After a pause, Beth said:
"Don"t think I"m flippant if I ask: How do these men who, in their maturity, become great spiritual forces, escape being caught young by some perceiving woman?"
"I"m not so sure the question could be put better," Bedient said.
"There is often a time in the youth of men, to whom illumination comes later, when they hang divided between the need of woman and some inner austerity that commands them to go alone."
"If they disobey, does the light fail to come?" Beth asked.
"It is less likely to come. But then, often the youth of such men is spent in some great pa.s.sion for an unattainable woman, a distant star for the groping years. In other cases, women have divined the mystic quality, and instead of giving themselves, have held the young visionaries pure. Again, poverty, that grim stepmother of the elect, often intervenes. And to common women--such lovers are absurd, beyond comprehension. That helps.... Illumination comes between the age of thirty and forty. After that, the way is clear. They do not grope, they see; they do not believe, they feel and know."
Beth found these things absorbing, though she accepted them only tentatively. She saw they were real to him--as bread and wool and paint.
"There is an impulse, too, among serious young men to live the life of asceticism and restraint," Bedient added. "It comes out of their very strength. This is the hasty conclusion of monasteries----"
"Hasty?"
"Well--unfledged saints fall.... Their growth becomes self-centred. The intellect expands at the expense of soul, a treacherous way that leads to the dark.... And then--a man must father his own children beautifully before he can father his race."
"That sounds unerring to me," Beth said.
"Why, it"s all the Holy Spirit driving the race!" Bedient exclaimed suddenly. "You can perceive the measure of it in every man. Look at the mult.i.tude. The s.e.xes devour each other; marriage is the vulgarest proposition of chance. Men and women want each other--that is all they know. They have no exquisite sense of selection. In them this glorious driving Energy finds no beautiful surfaces to work upon, just the pa.s.sions, the meat-fed pa.s.sions. Here is quant.i.ty. Nature is always ruthless with quant.i.ty, as cities are ruthless with the crowds. Here is the great waste, the tearing-down, and all that is ghastly among the ma.s.ses; yet here and there from some pitiful tortured mother emerges a faltering artist--her dream."
"You never forget her, do you,--that figure which sustains through the darkness and horror?"
"I cannot," he smiled. "No race would outlast a millenium without her.
Such women are saviors--always giving themselves to men--silently falling with men."
"But about the artist?" Beth asked. "What is his measure of the driving Energy? How does it work upon him?"
"He has risen from the common," Bedient replied. "He feels the furious need of completion, some one to ignite his powers and perfect his expression. It is a woman, but he has an ideal about her. He rushes madly from one to another, as a bee to different blooms. The flesh and the devil pull at him, too; surface beauty blinds him, and the world he has come from, hates him for emerging. It is a fight, but he has not lost, who fails once. The women who know him are not the same again.
The poor singer destroys his life, but leaves a song, a bit of fastidiousness. The world remembers the song, links it with the destroyed life, and loves both.
"But look at the mother-given prophets standing alone, militant but tender, the real producers! The spirit that sparks fitfully in the artist is a steady flame now. Their giving is to all, not to one. What they take of the world is very little, but through them to the world is given direct the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul and the Forerunner are the highest types, and in perspective. Their way is the way of the Christ, Who showed the world that unto the completed union of Mystic Womanhood and militant manhood, is added G.o.dhood.
"There are immediate examples of men maturing in prophecy," Bedient concluded. "Men in our own lives almost--Whitman, Lincoln, Th.o.r.eau, 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, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Poe. What n.o.ble 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 ma.s.ses 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 emanc.i.p.ated, 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 sh.o.r.e for a few days--later. She asked if I thought she had better go----"
"And you told her?" Beth managed to say.