Fate Knocks at the Door by Will Levington Comfort

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There was no one on the sloping hill-road, either to the right or left,
and only the colts in the meadows. A good free thing--this elimination
of human beings--though at this height, they stood in the very eye of
the country-side. The chestnut mare was cropping the young grass by the
edge of the highway, but there were matters for Clarendon to
understand--far distances and movements not for human eyes. The colts
racing up and down the hill-fence were beneath his notice. The great
arched neck was lifted for far gazing and listening, and that which
came to his foreign senses, caused him to snort softly from time to
time....

Beth rode without hat. Her arms were bare to the elbows; her gray silk
waist open at the throat. She stretched out her arms, and the sunlight,
cut by the high elm boughs, fell upon her like a robe, woven of
shimmerings. She seemed to want her full portion of vitality from the
great upbuilding day.

"It's strong medicine--this high noon of June," she said. "One feels
like unfolding as flowers do."

And then came over him--over all his senses--something flower-like in
scent, yet having to do with no particular flower. It dilated his
nostrils, but more than that, all his senses awoke to the strange charm
of it.... The distance between them was gone that instant. Though it
may have endured for ages and ages, it was gone. He had overtaken
her.... A haunting influence; and yet of magic authority! Was it the
perfume of the lotos and the bees? It was more than that. It was the
sublimate of all his bewitchings--chaste mountains, dawns, the morning
glow upon great heights, the flock of flying swans red with daybreak;
more still, all the petals of the Adelaide passion restored in one drop
of fragrance, and lifted, a different fragrance, the essence of a
miracle! This was the perfume that came from her life, from her arms
and throat and red mouth....

It was new out of the years. All his strangely guarded strength arose
suddenly animate. A forgotten self had come back to him, all fresh and
princely out of long enchantment.... And there she stood with face
averted awaiting this Return!... This was the mysterious prince who had
wrought in darkness so long, the source of his dreams of woman's
greatness, the energy that had driven and held him true to his ideals,
the structure into which his spiritual life had been builded (was this
the world's mighty illusion possessing him?), and now the prince had
come, asking for his own.... And she was there, stretching out her
arms.

Mighty forces awoke from sleep. They were not of his mind, but deep
resolutions of all his life, forces of her own inspiring which she must
gladly, gloriously obey. Was it not her love token, this electric
power, as truly as his mind's ardor and his spiritual reverence?... The
miracle of her life's fragrance held him.... Even desire was beautiful
in a love like this. All nature trembles for the issue, when love such
as his perceives the ripe red fruit of a woman's lips.... But better
far not to know it at all, than to know the half.

* * * * *

And Beth was thinking of the cool depths in his eyes a moment before,
and of his words, "asking nothing."... "Why asks he nothing of me?...
Because I am old and cold."... Some terrific magnetism filled her
suddenly, as if she had drawn vitality from great spaces of sunlight,
and some flaming thing from the huge hot strength of Clarendon.... And
now the goading devil whispered:

"With another he would not ask, he would take! Only you--you do not
attract great passions. The source of such attraction is gone from you.
Mental interests and spiritual ideals are your sphere!... Second-rate
women whistle and the giants come! They know the lovers in men. _You_
know the sedate mental gardeners and the tepid priests. How you worship
that still, cool gazing in the eyes of men! Books and pictures are
quite enough--for your adventures in passion. In them, you meet your
great lovers--of other women. You are Beth Truba of street and studio.
You can send lovers away. You can make them afraid of your tongue,
strip them of all ardor with your nineteenth century bigotry.... You
have so many years to waste. Empty arms are so light and cool, _their_
veins are never scorched; they never dry with age!... Oh, red-haired
Beth Truba, all the spaces of sky are laughing at you! To-morrow or
next day, by the ocean, another woman will start the flames in those
cool eyes of his, and feel them singing around her!... Why do you let
him go? Only a nineteenth century mind with the ideas of a slave woman
would let him go!... Keep him with you. Show your power. Create the
giant. By no means is that the least of woman's work!"

She shuddered at such a descent.

"Would you go back and be the waiting spider forever in the
yellow-brown studio, breaking your heart in the little room when some
woman chooses to bring you news of men and the world? You would not
descend to woman's purest prerogative?... Greater women than you shall
come, and they shall avail themselves of that, and their children shall
be great in the land...."

"Oh, what a world, and what a fool!" Beth said aloud.

"Why?"

She turned at his quick, imperious tone.

"I don't--I don't know. It just came!"

Beth bit her lip, and shut her eyes. There was a booming in her brain,
as from cataracts and rapids. His face had made her suddenly weak, but
there was something glorious in being carried along in this wild
current. She had battled so long. She was no longer herself, but part
of him. The face she had seen was white; the eyes dark and piercing,
terrible in their concentration of power, but not terrible to her. All
the magic from the sunlight had come to them. They were the eyes which
command brute matter.... The Other had become a giant; this man a god.

"What a day!" she whispered.

"Let's ride on!" he said swiftly.

The horses whirled about at his word. As his hand touched hers, she
felt the thrill of it, in her limbs and scalp. He lifted her to the
saddle. There was something invincible in his arms. The strength he
used was nothing compared to that which was reserved....

She seemed the plaything of some furious, reckless happiness....
"Asking nothing! Asking nothing!" repeated again and again in her
brain. And what should he ask--and why?... Her thoughts flew by and
upward--intent, but swift to vanish, like bees in high noon. Atoms of
concentrated sunlight, sun-gold upon their wings.... The good hot sun,
all the earth stretched out for it, and giving forth green tributes.
The newest leaf and the oldest tree alike expanded with praise.... What
a splendor to be out of the city and the paint and the tragedy; to have
in her veins the warm brown earth and the good hot sun--and this mighty
dynamo beneath! She was mad with it all, and glad it was so.

Beth raised her eyes to the dazzling vault. One cannot sit a horse
so--well. She lost the rhythm of her posting, but loved the roughness
of it. The heights thralled her. Up, up, into the blue and gold, she
trembled with the ecstasy of the thought, like the bee princess in
nuptial flight--a June day like this--up, up, until the followers had
fallen back--all but two--all but one--which one?... There was a slight
pull at her skirt. She turned.

He was laughing. His hand held a fold of her dress against the cantle
of the saddle. She could not have fallen on the far side, and he was on
this.... A sudden plunge of a mount would unseat any rider, staring
straight up.... Yes, he was there!... How different the world
looked--with him there. She had ridden alone so long. She dared to look
at him again.

His eyes were fastened ahead. Could it be illusion--their fiery
intentness? She followed his glance.... The big woods--she knew them,
had ridden by them many times--how deep and green they looked!... But
what was the meaning of that set, inexorable line of his profile? What
was he battling? That was her word, her portion. For hours, days, years
she had been battling, but not now! No longer would she be one of the
veal calves tied to a post on the world's highway, to consume the pity
of poor avatars!... Avatars--the word changed the whole order of her
thoughts; and those which came were not like hers, but reckless
ventures on forbidden ground; and, too, there was zest in the very
foreignness of the thoughts: Avatars--did they not spring into being
from such instants as this--high noon, vitality rising to the sun, all
earth in the stillness of creation; and above, blue and gold, millions
and millions of leagues of sheer happiness; and behind--put far behind
for the hour--all crawling and contending creatures....

And now the yellow-brown studio would not remain behind, but swept
clearly into her thinking. Something was queer about it. Yes, the havoc
of loneliness and suffering was gone.... And there seemed a rustling in
the far shadows of the little room. Could it be the Shadowy Sister
returning? And that instant, with a realism that haunted her for years,
there came--to her human or psychic sense, she could never tell--_a
tiny cry!_... Beth almost swooned. His hand sustained ... and then she
saw again his laughing face; all the intensity gone. It was carved of
sunlight. Everything was sunlight.

Beth spoke to Clarendon. She would ride--show him, she needed no hand
in riding. The great beast settled down to his famous trot, pulling the
chestnut mare to a run. Clarendon was steady as a car; the faster his
trot, the easier to ride.... She turned and watched this magician
beside her; his bridle-arm lifted, the leather held lightly as a
pencil; laughing, asking nothing, needing not to ask. And she was
unafraid, rejoicing in his power. All fear and slavishness and
rebellion, all that was bleak and nineteenth century, far behind. This
was the Rousing Modern Hour--her high day.

Nearer and nearer--the big woods.... She was thinking of a wonderful
little path ahead. She had never ventured in alone, a deep, leafy
footpath, soft with moss and fern-embroidered.... There was no one on
the road ahead, nor behind; only young corn in the sloping field on the
left, and now the big woods closed in on the right, and Beth reined a
little.

There was no shade upon the highway, even with the wood at hand. The
horses were trampling their own shadows in this zenith hour.... She
watched his eye quicken as he noted the little path.

"Ah--let's go in!" he called, pulling up.

It was her thought. "I've always wanted to, but never dared, alone,"
she panted, bringing Clarendon down.

Bedient dismounted, pulled the reins over the mare's head and through
his arm; then held up both hands to her.... Something made her hesitate
a second. He did not seem to consider her faltering.

"Oh, Beth, why should _we_ rush in there, as if we were afraid of the
light?... Come!"

She knew by his eyes what would happen; and yet she leaned forward,
until his hands fitted under her arms, and her eyelids dropped against
the blinding light....

"It had to be in the great sunlight--_that!_.... How glorious you are!"

"Please ... put me down!"

But again, he kissed her mouth, and the shut eyelids. And when her feet
at last touched the earth, he caught her up again, because her figure
swayed a little,--and laughed and kissed her--until the fainting
passed....

* * * * *

"... And--these--were--the--great--things--you asked permission to tell
me?" she said slowly, without raising her eyes.

The strange smile on her scarlet lips, and the lustrous pallor of her
face, so wonderfully prevailed, that he caught her in his arms again.
And they were quite alone in that mighty light, as if they had
penetrated dragons-deep in an enchanted forest.

"I cannot help it. You are stronger!" she said in the same trailing,
faery tone.... "And that distance--between us--that you always felt--in
'the cycle of Cathay'--you seem to have overcome that----"

"It was another century----"

"Oh----"

"And now to explore the wood!"

"But the horses, sir--"

"They will stand."

... She would not let him help, but loosened Clarendon's bridle, and
slipping out the bit, put the head-straps back. Bedient shook his head.

"It may slide askew that way, and worry him more than if the bit were
in," he said.

"If you command, I shall put it back."

"Let me."

"No."

Smiling, he watched her. The frail left hand parted the huge foamy
jaws, and held them apart--thumb and little finger--while the other
hand, behind Clarendon's ears, drew the bit home. The big fellow
decently bowed his head to take the steel from her. Then she patted the
mouse-colored muzzle, and gave the reins to the man, who, much
marvelling, tethered the two horses together.

Then they set forth into the wood.

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.

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