TWO DAVIDS COME TO BETH

Beth Truba awoke late. Goliath of Gath had just fallen with obituary hiccoughs and a great clatter of armor.... She sat up, and reviewed recent events backward. The stone had sunk into the forehead. David came down to meet the giant smiling. There was no anger about it. The stone had been slung leisurely. Before that, the boy had been brought in from his sheep-herding to be anointed king. Samuel had seen it in a vision, and not otherwise.... David found Saul’s armor irksome, took up his staff, and went to the brook for good, sizable stones, just as if he had spied a wolf slavering at the herds from the brow of the hill....

Beth laughed, and wondered why the Bible story had come back in her dream. There seemed no clue, not even when she contemplated the events of the rather remarkable evening preceding. Many minutes afterward, however, arranging her hair, she found herself repeating:

“Now he was ruddy, and withal, of a beautiful countenance." Finally it came to her, and she was pleased and astonished: Throughout the evening, Beth had felt that some Bible description exactly fitted in her mind to the new impression of Bedient, but she could not think of it then. Her effort had brought it forth in the night, and the whole story that went with it.

Beth drank a bottle of milk, ashamed of the hour, though she had not slept long. She loved mornings; New York could never change her delight in the long forenoon. She was at work at two, and undisturbed for two hours. Beth’s studio was the garret of an old mansion, a step from Fifth Avenue in the Thirties. Its effect, as one entered, was golden at midday, and turned brown with the first shadows.

Mrs. Wordling called at four. For a woman who had been scornfully analyzed by Kate Wilkes (who really could be vitriol-tongued) and ordered away from Vina Nettleton’s door like an untimely beggar, Mrs. Wordling looked remarkably well. In point of fact, Mrs. Wordling was ungovernably pretty. Moreover, she knew Kate Wilkes well enough to understand that she was too busy to sketch the characters of other women except for their own benefit. As for Vina Nettleton, the cloistered, she could do as she liked, being great in her calling; besides, a woman who had a man-visitor so rarely as Vina Nettleton, might be expected to become snappy and excited. Bedient was proving a rather stiff drug. Mrs. Wordling now wished to observe his action upon Beth Truba. “I’ll appear to regard it as a perfectly lady-like party, which it was,” she mused, in the dingy interminable stairways, the elevator being an uncertain quantity “and run no risk of being thrown three nights.”

“Beth, you’re looking really right,” Mrs. Wordling enthused.

“So good of you,” said Beth. “Must be lovely out, isn’t it?... The poster will be ready in three or four days.... Didn’t we have a good time at David’s party?”

“Such a good time

“Really must have, since we stayed until an unconscionable hour. Half-past two when we broke up

“All of that, Beth.”

The artist looked up from her work. Mrs. Wordling’s acquiescences seemed modulated. The “Beths” were no more frequent than usual, however. The artist had grown used to this from certain people. It appeared that her name was so to the point, that many kept it juggling through their conversation with her, like a ball in a fountain.... The poster, Beth had consented to do in a weak moment. It was to be framed for theatre-lobbies. People whom Beth painted were seldom quite the same afterward to her. She seemed to learn too much. She had greatly admired Mrs. Wordling’s good nature at the beginning. There was no objection now; only the actress had given her in quantity what had first attracted, and quantity had palled. Beth often wished she did not discern so critically.... Just now she divined that her caller wanted to discuss Cairns’ friend. The result was that Mrs. Wordling left after a half-hour, with Bedient heavier and more undeveloped than ever in her consciousness. Always a considerable social factor in her theatrical companies, Mrs. Wordling was challenged by the people of the Smilax Club. She was not getting on with them, and the thought piqued. Bedient, who had not greatly impressed her, had apparently struck twelve with the others. Therefore, he became at once both an object and a means. There was a way to prove her artistry....

Beth went on with her painting, the face of another whom she had found out. And painting, she smiled and thought. She was like a pearl in the good North light. Across the pallor of her face ran a magnetic current of color from the famous hair to the crimson jacket she wore, pinned at the throat by a soaring gull, with the tiniest ruby for an eye.... David Cairns called. He seemed drawn and nervous. Obviously he had come to say things. Beth knew his moods.

“David, we had a memorable time last night, you know that,” she said. “You know, too, that I have been, and am, friendly to Mrs. Wordling. As the party turned out, I’m interested to know just how you came to choose the guests. We drew rather close together for New Yorkers

“That’s a fact.”

“But the Grey One is engaged to be married. In theory, Kate Wilkes is a man-hater. Dear little Vina is consecrated to her ‘Stations’ for two years more. Eliminate me as, forborne, a spinster.... Yet you told me two or three days ago that you wouldn’t be surprised if your friend took his lady back

“That may be true, Beth,” he interrupted. “But I spoke hastily. It sounds crude and an infringement now. I really didn’t know Bedient

“When you invited your guests Mrs. Wordling?”

“I should have consulted someone

“Not at all, David. It was eminently right. I am not criticising, just interested.”

“I’ve been revoluting inside. Mrs. Wordling happened three days ago, when I was first thinking out the party. I didn’t know we were to get into real things. ‘Ah, here’s a ripe rounding influence,’ said I. ’Do come, Mrs. Wordling.’ Maybe I did figure out the contrast she furnished. She’s friendly and powerfully pretty and, why, I see it now, one of the Wordlings of this world would have taken Andrew Bedient into camp years ago, if he were designed for that kind of woman. Why, that’s the kind of woman he doubtless knows

“Do you know what I think?” Beth inquired. “I think you should be punished for using Mrs. Wordling or anyone else as a foil. That’s a Wordl a woman’s strategy.”

“I know it, Beth,” Cairns said excitedly. “But I didn’t think of it until afterward. I wouldn’t do it again.”

She was startled, saw too late that this was no time for showing him his crudities.

“You’re a dear boy ” she began.

“No, I’m not, Beth. Oh, it isn’t the only thing that has been rammed home to me.... Me; there’s so much me mixed up in my mind, so much tiresome and squalid me, that I wonder every decent person hasnt cut me long since for a bore and a nuisance. Why, I had become all puny and blinded my stomach, my desires, markets, memories, ambitions, doubts, rages, rights, poses and conceits. I really need to tell some one, to unveil before some one who won’t wince, but treasure the little moral residuum

“You have done well to come to Beth,” she said, leaning forward and patting his shoulder with the thin stem of her brush, though a woman always feels her years when a man brings woes such as these to her.... It was Beth’s weakness (or strength) that she could never reveal the intimacies of her heart. Only sometimes in half-humorous generalities, she permitted things to escape, thinking no one understood.

“Thanks, Beth. I’m grateful,” Cairns said. “I seem to have missed for a long time the bigger dimension in people, books, pictures, faces, even in the heart. It’s a long time since I set out this way, a down-grade, and the last few days, I’ve heard the rapids. I’m going back, as far and as fast as I can up-stream. And this is no lie; no pose.”

“I repeat, you’re a dear boy

“Oh, it’s Bedient who jerked me up straight. I’d have gone on.... And to think I made him wait over an hour, when he first called.... He’s the finest bit of man-stuff I’ve ever known, Beth.”

She found herself relieved, that he had given to the stranger the praise.

“... And, Beth, if you want to dig for his views, you’ll get them. He says New York plucks everything green; opinionates on the wing, makes personal capital out of another’s offering, refusing to wait for the fineness of impersonal judgment. He asks nothing more stimulating than the capacity to say on occasion, ‘I don’t know,’ flat and unqualified. He sees everywhere, the readiness to be clever instead of true. So many New Yorkers, he says, are like fishes, that, knowing water, disclaim the possibility of air.

“You know, Beth, Bedient never encountered what America was thinking and reading, until a few months ago down on his Island. 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 coarser article. That’s the first evil prostituting 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 prostituted 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 quantities 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 passions 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.