FULL DAY UPON THE PLAIN

Beth awoke early Christmas morning, and leaned out of the window to look at the East. After a week of the years darkest days, had come a lordly morn, bright garments fresh from ocean.... The night had shown her clearly the great thing which had befallen Andrew Bedient, a suggestion of which had come to her from the first Equatorian letter. And how wonderfully his life had prepared him for it!... Thirty-odd swift strange years ships, Asia, queer voices, far travels, unspoken friendships, possibly a point or two of passion, glimpses into dim lands and dark lives, the adored memory of his Mother whispered only to one dear living heart, yet glowing over all his days

“It was a man’s love, then,” Beth whispered.

She remembered his comings and goings, his sayings and silences. All were leveled and subdued by a serene and far-evolved spirit; and upon all was the flower of truth. His love had been an inner reverent thing which did not vaunt itself. All but once the passions he had felt were his own deep property.... The Shadowy Sister, who would live on when the worn-out earth of her being sank into its seventh year of restoring, yes, the Shadowy Sister had been chastened and strengthened by his passing.

...Beth saw the little boy, faring forth alone without the Mother’s hand out into the great world of sea under his star. Not a single preconception had his mind contained. Everything in the world had been for him to take, and when he would have taken something ill, the Mother had come and prevailed.... Only once he was denied she, Beth, had done that. Did the Mother prevail against her?... But how mightily had he desired her!

Beth saw she had betrayed herself. She had been too much an artist of the world, too little a visionary. She had not seen deeply enough his inner beauty and integrity; too accustomed had she become to the myriad-flaring commonness of daily life.... But would the greater dimension have come to him, if she had given him the happiness he thought he wanted? Had he turned to Vina Nettleton the man-love she, Beth, had felt, and been answered with swift adoration, would he have met in this life the Great Light on his hills?

...Too much artist how Beth understood what that meant now! There is a way to God through the arts, but it is a way of quicksands and miasmas, of deep forests and abysses. Only giants emerge unhurt in spirit. The artist is taught to worship line and surface; his early paths are the paths of sensuousness. He may be held true at first by the rigors of denial but what a turning is the first success his every capacity of sense is suddenly tested, as only an artist’s can be! Then, the hatred of the unsuccessful; he must forge ahead in the teeth of a great wind of contemporary hostility, which rouses the Ego and not the Spirit. And finally the artist must choose between his visions, for alike come purity and evil. The road of genius runs ever close to the black abyss of madness. The human mind ignited with genius is like an old time-weakened building, in which is installed new machinery of startling power. What a racking upon old fabric!

The simple religious nature with its ventures into a milder spiritual country, puts on glory with far less danger and pain than the artist, and what a perfect surface is prepared within him for the arts to be painted upon!

Beth knew she had lived her art-life bravely, loved her work with valor, and served it with the best of her eye and hand. The life of just-woman, she had wanted more, and idealized as only an artist can to be a man’s maiden, a man’s mate and the mother of his babes, but this was not for her. The man had come, and she had turned him away. Just-woman would have held him fast. Yes, it was the artist that had faltered at the right moment the resolute creative force within her, weathered in suffering, not to be intimidated, slow, tragically slow to bow down.... A little Salvation band passed below:

Joy to the world,
The Lord is Come

Eight notes of the descending scale sounded mightily from drum and cornet....

Bedient was coming this morning. He had asked to, the night before; asked if he might come early.... What a morning for bleak December! She went to the window. Islands of rose and lily were softly blooming in the lakes of Eastern light. Heaven was building in the East its spires to rise unto high noon....

His step was on the stair. Beth hurried to the door. She saw his strange smile, and the bundle in his arms.

“I thought you would like to play with him for a while,” he said. “He’s a wonderfully blessed little boy.... You really had to see him

Beth had taken the babe to a far corner and rushed to shut the window. Now, she bent over the coverings.

“I have always wanted to see you, just like that,” Bedient added. “...I know the little boy’s story.... He is amazingly rich they both gave him the blue flower. He is love-essence.... May I leave him a little while, until I get some other things?”

Out of the fervent heat he had come. Beth looked up. Bedient had drawn back to the door. Light from the hidden sun was in the room.... He was gone.

Beth did not yet know the babe’s story. Some dying woman’s love-child, she thought.... She would give him her years to make him brave and beautiful. It would be her gift to the world her greatest painting and the little child would name it Mother.

“He means me to have it!” she murmured. “I think this has been struggling to get into my heart for years the child of some woman who has kissed and died for it! ... I think I think this is the end of the fiery waiting.... Little boy, you shall heal the broken dreams, and I shall read in your eyes the world-secret which aches so heavily in the breasts of women.”

Long afterward she heard his step upon the stair again.... As she turned to the door from the far corner there was a tiny cry just as she had heard it before in that high noon.

She went back to the child.

And Bedient with further bundles, waited smiling outside the door.