself captive to madness--a broken-nerved creature in a strange
place, stifling among aliens, undone in the torment of strange
stars.... And, another, the ancient terror to strong women, now fell
upon her, to show Beth Truba how mighty she was to suffer. The sense of
her own fruitlessness drove home to her breast, of living without
solution, realizing that all her fluent emotions, lovely ideals, all
her sympathies, dreams and labors, should end with her own tired hands;
that she must know the emptiness of every aspiration, while
half-finished women everywhere were girdled with children.... He was
coming toward her.
That instant, a merciful blankness fell upon her mind. Out of the fury
and maiming, her consciousness seemed lifted to some cool blackness.
There was just one vague, almost primal, instinct, such as a babe must
feel--the need to be taken in his arms. The wall between them would
have fallen had Bedient done that, but nothing was further from his
thoughts. He, too, was groping in terrible darkness. Her spirit was
lost to him.... There was no moonlight, so he could not discern the
anguish of her face, and the sense of her suffering blended with his
own.... A very wise woman has said that it isn't a woman's mysteries
which dismay and mislead a man, but her contradictions.
"And now tell me the rest, Beth," he said quickly, looking down into
the pale blur which was her face. "I must know."
She shivered slightly. She was dazed. Hatred for the moment, hatred for
self and the world, for him, imperiously pinning her to the old sorrow;
his failure to make a child of her, as a lover of less integrity might
have done--it was all a sickening botch, about Wordling's pretty
taunting face. She had not the strength of faculty to tear down and
build again the better way.
"You were telling me that he was your work--of his face and all,"
Bedient whispered.
"Oh, yes.... Oh, yes, and you went away----"
"Yes," he said strangely.
"I must have been dreaming.... It hurt me so--he hurt me so. I
remember----"
And now a cold gray light dawned in her brain, and the old story
cleared--the old worn grooves were easily followed.
"Yes."
"But I--perhaps--I was inexorable." There was something eerie in that
touch which held her for an instant.
"But you started to tell me more about him, I'm sure, at first,"
Bedient said. The idea in his brain needed this.
"I helped him in his studies," she answered angrily. There was
something morbid to her in Bedient's intensity. "I helped him in the
world, or friends of mine did. Yes, I made his way among men until he
could stand alone. And he did, quickly. He was bright. Even his
refinements of dress and manner and English--I undertook at the
beginning."
Half-dead she had fallen into the old current, not comprehending a
tithe of his suffering.
"Oh, I put love into it!" she said dully. "I thought it the most
glorious work I ever did."
"You tell me wonderfully about yourself, Beth, with these few
sentences.... There is nothing finer in my comprehension than the
mother-spirit in the maid which makes her love the boy or the man whom
she lifts and inspires."
The cool idealist had returned. Beth did not welcome him.
"I believe that every achievement which lifts a man above his fellows
is energized by some woman's outpouring heart. She bestows brave and
beautiful things of her own, working in the dark, until the hour of his
test, as those fine straws of the Tropics are woven under water----"
"And what mockery to find," she finished coldly, "after you have woven
and woven, that the fabric finally brought to light is streaky and
imperfect."
Bedient's business of the moment was to learn if she were right in
being as she said, "inexorable"; if she did not sometimes think that a
finely-human heart might have come since to that flashing exterior,
which had filled the girlish eyes. He could only draw from the whole
savage darkness that the Other still lived in her heart.
"But he will not stay forgotten--is that it, Beth?"
Into the cold gray light of her mind, came a curious parable that had
occurred to her, as they started out to ride this morning, before the
great moments of high noon. And thus she related it to Bedient in the
hatred which filled her, last of all from his imperturbable coolness:
"I saddled a great deal, even as a girl. In New York, years ago, the
desire came to possess a horse of my own. I bought a beautiful bay
colt, pure saddle-bred, rare to look upon; but something always went
wrong with him. He galled, threw a shoe and went lame, stumbled,
invariably did the unexpected, and often the dangerous, thing. Truly he
was brand new every morning. I worried as if he were a child, but I
wasn't the handler for him; he spoiled in my care; yet how I loved that
colt--the first. He might have killed me, had I kept him.... It was
over a year before I had the heart to buy again--Clarendon--big,
courageous, swifter than the other, splendid in strength, yet
absolutely reliable in temper. Day after day, in all roads and
weathers, he never failed nor fell--until----"
Beth halted. The parable faltered here. She foresaw a dangerous
question, and finished it true to Clarendon.
"Until----" Bedient repeated.
"Until now--and you have seen him to-day," she said hastily. "Always he
seems to be aiming at improvement with eager, unabated energy. In many
ways, it was hard for me to realize that a horse could be so noble....
And yet I gave to the first something that I didn't have for the
second. Something that belonged to the second, was gone from me----"
A moment passed. Beth glanced into Bedient's face, but the darkness was
too deep for her to see. When he spoke, it was as steadily as ever:
"I understand clearly, Beth. I should say, don't do the first an
injustice. It was those very uncertainties of his, those coltish
frights and tempers, that made you so perfect a mistress of the second,
for you invariably bring forth the _best_ from the second."
Something big came to her from the utterance. But nothing of the
truth--that his heart had just received a death-thrust to its
love-giving.... He had left his gloves in the house. He asked for a cup
of water.... It was strange--his asking for anything. She could
remember only, besides this, his wish expressed that she might ride
with him. He had asked nothing this day. And it was a _cup_ of water
now.... They were in the lamplight, and he had drunk.... She was
standing by the table, and he at the door waiting for her to lift her
eyes.... Suddenly she felt, through the silence, his great strength
pouring over her.
She looked up at last. There was a dazzling light in his eyes, as if
some wonderful good to do had formed in his mind.
"Beth, was he the Other Man--who rested for one day on the mantel in
the studio?"
"Yes."... The question shocked her. She could not have believed that it
was harder for him to ask, than for her to answer....
He came nearer. Like a spirit he came.... He seemed very tall and tired
and white.... Her hand was lifted to his lips, but when she turned, he
was gone.
Beth did not shut the door.... The sound of a shut door must not be the
last so strange a guest should hear. Beth was cold. She could hardly
realize....
Bedient turned and saw the light streaming out upon the porch. She was
not visible, but her shadow stood forth upon the boards, arms strangely
uplifted. The mortal within him was outraged, because he did not turn
back--into that open door.
III
EQUATORIA
_Allegro Scherzo_
TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
BEDIENT FOR _THE PLEIAD_
Bedient dreamed:
He was sitting in the dark, in a high, still place; and at last
(through a rift in the far mountains), a faint ghost appeared,
waveringly white. Just a shimmering mist, at first, but it steadied and
brightened, until the snowy breast of old _God-Mother_ was configured
in the midst of her lowly brethren on the borders of Kashmir.... And
just as he was about to enter into the great peace, his consciousness
beginning to wing with cosmic sweep, the rock upon which he sat started
to creak and stir, and presently he was rolled about like a haversack
in a heaving palanquin.
Thus he awoke, tossed in his berth aboard the _Hatteras_--and a gale
was on. The ship, Southward bound, was far off the cape for which she
was named, asking only wide sea-room, to take the big rollers with easy
grace.
Bedient had not slept long. He had not slept for two consecutive hours
during the past ten days. From the open door of _her_ mother's house in
Dunstan his whole life had felt the urge to India. But that could not
be. It had the look of running away.
The little ocean matter had been happily ended.... The exact impulse to
tell David Cairns of his intention to return to Equatoria, and the
moment for it, had not offered, so Bedient had parted from his friend,
as one going to a different room for the night. Nor had he seen Mrs.
Wordling, the Grey One, Kate Wilkes or Vina Nettleton since the last
ride; though for the latter, he left a page of writing she had asked.
Beth he had tried to see, four days after their parting in Dunstan, but
she was not at her studio, nor with her mother. He did not seek
further.
Bedient felt that he was needed in Equatoria, but there was another
reason for his sudden return, than attention to the large financial
interests. Though his home was there, Equatoria had no imperious call
for him that his inner nature answered.... Only India had that. The
very name was like water to a fevered throat. They would know in India.
Old Gobind had always known:
"_You will learn to look within for the woman. You would not find favor
in finding her without. It is not for you--the red desire of love_."
How he had rebelled against the authority of those sentences, but his
respect for the deep vision of Gobind was complete. Moreover, the old
_Sannyasin_ had said he was not to return to India until he was ready
to give up the body. No sense of the physical end had come to him, even
in his darkest hour. There was much for him to do, and in New York, but
the pith was gone from him. His desolation made the idea of returning
to New York one of the hardest things he had ever faced. He had thought
of Beth Truba in his every conception of service. She inspired a love
which held him true to every ideal of woman, and kept the ideals
flaming higher. And what form she had brought to his concepts! In
expressing himself to her, direct world-values had attached to his
thoughts. Through her he had seen the ways of work. Every hour, he
blessed her in his heart--again and again; and every hour, the anguish
deepened.
But work had a different look. Darkness covered his dreams of service.
He was torn down; some great vitality was disintegrating. His projects
would be carried out; he would continue to give, and continue to
produce the things to give--but the heart, the love of giving, the
spirit of outpouring to men--these were gone from him. There was a
certain emptiness in following the old laws of his fuller nature. To
give and serve now, was like obeying the commands of the dead. He had
never turned to the past before. He would have been the first to tell
another--that one who looks to his past for the sanction of some act of
the present, has reached the end of growth.
Bedient could not lie to himself. He wanted to run away. He wanted to
sit at the knees of some old Gobind. Never since the night his mother
had taken him in her arms, had he so needed _to lean_.... Yes. he had
failed to find favor--in finding the woman.
And now came to him the inevitable thought, and not without savagery to
one of his nature: Was his high theme of uplift for women stimulated
from the beginning by his need of a human mate? Was it a mere
man-passion, which had charmed all his thoughts of women, from a boy?
Was this the glow which had illuminated his work in the world, during
the maturing silences of the Punjab? Was it physical, and not
spiritual--this love of all women, until he had come into his love of
one? And must he lose the broader love--in missing the love of one?
The answer lay dark in his consciousness. Ways to bring happiness to
women had come to him, but to carry them out now was mere obedience to
the old galvanism. He faced this realization with deadly shame....
"_You will learn to look within for the woman_." And what was left
within? In a kind of desperation, Bedient turned to this inventory. The
old faith of the soul in God, in the Son, and in the Blessed
Mother-Spirit still stood, apart and above the wreckage, unassailed.
This was Light.
In these furious days of disintegration Bedient's soul-faith was not
brought to test. A woman's might have fallen with her love.... But the
mighty passionate being, that was roused to commanding actions in that
high sunlit hour, died slowly and with agonies untellable.
The _Hatteras_ steamed out of the gale, as she had done out of many
another, in the same riotous stretch of sea-water. Bedient had become
known aboard from his association with Captain Carreras. It was during
the first dinner of the voyage that certain interesting information
transpired from the conversation of Captain Bloom.