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 Godhood 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 Godhood; 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 God?"… 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 space 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 God.
* * * * *
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?"
"Has he been seeing other things—in your studio?" Vina asked hastily.
"Oh, no, he hasn't been here, but he has been telling David Cairns things about writing…. David has really been born again."
"Do you know, Beth," Vina declared with intensity, "he has been such an inspiration to me, that I'm afraid my 'Stations' will look like a repaired wall, half new and half old plaster."
"My work will stand an inspiration, too."
"Beth——"
"Yes."
"You know what I think of your work, but I believe the Sailor-man could give you that inspiration——"
"Perhaps I can get it through you and David Cairns," remarked Beth, who was beginning to see, and with no little amazement, that to Vina the inspiration was spiritual, impersonal. This made Bedient's influence all the more exciting.
"Oh, he'll come to you, right enough. I supposed he had…. You know I was making my James and Matthews, my Peters and Jews and Romans quite contentedly in that bleak way it has been done a thousand times. But he made me see them! And the slopes of Calvary, and Gethsemane hunched in the darkness, and the Christ kneeling in a faint starry light; he made me see Him kneeling there, His Spirit, like a great mother's loving heart, standing between an angry Father and the world, a wilful child——"
"Yes," came softly from Beth.
"And it's almost too much for me now—the Passion, the Agony, the Crime and the Night—too much for me and clay. It would be, if it were not for the glowing Marys. They're for us, Beth——"
"That's sweet of you, Vina…. It won't be too much. You're in the reaction now. After that passes you will do the 'Stations' as they have never been done. And God's poor people will pass before your work for years and years to come; and something, as much as they can bear of the thrilling anguish of this new light of yours, will come to them, as they pray before the Eternal Tragedy."
"But that isn't all, Beth!… There's another; a terrible side. I sort of had myself in hand until he came, sort of felt myself two thousand years old, back among them. But he has made me a pitiful modern again, a woman who has tried and refuses to try longer, to be happy with clay dolls. And Mary McCullom——"
"Is submerged in tea—past resuscitation…. That modern madness will pass, too, dear. 'Member how those Italian giants used to have periods of madness while they decorated the everlasting cathedrals? No modern man could come into your studio and break your work for long, Vina. You know we promised each other that none could." Beth shivered at her memory. Vina had made her forget for a moment.
"But we said in our haste then, that all men were just natives——"
"Many wise women say so at their leisure——"
"But Mary McCullom——"
"Taboo——"
"Well, then, he made me see there were real men in the world," Vina declared with slow defiance.
"Oh."
"You're sure to misunderstand. Please listen carefully. He is as far to me—from being that kind of a real man—as a mere native. Do you understand?… I could worship through him, as through a pure priest——"
"Vina, you're a passionate idealist!"
"You don't know him. I think he is beyond sex—or going beyond. Perhaps he doesn't know it…. Oh, we've been hurt a little, by boys who failed to grow into men, and so we took to our breasts painted and molded images, saying there are no real men. And here in our midst comes more than we ask or dream—a Prophet in the making. That's very clear to me, and you'll see it!… The result—a clearer vision into clay and its possibilities, and an expanded conception of my subjects—that's one point and a wonderful one. I'm grateful, but there's another…. Oh, Beth, I'm sick unto nausea with repression. Why, should I deny it; I want a real lover among men, and I want live dolls!"
A trenchant moment to Beth Truba. No one, so well as she, could perceive the tragedy of this gifted woman, whom the right man had missed in the crush of the world's women. A real artist, but a greater woman…. More than this was revealed to Beth. Her own Shadowy Sister was speaking to her with Vina Nettleton's tongue, as Beth Truba could never speak of another…
The Grey One, too, had her tragedy; and Kate Wilkes had hers long ago, a strong woman, whose cup of bitterness had overflowed in her veins; who had come so to despise men, as to profess disliking children. Indeed, that moment, Beth Truba seemed to hear the whispered affirmations of tragedy from evolved women everywhere….And whither was tending the race, if only the Wordlings of the world were to be satisfied—if Wordlings were all that men cared for? What was to become of the race, if the few women who loved art, and through art learned really to love their kind, were forever to be denied? And here was Vina Nettleton with the spiritual power to concentrate her dream into an avatar (if into the midst of her solitary labors, a great man's love should suddenly come)!… Did the Destiny Master fall asleep for a century at a time, that such a genius for motherhood should be denied, while the earth was being replenished with children of chance, branded with commonness and forever afraid?
Beth Truba shook herself from this crippling rush of thoughts, and started to her feet.
"Vina, you've been drinking deep of power. You're a giantess reeking with mad contagions. Also, you're a heretic. Allow me to remind you that we are spinsters; born and enforced, and decently-to-be-buried spinsters. It isn't the Sailor-man, but the spring of the year, that makes us a bit feverish. We should go to the catacombs for this season, when this devil's rousing is in the air…. If you have anything further to say, purely in regard to artistic inspirations, you may go on——"
Vina sat rigidly before her, wan and white-lipped as if her emotions were burned out. Presently she began to talk again in her trailing pensive way:
"I had been working deep and doggedly for days, hardly noticing who came in or out. When the Grey One entered with him, I felt myself bobbing, whirling up into light surface water. I hardly spoke the first half hour. I remembered the night before, when he told that fine story straight into your eyes. I thought him wonderful then, and it occurred to me that you were in for it. But it was different when he came into my shop—something intimate and important. His eyes roved from one 'Station' to another, while the Grey One exploited me in her absurd, selfless fashion. She's a third in our trouble Beth.
"Presently he asked me how I knew the Christ had such wonderful hands; then he talked of the Forerunner and Saint Paul, who could have done so much, had they been there during the Passion, and of the women who were there. It was strange to have him come into the studio—to me—with all these pictures developed through silent years. It seems to me something tremendous must come of it… Someone knocked, and frenziedly I ordered the intruder away, without opening the door."
And now Vina repeated the belief of Bedient that impressed her so deeply: that the Holy Spirit is the source of the divine principle in woman; that the Marys of this world are the symbols of that Mystic Motherhood—the third of the Trinity—which will bring the races of the world to God, as a woman brings children to her husband.
"Everything he said glowed with this message," she went on. "His every thought brought out that women are the holders of the spiritual loaf; that prophets are the sons of strength of great spiritual mothers; that artists and poets are prophets in the making, and that unto the purest and greatest of the prophets must come at last Godhood—the Three in One; and of this Jesus is the Exemplar; His life and death and rising, His whole Mission, should make us see with human eyes, the Way of Truth."
"I see, dear girl," Beth said softly, "why you could not open the door to anyone… Then the, Mission of Jesus was vicarious? I had about given up hope of comprehending that."
"Yes. He lived and moved and bled and died and rose before the eyes of common men!" Vina exclaimed. "One has to bleed for such eyes! Without the living sacrifice, only the rare souls here and there, with the highest prophetic vision, could have risen clearly to understand these things…. Thus the growth of spirituality was quickened among the lowly multitudes. The coming of the Christ is the loveliest manifestation of the divine feminine principle within Him—the Holy Spirit. Did he not become a Spiritual Mother of the world? Was not Godhood the next step for such a finished Spirit? His awful agony was that these tremendous mysteries of His illumination were enacted in the hideous low pressures of human understanding. That he could endure this for the world's eye, is his greatness, his Godhood!"
"And Mr. Bedient comes out of India with this Christian conception?"
"Beth," Vina said solemnly, "I believe there is meaning in that, too.
The beauty and simplicity of that Sacrifice has been husked in dogmas
for centuries, and we here have not torn them all away. He had just the
Book and the Silence, and his own rare mind!"
* * * * *
"But, Vina, how could these things of pure religious fervor and beauty bring about that other rebellion of yours—the Mary McCullom one?"
"Oh, in a hundred ways; I'm all tired out now, but they'll come back. In a hundred ways, Beth, he spoke of women—with that same fervor and beauty. Just as he cleared and made exalted the Mystic Motherhood of the Christ, he pointed out how it works among us. Why, he says that there is nothing worth reading nor regarding nor listening to in the world of art, that has not that visioning feminine quality. The artist must be evolving through spirit, before his book or painting or symphony begins to live. All the rest of art is a mere squabbling over the letter of past prophecies, as the Jews did with the living Christ in their streets!… What a mother he must have had! I seemed to see her—to sense her—beside him. It was as if she looked into my heart and the Grey One's heart, and with her hand on her big boy's head, said to us, smiling and happily: 'This is my art—and he lives! You have but to look into your own hearts, you listening women, to know that he lives!'… Oh, Beth, her work does live to bless her! Can't you see how dead-cold the clay felt to my fingers after that?"
"Did he speak of his mother?"
"No."
Beth arose. "Vina," she said, "we are absolutely detached from the centres of sanity. We shall now walk Broadway, not the Avenue, but Broadway, to get back to markets and mere men. You're too powerful for this poor little room——"
"You always talk and laugh, Beth, but you're confronted and you know it. Confronted—that's the thing! Woman or artist—there's no word so naked and empty to me as just artist——"
"Only spinster," Beth suggested, shivering.
Vina stretched out her frail arms wearily, and her eyes suddenly fastened upon a fresh heather-plant on the corner of the writing-table. "Oh, please, drop a veil over that little bush," she pleaded. "It's arrayed like a bride——"
"A bridal veil, dear?"
"'No, no, a shawl, a rug!"
* * * * *
Beth returned alone at dusk. In some ways the afternoon was memorable. It was hard for her to keep her doubts about Bedient. Most of all that impressed her was Vina's sense of the mother's nearness to the man. She had thought of that at once, as she listened to his story. And he had not told Vina nor the Grey One about his mother… She sat down at her table and drew forth the opened but unread letter from Albany.
"Woman or artist," she whispered bitterly, "as if one could not be both!…It is only because a woman-and-artist requires a man who can love artistically. Few men can do that—and anything else beside…. Can you, Sailor-man?… Not if you explain to me why I found you at Wordling's…. Perhaps I can forgive you, after all the lovely things you've said. Anyway I shall tell no one…."
"Dear Miss Truba: I want to have a portrait painted of myself. I'm convinced that you can do it very well. Will you undertake the work? I shall be back in New York shortly after this letter reaches you Monday, and will wait at the Club until I hear from you. Yours, Andrew Bedient."
There was an instant in which she was conscious of something militant, something of the quiet power of the man who does not go home empty-handed. In his leaving the city Saturday, she perceived one who wishes to avoid the appearance of evil, and is content to leave his movements unexplained, trusting to another's perception.
"Vina is right," she said slowly. "'Confronted' is the word."