Beth Truba reached her studio again Monday noon. Among the letters in her post-box, was one she felt instinctively to be from Andrew Bedient, though it was post-marked Albany. She hesitated to open the letter at first, for fear that he had attempted to explain his presence in Mrs.

Wordling's room. This would affix him eternally to commonness in her mind. He had a right to go to Mrs. Wordling's room, but she had thought him other than the sort which pursues such obvious attractions.

Especially after what Cairns had said, she was hurt to meet him there.... Beth found herself thinking at a furious rate, on the mere hazard that the letter was from Bedient....

Were there really such men in the world as the Bedient whom Cairns pictured, and believed in? Personally, she didn't care to experiment, but there was a strange reliance in the thought that there _were_ such men.... The fine nature she wanted to believe in--wouldn't have written!... This one letter alone remained unopened--when the telephone rang.

It was Cairns, who inquired if she had heard aught of his friend.... "I reached town Sat.u.r.day morning," Cairns went on, "and found a note that he would be away for the day and possibly Sunday; didn't say where nor why. He left no word at the Club. In fact, Mrs. Wordling called me just now to inquire, volunteering that Bedient had been in her world Friday.

Excuse me for bothering you. I've an idea this is his way when a gale is blowing in his brain. He pushes out for solitude and sea-room."

Beth had not offered to a.s.sist. The Albany letter might not be his. It stared at her now from the library-table, full-formed black writing.

There were no two ways about a single letter. It was the writing of a man who had not covered continents of white paper. "Miss Beth Truba"

had been put there to stay, with a full pen, and as if pleasing to his sight. She was thinking--it would be well if Mrs. Wordling were always inquiring; and that the day would be spoiled if he had undertaken to explain things in this letter....

Beth crossed to the table, placed the paper-cutter under the flap and slit it across. Just at this moment, the door of the elevator-shaft opened on her floor--and her knocker fell. She tossed the letter under the leather cover of the table, and admitted Vina Nettleton.

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER

THIS CLAY AND PAINT AGE

A new light had come into the studio of Vina Nettleton; and only when at last the light became too strong, and the struggle too close, had she left it to seek her friend Beth Truba. She had not been sleeping, nor remembering to eat; but she had been thinking enough for seven artists, in the long hours, when the light was bad for work. And now the packing was worn from her nerve-ends, so that she wept easily, like a nervous child, or a man undone from drink.

The new force of Andrew Bedient had found in her a larger sensitiveness than even in David Cairns. That long afternoon which he had spent in her place of working and living was to her a visitation, high above the years. She had been amazed at the Grey One, for preserving a semblance of calm. The gratefulness that she had faltered was but a sign of what she felt.

The figures of Jesus in her room, she had been unable to touch. Bedient had made her see the _G.o.dhood_ of the Christ. John the Baptist, who had attained the apex of manhood and prophecy, had called himself unworthy to loose the latchet of His shoes, and this before Jesus had put on the glory of the Father.

All the others were amazingly nearer to her. She saw the bleak Iscariot as never before, and his darkened mother emerged a step out of the gloom of ages. The Romans moved, as upon a stage, before her, unlit battling faces, clashing voices and armor; and the bearded Jews heavily collecting and confuting. She saw the Eleven, and nearest the light, the frail John, the brother of James,--sad young face and ascetic pallor.... And in the night, she heard that great Voice crying in the wilderness, that mighty Forerunner, the returned Elias; next to Christ Himself, this Baptist, who leaped in the womb of the aged Elizabeth, when the Mother of the Saviour entered her house in the hill country!

This cataclysmic figure, not of the "Stations," was dominant in the background of them all. She saw him second to the Christ (for was he not a prophet in the elder Scripture?) in being called to the Father's G.o.dhood; and Saint Paul, of that nameless thorn in the flesh, following gloriously on the Rising Road!

There was a new and loving friendliness in the Marys. She could pray to _them_, and wait for greater purity to image the Saviour, as they saw Him.... And one night from her fire-frame, staring down into the lurid precipices of the city, the awful question preyed upon her lips, "Are you Jews and Romans that you must have again the blood of the Christ, to show you the way to G.o.d?"... She was weeping, and would have swooned, but something in her consciousness bade her look above. There were the infinite worlds, immensities of time and s.p.a.ce and evolving souls; and urging, weaving, glorifying all, was the Holy Spirit, Mystic Motherhood.... And back in the dark of her studio, she turned among creations and visions and longings. Next morning she sat upon the floor and wept, because she could not have her child of soul, only children of clay.... Hours afterward she was fashioning a cross with her fingers, and was suddenly crushed with anguish because she had not been there to carry the cross for Him, to confront the soldiery and take the cruel burden, and hear His Voice, Whom she knew now to be the Son of G.o.d.

The women embraced in that rare way which is neither formal nor an affectation. They had long liked and admired each other.

"Why, Vina,--it has been weeks--how did you manage to leave?"

"I haven't done much--for days," Vina said, ducking from under her huge hat, and tossing it with both hands upon the piano-top. "Not since he came up with the Grey One and spoiled my little old ideas. Let's have some tea?"

Beth laughed at the other, until Vina moved into the circle of light, and her face showed paler and more transparent than ever. She sat down upon Beth's working-stool, elbows on knees, and stared trance-like at her friend.

"Why, you dear little dreamer, what's the matter?" Beth asked quickly.

"Who is the destructive _he_?"

"The sailor-man David Cairns called us together to see. He's been in the shadows among the panels ever since. What he said I keep hearing again and again----"

Beth laughed at the remarkable way Bedient was besieging her own studio, without appearing in person. "But Vina, you've been living like a Hindu holy man, and no one can do that in New York, not even Hindus.

I order you to eat thrice daily and tire yourself physically----"

"I eat," Vina said, looking bored and helpless at the thought. "I eat and I do enough physical work to tire a stone-mason----"

"But I can see through you to the bone! I think you only imagine you take nourishment. Oh, Vina, I know your life--handling huge hard things and making them lovely with pure spirit. I must take better care of you. Tell me all about it, if it will help."

"Beth, please don't talk about pure spirit, meaning me. I used to be able to stand it, but not any more. The Grey One does that. I seem to suggest it to flesh and blood people.... I'm sure he didn't see me so.

He looked at me, as if to say, oh, I don't know what!... I wish I _were_ fish-cold! I'm all overturned.... I just met Mary McCullom on the way over."

Beth had forgotten the name for the moment. She thought Vina was about to tell her of Bedient.

"Don't you remember Mary McCullom, who tried painting for awhile, painted one after another, discolored and shapeless children, wholly bereft and unfortunate children?"

"Oh, yes," said Beth. "I heard she had married----"

"That's just it.... Do you remember how she used to look--pinched, evaporated, as one looks in a factory blue-light? I remember calling upon her, as she was giving up her last studio. We sat on a packing-case, while they took out her pictures, one child after another, foundlings which had come to her, and which no one would take nor buy----"

"Vina, you're cruel to her!"

"Listen, and you'll see whom I'm cruel to.... I remember telling her that day what a fearsome, ineffectual thing art is anyway.... How spooky thin she looked, and her face was yellow in patches! My heart was wrung with her, the image of a little woman with no place, no heart to go to, all her dreams of girlhood turned to ghosts, fit only to run from. Then she admitted that she might marry, that a man wanted her, but her wail was that she was mean and helpless, a failure; as such it was cowardly to let the man have her, hardly a square thing for a girl to do. Well, I perked her up on that.... She took him; I don't even know him by sight, but he's a man, Beth Truba! Mind you, here was a woman who said she was so dismayed and distressed and generally bowled over by living twenty-seven years, that she hadn't the heart left to love anybody. But he took her, and he's a man----"

"That seems to charm you," Beth ventured. "'He took her, and he's a man.'"

"It does, for I just left her, and she's a wicked flaunt of womanly happiness. I tell you, she has been playing with angels, all daintily plumped out, eyes shining, hands soft and white, her neck all round and new, lips red, and her voice low and ecstatic with the miracle of it all. And 'Oh, Vina,' she whispered, 'I almost die to think I might have refused him! You helped me not to. He loves me, and oh, he's so wonderful!'... I kissed her in an awed way--and asked about him....

'Oh, he's just a nurseryman--trees, you know, but he lo--we're so happy!'... Oh, Beth," Vina finished in a lowered voice, "something eternal, something immortal happens, when a man brings love to a thirsting woman!"

"Not tea, but strong tea," Beth observed. "Perhaps you think that's a pretty story--and perhaps it is," she added indefinitely.

Vina seemed hardly to hear. Many matters were revolving in her tired mind, and as soon as she caught a loose end, she allowed words to come, for there was some relief in thinking aloud.

"Hasn't the world done for us perfectly, Beth?" she demanded finally.

"Everything is arranged for men, to suit men--it's a man's world--and we're foreigners. We're forced to stand around and _mind_, before we understand. If we speak our own language, we're suspected of sedition.

And then we don't stand together. We're continually looking for some kind male native, and only now and then one of us is lucky.... Hideous and false old shames are inflicted upon us. We are hungry for many things, but appear shameless, if we say so... Beth, has it ever occurred to you that we come--I mean fair and normal women--we come from a country where there are lots of little children--?"

"The kingdom of heaven, you mean, Vina?"

"Possibly that's it. And when we get here we miss them--want them terribly. It's all _through_ us--like an abstraction. We know the way better than the natives here, but they have laws which make us dependent upon them for the way.... It has not lifted to an abstraction with our teachers, Beth. A crude concrete thing to them, a matter of rules broken or not. We must submit, or remain lonely, reviled foreigners.... Sometimes we discover a native who _could_ bring us back our own, but he's probably teaching the nearest...."

"We've got to stand together, we foreigners," Beth said laughingly.

"All our different castes must stand together first--and keep the natives waiting--until in their very eagerness, they suddenly perceive that we know best----"

"It's not for us--that happy time," Vina added hopelessly. "We are the sit-tight, hold-fast pilgrims. We belong to the clay-and-paint age----"

"It's something to see that----"

"Oh, how truly _he_ sees it!"

"Your Sailor-man, does he see that, too?"