"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 t.i.the 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 n.o.ble....
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 pa.s.sed. 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 _G.o.d-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: