Fate Knocks at the Door Part 22

"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 sh.o.r.e 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 sh.o.r.e? 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 ent.i.ty 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 sh.o.r.e.... 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sing 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 quant.i.ty. His still earlier years were pa.s.sed 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--punis.h.i.+ng 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 s.e.xes. 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, ba.n.a.l, 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 encompa.s.sing 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 a.s.sistance; 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 companions.h.i.+p 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.