THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

Bedient arose at four on Saturday morning and looked out of his high window. June had come. The smell of rain was not in the air. He was grateful and drew up a chair, facing the East. The old mystery of morning unfolded over sea, and there was no blemish.... Bedient had not slept, nor during the two preceding nights. While the abundance of his strength was not abated, deep grooves (that came to abrupt blind endings) were worn in his mind from certain thoughts, and he was conscious of his body, which may be the beginning of weariness; conscious, too, of a tendency of his faculties to mark time over little things.

Yesterday the picture had come. He had hoped hard against this. Its coming had brought to him a sense of separateness from the studio, that he tried not to dwell upon in mind, but which recurred persistently.... He could not judge a portrait of himself; yet he knew this was wonderful. Beth had caught him in an animate moment, and fixed him there. Her fine ideal had put on permanence.... “Hold fast to a soul-ideal of your friend,” he remembered telling her once, “and you help him to build himself true to it. If your ideal is rudely broken, you become one of the disintegrating forces at work upon him.”

He keenly felt the disorder in his relation to Beth. The thought that held together, against all others, was that Beth loved some one, just now out of her world. He wished she could see into his mind about this; instantly, he would have helped her; his dearest labor, to restore her happiness.

He had never been confident of winning. He loved far too well, and held Beth too high, ever to become familiar in his thoughts of her as a life companion. Power lived in her presence for him; great struggles and conquerings. He loved every year she had lived; every hour of life that had brought her to this supremacy of womanhood before which he bowed, was precious to him. In this instance he was myopic. He did not see Beth Truba as other women, and failed to realize this. His penetration faltered before her, for she lived and moved in the brilliant light of his love, blended with it, so that her figure, and her frailties, lost all sharpness of contour.

He had suffered in the past three days and nights. He was proud and glad to suffer. There was no service nor suffering that he would have hesitated to accept for Beth Truba.... This day amazed him in prospect, one of her beautiful gifts to him. It was almost as if she had come to his house, lovely, unafraid, and sat laughing before his fire. One of the loftiest emotions, this sense of companionship with her. There was something of distinct loveliness in every hour they had passed together. Not one of their fragrances had he lost. These memories often held him, like mysterious gardens.

...Bedient paced the big area in front of the ferry entrance long before seven. He saw her the instant she stepped from the cross-town car. The day was momentarily brightening, yet something of the early morning red was about her. His throat tightened at sight of her radiant swiftness. Her eyes were deeper, her lips more than ever red.... On the deck of the ferry, before the start, she said:

“I feel as if we were escaping from somewhere, and could not tolerate a moment’s delay.”

...At ten o’clock they were in the saddle, and Dunstan was far behind. The morning, as perfect as ever arose in Northern summer; the azure glorified with golden light, and off to the South, a few shining counterpanes of cloud lay still. The half had not been told about Beth’s Clarendon, a huge rounded black, with a head slightly Roman, and every movement a pose. He was skimp of mane and tail; such fine grain does not run to hair. While there was sanity and breeding in his steady black eye, every look and motion suggested “too much horse” for a woman. Yet Beth handled him superbly, and from a side-saddle. Clarendon had in his temper, that gift of show aristocrats excess of life, not at all to be confused with wickedness which finds in plain outdoors and decent going, plentiful stimulus for top endeavor and hot excitement.

“I’ve had him long,” Beth said, “and though he has sprung from a walk to a trot countless times without a word from me, he has yet to slow down of his own accord. He can do his twelve miles an hour, and turn around and do it back.... You see how he handles for me.”

She delighted in his show qualities, rarely combined with such excellent substance. She showed his gaits, but rode a trot by preference. Bedient, who had a good mare, laughed joyously when his mount was forced into a run to keep abreast. Clarendon, without the slightest show of strain, had settled to his trot.... All Bedient’s thinking and imaging during the years alone, of the woman he should some time find, had never brought him anything so thrilling as this slightly flushed profile of Beth’s now. What an anchorage of reality she was, after years of dream-stuff a crown of discoveries, no less and what an honor, her gift of companionship! He felt an expansion of power, and strength to count this day great with compensation, should the future know only the interminable dull aching of absence and distance.

Bedient had started to speak of the picture, but she bade him wait.... As they rode along a country road, they came to an old ruin of a farm-house, surrounded by huge barns, some new, and all in good repair. A little beyond was a calf tied to a post. It was lying down, its legs still being largely experimental a pitifully new calf, shapeless and forlorn.

The mother was nowhere around. Sick in some far meadow, perhaps, sick of making milk for men.

“That’s a veal calf,” Beth said.

The note in her voice called his eyes. Something which the sight suggested was hateful to her. Bedient dismounted and led his chestnut mare up to the little thing, which stared, tranced in hope and fear. The mare dropped her muzzle benignantly. She understood and became self-conscious and uncomfortable. One of a group of children near the farmhouse behind them called:

“Show off! Show off!”

“They sell its rightful food,” Beth said, “and feed the poor little thing on cheaper stuff until it hardens for the butcher. Men are so big with their business.”

“There are veal calves tied to so many posts on the world’s highway,” Bedient said slowly.

“When I was younger,” Beth went on, “and used to read about the men who had done great creative things, I often found that they had to keep away from men and crowds, lest they perish from much pitying, dissipate their forces in wide, aimless outpourings of pity, which men and the systems of men called from them. Then this was long ago I used to think this a silly affectation, but I have come to understand.”

“Of course, you would come to understand,” Bedient said.

“Men who do great things are much alone,” she continued. “They become sensitive to sights and sounds and odors they are so alive, even physically. The downtown man puts on an armor. He must, or could not stay. The world seethes with agony for him who can see.”

“That is what made the sacrifice of the Christ,” Bedient declared. “Every day he died from the sights on the world’s highway

They looked back.

“It was not the Cross and the Spear, but the haggard agony of His Face that night on Gethsemane that brings to me the realization of the greatness of His suffering,” he added.

“And the disciples were too sleepy to watch and pray with him

“How gladly would the women have answered His need for human companionship that night!” he exclaimed. “But it was not so ordained. It was His hour alone, the most pregnant hour in the world’s history.”

They reached the crest of a fine hill at noon, and dismounted in the shade of three big elms. They could see small towns in the valley distances, and the profile of hilltop groves against the sky. The slopes of the hill wore the fresh green of June pasture lands; and three colts trotted up to the fence, nickering as they came.... Beth was staring away Westward through the glorious light. Bedient came close to her; she felt his eyes upon her face, turned and looked steadily into them. She was the first to look down. Beth had never seen his eyes in such strong light, nor such power of control, such serenity, such a look of inflexible integrity.... She did not like that control. It was not designed in the least to take away the hate and burning which for three days had warred against the best resistance of her mind.

That cool lofty gaze was her portion. Another on the shore ignited the fires. A devil within for days and nights had goaded her: “Yes, Beth Truba, red haired and all that, but old and cold, just the same, and strange to men.”

“I’ve wanted this day,” he said. “It was some need deeper than impulse. I wanted it just this way: A hill like this, shade of great trees that whispered, distant towns and woods, horses neighing to ours. Something more ancient and authoritative than the thing we call Memory, demanded it this way. Why, I believe we have stood together before.”

Beth smiled, for the goading devil had just whispered to her, “You were a vestal virgin doubtless oh, severely chaste!"... She said, “You believe then we have come up through ’a cycle of Cathay’?”

“If I had heard your name, just your name, over there in India,” he replied thoughtfully, “it would have had some deep meaning for me.”

“The ‘cycle of Cathay’ wasn’t enough to cure you?”

He turned quickly, but didn’t smile. “I think there was always some distance between us, that we were never equal, a difference like that between Clarendon and the chestnut. Only you were always above me, and it was the better, the right way. Beth

She looked up.

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t tell you how great you are to me just that asking nothing?”

“We are both grown-ups,” she answered readily. “You won’t mind if I find it rather hard to believe I mean, my greatness. You like my riding and the portrait

“I can judge your riding. As for the picture, it is an inspiration, though I cannot judge that so well. But it is not those

“And what then, pray?”

“Beth Truba.”

“A tired old artist whom nobody knows really.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” he declared earnestly. “There is nothing alive this moment, nothing in the great sun’s light, that has put on such a glory of maturity. Why, you are concentrated sunlight to me!”

“That’s very pretty,” she said, and turned a glance into his eyes.... The same cool deeps were there, though his face held a singular happiness. She wondered if it were because she had not forbade him to speak. Did he think she was ready, and that her heart was free?

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.