Fate Knocks at the Door: A Novel

by Will Levington Comfort

TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

A PARABLE OF TWO HORSES

They were nearing Dunstan on the way back. The light had flattened out, and the little town was stretching its shadows. They were silent…. Beth was trying to fit this day to days that had gone, but it was hard. This had a brightness apart from them, but it seemed to her now that the brightness was gone with the sun. She was tired—and alone. The thoughts in her mind had brought the sense of separateness.

She must soon know from him, if the day had served her end. She thought of her temptation in the studio—to hold him from the ocean, as a woman might, as a Wordling might. She had not needed quite to do that, merely to let herself go. The glorious lover in him had done more than she dreamed, in making her Beth of the bestowals, this day.

In the sunlight, she had been one with him. Rather startlingly it came to her now, that she could have asked anything then. But in those incomparable moments of the high day, there had been nothing to ask. How strange this was to her! How utterly had they put all commonness behind.

She trembled at the thought of another woman rousing that lover in him, looking upon the miracle she had evoked. She could not bear it, nor could she suffer him to know this thought of hers.

They were riding down into the town. Brightenings from the West were still upon the upper foliage of the trees, but vague dusk had fallen between their faces. His features were white and haggard…. She was afraid to ask him now. She would wait for the darkness. Had he heard a tremble in her voice, Bedient would have caught her bridle-rein and searched her face.

She clucked. Clarendon, with stables just ahead, was only too eager…. Bedient rejoined her after turning over his horse, and making the change of clothes. Beth met him at the gate of her mother's house and there was a smile in the evening light.

They did not sit opposite at supper. Bedient studied the little mother at the head of the table, but with a fear in his heart. A sense of disaster had come to him at the end of the ride. He knew nothing of what had formed about the short sea journey in Beth's mind; he could not have believed from her own lips that she had been tempted to hold him with passion. He would have expected faith from her, had some destroying tale come to her ears. He did not realize the effect upon others, of his aptness to ignore all explanation. Especially in this seagoing affair, he had nothing to say. It was not his way to discuss his adventures into the happiness of others…. Beth felt his reserve instinctively, a reason why it had been impossible for her to show him the document of disorder.

The talk at the supper table had to do with the portrait she had painted. Beth never forgot some of Bedient's sentences…. Then she told him about the new life of the Grey One; of the latter's call on Wednesday, with the great news about Torvin, and of the telephone message yesterday.

"More buyers have been to her studio," Beth said. "You see, Torvin can do anything. A whisper from him and they buy. The Grey One has disposed of several of her little things at her vogue prices——"

"I'm glad," said Bedient.

"It came in the nick of time. It means more than money or pictures.
Margie Grey has won her race."

"I understand," he added.

After supper, they walked together outside. With her whole heart Beth prayed that the day had changed him from going. She had put off until the last moment any talk that would bring his answer. And now walking with him in the darkness, she thought strangely of her parting with the Other. All was forgotten save that moment of parting; all the old intimacies had dropped from mind, banished by the sunlit god she had met this day…. Bedient's defect would be quite as intrinsic as the Other's—if he went to Wordling now. She could have forgiven a boyish carelessness in either, but Beth could not forgive in any man that unfinished humanity which has a love-token for the obviously common and sensuous…. She was ill with terror and tension. And how pitifully human she was! A greater faith or a lesser strength would have saved her. Beth failed in the first. It was her madness; her mortal enemy—this pride.

"I doubt if there could be such another day of June," she observed at last, wondering if he caught the hard note in her voice…. This would bring his word. She would cry aloud with happiness—if the day had changed him.

"To-morrow——" he answered. "Beth, is there anything to prevent to-morrow——?"

"Riding together?"

"Yes."

"Not to-morrow. The horses had better rest a day. We must have done twenty-five miles to-day…. But early next week——"

She had turned away, as one averts the face from disaster. Even had she not turned from him, it was too dark to see his queer troubled smile, as he said:

"Monday, I go away. It's that ocean matter. Three days will finish it,
I'm sure."

So this was her answer. Beth of the bestowals had not prevailed. This was the inner uprooting. Love-lady she had been—love-lady of thrilling arts this day—and yet his determination to go to the other was not altered…. She would not show him tears of rage and jealousy. She would not see him again. She meant to show him that the day had not stormed her heart of hearts. Her spirit was torn, and she was not above hurting him…. "Three days will finish it, I'm sure." To her the sentence had the clang of a prison door…. It was through the Other that she proceeded now…. How he had struck her through another!….

They had walked for some time through the evergreens. His listening had become like a furious draught, her brain burning intensely beneath it. It had been hard for her to begin, but that was over…. "It was not until to-day that there was any need to tell you," she was saying. "You were inspiring in other ways. I would have been stupid, indeed, not to have seen that, but somehow you seemed remote from everyday habiliments and workday New York—somehow inseparable from silences—until to-day—when you came singing Invictus. You did not let me tell you—out there—in the sunlight. You didn't let me think of telling you…. You mustn't judge me always so susceptible——"

She halted, lost for an instant in the emptiness.

"Please tell me about him," Bedient said.

"Why, he was only a working boy when he first came to our house—here," she went on. "I was just back from Paris—after years. I remember with what a shock of surprise I noted the perfection of his face. The angle was absolutely correct as the old Hellenic marbles, and to every curve was that final warmth which stone can only distantly suggest. Then he was tall, but so light and lithe——"

She knew he would not fail to see the flaw here—the artistic taint. She had heard him deplore the worship of empty line, saying that nature almost invariably travesties it.

"I was hasty, then, in my conclusion to-day," he said, questioning, "when I asked if there was any reason why I should not tell you how great you are to me?"

"It did not seem the time to tell you," she answered quickly. "I was wrong, but—it was not wrong to him! Please don't think that! I sent him away."

"Oh, I see better—thank you. And now go on, Beth, please——"

"You see, he was my work——"

Beth's mother now called from the front door. She was going upstairs and would say good-night to Mr. Bedient.

"Go to her," Beth whispered. "I shall see her later."

… And now she stood alone by the gate, her mind seething. Forces within falteringly implored her to go no further. She found in his few brief questions that old fidelity to truth that had been one of his first charms. This helped to unsteady her. Was she not wrong to judge this man by the standards the world had made her accept for others?… The day came back. Why had Wordling been so far from her mind out there in the sunlight? Radiant with health, thrilling with mysteries, in the summit of her womanhood, she had been above fear, and he above evil. The Shadowy Sister, too, had gone forth to meet him, majestic and unashamed. What spell was that which had come over her, a perfect vein-dilation in the brilliant light? Why, it had seemed to her that she could feel the pulse of flower-stems, and paint the nervous systems of the bees. Painting—what a pitiful transaction was art (in the divine stimulus at that hour) compared to the supernal happiness of evolved motherhood! And what exquisite homage had he shown her! And the long talk, his mind crowded with pictures like memories of a world-voyage! Again and again, there had come over her, some inner uplift, as if she were rising upon a wave…. She heard his tones now, as he spoke to her mother on the porch, and his gentleness throughout recurred.

The Other had gone from her world, and now he was going. Her mind shrank from the new and utter desolation…. The night seemed closing about her, as she stood beside the gate. Like some great foreign elemental, it was, until she was near to screaming, and perceived herself captive to madness—a broken-nerved creature in a strange place, stifling among aliens, undone in the torment of strange stars…. And, another, the ancient terror to strong women, now fell upon her, to show Beth Truba how mighty she was to suffer. The sense of her own fruitlessness drove home to her breast, of living without solution, realizing that all her fluent emotions, lovely ideals, all her sympathies, dreams and labors, should end with her own tired hands; that she must know the emptiness of every aspiration, while half-finished women everywhere were girdled with children…. He was coming toward her.

That instant, a merciful blankness fell upon her mind. Out of the fury and maiming, her consciousness seemed lifted to some cool blackness. There was just one vague, almost primal, instinct, such as a babe must feel—the need to be taken in his arms. The wall between them would have fallen had Bedient done that, but nothing was further from his thoughts. He, too, was groping in terrible darkness. Her spirit was lost to him…. There was no moonlight, so he could not discern the anguish of her face, and the sense of her suffering blended with his own…. A very wise woman has said that it isn't a woman's mysteries which dismay and mislead a man, but her contradictions.

"And now tell me the rest, Beth," he said quickly, looking down into the pale blur which was her face. "I must know."

She shivered slightly. She was dazed. Hatred for the moment, hatred for self and the world, for him, imperiously pinning her to the old sorrow; his failure to make a child of her, as a lover of less integrity might have done—it was all a sickening botch, about Wordling's pretty taunting face. She had not the strength of faculty to tear down and build again the better way.

"You were telling me that he was your work—of his face and all,"
Bedient whispered.

"Oh, yes…. Oh, yes, and you went away——"

"Yes," he said strangely.

"I must have been dreaming…. It hurt me so—he hurt me so. I remember——"

And now a cold gray light dawned in her brain, and the old story cleared—the old worn grooves were easily followed.

"Yes."

"But I—perhaps—I was inexorable." There was something eerie in that touch which held her for an instant.

"But you started to tell me more about him, I'm sure, at first,"
Bedient said. The idea in his brain needed this.

"I helped him in his studies," she answered angrily. There was something morbid to her in Bedient's intensity. "I helped him in the world, or friends of mine did. Yes, I made his way among men until he could stand alone. And he did, quickly. He was bright. Even his refinements of dress and manner and English—I undertook at the beginning."

Half-dead she had fallen into the old current, not comprehending a tithe of his suffering.

"Oh, I put love into it!" she said dully. "I thought it the most glorious work I ever did."

"You tell me wonderfully about yourself, Beth, with these few sentences…. There is nothing finer in my comprehension than the mother-spirit in the maid which makes her love the boy or the man whom she lifts and inspires."

The cool idealist had returned. Beth did not welcome him.

"I believe that every achievement which lifts a man above his fellows is energized by some woman's outpouring heart. She bestows brave and beautiful things of her own, working in the dark, until the hour of his test, as those fine straws of the Tropics are woven under water——"

"And what mockery to find," she finished coldly, "after you have woven and woven, that the fabric finally brought to light is streaky and imperfect."

Bedient's business of the moment was to learn if she were right in being as she said, "inexorable"; if she did not sometimes think that a finely-human heart might have come since to that flashing exterior, which had filled the girlish eyes. He could only draw from the whole savage darkness that the Other still lived in her heart.

"But he will not stay forgotten—is that it, Beth?"

Into the cold gray light of her mind, came a curious parable that had occurred to her, as they started out to ride this morning, before the great moments of high noon. And thus she related it to Bedient in the hatred which filled her, last of all from his imperturbable coolness:

"I saddled a great deal, even as a girl. In New York, years ago, the desire came to possess a horse of my own. I bought a beautiful bay colt, pure saddle-bred, rare to look upon; but something always went wrong with him. He galled, threw a shoe and went lame, stumbled, invariably did the unexpected, and often the dangerous, thing. Truly he was brand new every morning. I worried as if he were a child, but I wasn't the handler for him; he spoiled in my care; yet how I loved that colt—the first. He might have killed me, had I kept him…. It was over a year before I had the heart to buy again—Clarendon—big, courageous, swifter than the other, splendid in strength, yet absolutely reliable in temper. Day after day, in all roads and weathers, he never failed nor fell—until——"

Beth halted. The parable faltered here. She foresaw a dangerous question, and finished it true to Clarendon.

"Until——" Bedient repeated.

"Until now—and you have seen him to-day," she said hastily. "Always he seems to be aiming at improvement with eager, unabated energy. In many ways, it was hard for me to realize that a horse could be so noble…. And yet I gave to the first something that I didn't have for the second. Something that belonged to the second, was gone from me——"

A moment passed. Beth glanced into Bedient's face, but the darkness was too deep for her to see. When he spoke, it was as steadily as ever:

"I understand clearly, Beth. I should say, don't do the first an injustice. It was those very uncertainties of his, those coltish frights and tempers, that made you so perfect a mistress of the second, for you invariably bring forth the best from the second."

Something big came to her from the utterance. But nothing of the truth—that his heart had just received a death-thrust to its love-giving…. He had left his gloves in the house. He asked for a cup of water…. It was strange—his asking for anything. She could remember only, besides this, his wish expressed that she might ride with him. He had asked nothing this day. And it was a cup of water now…. They were in the lamplight, and he had drunk…. She was standing by the table, and he at the door waiting for her to lift her eyes…. Suddenly she felt, through the silence, his great strength pouring over her.

She looked up at last. There was a dazzling light in his eyes, as if some wonderful good to do had formed in his mind.

"Beth, was he the Other Man—who rested for one day on the mantel in the studio?"

"Yes."… The question shocked her. She could not have believed that it was harder for him to ask, than for her to answer….

He came nearer. Like a spirit he came…. He seemed very tall and tired and white…. Her hand was lifted to his lips, but when she turned, he was gone.

Beth did not shut the door…. The sound of a shut door must not be the last so strange a guest should hear. Beth was cold. She could hardly realize….

Bedient turned and saw the light streaming out upon the porch. She was not visible, but her shadow stood forth upon the boards, arms strangely uplifted. The mortal within him was outraged, because he did not turn back—into that open door.