IN THE HOUSE OF GREY ONE

Bedient went one morning to the old Handel studio in East Fourteenth Street. The Grey One had asked him to come. Bedient liked the Grey One. He could laugh with Mrs. Wordling; Vina Nettleton awed him, though he was full of praise for her; he admired Kate Wilkes and had a keen relish for her mind. The latter had passed the crisis, had put on the full armor of the world; she was sharp and vindictive and implacable to the world; a woman who had won rather than lost her squareness, who showed her strength and hid her tenderness. He had rejoiced in several brushes with Kate Wilkes. There was a tang to them. A little sac of fiery acid had formed in her brain. It came from fighting the world to the last ditch, year after year. Her children played in the quick-passing columns of the periodicals ambidextrous, untamable, shockingly rough in their games, these children, but shams slunk away from their shrill laughter. In tearing down, she prepared for the Builder.

Bedient was not at all at his best with Kate Wilkes; indeed, none of the things that had aroused Vina and Beth and David, like sudden arraignments from their higher selves, came to his lips with this indomitable veteran opposite; still he would go far for ten minutes talk with her. She needed nothing that he could give; her copy had all gone to the compositor, her last forms were locked; and yet, he caught her story from queer angles on the stones, and it was a transcript from New York in this, the latest year of our Lord....

Bedient’s “poise and general decency” disturbed the arrant man-hater she had become; she called him “fanatically idealistic,” and was inclined to regard him at first as one of those smooth and finished Orientalists who have learned to use their intellects to a dangerous degree. But each time she talked with him, it seemed less possible to put a philosophical ticket upon him. “He’s not Buddhist, Vedantist, neo-Platonist,” she declared, deeply puzzled. Somehow she did not attract from him, as did Vina Nettleton, the rare pabulum which would have proved him just a Christian. Finally, from fragments brought by Vina, the Grey One, and David Cairns, she hit upon a name for him that would do, even if intended a trifle ironically at first: The Modern. She was easier after that; became very fond of him, and only doubted in her own thoughts, lest she hurt his work with the others, the good of which she was quick to see.... “He does not break training,” she said at last. “He cut out a high place and holds it easily. Suppose he is The Modern?” she asked finally. “If he is, we who thought ourselves modern, should laugh and clap our hands!” This was open heresy to the Kate Wilkes of the world. “I thought I was past that,” she sighed. “Here I am getting ready to be stung again.”

Certain of her barbed sentences caught in Bedient’s mind: “Women whom men avoid for being ‘strong-minded’ are apt to be strongest in their affections. You can prove this by the sons of clinging vines."... “Beware of the man who discusses often, and broods much, upon his spiritual growth, when he fails to make his wife happy."... “A man’s courage may be just his cowardice running forward under the fear of scorn from his fellows."... “The most passionate mother is likely to be the least satisfied with just passion from her husband. Wedded to a man capable of real love, this woman, of all earth’s creatures, is the most natural monogamist."... “A real woman had three caskets to give to a man she loved. One day she read in his eyes that he could take but the nearest and lowest; and that moment arose in her heart the wailing cry: ‘The King is dead!’"... “The half-grown man never understands that woman is happiest, and at her best in all her services to him, when he depends upon her for a few of the finer things."...

Also Kate Wilkes had a way of doing a memorable bit of criticism in a sentence or two: Regarding MacDowell, the American composer, “He left the harvest to the others, but what exquisite gleanings he found!"... As to Nietschze; “He didn’t see all; his isn’t the last word; but he crossed the Forbidden Continent, and has spoken deliriously, half-mad from the journey."... And her beloved Whitman, “America’s wisest patriot."...

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

“I might have told you just that if you hadn’t warned me.... I like your woods; they’re the sort of woods that fairies come to; and I like your fields and afternoons I can hear the bees and forget myself in them. I know they’re good.”

The Grey One whipped out a match and cigarette from the pocket of her blouse, lit it and stared at her covered easel. “You have your way, don’t you?” she asked, and her lips were tightened to keep from trembling.

“It isn’t a way,” he said. “It’s a matter of feeling. I never judge a book or picture, but when I feel them, they are good to me. I would have stopped before some of these in any gallery, because I feel them. They make me steal away

“I’m hard-hearted and a scoffer,” she said, holding fast. “It isn’t that I want to be oh, you are different. I don’t believe you were ever tired!... I see what David Cairns meant about your coming up here out of the seas with a fresh eye and all your ideals.... Don’t you see we’re all tired out! New York has made us put our ideals away commercial, romantic every sort of ideal.... Oh, it’s harder for a woman to talk like this than for a man; she’s slower to learn it. When a woman does learn it, you may know she carries scars

The Grey One arose. She looked tall and gaunt, and her eyes had that burning look which dries tears before they can be shed. He did not hasten to speak.

“It’s crude to talk so to you, but you came to-day,” she went on. “I had about given up. The race oh, it’s a race to sanctuary right enough but so long!... In the forenoons one can run, but strength doesn’t last.”

With a quick movement, the Grey One tossed up the covering from the easel. He saw a girl in red, natty figure, piquant face. It was not finished. She was to stand at the head of a saddle-horse, as yet embryonic. She stepped hastily to a little desk and poked at a formidable pile of business-looking correspondence.

“Do these look like an artist’s communications?” she asked in the dry pent way that goes with burning eyes.... “They are not, but letters to one who paints for lithographers’ stones! See here

And now she lifted a couch-cover, and drew from beneath a big portfolio which she opened on the floor before him. It was filled with flaring magazine covers, calendars, and other painted products having to do with that expensive sort of advertising which packing-houses and steel-shops afford. Girls girls mounted side and astride, girls in racing-shells and skiting motor-boats, in limousines and runabouts, in dirigibles and ’planes; seaside, mountain and prairie girls; house-boat, hunting and skating girls; even a vivid parlor variety all conventional, colorful and unsigned.

“Eight years in Europe for these,” she said in a dragging, morbid tone. “And the letters on the table say I may do more, as the managers of shirt-waist factories might say to poor sewing-women when business is good. And they pay piece-work prices just the same; and they want girls, not real girls, but things of bright paint like these! Oh, they know what they want and they must be common in order to suit girls of just paint

“And women of just flesh,” said Bedient. “New York has shown me that about so many men!”

This startled her made her forget the sailor part. It was particularly in the range of her mood that moment, and seemed finished.

“You’re going to feel a lot better, and soon,” he went on. “It’s going to be much better than you think

She drew suddenly back, hatred altering her features as a gust of wind on the face of a pool.

“You mean my marriage?” she asked, clearing her voice.

“I did not know that you were to be married,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry not to have been clearer. I meant the days to come through your work and nothing more.”

“A few have heard that I’m to be married,” she said. “I thought you had heard. As a matter of fact, it is not settled. Oh, I have croaked to you terribly please forgive me!”

“That first night, I felt that we were old friends at once,” he added, rising and standing before her. “The next day, you said it was just like a dream the night before and it was the same to me. We went up to Miss Nettleton’s on the minute, just as if we were old playmates, and you had said, ’Let’s ’... So to-day, you have only told an old friend things trying things exactly as you should. And I I think you’re brave to have done so well for so long. I like New York better. I’m coming again. I like your pictures. They are not just paint.... Hasn’t anyone told you don’t you know that it wouldn’t hurt you at all to do the others if your real pictures were just paint? And since you are driven to do them, and don’t do them out of greed, nor through commonness, nor by habit, they can’t hurt your real work? I really believe, too, that it is what you have done that will help you, and bring the better times, and not what anyone else will do.... I seem to be talking a great deal as I could not at all, except for the sense of an old friend’s authority, and to one I have found rare and admirable. Believe me, I have very good eyes, New York has not printed its metal soul upon you.”

The Grey One had listened with bowed head. A tall woman is at her loveliest, standing so. She regarded his face searchingly for an instant, smiled, and turned away.

Bedient asked no one. He did not know that the race Marguerite Grey was running was with American dollars, and that the sanctuary she meant was only a debtless spinsterhood. He did not know that she dared not give up the Handel studio while she held a single hope of her vogue returning. Only the great, who are permitted eccentricities, dare return to their garrets. Nor did Bedient know that her marriage meant she had failed utterly, and that another must square her debts; that only out of the hate of defeat could she give herself for this price.... Still, Bedient knew quite enough.

It was a little later, after he had been truly admitted into the circle he loved so well, that Beth told him the story of the Grey One’s first collision with the man world. It was a rainy afternoon; they were together in the studio he always entered with reverence.

“She is different from Vina,” Beth said, speaking of Marguerite Grey. “She has been working fearfully and she’s not made for such furious sessions as Vina Nettleton can endure. Vina seems replenished by her own atmosphere. She told me once that when her work is coming well, her whole body sings, all the functions in rhythm. Aren’t people strange? That little soft thing with baby hands! Why, her physical labor alone some days would weary a strong man and that is the thoughtless part.

“But I was telling you about the Grey One. Sometimes I think she is more noble than we understand one of those strange, solitary women who love only once. At least, she seems to ask only success in her work, and what that will bring her.” Beth thought a moment of the horrible alternative which she did not care to explain to Bedient. “A few years ago in Europe just a young thing, she was, when she met her hero. He was a good man, and loved her. I knew them both over there. In the beginning, it was one of those really golden romances, and in Italy. One day, a woman came to the Grey One, and in the lightest, brassiest way, asked to be congratulated on her engagement, mentioning the man whose attentions Marguerite had accepted as a heavenly dispensation. This was in Florence. The woman hurried away that day for London. The Grey One, just a gullible girl, was left half dead. When her lover came, she refused to see him. He wrote a letter which she foolishly sent back, unopened. And she returned to Paris all this in the first shock.... She did not hear from him again for two years. Word came that he was married no, not to that destroyer, but to a girl who made him happy, let us hope. The Grey One penetrated then to the truth. He had only a laughing acquaintance with the other woman to whom he was one of several chances. Leaving Florence, she had crippled the Grey One. This is just the bare fact but it is enough to show how the lie of a worthless woman kept Marguerite from happiness. And she has remained apart.... It is said that the Grey One encountered the destroyer here in New York a few months ago, the first time since that day in Florence. So natural was evil to this woman, that she did not remember, but came forward gushingly and would have kissed her victim....”