THE STORY OF THE MOTHER

Andrew Bedient had entered the company of lovers.... There have been great lovers who were not otherwise great men, but never a great man who was not a great lover.... On the night he had first seen Beth Truba across the table, deep within there had been a swift ignition of altar-flames that would never cease to burn. Often in his reading and thinking, in pictures he had seen, and in his limited adventures into music; wherever, in fact, man had done well in the arts, the vision of some great woman was behind the work for his eyes; famous and lovely women long-dead, whose kisses are imperishable in tone or pigment or tale; women who called to themselves for a little space the big-souled men of their time, and sent them away illustrious. And these men forever afterward brought their art to witness that such women are the way to the Way of Life.

Bedient had rejoiced to discover the two women in every great man’s life: the woman who visioned his greatness in the mothering; and the woman who saw it potentially afterward and ignited it. How often the latter loosed a landslide of love at the ignition, and how seldom she stepped aside to let it pass!

All this thinking for years upon the beauty and fineness of women was focussed now.... The depth of his humility, and the vastness of his appreciation were the essential beginnings of the love of this hour, just as they would be, if he were ready to perform some great creative expression in art. The boyhood of a genius is a wild turning from one passionate adoration to another among the masters of his art; often his gift of appreciation is a generation ahead of his capacity to produce. And love is the genius of mothering, the greatest of all the arts. The love that a man inspires in a woman’s heart is her expression of the Holy Spirit. According to the degree and beauty of that love, does the woman’s child lift its head above the brute; according to the greater or lesser expression of this Mystic Motherhood in the world, at a certain hour, must be determined the morality of the race.

A fortnight in New York had terrorized Bedient. He perceived that men had not humility, nor passionate appreciation for anything; that they were dazed with their own or other men’s accumulations; that they destroyed every dream of woman, drove the kingdom of heaven from her heart, with their comings and their goings and their commonness. He came to believe that this was an age of impossible men, impossible lovers, artists, and critics, because they had not the delicacy and wisdom to accept the finer forces, which women bring into the world for men.

Indeed, he saw that this was woman’s gray hour of restless hoping, pitiful dreaming and untellable pain; that out of these must come the new generation. Then it appeared to him with splendid cheer, that woman had not fallen to these modern miseries, but risen to them, from a millénium of serfdom, untimely outraging, hideous momentary loving, brute mastery, ownership and drudgery.... These of to-day were finer sufferings; this an age of transition in which she was passing through valleys of terrible shadow, but having preserved her natural greatness through the milléniums, she could not fail now with her poor gleanings of real love to give the world a generation of finer-grained men.

Women, then, he thought, have a natural greatness which man cannot destroy. If men were able to destroy it, the sources of the saving principle of the race would be shut off. But marvellously can man inspire this natural greatness, make it immense and world-swaying by bringing out the best of women, and yet how few have this chivalry! Here was the anguish, the failure. With his mind filled with these illimitable possibilities, Bedient was overcome with his insight of New York, the awfulness of ignorance and cruelty in the ordinary relations of man with woman.

Bedient firmly believed that if women were granted (a heavenly dispensation, it would have to be) a decade of happiness beginning now, a decade of lovers of their own choosing, men of delicacy and wisdom, that thirty years from now there would be that poise and sweetness in the world that dreamers descry in far future ages. And here and there would be a beyond-man, indeed; and here and there cosmic, instead of mere self-consciousness.

He believed that the greatest miracle for the unsealed eye in this day, was that woman had emerged from a degraded past with this powerful present vitality; the capacity to hope and dream and suffer and be aroused; that she had the fervor and power of visioning left to be aroused! Surely this was the Third of the Trinity sustaining her.... Bedient began to study with sympathy and regard those groups of women, willing to sacrifice the best of their natures and descend into man’s spheres of action, there to wring from man on his own ground the privileges so doggedly withheld. He saw that their sacrifice was heroic; that their cause was “in the air”; that this was but one startling manifestation of a great feminist seething over the world; and yet every brightness of evolution depended, as he saw it, upon woman being herself, retaining first of all those stores of beauty and spirit which are designed to be her gifts to manhood and the race. In the eyes of the future, he believed, these women would stand as the inspired pioneers of a rending transition period.

The note that came from Beth Truba, saying that she would see him about the portrait at two on Tuesday, Bedient regarded as one of the happiest things that ever befell. It was delivered at the Club by messenger that Monday night. Very well he knew, that she gracefully might have declined, and would have, had she not been able to look above a certain misleading event.

There were moments in which he seemed always to have known Beth Truba. Had he come back after long world-straying?

There was a painting of Bernhardt in an upper gallery at the Club, that he had regarded with no little emotion during past days. The face of the greatest actress, so intensely feminine, in strangely effective profile between a white feathery collar and a white fur hat, had made him think of Beth Truba in a score of subtle ways. They told him that the painting had been done by a young Italian, who had shown the good taste to worship the creator of La Samaritaine.... Bedient wished he could paint the russet-gold hair and the lustrous pallor of ivory which shone from Beth’s skin, and put upon the canvas at the last, what had been a revelation to him, and which had carried credentials to the Bedient throne, to the very crown-cabinet of his empire, the fine and enduring spirit in her brilliant eyes.

They met in the studio on the business basis. It was a gray day, one of those soft, misty, growing days. She was a trifle taller than he had thought. Something of the world-habit was about her, or world-wear, a professionalism that work had taught her, and a bit of humor now and then. The studio was filled with pictures, many studies of her own, bits of Paris and Florence, many flowers and heads. There was one door which opened into a little white room. The door was only partly open, and it was shut altogether presently. Bedient had only looked within it once, but reverently. Besides, there was a screen which covered an arcanum, from which tea and cakes and sandwiches came on occasion. An upright piano, some shelves of books, an old-fashioned mantle and fire-place; and the rest pictures and yellow-brown hangings and lounges. He wondered if anyone ever saw Beth’s pictures so deeply as he.... She was in her blouse. The gray light subdued the richness of her hair, but made her pallor more luminous. She was very swift and still in her own house.

A chair was placed for him, and Beth went back to her stool under the light. Occasionally she asked him to look at certain pictures in her room, studying him as he turned. She told him of adorable springtimes in Florence; how once she had asked a beautiful Italian peasant boy to help her with an easel, and some other matters, up a long flight of marble steps, and he had answered, with drowsy gentleness, “Please ask another boy, Signorina. I have dined to-day."... And Bedient watched, when her head was bowed over the board upon her knee. Her hair, so wonderful now in the shadows, made amazing promises for sunlit days. Uncommon energy was in his heart, and a buoyant activity of mind that formed, one after another, ideals for her happiness.

“Yesterday at this time,” she said finally, “Vina Nettleton was here. She spoke of your great help in her work

“Her studio was thrilling to me.... Altogether, getting back to New York has been my greatest experience.”

“You have been away very long?”

“So long that I don’t remember leaving, nor anything about it, except the boats and whistles, the elevated railways and the Park, and certain strains of music. I remember seeing the animals, and the hall of that house

“Where the light frightened you?”

“Yes. And I remember the bees.... I have ridden through and about the Park several times, but I can’t seem to get anything back. I felt like asking questions, as I did long ago, of my mother.”

Beth wanted to tell him that she would ride with him sometime and answer questions, but he seemed very near the deep places, and she dared not urge nor interrupt.

“It was very clear to me then, that we needed each other,” he added. “A child knows that. She must have answered all the questions in the world, for I was always satisfied. I wonder that she had time to think about her own things.... Isn’t it remarkable, and I don’t remember anything she said?”

Bedient seemed to be thinking aloud, as if this were the right place to talk of these things. They had been in the foreground of his mind continually, but never uttered before.

“It was always above words our relation,” he went on presently. “Though we must have talked and talked it is not the words I remember but realizations of truth which came to me afterward, from them. What a place for a little boy’s hand to be!...

“I remember the long voyage, and she was always near. There were many strange things far too strange to remember; and then, the sick room. She was a long time there. I could not be with her as much as I wanted. It was very miserable all around, though it seems the people were not unkind. They must have been very poor. And then, one night I knew that my mother was going to die. I could not move, when this came to me. I tried not to breathe, tried to die too; and some one came in and shook me, and it was all red about my eyes.

“They took me to her, but I couldn’t tell what I knew, though she saw it. And this I remember, though it was in the dark. The others were sent away, and she made a place for me on her arm, and she laughed, and whispered and whispered. Why, she made me over that night on her arm!

“She must have whispered it a thousand times so it left a lasting impression. Though I could not always see her, she would always be near! That remains from the night, though none of the words ever came back. I never lost that, and it was true.... Do you see how great she was to laugh that night?... And how she had to struggle to leave that message on such a little boy’s mind?... More wonderful and wonderful it becomes, as I grow older. She was dying, and we had been such dependent lovers. She was not leaving me, as it had been with us, nor in any way as she liked....

“She must have grappled with all the forces that drive the world that night!... First, I was happy on her arm and then, through the long hours, and mysteriously, she implanted her message.... And see what came of it see her strength! The actual parting was not so terrible she had builded a fortress around me against that not so terrible as the hours before, when I tried not to breathe.”

Beth did not raise her eyes as he paused. She could not speak. The little boy had come home to her mind like a wraith-child of her own. She was shaken with a passion of pity.

“It seems it was meant for me to stay in that house, but I couldn’t,” Bedient went on. “They probably bothered a great deal after I stole away, and tried to find me. But they didn’t.... And I went down where there were ships. I think the ships fascinated me, because we had come on one. I slipped aboard, and fell asleep below. The sailors found me after we had cleared. They were very good, and called me ’Handy.’... I think my mother must have taught me my letters, for when an old sailor, with rings in his ears, pointed out to me the name of the ship on the jolly-boat, the letters came back to me. I was soon reading the Bible. That was the book I cut my teeth on, as they say.... And one time, as we were leaving port, I thought I had better have a name. One of the men had asked me, you see, and I was only able to say, ‘Handy.’ And just then, we passed an old low schooner. She had three masts; her planking was gray and weathered, and her seams gaped. On her stern, I saw in faded sprawly letters, that had been black:

“ANDREW BEDIENT

“Of somewhere, I couldn’t make out. So I took that for my name. It fitted ‘Handy’ and the little boy’s idea of bigness and actuality, because I had seen it in print.... I never saw the old schooner again. I don’t know the port in which she lay at the time; nor the port where my mother died. You see, I was very little.... Everyone was good to me. And it is true that my mother was near.... There were places and times that must have put dull care into her eyes, but she was the true sentry. I only knew when I was asleep.”

It was beautiful to Beth, the way he spoke. His heart seemed to say, “God love her!” with every sentence.

Her lips breathed the words, her eyes had long questioned:

“And your father?”

The room suddenly filled with her fateful words.

“My father?” he repeated. “He was never with my mother. I did not understand until long afterward, but she meant me to understand that she was not married. She impressed it upon my consciousness for me to understand when I was older.”

Beth could have knelt in her humility that moment.

“Please forgive me for asking,” she faltered.

“It was right. I intended to tell you.”

Some strange, sustaining atmosphere came from him. His words lifted her. Beth saw upon his brow and face the poise and fineness of a love-child.... With all the mother’s giving there had been no name for him; and he had told her with all the ease and grace of one who knows in his heart a mother’s purity of soul.... It was hard for Beth to realize, with Bedient sitting there, that the world makes tragic secrets of these things he had told her; that lives of lesser men have been ruined with the fear of such discoveries.... Nothing of so intense and intimate appeal had ever come to her studio, as the heroism of this mother, impressing upon her tortured and desperate child, that though taken from him, she would be near always.... The sensitive Vina had seemed to see the mother near him, her hand upon his head, saying with a laugh, “This is my Art and he lives!”

Beth spoke at last: “You honor me, Mr. Bedient, in telling me these deep things.”

“This seemed the place,” he said, leaning forward. “It’s extraordinary when I recall I have only been here an hour or so. It would seem absurd to some women, but the story knew where it belonged.... In fact, it is hard for me to remember that this is our first talk alone.... Perhaps you should know, that I’ve never spoken of my mother to anyone else.... I never could find the port where she died.”

They learned that they could be silent together.... Beth knew that she would have extended conference with the Shadowy Sister when alone. Big things were enacting in the depths. There was another thing that Vina had said regarding the appeal of Bedient personally to her, which required much understanding.... Beth had found herself thinking (in Bedient’s presence) that she might have been hasty and imperious in sending the Other away. She had been rather proud of her iron courage up to this hour. Of course, it was ridiculous that Bedient should recall the Other, and after months suggest her unreasonableness; yet these things recurred.... Moreover, a moment after Bedient’s entering, there had been no embarrassment between them. Not only had they dared be silent, but they had not tried each other out tentatively by talking about people they knew. Then he had said it was hard for him to remember this was their first talk together alone. Beth realized that here was a subject who would not bore her before his portrait was finished.

“Does David Cairns know Miss Nettleton very well?” Bedient asked, as he was leaving.

She smiled at the question, and was about to reply that they had been right good friends for years, when it occurred that he might have a deeper meaning.

Bedient resumed while she was thinking: “I know that he admires her work and intelligence, but he never spoke to me of any further discoveries. Perhaps he wouldn’t.... He’s a singularly fine chap, finer than I knew.... I noticed a short essay in your stand that contains a sentence I cannot forget. It was about a rare man who ’stooped and picked up a fair-coined soul that lay rusting in a pool of tears.’”

“Browning,” she said excitedly.

“Yes.... Good-by and thank you.... To-morrow?”

“Yes.”

He left her in the whirl of this new conception. She was taking dinner with David Cairns that night. David, she felt, had arranged this for further urging in the matter of her seeing his friend. And now she smiled at the surprise in store for him; then for a long time, until the yellows and browns were thickly shadowed about her, Beth sat very still, thinking about the Vina Nettleton of yesterday, and the altered and humble David Cairns of the past fortnight.... In the single saying of Bedient’s, that he had found Cairns finer than he knew, there was a remarkable, winsome quality for her perception. Bedient had started the revolution which was clearing the inner atmospheres of his friend; and yet, he refused any part.

David took her for dinner to a club far down-town a dining-room on the twentieth floor, overlooking the rivers and the bay, the shipping and the far shores pointed off with lights.... They waited by a window in the main hall for a moment while a smaller room was being arranged. Forty or more business men were banqueting in a glare of light and glass and red roses a commercial dinner with speeches. The talk had to do with earnings, per cents, leakages, markets and such matters. The lower lid of many an eye was updrawn in calculation.

Beth shivered, for she saw avarice, cunning, bluff, campaigning with humor and natural forces. “The starry night and the majestic rivers might just as well be plaster-walls,” she whispered. “What terrible occupations are these to make our brothers so dull, bald and stodgy-looking?”

“It’s their art,” said Cairns. “They start in merrily enough, but it’s a fight out in the centre of the current. You see them all of one genial dining-countenance, yet this day they fought each other in the streets below, and to-morrow again.... It’s not only the sweep of the current, but each other, they have to fight.... Oh, it’s very easy for an artist to look and feel superior, Beth, but we know very well how much is sordid routine in our own decenter games and suppose we had been called to money-making instead. It would catch us young, and we’d either harden or fail.”

... They were taken to a place of stillness and the night-view was restoring.... Though Cairns had just left Bedient, he had not been told about the portrait nor the first sitting. Beth wondered if Bedient foresaw that she would appreciate this. She was getting so that she could believe anything of the Wanderer. For a long time they talked about him.... Cairns already was emerging from the miseries of reaction; new ways of work had opened; he was fired with fresh growth and delights of service. Beth was charmed with him.... At last she said:

“Nor has Mr. Bedient missed those rare and subtle things which make Vina Nettleton the most important woman of my acquaintance.”

The sentence was a studied challenge.

“You mean in her work?” he said, under the first spur.

“Did I say artist? I meant woman ’most important woman’

“That’s what you said.”

“Yes, I thought so ” Beth shaded the interior light from her eyes to regard the night through the open window. “It was misty gray all day, and yet it is clear now as a summer night.”

“And so Bedient sees more than a remarkable artist in Vina?” Cairns mused.

“That much is for the world to see.... Why, those dollar-eating gentlemen in the big room could see that, if they interested themselves in her kind of work. But they are not trained to know real women. Their work keeps them from knowing such things. When they marry a real woman, it’s an accident, largely. A diadem of paste would have caught their eyes quite as quickly. Sometimes I think they prefer paste jewels.... Only here and there a man of deep discernment reads the truth and is held by it. What a fortune is that discernment! A woman may well tremble before that kind of vision, for it is her own, empowered with a man’s understanding

“Why, Beth, that’s Bedient’s mind exactly!” Cairns exclaimed. “A woman’s vision of the finest sort, empowered with a man’s understanding

“Of the finest sort,” Beth finished laughingly. “By the way, that’s a good definition of a prophet, isn’t it?”

“It does work out,” he said, thinking hard.

Beth observed with interest at this point, that Bedient had confined his discussion of the visioning feminine principle to Vina. There were several approaches to his elevation.

“How glorious it is to see things, David!” she exclaimed happily. “Even to see things after they are pointed out. And you I’m really so glad about you! You’re coming along so finely, and putting away boyish things.”

She reached across the table and dropped her hand upon his sleeve.

“It’s so tonic and bracing to watch one’s friend burst into bloom!... I needed the stimulus, too. You are helping me.”

It was Cairns’ turn to shade his eyes for a clearer view of the night.