Fate Knocks at the Door: A Novel

by Will Levington Comfort

Bedient liked the Grey One. He liked her that afternoon, when she asked if he cared to come up to Vina Nettleton's with her. There was real warmth in her manner from the first…. Always that illusion of having played with her long ago, stole into mind with her name or presence. (Once he had found her sobbing, about something she wouldn't tell. She had always been ready to give up things. The smile she had for him, would remain upon her lips, while she thought of something else. She would leave the others and wait for him to come and find her.) These things were altogether outside of human experience, a sweet and subtly attractive run of vagaries which had to do with a tall yellow-haired maid, now Marguerite Grey…. From something Cairns had said, Bedient knew she was unhappy. He saw it afresh when he entered the big still place where she was. She had been working, but dropped a curtain over the easel as he entered.

"Did I come at a wrong time?" he asked. "I can just as well come again."

"I don't know of any time so good. You may not want to come again."

She had not been weeping. He saw that with a quick look. It was deeper than that—something cold and slow and creeping, that made her reckless with hatred, and writhing. Answering Bedient's swift glance, she perceived that he had seen deeply, and was glad. It eased her; she hoped he had seen all, for she was sick with holding her own…. Meanwhile, her soft voice was telling him about her house. The pictures of her own here and there, were passed over quickly. Children, these, that the world had found wanting; badly-brought-up children that the world had frightened back to the parent roof where they warred with one another.

Back of all, Bedient saw a most feminine creature in the Grey One, naturally defenceless in her life against the world; a woman so preyed upon by moods that many a time she gladly would have turned devil, but was helpless to know how to begin; again and again plucked to the quick by the world. She had put on foreign scepticisms, and pitifully attempted to harden herself; but the hardening, try as she would, could not be spread evenly. It didn't protect her, as Kate Wilkes' did, only made her the more misunderstood. She did not have less talent than Vina or Beth; indeed, she had been considered of rather rich promise in Paris; but she had less developed energies and balance to use them, less physique. She lacked the spirit of that little thoroughbred, Vina Nettleton, and the pride and courage of Beth Truba. The Grey One had been badly hurt in that sadly sensitive period which follows the putting away of girlish things—when womanhood is new and wonderful. She was slow to heal. Few men interested her, but she needed a man-friend, some one to take her in hand. She had needed such a one for years. He would have been of little use, had he not come at this time. Bedient's eager friendliness for this woman was one of the most interesting things he had encountered in New York, a sort of fellowship which no one else had evoked. The Grey One had felt something of this, but had learned to expect so little, that she had not allowed herself to think about it. Only she had felt suddenly easier, perceiving the comprehension in his glance.

They had talked an hour, and were having tea. He admired some of her pictures unreservedly. They were like her voice to him—lingering, soft, mysteriously of the long-ago. Their settings were play-places that he might have imagined. She believed what he said, but did not approve of his perception. She had lost faith. It was the sailor part of him that liked her pictures.

"I had great dreams when I came to New York three years ago," she said somewhat scornfully. "For a time in Paris, I did things with little thought, and they took very well. I must have been happy. Then when I came here, all that period was gone. I was to be an artist—sheer, concentrated, the nothing-else sort of an artist. And things went so well for a time. That's queer when you think of it. The papers took me up. They gave me an exhibition at the Smilax Club, and not a few things were disposed of. In fact, when I learned that this studio was to be let, I was so prosperous as to consider it none too adequate for Margie Grey herself——

"Since then these things and others have been done, and they haven't struck the vogue at all. First, I thought it was just one of those changing periods which come to every artist, in which one does badly during the transition. I have continued to do badly. It was not a change of skin. I have become sour and ineffectual, and know it——"

"You won't mind if I say you are wrong?" Bedient asked quietly.

"No," she laughed. "Only please don't tell me that I'm only a little ahead of my time; that presently these things will dart into the public mood, and people will squabble among themselves to possess them——"