Fate Knocks at the Door Part 11

We are editorialists in the writing game, he declares, what-shall-I-write-about-to-day-folks! We don't wait for fulness, but wear out brain thin bandying about what drops on it. If we would wait until we were full men, we would _have_ to write, and not drive ourselves to the work----"

"Oh, I do believe that!" Beth said. "We need to be reminded of that."

"That _we_ is very pretty, Beth," Cairns went on. "...Such a queer finished incident happened yesterday. I hunted up Bedient at noon, and we talked about some of these matters. And then we met Ritchold for luncheon. It was at _Teuton's_. I took Bedient aside and whispered with a flourish, 'One of our ten-thousand-a-year editors, Andrew.'... 'What makes him worth that?' he asked. 'He knows what the people want,' I replied. Can you see us, Beth?...

"The luncheon was interesting. Bedient and Ritchold got together beautifully. The talk was brisk and big, just occasionally cutting the edges of shop. Both men came to me afterward. 'Splendid chap, your friend,' Ritchold said. 'A man who has seen so much and can talk so well, ought to _write_. Thanks for meeting him.'

"'I was very glad to meet Mr. Ritchold,' Bedient remarked later--hours later--after I had given up hope of hearing on the subject. 'I think he shows where one trouble lies.... It's in _him_ and his kind, David. His periodical sells to the great number. He is a very bright man, and his art is in knowing what the great number wants. Being brighter, and of finer discernment, than those who buy his product, he debases his taste to make his organs relish the coa.r.s.er article. That's the first evil--prost.i.tuting himself.... Now a people glutted with what it wants is a stagnant people. Its only hope is in such men as Ritchold leading them to the higher ways. In refusing, he wrongs the public--the second evil.... Again, in blunting his own sensibilities and catering to the common, he stands as a barrier between the public and real creative energy. He and the public are one. A prost.i.tuted taste and a stagnant popular mind are alike repelled by reality. Rousing creative power glances from them both. So his third evil is the busheling and harrying of genius.... There he stands, forcing genius to be common, to appear, paying well and swiftly only for that which is common. Genius writhes a bit, starves a bit, but the terrible needs of this complicated life have him by the throat until he cries "Enough," and presently is common, indeed.'"

"He need not have spoken of writing only," Beth remarked. "_They_ must have taught him to see things clearly in the Orient.... You know, David, I found it hard last night, and a little now, to fix his point of view and his power to express it, with the life of outdoor men, the 'enlisted,' as he says, rather than the 'commissioned' folk of this world."

"He has done much reading, but more thinking," Cairns declared. "He has been much alone, and he has lived. He sees inside. 'The great books of the world are little books,' he said recently, 'books that a pocket or a haversack will hold. You don't realize what they have given you, until you sit down in a roomful of ordinary books and see how tame and common the quant.i.ties are.' And it's true. Look at the big men of few books. They learned to look _inside_ of books they had! He knows the Bible, and the _Bhagavad Gita_."

"Oh, I'm beginning to understand," Beth exclaimed. "Nights alone with the Bible and the _Bhagavad Gita_, and one's schooldays--a weathering from the open and seasoning from the seas. Men have such chances to learn the perils and pa.s.sions of the earth, but so few do.... I see it now. It isn't remarkable that we find him poised and finished, but that he should have had the inclination naturally--a child among sailors--for the great little books of the world, and through them and his nights alone, to have kept his balance and builded his power."

"That's the point, Beth. New York is crowded with voyagers, and men of mileage to the moon, but what made this powerful unlettered boy _look_ for the inside of things? What made him different from the packers and cooks and sailors around the world, boys of the open who never become men except physically?"

Beth answered: "I think we'll find that has to do with Mr. Bedient's mother, David."

"I know he'd be thrilled to hear you say that."

"Is she still living?"

"No, or he'd be with her.... He has never spoken to me of her. And yet I'm sure she is the unseen glow upon his life. I think he would tell _you_ about her. Only a woman could draw that from him.... He saw no one but you last night; did all his talking to you, Beth."

"I'm the flaringest, flauntingest posy in the garden. I call the bees first," she said dryly, but there was a flitting of ghostly memories through her mind. "And then I'm an extraordinary listener."

"Beth," he said solemnly, "no one knows better than I, that it is you who send the bees away."

She laughed at him. "We found each other out in time, David.... Too much artist between us. We'd surely taint each other, don't you see?"

"I never could see that----"

"That's being polite; and one must be polite.... We are really fine friends, better than ever after to-day, and that's something for a pair of incomplete New Yorkers."

There was a pause.

"Beth," said Cairns. "Shall I bring Bedient over to-morrow?"

"No, please. At least not to-morrow."

He was surprised. Beth saw it; saw, too, that he had observed how Bedient talked to her last night. Mrs. Wordling had not missed comment here.... Cairns must not think, however, that she would avoid Andrew Bedient. She fell into her old resource of laughing at the whole matter.

"I can't afford to take any chances, David. He's _too_ attractive.

Falling in love is pure dissipation to one of my temperament, and I have too many contracts to fill. I'm afraid of your sailor-man. Think of the character you built about him to-day in this room. If he didn't prove up to that, what a pity for us all! And if he did, what a pity for poor Beth, if he started coming here!... Anyway, I've ceased to be a bachelor-girl. I'm a spinster.... That word hypnotizes me. I'm all ice again. I shall know Mr. Bedient ethically and not otherwise."

Cairns laughed with her, but something within hurt. His relation with Beth Truba had been long, and increasingly delightful, since the ordeal of becoming just a friend was safely past. He realized that only a beautiful woman could speak this way, even in fun to an old friend....

His work dealt with wars, diplomacy and politics; his fictions were twenty-year-old appeals, so that Beth felt her present depth of mood to be fathoms deeper than his story instinct.

"You know, David, I've said for years there were no real lovers in the world," she went on lightly. "But your friend was full of touches last night such as one dreams of: that colored pane in the hall-way, when he was a little boy somewhere, and the light that frightened him from it.... 'One of the Chinese knifed me, but he died.'... That big 'X' of the _Truxton_ flung stern up, as she sank; ... and about the old Captain wriggling his shoulder bashfully for his young friend's arm at the last.... It is altogether enticing, in the light of what you have brought to-day. Really you must take him away. Red-haired spinsters mustn't be bothered, nor imprisoned in magic spring weather. When does he return to his Island?"

"He hasn't spoken of that, but I do know, Beth, that Bedient will never sink back into the common, from your first fine impressions. I've known him for years, you see----"

She put down her brush and said theatrically, "I feel the fatal premonitive impulses.... Spinster, spinster; Beth Truba, spinster!...

That's my salvation."

"You're the finest woman I know," Cairns said. "You know best, but I doubt if Bedient will go back to Equatoria without seeing more of you----"

"Did he speak of such a thing?"

"That isn't his way----"

"I am properly rebuked."

... Cairns was at the door. "Did you say, Beth, that the Grey One is engaged to be married?"

"Pure tragedy. The man is fifty and financial.... She's a courageous girl, but I think under her dear smile is a broken nerve. She has about reached the end of her rope. The demand for her work has fallen off.

One of those inexplicable things. She had such a good start after returning from Paris. And now with Handel's expensive studio, probably not less than three thousand a year for that, debt and unsought pictures are eating out her heart. There's much more to the story--I mean leading up. Help her if you can, or she must go to the arms and house of a certain rich man.... What a blithe thing is Life, and how little you predatory men know about it!"

They regarded each other, their thoughts poised upon an _If_. Beth spoke first:

"If your friend----"

"But Bedient didn't look into the eyes of the Grey One when he told his tale of the sea," Cairns said, leaving.

TWELFTH CHAPTER

TWO LESSER ADVENTURES

A few nights after the party, Bedient was left to his own devices, Cairns being appointed out of town. He attended the performance of a famous actress in _Hedda Gabler_.... Bedient was early. The curtain interested him. It pictured an ancient Grecian ruin, a gloomy, heavy thing, but not inartistic. Beneath was a couplet from Kingsley:

"So fleet the works of men, back to their earth again, Ancient and holy things fade like a dream."

Sensitive to such effects, he sat, musing and contemplative, when suddenly his spirit was imperiously aroused by the orchestra. The 'celli had opened the _Andante_ from the C Minor Symphony. For ten minutes, the music held his every sense.... It unfolded as of old, but not its full message. There was a meaning in it _for him_! He heard the three voices--man, woman and angel. It was the woman's tragedy. The l.u.s.trous Third Presence was for her. The man's figure was obscure, disintegrate.... Bedient was so filled with the mystery, that the play had but little surface of his consciousness during the first act. He enjoyed it, but could not give all he had. Finally, as _Hedda_ was ordering the young writer to drink wine to get "vine-leaves in his hair," there was an explosion back of the scenes. Bedient, as did many others, thought at first it belonged to the piece. The faces of the players fell away in thick gloom, the voices sank into crazy echoes, and the curtain went down. Bedient's last look at the stage brought him the impression of squirming chaos. Fire touched the curtain behind, disfiguring and darkening the pictured ruin. Then a woman near him screamed. The back of a chair snapped, and now scores took up the woman's cry.

The crowd caught a succession of hideous ideas: of being trapped and burned, of inadequate exits, murderous gases, bodies piled at the doors--all the detailed news-horror of former theatre disasters. And the crowd did all it could to repeat the worst of these. Bedient encountered an altogether new strength, the strength of a frenzied ma.s.s, and to his nostrils came a sick odor from the fear-mad. The lights had not been turned on with the fall of the curtain. Untrained to cities, Bedient was astonished at the fright of the people, the fright of the men!... The lines of _Hedda_ recurred to him, and he called out laughingly:

"Now's the time for 'vine-leaves in your hair,' men!"

He moved among the seats free from the aisle. A body lay at his feet.

Groping forward, his hand touched a woman's hair. He smiled at the thought that here was one for _him_ to help, and lifted her, turning to look at the glare through the writhing curtain. There were voices behind in that garish furnace; and now the lights filled the theatre again. Bedient quickly made his way with others to a side exit, the red light of which had not attracted the crowd.

The woman was light in his arms. She wore a white net waist, and her brown hair was unfastened. She had crushed a large bunch of English violets to her mouth and nostrils, to keep out the smoke and gas. A peculiar thing about it was, Bedient did not see her face. In the alley, he handed his burden to a man and woman, standing together at the door of a car, and went back. One of the actors had stepped in front of the stage, and was calling out that the fire was under control, that there was no danger whatever. The roar from the gallery pa.s.sages subsided. Only a few were hurt, since the theatre was modern and the main exit ample.... Bedient returned to the side-door but the woman he had carried forth was gone, probably with the pair in the car.

He decided to see the end of _Hedda Gabler_ another time. The _Andante_, the Grecian ruin and vine-leaves were curiously blended in his mind....

Though several days had pa.s.sed since the Club affair, he had not seen Beth Truba again. This fact largely occupied his thinking. He would not telephone nor call, without a suggestion from her. The moment had not come to bring up her name to David Cairns, who, since his talk with Beth, had of course nothing to offer. So Bedient revolved in outer darkness.... The morning after _Hedda Gabler_ he found a very good chestnut saddle-mare in an up-town stable, and rode for an hour or two in the Park, returning to the Club after eleven. At the office, he was told that Mrs. Wordling had asked for him to go up to her apartment, as soon as he came in. Five minutes later, he knocked at her door.