That was hard.

...In the veil of dusk she was still kneeling, her face ghastly with waiting.... And not until pride intervened again, and prevailed upon her to see him no more, after the last ride together, did she find some old friendly tears, almost as remote from the days she now lived, as Florentine springtimes of student memory.

TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

Bedient arose at four on Sat.u.r.day morning and looked out of his high window. June had come. The smell of rain was _not_ in the air. He was grateful and drew up a chair, facing the East. The old mystery of morning unfolded over sea, and there was no blemish.... Bedient had not slept, nor during the two preceding nights. While the abundance of his strength was not abated, deep grooves (that came to abrupt blind endings) were worn in his mind from certain thoughts, and he was conscious of his body, which may be the beginning of weariness; conscious, too, of a tendency of his faculties to mark time over little things.

Yesterday the picture had come. He had hoped hard against this. Its coming had brought to him a sense of separateness from the studio, that he tried not to dwell upon in mind, but which recurred persistently....

He could not judge a portrait of himself; yet he knew this was wonderful. Beth had caught him in an animate moment, and fixed him there. Her fine ideal had put on permanence.... "Hold fast to a soul-ideal of your friend," he remembered telling her once, "and you help him to build himself true to it. If your ideal is rudely broken, you become one of the disintegrating forces at work upon him."

He keenly felt the disorder in his relation to Beth. The thought that held together, against all others, was that Beth loved some one, just now out of her world. He wished she could see into his mind about this; instantly, he would have helped her; his dearest labor, to restore her happiness.

He had never been confident of winning. He loved far too well, and held Beth too high, ever to become familiar in his thoughts of her as a life companion. Power lived in her presence for him; great struggles and conquerings. He loved every year she had lived; every hour of life that had brought her to this supremacy of womanhood before which he bowed, was precious to him. In this instance he was myopic. He did not see Beth Truba as other women, and failed to realize this. His penetration faltered before her, for she lived and moved in the brilliant light of his love, blended with it, so that her figure, and her frailties, lost all sharpness of contour.

He had suffered in the past three days and nights. He was proud and glad to suffer. There was no service nor suffering that he would have hesitated to accept for Beth Truba.... This day amazed him in prospect, one of her beautiful gifts to him. It was almost as if she had come to his house, lovely, unafraid, and sat laughing before his fire. One of the loftiest emotions, this sense of companionship with her. There was something of distinct loveliness in every hour they had pa.s.sed together. Not one of their fragrances had he lost. These memories often held him, like mysterious gardens.

...Bedient paced the big area in front of the ferry entrance long before seven. He saw her the instant she stepped from the cross-town car. The day was momentarily brightening, yet something of the early morning red was about her. His throat tightened at sight of her radiant swiftness. Her eyes were deeper, her lips more than ever red.... On the deck of the ferry, before the start, she said:

"I feel as if we were escaping from somewhere, and could not tolerate a moment's delay."

...At ten o'clock they were in the saddle, and Dunstan was far behind.

The morning, as perfect as ever arose in Northern summer; the azure glorified with golden light, and off to the South, a few shining counterpanes of cloud lay still. The half had not been told about Beth's Clarendon, a huge rounded black, with a head slightly Roman, and every movement a pose. He was skimp of mane and tail; such fine grain does not run to hair. While there was sanity and breeding in his steady black eye, every look and motion suggested "too much horse" for a woman. Yet Beth handled him superbly, and from a side-saddle. Clarendon had in his temper, that gift of show aristocrats--excess of life, not at all to be confused with wickedness--which finds in plain outdoors and decent going, plentiful stimulus for top endeavor and hot excitement.

"I've had him long," Beth said, "and though he has sprung from a walk to a trot countless times without a word from me, he has yet to slow down of his own accord. He can do his twelve miles an hour, and turn around and do it back.... You see how he handles--for me."

She delighted in his show qualities, rarely combined with such excellent substance. She showed his gaits, but rode a trot by preference. Bedient, who had a good mare, laughed joyously when his mount was forced into a run to keep abreast. Clarendon, without the slightest show of strain, had settled to his trot.... All Bedient's thinking and imaging during the years alone, of the woman he should some time find, had never brought him anything so thrilling as this slightly flushed profile of Beth's now. What an anchorage of reality she was, after years of dream-stuff--a crown of discoveries, no less--and what an honor, her gift of companionship! He felt an expansion of power, and strength to count this day great with compensation, should the future know only the interminable dull aching of absence and distance.

Bedient had started to speak of the picture, but she bade him wait....

As they rode along a country road, they came to an old ruin of a farm-house, surrounded by huge barns, some new, and all in good repair.

A little beyond was a calf tied to a post. It was lying down, its legs still being largely experimental--a pitifully new calf, shapeless and forlorn.

The mother was nowhere around. Sick in some far meadow, perhaps, sick of making milk for men.

"That's a veal calf," Beth said.

The note in her voice called his eyes. Something which the sight suggested was hateful to her. Bedient dismounted and led his chestnut mare up to the little thing, which stared, tranced in hope and fear.

The mare dropped her muzzle benignantly. She understood and became self-conscious and uncomfortable. One of a group of children near the farmhouse behind them called:

"Show off! Show off!"

"They sell its rightful food," Beth said, "and feed the poor little thing on cheaper stuff until it hardens for the butcher. Men are so big with their business."

"There are veal calves tied to so many posts on the world's highway,"

Bedient said slowly.

"When I was younger," Beth went on, "and used to read about the men who had done great creative things, I often found that they had to keep away from men and crowds, lest they perish from much pitying, dissipate their forces in wide, aimless outpourings of pity, which men and the systems of men called from them. Then--this was long ago--I used to think this a silly affectation, but I have come to understand."

"Of course, you would come to understand," Bedient said.

"Men who do great things are much alone," she continued. "They become sensitive to sights and sounds and odors--they are so alive, even physically. The downtown man puts on an armor. He must, or could not stay. The world seethes with agony--for him who can see."

"That is what made the sacrifice of the Christ," Bedient declared.

"Every day--he died from the sights on the world's highway----"

They looked back.

"It was not the Cross and the Spear, but the haggard agony of His Face that night on Gethsemane that brings to me the realization of the greatness of His suffering," he added.

"And the disciples were too sleepy to watch and pray with him----"

"How gladly would the women have answered His need for human companionship that night!" he exclaimed. "But it was not so ordained.

It was His hour alone, the most pregnant hour in the world's history."

They reached the crest of a fine hill at noon, and dismounted in the shade of three big elms. They could see small towns in the valley distances, and the profile of hilltop groves against the sky. The slopes of the hill wore the fresh green of June pasture lands; and three colts trotted up to the fence, nickering as they came.... Beth was staring away Westward through the glorious light. Bedient came close to her; she felt his eyes upon her face, turned and looked steadily into them. She was the first to look down. Beth had never seen his eyes in such strong light, nor such power of control, such serenity, such a look of inflexible integrity.... She did not like that control. It was not designed in the least to take away the hate and burning which for three days had warred against the best resistance of her mind.

That cool lofty gaze was her portion. Another--on the sh.o.r.e--ignited the fires. A devil within--for days and nights--had goaded her: "Yes, Beth Truba, red haired and all that, but old and cold, just the same, and strange to men."

"I've wanted this day," he said. "It was some need deeper than impulse.

I wanted it just this way: A hill like this, shade of great trees that whispered, distant towns and woods, horses neighing to ours. Something more ancient and authoritative than the thing we call Memory, demanded it this way. Why, I believe we have stood together before."

Beth smiled, for the goading devil had just whispered to her, "You were a vestal virgin doubtless--oh, severely chaste!"... She said, "You believe then we have come up through 'a cycle of Cathay'?"

"If I had heard your name, just your name, over there in India," he replied thoughtfully, "it would have had some deep meaning for me."

"The 'cycle of Cathay' wasn't enough to cure you?"

He turned quickly, but didn't smile. "I think there was always some distance between us, that we were never equal, a difference like that between Clarendon and the chestnut. Only you were always above me, and it was the better, the right way. Beth----"

She looked up.

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't tell you how great you are to me--just that--asking nothing?"

"We are both grown-ups," she answered readily. "You won't mind if I find it rather hard to believe--I mean, my greatness. You like my riding and the portrait----"

"I can judge your riding. As for the picture, it is an inspiration, though I cannot judge that so well. But it is not those----"

"And what then, pray?"

"Beth Truba."

"A tired old artist whom n.o.body knows--really."

"I wish you wouldn't say that," he declared earnestly. "There is nothing alive this moment, nothing in the great sun's light, that has put on such a glory of maturity. Why, you are concentrated sunlight--to me!"