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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15603-8.txt b/15603-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ca2a43 --- /dev/null +++ b/15603-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11874 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, One Man in His Time, by Ellen Glasgow + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: One Man in His Time + + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: April 11, 2005 [eBook #15603] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME*** + + +E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +ONE MAN IN HIS TIME + +by + +ELLEN GLASGOW + +1922 + + + + + + + +"One man in his time plays many parts." + + + + +NOTE + +No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past or +present. + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I. THE SHADOW + + II. GIDEON VETCH + + III. CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP + + IV. THE TRIBAL INSTINCT + + V. MARGARET + + VI. MAGIC + + VII. CORINNA GOES TO WAR + + VIII. THE WORLD AND PATTY + + IX. SEPTEMBER ROSES + + X. PATTY AND CORINNA + + XI. THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE + + XII. A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS + + XIII. CORINNA WONDERS + + XIV. A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE + + XV. CORINNA OBSERVES + + XVI. THE FEAR OF LIFE + + XVII. MRS. GREEN + + XVIII. MYSTIFICATION + + XIX. THE SIXTH SENSE + + XX. CORINNA FACES LIFE + + XXI. DANCE MUSIC + + XXII. THE NIGHT + + XXIII. THE DAWN + + XXIV. THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SHADOW + + +The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through the +Capitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountains +were in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees the +sky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over the +head of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shot +suddenly before it vanished amid the spires and chimneys of the city, +which looked as visionary and insubstantial as the glowing horizon. + +Stopping midway of the road, Stephen Culpeper glanced back over the +vague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spun +mauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a new +and inscrutable force--the force of an idea--had risen within the last +few months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meant +in his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watched +the decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the past +remained untouched. Not the old buildings, not the old trees, not even +the old memories. Clustering traditions had fled in the white blaze of +electricity; the quaint brick walks, with their rich colour in the +sunlight, were beginning to disappear beneath the expressionless mask of +concrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather's +day; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and naked +and undistinguished--yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising. +Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finer +things, had overwhelmed the world of established customs in which he +lived. + +As he lifted his face to the sky, his grave young features revealed a +subtle kinship to the statues beneath the mounted Washington in the +drive, as if both flesh and bronze had been moulded by the dominant +spirit of race. Like the heroes of the Revolution, he appeared a +stranger in an age which had degraded manners and enthroned commerce; +and like them also he seemed to survey the present from some +inaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and a +certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his +well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal. +Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he +was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him." +His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the +faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member +of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Only +the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an +uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling +buried beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished an +inarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds. The war had left +him with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and this +increased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and his +inability to make a sustained effort to change it. + +The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appeared +to swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred the +white slopes with violet shadows. In the topmost branches of an old +sycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like a +luminous thread. The twilight was intensely still, and the noises of the +city fell with a metallic sound on his ears, as if a multitude of bells +were ringing about him. While he walked on past the bald outline of the +restored and enlarged Capitol, this imaginary concert grew gradually +fainter, until he heard above it presently the sudden closing of a +window in the Governor's mansion--as the old gray house was called. + +Pausing abruptly, the young man frowned as his eyes fell on the charming +Georgian front, which presided like a serene and spacious memory over +the modern utilitarian purpose that was devastating the Square. Alone in +its separate plot, broad, low, and hospitable, the house stood there +divided and withdrawn from the restless progress and the age of +concrete--a modest reminder of the centuries when men had built well +because they had time, before they built, to stop and think and +remember. The arrested dignity of the past seemed to the young man to +hover above the old mansion within its setting of box hedges and +leafless lilac shrubs and snow-laden magnolia trees. He saw the house +contrasted against the crude surroundings of the improved and disfigured +Square, and against the house, attended by all its stately traditions, +he saw the threatening figure of Gideon Vetch. "So it has come to this," +he thought resentfully, with his gaze on the doorway where a round +yellow globe was shining. Ragged frost-coated branches framed the +sloping roof, and the white columns of the square side porches emerged +from the black crags of magnolia trees. In the centre of the circular +drive, invaded by concrete, a white heron poured a stream of melting ice +from a distorted throat. + +The shutters were not closed at the lower windows, and the firelight +flickered between the short curtains of some brownish muslin. As Stephen +passed the gate on his way down the hill, a figure crossed one of the +windows, and his frown deepened as he recognized, or imagined that he +recognized, the shadow of Gideon Vetch. + +"Gideon Vetch!" At the sound of the name the young man threw back his +head and laughed softly. A Gideon Vetch was Governor of Virginia! Here +also, he told himself, half humorously, half bitterly, democracy had +won. Here also the destroying idea had triumphed. In sight of the bronze +Washington, this Gideon Vetch, one of "the poor white trash," born in a +circus tent, so people said, the demagogue of demagogues in Stephen's +opinion--this Gideon Vetch had become Governor of Virginia! Yet the +placid course of Stephen's life flowed on precisely as it had flowed +ever since he could remember, and the dramatic hand of Washington had +not fallen. It was still so recent; it had come about so unexpectedly, +that people--at least the people the young man knew and esteemed--were +still trying to explain how it had happened. The old party had been +sleeping, of course; it had grown too confident, some said too +corpulent; and it had slept on peacefully, in spite of the stirring +strength of the labour leaders, in spite of the threatening coalition of +the new factions, in spite even of the swift revolt against the stubborn +forces of habit, of tradition, of overweening authority. His mother, he +knew, held the world war responsible; but then his mother was so +constituted that she was obliged to blame somebody or something for +whatever happened. Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, held +the war responsible for Gideon Vetch--as if the great struggle had cast +him out in some gigantic cataclysm, as if it had broken through the once +solid ground of established order, and had released into the world all +the explosive gases of disintegration, of destruction. + +For himself, the young man reflected now, he had always thought +otherwise. It was a period, he felt, of humbug radicalism, of windbag +eloquence; yet he possessed both wit and discernment enough to see that, +though ideas might explode in empty talk, still it took ideas to make +the sort of explosion that was deafening one's ears. All the flat +formula of the centuries could not produce a single Gideon Vetch. Such +men were part of the changing world; they answered not to reasoned +argument, but to the loud crash of breaking idols. Stephen hated Vetch +with all his heart, but he acknowledged him. He did not try to evade the +man's tremendous veracity, his integrity of being, his inevitableness. +An inherent intellectual honesty compelled Stephen to admit that, "the +demagogue", as he called him, had his appropriate place in the age that +produced him--that he existed rather as an outlet for political +tendencies than as the product of international violence. He was more +than a theatrical attitude--a torrent of words. Even a free country--and +Stephen thought sentimentally of America as "a free country"--must have +its tyrannies of opinion, and consequently its rebels against current +convictions. In the older countries he had imagined that it might be +possible to hold with the hare and run with the hounds; but in the land +of opportunity for all there was less reason to be astonished when the +hunted turned at last into the hunter. Where every boy was taught that +he might some day be President, why should one stand amazed when the +ambitious son of a circus rider became Governor of Virginia? After all, +a fair field and no favours was the best that the most conservative of +politicians--the best that even John Benham could ask. + +Yes, there was a cause, there was a reason for the miracle of disorder, +or it would not have happened. The hour had called forth the man; but +the man had been there awaiting the strokes, listening, listening, with +his ear to the wind. It had been a triumph of personality, one of those +rare dramatic occasions when the right man and the appointed time come +together. This the young man admitted candidly in the very moment when +he told himself that he detested the demagogue and all his works. A man +who consistently made his bid for the support of the radical element! +Who stirred up the forces of discontent because he could harness them +to his chariot! A man who was born in a circus tent, and who still +performed in public the tricks of a mountebank! That this man had power, +Stephen granted ungrudgingly; but it was power over the undisciplined, +the half-educated, the mentally untrained. It was power, as John Benham +had once remarked with a touch of hyperbole, over empty stomachs. + +There were persons in Stephen's intimate circle (there are such persons +even in the most conservative communities) who contended that Vetch was +in his way a rude genius. Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, for instance, +insisted that the Governor had a charm of his own, that, "he wasn't half +bad to look at if you caught him smiling," that he could even reason +"like one of us," if you granted him his premise. After the open debate +between Vetch and Benham--the great John Benham, hero of war and peace, +and tireless labourer in the vineyard of public service--after this +memorable discussion, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page had remarked, in his +mild, unpolemical tone, that "though John had undoubtedly carried off +the flowers of rhetoric, there was a good deal of wholesome green stuff +about that fellow Vetch." But everybody knew that a man with a comical +habit of mind could not be right. + +Again the figure crossed the firelight between the muslin curtains, and +to Stephen Culpeper, standing alone in the snow outside, that large +impending presence embodied all that he and his kind had hated and +feared for generations. It embodied among other disturbances the law of +change; and to Stephen and his race of pleasant livers the two sinister +forces in the universe were change and death. After all, they had made +the world, these pleasant livers; and what were those other people--the +people represented by that ominous shadow--except the ragged prophets of +disorder and destruction? + +Turning away, Stephen descended the wide brick walk which fell +gradually, past the steps of the library and the gaunt railing round a +motionless fountain, to the broad white slope of the Square with its +smoky veil of twilight. Farther away he saw the high iron fence and +heard the clanging of passing street cars. On his left the ugly shape +of the library resembled some crude architectural design sketched on +parchment. + +As he approached the fountain, a small figure in a red cape detached +itself suddenly from the mesh of shadows, and he recognized Patty Vetch, +the irrepressible young daughter of the Governor. He had seen her the +evening before at a charity ball, where she had been politely snubbed by +what he thought of complacently as "our set." From the moment when he +had first looked at her across the whirling tulle and satin skirts in +the ballroom, he had decided that she embodied as obviously as her +father, though in a different fashion, the qualities which were most +offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards +of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair +curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt +nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows +over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on +the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, +but he couldn't help looking at her. If she had been on the cover of a +magazine, he had told himself sternly, he should never have bought it. +He had correct ideas of what a lady should be (they were inherited from +the early eighties and his mother had implanted them), and he would +have known anywhere that Patty Vetch was not exactly a lady. Though he +was broad enough in his views to realize that types repeat themselves +only in variations, and that girls of to-day are not all that they were +in the happy eighties--that one might make up flashily like Geraldine +St. John, or dance outrageously like Bertha Underwood, and yet remain +in all essential social values "a lady"--still he was aware that the +external decorations of a chorus girl could not turn the shining +daughter of the St. Johns for an imitation of paste, and, though the +nimble Bertha could perform every Jazz motion ever invented, one would +never dream of associating her with a circus ring. It was not the things +one did that made one appear unrefined, he had concluded at last, but +the way that one did them; and Patty Vetch's way was not the prescribed +way of his world. Small as she was there was too much of her. She +contrived always to be where one was looking. She was too loud, too +vivid, too highly charged with vitality; she was too obviously +different. If a redbird had flown into the heated glare of the ballroom +Stephen's gaze would have followed it with the same startled and +fascinated attention. + +As the girl approached him now on the snow-covered slope, he was +conscious again of that swift recoil from chill disapproval to reluctant +attraction. Though she was not beautiful, though she was not even pretty +according to the standards with which he was familiar, she possessed +what he felt to be a dangerous allurement. He had never imagined that +anything so small could be so much alive. The electric light under which +she passed revealed the few golden freckles over her childish nose, the +gray-green colour of her eyes beneath the black eyelashes, and the +sensitive red mouth which looked as soft and sweet as a carnation. It +revealed also the absurd shoes of gray suede, with French toes and high +and narrow heels, in which she flitted, regardless alike of danger and +of common sense, over the slippery ground. The son of a strong-minded +though purely feminine mother, he had been trained to esteem discretion +in dress almost as highly as rectitude of character in a woman; and by +no charitable stretch of the imagination could he endow his first +impression of Patty Vetch with either of these attributes. + +"It would serve her right if she fell and broke her leg," he thought +severely; and the idea of such merited punishment was still in his mind +when he heard a sharp gasp of surprise, and saw the girl slip, with a +frantic clutch at the air, and fall at full length on the shining +ground. When he sprang forward and bent over her, she rose quickly to +her knees and held out what he thought at first was some queer small +muff of feathers. + +"Please hold this pigeon," she said, "I saw it this afternoon, and I +came out to look for it. Somebody has broken its wings." + +"If you came out to walk on ice," he replied with a smile, "why, in +Heaven's name, didn't you wear skates or rubbers?" + +She gave a short little laugh which was entirely without merriment. "I +don't skate, and I never wear rubbers." + +He glanced down at her feet in candid disapproval. "Then you mustn't be +surprised if you get a sprained ankle." + +"I am not surprised," she retorted calmly. "Nothing surprises me. Only +my ankle isn't sprained. I am just getting my breath." + +She had rested her knee on a bench, and she looked up at him now with +bright, enigmatical eyes. "You don't mind waiting a moment, do you?" +she asked. To his secret resentment she appeared to be deliberately +appraising either his abilities or his attractions--he wasn't sure which +engaged her bold and perfectly unembarrassed regard. + +"No, I don't mind in the least," he replied, "but I'd like to get you +home if you have really hurt yourself. Of course it was your own fault +that you fell," he added truthfully but indiscreetly. + +For an instant she seemed to be holding her breath, while he stood there +in what he felt to be a foolish attitude, with the pigeon (for all +symbolical purposes it might as well have been a dove) clasped to his +breast. + +"Oh, I know," she responded presently in a voice which was full of +suppressed anger. "Everything is my fault--even the fact that I was +born!" + +Shocked out of his conventional manner, he stared at her in silence, and +the pigeon, feeling the strain of his grasp, fluttered softly against +his overcoat. What was there indeed for him to do except stare at a lack +of reticence, of good-breeding, which he felt to be deplorable? His fine +young face, with its characteristic note of reserve, hardened into +sternness as he remembered having heard somewhere that the girl's mother +had been killed or injured when she was performing some dangerous act at +a country fair. Well, one might expect anything, he supposed, from such +an inheritance. + +"May I help you?" he asked with distant and chilly politeness. + +"Oh, can't you wait a minute?" She impatiently thrust aside his offer. +"I _must_ get my breath again." + +It was plain that she was very angry, that she was in the clutch of a +smothered yet violent resentment, which, he inferred with reason, was +directed less against himself than against some abstract and impersonal +law of life. Her rage was not merely temper against a single human +being; it was, he realized, a passionate rebellion against Fate or +Nature, or whatever she personified as the instrument of the injustice +from which she suffered. Her eyes were gleaming through the web of light +and shadow; her mouth was trembling; and there was the moisture of +tears--or was it only the glitter of ice?--on her round young cheek. And +while he looked, chilled, disapproving, unsympathetic, at the vivid +flower-like bloom of her face, there seemed to flow from her and envelop +him the spirit of youth itself--of youth adventurous, intrepid, and +defiant; of youth rejecting the expedient and demanding the impossible; +of youth eternally desirable, enchanting, and elusive. It was as if his +orderly, complacent, and tranquil soul had plunged suddenly into a bath +of golden air. Vaguely disturbed, he drew back and tried to appear +dignified in spite of the fluttering pigeon. He had no inclination for +a flirtation with the Governor's daughter--intuitively he felt that such +an adventure would not be a safe one; but if a flirtation were what she +wanted, he told himself, with a sense of impending doom, "there might be +trouble." He didn't know what she meant, but whatever it was, she +evidently meant it with determination. Already she had impressed him +with the quality which, for want of a better word, he thought of as +"wildness." It was a quality which he had found strangely, if secretly, +alluring, and he acknowledged now that this note of "wildness," of +unexpectedness, of "something different" in her personality, had held +his gaze chained to the airy flutter of her scarlet skirt. He felt +vaguely troubled. Something as intricate and bewildering as impulse was +winding through the smoothly beaten road of his habit of thought. The +noises of the city came to him as if they floated over an immeasurable +distance of empty space. Through the spectral boughs of the sycamores +the golden sky had faded to the colour of ashes. And both the empty +space and the ashen sky seemed to be not outside of himself, but a part +of the hidden country within his mind. + +"You were at the ball," she burst out suddenly, as if she had been +holding back the charge from the beginning. + +"At the ball?" he repeated, and the words were spoken with his lips +merely in that objective world of routine and habit. "Yes, I was there. +It was a dull business." + +She laughed again with the lack of merriment he had noticed before. +Though her face was made for laughter, there was an oddly conflicting +note of tragedy in her voice. "Was it dull? I didn't notice." + +"Then you must have enjoyed it?" + +"But you were there. You saw what happened. Every one must have seen." +Her savage candour brushed away the flimsy amenities. He knew now that +she would say whatever she pleased, and, with the pigeon clasped tightly +in his arms, he waited for anything that might come. + +"You pretend that you don't know, that you didn't see!" she asked +indignantly. + +As she looked at him he thought--or it may have been the effect of the +shifting light--that her eyes diffused soft green rays beneath her black +eyelashes. Was there really the mist of tears in her sparkling glance? + +"I am sorry," he said simply, being a young man of few words when the +need of speech was obvious. The last thing he wanted, he told himself, +was to receive the confidences of the Governor's daughter. + +At this declaration, so characteristic of his amiable temperament, her +anger flashed over him. "You were not sorry. You know you were not, or +you would have made them kinder!" + +"Kinder? But how could I?" He felt that her rage was making her +unreasonable. "I didn't know you. I hadn't even been introduced to you." +It was on the tip of his tongue to add, "and I haven't been yet--" but +he checked himself in fear of unchaining the lightning. It was all +perfectly true. He had not even been introduced to the girl, and here +she was, as crude as life and as intemperate, accusing him of +indifference and falsehood. And after all, what had they done to her? No +one had been openly rude. Nothing had been said, he was sure, absolutely +nothing. It had been a "charity entertainment," and the young people of +his set had merely left her alone, that was all. The affair had been far +from exclusive--for the enterprising ladies of the Beech Tree Day +Nursery had prudently preferred a long subscription list to a limited +social circle--and in a gathering so obscurely "mixed" there were, +without doubt, a number of Gideon Vetch's admirers. Was it maliciously +arranged by Fate that Patty Vetch's social success should depend upon +the people who had elected her father to office? + +"As if that mattered!" + +Her scorn of his subterfuge, her mocking defiance of the sacred formula +to which he deferred, awoke in him an unfamiliar and pleasantly piquant +sensation. Through it all he was conscious of the inner prick and sting +of his disapprobation, as if the swift attraction had passed into a +mental aversion. + +"As if that mattered!" he echoed gaily, "as if that mattered at all!" + +Her face changed in the twilight, and it seemed to him that he saw her +for the first time with the peculiar vividness that came only in dreams +or in the hidden country within his mind. The sombre arch of the sky, +the glimmer of lights far away, the clustering shadows against the white +field of snow, the vague ghostly shapes of the sycamores--all these +things endowed her with the potency of romantic adventure. In the winter +night she seemed to him to exhale the roving sweetness of spring. Then +she spoke, and the sharp brightness of his vision was clouded by the old +sense of unreality. + +"They treated me as if I were a piece of bunting or a flower in a pot," +she said. "They left me alone in the dressing-room. No one spoke to me, +though they must have known who I was. They know, all of them, that I am +the Governor's daughter." + +With a start he brought himself back from the secret places. "But I +thought you carried your head very high," he answered, "and you did not +appear to lack partners." Some small ironic demon that seemed to dwell +in his brain and yet to have no part in his real thought, moved him to +add indiscreetly: "I thought you danced every dance with Julius Gershom. +That's the name of that dark fellow who's a politician of doubtful cast, +isn't it?" + +She made a petulant gesture, and the red wings in her hat vibrated like +the wings of a bird in flight. There flashed though his mind while he +watched her the memory of a cardinal he had seen in a cedar tree against +the snow-covered landscape. Strange that he could never get away from +the thought of a bird when he looked at her. + +"Oh, Julius Gershom! I despise him!" + +She shivered, and he asked with a sympathy he had not displayed for +mental discomforts: "Aren't you dreadfully chilled? This kind of thing +is a risk, you know. You might catch influenza--or anything." + +"Yes, I might, if there is any about," she replied tartly, and he saw +with relief that her petulance had faded to dull indifference. "I was +obliged to dance with somebody," she resumed after a minute, "I couldn't +sit against the wall the whole evening, could I? And nobody else asked +me,--but I don't like him any the better for that." + +"And your father? Does he dislike him also?" he asked. + +"How can one tell? He says he is useful." There was a playful tenderness +in her voice. + +"Useful? You mean in politics?" + +She laughed. "How else in the world can any one be useful to Father? It +must be freezing." + +"No, it is melting; but it is too cold to play about out of doors." + +"Your teeth are chattering!" she rejoined with scornful merriment. + +"They are not," he retorted indignantly. "I am as comfortable as you +are." + +"Well, I'm not comfortable at all. Something--I don't know what it +was--happened to my ankle. I think I twisted it when I fell." + +"And all this time you haven't said a word. We've talked about nothing +while you must have been in pain." + +She shook her head as if his new solicitude irritated her, and a quiver +of pain--or was it amusement?--crossed her lips. "It isn't the first +time I've had to grit my teeth and bear things--but it's getting worse +instead of better all the time, and I'm afraid I shall have to ask you +to help me up the hill. I was waiting until I thought I could manage it +by myself." + +So that was why she had kept him! She had hoped all the time that she +could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was +impossible. Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic +imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her. By Jove, what pluck +she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the +realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so +lightly, it could mean only that her short life had been full of +misadventures beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial. She could +"play the game" so perfectly, he grasped, because she had been obliged +either to play it or go under ever since she had been big enough to read +the cards in her hand. To be "a good sport" was perhaps the best lesson +that the world had yet taught her. Though she could not be, he decided, +more than eighteen, she had acquired already the gay bravado of the +experienced gambler with life. + +"Let me help you," he said eagerly, "I am sure that I can carry you, you +are so small. If you will only let me throw away this confounded bird, I +can manage it easily." + +"No, give it to me. It would die of cold if we left it." She stretched +out her hand, and in silence he gave her the wounded pigeon. Her +tenderness for the bird, conflicting as it did with his earlier +impression of her, both amused and perplexed him. He couldn't reconcile +her quick compassion with her resentful and mocking attitude toward +himself. + +At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and +stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite unnecessary +to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't need to be +carried," she said. "That sort of thing went out of fashion ages ago. If +you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill." + +She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the +hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most +embarrassing one through which he had ever lived. The fugitive gleam, +the romantic glamour, had vanished now. He wondered what it was about +her that he had at first found attractive. It was the spirit of the +place, he decided, nothing more. With every step of the way there closed +over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence, his +instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour. Conventions were the +breath of his young nostrils, and yet he was passing through an +atmosphere, without, thank Heaven, his connivance or inclination, where +it seemed to him the hardiest convention could not possibly survive. +When the lights of the mansion shone nearer through the bared boughs, he +heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Have I tired you?" asked the girl in response, and the curious lilting +note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden +suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging some +hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that she +would be capable of such a performance, or of anything else that invited +her amazing vivacity. His one hope was that he might leave her in some +obscure corner of the house, and slip away before anybody capable of +making a club joke had discovered his presence. The hidden country was +lost now, and with it the perilous thrill of enchantment. + +He rang the bell, and the door was opened by an old coloured butler who +had been one of the family servants of the Culpepers. How on earth, +Stephen wondered, could the Governor tolerate the venerable Abijah, the +chosen companion of Culpeper children for two generations? While he +wondered he recalled something his mother had said a few weeks ago about +Abijah's having been lured away by the offer of absurd wages. "You +needn't worry," she had added shrewdly, "he will return as soon as he +gets tired of working." + +"I hurt my ankle, Abijah," said the girl. + +"You ain't, is you, Miss Patty?" replied Abijah, in an indulgent tone +which conveyed to Stephen's delicate ears every shade of difference +between the Vetchs' and the Culpepers' social standing. + +"How are you, Abijah?" remarked the young man with the air of lordly +pleasantry he used to all servants who were not white. Beyond the fine +old hall he saw the formal drawing-room and the modern octagonal +dining-room at the back of the house. + +"Howdy, Marse Stephen," responded the negro, "I seed yo' ma yestiddy en +she sutney wuz lookin well an' peart." + +He opened the door of the library, and while Stephen entered the room +with the girl's hand on his arm, a man rose from a chair by the fire and +came forward. + +"Father, this is Mr. Culpeper," remarked Patty calmly, as she sank on a +sofa and stretched out her frivolous shoes. + +In the midst of his embarrassment Stephen wondered resentfully how she +had discovered his name. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +GIDEON VETCH + + +"Your daughter slipped on the ice," explained the young man, while the +thought flashed through his mind that Patty's father was accepting it +all, with ironical humour, as some queer masquerade. + +It was the first time that Stephen had come within range of the +Governor's personal influence, and he found himself waiting curiously +for the response of his sympathies or his nerves. Once or twice he had +heard Vetch speak--a storm of words which had played freely from the +lightning flash of humorous invective to the rolling thunder of +passionate denunciation. Such sound and fury had left Stephen the one +unmoved man in the audience. He had been brought up on the sonorous +rhetoric and the gorgeous purple periods of the classic orations; and +the mere undraped sincerity--the raw head and bloody bones eloquence, as +he put it, of Vetch's speech had been as offensive to his taste as it +had been unconvincing to his intelligence. The man was a mountebank, +nothing more, Stephen had decided, and his strange power was simply the +reaction of mob hysteria to the stage tricks of the political clown. + +Yes, the man was a mountebank--but was he nothing more than a +mountebank? Like most men of his age, Stephen Culpeper was inclined to +swift impressions rather than hasty judgments of people; and he was +conscious, while he listened in silence to the murmuring explanations +of the girl, that the immediate effect was a sensation, not an idea. At +first sight, the Governor appeared merely ordinary--a tall, rugged +figure, built of good bone and muscle and sound to the core, with the +look of arrested energy which was doubtless an inheritance from the +circus ring. There was nothing impressive about him; nothing that would +cause one to turn and look back in a crowd. What struck one most was his +air of extraordinary freshness and health, of sanguine vitality. His +face was well-coloured and irregular in outline, with a high bulging +forehead and thick sandy hair which was already gray on the temples. In +the shadow his eyes did not appear remarkably fine; they seemed at the +first glance to be of an indeterminate colour--was it blue or gray?--and +there was nothing striking in their deep setting under the beetling +sandy eyebrows. All this was true; and yet while Stephen looked into +them over the Governor's outstretched hand, he told himself that they +were the most human eyes he had ever seen. Afterward, when he groped +through his vocabulary for a more accurate description, he could not +find one. There was shrewdness in Gideon Vetch's eyes; there was +friendliness; there was the blue sparkle of contagious humour--a ripple +of light that was like visible laughter--but above all there was +humanity. Though Stephen did not try to grasp the vivid impressions that +passed through his mind, he felt intuitively that he had learned to know +Gideon Vetch through his look and manner as well as he should have known +another man after weeks or months of daily intercourse. Whatever the +man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there +was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile. +He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or +low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up +as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without +condescension. It was the law of his nature that he should give himself +emphatically to the just and the unjust alike. + +"He came home with me because I hurt my foot," Patty was saying. + +Had she forgotten already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was +not her foot but her ankle? His suspicions returned while he looked at +her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel +impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure. Like Gideon +Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding the smallest +fragment of a fact; and the young man wondered if it were characteristic +either of "the plain people," as he called them, or of circus riders as +a class, that their minds should go habitually unclothed yet unashamed. + +"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked: "Did +you hurt yourself, Patty?" while he bent over and laid his hand on her +ankle. + +A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and +when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of +affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him. + +"Not much," she replied carelessly. Then she held out the drooping +pigeon. "I found this bird. Is there anything we can do for it?" + +The Governor took the bird from her, and examined it under the light +with the manner of brisk confidence which directed his slightest action. +The man, for all his restless activity, appeared to be without excess or +exaggeration when it was a matter of practical detail. He apparently +employed his whole efficient and enterprising mind on the incident of +the bird. + +"The wings aren't broken," he said presently, lifting his head, "but it +is weak from hunger and exhaustion," and he rang the bell for Abijah. +"Rice and water and a warm basket," he ordered when the old negro +appeared. "You had better keep it in the house until it recovers." Then +dismissing the subject, he turned back to Stephen. + +"Well, I am glad to see you, Mr. Culpeper," he said. "You had a hard +beginning, but, as they used to tell me when I was a kid, a hard +beginning makes a good ending." + +For the first time a smile softened his face, and the roving blue gleam +danced blithely in his eyes. A moment before the young man had thought +the Governor's face harsh and ugly. Now he remembered that the Judge had +said "the man was not half bad to look at if you caught him smiling." +Yes, he had a charm of his own, and that charm had swept him forward +over every obstacle to the place he had reached. A single gift, +indefinable yet unerring--the ability to make men believe absurdities, +as John Benham had once said--and the material disadvantages of poverty +and ignorance were brushed aside like trivial impediments. A strange +power, and a dangerous one in unscrupulous hands, the young man +reflected. + +"I remember your face," pursued the Governor, while his smile faded--was +brevity, after all, the secret of its magic? "You were at one of my +speeches last autumn, and you sat in the front row, I think. I recall +you because you were the only person in the audience who looked bored." + +"I was." Frankness called for frankness. "I am not keen about speeches." + +"Not even when Benham speaks?" The voice was gay, but through it all +there rang the unmistakable tone of authority, of conscious power. There +was one person, Stephen inferred, who had never from the beginning +disparaged or ridiculed Gideon Vetch, and that person was Gideon Vetch +himself. John Benham had once said that the man was a mere posturer--but +John Benham was wrong. + +"Oh, well, you see, Benham is different," replied the young man as +delicately as he could. "He is apt to say only what I think, you know." + +So far there had been no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner, +no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and +presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had +looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, +facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the +break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man +because he had been so imperfectly prepared for it. + +"And because he is different, of course you think he'd make a better +Governor than I shall," said Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way +with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You +never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it +knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've been +on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so much +as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too much +electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; but you haven't +even looked back to find out whether you are right or wrong. Talk about +public spirit! Why, there isn't an ounce of live public spirit left +among you, in spite of all the moonshine your man Benham talks about the +healing virtues of tradition and the sacred taboo of your political +Pharisees. There wasn't one of you that didn't hate like the devil to +see me Governor of Virginia--and yet how many of you took the trouble to +find out what I am made of, or to understand what I mean? Did you even +take the trouble to go to the polls and vote against me?" + +Though Stephen flushed scarlet, he held his ground bravely. It was true +that he had not voted--he hated the whole sordid business of +politics--but then, who had ever suspected for a minute that Gideon +Vetch would be elected? His brief liking for the man had changed +suddenly to exasperation. It seemed incredible to him that any Governor +of Virginia should display so open a disregard of the ordinary rules of +courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such +a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him +an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the +agitator simply because his opponent had reluctantly yielded him an +opportunity! + +"Well, I heard you speak, but that didn't change me!" he retorted with a +smile. + +The Governor laughed, and the sincerity of his amusement was evident +even to Stephen. "Could anything short of a blasting operation change +you traditional Virginians?" he inquired. + +His face was turned to the fire, and the young man felt while he +watched him that a piercing light was shed on his character. It was as +if Stephen saw his opponent from an entirely fresh point of view, as if +he beheld him for the first time with the sharp clearness which the +flash of his anger produced. The very absence of all sense of dignity +impressed him suddenly as the most tremendous dignity a human being +could attain--the unconscious dignity of natural forces--of storms and +fire and war and pestilence. Because the man never thought of how he +appeared, he appeared always impregnable. + +"I shall not argue," said the young man, with a smile which he +endeavoured to make easy and natural. "The time for argument is over. +You played trumps." + +Vetch laughed. "And it wasn't my last card," he answered bluntly. + +"The game isn't finished." Though Stephen's voice was light it held a +quiver of irritation. "He laughs best who laughs last." The other had +started the row, and, by Jove, he would give him as much as he wanted! +He recalled suddenly the charges that there was more than the customary +political log-rolling--that there were mysterious "discreditable +dealings" in the Governor's election to office. + +But it appeared in a minute that Gideon Vetch was adequate to any demand +which the occasion might develop. Already Stephen was beginning to +regard him less as a man than as an energetic idea, as activity +incarnate. + +"If you mean to imply that the laugh may be on me at the last," he +returned, while the points of blue light seemed to pierce Stephen like +arrows--no, like gimlets, "well, you're wrong about one part of it--for +if that ever happens, I'll laugh with you because of the sheer rotten +irony." + +For the first time the other noticed how the Governor was dressed--in a +suit of some heavy brown stuff which looked as if it had been sprinkled +and needed pressing. He wore a green tie and a striped shirt of the +conspicuous kind that Stephen hated. Though the younger man was keenly +critical of clothes, and perseveringly informed himself regarding the +smallest details of fashion, he acknowledged now that he had at last met +a man who appeared to wear his errors of dress as naturally as he wore +his errors of opinion. The fuzzy brown stuff, the green tie with red +spots, the striped shirt--was it blue or purple?--all became as much a +part of Gideon Vetch as the storm-ruffled plumage was part of an eagle. +If the misguided man had attired himself in a toga, he would have +carried the Mantle without dignity perhaps, but certainly with +picturesqueness. + +"I'll hold you to your promise--or threat," said Stephen lightly, as he +turned from the Governor to his daughter. Why, in thunder, he asked +himself, had he stayed so long? What was there about the fellow that +held one in spite of oneself? "I hope you will be all right again in a +few days," he said formally as his eyes met Patty's upraised glance. In +the warm room all the glamour of the twilight--and of that hidden +country within his mind--had faded from her. She looked fresh and +blooming and merely commonplace, he thought. A brief half hour ago he +had felt that he was in danger of losing his head; now his rational part +was in the ascendant, and his future appeared pleasantly tranquil. Then +the girl smiled that faint inscrutable smile of hers, and the +disturbing green rays shot from her eyes. A thrill of interest stirred +his pulses while something held him there against his will and his +better judgment, as if he were caught fast in the steel spring of a +trap. + +"Oh, that's nothing," replied Patty, with her air of mockery. "If there +were no worse things than that!" + +He did not hold out his hand, though there was a flutter toward him of +her fingers--pretty fingers they were for a girl with no blood that one +could mention in public. There was a faint hope in his mind that he +might still vanish unthanked and undetained. The one quality in father +and daughter which had arrested his favourable attention--the quality of +"a good sport"--would probably aid in his escape. + +"Drop in some evening, and we'll have a talk," said the Governor in his +slightly theatrical but extremely confident manner, "there are things +I'd like to say to you. You are a lawyer, if I remember, in Judge +Horatio Page's firm, and you were in the war from the beginning." + +Stephen smiled. "Not quite." They were at the front door, and all hope +of escaping into the desirable obscurity from which he had sprung fled +from his mind. + +"He is a great old boy, the Judge," resumed Gideon Vetch blandly, "I had +a talk with him one day before the elections, when you other fellows +were sitting back like a lot of lunatics and waiting for the Democratic +primaries to put things over. He is the only one in the whole bunch of +you who stopped shouting long enough to hear what I had to say. I like +him, sir, and if there is one thing you will never find me doing it is +liking the wrong man. I may not know Greek, but I can read men." + +The front door was open, and the blast of cold air dispersed all the +foolish fancies that had gathered in Stephen's brain. Beyond the +fountain and the gate he could see the broad road through the Square and +the dark majestic figure of Washington on horseback. The electric signs +were blazing on the roofs of the shops and hotels which had driven the +original dwelling houses out of the neighbouring streets. + +Turning as he was descending the steps, the young man looked into the +Governor's face. "Are you sure that you read Julius Gershom correctly?" +he inquired. + +For a minute--it could not have been longer--the Governor did not reply. +Was he surprised for once into open discomfiture, or was his nimble wit +engaged in framing a plausible answer? Within the house, where so much +was disappointing and incongruous, Stephen had not felt the lack of +harmony between Gideon Vetch and his surroundings; but against the fine +proportions and the serene stateliness of the exterior, the Governor's +figure appeared aggressively modern. + +"Julius Gershom!" repeated Vetch. "Well, yes, I think I know my Julius. +May I ask if you do?" The ironical humour which flashed like a sharp +light over his countenance played with the idea. + +"Not by choice." Stephen looked back laughing. There was one thing to be +said in the Governor's favour--he invited honesty and he knew how to +receive it. "But I read of him in the newspapers when I cannot avoid it. +He does some dirty work, doesn't he?" + +Again the Governor paused before replying. There was a curious gravity +about his consideration of Gershom in spite of the satirical tone of his +responses. Was it possible that he was the one man in town who did not +treat the fellow as a ridiculous farce? + +"If by dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles--well, +somebody has to do it, hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a +clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the +slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush--and you +complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle +too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was +necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn't +he? There are people," he added, "who believe that the wind he raised +swept me into office." + +"I object to his methods," insisted Stephen, "because they seem to me +dishonest." + +"Perhaps." The blue eyes--how could he have thought them gray?--had +grown quizzical. "But he wasn't moving in the best company, you know. He +who sups with the Devil must fish with a long spoon." + +"You mean that you defend that sort of thing--that you openly stand for +it?" + +"I stand for nothing, sir," replied Gideon Vetch sharply, "except +justice. I stand for a square deal all round, and I stand against the +exploitation or oppression of any class. This is what I stand for, and I +have stood for it ever since I was a small, gray, scared rabbit of a +creature dodging under hedgerows." + +It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met +it without subterfuge or evasion. "And you believe that such people as +Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?" he +demanded. + +"I'll answer that some day; but it's a long answer, and I can't speak it +out here in the cold," responded the Governor, while his blustering +manner grew sober. "Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not. You +may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth. I am a reformer, and all I care +about is pushing on the idea. I use any tools that I find; and one of +the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use +bad ones. If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad--well, it is +all in the day's job. But the cause is what matters--the thing you are +making, not the implements with which it is made. You dislike my methods +of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test +of achievement, they have proved to be sound. I have got somewhere; not +all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, without +patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the +market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or +did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the +simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like +nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be +traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am +an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as +old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half a loaf +is to ask for a whole one. Come again, and I'll talk to you." + +"Yes, I'll come again," Stephen answered, and he knew that he should. +Whether he willed it or not he would be drawn back by the Governor's +irresistible influence. The man had aroused in him an intense, a +devouring curiosity. He wanted to know his thoughts and his life, the +mystery of his birth, of his upbringing, of his privations and denials. +Above all he wanted to know why he had succeeded, what peculiar gift had +brought him out of obscurity, and had given him the ability to use men +and circumstances as if they were tools in his hands. + +When the young man ran down the steps there was a pleasant excitement +tingling in his veins, as if he were feeling the glow of forbidden wine. +Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing +the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch +darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She +hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock +of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an +instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked +rapidly past the fountain to the open gate. + +The snow was dimly lighted on the long slope to the library; and +straight ahead, in the circle beneath the statue of Washington, the +bronze silhouette of a great Virginian stood sharply cut against the +luminous haze of the street. From the chimney-stack of a factory near +the river a wreath of gray smoke was flung over the tree-tops, where it +broke and drifted in feathery garlands. Across the road a group of three +trees was delicately etched, with each separate branch and twig, on the +slate-coloured evening sky. + +He had passed through the gate when a voice speaking suddenly at his +side caused him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he +had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place +from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There +was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it +produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child +when his hand was unexpectedly touched in the dark. + +"I beg your pardon," he said to the vague shape at the foot of a tree. +"Did you speak to me?" + +The shadows divided, and what seemed to him the edge of darkness moved +forward into the dimly lighted space at his side. He saw now that it was +the figure of a woman in a long black cloak, with the dilapidated +remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came +toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately +afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the +tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her +eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget. They were eyes that +would haunt his sleep that night like the face of the drowned man in the +nursery rhyme. + +"Will you tell me," asked the woman hurriedly, "who lives in this +house?" + +It was a queer question, he thought, for any one to ask in the Square; +but she was probably a stranger. + +"This is the Governor's house," he answered courteously. "I suppose you +are a stranger in town." + +"I got here a few hours ago, and I came out for a breath of air. I was +four days and nights on the way." + +To this he made no reply, and he was about to pass on again, when her +voice arrested him. + +"You wouldn't mind telling me, would you, the Governor's name?" + +"Not in the least. His name is Gideon Vetch." + +"Gideon Vetch?" She repeated the name slowly, as if she were impressing +it on her memory. "That's a queer name for a Governor. Was he born in +this town?" + +"I think not." + +"And who lives with him? I saw a girl come out awhile ago. Is she his +daughter, perhaps--or his wife--though she looked young for that." + +"It must have been his daughter. His wife is not living." + +"Is she his only child? Or has he others?" There was a quiver of +suspense in her voice, and turning he looked at her more closely. Was it +possible that she had known Gideon Vetch in his obscure past? + +"She is his only child," he replied. + +"Well, that's nice for her. Is she pretty?" An odd question if it had +been put by a man; but he had been trained to accept the fact that women +are different. + +"Yes, you would call her pretty." As he spoke the words there flashed +through his mind the picture of Patty Vetch as he had seen her that +afternoon, in her red cape and her small hat with the red wings, against +the snowy hill under the overhanging bough of the sycamore. Was she +really pretty, or was it only the witchery of her surroundings? Now that +he was out of her presence the attraction had faded. He was still +smarting from the memory of that dancing figure. + +"Well, it's a fine house," said the woman, "and it looks large for just +two people. I thank you for telling me." + +The pathos of her words appealed to the generous chivalry of his nature. +He felt sorry for her and wondered if he might offer her money. + +"I hope you found lodgings," he said. + +"Yes, I've found a room near here--on Governor Street, I think they call +it." + +"And you are not in want? You do not need any help?" + +She shook her head while the rusty mourning veil shrouded her features. +"Not yet," she answered. "I'm not a beggar yet." Though her tone was not +well-bred, he realized that she was neither as uneducated nor as +degraded as he had at first believed. + +"I am glad of that," he responded; and then lifting his hat again, he +hurried quickly away from her up the road beneath the few old linden +trees that were left of an avenue. Glancing back as he reached the +Capitol building, he saw her black figure moving cautiously over the +snow toward one of the gates of the Square. + +"That was a nightmare," he thought, "and now for the pleasant dream. +I'll go to the old print shop and see my Cousin Corinna." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP + + +As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old +print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at +forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid +the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate +early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she +had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously +with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her +father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Ambassador to +Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had +settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had +opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an +engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the +upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside +the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and +a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where +you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she +had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did +it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At +forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be +lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a +girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm, +the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing +heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to +remember, trite as it was--the singing heart--that was Corinna. She had +had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she +had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and +adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and +common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty +if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of +Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that +she liked almost every one--every one, that is, except Rose Stribling, +whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose +Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red +Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of +the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he +ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose Stribling, all blue eyes +and white linen, had nursed him at the last. At that time Corinna was in +America, and she hadn't so much as looked at Kent for years; but a woman +has a long memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss +of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet +the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose +Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black +patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to +Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it +intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could +have been half so lovely when she was a girl, before the faint shadows +and the tender little lines lent depth and mystery to her eyes, and the +single white lock swept back amid the powdered dusk of her hair. + +While the young man walked rapidly up Franklin Street, he saw before him +the long delightful room beyond the pyramidal cedars and the hedge of +box. He saw the ruddy glow of the fire mingling with the paler light of +amber lamps, and this mingled radiance shining on the rich rugs, the few +old brocades, and the rare English prints which covered the walls. He +saw wide-open creamy roses in alabaster bowls which were scattered +everywhere, on tables, on stools, on window-seats, and on the rich +carving of the Spanish desk in one corner. Against the curtains of gold +silk there was the bough of twisted pine he had broken, and against the +pine branch stood the figure of Corinna in her gown of soft red, which +melted like a spray of autumn foliage into the colours of the room. She +was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of +a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that +she looked like an October morning? + +As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull +gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the +thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a Japanese print. When +he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was +holding a basket of marigolds. + +"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in +water." + +She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she +was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two +old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the +hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he +inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was +as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had passed out of +the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance +and pleasant magic. The other was real life--life for all but the happy +few, he found himself thinking--this was merely the enchanted fairy-ring +where children played at making believe. + +"I hoped I'd catch you," he said, stretching out his hands to the log +fire. "I felt somehow that you hadn't gone, late as it is." While he +spoke he was thinking, not of Corinna, but of the strange woman he had +left in the Square. Queer how that incident had bitten into his mind. +Try as he might he couldn't shake himself free from it. + +"Father is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I +stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't +matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight. +Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I +haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell +me." + +"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who +were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as +the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that +it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the +feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings +were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of +the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities. + +"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge +Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any +world or any fireside--imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir +Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the shining dark eyes +of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment, +like an ambassador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your +fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get +is the conversation of an old fogy like me." + +"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt +powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the +shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular, +tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who +was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when +Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The +men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For +the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite +of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted +fairy-ring where no fact ever entered. + +With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the +tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing +over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness, +though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the +red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers. + +"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said. +"Wasn't it nice of him?" + +"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered. + +Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she +inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?" + +"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone. +"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older. +There isn't a man living whom I admire more." + +"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in +malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?" + +For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she +had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to +mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper +purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual +question? + +"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since +her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her." + +Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than +revealed her obscure motives. + +"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further +entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that +she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham." + +Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she +saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had +developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it +seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most +loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest. + +"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows." + +There was really nothing else that he could answer. Though he could +discuss Alice Rokeby, one of those vague, sweet women who seem designed +by Nature to develop the sentiment of chivalry in the breast of man, he +felt that it would be disloyal to speak lightly of his hero, John +Benham. "You could never guess where I've been," he said with relief +because he had got rid of the subject. "I might as well tell you in the +beginning that I have just left the Governor." + +"Gideon Vetch!" exclaimed Corinna, as she dropped into a chair at his +side. "Why, I thought you were as far apart as the poles!" + +"So we were until ten minutes--no, until exactly an hour ago." + +"It makes my blood boil when I think of that circus rider in the +Governor's mansion," said the General indignantly. "Do you know what my +father would have called that fellow? He would have called him a common +scalawag--a common scalawag, sir!" + +The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed, +that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy. +"Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The +trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village +stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians +were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may +have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out +with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the +archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept--. We +must let in new blood." + +"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got +to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?" + +"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be +only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made +up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say +that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view, +it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him +the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of +things." + +"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he +spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the +fellow ain't even in your class, sir!" + +"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the +Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make +a friendship." + +"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted +to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the +way." + +The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of +Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me +more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows +human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles +of the Confederacy." + +"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's +something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one +in spite of oneself." + +The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed +presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent +candour. Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours +it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his +Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment--straight +and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard +simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't--and +I'll say as much for our friend Gideon." + +"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is +honestly dishonest?" + +The Judge's suavity clothed him like velvet. "I know nothing about his +honesty. I doubt if any one does. He may be a liar and yet speak the +truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives. But I am not maintaining +that he is entirely right, you understand--merely that like the rest of +us he is not entirely wrong. I am not taking sides, you know. I am too +old to fight anybody's battles--even distressed Virtue's." + +"Then you think--you really think that he is sincere?" asked Stephen. + +"Sincere? Well, yes, in a measure. Nothing advertises one so widely as a +reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for +self-advertisement. He has found that it pays in politics to speak the +truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice. It takes courage, of +course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous +than the rest of us. To that extent, I should say that he has the +advantage of us." + +"Do you mean to imply," demanded the General wrathfully, "that a common +circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is +better than this lady and myself, sir?" + +"Well, hardly better than Corinna," replied the Judge. "Indeed, I was +about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and +Vetch. There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of +Corinna." + +"Father!" gasped Corinna. "Stephen, do you think he has gone out of his +mind?" + +"That is the first sign that wisdom has broken its cage," commented her +father. "No, my dear, I did not mean that you look like him; you are far +handsomer. I meant simply that you both habitually speak the truth, and +because you speak the truth the world mistakes you for a successful +comedian and Vetch for a kind of political Robin Hood." + +"Well, he is trying to hold us up in highwayman fashion, isn't he?" +asked Corinna. + +"Does it look that way?" inquired the Judge, with his beaming smile +which cast an edge of genial irony on everything that he said. "On the +contrary, it seems to me that Vetch is telling us the things we have +known about ourselves for a very long time. He says the world might be a +better place if we would only take the trouble to make it so; if we +would only try to live up to our epitaphs, I believe he once remarked. +He says also, I understand, that he is trying to climb to the top over +somebody else; and when I say 'he' I mean, of course, his order or his +class, whatever the fashionable phrase is. Now, unfortunately, there +appears to be but one way of reaching the top of the world, doesn't +there?--and that is by climbing up on something or somebody. Even you, +my dear Stephen, who occupy that high place, merely inherited the seat +from somebody who scrambled up there a few centuries ago. Somebody else +probably got broken shoulders before your nimble progenitor took +possession. Of course I am willing to admit that time does create in us +the sense of a divine right in anything that we have owned for a number +of years, as if our inheritance were the crown of some archaic king. I +myself feel that strongly. If it came to the point, though I have said +that I am too old to fight for distressed Virtue, I should very likely +die in the last ditch for every inch of land and every worthless object +I ever owned. When Vetch talks about taxing property more heavily I am +utterly and openly against him because it is my instinct to be. I refuse +to give up my superfluous luxuries in the cause of equal justice for +all, and I shall fight against it as long as there is a particle of +fight left in my bones. But because I am against him there is no reason, +I take it, why I shouldn't enjoy the pleasure of perceiving his point of +view. It is an interesting point of view, perhaps the more interesting +because we think it is a dangerous one. To approach it is like rounding +a sharp curve at high speed." + +As he rose to his feet and reached for his walking stick, Stephen +remembered that in England the Judge was supposed to have the fine +presence and the flashing eagle eyes of Gladstone. Were they alike also, +he wondered, in their fantastic mental processes? + +"It's time for me to go, Corinna," said the old man, stooping to kiss +his daughter, "so I shan't see you until to-morrow." Then turning to +Stephen, he added with a whimsical smile, "If you are so much afraid of +Vetch, why don't you fight him with his own weapons? What were you +doing, you and John, when the people voted for him?" + +"To tell the truth nobody ever dreamed that he would be elected," +replied Stephen, flushing. "Who would have thought that an independent +candidate could win over both parties?" + +The Judge had moved to the door, and he looked back, as Stephen +finished, with a dramatic flourish of his long white hand. "Well, +remember next time, my dear young sir," he answered, "that in politics +it is always the impossible that happens." The long white hand fell +caressingly on the shoulders of old Powhatan Plummer, and the two men +passed out of the door together. + +When Stephen turned to Corinna, she was resting languidly against the +tapestry-covered back of her chair, while the firelight flickering in +her eyes changed them to the deep bronze of the marigolds on the table. +With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to +him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall. + +"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked, +pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of +Bedford. + +She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my +reasons." + +As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly +over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich +mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the +bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints +of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer. Was not Corinna's place +among those vanished beauties of a richer age, rather than among the +sour-faced reformers and the Gideon Vetches of to-day? The wonderful +tone of the old prints, the silvery dusk, or the softly glowing colours +that were like the sunset of another century; the warmth and splendour +of the few brocades she had picked up in Italy; the suave religious +feeling of the worn red velvet from some church in Florence; the candles +in wrought-iron sconces, the shimmering firelight and the dreamy +fragrance of tea roses--all these things together made him think +suddenly of sunshine over the Campagna and English gardens in the month +of May and the burning reds and blues and golden greens of the Middle +Ages. Corinna with her unfading youth became a part of all the +loveliness that he had ever seen--of all beauty everywhere. + +"I haven't had a chance to tell you," she said, "that I am going to meet +the Governor." + +"Where? At the Berkeleys'?" + +"Yes, at the Berkeleys' dinner on Thursday. Are you going?" + +He laughed. "Mrs. Berkeley called me up this morning and asked me if I +would take somebody's place. She didn't say whose place it was, but she +did divulge the fact that the dinner is given to Vetch. I told her I'd +come--that I was so used to taking other people's places I could fill +six at the same time. But a dinner to Vetch! I wonder why she is doing +it?" + +"That's easy. Mr. Berkeley wants something from the Governor. I don't +know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very +badly." + +"And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me +an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of +man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the +opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he +is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs. +Stribling?" + +"Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should +that interest you?" + +"Oh, they say--at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any +misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it--that Mrs. Stribling's +latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself." + +He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not +mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and +unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war +had cured her." + +"The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," +he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as +a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more +obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard +enough to get rid of that." + +"I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make +you human--and you've never been really human all through, you know--was +not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they +made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France--he had +gone into the war before his country--and to the nervous malady, the +disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more +esteem, but to lose some that you've got. Your salvation lies in the +opposite direction from where flags are waving. If you could only +deliberately arrange to do something that would lower your reputation in +the eyes of gouty old gentlemen or mothers with marriageable daughters! +If you could manage to get your nose broken, or elope with a chorus +girl, or commit an unromantic murder, I should begin to have hopes of +you." + +"I may do something as bad some day and surprise you." + +"It would surprise me. But I'm not sure, after all, that I don't like +you better as you are, with your fine air of superiority. It makes one +believe, somehow, in human perfectibility. Now, I can never believe in +that when I realize how I feel about Rose Stribling. There is nothing +perfectible in such emotions." + +"Rose Stribling! Beside you she is like a pumpkin in the basket with a +pomegranate!" + +Corinna laughed with frank pleasure. "There are a million who would +prefer the pumpkin to the pomegranate," she answered. "Rose Stribling, +you must admit, is the type that has been the desire of the world since +Venus first rose from the foam." + +"Can you imagine Mrs. Stribling rising from foam?" Stephen retorted +impertinently. + +"No, Venus has grown fatter through the ages," assented Corinna, "but +the type is unchanged. Now, among all the compliments that have been +paid me in my life, no one has ever compared me to the Goddess of Love. +I have been painted with the bow of Diana, but never with the doves of +Venus." + +Because he felt that her gaiety rippled over an undercurrent of pain, +Stephen bent forward and touched her hand with an impulse of tenderness. + +"You are more beautiful than you ever were in your life," he said. +"There isn't a woman in the world who can compare with you." Then he +laughed merrily. "I shall watch you two to-morrow evening, you and Rose +Stribling." + +"I am sorry," replied Corinna in a troubled voice. "I may tell you the +truth since Father says it is the last thing any one ever believes--and +the truth is that she makes me savage--yes, I mean it--she makes me +savage." + +"I know what the Judge means when he says you are like Vetch," returned +Stephen abruptly. Then, without waiting for her reply, he added in an +impulsive tone: "Triumph over her to-morrow night, Corinna. Go out to +fight with all your weapons and seize the trophies from Mrs. Stribling." + +"You funny boy!" exclaimed Corinna, but the sadness had left her voice +and her eyes were shining. "Why, I am twelve years older than Rose +Stribling, and those twelve years are everything." + +"Those twelve years are nothing unless you imagine that you are in a +novel. It is only in books that there is a chronology of the emotions." + +"She is a fat blonde without a heart," insisted Corinna, "and they are +invulnerable." + +"Well, snatch Vetch away from her. He deserves something better than +that combination." + +"Oh, she can't hurt him very much, even though she no longer has a +husband to get in her way. Have you ever wondered how George Stribling +stood her? It must have been a relief to find himself safely dead." + +"He stood her as one stands sultry weather probably, but with less hope +of a change. He had that slow and heavy philosophy that wears well. I +think it even dawned upon him now and then that there was something +funny about it." + +"Of course he knew that she married him for his money," said Corinna, +"but that is the last thing the natural man appears to resent." + +Stephen rose and bent over her. "Promise me that you will save Vetch," +he implored mockingly. + +"Why this sudden interest in Vetch?" Corinna rose also and reached for +her fur coat. "It makes me curious to meet him. Yes, I promise you that +I will go to-morrow night attired as for a carnival in all the mystery +of a velvet mask. I may not save Vetch, but I think at least that I can +eclipse Rose Stribling. My motive may not be admirable, but it is as +feminine as a string of beads." + +He kissed her hand. "Bless your heart because you are both human and my +cousin." For an instant he hesitated, and then as they reached the door +together, he turned with his hand on the knob, and looked into her eyes. +"The Governor has a daughter. Did you know it?" he asked. + +"Why, of course I know it. Isn't Patty Vetch as well advertised as the +newest illustrated weekly?" + +"I was wondering," again he hesitated over the words, "if you had seen +her and what you think of her?" + +"I have seen her twice. She was in here the other day to look at my +prints, and," her brilliant eyes grew soft, "well, I feel sorry for +her." + +"Sorry? But do you like her?" + +"Haven't you always told me that I like everybody?" + +He laughed. "With one exception!" + +"With one particular exception!" + +"But honestly, Corinna." His tone was insistent. "Do you like Patty +Vetch?" + +"Honestly, my dear Stephen, I do. There is something--well, something +almost pathetic about the girl; and I think she is genuine. One day last +week she came here and made me tell her everything I could about my +prints. I don't mean really that she made me, you know. There wasn't +anything forward about her then, though I hear there is sometimes. She +seemed to me a restless, lonely, misdirected intelligence hungry to know +things. That is the only way I can describe her, but you will +understand. She has had absolutely no advantages; she doesn't even know +what culture means, or social instinct, or any of the qualities you were +born with, my dear boy; but she feels vaguely that she has missed +something, and she is reaching out gropingly and trying to find it. I +like the spirit. It strikes me as American in the best sense--that young +longing to make up in some way for her deficiencies and lack of +opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her +upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know. +I like the courage that is in the girl--I am sure it is courage--and her +straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things +she was never taught, to make herself over if need be." + +"Is this Patty Vetch, Corinna, or your own dramatic instinct?" + +"Oh, it's Patty Vetch! I had no interest in her whatever. Why should I +have had? But I liked the way she went straight as a dart at the thing +she wanted. There was no affectation about her, no pretence of being +what she was not. She asked about prints because she saw the name and +she didn't know what it meant. She would have asked about Browning, or +Swinburne, or Meredith in exactly the same way if this had been a +book-shop. She wanted to know the difference between a mezzotint and a +stipple print. She wanted to know all about the portraits too, and the +names of the painters and who Lady Hamilton was and the Duchess of +Bedford and the Ladies Waldegrave and 'Serena,' and if Morland's +Cottagers were really as happy as they were painted? She asked as many +questions as Socrates, and I fear got as inadequately answered." + +"Well, she didn't strike me as in the least like that; but you can be a +great help to her if she is really in earnest." + +"She didn't strike you like that, my dear, simply because you are a man, +and some girls are never really themselves with men; they are for ever +acting a part; a vulgar part, I admit, but one they have learned before +they were born, the instinctive quarry eluding the instinctive hunter. +The girl is naturally shy; I could tell that, and she covers it with a +kind of boldness that isn't--well, particularly attractive to one of +your fastidious mind. Yet there is something rather taking about her. +She reminds me of a small, bright tropical bird." + +"Of a Virginia redbird, you mean." + +"A redbird? Then you have seen her?" + +"Yes, I've seen her--only twice--but the last time she indulged her +sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle." + +"I suppose she would joke like that. Even the modern girl that we know +isn't in the best possible taste. And you must remember that Patty Vetch +is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope +she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't +come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like +that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one +can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the +window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let me take you home?" + +They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her +smile of whimsical gaiety. + +"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown +you will wear for your triumph." + +It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her +laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn +hope!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TRIBAL INSTINCT + + +The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude, +was holding carnival in the town. Faster and faster buildings were +rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it +is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected. Everywhere +people were pushing one another into the slums or the country. +Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was +coming on in a torrent. Two opposing principles, the conservative and +the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive +principle had won. To add more and more numbers; to build higher and +higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had +been already added or built or pushed--these impulses had united at last +into a frenzied activity. And while the building and the pushing and the +improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into +the city, and the city grew out into the country. Beneath it all, +informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the +symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless +of quality or condition, is civilization. For the many-headed god is a +god of sacrifice. He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress. + +Long ago the village had disappeared. Long ago the spacious southern +homes, with their walled gardens of box and roses and aromatic shrubs in +spring, had receded into the shadowy memories of those whom the modern +city pointed out, with playful solicitude, as "the oldest inhabitants." +None except the very oldest inhabitants could remember those friendly +and picturesque streets, deeply shaded by elms and sycamores; those +hospitable houses of gray stucco or red brick which time had subdued to +a delicate rust-colour; those imposing Doric columns, or quaint Georgian +doorways; those grass-grown brick pavements, where old ladies in +perpetual mourning gathered for leisurely gossip; those wrought-iron +gates that never closed; those unshuttered windows, with small gleaming +panes, which welcomed the passer-by in winter; or those gardens, steeped +in the fragrance of mint and old-fashioned flowers, which allured the +thirsty visitor in summer. These things had vanished years ago; yet +beneath the noisy commercial city the friendly village remained. There +were hours in the lavender-tinted twilights of spring, or on autumn +afternoons, while the shadows quivered beneath the burnished leaves and +the sunset glowed with the colour of apricots, when the watcher might +catch a fleeting glimpse of the past. It may have been the drop of dusk +in the arched recess of a Colonial doorway; it may have been the faint +sunshine on the ivy-grown corner of an old brick wall; it may have been +the plaintive melody of a negro market-man in the street; or it may have +been the first view of the Culpeper's gray and white mansion; but, in +one or all of these things, there were moments when the ghost of the +buried village stirred and looked out, and a fragrance that was like the +memory of box and mint and blush roses stole into the senses. It was +then that one turned to the Doric columns of the Culpeper house, +standing firmly established in its grassy lawn above the street and the +age, and reflected that the defeated spirit of tradition had entrenched +itself well at the last. Time had been powerless against that fortress +of prejudice; against that cheerful and inaccessible prison of the +tribal instinct. Poverty, the one indiscriminate leveller of men and +principles, had never attacked it, for in the lean years of +Reconstruction, when to look well fed was little short of a disgrace in +Virginia, an English cousin, remote but clannish, had died at an +opportune moment and left Mr. Randolph Byrd Culpeper a moderate fortune. +Thanks to this event, which Mrs. Culpeper gratefully classified as the +"intervention of Providence," the family had scarcely altered its manner +of living in the last two hundred years. To be sure there were modern +discomforts which related to the abolition of slavery and the +prohibition of whiskey; but since the Culpepers had been indulgent +masters and light drinkers, they had come to regard these deprivations +as in the nature of blessings. Solid, imposing, and as richly endowed as +an institution of learning, the Culpeper generations had weathered both +the restraints and the assaults of the centuries. The need to make a +living, that grim necessity which is the mother of democracy, had +brushed them as lightly as the theory of evolution. Saturated with +tradition as with an odour, and fortified by the ponderous moral purpose +of the Victorian age, they had never doubted anything that was old and +never discovered anything that was new. About them as about the hidden +village, there was the charm of mellowness, of unruffled serenity. Some +ineradicable belief in things as they have always been had preserved +them from the aesthetic derangement of the Mid-Victorian taste; and in +standing for what was old, they had stood, inadvertently but +courageously, for what was excellent. Security, permanence, +possession--all the instincts which blend to make the tribe and the +community, all the agencies which work for organized society and against +the wayward experiment in human destiny--these were the stubborn forces +embodied in the Culpeper stock. + +The present head of the family, that Randolph Byrd Culpeper who had been +only ten years old when Providence intervened, was now a fine-looking, +heavily built man of sixty-five, with prominent dark eyes under sleepy +lids, abundant iron-gray hair which was brushed until it shone, and a +drooping moustache that was still as brown as it had been in his youth. +He had an impressive though stolid bearing, an amiable expression, an +engaging smile, and the manner of a weary monarch. It was his boast that +he had never done anything for the first time without ascertaining +precisely how it had been done by the highest authority before him. +Devoid of even the rudiments of an imagination, he had never been +visited in a nightmare by the suspicion that the name of Culpeper was +not the best result of the best of all possible worlds. As long as his +prejudices were not offended his generosity was inexhaustible. For the +rest, he bore his social position as reverently as if it were a plate in +church, had never spoken a profane word or recognized a joke in his +life, and still dined at two o'clock in the afternoon because his +grandfather, who was dyspeptic by constitution, had been unable to +digest a late dinner. At the time of his marriage, an unusually happy +one, he was regarded as "the handsomest man of his day"; and he was +still yearned over from a distance by elderly ladies of suppressed +romantic temperaments. + +Mrs. Culpeper, a small imperious woman of distinguished lineage and +uncertain temper, had gone through an entire life seeing only one thing +at a time, and never seeing that one thing as it really was. If her +husband embodied the moral purpose, she herself was an incarnation of +the evasive idealism of the nineteenth century. Her universe was +comprised in her family circle; her horizon ended with the old brick +wall between the alley and the Culpepers' garden. All that related to +her husband, her eight children and her six grandchildren, was not only +of supreme importance and intense interest to her, but of unsurpassed +beauty and excellence. It was intolerable to her exclusive maternal +instinct that either virtue or happiness should exist in any degree, +except a lesser measure, outside of her own household; and praise of +another woman's children conveyed to her a secret disparagement of her +own. Having naturally a kind heart she could forgive any sin in her +neighbours except prosperity--though as Corinna had once observed, with +characteristic flippancy, "Continual affliction was a high price to pay +for Aunt Harriet's favour." In her girlhood she had been a famous +beauty; and she was still as fine and delicately tinted as a carving in +old ivory, with a skin like a faded microphylla rose-leaf, and stiff +yellowish white hair, worn à la Pompadour. Her mind was thin but firm, +and having received a backward twist in its youth, it had remained +inflexibly bent for more than sixty years. Unlike her husband she was +gifted with an active, though perfectly concrete imagination--a kind of +superior magic lantern that shot out images in black and white on a +sheet--and a sense of humour which, in spite of the fact that it lost +its edge when it was pointed at the family, was not without practical +value in a crisis. + +On the evening of Stephen's adventure in the Square, the Culpeper family +had gathered in the front drawing-room, to await the arrival of a young +cousin, whom, they devoutly hoped, Stephen would one day perceive the +wisdom of marrying. The four daughters--Victoria, the eldest, who had +nursed in France during the war; Hatty, who ought to have been pretty, +and was not; Janet, who was candidly plain; and Mary Byrd, who would +have been a beauty in any circle--were talking eagerly, with the +innumerable little gestures which they had inherited from Mrs. +Culpeper's side of the house. They adored one another; they adored their +father and mother; they adored their three brothers and their married +sister, whose name was Julia; and they adored every nephew and niece in +the connection. Though they often quarrelled, being young and human, +these quarrels rippled as lightly as summer storms over profound depths +of devotion. + +"Oh, I do wish," said Mary Byrd, who had "come out" triumphantly the +winter before, "that Stephen would marry Margaret." She was a slender +graceful girl, with red-gold hair, which had a lustrous sheen and a +natural wave in it, and the brown ox-like eyes of her father. There was +a great deal of what Peyton, the second son, who lived at home, and was +the most modern of the family, called "dash" about her. + +"It was the war that spoiled it," said Janet, the plain one, who +possessed what her mother fondly described as "a charm that was all her +own." "I sometimes think the war spoiled everything." + +At this Victoria, the eldest, demurred mildly. Ever since she had nursed +in France, she had assumed a slightly possessive manner toward the war, +as if she had in some mysterious way brought it into the world and was +responsible for its reputation. She was tall and very thin, with a +perfect complexion, a long nose, and a short upper lip which showed her +teeth too much when she laughed. Her hair was fair and fluffy; and Mrs. +Culpeper, who could not praise her beauty, was very proud of her +"aristocratic appearance." + +"Why, he never even mentions the war," she protested. + +"I don't care. I believe he thinks about it," insisted Janet, who would +never surrender a point after she had once made it. + +"He's different, anyhow," said Hatty, the one who had everything, as her +mother asserted, to make her pretty, and yet wasn't. "He isn't nearly so +normal. Is he, Mother?" + +Mrs. Culpeper raised troubled eyes from the skirt of her pale gray silk +gown which she was scrutinizing dejectedly. "How on earth could I have +got that spot there?" she remarked in her brisk yet soft voice. "I am +afraid you are right, dear, about Stephen. He certainly hasn't been like +himself for some time. I have felt really anxious, I suppose it was the +war." + +While the war had lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of +vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but +from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an +international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course +of her family affairs. For the past two years she had refused to think +of it except under pressure; and then she recalled it only as the +occasion when Victoria and Stephen had been in France, and poor Peyton +in a training camp. Her feeling had been violent, but entirely personal, +while Mr. Culpeper, who possessed the martial patriotism characteristic +of Virginians of his class and generation, had been animated by the +sacrificial spirit of a hero. + +"Oh, Stephen is all right," declared Peyton, who felt impelled to take +the side of his brother in a family discussion. He was an incurious and +gay young man, of active sporting interests and immaculate appearance, +with so few of the moral attributes of the Culpepers that his mother +sometimes wondered how he could possibly be the son of his father. +Indeed there were times when this wonder extended to Mary Byrd, for it +seemed incredible that anything so "advanced" as the outlook of these +two should have been a legitimate offspring of either the Culpeper or +the Warwick point of view. + +"He would be all right," maintained Janet, "if he would only marry +Margaret. I am sure she likes him." + +"Oh, I don't know. There's that young clergyman," rejoined Hatty, "and +Margaret is so pious. I suppose that's why she has never been popular +with men." + +"My dear child," breathed Mrs. Culpeper in remonstrance, and she added +emphatically, as if the doubt were a disparagement of Stephen's +attractions, "Of course she likes him. Why, it would be a perfectly +splendid marriage for Margaret Blair." + +"It isn't possible," asked Mary Byrd, for if her manners were modern, +her prejudices were old-fashioned, "that Stephen could have met any one +else over there?" She was wearing an elaborate, very short and very low +gown of pink velvet, not one of the simple blue or gray silk dresses, +with modest round necks, in which her sisters attired themselves in the +evening. A little later she and Peyton would go on to a dance; for her +mother's consternation when the frock had been unpacked from its Paris +wrappings had been temporarily mitigated by the assertion that unless +one danced in gowns like that, one simply couldn't be expected to dance +at all. "Of course, if you wish me to be a wall-flower like Margaret +Blair," Mary Byrd had protested with wounded dignity; and since Mrs. +Culpeper wished nothing on earth so little as that, her only response +had been, "Well, I hope to heaven that you won't let your father see +it!" + +Now, as her husband was heard descending the stairs, she said hurriedly: +"Mary Byrd, if you won't put a scarf over your knees, I wish you would +wear one around your neck." + +"Oh, Father won't mind," retorted Mary Byrd flippantly. "He is a real +sport, and he knows that you have to play the game well if you play it +at all." Then turning with her liveliest air, she remarked as Mr. +Culpeper entered: "Father, darling, I've just said that you were a +sport." + +Mr. Culpeper surveyed her with portentous disapproval. He adored her, +and she knew it, but because it was impossible for his features to wear +any expression lightly, the natural gravity of his look deepened to a +thundercloud. + +"Is Mary Byrd going in swimming?" he demanded not of his daughter, but +of the family. + +"No, you precious, only in dancing," replied Mary Byrd, as she rose +airily and placed a kiss above the thundercloud on his forehead. + +"Will you go looking like this?" + +"Not if I can possibly look any worse." She swayed like a golden lily +before his astonished gaze. "Can you suggest any way that I might?" + +"I cannot." His face cleared under the kiss, and he held her at arm's +length while paternal pride softened his look. "Do you really mean that +you won't shock the young men away from you?" It was as near a jest as +he had ever come, and a ripple of amusement passed over the room. + +"I may shock them, but not away." The girl was really a wonder. How in +the world, he asked himself, did she happen to be his daughter? + +"Do you mean that all the other girls dress like this?" It was his final +appeal to an arbitrary but acknowledged authority. + +"All the popular ones. You can't wish me to dress like the unpopular +ones, can you?" + +His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his +father had displayed in a greater surrender. + +"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded; +and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this +convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct. + +As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble +mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less +resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and +haughty--the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and +knows that his blood is blue. + +"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I +heard him upstairs." + +She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming. +That is her ring now." + +Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe +herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was +the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I +should call Margaret our last violet--" + +A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It +sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's +just as certain to be left on the stem--" Then she broke off, still +pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet +entered the room. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MARGARET + + +As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fashioned lock, Stephen +remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because +Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening. "It takes you so long to +change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your +room," she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up +the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the +girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some +day--some remote day probably--become his wife. He was not in love with +Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was +not in love with him--that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be +called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who +read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also +that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of +four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past +experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less +intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this +carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her +usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have +married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would +have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of +tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous +ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the +compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of +the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for +romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would +have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James +River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had +sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness +could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something +wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived. +In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated +traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he +had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing +together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of +smothering for lack of space in which to breathe, had driven him like a +hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he +discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more +quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents +stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been +suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific +terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in +on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy +and afterward to analyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other +lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations +or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to +turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could +understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of +depression was psychoanalysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to +be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound +revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved--an apathy +of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark +unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this +morass of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only +hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete +plunge into the future. His reason told him this, and yet, though he +longed passionately to let himself go--to make the wild dash for +freedom--his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he +suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were +hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fortitude +to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as +in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic +spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw +things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by +circumstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between +tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age +and youth. + +Yes, it was "something different" that he craved. He had known Margaret +too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in +any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs +to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the +unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and +preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read. +As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was +gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions, +never exacted more of one's time than one cared to give, never +interfered with more important, if not more admirable, pursuits. That +was the rarest of combinations, he knew--the delightful mingling of +every virtue he held desirable in woman--and yet, rare and delightful as +he acknowledged it to be, he was obliged to confess that it awakened not +the faintest quiver of his pulses. Margaret aroused in him every +sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that +at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him +to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their +association had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in +accordance with the system under which he lived, he had assumed that +woman's part in love was as heroically passive as it had been in +religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she +was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love +with her? Until this evening he had always told himself that it would +come right in the end, that he was in his own phrase simply "playing for +time." Margaret was handsomer, if less piquant, than Patty Vetch. She +possessed every quality he had found lacking in poor Patty; yet he +admitted ruefully that he felt the vague sense of disappointment which +follows when one is offered a dish of one's choice and finds that the +expected flavour is missing. + +There was a peremptory knock at his door, and his mother looked in +reproachfully. "You must hurry, Stephen, or everything will be burned to +a cinder." + +"I am sorry," he replied with compunction, "I didn't realize that I was +late." + +Her expression was stern but kind. "If you could only learn to be +punctual, dear. Of course while we felt that you were not quite +yourself, we tried not to worry about it. But you have been home so long +now that you ought to be able to drop back into your old habits." + +She was right, he knew; the exasperating thing about her was that she +was always right. It was reasonable, it was logical, that after two +years he should be able to drop back into his old habits of life; and +yet he realized, with the intensity of revolt, that these habits +represented for him the form of bondage from which he desired +passionately to escape. He could not oppose his mother, and the +knowledge that he could not oppose her increased his annoyance. As far +back as he could remember she had governed her household as a benevolent +despot; and the fact that she lived entirely for others appeared to him +to have endowed her with some unfair advantage. Her very unselfishness +had developed into an unscrupulous power to ruin their lives. How was it +possible to weigh one's personal preferences against an irresistible +force which was actuated simply and solely by the desire for one's good? +Who could withstand a virtue which had encased itself in the first +principle of religion--which gave all things and demanded nothing except +the sacrifice of one's immortal soul? + +"I am ready now," he said; and then as they went downstairs together, he +added contritely: "After this I'll try to remember." + +"I hope you will, my dear. It vexes your father." Even in his childhood +Stephen had understood that his father's "vexation" existed only as an +instrument of correction in the hands of his mother. Though he had +discovered by the time he was three years old that the image was nothing +more than a nursery bugaboo, there were occasions still when the figure +was solemnly dressed up and paraded before his eyes. + +"So it's the Dad, bless him!" he exclaimed, for if he loved his mother +in spite of her virtues, he joined heartily in the family worship of the +head of the house. "Well, he has had a word with Margaret anyway, and he +ought to thank me for that." + +"Dear Margaret," murmured Mrs. Culpeper, "she is looking so sweet +to-night." + +That Margaret was looking very sweet indeed, Stephen acknowledged as +soon as he entered the room, where the firelight suffused the Persian +rugs (which had replaced the earlier Brussels carpet woven in a mammoth +floral design), the elaborately carved and twisted rosewood chairs and +sofas, upholstered in ruby-coloured brocade, the few fine old pieces of +Chippendale or Heppelwhite, the massive crystal chandelier, and the +precise copies of Italian paintings in gorgeous Florentine frames. Here +and there hung a family portrait, one of Amanda Culpeper, a famous +English beauty, with a long nose and a short upper lip, not unlike +Victoria's. This painting, which was supposed to be by Sir Joshua +Reynolds, was a source of unfailing consolation to Victoria, though +Stephen preferred the Sully painting of his grandmother, Judith +Randolph, who reminded him in some subtle way of Margaret Blair. In his +childhood he had believed this drawing-room to be the most beautiful +place on earth, and he never entered it now without a feeling of regret +for a shattered illusion. + +As he took Margaret's hand her expression of intelligent sympathy went +straight to his heart; and he told himself emphatically that after all +the familiar graces in women were the most lovable. She was a small +fragile girl, with a lovely oval face, nut-brown hair that grew in a +"widow's peak" on her forehead, and the prettiest dark blue eyes in the +world. Her figure drooped slightly in the shoulders, and was, as Mary +Byrd pointed out in her dashing way, "without the faintest pretence to +style." But if Margaret lacked "style," she possessed an unconscious +grace which seemed to Stephen far more attractive. It was delightful to +watch the flowing lines of her clothes, as if, he used to imagine in a +fanciful strain, she were poured out of some slender porcelain vase. Her +dress to-night, of delicate blue crêpe, began slightly below the throat +and reached almost to her ankles. It was a fashion which he had always +admired; but he realized that it gave Margaret, who was only twenty-two, +a quaint air of maturity. + +"I am so sorry I am late," he said, "but I had to go back to the office +for a paper I'd forgotten." It was the truth as far as it went; and yet +because it was not the whole truth, because his delay was due, not to +his return for the paper, but to his meeting with Patty Vetch in the +Square, his conscience pricked him uncomfortably. When deceit was so +easy it ceased to be a temptation. + +She looked at him with an expression of guileless sympathy. "After +working all day I should think you would be tired," she murmured. That +was the way she would always cover up his errors, large or small, he +knew, with a trusting sweetness which made him feel there was dishonour +in the merest tinge of dissimulation. + +Mary Byrd was talking as usual in high fluting notes which drowned the +gentle ripple of Margaret's voice. + +"I was just telling Margaret about the charity ball," she said, "and the +way the girls snubbed Patty Vetch in the dressing-room." + +"And it was a very good account of young barbarians at play," commented +Mr. Culpeper, who was a romantic soul and still read his Byron. + +"Patty Vetch? Why, isn't that the daughter of the Governor?" asked Mrs. +Culpeper, without a trace of her husband's sympathy for the victim of +the "snubbing." A moment later, in accordance with her mental attitude +of evasive idealism, she added briskly: "I try not to think of that man +as Governor of Virginia." + +Of course the subject had come up. Wherever Stephen had been in the past +few weeks he had found that the conversation turned to the Governor; and +it struck him, while he followed the line of girls headed by his +mother's erect figure into the dining-room, that, for good or bad, the +influence of Gideon Vetch was as prevalent as an epidemic. All through +the long and elaborate meal, in which the viands that his ancestors had +preferred were served ceremoniously by slow-moving coloured servants, he +listened again to the familiar discussion and analysis of the demagogue, +as he still called him. How little, after all, did any one know of +Gideon Vetch? Since he had been in office what had they learned except +that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in +political ones? + +"I wonder if Stephen noticed the girl at the ball?" said Mrs. Culpeper +suddenly, looking tenderly at her son across the lovely George II +candlesticks and the dish of expensive fruit, for she could never +reconcile with her ideas of economy the spending of a penny on +decorations so ephemeral as flowers. + +"Oh, he couldn't have helped it," responded Mary Byrd. "Every one saw +her. She was dressed very conspicuously." + +"Do you imply that you were not?" inquired her father, without facetious +intention. + +Mary Byrd beamed indulgently in his direction. "Oh, you don't know what +it is to be conspicuous, dear," she answered. "What did you think of her +dress, Stephen?" + +He met her question with a blush. Was he really so modest after the war +and France and everything?--Victoria wondered in silence. + +"It was something red, wasn't it?" he rejoined vaguely. + +"It was scarlet tulle." Mary Byrd, as her mother had once observed, +"hadn't an indefinite bone in her body." Then she imparted an additional +incident. "She got it badly torn. I saw her pinning it up in the +dressing-room." + +"I should have been sorry for her," said Margaret simply; and he felt +that he had never in his life been so nearly in love with her. + +"Is she pretty?" asked Mrs. Culpeper, appealing directly to Stephen as +a man and an authority. It was the question the strange woman had put to +him in the Square, and ironical mirth seized the young man as he +remembered. + +"Do you think her pretty, Stephen?" repeated Margaret, and waited, with +an expression of impartial interest, for his reply. + +For an instant he hesitated. Did he think Patty Vetch pretty or not? "I +hardly know," he answered. "I suppose it depends upon whether you like +that kind of thing or not. Why don't you ask Peyton?" At the time he +couldn't have told himself whether he admired Patty or not. She +surprised him, she struck a new note, the note of the unexpected, but +whether he liked or disliked it, he could not tell. "There is something +unusual about her," he concluded hurriedly, feeling that he had not been +quite fair. + +"Well, I think she's good looking enough," Peyton, the incurious young +man of "advanced" tastes, was replying. "She seems to have a kind of +fascination. I don't know what it is, but I dare say she inherited it +from her father. The Governor may be unsound in his views and uncertain +in his methods, but I've yet to see any one who could resist his smile." + +"The Judge admires him," remarked Stephen, with the air of a man who +tosses a bomb into a legislative assembly. + +"Oh, Stephen," protested Victoria on a high note of interrogation, "how +can he?" + +"The Judge likes to keep up well with the times," observed Mr. Culpeper, +whose final argument against any innovation was the inquiry, "What do +you suppose General Lee would have thought of it?" Pausing an instant +while the family hung breathlessly on his words, he continued +heroically: "Now, it doesn't bother me to be called an old fogy." + +"There's no use trying to hide the fact that the Judge isn't quite what +he used to be," said Mrs. Culpeper in an unusually tolerant tone. "He +has let his habit of joking grow on him until you never know whether he +is serious or simply poking fun at you." + +"The next thing we hear," suggested Peyton, who was quite dreadful at +times, "will be that the old gentleman admires the daughter also." + +"He doesn't like conspicuous women," rejoined Victoria. "He told me so +only the other day when Mrs. Bradford announced that she was going to +run for the legislature." + +"That's the kind of conspicuousness we all object to," commented Peyton; +"Patty Vetch isn't that sort." + +Janet was more merciful. "Well, you are obliged to be conspicuous to-day +if you want anybody to notice you," she said. "Look at Mary Byrd." + +Mary Byrd tossed her bright head as gaily as if a compliment had been +intended. "Oh, you needn't think I like to dress this way," she +retorted, "or that I don't sometimes get tired of keeping up with +things. Why, there are hours and hours when I simply feel as if I should +drop." + +"Well, as long as you look like that you needn't hope for a change," +remarked Stephen admiringly. Then, turning his gaze away from her too +obvious brightness, he looked into the tranquil depths of Margaret's +blue eyes, and thought how much more restful the old-fashioned type of +woman must have been. Men didn't need to bestir themselves and sharpen +their wits with women like that; they were accepted, with their +inherent virtues or vices, as philosophically as one accepted the +seasons. + +It was a dull supper, he thought, because his mind was distracted; but a +little later, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and the family +had drifted away in separate directions--Mary Byrd and Peyton to a +dance, his father to his library, and his mother and the three other +girls to a game of bridge in the next room, he received an amazing +revelation of Margaret's point of view. His sentiment for the girl had +always suffered, he was aware, from too many opportunities. He had +sometimes wished that an obstacle might arise, that the formidable +parents would try for once to tear them apart instead of thrust them +together, but, in spite of the changeless familiarity of their +association, he was presently to discover how little he had known of the +real Margaret beneath the flowing grace and the nut-brown hair and the +eyes like blue larkspur. Though the tribal customs had shaped her body +and formed her manners, a rare essence of personality escaped like a +perfume from the hereditary mould of the race. + +As he looked at her now, sitting gracefully on the ruby brocade of one +of the rosewood chairs, with her lovely head framed by the band of +intricate carving, he was aware that the delicate subtleties and +shadings of her feminine charm made an entirely fresh appeal to his +perceptions, if not to his senses. He had never admired her appearance +more than he did at that instant; and yet his gaze was as dispassionate +as the one he bestowed on the Sully portrait of which she reminded him. +Her eyes were very soft; there was a faint smile on her thin pink lips +which gave the look of coldness, of reticence to her face. With her head +bent and her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting +pensively--for what? It occurred to him suddenly with a shock that she +was deeper, far deeper than he had ever suspected. + +"You are so different from the other girls, Margaret," he said at last, +oppressed by the old difficulty of making conversation. "You don't +belong to the same world with Mary Byrd and--" He was going to add +"Patty Vetch," but he checked himself before the name escaped him. + +She seemed to melt rather than break from her attitude of waiting, so +gently did her movements sink into the shadowy glow of the firelight. + +"No, I don't," she replied, with a touch of sadness. "I sometimes wish +that I did." + +"You wish that you did!" Here was surprise at last. "But, why, in +Heaven's name, should you wish that when you are everything that they +ought to be?" + +"As if that mattered!" There was a tone in her voice that was new to +him. "It's gone out of fashion to be superior. Nobody even cares any +longer about your being what you ought to be. I've been trained to be +the kind of girl that doesn't get on to-day, full of all sorts of +forgotten virtues and refinements. Nobody looks at me because everybody +is staring so hard at the girls who are improperly dressed. There is +only one place where I can be sure of having attention, and that is in +an Old Ladies' Home. Old ladies admire me." + +For the second time that day he found himself startled by the +eccentricities of the feminine mind; but in Margaret's passive +resignation there was none of Patty's rebellion against the cruelty and +injustice of life. Generations of acquiescence were in the slender +figure before him; and he realized that the completeness of her +surrender to Fate must have softened her destiny. Both girls were +victims of the changing fashion in women, of an age that moved not in a +stream, but in a whirlpool. + +"I admire you," he said in a caressing voice, "more than I admire any +one else in the world." + +She had been gazing into the fire, and as she turned slowly in answer to +his words, it seemed to him that the blue of a summer sky shone on him +from beneath the tremulous shadow of her eyelashes. + +"The trouble," she replied, with an appealing glance, "is that I don't +know how to be common. There isn't any hope of a girl's being popular if +she doesn't know how to be common. I would be if I could," she confessed +plaintively, "but I haven't the faintest idea how to begin." + +"I hope you'll never learn," he insisted. In awakening his sympathy she +had awakened also a deep-rooted protective instinct. He felt that he +longed to guard and defend her, as a brother of course, and if this +newer and tenderer sentiment was the result of feminine calculation, he +was too chivalrous or too inexperienced to perceive it. What he +perceived was simply that this lovely girl, whom he had known from +infancy, had opened her heart and taken him into her confidence. To +admit that she was not a success in her small social world, proved her, +he felt, to be both frank and courageous. + +"Of course they don't call their way common," she pursued, with what +seemed to him the most touching candour. "Their word for it is 'pep'." +She pronounced the vulgar syllable as if she abhorred it. "That is what +I haven't got, and that's why I have never been a real success in +anything except church work. Even in the Red Cross it was 'pep' that +counted most, and that was the reason they never sent me to Europe. +Mother tried to make me into the kind of girl that men admired when she +was young; but the type has gone out of fashion to-day just as much as +crinolines or a small waist. If I were clever I suppose I could make +myself over and begin to jump about and imitate the sort of animation I +never had; but I'm not really clever, for I've tried and I can't do it. +It only makes me feel silly to pretend to be what I am not." + +Her confession struck him, while he listened to it, as the sweetest and +most womanly one he had ever heard. + +"I cannot imagine your pretending," he answered, and felt that the +remark was as inane as if he had quoted it from a play. After a moment, +as she seemed to be waiting for something, he continued with greater +assurance, "I dare say they have a quality that the older generation +missed. It isn't just commonness. The modern spirit means, I suppose, a +breathless vitality. We are more intensely alive than our ancestors, +perhaps, more restless, more inclined to take risks." + +The phrases he had used made him think suddenly of Gideon Vetch. Was +that the secret of the Governor's irresistible magnetism, of his +meteoric rise into power? He embodied the modern fetish--success; he +was, in the lively idiom of the younger set,--personified "pep." After +all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? +Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, +of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps +it could build as well. There might be more in it, he was beginning to +discern, than mere lack of control, than vulgar hysteria and +undisciplined violence. The quality expressed by that dreadful word was +the sparkle on the edge of the tempest, the lightning flash that +revealed the presence of electricity in the air. After all, the god of +the future was riding the whirlwind. + +"I wonder if we can be wrong, you and I?" he went on presently, +forgetting the intensely personal nature of Margaret's disclosures, +while he followed the abstract trend of his reflections. "Isn't it +conceivable that we are standing, not for what is necessarily better, +but simply for what is old? Isn't the conservative merely the creature +of habit? I suppose the older generation always looks disapprovingly at +the younger, and, in spite of our youth, we really belong to the past +generation. We see things through the eyes of our parents. We are +mentally middle-aged--for middle age is a state of mind, after all. You +and I were broken in by tradition--at least I know I was, and even the +war couldn't free me. It only made me restless and dissatisfied. It +destroyed my belief in the past without giving me faith in the future. +It left me eager to go somewhere; but it failed to offer me any +direction. It put me to sea without a compass." + +Clasping his hands behind his head, he leaned back against the carving +of his chair, and fixed his gaze on the portrait of the English +ancestress over the mantelpiece. The firelight flickered over his firm, +clear-cut features, over the sleek dark hair, which was brushed +straight back from his forehead, and over his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes in which a dusky glow came and went. Margaret, watching him with +her pensive smile, thought that she had never seen him look so +"interesting." + +"We used to talk in those first days about the 'spiritual effect' of the +war," he resumed dreamily, speaking more to himself than to his +companion. "As if organized violence could have a steadying +effect--could have any results that are not the offspring of violence. +It is hard for me to talk about it. I've never even tried before to put +it into words; but we are both suffering from the same cause, I think. I +know it has played the very deuce with my life. It has made me +discontented with what I have; but it hasn't shown me anything else that +was worth striving for. I seem to have lost the power of wanting because +I've discovered that nothing is worth having after you get it. Every +apple has turned into Dead Sea fruit." + +He had never before spoken so freely, and when he had finished he felt +awkward and half resentful. Margaret's extraordinary frankness had +started him, he supposed, on a similar strain; but he wished that he had +kept back all that sentimental nonsense about what his mother called +disapprovingly, his "frame of mind." Any frame of mind except the +permanently settled appeared unsafe to Mrs. Culpeper; and her son felt +at the moment that her opinion was justified. Somehow the whole thing +seemed to have resulted from his meeting with Gideon Vetch. It was Vetch +who had "unsettled" him, who had taken the wind out of the stiff sails +of his prejudices. Had the war awakened in him, he wondered, the need of +crude emotional stimulants, the dangerous allurement of the unfamiliar, +the exotic? Would it ever pass, and would life become again normal and +placid without losing its zest and its interest? For it was the zest of +life, he realized, that he had encountered in Gideon Vetch. + +"But you are a man," Margaret was saying plaintively. "Everything is +easier for a man. You can go out and do things." + +"So can women now. You can even go into politics." + +She made a pretty gesture of aversion. "Oh, I've been too well brought +up! There isn't any hope for a girl who is well brought up except the +church, and even there she can't do anything but sit and listen to +sermons. Mother's consolation," she added with a soft little laugh, "is +that I should have been a belle and beauty in the days when Madison was +President." + +Then putting the subject aside as if she had finished with it for ever, +she began talking to him about the books she was reading. Of all the +girls he knew she was the only one who ever opened a book except one +that had been forbidden. + +An hour later, when Margaret went home with her father, Stephen turned +back, after putting her into the car, with a warmer emotion in his heart +than he had ever felt for her before. She was not only lovely and +gentle; she had revealed unexpected qualities of mind which might +develop later into an attraction that he had never dreamed she could +possess. Never, he felt, had the outlook appeared so desirable. He was +in that particular dreaminess of mood when one is easily borne off on +waves of sentiment or imagination; and it is possible that, if his +mother had been able to refrain from improving perfection, he might +have found himself sufficiently in love with Margaret for all practical +purposes. But Mrs. Culpeper, who had no need of dissimulation since she +had always got things by showing that she wanted them entirely for the +good of others, was incapable of leaving her son to work out his own +future. When he entered the house again he found her awaiting him at the +foot of the staircase. + +"I hope you had a pleasant evening, Stephen." + +"Yes, Mother, very pleasant." + +"Margaret is a dear girl, and so well brought up. Her mother has a great +deal for which to be thankful." + +"A great deal, I am sure." A sharp sense of irritation had dispelled the +dreamy sentiment with which he had parted from Margaret. To his mother, +he knew, the evening appeared only as one more carefully planned and +carelessly neglected opportunity; and the knowledge of this exasperated +him in a measure that was absurdly disproportionate to the cause. + +"She is so refreshing after the things you hear about other girls," +pursued Mrs. Culpeper. "Poor Mrs. St. John was obliged to go to a rest +cure, they say, because of the worry she has had over Geraldine; and the +other girls are almost as troublesome, I suppose. That is why I am so +thankful that you should have taken a fancy to Margaret. She is just the +kind of girl I should like to have for a daughter-in-law." + +"You'll have a long time to wait, Mother. I don't want to marry anybody +until I need a nurse in my old age." + +He spoke jestingly, but his mother, with her usual tenacity, held fast +to the subject. Under the flickering gas light in the hall (they were +still suspicious of the effect of electricity on Mr. Culpeper's eyes) +her face looked grimly determined, as if an indomitable purpose had +moulded every feature and traced every line in some thin plastic +substance. + +"I have set my heart on this, Stephen." + +At this he laughed aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her +instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly +without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the +unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost +her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know +whether the dread of being nagged or the fear of hurting her had +influenced him most; and when he looked back he could recall only a +series of ineffectual efforts at evasion or denial. It is true that he +had once adored her--that he still loved her--but it was a love, like +his father's, which was forbearing but never free, which was always +furtive and a little ashamed of its own weakness. Ever since he could +remember she had triumphed over their inclinations, their convictions, +and even their appetites, for they had eaten only what she thought good +for them. She had invariably gained her point; and she had gained it +with few words, without temper or agitation, by sheer force of +character. If she had been a moral principle she could not have moved +more relentlessly. + +"Mrs. Blair and I used to talk it over when you and Margaret were +children," she continued, in the inflexible tone with which she was +accustomed to carry her point. "Even then you were fond of her." + +He looked at her with a gleam of the tolerant amusement he had caught +from his father's expression. "Can you imagine anything more certain to +turn a man against a marriage than the thought that it was arranged for +him in his infancy?" he objected. + +"Not if he knew that his mother had set her heart on it?" She looked +hurt but resolute. + +"Don't set your heart on it, Mother. Let me dree my own weird." + +"My dear boy, it is for your own good. I am sure that you know I am not +thinking of myself. I may say with truth that I never think of myself." + +It was true. She never thought of herself; but he had sometimes wondered +what worse things could have happened if she had occasionally done so. + +"I know that, Mother," he answered simply. + +"I have but one wish in life and that is to see my children happy," she +said, with an air of injured dignity which made him feel curiously +guilty. + +It was the old infallible method, he knew. She would never yield her +point; she would never relax her pressure; she would never admit defeat +until he married another woman. + +"I want nobody else in your place, Mother. Goodnight, and try to set +your heart on something else." + +As he undressed a little later he was thinking of Margaret--of her low +white brow under the "widow's peak," of her soft blue eyes, of her +goodness and gentleness, and of the thrill in her voice when she had +made that touching confession. Margaret's voice was the last thing he +thought of before falling asleep; but hours afterward, when the dawn was +beginning to break, he dreamed of Patty Vetch in her red cape and of +that hidden country of the endless roads and the far horizons. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MAGIC + + +The next day after luncheon, as Stephen walked from his club to his +office, he lived over again his evening with Margaret. "If she cared for +me it might be different," he mused; and then, through some perversity +of memory, Margaret's pensive smile became suddenly charged with +emotion, and he asked himself if he had not misinterpreted her innocent +frankness? Even if she cared, he knew that she would die rather than +betray her preference by a word or a look. "Whether she cares or not, +and it is just possible that she does care in her heart, she will marry +me if I ask her," he thought; and decided immediately that there was no +necessity to act impulsively in the matter. "If I ask her she will +persuade herself that she loves me. She will marry me just as hundreds +of women have married men in the past; and we should probably live as +long and as happily as all the others." That was the way his father and +mother had married; and why were he and Margaret different from the +generations before them? What variable strain in their natures impelled +them to lead their own separate lives instead of the collective life of +the family? "I suppose Mother is right as far as she sees," he admitted. +"To marry Margaret and settle down would be the best thing that could +happen to me." Yet he had no sooner put the thought into words than the +old feeling of suffocation rushed over him as if his hopes were +smothered in ashes. + +Yes, he would settle down, of course, but not now. Next year perhaps, or +the year after, he would sincerely fall in love with Margaret, and then +everything would be different. + +He was passing through the Square at the moment; and while he played +with the idea of his marriage with Margaret, he found himself glancing +expectantly at the car which was waiting in front of the Governor's +door. "I wonder if she is going out," he thought, while a superficial +interest brightened the dull hours before him. "It would be no more than +she deserved if I were to go in and ask after her ankle." In obedience +to the mocking impulse, he entered the gate and reached the steps just +as Patty came out on the porch. She was walking with ease, he noticed at +once, and she wore again the red cape and the little hat with red wings. + +"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you!" + +"I stopped to ask after your ankle," he retorted with ironic gaiety. "I +am glad it doesn't keep you from walking." + +"That's the new way of treating a sprain," she replied calmly. "Haven't +you heard of it?" + +"Yes, I've heard of it." He glanced down at her stocking of thin gray +silk. "But I thought even then there were bandages." + +She smiled archly--he felt that he wanted to slap her--and glanced up at +him with playful concern. The gray-green rays were brighter in the +daylight than he had remembered them and her mocking lips were the +colour of cherries. He thought of the thin pink curve of Margaret's +mouth and wondered if the war had corrupted his taste. + +Yes, Margaret was womanly; she was well bred; she possessed every +attribute that in theory he admired; yet she had never awakened this +sparkling interest, this attraction which was pungently flavoured with +surprise that he could be so strangely attracted. He could gaze unmoved +by the hour on Margaret's smooth loveliness; but the tantalizing vision +of this other girl's face, of her cloudy black hair and her clear skin +and her changeable eyes, with their misty gleam like a firefly lost in a +spring marsh--all these things were a part not of the tedious actuality, +but of that hidden country of romance and adventure. For the first time +since his return from France, he was carried far outside of himself on +the wave of an impulse; he was interested and excited. Not for an +instant did he imagine that he was falling in love. His thoughts did not +leave the immediate present when he was with her; and a part of the +adventure was the feeling that each vivid moment he spent with her might +be the last. It was, he would have said had he undertaken to analyse the +situation, merely an incident; but it was an incident that delighted +him. He knew nothing of Patty Vetch except that she charmed him against +his will; and, for the moment at least, this was sufficient. + +"Oh, there are sprains and sprains," she answered, with the quiver of +her lip he remembered so disturbingly. "Didn't you learn that in the +trenches?" Was she really pretty, or was it only the provocative appeal +to his imagination, the dangerous sense that you never knew what she +would dare to say next? + +"I didn't go there to learn about sprains," he responded gravely. + +"Nor about maneuvers apparently?" She hesitated over the word as if it +were unfamiliar. + +At her charge the light of battle leaped to his eyes. "Then it was a +maneuver? I suspected as much." + +The audacity of her! The unparalleled audacity! "But I am not so much +interested in maneuvers," he added merrily, "as I am in the strategy +behind them." + +She looked puzzled, though her manner was still mocking. "Is there +always strategy," she pronounced the word with care, "behind them?" + +"Always in the art of warfare." + +"But can't there be a maneuver without warfare?" He could see that she +was venturing beyond her depths; but he realized that a confession of +ignorance was the last thing he must ever expect from her. Whatever the +challenge she would meet it with her natural wit and her bright +derision. + +"Never," he rejoined emphatically. "A campaign goes either before or +afterward." + +A thoughtful frown knit her forehead. "Well, one didn't go before, did +it?" she inquired with an innocent air. "So I suppose--" + +He ended her sentence on a note of merriment. "Then I must be prepared +for the one that will follow!" + +She threw out her hand with a gesture of mock despair. "Oh, you may have +been mistaken, you know!" + +"Mistaken? About the campaign?" + +"No, about the maneuver. Perhaps there wasn't any such thing, after +all." + +"Perhaps." Though his voice was stern, his eyes were laughing. "I am not +so easily fooled as that." + +"I doubt if you could be fooled at all." It was the first bit of +flattery she had tossed him, and he found it strangely agreeable. + +"I am not sure of that," he answered, "but the thing that perplexes +me--the only thing--is why you should have thought it worth while." + +Her eyes grew luminous with laughter, and the little red wings quivered +as if they were about to take flight over her arching brows. "How do you +know that I thought about it at all? Sometimes things just happen." + +"But not in this case. You had arranged the whole incident for the +stage." + +"Do you mean that I fell down on purpose?" + +"I mean that you were laughing up your sleeve all the time. You weren't +hurt and you knew it." + +Her expression was enigmatical. "You think then that I arranged to fall +down and risk breaking my bones for the sake of having you pick me up?" +she asked demurely. + +Put so plainly the fact sounded embarrassing, if not incredible. "I +think you fell for the fun of it. I think also that you didn't for a +second risk breaking your bones. You are too nimble for that." + +"I ought to be," she retorted daringly, "since I was born in a circus." + +Surprised into silence, he studied her with a regard in which admiration +for her courage was mingled with blank wonder at her recklessness. If +she had inherited her father's gift of expression, she appeared to +possess also his dauntless humour. For an instant Stephen felt that her +gaiety had entered into his spirit; and while his impression of her +danced like wine in his head, he answered her in her own tone of mocking +defiance. + +"Well, everything that is born in a circus isn't a clown." + +Her eyes widened. "Is that meant for a compliment?" + +"No, merely for a reminder. But if you were born in a circus, I assume +that you didn't perform in one." + +She shook her head. "No, they took me away when I was a baby--just after +Mother died. I never lived with the circus people, and Father didn't +either except when he was a child. Not that I should have been ashamed +of it," she hastened to explain. "They are very interesting people." + +"I am sure of it," he answered gravely, and he was very sure of it now. + +"When I was a child," she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, "I used to +make Father tell me all he could remember about the 'freaks,' as they +called them. The fat woman--her name was really Mrs. Coventry--was very +kind to him when he was little, and he never forgot it. He never forgets +anybody who has ever been kind to him," she concluded with simple +dignity. + +An emotion which he could not define held Stephen speechless; and before +he could command his words, she began again in the same cool and quiet +voice. "His mother ran away to marry his father. She came of a very good +family in Fredericksburg, and her people never forgave her or spoke to +her afterward. But she was happy, and she never regretted it as long as +she lived. It was love at first sight. Grandfather was Irish and he +was--was--" she hesitated for a word, and at last with evident care +selected, "magnificent." "He was magnificent," she repeated +emphatically, "and she saw him first on horseback when she was out +riding. Her horse became frightened by one of the animals in the circus, +and he caught it and stopped it. It began that way, and then one night +she stole out of the house after her family had gone to bed, and they +ran away and were married. I think she was right," she added +thoughtfully, "but then I reckon--I mean I suppose it is in my blood to +take risks." + +She looked up at him and he responded. "But where did you learn to see +things like this, and to put them into words? Not in a circus?" + +"I told you I couldn't remember the circus. Mother was in one, and +though Father never told me how he fell in love with her--he never talks +of her--I think it must have been when he went back to see the people. +He always took an interest in them and tried to help them. He does +still. Even now, if anybody belonging to a circus asks him for +something, he never refuses him. When he was twelve years old somebody +took him away and sent him to school, but he always says he never +learned anything at school except misinformation about life. No books, +he says, ever taught him the truth except the Bible and 'Robinson +Crusoe.' He used to read me chapters of those every day--and he does +still when he has the time." + +What a strange world it was! How full of colour and incident, how +drenched with the quality of the unusual! + +"And what did you learn?" he asked. + +"I?" She was speaking earnestly. "Oh, I learned a great many--no, a +multitude of things about life." + +At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight. "With a special course of +instruction in maneuvers," he rejoined. + +Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with +defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have learned +about--strategy." + +How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack! It was easy +to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle +in her wit. + +"Oh, then you will out-general me entirely! Isn't it enough to force me +to acknowledge your superior tactics?" + +She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter. "Tactics? Have I been +using superior tactics without knowing it?" + +"That I can't answer. Is there anything that has escaped your +instinctive understanding?" + +She laughed softly. "Well, there's one thing you may be sure of. I'll +know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again." +Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the +steps and into the car. "I wish Father were here," she said, looking out +at him. "He wants to talk to you." + +"I should like to talk to him. I shall come again, if I may." + +"Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home." As the car +started she called out teasingly. "My next maneuver may be more +successful, you know!" + +How provoking she was, and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as +sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked +himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display +of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time--not, like +Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the +general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he +felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or +pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition--a perpetual +motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, he realized, was +where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in +the turmoil. He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to +become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was +simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to +meditate, never to reason upon one's course; but to sweep onward, +somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, +variability--were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern +mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to +convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the +triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; +martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading +mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that +democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? +Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some +justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for +ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to +believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the +disorder. If he could find that it contained a single redeeming +principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be +able to surrender his disbelief. + +He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the +house, spoke to him abruptly. + +"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?" + +With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare, +he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the +evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less +repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her +features gave a certain dignity to her expression--the look of one who +is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or +dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been +attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes +were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse +black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye. + +"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was +you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass +on; but he made a movement to detain her. + +"Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?" + +"Oh, no, I am a stranger here." Her accents were ordinary, yet there was +a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner. Whatever she was, +she was not commonplace. + +"But you were waiting to see him?" he said. + +Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion. "Oh, +yes, I thought I might see him. I've never seen a Governor." + +"You do not wish to speak to him?" + +"No; why should I wish to speak to him? I'm a stranger, that's all. I +like to see whatever is going on. Was that his daughter who went out +just now?" + +"Yes, that was his daughter." + +"Then she is pretty--almost as pretty as--Thank you, sir. I will go +along now. I'm staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the +chance to watch the squirrels in the Square." + +The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could +not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth. Again +he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past? It +was possible; it was not even improbable. Once, even ten or fifteen +years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and +he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a +fastidious taste. + +The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer +gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a +man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk from the fountain at the +foot of the hill. By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive +joviality--the mark of the successful local politician--Stephen +recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who +had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career. "What an +unconscionable bounder the fellow is," thought Stephen as he passed him. +What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in +his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too +low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends +which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips. + +"I suppose he is on his way to the Governor," mused the young man idly. +"How on earth does Vetch stand him?" + +But to his surprise, when he glanced back again, he saw that Gershom had +passed the mansion, and was hurrying down the walk which the strange +woman had followed a moment before. Stephen could still see her figure +approaching a distant gate; and he observed presently that Gershom was +not far behind her, and that he appeared to be speaking her name. She +started and turned quickly with a movement of alarm; and then, as +Gershom joined her, she went on again in the direction she had first +taken. A few minutes later their rapidly moving figures left the Square +and passed down the street beyond the high iron fence. + +"I wonder what it means?" thought Stephen indifferently. "I wonder what +the deuce Gershom has got up his sleeve?" + +By the time he reached his office the wonder had vanished; but it +returned to him on his way home that afternoon when he dropped into the +old print shop for a word with Corinna. + +"I passed that fellow Gershom in the Square to-day," he said. "Do you +know him by sight?" + +She shook her head. "What is he like? Patty tells me that he has become +a nuisance." + +"Ah, then you have seen Patty?" + +A smile turned her eyes to the colour of November leaves. "She was here +for an hour this morning. I have great hopes of her. I think she is +going to supply me with an interest in life." + +"Then she still amuses you?" + +"Amuses me? My dear, she enchants me. She stands for the suppressed +audacities of my past." + +He looked at her thoughtfully. "I wonder how much of her is real?" + +"Probably half. She is real, I think, in her courage, but not in her +conventions." + +"Well, I confess that she puzzles me. I can't see just what she means." + +"I doubt if she means anything. She is a vital spirit; she chafes at +chains; and she is smarting from a sense of inferiority. There is a +thirst for power in her little body that may make her either an actress +or a politician." + +"Now, it seems to me that if she has any sense it is one of superiority. +She treated me like a brick under her feet." + +For a minute Corinna was silent. The smile on her lips had grown +tenderly humorous; and there was a softness in her eyes which made him +sorry that he had not known her when he was a child. "Do you know what +she told me to-day?" she said. "She studies a page of the dictionary +every morning, and she tries to remember and practise all day the new +words that she learns. She is now in the letter M." + +A peal of merriment interrupted her. "That explains it!" exclaimed +Stephen with unaffected delight, "maneuver--misinformation--multitude--" + +"So she has practised on you too?" + +"Oh, they all practise on me," he retorted. "It is what I was made for." + + +"Well, as long as it is only words, you are safe, I suppose." + +He denied this with a gesture. "It is everything you can possibly +practise with--from puddings to pigeons." + +"My poor dear, so you have been eating Margaret's puddings. Weren't they +good ones?" + +"Oh, perfection! But I wasn't thinking of Margaret." + +"I know you weren't. For your mother's sake I wish that you were." + +His face looked suddenly tired. "Margaret is perfection, I know; but I +feel sometimes that only perfect people can endure perfection." + +"Yes, I know." Her smile had faded now. "I admire Margaret tremendously, +but I feel closer to Patty." + +"Perhaps. I am not sure. Somehow I have been sure of nothing since I +came out of the trenches--least of all of myself. I am trying to find +out now what I am in reality." + +As he rose to go she held out her hand. "I think,--I am not certain, but +I think," she responded gaily, "that Patty's dictionary may give you the +definition." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CORINNA GOES TO WAR + + +"Yes, I've had a mean life," thought Corinna, while she stood before her +mirror carefully placing a patch on her cheek. In her narrow gown of +black velvet, with the silver heels of her slippers shining beneath the +transparent draperies, she had more than ever the look of festival, of +October splendour. If her beauty had lost in roundness and softness, it +had gained immeasurably in authority, in that air of having been a part +of great events, of historic moments which clung to her like a legend. +Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for +her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the +painted lily? Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry, +nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness. She had given +herself for what? For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a +damaged illusion. The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been +worse than tragic; it had been comic--since it had left her beggared. +Looking back upon it now she saw that it had lacked even the mournful +dignity of a broken heart. + +"I have had a mean life; but it isn't over yet, and I may make something +better of the rest of it," she thought. "At least I have fighting blood +in my veins, and I will never give up. After all, even if my life has +been mean, I haven't been--and that is what really counts in the end. +If I haven't been happy, I have tried to be gallant--and it takes +courage to be gallant with an aching heart--" + +As she fastened the long string of pearls--one of Kent Page's early +gifts--she drew back from the mirror, with the light of philosophy, if +not of happiness, overflowing her eyes. With her grace and her radiance +she stood for the flower of the Virginian aristocratic tradition; with +her sincerity and her fearlessness she embodied the American democratic +ideal. Her forefathers had brought representative government to the New +World. They had sat in the first General Assembly ever summoned in +America; and through the generations they had fought always on the side +of liberty tempered by discipline, of democracy exalted by patriotism. +They had stood from the beginning for dignity, for manners, for the +essence of social culture which places art at the service of life. +Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always +they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing +cult of the second best. From this source, from the inherited instinct +for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order +and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of +life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body. She had +been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an age when +beauty had been bartered for usefulness. Would the delicate +discriminations in which she had been trained, the lights and shadows of +her soul, become submerged in the modern effort to reduce all +distinctions to a level, all diversities to an average? + +Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room, +with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue +silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit +darkness. There had been luxury always. Money she had had in abundance; +yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not +have exchanged it all--everything that money could bring her--for the +dinner of herbs where love was. She had possessed everything except the +one thing she had wanted. She had served the tin gods in temples of gold +and jade. With the deep instinct for perfection in her blood, she had +spent her life in an endless compromise with the inferior. + +"Was there something lacking in me?" she asked now of her glowing +reflection. "Was there some vital spark left out when I was born? And +to-night? Why should I care how it goes? What is Rose Stribling to me or +I to her?" Why should she still cherish that dull resentment, that +smothered sense of injury in her heart? Was it the burden of her +inheritance, the weakness of the older races, that she could not +forget? She had loved a man who was unworthy; she had loved him for no +better reason, she understood now, than a superficial charm, a romantic +appeal. The fault was in the man, she knew, yet she had forgiven the +man long ago, while she still hated Rose Stribling. Perversity, +inconsistency--but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it. "If +she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but +she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day. It was +vanity then, and it is vanity now. You cannot hurt her heart--only her +pride--" + +Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her +image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue +velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on +that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she +had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost +much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and the +transparent gaze, but she had lost neither charm nor radiance. + +"So we are invited to meet Gideon Vetch," remarked the Judge as they +went down the steps; and from the whimsical sound of his voice, she knew +that there was a smile on his face. The house, with its picturesque +English front half hidden by Virginia creeper, stood at the end of a +long avenue, in the centre of a broad lawn planted in fine old elms. + +"Yes, there must be some reason for the dinner, but Sarah Berkeley did +not tell me." + +"Well, I'll be glad to see the Governor again," said the Judge, leaning +comfortably back as the car rolled down the avenue to the road, "but you +will have a dreary evening, I fear, unless John should be there." + +Corinna smiled in the darkness. So even her father, who so rarely +noticed anything, had observed her growing interest in John Benham. +After all, might this be--this sudden revival of an old sentiment in +John's heart--"the something different," the ultimate perfection for +which she had sought all her life? "He is beginning to mean more to me +than any one else," she thought. "If only I had never heard that old +gossip about Alice Rokeby." + +Leaning over, she patted the Judge's hand. "Don't have me on your mind, +Father darling. Go ahead and enjoy the Governor as much as you can. I am +easy to amuse, you know, and besides, I have my own particular iron in +the fire to-night." + +"You are never without expedients, my child, but I hope this one has no +bearing on Vetch." + +"Oh, but it has. Like Esther, the queen, I have put on royal apparel for +an ulterior object. Did you notice that I had made myself as terrible as +an army with banners?" + +"I thought you were looking unusually lovely," replied the Judge +gracefully. "But you are always so handsome that I suspected no guile." + +Corinna laughed merrily. "But I am full of guile, dear innocent! I go +forth to conquer." + +"Not the Governor, I hope?" + +"Oh, no, the Governor is nothing--a prize, nothing more. My antagonist +is Mrs. Stribling." + +"Rose Stribling?" The Judge was mildly astonished. "Why, I remember her +as a little girl in white dresses." + +Corinna's smile became scornful. "Well, she isn't a little girl any +longer, and she oughtn't to be in white dresses." + +"Dear me, dear me," rejoined the old gentleman. "I am aware that you +have a dramatic temperament, but it is scarcely possible that you are +jealous of little Rose. She is a good deal younger than you, if I am not +mistaken--but my memory is not all that it once was." + +"She is twelve years younger and at least twenty years more malicious," +retorted Corinna lightly. "But those twelve years aren't as long as they +were in your youth, my dear. A generation ago they would have spelt an +end of my conquests; to-day they mean only new worlds to conquer." + +The Judge looked perplexed. "Am I to infer from this that you have +designs on the Governor? And may I inquire what use you intend to make +of him after you have captured him from the enemy?" + +Corinna shrugged her shoulders. "I hadn't thought of that. Release him, +probably. But, whatever happens, I shall have saved him from a worse +fate. For that he ought to thank me, and he will if he is reasonable." + +"Few men are reasonable in captivity. Do you think, by the way, that +Mrs. Stribling would like another husband, and such a husband as our +friend the demagogue?" + +"I think she would like a political career, and of course her only way +of obtaining a career of any kind is to marry one. Though she isn't +discerning, she has sense enough to perceive that. They tell me that the +Governor is starting straight for the Senate, and the wife of a +senator--of any senator--might have a very good time in Washington. +Besides, there is always the chance of course that the winds of public +folly may blow him into the White House." + +"If what you say is true it would be a hard fate for an honest rogue," +admitted the Judge. "In your hands he would at least go unharmed." + +"Oh, unharmed certainly. Perhaps helped." + +"Then it is better so. But the thing that interests me in Vetch, is not +his value as a matrimonial or romantic prize; I am concerned solely and +simply with his opinions." + +"Well, you will have the advantage of Mrs. Stribling and me, for we +shall probably find the cigars an impediment to our attack. At any rate, +we ought to have a less tedious evening than you expect." + +A little later, when she entered the long drawing-room where the other +guests were already assembled, Corinna threw an inquiring glance in the +direction of Mrs. Stribling. Could the shallow pink and white loveliness +of that other woman, the historic type of the World's Desire, bear +comparison with her own starry beauty? It was a petty rivalry. She had +entered into it half in jest, half in irritation, yet some sportsmanlike +instinct prompted her to play the game to the end. She would prove to +Rose Stribling that those twelve years of knowledge and suffering had +taught her not to surrender, but to conquer. + +The Berkeleys were what was still known in their small social world as +"quiet people." They entertained little, and always with a definite +object which they were not afraid to disclose. Their house, an +incongruous example of Mid-Victorian architecture, was still suffused +for them with the sentimental glamour of their wedding day. The walls, +untouched for years, were covered with embossed paper and panelled in +yellow oak. The furniture, protected for five months of the year by +covers of striped linen, was stiffly upholstered in pea-green brocade; +and the pictures, hanging very high, were large but inferior oil +paintings in heavily gilded frames that represented preposterous sheaves +of wheat or garlands of roses. Forty years ago the house reproduced +within and without "the best taste" of the period, and was as bad as the +Berkeleys could afford to make it. Since then fashions had come and +gone; yet the hospitable home remained as unchanged as the politics of +the host or the figure of the hostess. The Berkeleys were still content +to be "old-fashioned people," with the fine feeling and the +indiscriminate taste of an era which had flowered not in architecture +but in character, when the standard of living was high and the style in +furniture correspondingly low. To-night the ten guests (the Berkeleys +never gave large dinners) had been carefully chosen, and the evening +would probably be distinguished by good talk and good wine. Though they +were law-abiding persons to the core, the bitterness of the Eighteenth +Amendment had not penetrated to the subterranean darkness where Mr. +Berkeley's treasures were stored. + +Mrs. Berkeley, a brisk, compact little woman, with a pretty florid face +and the prominent bosom and tapering waist of forty years ago, turned +from the Governor as Corinna and the Judge entered, and hurried forward +in her animated way, which reminded one of the manner of a child that is +trying to make a success of a dolls' party. Beyond Mr. Berkeley, a +short, neutral-tinted man without emphasis of personality, Corinna saw +Mrs. Stribling's tall, full figure draped in a gown of jade-coloured +velvet, with a daringly short skirt from which a narrow, sharply pointed +train wound like a serpent. Her heavy hair, of an unusual shade of pale +gold, had the smooth, polished look of metal which had been moulded in +waves close to her head. In spite of her active life and her disastrous +affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy +surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent +attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for +the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one, +except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair +between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had +thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But +time had dragged on; Corinna had come home again; and Alice Rokeby's +violet eyes had grown deeper and more wistful, with a haunted look in +them as if they were denying a hungry heart. She had never dressed well; +she had never, as Mrs. Stribling remarked, known how to bring out her +best points; and to-night she had been even less successful than usual. +Both Corinna and Mrs. Stribling could have told her that she should have +avoided violent shades; and yet she was wearing now a dress of vivid +purple which made her pale rose-leaf complexion look almost sallow. +Though she could exercise when she chose a strangely passive attraction, +her charm usually failed in the end for lack of intelligent guidance. + +A little beyond Alice Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures, +John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch, +who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted +from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over +a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large +beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to +cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a +moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash +of satirical amusement in his eyes. He was a tall thin man of middle +age, with a striking appearance and the straight composed features of an +early American portrait. His dark hair, brushed back from his forehead, +had the shining gloss that comes of good living and careful grooming, +and this gloss was reflected in his smiling gray eyes and in the healthy +red of his well-cut though not quite generous mouth. He was a charming +guest, an impressive speaker, a sympathetic listener; yet there had +always seemed to Corinna to be a subtle deficiency in his character. It +was only of late, since their friendship had turned into a warmer +feeling, that she had been able to overcome that sense of something +wanting which had troubled her when she was with him. She could define +no quality that was absent; but the impression he still gave her at +times was one of a man tremendously gifted and yet curiously inadequate. +A mental thinness perhaps? An emotional dryness? Or was it merely that +here also she felt, rather than perceived, the intrinsic weakness of the +old order? + +Beyond Benham, Gideon Vetch, rugged, sanguine, and wearing the wrong tie +with his evening clothes as valiantly as he had worn the rumpled brown +suit in which Stephen had last seen him, was talking in a loud voice to +Miss Maria Berkeley--one of those serene single women arrayed in +dove-colour who belong as appropriately as crewel work or antimacassars +to another century. If Patty was shy and self-conscious, it was evident +that her state of mind was not shared by her father. He was interested +because he was expressing a cherished opinion, and he was talking in an +emphatic tone because he hoped that he might be overheard. When Mrs. +Berkeley drew him away in order to introduce him to Corinna, he resumed +his theme immediately, as if he were addressing a public meeting and had +scarcely noticed that there had been a change in his audience. "Miss +Berkeley was asking me what I thought of the effects of prohibition," +he explained presently with his smile of unguarded friendliness. How +was it possible to arrest the attention of a man who insisted on talking +of prohibition? + +At the table a little later Corinna asked herself the question again, +while she made light conversation for the retired general who had taken +her in--an anecdotal, bewhiskered presence, with the husky voice and the +glazed eyes of successful pomposity. Glancing occasionally at Vetch who +sat on her left, she found that he was describing to Mrs. Berkeley the +best protection against forest fires. As far as Corinna was concerned, +she felt that she might as well have been a view from the window, or the +portrait of Mr. Berkeley's great aunt that hung over the mantelpiece. He +had probably, she reflected, classified her lightly as "another +gray-haired woman," and passed on to Rose Stribling, who bloomed +triumphantly between John Benham and Stephen Culpeper. Vetch was so +different from what Corinna had expected to find him that, in some vague +way, she felt disappointed and absurdly resentful. Had her imagination, +she wondered, prepared her to meet one of the picturesque radicals of +fiction? Had she looked for a middle-aged Felix Holt; and was this why +the Governor's prosaic figure, his fresh-coloured, undistinguished face +and his vehement, spectacular gestures, dispelled immediately the +interest she had felt in the meeting? There were no salient points in +his appearance, nothing that she could detach from the rest in her +mental image of him. There was no single characteristic of which she +could say: "He may be common; he may be vulgar; but he strikes the note +of greatness here--and here--and here." With such a man, she felt, the +direct and obvious appeal of Rose Stribling would be victorious. He +could discern pink and white and blue and gold; but the indeterminate +shades, the subtleties and mysteries of charm were enigmatical to him. +His emotions would be as literal as his convictions or his oratory. Yet +there must be some faculty in him which did not appear on the surface, +some primitive grasp of realities in his understanding of men. Why +should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, she asked +herself the next minute, be greater than the influence of John Benham, +who possessed every admirable trait except the ability to make people +follow him? What was this fundamental difference in material or +structure which divided them so completely? When she had traced it to +its source would she discover the secret of Vetch's conquering +personality? + +Looking away from the General, her eyes rested for a moment on Stephen +Culpeper, who was listening with his reserved impersonal attention to +the amusing prattle of Patty Vetch. Obeying an imperative rule, Mrs. +Berkeley had placed her youngest guests together; and yet, if Stephen +had been seventy-five instead of twenty-six, he could sparcely have had +less in common with the Governor's daughter. With her small glossy head, +and her scarlet cheeks and lips above the fan of ostrich feathers, the +girl reminded Corinna of a spray of Christmas holly, all dark and bright +and shining. Ever since Patty's first visit to the print shop Corinna +had felt a genuine liking for her. The girl had something deeper than +charm, reflected the older woman; she had determination and endurance, +the essentials of character. Of course she was crude, she was ignorant; +but these are never insurmountable obstacles except to the dull. With +intelligence and resourcefulness all things are possible--even the +metamorphosis of a circus rider's daughter into a woman of the world. + +Becoming suddenly aware that Vetch was silent, and that Mrs. Berkeley +had turned to Judge Page on her left, Corinna looked for the first time +into the frank blue eyes of the Governor. Strange eyes they were, she +thought, the one striking feature in a face that was ordinary. It was +like looking down into the very fountain of life--no, of humanity. + +"I have been watching your daughter," she began casually. "She is very +pretty." + +"Yes, she is pretty enough"--his tone was playful--"but I don't like +this craze for short hair." + +She looked him over calmly. Indirect methods would be wasted on such an +opponent. "You must admire Mrs. Stribling's." + +"I do. Don't you?" His glance roved to the ample beauty beside John +Benham. "It looks exactly like a rope of flax." + +"A rope suggests a hanging to me," she rejoined grimly. + +He laughed, and she noticed that his eyes were brimming over with +humour. Yes, they were extraordinary eyes, and they made one feel +sympathetic and friendly. The man had a quality, she couldn't deny it. + +"We don't hang any longer," he replied. + +"Oh, yes, we do sometimes--without the law." + +The blue sparkles in his eyes contracted to points of light. She had at +last, by arresting his wandering attention, succeeded in making him look +at her. + +"I wonder what you mean," he mused aloud, and added frankly, "I've never +seen you before, have I?" + +"Have I?" she mimicked gaily. "Wouldn't you remember me? Or are all +gray-haired women alike to you?" + +His gaze travelled to her hair. "I didn't mean it that way. Of course I +should have remembered." He spoiled this by adding: "I never forget a +face," and continued before she could answer, "I don't know whether your +hair is gray or only powdered a little; but you are as young as--as +summer." + +"Or as your political party." + +"That's good. I like a nimble wit." He was plainly amused. "But my party +isn't young, you know. It is as old as Esau and Jacob. Oh, yes, I've +read my Bible. I was brought up on it." + +"That is why your speech is so direct," she said when he paused, +concluding slowly after a minute, "and so sincere." + +"You feel that I am sincere?" + +She met his eyes gravely. "Doesn't every one?" + +He laughed shortly. "Ah, you know better than that!" + +"Well, my father does. He says that it is your sincerity that makes you +resemble me." + +To her surprise he did not laugh at this. "Do I resemble you?" he asked +simply. + +"Father thinks so. He says that people won't take us seriously because +we tell them the truth." + +An impression drifted like smoke across the blue of his eyes. Who was +it, she wondered, who had said that his eyes were gray? "Don't they take +you seriously?" he asked. + +"As a woman, yes. As a human being, no." + +He smiled. "You are too deep. I can't follow. I understand only the +plain bright ideas of the half educated, you know." + +Her brilliant glance shone on him steadily. "I shan't try to explain. +What one doesn't understand without an explanation isn't worth knowing. +But somebody must take you seriously, or you wouldn't be where you are." + +"Do you know where I am?" he demanded impulsively. + +"I know that you are Governor of Virginia." + +"Oh, that! I thought you meant something more than that," he returned +with a note of disappointment in his voice. + +"What could I mean more than that? Isn't it the first step upward in a +political career?" + +"Perhaps. But I was thinking of something else. The chief thing seems to +me to be to work a way out of the muddle. Anybody may be Governor or +even President if he tries hard enough--but it is a different matter to +bring some kind of order out of this confusion. I've got an idea that +I've been hammering at for the last twenty years. Not a great one, +perhaps, though I think it is; and I'd like to get a chance to put it +into practice before I die. I want to wake up people and tell them the +truth." + +Was he, for all his matter-of-fact appearance, simply another political +dreamer, another visionary without a definite vision? + +"And will they listen when you tell them?" she asked. + +He laughed. "Who knows what may happen? When I was a kid in the +circus--you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a +travelling circus"--how simply he brought this out!--"the fat woman, we +called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When +the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the +people will learn wisdom." + +"But you have caught your larks, haven't you?" + +"No, I used to set snares by the hundred, but I never caught anything +better than a sparrow." + +A wistful look crossed her face, and for an instant the youth seemed to +droop and fade in her eyes. "Isn't that life?--sparrows for larks +always?" + +His sanguine spirit rejected this as she had known that it would. "Life +is all right," he replied, "as long as there's a fighting chance left to +you. That is the only thing that makes it worth while, fighting to win." + +She gazed meditatively at the points of flame on the white candles. "I +suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a +part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of +us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang." + +"Yes, I am a part of it," he answered slowly. "I see it as it is, I +think. It is pure buncombe, of course, to say that it hasn't its ugly +side; but I believe, if I have a chance, that I can make something of +it." He paused a moment while he hesitated over the silver beside his +plate; but there was no uncertainty in his voice when he went on again, +after deliberately picking up the fork he preferred. It was a little +thing to remember a man by--the merest trifle--but she never forgot it. +Only a big man could be as natural as that, she reflected. "I reasoned +it all out before I went into politics," he was saying. "I didn't get it +out of books either--unless you count the Bible and 'Robinson Crusoe,' +which are the only two I ever read as a boy. But the way I worked it out +at last was that democracy, like life, isn't anything that's already +finished. It is raw stuff. We are making it every minute of the time; +and it depends on us whether we put it through as a straight job or a +failure. Democracy, as I see it, isn't a word or a phrase out of a book, +or a formula, or anything that has frozen into a fixed shape or pattern. +It is warm and fluid, and it is teeming with living forms. It is as much +alive as the earth or air or water, and it can be used to develop as +many varying energies. That is why it is all so amazingly interesting. +As long as you don't fall away from that thought you have your feet +planted on solid ground--you can face things squarely--" + +"You preach a kind of political pragmatism," she said as he paused. + +"Pragmatism? That's a muscular word, but I don't know it. I wonder if +Robinson Crusoe discovered it." + +"If Robinson Crusoe didn't discover it, he lived it," she rejoined +gaily; and then, as the voice of Mrs. Berkeley was heard purring softly +on Vetch's other side, Corinna turned to the bewhiskered General, whose +only sense, she had already ascertained, was the historic sense. + +While she leaned back, with her head bent in the direction of his husky +voice, she was visited by a piercing realization of the emptiness, the +artificiality of her life. Futility--weariness--disenchantment--a gray +lane without a turning that stretched on into nothingness! Many thoughts +were blown through her mind like leaves in a high wind. She saw herself +from the beginning--striving without rest--searching--searching--for +what? For happiness--for perfection--for the starry flower that she had +never found. All was tawdry, all was tarnished, all was unreal. In +looking back she saw that the festival of her life was an affair of +tinselled splendour and glittering dust. Was this only the impression of +Vetch on her mood? Did he possess some magic gift of personality which +caused the artificial, the counterfeit, to wither in his presence? + +Conversation was not animated; and while she listened with a smile to +dreary anecdotes of the War Between the States, she allowed her gaze to +wander slowly down the table to where Alice Rokeby sat, with her large +soft eyes, so vague and wistful, asking of life, "Why have you passed me +by?" Now and then these eyes, which reminded Corinna of the eyes in a +dream, would turn timidly to John Benham, and then there would steal +into them that strange look of hunger, of desperation. What did it mean? +Corinna wondered. Surely there was no truth in the old gossip that she +had heard long ago and forgotten? + +John Benham had put a question to the Governor across the table; and he +sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The +light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen +Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of +delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions +fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated +to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in +that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair +accentuated the height of his forehead, and produced at first sight an +impression of intellectual superiority. His nose was long and slightly +aquiline; his mouth firm and clear-cut, with thin lips that closed +tightly; his chin jutted a little forward, giving a hatchet-like +severity to his profile. It was the face of a fair fighter, of a man who +could be trusted absolutely beyond personal limitations, of a man who +would always keep the vision of the end through any enterprise, who +would always put the curb of expediency on emotional impulses, who would +invariably judge a theory not by its underlying principle, but by its +practical application. A charming face, too, complex and imaginative, a +face which made the rugged and open countenance of the Governor appear +primitive and undeveloped. Corinna admired Benham; she respected him; +she liked--was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him? +Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy, +of something wanting, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either +left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes +of his mind. + +Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs. +Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable +allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the +flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming +enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty +Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from +one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna, +for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the +admiration of Gideon Vetch. The lesson it taught, she repeated +cynically, was simply that it was futile to stray too far from one's +type. Vetch had talked to her as he might have talked to her father or +to the husky warrior on her right; but he had never once looked at her. +His attention would be arrested by large, sudden, bright things like the +rosy curve of Mrs. Stribling's shoulders or the shining ropes of her +hair. + +"How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!" thought +Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than +resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was +her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her +adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate +Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep +meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and +the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers. +Had he read the thought in her mind? Was the tenderness in his glance +only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days? + +She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the +eyes of Alice Rokeby--those eyes that asked perpetually of life, "Why +have you passed me by?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE WORLD AND PATTY + + +On the way home, leaning against her father who had not spoken since the +car started, Patty shut her eyes and went over, one by one, the +incidents of the dinner. What had she done that was right? What had she +done that was wrong? Was her dress just what it ought to have been? Had +she talked to Stephen Culpeper about the things people are supposed to +discuss at a dinner? Had he seen how embarrassed she was beneath her +pretence of gaiety? Would she be better looking if she were to let her +hair grow long again? What had Mrs. Page, who looked as if she had +stepped down from one of those old prints, thought of her? + +Beneath the hard brightness of her manner there was a passionate groping +toward some dimly seen but intensely felt ideal. She longed to learn if +she could only learn without confessing her ignorance. Her pride was the +obstinate, unreasonable pride of a child. + +"If I could only find out things without asking!" The image of Stephen +rose in her mind, which worked by flashes of insight rather than orderly +processes. She saw his earnest young face, with the sleek dark hair, +which swept in a point back from his forehead, his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes, and the firm, slightly priggish line of his mouth. He seemed miles +away from her, separated by some imponderable yet impassable barrier. +The first time her gaze had rested on him at the charity ball she had +thought impetuously, "Any girl could fall in love with a man like that!" +and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who +appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself. The next +day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had +obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the +gambler's instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity. After all, had not +experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that +nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next +turn of fortune? She had been startled out of her composure by the sight +of Stephen at the dinner; and yet she had not been conscious of any +particular wish to see him again, or to sit at his side through two +hours of embarrassment and uncertainty. Now, on the way home, she was +suffering acutely from the burden of failure, from the smarting +realization of her own ignorance and awkwardness. Her one bitter-sweet +consolation was the knowledge that she had been "a good loser," that she +had carried off her humiliation with a scornful pride which must have +blighted like frost any tenderly budding shoots of compassion. "I'll +show them that they mustn't pity me!" she thought, while her eyes blazed +in the darkness. "I'll prove to them that I think myself every bit as +good as they are!" She knew that her manner had been ungracious; but she +knew also that something stronger than her will, some instinct which was +rooted deep in the secret places of her nature, had made it impossible +for her to appear otherwise. Impassioned, undisciplined, and capable of +fierce imaginative loyalties and aversions, the strongest force in her +character was this bitter ineradicable pride. To accept no benefits that +she could not return; to fall under no obligation that would involve a +feeling of gratitude; to pay the piper to the utmost penny whenever she +called the tune--these were the only laws that she acknowledged. Though +she longed ardently for the admiration of Stephen Culpeper, she would +have died rather than relinquish the elfin mockery of her challenge. + +"Well, did you enjoy it, Patty?" Her father turned to her with sudden +tenderness, though the frown produced by some engrossing train of +thought still gathered his heavy brows. + +She caught his hand while her small face relaxed from its expression of +rigid disdain. "I had simply the time of my life," she responded with +convincing animation. "That Mrs. Page is the most beautiful woman I ever +saw--but she can't be very young. I wonder what she was like when she +was my age?" + +Vetch laughed. "Not like a short-haired imp with green eyes anyway," he +replied. "Mrs. Stribling looked very handsome, too, I thought." + +"Oh, she's handsome enough," admitted Patty. "But she hasn't any sense. +I listened to what she was saying, and she just asked questions all the +time. Mrs. Page is different. You can tell that she has been all over +the world. She knows things." + +"Yes, I suppose she does," said Vetch. "What did you think of Benham?" + +"He is good looking," answered the girl deliberately, "but I don't like +him. He is making fun of you." + +"Is he?" returned Vetch curiously. "Now, I wonder if you're right about +that. At any rate he asked me a question to-night that I should like a +chance to answer on the platform." + +"He was in the army," said Patty, "and every one says he was a hero. The +women were talking about him while you were smoking. They all admire him +so. It seems that he went into an officer's training camp as soon as war +was declared though he was over age; and then just recently he has done +something that every one thinks splendid. He refused a tremendous fee +from some corporation--what did they mean by a corporation?--because he +thought the money was made dishonestly. Mrs. Page says he has as many +public virtues as a civic forum. What is a forum, Father?" + +Vetch laughed without replying directly to her question. "Did she say +that?" he responded. "And what did she mean by it, I wonder?" + +"It sounded clever," said Patty, "but I didn't understand. What is a +forum, Father?" + +Vetch thought a moment. "Mrs. Page would probably tell you," he replied, +"that it is the temple of the improbable." + +Patty stirred impatiently. "Now you are trying to talk like Mrs. Page," +she rejoined. "I wish I knew what things meant." + +"When you find out what they mean, Patty, they will cease to interest +you." + +"Well, I'd rather be less interested and more comfortable," said Patty, +with a trace of exasperation in her voice. "To-night, for instance, I +hadn't the faintest idea how to behave. Look at all those books I've +read, too, when I might just as well have been enjoying myself. I've +found out to-night, Father, that books can't tell you everything--not +even books on etiquette." + +Vetch broke into a laugh of boisterous amusement. "So that is how you +have been spending your time!" he exclaimed. "You'd better trust to your +common sense, my dear; it will carry you straighter." + +"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. +When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the +dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all +talk slang, every one of them--only they don't talk the kind that Julius +Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. +Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night--she +looked exactly like a frozen fish--though just the moment before Mr. +Culpeper had called somebody a 'rotter'. I heard him." + +The Governor dismissed it all with a wave of his hand. "Trifles, +trifles," was his only comment. + +The car had entered the Square, and in a moment it was passing the +Washington statue and the Capitol building. Until it stopped before the +steps of the mansion, Patty did not reply; then springing up with a +flutter of her scarlet skirt, she exclaimed airily, "But I am a trifle, +too, Father!" + +As he held out his hand from the ground, Vetch looked at her with an +expression in which pride and pity were strangely mingled. "Then you are +one of the trifles that make life worth living," he replied. + +He had taken out his latch-key and was about to insert it in the lock, +when the door opened and Gershom stood before them. + +"I waited for you," he said to Vetch. "There's a matter I must see you +about to-night." His ruddy face was tinged with purple, and he had the +look of a man who has just been aroused from a nap. + +"Well, I'm sleepy, and I'm going to bed," retorted Patty in reply to his +glance rather than his words, and her tone was bitterly hostile. + +"Then I'll see you to-morrow." He had followed her into the wide hall +while the Governor closed the door and stopped to take off his overcoat. +"Did you have a good time?" + +She responded with a disdainful movement of her shoulders which might +have been a shrug if she had had French instead of Irish blood in her +veins. In her evening cloak of green velvet trimmed with gray fox she +had the look of a small wild creature of the forest. Beneath her thick +eyelashes her eyes shone through a greenish mist; and at the moment +there was something frightened and furtive in their brightness. + +"Of course," she replied defiantly, moving away from him in the +direction of the staircase. "I had a wonderful time--perfectly +wonderful. The people were all so interesting." Her pronunciation was as +deliberately correct as if she were reading from a dictionary. It was +the air of superiority that she always assumed with Gershom, for in no +other way, she had learned from experience, could she irritate him so +intensely. + +His jovial manner gave place to a crestfallen look. "Who was there? I +reckon I know the names anyway." + +He affected a true republican scorn of appearances; and standing there, +in his dishevelled business clothes beside Patty's ethereal youth, he +looked as hopelessly battered by reality as a political theory, or as +old General Powhatan Plummer of aristocratic descent. + +Patty had often wondered what it was about the man that aroused in her +so unconquerable an aversion. He was not ugly compared to many of the +men her father had brought to the house; and ten years ago, when she +first met him in the little country town where they were living, his +curling black hair and sharp black eyes had seemed to her rather +attractive than otherwise. If he had been merely untidy and unashamed in +dress, she might have tolerated the failing as the outward sign of a +distinguished social philosophy; but, even in those early days, his +Jeffersonian simplicity had yielded to an outbreak of vanity. Though his +clothes were unbrushed and his boots were unpolished, he wore a +sparkling pin in his tie and several sparkling rings on his fingers. +There was something else, too, some easy tone of patronage, some +familiar inflexion, which as a child she had hated. Now, after the +evening with Stephen Culpeper, she shrank from him with a disgust which +was made all the keener by contrast. A pitiless light had fallen over +Gershom while he stood there beside her, as if his bad taste and his +pathetic ambition to appear something that he was not, had become +exaggerated into positive vices. She was too young to perceive the +essential pathos of all wasted effort, of all misdirected attempts to +overcome the disadvantages of ignorance; and while she looked at him +now, she saw only the vulgarity. Like all those who have suffered from +insufficient opportunities and wounded pride, Patty Vetch was without +mercy for the very weaknesses that she had risen above. After the +evening at the Berkeleys' she felt that she should be less ashamed of a +drunkard than of a man who wore diamonds because he thought that it was +the correct thing to do. She remembered suddenly that on her fourteenth +birthday she had bought a pair of paste earrings with ten dollars her +father had given her; and for the sting of this reminder she knew that +she should never forgive Gershom. Oh, she had no patience with a man who +couldn't find out things and learn without asking questions! Hadn't she +tried and tried, and made mistakes and tried again, and still gone on +trying by hook or by crook; as her father would say, to find out the +thousand and one things she oughtn't to do? If she, even as a child, had +struggled so hard to improve herself and change in the right way, not +the wrong way--then why shouldn't he? Her father, of course, wasn't +polished, but he was as unlike Gershom as if they had been born as far +apart as the poles. Even to her untrained eyes it was evident that Vetch +possessed the authority of personality--a sanction that was not social +but moral. Some inherent dislike for anything that was not solid, that +was not genuine, had served Vetch as a kind of aesthetic discrimination. + +"I know Benham," Gershom was saying eagerly. "I've worked with him. +Smart chap, don't you think? Ever heard him speak?" + +"No, I hate speeches." + +"Did he and the Governor have any words?" + +"Of course they didn't--not at dinner," she replied with a crushing +manner. "Father is waiting for you." + +"Then you'll see me to-morrow? I've got a lot I want to say to you. And +I'll tell you this right now, Patty, my dear, you may run round with +these high-faluting chaps like Culpeper as much as you please; but how +many dinner parties do you think you'd be invited to if I hadn't put the +old man where he is?" + +At this she turned on him furiously, her eyes blazing through their +greenish mist. "I don't owe you anything, and you know it!" she retorted +defiantly. Then before he could detain her she broke away from him and +ran up the stairs. How dared he pretend that he had placed her under an +obligation! As if it made any difference to her whether her father were +Governor or not! + +As she fled upward she heard Gershom follow Vetch into the library, and +she knew that they would sit talking there until long after midnight. +These discussions had become frequent of late; and she surmised vaguely, +though Vetch never mentioned Gershom's name to her, that the two men +were no longer upon the friendly terms of the old days. Ever since +Vetch's election, it had seemed to her that the pack of hungry +politicians had closed in about him; and only the day before, when she +had gone over to the Governor's office in the Capitol building, she had +run away from what she merrily described as "the famished wolves" +waiting outside his door. It was clear even to her that the political +leaders who had supported Vetch were beginning already to distrust him. +They had sought, she realized, to use his popularity, his eloquence, his +earnestness, for their own ends; and they were making the historic +discovery that the man who possesses these affirmative qualities is +seldom without the will to preserve them. In their superficial ploughing +of the soil, Vetch's adherents had at last struck against the rock of +resistance. A man of ambition, or a man of prejudice, they might have +controlled; but, as Patty had learned long ago, Vetch was that most +difficult of political problems--the man of an idea. + +Sitting before her dressing-table she glanced over the room, which was +hung with the gaily decorated chintz she had bought after months of +secret longing for roses and hollyhocks in her bedroom. Now she felt +that it looked cheap and flimsy because she had sacrificed material to +colour. She wanted something different to-night; she wanted something +better. Turning to the mirror she gazed back at her vivid face, with the +large deep eyes, so full of poignant expectancy, and the soft dimpled +chin. From her expression she might have been dreaming of happiness; but +the thought in her mind was simply, "The powder I use is too white. +Those women to-night used powder that did not show. I must get some +to-morrow." She was pretty,--even Stephen thought she was pretty. She +could see it in his eyes when he looked at her; but her prettiness was +merely the bloom of youth, nothing more. It was not that changeless +beauty of structure--that beauty, as she recognized, of the very bone, +which made Mrs. Page perennially lovely. "In ten, fifteen, at the most +in twenty years, I shall have lost it all," she thought. "Then I shall +get fat and common looking; and everything will be over for me because a +little youthful colour and sparkle was all that I had. I have nothing to +hold on to--nothing that will last. I don't know anything--and yet how +could I be expected to know anything after the dull life I've had? In my +whole life I've never known a woman that could help me. I've had to find +out everything for myself--" + +With her gaze still on the mirror, she laid the brush on its back of +pink celluloid--how much she had admired it when she bought it!--and +leaned forward with her hands clasped on the cover of the +dressing-table. Her hair still flying out from the strokes of the brush +surrounded her small eager face like a cloud. From the open neck of her +kimono, embroidered in a pattern of cranes and wistaria, the thin +girlish lines of her throat rose with an appealing fragility, like the +stem of some delicate flower. + +"I wonder if Mother could have helped me if she had lived?" she asked +presently of her reflection. "I wonder if she was different from all the +other women I've known?" Through her mind there passed swiftly a hundred +memories of her childhood. First there came the one vivid recollection +of her mother, a flashing, graceful figure, as light as thistle-down, in +a skirt of spangled tulle that stood out from her knees. The face Patty +could not remember, but the spangles were indelibly impressed on her +mind, the spangles and a short silver wand, with a star on the end of +it, which that fairy-like figure had held over her cradle. Of her mother +this was all she had left, just this one unforgettable picture, and then +a long terrible night when she had not seen her, but had heard her +sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, somewhere in the darkness. The next day, when +she cried for her, they had said that she was gone, and the child had +never seen her again. In the place of her pretty mother there had been a +big, rugged man, whom she had never seen before, and when she cried this +man had taken her in his arms, and tried to quiet her. Afterward, when +she grew bigger and asked questions, one of the neighbours had told her +that her mother had lost her mind from a fall in the circus, that they +had taken her away to an asylum, and that now she was dead. + +"And wherever she is, she ought to go down on her knees and thank +Gideon Vetch for the way he's looked after you," said the woman. + +"But didn't he look after her too?" asked the child. + +At this the woman laughed shrilly, lifting the soaking clothes with her +capable red hands, and then plunging them down into the soapsuds." +Well, I reckon that's more than the Lord Almighty would expect of him!" +she replied emphatically but ambiguously. + +"I wonder why Father never took me to see her. I'm sure I'd have +remembered it." + +The woman looked at her darkly. "There are some places that children +don't go to." + +"How long ago did she die?" + +Patty waited patiently for an answer; but when at last the neighbour +raised her head again from the tub, it appeared that her reticence had +extended from her speech to her expression which looked as if it had +closed over something. "You'll have to ask your father that," she +returned in a phrase as cryptic as the preceding one. "I ain't here to +tell you things." + +After this the child set her lips firmly together, and asked no more +questions. Her father had become not one parent, but both to her; and it +seemed that whereever she looked he was always there, overshadowing like +a mountain everything else on her horizon. In the beginning they had +been very poor; but he had never let her suffer for things, although for +weeks at a time she knew that he had gone without his tobacco in order +to buy her toys. Until she went to the little village school, she had +always had an old woman to look after her, and later on, when their +circumstances appeared miraculously to improve, he employed the slim, +gray, uninteresting spinster who slept now a few doors away from her. +There were hours when it seemed to her that she had never learned the +meaning of tediousness until the plain but hopeful Miss Spencer came to +live with her. + +Rising from her chair, she moved away from the mirror, and wandered +restlessly to the pile of fashion magazines and festively decorated +"books on etiquette" that littered the table beside the chintz-covered +couch. "They don't know everything!" she thought contemptuously. How +hard she had tried to learn, and yet how confused, how hopeless, it all +seemed to her to-night! All the hours that she had spent in futile study +appeared to her wasted! At her first dinner she had felt as bewildered +and unhappy as if she had never opened one of those thick gaudy volumes +that had cost so much--as much as a box of chocolates every day for a +week. "I don't care," she said aloud, with sullen resolution. "I am +going to let them see that I don't want any favours." + +The next afternoon she went out early in order to escape Gershom; but +when she came in, after a restless wandering in shops and a short drive, +she met him just as he was turning away from the door. + +"Something told me I'd find you at this hour," he remarked with +unfailing good humour. "Come out and walk about in the Square. It will +do you good." + +She shook her head impatiently. "I'm tired. I don't like walking." + +"Well, I reckon it's easier to sit anyway. We'll go inside." + +"No, if I've got to talk to you I'd rather do it out of doors," she +replied, turning back toward the gate. + +"That's right. The air's fine. I shouldn't wonder if the bad weather +ain't all over." + +"I don't mind the bad weather," she retorted pettishly because it was +the only remark she could think of that sounded disagreeable. + +They passed through the gate, and walked rapidly in the direction of the +Washington monument, which lifted a splendid silhouette against a deep +blue background of sky. It was one of those soft, opal-tinted February +days which fall like a lyric interlude in the gray procession of winter. +The sunshine lay like flowing gold on the pavement; and the breeze that +stirred now and then in the leafless boughs of the trees was as roving +and provocative as the air of spring. In the winding brick walks of the +Square children were at play with the squirrels and pigeons; and old +men, with gnarled hands and patient hopeless faces, sat warming +themselves in the sunshine on the benches. "Life!" she thought. "That's +life. You can't get away from it." Then one of the old men broke into a +cackle of cheerful laughter, and she added: "After all nobody is ever +pathetic to himself." + +"I believe I'll go in," she said, turning to Gershom. "I want to take +off my hat." + +He laughed. "Your hat's all right, ain't it? It looks pretty good to +me." + +A shiver of aversion ran through her. If only he wouldn't try to be +funny! If only he had been born without that dreadful sense of humour, +she felt that she might have been able to tolerate him. + +"Please don't," she replied fretfully. + +"Well, I won't, if you'll walk a little slower. I told you I had +something to say to you." + +"I don't want to hear it. There's no use talking about it. I'll say the +same thing if you ask me for a hundred years." + +A chuckle broke from him while he stood jauntily fingering the diamond +in his tie, as if it were some talisman which imparted fresh confidence. +Oh, it was useless to try to put a man like that in his place--for his +place seemed to be everywhere! + +"Well, it won't do any harm," he said at last. "As long as I like to +listen to it." + +"I wish you would leave me alone." + +"But suppose I can't?" He was still chaffing. He would continue to +chaff, she was convinced, if he were dying. "Suppose I ain't made that +way?" + +"I don't care how you're made. You may talk to Father if you like; but +I'm going upstairs to take off my hat." + +His chuckle swelled into a roar of laughter. "Talk to Father! Haven't I +been talking to Father over at the Capitol for the last three hours?" + +They had reached the gate beyond the monument, and swinging suddenly +round, she started back toward the house. As she passed him he touched +the end of her fur stole with a gesture that was almost imperative. His +eyes had dropped their veil of pleasantry, and she was aware, with a +troubled mind, that he was holding back something as a last resource if +she continued to prove intractable. Again and again she had this feeling +when she was with him--an uneasy intuition that his good humour was not +entirely unassumed, that he was concealing a dangerous weapon beneath +his offensive familiarity. + +"After all I may be going to surprise you," he said lightly enough, yet +with this disturbing implication of some meaning that she could not +discern. "What if I tell you that I've no intention of making love to +you?" + +"You mean there is something else you want to see me about?" She +breathed a sigh of relief, and her light steps fell gradually into the +measure of his. Her conscience pricked her unpleasantly when she +remembered that there had been a time when she would have spoken less +curtly. Well, what of that? It was characteristic of her energetic mind +that past mistakes were dismissed as soon as they were discovered. When +one started out in life knowing nothing, one had to learn as best one +could, that was all! Every day was a new one, so why bother about +yesterday? There was trouble enough in the world as it was, without +dragging back what was over. + +"Please tell me what it is," she said impatiently. + +He looked at her with curious intentness. "It is about an aunt of +yours--Mrs. Green. I met her when I was in California." + +Her surprise was so complete that he must have been gratified. + +"An aunt of mine? I haven't any aunt." + +For a minute he hesitated. Now that he had come to practical matters his +careless jocularity had given place to a manner of serious deliberation. +"Then your father hasn't told you?" he asked. + +"Is she his sister?" Her distrust of Gershom was so strong that she +could not bring herself to a direct reply. + +"So he hasn't?" After all she might as well have answered his question. +"No, she isn't his sister." His smile was full of meaning. + +"Then she must be"--there was a change in her voice which he was quick +to detect--"she must be the sister of my mother." + +"Didn't you know that she had one?" he enquired. "Don't you remember +seeing her when you were a child?" + +She shook her head. "No, I don't remember her, and Father has never +spoken of her." + +At this he glanced at her sharply, and then looked away over the tops of +the trees to the political mausoleum of the City Hall. "We take that as +a sort of joke now," he remarked irrelevantly, "but the time was--and +not so long ago either--when we boasted of it more than of the Lee +monument. Cost a lot too, they say! Queer, ain't it, the way we spend a +million dollars or more on a thing one year, and the next want to kick +it out on the junk heap? I reckon it's the same way about behaviour too. +It ain't so much what you do as the time you do it in that seems to make +the difference." As she showed no inclination to follow this train of +moralizing, he asked suddenly, "Do you remember your mother?" + +"Only once. I remember seeing her once." He had not imagined that her +voice could become so gentle. + +"Did they ever tell you what became of her?" + +"Yes, I know that. She lost her mind. They told me that she died in the +asylum." + +He was still watching her closely, as if he were observing the effect on +her nerves of each word he uttered. "Did they tell you the cause of it?" + +She shook her head. "That was all they ever told me." + +"You mean your father never mentioned it to you? Are you sure he never +spoke of Mrs. Green?" + +"I shouldn't have forgotten. But, if she is my mother's sister, why has +she never written to me?" + +"Ah, that's just it! She was afraid your father wouldn't like it. There +was a difference of some kind. I don't know what it was about--but they +didn't get on--and--and--" + +"I am sure Father was right. He is always right," she said loyally. + +"Well, he may have been. I'm not denying that; but it's an old story +now, and I wouldn't bring it up again, if I were you. He has enough +things to carry without that." + +She hesitated a moment before replying. "Yes, I suppose it's better not +to speak of it. He has too many worries." + +"I knew you'd see it that way; you're a girl of sense. And if Mrs. Green +should ever come here, must I tell her that you would like to see her?" + +"Does she think of coming here? California is so far away." + +"Well, people do come, don't they? And I know she'd like to see you. She +was very fond of your mother. I used to know both of 'em in the old days +when I was a boy." + +"Of course I'd like to see her if she could tell me about my mother. I +want to ask questions about her--only it makes Father so unhappy when I +bring up the past." + +"It would, I reckon. Things like that are better forgotten." Then, +dismissing the subject abruptly, he remarked in the old tone of +facetious familiarity, "I never saw you looking better. What have you +done to yourself? You are always imitating some new person every time I +see you." + +"I am not!" Her temper flashed out. "I never imitate anybody." Yet, even +as she passionately denied the charge, she knew that it was true. For a +week, ever since her first visit to the old print shop, she had tried to +copy Corinna's voice, the carriage of her head, her smile, her gestures. + +"Well, you needn't," he assured her with admiring pleasantry. "As far as +looks go--and that's a long way--I haven't seen any one that was better +than you!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SEPTEMBER ROSES + + +The afternoon sunshine streamed through the dull gold curtains into the +old print shop where Corinna sat in her tapestry-covered chair between +the tea-table and the log fire. She was alone for the moment; and lying +back in the warmth and fragrance of the room, she let her gaze rest +lovingly on one of the English mezzotints over which a stray sunbeam +quivered. The flames made a pleasant whispering sound over the cedar +logs; her favourite wide-open creamy roses with golden hearts scented +the air; and the delicate China tea in her cup was drawn to perfection. +As she lay back in the big chair but one thing disturbed her +serenity--and that one thing was within. She had everything that she +wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood +was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear +bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the +present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid +surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to +interest her because she knew them too well. She knew by heart the very +machinery of their existence, the secret mental springs which moved them +so mechanically; and she felt to-day that if they had been watches, she +could have taken them apart and put them together again without +suspending for a minute the monotonous regularity of their works. Even +Gideon Vetch, who might have held a surprise for her, had differed from +the rest in one thing only: he had not seen that she was beautiful! And +it wasn't that she was breaking. To-day because of her mood of +depression, she appeared drooping and faded; but that night, a week ago, +in her velvet gown and her pearls, she had looked as handsome as ever. +The truth was simply that Vetch had glanced at her without seeing her, +as he might have glanced at the gilded sheaves of wheat on a picture +frame. He had been so profoundly absorbed in his own ideas that she had +been nothing more individual than one of an audience. If he were to meet +her in the street he would probably not recognize her. And this was a +man who had never before seen a woman whose beauty had passed into +history, a man who had risen to his place through what the Judge had +described with charitable euphemism, as "unusual methods." "The odd part +about Vetch," the Judge had added meditatively on the drive home, "is +that he doesn't attempt to disguise the kind of thing that we of the old +school would call--well, to say the least--extraordinary. He is as +outspoken as Mirabeau. I can't make it out. It may be, of course, that +he has a better reading of human nature than we have, and that he knows +such gestures catch the eye, like long hair or a red necktie. It is very +much as if he said--'Yes, I'll steal if I'm driven to it, but--confound +it!--I won't lie!'" + +After all, the sting to her vanity had been too slight to leave an +impression. There must be another cause for the shadow that had fallen +over her spirits. Even a reigning beauty of thirty years could scarcely +expect to be invincible; and she had known too much homage in the past +to resent what was obviously a lack of discrimination. Her +disappointment went deeper than this, for it had its source in the +stories she had heard of Vetch that sounded original and dramatic. She +had imagined a personality that was striking, spectacular, or at least +interesting; and the actual Gideon Vetch had seemed to her merely +unimpressive and ordinary. Beside John Benham (as the thought of Benham +returned to her, her spirit rose on wings out of the shadow), beside +John Benham, in the drawing-room after dinner, Vetch had appeared at a +disadvantage that was almost ridiculous; and, as Stephen Culpeper had +hastened to point out, this was merely a striking illustration of the +damning contrast between the Governor's chequered political career and +Benham's stainless record of service. + +A smile curved her lips as she gazed at the quivering sunbeams. Was that +deep instinct for perfection, the romantic vision of things as they +ought to be, awaking again? Did the starry flower bloom not in the +dream, but in reality? The passion to create beauty, to bring happiness, +which had been extinguished for years, burned afresh in her heart. Yes, +as long as there was beauty, as long as there was nobility of spirit, +she could fight on as one who believed in the future. + +A shadow darkened the window, and a moment afterward there was a fall of +the old silver knocker on her door. She thought at first--the shadow had +seemed so young--that it was Stephen; but when she opened the door, she +saw, with a lovely flush, that it was John Benham. + +"You expected me?" he asked, raising her hand to his lips. + +"Yes, I knew that you would come," she answered, and the flush died +away slowly as she turned back to the fire. In the moment of recognition +all the despondency had vanished so utterly that it had not left even a +memory. He had brought not only peace, but youth and happiness back to +her eyes. + +He came in as impressively as he presented himself to an audience; and +with the glow of pleasure still in her heart, she found her keen and +observant mind watching him almost as if he were a stranger. This had +been her misfortune always, the ardent heart joined to the critical +judgment, the spectator chained eternally to the protagonist. She +received a swift impression that he had prepared his words and even his +gestures, the kiss on her fingers. Yet, in spite of this suggestion of +the actor, or because of it, he possessed, she felt, great distinction. +The straight backward sweep of his hair; the sharp clearness of his +profile; the steady serenity of his gray eyes; the ease and suppleness +and indolent strength of his tall thin figure--all these physical +details expressed the reserves and inhibitions of generations. The only +flaw that she could detect was that dryness of soul that she had noticed +before, as of soil that has been too heavily drained. She knew that he +excelled in all the virtues that are monumental and public, that he was +an honourable opponent, a scrupulous defender of established rules and +precedents. He would always reach the goal, but his race would never +carry him beyond the end of the course; he would always fulfil the law, +but he would never give more than the exact measure; he would always +fight for the risen Christ, but he would never have followed the humble +bearer of the Cross. His strength and weakness were the kind which had +profoundly influenced her life. He represented in her world the +conservative principle, the accepted standard, the acknowledged +authority, custom, stability, reason, and moderation. + +As he sat down in front of the fire, he looked at her with a gentle +possessive gaze. + +"Of course you have never sold a print," he remarked in a laughing tone, +and she responded as flippantly. + +"Of course!" + +"Why didn't you call it a collection?" + +"Because people wouldn't come." + +"Then why didn't you keep them at home where you have so much that is +fine?" + +She laughed. "Because people couldn't come. I mean the people I don't +know. I have a fancy for the people I have never met." + +"On the principle that the unknown is the desirable." + +She nodded. "And that the desirable is the unattainable." + +His gray eyes were warmed by a fugitive glow. "I shouldn't have put it +that way in your case. You appear to have everything." + +"Do I? Well, that twists the sentence backward. Shall we say that the +attainable is the undesirable?" + +"Surely not. Can you have ceased already to desire these lovely things? +Could that piece of tapestry lose its charm for you, or that Spanish +desk, or those English prints, or the old morocco of that binding? Do +you feel that the colours in that brocade at your back could ever become +meaningless?" + +"I am not sure. Wouldn't it be possible to look at it while you were +seeing something else, something so drab that it would take the colour +out of all beauty?" She was looking at him over the tea-table, and while +she asked the question she raised a lump of sugar in the quaint old +sugar tongs she had brought home from Florence. + +He shook his head. "I am denied sugar. Has it ever occurred to you that +middle age ought to be called the age of denial?" Then his tone changed. +"But I wonder if you begin to realize how fortunate you are? You have +the collector's instinct and the means to gratify it. To discover with +you is to possess--don't you understand the blessing of that? You love +beauty as a favoured daughter, not as one of the disinherited who can +only peer through the windows of her palace." + +"But you also--you love beauty as I do." + +"But I can't own it--not as you do." He was speaking frankly. "I haven't +the means. At least what I have I have made myself, and therefore I +guard it more carefully. It is only those who have once been poor who +are really under the curse of money, for that curse is the inability to +understand that money is less valuable than anything else on earth that +you happen to need or desire. Now to me the most terrible thing on earth +is not to be without beauty, but to be without money--" + +She smiled. "You are talking like Gideon Vetch." + +He caught at the name quickly. "Like Gideon Vetch? You mean that I sound +ignoble?" + +The laughter in his eyes made him look almost boyish, and she felt that +she had come suddenly close to him. After all he was very attractive. + +"Is he ignoble?" she asked. "I have seen him only once, and that was at +the dinner a week ago." + +He looked at her intently. "I should like to know what you think." + +"I hardly know--but--well, I must confess that I was disappointed." + +"You expected something better?" + +She hesitated over her answer. "I expected something different. I +suppose I looked for the dash of purple--or at least of red--in his +appearance." + +"And he seemed ordinary?" + +"In a way--yes. His features are not striking, and yet when he talks to +you and gets interested in his own ideas, he sheds a kind of warmth that +is like magnetism. I couldn't analyse it, but it is there." + +"That, I suppose, is the charm of which they talk. Warmth, or perhaps +heat, is a better word for it. Fortunately I'm proof against it because +of what you might call an asbestos temperament; but I've seen it catch +fire in a crowd, and it sweeps over an audience like a blaze over a +prairie. It is a cheap kind of oratory; yet it is a power in +unscrupulous hands--and Vetch is unscrupulous." + +"You believe that?" + +"I know it. It has been proved again and again that he will stoop to any +means in order to advance his ideas, which mean of course his ambition. +Oh, I'm not denying that in the main he is sincere, that he believes in +his phrases. As a matter of fact one has only to look at his +appointments, those that he is able to make by his own authority! There +isn't a doubt in the world that he deliberately sold his office in +exchange for his election--" + +So this was one honest man's view of Gideon Vetch! John Benham believed +this accusation, for some infallible intuition told her that Benham +would never have repeated it, even as a rumour, if he had not believed +it. Her father's genial defence of the Governor; his ironic +aristocratic sympathy with the radical point of view appeared +superficial and unconvincing beside Benham's moral repudiation. And yet +what after all was the simple truth about Gideon Vetch? What was the +true colour of that variable personality, which appeared to shift and +alter according to the temperament or the convictions of each observer? +She had never known two men who agreed about Vetch, except perhaps +Benham and his disciple, Stephen Culpeper. Each man saw Vetch +differently, and was this because each man saw in the great demagogue +only the particular virtue or vice for which he was looking, the +reflection of personal preferences or aversions? It seemed to her +suddenly that the Governor, whom she had thought commonplace, towered an +immense vague figure in a cloud of misinterpretation and +misunderstanding. His followers believed in him; his opponents +distrusted him; but was this not true of every political leader since +the beginning of politics? The power to inspire equally devotion and +hatred had been throughout history the authentic sign of the saviour and +of the destroyer. Her curiosity, which had waned, flared up more +strongly than ever. + +"I should like to know," she said aloud, "what he is truthfully?" + +Benham laughed as he rose to go. "Do you think he can be anything +truthfully?" + +"Oh, yes, even if it is only a demagogue." + +"Only a demagogue! My dear Corinna, the demagogue is the one everlasting +and unalterable American institution. He is the idol of the Senate +chamber; the power behind the Constitution." + +"But what does he really stand for--Vetch, I mean?" + +"Ask him. He would enjoy telling you." + +"Would he enjoy telling me the truth?" + +With the laughter still in his eyes Benham drew nearer and stood looking +down on her. "Oh, I don't mean that he is pure humbug. I haven't a +doubt, as I told you, that he believes, sufficiently at least for +election purposes, in the fallacies that he advocates, even in the old +age pension, the minimum, or more accurately, the maximum wage, and of +course in what doesn't sound so Utopian since we have experimented with +it, that favourite dogma of the near-Socialists, the Government +ownership of railroads. His main theory, however, appears to be some +far-fetched abstraction which he calls the humanizing of +industry--you've heard that before! Mere bombast, you see, but the kind +of thing that is dangerous in a crowd. It is the catchpenny politics +that has been the curse of our country." + +"And of course he is not a gentleman." Corinna's voice was regretful. "I +may be old-fashioned, but I can't help feeling that the Governor ought +to be a gentleman. That sounds like General Plummer, I know," she +concluded apologetically. + +"The archaic cult of the gentleman? Well, I like to think that in +Virginia it still has a few obscure followers. It is a prejudice that I +dare to admit only when I am not on the platform, for the belief in the +gentleman has become a kind of underground religion, like the worship in +the Catacombs." + +Her eyes had grown wistful when she answered: "It is the price we pay +for democracy." + +"The price we pay is the reign of social justice in theory, and in +practice the rule of the Gideon Vetches of history. Oh, I admit that it +may all work out in the end! That is my political creed, you know--that +everything and anything may work out in the end. If I stood simply for +tradition without progress, I should long ago have been driven to the +wall." + +"I feel as you do," she said after a moment, "and yet I am curious to +see what will become of our experimental Governor." + +"And I also. The man may have executive ability, and it is possible that +he may give us an efficient administration. But, of course, it is merely +a stepping-stone for his inordinate greed for power. His vanity has been +inflamed by success, and he sees the Senate, it may be even the +Presidency, ahead of him." + +Though she smiled there was a note of earnestness in her voice. "Well, +why not? There was once a rail splitter--" + +"Oh, I know. But the rail splitter was born a president; and it is a far +cry to a circus rider who was not born even a gentleman." + +"Perhaps. Yet, right or wrong, hasn't the war stretched a little the +safety net of our democracy? Isn't it just possible to-day that we might +find a circus rider who was born a president too?" Then before he could +toss back her questions she asked quickly, "After all, he didn't +actually ride, did he?" + +Benham shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had acquired in France. +"I've heard so, but I don't know. They tell queer tales of his early +years. That was before the golden age of the movies, you see; and I +suspect that the movies rather than the war introduced the mock heroic +into politics." + +He was still standing at her side, looking down into her upraised eyes, +which made him think of brown velvet. For a long pause after speaking he +remained silent, drinking in the fragrance of the room, the whispering +of the flames, and the dreamy loveliness of Corinna's expression. A +change had come over her face. In the flushed light she looked young and +elusive; and it seemed to him that, beneath the glowing tissue of flesh, +he gazed upon an indestructible beauty of spirit. + +"Do you know what I was thinking?" he asked presently. "I was thinking +that I'd known all this before--that I'd been waiting for it always--the +firelight on these splendid colours, the smell of the roses, the sound +of the flames, and the way you looked up at me with that memory in your +eyes. 'I have been here before'." + +A quiver as faint as the shadow of a flower crossed her face. "Yes, I +remember. It is an odd feeling. I suppose every one has felt it at +times--only each one of us likes to think that he is the particular +instance." + +"It is trite, I know," he said with a smile, "but feeling is never very +original, is it? Only thought is new." + +"But I would rather have feeling, wouldn't you?" she asked in a low +voice, and sat waiting in a lovely attitude, prepared without and +within, for the moment that was approaching. There was no excitement in +such things now, she had had too much experience; but there was an +unending interest. + +"Then it isn't too late?" he asked quickly; and again after a pause in +which she did not answer: "Corinna, is it too late?" + +For a minute longer she looked up at him in silence. The glow was still +in her eyes; the smile was still on her lips; and it seemed to him that +she was wrapped in some enchantment which wrought not in actual life but +in allegory--that the light in which she moved belonged less to earth +than to Botticelli's springtime. Was romance, after all, he thought +sharply, the only reality? Could one never escape it? + +While he looked down on her she had stirred, as if she were awaking from +a dream, or a memory, and stretched out her hand. + +"Is it ever too late," she responded, "as long as there is any happiness +left in the world?" + +She smiled as she answered him; but suddenly her smile faded and that +faint shadow passed again over her face. In the very moment when he had +bent toward her, there had drifted before her gaze the soft anxious eyes +of Alice Rokeby, and the look in them as they followed John Benham that +evening a week ago. + +"Oh, my dear," said Benham softly. Then his voice broke and he drew back +hurriedly, for a figure had darkened the low window, and a minute +afterward the door opened and Patty Vetch entered the room. + +"The latch was not fastened, so I came in," she began, and stopped as +her look fell on Benham. "I--I hope you don't mind," she added in +confusion. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +PATTY AND CORINNA + + +Patty had come straight to Corinna after a conversation with Stephen. +She needed sympathy, and she had meant to be frank and confiding; but +when Benham left them alone in the lovely room, which made her feel as +if she had stepped into one of the stained glass windows in the old +church she attended, her courage failed, and she forgot all the +impulsive words she had learned by heart in the street. + +"I am so glad," said Corinna sweetly. "I went to see you after luncheon +to-day, and I was very much disappointed not to find you at home." + +"That was why I came," answered Patty. "Your card was there when I got +in, and I couldn't bear missing you." + +"That was right, dear. It was what I hoped you would do." + +Turning back to the fire, Corinna stooped and flung a fresh log on the +Florentine andirons. Then, without glancing at the girl, she sat down in +one of the deep chairs by the hearth, and motioned invitingly to a place +at her side. She was determined to win Patty's heart, and she wanted to +be near enough to reach out her hand when the right moment came. That +moment had not come yet, and she knew it, for she was wise from +experience. There was time enough, and she felt no impulse to hasten +developments. She was strongly attracted, and since her sympathy was +easily stirred, she wished, without any great desire, to help the girl +if she could. The only way, she realized, was to watch and hope, to play +the waiting game as far as this was possible to her active nature. For, +above all things, Corinna hated to wait; and this potent energy of soul, +this vital flame, had given the look of winged radiance to her eyes. + +"You are always so happy," said Patty breathlessly, as she leaned +forward and held out her hands to Corinna as if she were the fire. +"Everything about you seems to give out joy every minute." + +"You dear!" murmured Corinna softly, for admiration was to her nature +what sunshine is to a flower. "I am happy to-day--happy as I thought I +should never be again. I am so happy that I should like to take the +whole world to my heart and heal its misery." Then she added hastily +before the girl could reply: "You came just at the right moment. I have +wanted a talk with you, and there couldn't be a better opportunity than +this. The other night I tried to join you after dinner; but Mrs. +Berkeley got all the women together, and I didn't have a chance to speak +a word to you alone. You looked charming in that scarlet dress. Your +head is shaped so prettily that I think you are wise to cut your hair. +It makes you look like a page of the Italian Renaissance." + +"Do you really like it?" asked Patty, and her voice trembled with +pleasure. "Father hates it, but men never know." + +Corinna laughed. "Not much more about fashions than they know about +women." + +"And that isn't anything, is it?" + +"Well, perhaps they'll learn some day--by the time I am dead and you are +old. You look so young, you can't be over eighteen." + +"I'll be nineteen next summer--at least I think I shall, for nobody +knows exactly when my birthday comes." + +"Not even your father?" + +"No, he guesses it's in June, but he isn't perfectly sure, and he hasn't +any idea what day of the month it is. He gives me a birthday gift +whenever he happens to think of it." + +For a minute Corinna gazed thoughtfully into the fire. "It is queer the +things men can't remember," she said at last. "Now, my father always +forgets, or pretends to, that I've ever been married." + +"Then I needn't be so surprised," rejoined Patty brightly, "when mine +forgets that I ever was born!" + +"Oh, he doesn't forget it really, my dear. He adores you." + +"He is an angel to me," answered the girl with passionate loyalty. "I've +never had any one else, you know, and he has been simply everything. +Only I do wish he wouldn't have that tiresome Miss Spencer to live with +us." + +"But you ought to have some one with you." + +"Not some one like that. She doesn't know as much as I do; but Father +thinks she is all right because she lets her hair turn gray and wears +long dresses." + +Corinna's laugh was like music. "It takes more than that to make a +virtuous mind!" she exclaimed, but she was not thinking of Miss Spencer. + +"Do you know," said Patty, leaning forward and speaking with the +earnestness of a child, "I doubt if Father ever looked at a well-dressed +woman until he met you." + +Was it natural ingenuousness, or did the girl have a deeper motive? For +an instant Corinna wondered; then she returned merrily: "Certainly he +wouldn't look at me when Mrs. Stribling is near." + +"Yes, he admires Mrs. Stribling very much," replied Patty gravely, "but +I don't. She isn't a bit real." + +Corinna's gaze softened until it swept the girl's face like a caress. "I +hope you won't mind my calling you Patty," she responded irrelevantly. +"It is so hard to say Miss Vetch, for I can see that we are going to be +friends." + +"Oh, if you will!" cried Patty breathlessly, and she added eagerly, "I +have never had a real friend, you know, and you are so beautiful. You +are more beautiful than anybody I ever saw on the stage." + +"Or in the movies?" Corinna's voice was mirthful, but there was a deep +tenderness in her eyes. Was the girl as shallow as she appeared, or was +there, beneath her vivid enamel-like surface, some rich plastic +substance of character? Was she worth helping, worth the generous +friendship that Corinna could give, or was she merely a bit of human +driftwood that would burn out presently in the thin flame of some +transient passion? "I'll take the risk," thought Corinna. "A risk is +worth taking," for there was sporting blood in her veins. While she sat +there in silence, listening to the artless unfolding of the girl's +thoughts, she appeared to be searching for the hidden possibilities in +that crude young spirit. So often in the past the older woman had given +herself abundantly only to meet disappointment and ingratitude. Why +should it be different now? What was there in this unformed child that +appealed so strongly to her sympathy and tenderness? Not beauty surely, +for Patty was merely pretty. Charm she had unmistakably; but it was a +charm that men would feel rather than women; and of all the feminine +varieties that Corinna had known in the past, she disliked most heartily +"the man's woman." Was her impulse to help only the need of a fresh +interest, the craving for a new amusement? The heart of life she had +never reached. Something was missing--the unfading light, the starry +flower that she had never found in her search. Now at last, in a golden +middle age, she told herself that she would build her happiness not on +perfection, but on the second best of experience. She would accept the +milder joys, the daily miracles, the fulfilled adventures. And so, +partly because she liked the girl, and partly because of a generous +whim, she said presently: + +"You shall have a friend--a real friend--from this day." + +Patty who had been gazing into the fire turned on her a face that was as +sparkling as a sunbeam. "I would rather have you for a friend than +anybody in the world," she responded in a voice so caressing that +Stephen would not have believed it belonged to her. + +"I am sure that I can be useful to you," said Corinna, for the gratitude +in the girl's voice touched and embarrassed her, "and I know that you +can be to me. How would you like to come every morning and help me for +an hour or two in my shop? There isn't anything to do, but we may get to +know each other better." After all, she might as well show a fighting +spirit and see the adventure through to the end. + +Patty's eyes shone, but all she said was, "Oh, I'd love to! It is so +beautiful here." + +"Do you like it?" asked Corinna, and wondered how much the girl really +saw. Did she have the eyes and the soul to see and feel beauty? "I have +some good things at home. You must come out there." + +"If you'll only let me sit and watch you!" exclaimed Patty fervently. + +"As long as you like." A smile crossed Corinna's lips, as she imagined +those large bright eyes, like stars in a spring twilight, shining on her +hour after hour. How could she possibly endure their unfaltering +candour? How could she adjust her life to their adoring regard? "How +long has your mother been dead, Patty?" she asked suddenly. "Do you +know--of course you don't--scarcely anybody has ever heard it--that I +had a child once, a little girl, and she lived only one day." + +"And she might have been like you," was all Patty said, but Corinna +understood. + +"Do you remember your mother, dear?" + +"Only a little," answered Patty, and then she told of the spangled skirt +and the silver wand with the star on the end of it. "That is all I can +remember." + +She rose with a shy movement and held out her hand. "Then I may come +to-morrow?" + +"Every day if you will, and most of all on the days when you need a +friend." Bending her head, she kissed the girl lightly on the cheek. "Do +you like my cousin Stephen?" she asked suddenly. + +A look of scorn came into Patty's eyes. "He is so superior," she +answered, with a gesture of complete indifference. "I don't like +superior persons." + +"Ah," thought Corinna, watching her closely, "she is really interested, +poor child!" + +After this the girl went out into a changed world--into a world which +had become, as if by a miracle, less impersonal and unfriendly. The +amber light of the sunset seemed to envelop her softly as if she were +surrounded by happiness. It was like first love without its troubled +suspense, this new wonderful feeling! It was like a religious awakening +without the sense of sin that she associated with her early conversion. +Nothing, she felt, could ever be so beautiful again! Nothing could ever +mean so much to her in the rest of life! In one moment, almost by magic, +she had learned her first lesson in discrimination, in the relative +values of experience; she had attained her first clear perception of the +difference between the things that mattered a little and the things that +mattered profoundly. + +The every-day world had faded from her so completely that it seemed a +natural incident--it caused her scarcely a start of surprise--when she +met Stephen Culpeper under the Washington monument. He had evidently +just left his office, for there was a bulky package of papers in his +hand; and he greeted her as if it were the merest accident that had +taken him through the Square. As a matter of fact it was less of an +accident than he made it appear, for he had declined to go home in the +Judge's car because of some vague hope that by walking he might meet +either Patty or Gideon Vetch. Since the evening of the Berkeleys' dinner +the young man's interest had shifted inexplicably from Patty to her +father. + +"You looked so much like Mr. Benham a little way off," said Patty, as +he turned to walk back with her, "that I might have mistaken you for +him." + +"If you only knew it," he replied, laughing, "you have paid me the +highest compliment of my life." + +She blushed. "I didn't mean it as a compliment." + +"That makes it all the better. But don't you like Benham?" + +Patty pondered the question. "I can't get near enough to him either to +like or dislike him. He is very good looking." + +"He is more than good looking. He is magnificent." + +"You think a great deal of him?" + +"I couldn't think more," he responded with young enthusiasm. "Every one +feels that way about him. He stands for--well, for everything that one +would like to be." + +"I've heard of him, of course," said the girl slowly. "Father has been +fighting him ever since he went into politics; but I never saw Mr. +Benhem close enough to speak to him until the other evening." She raised +her black lashes and looked straight at Stephen with her challenging +glance. "All the men seemed so serious, except you." + +He laughed and flushed slightly. "And I did not?" + +Though her manner could not have been more indifferent, there was an +undercurrent of feeling in her voice, as if she meant something more +than she had put into words. He might take it as he chose, lightly or +seriously, her look implied--and it was, he admitted, a thrilling look +from such eyes as hers. + +"You are nearer my age," she rejoined, "though you do seem so old +sometimes." + +A depressing dampness fell on his mood. "Do I seem old to you? I am only +twenty-six." + +Her inquiring eyebrows were raised in mockery. "That is too old to play, +isn't it?" + +"Well, I might try," he answered, and added curiously, "I wonder whom +you find to play with? Not your father?" + +"Oh, no, not Father. He is as serious as Mr. Benham, only he laughs a +great deal more. Father jokes all the time, but there is something +underneath that isn't a joke at all." + +"I should like to talk to your father. I want to find out, if I can, +what he really believes." + +"You won't find out that," said Patty, "by talking to him." + +"You mean he will not tell me?" + +"Oh, he may tell you; but you won't know it. Half the time when he is +telling the truth, it sounds like a joke, and that keeps people from +believing him. He says the best way to keep a secret is to shout it from +the housetops; and I've heard him say things straight out that sounded +so far fetched nobody would think he was in earnest. I was the only +person who knew that he was speaking the truth. They call that a +'method', the politicians. They used to like it before he was elected; +but now it makes them restless. They complain that they can't do +anything with him." + +"That," remarked Stephen, as she paused, "appears to be the chronic +complaint of politicians." + +"Does it? Well, Mr. Gershom is always saying now that Father can't be +depended on. It was much more peaceable," she concluded with artless +confidence, "when he let them manage him. Now there are discussions and +disagreements all the time. It all seems to be about what they think +people want. Have you any idea what they want?" + +"Does anybody know what they want--except when they want money?" + +"Well, some of them would like Father to go to the Senate," she returned +naïvely, "and some of them wouldn't. Do you think that Mr. Benham would +be better in the Senate?" + +"I think so, of course. But you mustn't judge, you know, by what my +thoughts happen to be." + +"I'm not judging. I hate politics. I always have. I want to get as far +away from them as I can." + +He looked at her intently. "And where would you like to go?" + +"Into the movies." Her eyes sparkled at the thought. "At least I wanted +to go into the movies until I saw Mrs. Page this afternoon." + +"Mrs. Kent Page?" he asked in astonishment. "My Cousin Corinna?" + +"Yes, in the old print shop. Isn't she adorable?" + +He smiled at her fervour. "I have always found her so. But what has she +to do with your change of ambition?" + +"Oh, nothing, except that she is lovelier than any actress I ever saw." + +They had reached the house, and while they ascended the steps, the sound +of the Governor's voice, raised in vehement protest, floated to them +through the half-open door. + +"He must be talking to Julius Gershom," whispered Patty. "It is always +like that." + +"I don't care a damn for the whole bunch of you," said Vetch suddenly. +"You can go and tell that to the crowd!" + +"Well, I'll come back again after I've told them," Gershom replied in an +insolent tone; and the next moment the door swung back and he appeared +on the threshold. + +At sight of Patty and Stephen he attempted to cover his embarrassment +with a jest. "Your father and I were having one of our little arguments +about a Ladies' Aid Society," he said. "He is beginning to kick against +too much ice cream." + +"Well, if you argue as loud as that," replied the girl with +imperturbable coolness, "it won't be necessary to go and tell it to the +crowd." + +In an instant she had changed from the sparkling elusive creature +Stephen had known into a woman of authority and composure. What an +eternal enigma was the feminine mind! He had flattered himself that he +had reached the end of her superficial attractions; and in a minute, by +some startling metamorphosis, she was changed from a being of +transparent shallows into the immemorial riddle of sex. She might be +anything, or everything, except the ingenuous girl of the moment before. + +"We must learn to lower our voices," said the Governor in a laughing +tone. His anger, if it were anger, had blown over him like a summer +storm, and the clear blue of his glance was as winning as ever. "I've +been looking into the matter of that appointment Judge Page asked me +about," he added, "and I think I may see my way to oblige him." + +"If you are free for half an hour I'd like to have the talk we spoke of +the other day," answered Stephen. + +"Oh, I'm free except for Darrow. You won't mind Darrow." + +He turned toward the library on the left of the hall; and as Stephen +entered the room, after a gay and friendly smile in Patty's direction, +he told himself that the man promised to be more interesting than any +girl he had ever known. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE + + +A tall old man was standing by the window in the library, and as he +turned his face away from the light of the sunset, Stephen had a vague +impression that he had seen him before--not in actual life but in some +half-forgotten picture or statue. The Governor's visitor was evidently a +carpenter, with a tall erect figure and a face which had in it a dignity +that belonged less to an individual than to an era. Beneath his abundant +white hair, his large brown eyes still shone with the ardour of a +convert or a disciple, and his blanched, strongly marked features had +the aristocratic distinction and serenity that are found in the faces of +the old who have lived in communion either with profound ideas or with +the simple elemental forces of sky and sea. In spite of his gnarled +hands and the sawdust that had lodged in the frayed creases of his +clothes, he was in his way, Stephen realized, as great a gentleman and +as typical a Virginian as Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. Both men were +the descendants of a privileged order; both were inheritors of a formal +and authentic tradition. + +"This is Mr. Darrow," said Vetch in a voice which contained a note of +affectionate deference. "I think he knew your father, Culpeper. Didn't +you tell me, Darrow, that you had known this young man's father?" + +"No, sir, I only said I'd worked for him," replied Darrow, with an air +of genial irony which brought the Judge to Stephen's mind again. "That's +a big difference, I reckon. I did some repairs a few years ago on a row +of houses that belonged to Mr. Culpeper; but the business was all +arranged by the agent." + +"That was part of the estate, I suppose," explained Stephen. "My father +leaves all that to his agent." + +"Yes, I thought as much," replied Darrow simply; and after shaking hands +with his rough, strong clasp, he sat down in a chair by the window. +"They've made a lot of changes inside this house," he remarked. "Before +they added on that part at the back the dining-room used to be in the +basement. I remember doing some work down there when I was a young man +and there was going to be a wedding." + +"Well, that long room is very little use to me," returned Vetch. "As far +as I am concerned they might have left the house as it was built." Then +turning abruptly to Stephen, he said sharply: "You heard Gershom's +parting shot at me, didn't you?" There was a gleam of quizzical humour +in his eyes, and Stephen found himself asking, as so many others had +asked before him, "Is the man serious, or is he making a joke? Does he +wish me to receive this as a confidence or with pretended hilarity?" + +"Something about telling the crowd?" he answered. "Yes, I heard it." + +"We were having a tussle," continued Vetch lightly. "The fat's in the +fire at last." + +Stephen laughed drily. "Then I hope you will keep it there." + +"You mean you would like an explosion?" + +"I mean that anything that could clear up the situation would be +welcome." + +At this Vetch turned to Darrow and observed whimsically: "He doesn't +seem to fancy our friend Gershom." + +Darrow looked round with a smile from the window. "Well, there are times +when I don't myself," he confessed in his deliberate way. "Of all +bullies, your political bully is the worst. But he is not bad, he is +just foolish. His heart is set on this general strike, and he can't set +his heart on anything without losing his head." As the old man turned +his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile +reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving. Was +this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had +entered the room? + +"To tell the truth," said Stephen frankly, "the fellow strikes me as +particularly obnoxious; but I may be prejudiced." + +"I think you are," responded Vetch. "I owe Gershom a great deal. He was +useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I +don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met +Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish +candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like +your face, and I'm going to talk frankly to you." + +"You may," replied the young man impulsively. It was impossible to +resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor's +manner. The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was +mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the +charlatan. In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had +already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator +that dwelt apart in his brain. + +"You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow," +resumed Vetch, with his charming smile. "I can safely assume that if you +didn't want something, you wouldn't be here. Good Lord, if a man so much +as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think +that he is either a half-wit or a ne'er-do-well." + +"At least I want nothing for myself," laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply. + +"Nor does Darrow, God bless him!--nor, for the matter of that, does +Judge Page. I've got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you +are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board." The gleam of +humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice. + +"We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley. He is +the man you need." + +"For a hobby, yes. That's all right, of course, but, my dear young sir, +you can't run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can +administer it as a philanthropy." + +"Perhaps. But can you administer it successfully without philanthropy?" + +At this Darrow turned with a smile. "Can't you see that he is fooling +with you?" he said. "Prison reform is one of his fads--that and the +rights of the indigent aged and orphans and animals and any other mortal +thing that has to live on what he calls the stones of charity. He knows +why you came, and he likes you the better because of it." + +"Gershom and I have had a word or two about that board," resumed Vetch; +and as he stopped to strike a match, Stephen noticed that the cigar he +held was of a cheap and strong brand. "Between the Legislature on one +side and that bunch of indefatigable lobbyists on the other, I shan't be +permitted presently to appoint the darkey who waits on my table." The +cigar was lighted now, and to Stephen's sensitive nostrils the air was +rapidly becoming too heavy. Oddly enough, he reflected, nothing had +"placed" Vetch so forcibly as the brand of that cigar. + +"That," observed the young man briefly, "is the penalty of political +office." + +"So long as I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to +pull on the curb; but now that I've won the race, they'll find that I'm +my own master. Won't you smoke?" + +Stephen shook his head. "Not now. There is always the next race to be +considered, I suppose." + +The Governor's rugged, rather heavy features hardened suddenly until +they looked as if they were formed of some more durable substance than +flesh. Under the thick sandy hair his eyes lost their blueness and +appeared as gray as Stephen had once thought them. "Have you ever +heard," he asked with biting sarcasm, "that I was easy to manage and +that that was why certain people put me in office?" + +"Yes, I've heard that." As the young man replied, Darrow turned from the +window and looked at him attentively. + +"And may I ask what else you have heard?" inquired Vetch. + +Stephen laughed and coloured. "I've heard that it was becoming difficult +to do anything with you." + +"Because I have the people behind me?" + +"Well, because you think you have the people behind you." + +Vetch leaned forward with a confiding movement, and flicked the ashes +of his objectionable cigar on the immaculate sleeve of Stephen's coat. +Yet, even in the careless gesture, a breath of freshness and health, of +mental and physical cleanliness, seemed to emanate like an invigorating +breeze from his robust spirit. "Of course I admit," he said +thoughtfully, "that we are obliged to have some kind of party +organization to begin with. There must be method and policy and all +sorts of team-pulling and log-rolling until you get started. That kind +of thing is useful just as far as it helps and not a step farther. I won +my fight as an Independent--and, by George, I'll remain an Independent! +I've got the upper hand now. I am strong enough to stand alone. If any +party on earth thinks it can manage me--well, I'll show it that I can be +my own party!" + +Was it true, what they said of him,--that success had already gone to +his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a +political rope with which he might hang himself? Or was there some solid +foundation of fact in his blustering assumption of power? Was he +actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future? From +a mass of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly +except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one +side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the +other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was +as real and as intangible as light or colour. + +"Do you think that is possible?" he asked sceptically. "In a democracy +like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?" + +"Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the +majority." + +"You may have this support--I neither affirm nor deny it--but upon what +does it rest? What do you offer the people that is better than the +principles or the promises of the old parties? I heard you speak once, +but you did not answer this question--to my mind the only question that +is vital. You talked a great deal about humanizing industry--a vague +phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all +the vices as well as all the virtues of the race. Benham could use that +phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and +commits one to nothing." + +Vetch's face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a +rush of energy to the brain. His eyes became blue again, and as keen as +the blade of a knife. + +"I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make +something out of the muddle if I am given a chance," he replied. "Oh, I +know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now--that they have been +ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount! But I know also that +you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the +American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork. For a +little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will +crop out in spite of you. Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the +inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism. In the thought of +the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense +of the American mind. I am one of the first signs of the new times." + +"And you believe that you prove this," asked Stephen frankly, "by +turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested +politicians? You show your ability to govern by evading the first +requirement of good government--that there should be honest and able men +in control of public offices?" + +A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. "I told you the other day," +answered Vetch in a low voice, "that I used the tools at my command, and +I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones. People say +that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy +that deals with life so completely? They say also that I am without +public conscience--another name for opinions that have crystallized into +prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me +vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I +employ." + +It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification +of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a +political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he +asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the +race, was in the keeping of demagogues? + +"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to +justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public +affairs?" + +To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal +question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn't agree with +you." + +At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn't mean what we +do," he said quietly. "I've seen honest men that I knew ought to have +been in prison." + +"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered +Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer, +somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important +enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?" + +Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty, +by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were +something we had actually possessed," he said. + +"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but +I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better. +You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view--to get +at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never +find its way to the public." + +"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance +at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I'd talk to you so +frankly?" + +Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I +don't mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves +another." + +"I like you the better for that." A cluster of fine lines appeared at +the corners of the Governor's laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you +must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not +as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an +extremist--well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world +as it is and you see it as you wish it to be--that is the difference +between us. I have lived with realities; I know actual conditions--and +you know only what you have been told or imagined. Oh, I admit that you +saw an edge of reality in the trenches; but, after all, life in the +trenches was as abnormal as life in the movies. Each represents an +extreme. What you know of average human life, of hunger and pain and +labour, could be learned in an academy for young ladies. Yet you imagine +that it is experience! You have lived so long in your lily-pond, with +the rushes hemming you in, that when you hear all the frogs croaking on +the same note, you think complacently, 'that is the voice of the +people'. Why, I tell you, man, you are so ignorant of the conditions in +this very town, that Darrow could take you out and show you things that +would make you feel like Robinson Crusoe!" + +Stephen turned eagerly to the old man at the window. "I am ready for +you, Mr. Darrow." + +Darrow nodded with a reluctant assent. "I've got my Ford around the +corner," he answered. "If you would like to go up town with me I can +show you a thing or two that might interest you." + +"You mean the conditions in this city?" + +"The conditions in all cities. They differ only in the name of the +town." + +"He will show you a little--just a little--of what getting back to peace +means," said Vetch earnestly. "By next winter it will be worse, of +course, but it has already begun. The rate of wages is falling--for +wages always fall first--and the cost of living is still as high as in +war times. Rents are going up every day, Darrow can tell you more about +the speculation in rents than I can, and the housing of the +working-classes, both white and coloured, is growing worse. We shall +soon be facing the most serious problem of the system under which we +live, the problem of the unemployed. Already it is beginning. Darrow was +telling me just before you came in of a man in one of the houses where +he has been working--a returned soldier too--who has walked the streets +for weeks in search of work. He has been unable to pay his rent, so of +course he is obliged to move somewhere, if he can find a place to move +into. Oh, I realize perfectly what you are going to say! The brief +prosperity of the war still envelops the labouring man in your mind; and +you are preparing to remind me of the lace curtains and victrolas of +yesterday. Yes, I admit that lace curtains and victrolas are not +necessities. It was a case where nature cropped out in the wrong spot. +Even the working-man may have suppressed desires, you see, and lace +curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the +poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the +economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the +civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!" + +As the man's words poured out in his rich, deep voice, Stephen stared at +him in a silence which reminded him humorously of the pause in church +before the sermon began. Was this the reason of Vetch's influence and +authority--this flow of ideas, as from a horn of plenty, that left the +listener both charmed and bewildered? + +"I admit it all," rejoined the young man, "except that you have +discovered the remedy." + +The Governor laughed and settled back in his big leather-covered chair. +"You think that I blow my own horn too loudly," he continued, "but, +after all, who knows how to blow it half so well as I do? For the same +reason some over-sensitive nerve of yours may wince at my behaviour at +times, my lack of dignity or reserve; but have I ever lost a vote--I put +it to you plainly--or the shadow of a vote by an occasional resort to +spectacular advertising? It pays to advertise in politics, we all know +that!--but it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the +goods. I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and +you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself +ridiculous because I strike an attitude. The people laughed--but, by +George, they laughed with me! Oh, I know you think that I am wandering +from my point; but I haven't forgotten your question, and I am going to +answer it, if you will give me time. You ask me what I believe--" + +"If you could tell me in few words and plainly." + +"Well, first of all, I make no pretence. I do not promise to work +miracles. I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in +platitudes. I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out +of unregenerate human nature. As long as we have cherries we shall have +blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians. I +acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as +good results as I can out of the mixture. Definitely I stand for a +progressive reorganization of society--for a fairer social order and a +practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of +increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old +disorganized slavery. I believe in the trite formula we workers +preach--in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the +inevitable step from the mother's pension, the gradual nationalization +of mines and railroads. I believe in these things which are the +commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the +people follow me. It is something bigger than all this that catches the +crowd. What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the +man who acts. I stand to them not for words--though you and Benham think +I've made my way by a gift of tongue--but for deeds--for things +performed as well as planned. Other men can tell them what they want. My +hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want--a very +big difference! Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest. I have read a +few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot +when I get started. But the words I use are living words, if you notice +them. I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the +things that I think. Well, that is my secret--my pose, if you prefer--to +present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea. There are +plenty of imposing statues standing around. What they see in me is a +human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will +fight to the last ditch to get it for them." + +It was plausible; it sounded convincing and logical; and yet, even while +Stephen responded to the Governor's personal touch, some obstinate fibre +of race or inflexible bent of judgment, refused to surrender. Vetch was +probably sincere--it was fairer to give him the benefit of the +doubt--but on the surface at least he was parading a spectacular pose. +The rôle of the Friend of the People has seldom been absent from the +drama of history. + +With a glance at the window, where twilight was falling, Stephen rose, +and held out his hand. "I shall remember your frankness," he said, "the +next time I hear you speak. That, I hope, will be soon." + +"And you will wait until then to be converted?" + +"I shall wait until then to be wholly convinced." + +"Well, Darrow may have better results. You go with Darrow?" + +"If he will take me?" The deference with which the old man had inspired +the Governor showed in Stephen's manner. "I shall be grateful for a lift +on the way home." + +Darrow had risen also; and after shaking hands with Vetch, he looked +back at the younger man from the doorway. "I'll have my Ford round here +in five minutes. Meet me at the nearest gate." + +He went out hurriedly; and as Stephen followed him, after the delay of a +few minutes, he found himself face to face with Patty, who was coming +from "the blue room" on the opposite side of the hall. + +"I hope you got what you came for," she said gaily. + +"I came for nothing," he retorted lightly, "and I'm sure I got it." + +"Well, that won't matter so much since it wasn't for yourself," she +mocked. "Nobody ever wants anything for himself in politics. Father +could tell you that." + +"He told me a good many things--but not that." + +"Did he tell you," she inquired daringly, "why he is falling out with +Julius Gershom?" + +"Is he falling out with him?" + +"Didn't you see it--and hear it--when you came in?" + +"I suspected as much; but after all it was none of my business." + +"And you confine your curiosity to your own business?" + +"Not entirely," he answered, and wondered if she were experimenting +with the letter "C". "For instance I am curious about you." + +Her eyes challenged him with their old defiance. "And I am certainly not +your business." + +"I admit that you are not--but that does not decrease my curiosity." + +For a moment her smile grew wistful. "And what, I wonder," she asked, +with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to +know?" + +"Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly. There was no longer in his +mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation. On the +contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to +look like this. She was not beautiful--yet he realized that she did not +need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the +heartstrings. A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very +instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a +whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though +it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as +divinely fresh and wonderful as first love. + +"Is it too little?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it +was faint in his ears. + +She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning. "That +depends," she answered, and suddenly, without warning, she passed to the +lightest and gayest of tones. "Everything depends on something else, +doesn't it? Now Father is coming out, and I must run upstairs and +dress." + +It was a dismissal, he knew, and yet he hesitated. "May I come again +soon?" he asked, and held out his hand. + +To his surprise Patty greeted his question with a laugh. "Do you really +like politics so much?" she retorted; and fled lightly toward the +staircase beyond the library. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS + + +Darrow's little car was waiting before the entrance; and as soon as +Stephen had taken his place by the old man's side, they shot forward +into the smoky twilight. A policeman, standing in the circle of +electric light at the corner, held up a warning hand; and then, as he +recognized Darrow, he nodded with a smile, and there stole into his face +the look of deference which Stephen had seen in the Governor's eyes. +Glancing up at the sombre ruggedness of the profile beside him, the +younger man asked himself curiously from what source of character or +Circumstance this old man had derived his strange impressiveness and his +Authority over men. With his gaunt length, his wide curving nostrils, +his thick majestic lips, he looked, as Stephen had first seen him, a +rock-hewn Pharaoh of a man. An unusual type to survive in modern +America--republican and imperial! Did he represent, this carpenter who +was also a politician, the political despotism of the worker--the crook +and scourge of the labourer's power? + +Suddenly, while he wondered, Darrow turned toward him. "What do you +think of the Governor?" + +"I hardly know," answered Stephen thoughtfully. "It is too soon to ask; +but I think he is honest." + +"He is more than honest," rejoined the other quietly. "He is human. He +understands. He belongs to us." + +"Belongs?" Stephen repeated the word with a note of interrogation. + +Very slowly the old man answered. "I mean that he is more than anything +that he says or thinks. He is bigger than his message." + +"I suppose he stands for a great deal?" + +"A man stands only for what he is, not for an inch more, not for an inch +less. The trouble with all the leaders we've had in the past was that +their thought outstripped their characters. They believed more than they +were and they broke down under it. I'm an old man now. I've watched them +come and go." + +"You think that Vetch is a great leader?" + +"I think he is a great leader, but I don't mean that I think he will +ever lead us anywhere." + +"You feel that he is losing his grip on the crowd?" + +Up from Main Street the workers were pouring out of the factories; and +while they moved in a dark stream through the light and shadow on the +pavement, the faces flowed past Stephen with a pallid intensity which +made him think of dead flowers drifting on a river. In all those faces +how little life there seemed, how little individuality and animation! + +"When I was a small kid I used to live by the seashore," said the old +man presently in his dry, emphatic tones. "Many is the time I've stood +and watched the tide coming in, and I never once saw it come in that it +didn't go out again." + +"Then you believe that the tide is turning against Vetch?" + +For a minute, while they sped on in the obscurity of a side street, +Darrow meditated. + +"No, sir, I ain't saying that much--not yet. But the way I calculate is +something like this. Vetch came in on a wave of popular emotion, and a +wave of popular emotion is just about like the tide of the sea. It may +rise a certain distance, but it can't stand still, and it can't go any +farther. It's obliged to turn; and when it turns, it's pretty sure to +bring back a good deal that it carried with it. A crowd impulse--as they +call it in the pulpit and on the platform--is a dangerous thing. It's +dangerous because you can't count on it." + +"It looks to me as if Vetch counted upon it a little too much." + +"That's his nature. He was born on the sunny side of the street. He +thinks because he sees the way to help people that they want to be +helped. I've been mixed up in politics now for fifty years, and in the +labour movement, as they say, ever since it began to move in the +South--and I've found out that people don't really want to be +helped--they want to be fooled. Vetch offers 'em facts, and all the time +it ain't facts they're wanting, but names." + +"I see," assented Stephen. "Names that they can repeat over and over +until they get at last to believe that they are things. Long +reverberating names like Democratic or Republican--" + +Darrow laughed grimly. "That's right, sir, that's the way I've worked it +out in my mind. The crowd will come a little way after a fact; but in +the end it gets tired because the fact won't work magic, like that +conjure-stuff of the darkeys, and then it turns and goes back to the old +names that mean nothing. Only when a crowd moves all together it's +dangerous because it's like the flood-tide and ebb-tide of the sea." + +"And the most irritating part of it," said Stephen, with an insight +which had sometimes visited him in the trenches, "is that it gets what +it deserves because it can always have whatever it wants--even the truth +and honest government." + +They were passing rows of narrow old-fashioned tenement-houses, +standing, like crumbling walls of red brick, behind sagging wooden +fences; and suddenly, while Stephen's eyes were on the lights that came +and went so fitfully in the basement dining-rooms, Darrow stopped the +car in the gutter of cobblestones, and motioned in silence toward the +pavement. As Stephen got out, he glanced vaguely round him at the +strange neighbourhood. + +"Where are we?" + +"North of Marshall Street. A quarter which was once very prosperous; but +that was before your day. This is one of several rows of old houses, +well-built in their time, better built, indeed, than any houses we're +putting up now; but their day is over. The cost of repairing them would +be so great that the agent is deliberately letting the property run down +in the hope that this part of the street will soon be turned over to +negroes. The negroes are so crowded in their quarter that they are +obliged to expand, and when they do, this investment will yield a still +higher interest. Coloured tenants stand crowding better than white ones, +and they will pay a better rent for worse housing. As it is the rent of +these houses has doubled since the beginning of the war." + +"Good God!" said Stephen. "Do we stop here?" + +"I want you to see Canning, the man the Governor told you about. He +can't pay his rent, which was raised last Saturday, and the family is +moving to-morrow." + +"He ought to be paid for living here. Where will he go?" + +"Oh, people can always find a worse place, if they look long enough. +Canning was in the war, by the way. He's got some nervous trouble--not +crazy enough to be taken care of--just on edge and unstrung. The war +used him up, I reckon, and anxiety and undernourishment used up his wife +and children. It all seems to have come out in the baby--queerest little +kid you ever saw--born about a year ago. Mighty funny--ain't it?--the +way we let children just a few squares away from us grow up pinched, +half-starved, undersized, uneducated, and as little moral as the gutters +can make 'em, and all the time we're parading and begging and even +collecting the pennies out of orphan asylums, for the sake of the +children on the other side of the world. But it's a queer thing, +charity, however you happen to look at it. My father used to say--and he +had as much sense as any man I ever met--that charity is the greatest +traveller under the sun; and even if it begins at home it ain't ever +content to stop there over night." + +Standing there in the dim street, before the silent rows of bleak houses +with their tattered window-shades and their fitful lights, Stephen +stared wonderingly at the gaunt shape of the man before him. For the +first time he was brought face to face with the other half of his world, +with the half of the world where poverty and toil are stark realities. +This was the way men like Darrow were thinking, men perhaps like Gideon +Vetch! These men saw poverty not as a sentimental term, but as a human +experience. They knew, while he and his kind only imagined. With a +sensation as acute as physical nausea, a sensation that the thought of +the Germans used to bring when he was in the trenches, there swept over +him a memory of the social hysteria which had followed, like a mental +pestilence or famine, in the track of the war. The moral platitudes, the +sentimental philanthropy, and the hypocritical command of conscience to +put all the world, except our own cellars, in order, where were these +impulses now in a time which had gone mad with the hatred of work and +the craving for pleasure? Yet he had once thought that he was returning +to a world which could be rebuilt on a foundation of justice, and it was +this lost belief, he knew, which had made him bitter in spirit and +unfair in judgment. + +The gate swung back with a grating noise, and they entered the yard, and +walked over scattered papers and empty bottles to the narrow flight of +brick steps, which led from the ground to the area in front of the +basement dining-room. As Stephen descended by the light from the +dust-laden window, a chill dampness rose like a fog from the earth below +and filled his nostrils and mouth and throat--a dampness which choked +him like the effluvium of poverty. Glancing in from the area a moment +later, he saw a scantily furnished room, heated by an open stove and +lighted by a single jet of gas, which flickered in a thin greenish +flame. In the centre of the room a pine table, without a cloth, was laid +for supper, and three small children, in chairs drawn close together, +were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, +in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the +adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing +sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag +carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the +pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an +infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying the scene. + +More than anything else in the room, more even than the sodden +hopelessness of the man's expression, the hopelessness of neurasthenia, +this baby, tied with a strip of gingham in his high chair, arrested and +held Stephen's attention. Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but +of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old +man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, +with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience. And this +look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken +aloud: "I am tired before I begin. I am old before I begin. I am ending +before I begin." + +Darrow knocked at the door, and the woman opened it with the coffee-pot +still in her hand. + +"So you've come back," she said in a voice that was without surprise and +without gratitude. + +"I came back to ask what you've done about a place. This gentleman is +with me. You don't mind his stepping inside a minute?" + +"Oh, no, I don't mind. I don't mind anything." She drew back as she +answered, and the two men entered the room and stood gazing at the stove +with the look of embarrassment which the sight of poverty brings to the +faces of the well-to-do. + +"When are you moving?" asked Darrow, withdrawing his gaze from the +glimmer of the embers in the stove, and fixing it on the steam that +issued from the coffee-pot. + +"In the morning. We've found a cheaper place, though with rent going up +every week, it looks as if we'd soon have nowhere worse to move to, +unless it's gaol alley." Her tone dripped bitterness, and the lines of +her pale lips settled into an expression of scornful resignation. + +Without replying to her words, Darrow nodded in the direction of the +young man, who had never looked up, but sat in the same rigid attitude, +with his vacant eyes staring at the hole in the carpet. + +"Any better?" + +"How can he be better," returned the woman grimly, "when all he does is +to walk the streets until he's fit to drop, and then drag himself home +and sit there like that for hours, too worn out even to lift his eyes +from the floor. This is the last coffee I've got. I've been saving it +since Christmas, but I made it for him because he seems more down than +usual to-night." Then a nervous spasm shook her thin figure, and she +added in a fierce whisper: "He's sick, that's the matter with him. He +ain't sick enough to be in a government hospital, but he'd be better off +if he was. Even when he gets work he ain't able to stick to it. The +folks that hire him don't have any patience. As long as he was over +yonder in France it looked as if every woman in America was knitting for +him; and now since he's back here he can't get a job to keep him and the +children alive." + +"How have you fed the children?" + +"On what I could get cheapest. You see how sickly and peaked they look, +and it's been awful damp in these rooms sometimes. The doctor says he +ain't sick; it ain't his body, it's his mind. He says he's had a kind +of horror inside of him ever since he came home. He's turned against +everything he used to do, and even everything he used to believe in." + +"That's hell!" exclaimed Stephen suddenly; and at her surprised glance, +he added, "I've been there and I know. Nerves, they say, but just as +real as your skin." He looked away from her to the man on the sofa. "To +have _that_, and be in poverty!" Turning away from the father, his +glance met the calm eyes of the baby fixed on him with that gaze which +was as old and as pitiless as philosophy. + +"Ma, may I help myself?" screamed one of the children, drumming loudly +on the table. "I'd rather have bread and molasses!" cried another; and +"Oh, Ma, when we move to-morrow will you let me take the kitten I +found?" + +"Well, I've talked to the Governor," said Darrow, in his level voice +which sounded to Stephen so unemotional, "and I think we can find a job +for your husband." + +Suddenly the man on the sofa looked up. "I voted against him," he +whispered angrily. + +Darrow laughed shortly. "You don't know the Governor if you think he'd +hold that against you," he replied. "But for that little weakness of his +he might not be a political problem." + +"That's the way he goes on," remarked the woman despairingly. "Always +saying things straight out that other people would keep back. He don't +care what happens, that's the whole truth of it. He don't care about +anything on earth, not even his tobacco." + +"Life!" thought Stephen, with a dull pain in his heart. "That's what +life is!" And the old familiar feeling of suffocation, of distaste for +everything that he had ever felt or thought or believed, smothered him +with the dryness of dust. Going quickly over to the sofa, he laid his +hand on the man's shoulder, and spoke in a high ringing voice which he +tried to make cheerful. "It will pass, old fellow," he said, and could +have laughed aloud at the insincerity of his tone. "I know because I've +been there." And he added cynically, as a kind of sacrifice on the altar +of truth: "Everything will pass if you only wait long enough." + +The man started and looked up. With an air of surprise he glanced round +the dingy room, at his wife, at the whimpering children, at the +dispassionate baby enthroned in his high chair, and at the majestic +profile of Darrow. "It's the rottenness of the whole blooming show," he +said doggedly. "It ain't just the hole I'm in. I could put up with that +if it wasn't for the rottenness of it all." + +"I know," replied Stephen quietly. "There are times when the show does +look rotten, but we're all in it together." + +Then, because he felt that he could stand it no longer, he turned +abruptly, and went out into the dusk of the area. In a few minutes +Darrow joined him, and in silence the two men felt their way up the +brick steps to the bare ground of the front yard. + +"I don't know what I ought to do, but I've got to do something," said +Stephen, when he had opened the gate and passed through to the pavement +where the car waited. Lifting his sensitive young face, he stared up at +the row of decaying tenements. "What places for homes!" + +For a moment Darrow looked at him without speaking; and then he +answered in a voice which sounded as impersonal as the distant rumble of +street cars. "I thought you might be interested because these houses, +these and the other rows on the next block or two, are part of the +Culpeper estate." + +"The Culpeper estate?" repeated Stephen in an expressionless tone; and +raising his eyes again he looked up at the bleak houses. In that +instant, it seemed to him that he was seeing, not the sharp projection +of the roofs against the ashen sky, but a long line of pleasant and +prosperous generations. Beyond him stood his father, beyond his father +stood his grandfather, beyond the tranquil succession of his +grandfathers stood--what? Civilization? Humanity? + +"Do you mean," he asked quietly, "that we--our family--own these +houses?" + +"The whole block, and the next, and the next. It is the Culpeper estate. +You've never seen 'em before, I reckon. I doubt even if your father has +ever seen 'em. The agent attends to all this, and if the agent didn't +see that the rents were as high as people would pay, or were paying in +the next places, he would be soon out of a job. I'm not blaming him, you +know. I've got a son-in-law who is a real estate agent. It's just one of +the cases where it's nobody's fault, and everybody's." + +Without replying, Stephen turned away and got into the car. He felt +bruised and sick, and he wanted to be alone, to think things out by +himself in the darkness. "This is only one instance," he thought, as +they started down the dim street toward the white blaze of the business +quarter in the distance. "Only one out of millions! In every city. All +over the world it is the same. Wherever there is wealth it casts its +shadow of poverty." + +"I used to bother about it too when I was young," said the old man at +his side. "I used to feel, I reckon, pretty near as bad as you are +feeling now, but it don't last. When you get on a bit you'll sort of +settle down and begin to work it out. That's life. Yes, but it ain't the +whole of life. It ain't even the biggest part. Those folks we've been to +see have had their good times like the rest of us, only we saw 'em just +now when they were in the midst of a bad time. Life ain't confined to a +ditch any more than it is to what Gideon calls a lily-pond. Keep your +balance, that's the main thing. Whatever else you lose, you must be sure +to keep your balance, or you'll be in danger of going overboard." + +"Do you mean that there is no remedy for conditions like this?" + +The old man pondered his answer so long that Stephen thought he had +either given up or forgotten the question. + +"The only remedy I have ever been able to see is to work not on +conditions, but on human nature," he replied. "Improve human nature, and +then you will improve the conditions in which it lives. Improve the rich +as well as the poor. Teach 'em to be human beings, not machines, to one +another--that's Gideon's idea, you know,--humanize--Christianize, if you +like it better--civilize. It's a pretty hopeless problem--the individual +case--charity is all rotten from root to branch. If you could see the +harm that's been done by mistaken charity! Why, look at my friend, Mrs. +Page, now. She tried to work it out that way, and what came of it +except more rottenness? And yet until the State looks after the +unemployed, there is obliged to be charity." + +"Do you mean Mrs. Kent Page?" asked Stephen in surprise, and remembered +that his mother had once accused Corinna of trying to "undermine +society." + +"She is one of my best friends," answered the old man, with mingled +pride and affection. "I go to see her in her shop every now and then, +and I reckon she values my advice about her affairs as much as +anybody's. Well, when she came home from Europe she found that she +owned a row of tenements like this one, and her agent was profiteering +in rents like most of the others. I wish you could have seen her when +she discovered it. Splendid? Well, I reckon she's the most splendid +thing this old world has ever had on top of it! She went straight to +work and had those houses made into modern apartments--bathrooms, steam +heat, and back yards full of trees and grass and flowers, just like +Monroe Park, only better. The rent wasn't raised either! She put that +back just where it was before the war; and then she let the whole row to +the tenants for two years. You never saw anything like the interest she +took in that speculation--you'd have thought to hear her that she was +setting out to bring what the preachers call the social millennium." + +"She never mentioned it to me," said Stephen, with interest. "How did it +turn out?" + +Darrow threw back his great head with a laugh. "I don't reckon she did +mention it, bless her! It don't bear mentioning even now. Why, when she +went back last fall to see those houses, she found that the tenants had +all moved into dirty little places in the alley, and were letting out +the apartments, at five times the rent they paid, to other tenants. +They were doing a little special profiteering of their own--and, bless +your life, there wasn't so much as a blade of grass left in the yards, +even the trees had been cut down and sold for wood. And you say she +never mentioned it?" + +"How could she? But, after all, I suppose the question goes deeper than +that?" + +"The question," replied Darrow, with an energy that shook the little +car, "goes as deep as hell!" + +They were driving rapidly up Grace Street; and as they shot past the +club on the corner, Stephen noticed the serene aristocratic profile of +Peyton at one of the brilliantly lighted windows. A little farther on, +when they turned into Franklin Street, he saw that the old print shop +was in darkness, except for the lights in the rooms of the caretaker +and the lodgers in the upper storey. Corinna had gone home, he supposed, +and he wondered idly if she were with Benham? As they went on they +passed the house of the Blairs, where he caught a glimpse of Margaret on +the porch, parting from the handsome young clergyman. The sight stirred +him strangely, as if the memory of his dead life had been awakened by a +scent or a faded flower in a book. How different he was from the boy +Margaret had known in that primitive period which people defined as +"before the war"! It was as if he had belonged then to some primary +emotional stratum of life. All the complex forces, the play and +interplay of desire and repulsion, of energy and lassitude, had +developed in the last two or three years. + +On either side, softly shaded lights were shining from the windows, and +women, in rich furs, were getting out of luxurious cars. It was the +world that Stephen knew; life moulded in sculptural forms and encrusted +with the delicate patina of tradition. Here was all that he had once +loved; yet he realized suddenly, with a sensation of loneliness, that +here, not in the mean streets, he felt, as Vetch would have said, +"stranger than Robinson Crusoe." Something was missing. Something was +lost that he could never recover. Was it Vetch, after all, who had shown +him the way out, who had knocked a hole in the wall? + +When Darrow stopped the car before the Culpeper gate, Stephen turned and +held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. "I shall see you again." + +Crossing the pavement with a rapid step, he entered the gate and ran up +the steps to the porch between the white columns. As he passed into the +richly tempered glow of the hall, it seemed to him that an invisible +force, an aroma of the past, drifted out of the old house and enveloped +him like the sweetness of flowers. He was caught again, he was +submerged, in the spirit of race. + +A little later, when he was passing his mother's door, he glanced in and +saw her standing before the mirror in her evening gown of gray silk, +with the foam-like ruffles of rose-point on her bosom and at her elbows, +which were still round and young looking. + +Catching his reflection in the glass, she called out in her crisp tones, +"My dear boy, where on earth have you been? You know we promised to dine +with Julia, and then to go to those tableaux for the benefit of the +children in Vienna. She has worked so hard to make them a success that +she would never forgive us if we stayed away." + +"Yes, I know. I had forgotten," he replied. Why was he always +forgetting? Then he asked impulsively, while pity burned at white heat +within him, "Is Father here? I want to speak to him before we go out." + +"He came in an hour ago," said Mrs. Culpeper; and as she spoke the mild +leonine countenance of Mr. Culpeper, vaguely resembling some playful and +domesticated king of beasts, appeared at the door of his dressing-room. + +"Do you wish to see me, my boy?" he asked affectionately. "We were just +wondering if you had forgotten and stayed at the club." + +"No, I wasn't at the club. I've been looking over the Culpeper estate--a +part of it." Stephen's voice trembled in spite of the effort he made to +keep it impersonal and indifferent. "Father, do you know anything about +those old houses beyond Marshall Street?" + +It was the peculiar distinction of Mr. Culpeper that, in a community +where everybody talked all the time, he had been able to form the habit +of silence. While his acquaintances continually vociferated opinions, +scandals, experiences, or anecdotes, he remained imperturbably reticent +and subdued. All that he responded now to Stephen's outburst was, "Has +anybody offered to buy them?" + +"Why, what in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Culpeper, who was neither +reticent nor subdued. From the depths of the mirror her bright brown +eyes gazed back at her husband, while she fastened a cameo pin, +containing the head of Minerva framed in pearls, in the rose-point on +her bosom. + +"To buy them?" repeated Stephen. "Why, they are horrors, Father, to live +in--crumbling, insanitary horrors! And yet the rent has been doubled in +the last two or three years." + +From the mirror his mother's face looked back at him, so small and +clear and delicately tinted that it seemed to him merely an exaggerated +copy of the cameo on her bosom, "I hope that means we shall have a +little more to live on next year," she said reflectively, while the +expression that Mary Byrd impertinently called her "economic look" +appeared in her eyes. "What with the high cost of everything, and the +low interest on Liberty Bonds, and the innumerable relief organizations +to which one is simply forced to contribute, it has been almost +impossible to make two ends meet. Poor Mary Byrd hasn't been able to +give a single party this winter." + +Before Stephen's gaze there passed a vision of the dingy basement room, +the embittered face of the woman, the sickly tow-headed children, the +man who could not lift his eyes from the hole in the carpet, and the +baby with that look of having been born not young, but old, the look of +pre-natal experience and disillusionment. And he heard Darrow's dry +voice complaining because the well-to-do classes still gave to starving +orphans across the world. After all, what was there to choose between +the near-sighted and the far-sighted social vision? How narrow they both +appeared and how crooked! Darrow would let all the children of Europe +starve as long as their crying did not interfere with the aims of his +Federation of Labour; Stephen's sister Julia, with her instinct for +imitation and her remote sense of responsibility, would step over the +poverty at her door, while she held out her hands, in the latest +fashionable gesture of philanthropy, to the orphans in France or Vienna. +And beside them both his mother, who because of her constitutional +inability to see anything beyond the family, perceived merely the fact +that her own child would be disappointed if the tableaux for the benefit +of starving children somewhere did not go off well. The question, he +realized, was not which one of the three points of view was the most +admirable, but simply which one served best the ultimate purpose of the +race. Selfishness seemed to have as little as altruism to do with the +problem. Was Corinna, who had failed in philanthropy and chosen beauty, +the only wise one among them? + +"But children are living in these houses," he said, "and not only +living--they are forced to move out because the rent has become so high +that they must find a worse place. I've just seen it with my own eyes. +Three sickly little children and a dreadful baby--a baby that knows +everything already." + +A quiver of pain crossed Mr. Culpeper's handsome features; but he said +only, "I will speak to the agent." + +"Won't you look into it yourself?" asked Stephen hopelessly. "The agent +is only the agent--but the responsibility is yours--ours. Of course the +agent doesn't want to make expensive repairs when he can get as high +rent without doing so. He knows that people are obliged to have a roof +over them; and if the roofs are too bad for white people, he can always +find negroes to pay anything that he asks. Can't you see what it is in +reality--that we are preying on the helpless?" + +Turning suddenly from the mirror, Mrs. Culpeper crossed the floor +hastily and put her arms about her son's shoulders. Her face was very +motherly and there was a compassionate light in her eyes, "My dear, dear +boy," she murmured in the soothing tone that one uses to the ill or the +mentally unbalanced. "My dear boy, you must really go and dress. Julia +will never forgive us." In her heart she was sincerely grieved by what +he had told her. She would have helped cheerfully if it had been +possible to her nature; but stronger than compassion, stronger even than +reason, was the instinct of evasive idealism which the generations had +bred. He understood, while he looked down on her white hair and unlined +face, that even if he took her with him to that basement room, she would +see it not as it actually was, but as she wished it to be. Her +romanticism was invulnerable because it had no contact, even through +imagination, with the edge of reality. + +And he knew also, while she held him in her motherly arms, that +something had broken down within his soul--some barrier between himself +and humanity. The wall of tradition and sentiment no longer divided him +from Darrow, or Gideon Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything +but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited +place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a +nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look +of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a +spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the +very law of his being, which was the law of order, of manners, of +self-control, the inbred horror, older than himself or his parents, of +giving himself away, of making a scene of his own emotions, this +ancestral custom of good breeding closed over him like the lid of a +coffin. + +With a smile he looked into the anxious face of his father. "Isn't there +some way out of it, Dad?" + +The muscles about Mr. Culpeper's mouth contracted as if he were going +to cry; but when he spoke his voice was completely under control. "I +can't interfere, son, with the way the agent manages the property," he +answered, "but, of course, if you have discovered a peculiarly +distressing case--if it is an object of charity--" + +He paused abruptly in amazement, for Stephen was laughing, laughing in a +way, as Mrs. Culpeper remarked afterward, that nobody had ever even +thought of laughing before the whole world had become demoralized. + +"Damn charity!" he exclaimed hilariously. "I beg your pardon, Mother, +but if you only knew how inexpressibly funny it is!" Then the laughter +stopped, and a wistful look came into his eyes, for beyond the broken +walls he saw Patty Vetch in her red cape, and around her stretched the +wind-swept roads of that hidden country. + +A minute later, as he left the room, his mother's eyes followed him +anxiously. "Poor boy, we must bear with him," she said in melting +maternal accents. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CORINNA WONDERS + + +After a winter of Italian skies spring had come in a night. It was a +morning in April, blue and soft as a cloud, with a roving fragrance of +lilacs and hyacinths in the air. Already the early bloom of the orchard +had dropped, and the freshly ploughed fields, with splashes of henna in +the dun-coloured soil, were surrounded by the budding green of the +woods. + +As Mrs. Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna's shop, she noticed that +the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing +narcissi. For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, +framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and +anxious. Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the +tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were suddenly touched with spring. + +"How delicious the flowers smell," she remarked when Corinna opened the +door; and then, as she entered the room and glanced curiously round her, +she asked incredulously, "Do people really pay money for these old +illustrations, Corinna?" + +"Not here, Cousin Harriet. I bought these in London." + +"And they cost you something?" + +"Some of these, of course, cost more than others. That," Corinna pointed +to a mezzotint of the Ladies Waldegrave by Valentine Green, "cost a +little less than ten thousand dollars." + +"Ten thousand dollars!" Mrs. Culpeper gazed at the print as +disapprovingly as if it were an open violation of the Eighteenth +Amendment. "We didn't pay anything like that for our largest copy of a +Murillo. Well, I may not be artistic, but, for my part, I could never +understand why any one should want an old book or an old picture." +Sitting rigidly upright in one of the tapestry-covered chairs, she added +condescendingly: "Stephen admires this room very much." + +"Stephen," remarked Corinna pleasantly, "is a dear boy." + +"Just now," returned Stephen's mother, with her accustomed air of duty +unflinchingly performed, "he is giving us a great deal of anxiety. Never +before, not even when he was in the war, have I spent so many sleepless +nights over him." + +"I am sorry. Poor Stephen, what has he done?" + +"I have always hoped," observed Mrs. Culpeper firmly, "that Stephen +would marry Margaret." + +"I am aware of that." A flicker of amusement brightened Corinna's eyes. +"So, I think, is Stephen." + +"I have tried to be honest. It seems to me that a mother's wish should +carry a great deal of weight in such matters." + +"It ought to," assented Corinna, "but I've never heard of its doing so." + +"Everything would have been satisfactory if he had not allowed himself +to be carried away by a foolish fancy." + +"I cannot imagine," said Corinna primly, "that Stephen could ever be +foolish. It gives me hope of him." + +Impaling her, as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as +a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, "How much do you know of this +affair, my dear?" + +In spite of her natural courage Corinna was seized with a shiver of +apprehension. "Do you think it is an affair?" she asked. + +"I think it is worse. I think it is an infatuation." + +"What, Stephen? Not really?" Corinna's voice was mirthfully incredulous. + +"I have seen the girl once or twice," resumed Mrs. Culpeper, "and she +seems to me objectionable from every point of view." + +"Only from the Culpeper one," protested Corinna. "I find her very +attractive." + +"Well, I do not." Mrs. Culpeper had relapsed into her tone of habitual +martyrdom. "If Stephen chooses to kill me," she added, "he may do it." + +Corinna leaned toward her ingratiatingly. "Don't you admit, Cousin +Harriet, that I have improved Patty tremendously?" + +"I see no difference." + +"Oh, but there is one--a great difference! If you had come to one of the +Governor's receptions last winter, you couldn't have told that she +wasn't--well, one of us. She has been so quick to pick up things that it +is amazing." + +Mrs. Culpeper lifted the transparent mesh from the point of her nose. +"Do you know," she demanded, "that the girl was born in a circus tent?" + +"So I have heard. It was a romantic beginning." + +Foiled but undaunted, the older woman fixed on Corinna the stare with +which she would have attempted the conversion of an undraped pagan if +she had ever encountered one. Though she was unconscious of the fact as +she sat there, suffering yet unbending, in the Florentine chair, she +represented the logical result of the conservative principle in nature, +of the spirit that forgets nothing and learns nothing, of the instinct +of the type to reproduce itself, without variation or development, until +the pattern is worn too thin to endure. That Stephen had inherited this +passive force, Corinna knew, but she knew also, that it was threatened +by his incurable romanticism, by that inarticulate longing for heroic +adventures. + +Suddenly, as if moved by a steel spring, Mrs. Culpeper rose. "I know you +have a great deal of influence over Stephen," she said, "and I hoped +that, instead of encouraging him in his folly, you would sympathize with +me." + +"I do sympathize with you, Cousin Harriet--only I have learned that it +is sometimes very difficult to decide what is folly and what is wisdom +in a man's life." + +"There can scarcely be a doubt, I think, about this. Surely you cannot +imagine that there would be happiness for my son in a marriage with the +daughter of Gideon Vetch?" + +There was a dreamy sweetness in Corinna's eyes. "I can't answer that, +Cousin Harriet, because I don't know. But are you sure it has gone as +far as that? Has Stephen really thought of marriage?" + +"I don't know. He tells me nothing," replied Mrs. Culpeper hopelessly, +and she added after a pause: "But I can't help having eyes. It is either +that--or he is going into politics." Her tone was as despairing as if +she had said, "he is coming down with fever." + +For a minute Corinna hesitated; then she responded cheerfully, "If it +is any comfort to you, Cousin Harriet, I feel that you are making a +mountain out of a mole hill. When it comes to the point, I believe that +Stephen will revert to type like the rest of us." + +Mrs. Culpeper clutched desperately at the straw that was offered her. +"You think he won't ask her to marry him?" + +"If he does," said Corinna firmly, "I shall be more surprised than I +have ever been in my life." + +The look of martyrdom faded slowly from her visitor's features. "You say +this because you know Stephen?" + +"Because I know Stephen--and men," answered Corinna, while she thought +of John Benham. "Frankly, I think it would be a splendid thing for +Stephen to do. It would prove, you know, that he cared enough to make a +sacrifice. I think it would be splendid; but I think also that we are of +the breed that looks too long before it leaps. Our great adventures take +place in dreams or in talk. We like to play with forlorn hopes; but the +only forlorn hope we have actually embraced is the conservative +principle; and we couldn't let that go, even if we tried, because it is +bred in our bone. So I believe that the ^hereditary habit will drag +Stephen safely back before he rushes into danger. He may play with the +thought of Patty, but he will probably marry Margaret." + +If Mrs. Culpeper's too refined features could have expressed passion, it +would have been the passion of thankfulness. "It was worth coming," she +said, "to hear you say that of Stephen." + +When at last she had gone, primly grateful for the scrap of comfort, +Corinna stood for a minute with her eyes on the sunbeams at the window. +Outside there were the roving winds and the restless spirit of April; +and feeling suddenly that she could stand the close walls and the +familiar objects no longer, she put on her hat and gloves and went out +into the street. Scarcely knowing why, with some vague thought that she +might go to see Patty, she turned in the direction of the Capitol +Square, walking with her buoyant grace which seemed a part of the +fugitive beauty of April. The air was so fragrant, the sunshine so +softly burning, that it was as if summer were advancing, not gradually, +but in a single miracle of florescence. It was one of those days which +release all the secret inexpressible dreams of the heart. Every face +that she passed was touched with the wistful longing which is the very +essence of spring. She saw it in the faces of the women who hurried, +warm, flushed, and impatient, from the shops or the markets; she saw it +in the faces of the men returning from work and thinking of freedom; and +she saw it again in the long sad faces of the dray-horses standing +hitched to a city cart at the corner. + +In the Square the sunlight lay in splinters over the young grass, which +was dotted with buttercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the +trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves. Back and forth from the +grassy slopes to the winding brick walks, squirrels darted, busy and +joyous; and a few old men, never absent from the benches, were smiling +vaguely at the passers-by. + +When she reached the gate of the Governor's house, her wish to see Patty +had vanished, and she decided that she would go on to the library and +ask for a book that she had recently heard John Benham discussing. How +much of her life now, in spite of its active impersonal interests, was +beginning to centre in John Benham! They were planning to be married in +June, and beyond that month of roses, which was once so saturated with +memories of her early romance, she saw ahead of her long years of +tranquil happiness. Well, she could not complain. After all, was not +tranquil happiness the best that life had to offer? + +She had ascended the steps of the library, and was about to enter the +swinging doors, when she turned and glanced back at the dappled boughs +of an old sycamore, outlined so softly, with its budding leaves, against +the green hill and the changeable blue of the sky. The long walk was +almost deserted. A fountain played gently at the end of the slope; a few +coloured nurses were dozing on a bench, while their be-ribboned charges +scattered peanuts before a fluttering crowd of sparrows, pigeons, and +squirrels; and, leaning on a rude crutch, a lame old negro woman was +dragging a basket of brushwood to the brow of the hill. The scene was +very peaceful, wrapped in that languorous stillness which is the +pervading charm of the South; and beyond the high spikes of the iron +fence, the noise of passing street cars sounded far off and unreal. + +She was still standing there, with her dreamy eyes on the old negress +toiling up the hill with her basket of brushwood, when a man passed the +fountain hurriedly, and came with a brisk, springy stride up the brick +walk below the library. As she watched him, at first without +recognition, she thought vaguely that his rugged figure made a picture +of embodied activity, of physical energy and enjoyment. The next minute +he reached the old negress, glanced at her casually in passing, and +turning abruptly round, lifted the basket, and carried it to the top of +the hill. Then, as he looked back at the old woman, who limped after +him, he laughed with boyish merriment, and Corinna saw in amazement that +the man was Gideon Vetch. + +"He is obliged to be theatrical," remarked a voice behind her, and +glancing over her shoulder she saw that she had been joined by a +severe-looking young woman with several books under her arm. + +"Is it that?" asked Corinna doubtfully, and she added to herself after a +moment, "I wonder?" + +A little later, as she was leaving the Square, Stephen overtook her, and +she told him of the incident. "The Governor is always breaking out like +an epidemic where you least expect him," she concluded with a smile. + +"I know. I've caught him." Though the young man's eyes reflected her +smile, his tone was serious. "I can't rid myself of the fellow." + +"Have you been to see him this morning?" + +He laughed. "I should say not! But I've been in a worse fix. I've just +walked up the street with--well, imagine it!--that bounder Gershom." + +"So you both haunt the Square?" + +At the question Stephen turned and faced her frankly. "How, in Heaven's +name, does she stand him?" + +"That's a riddle. To me he is impossible." + +"He is more than that. He is unspeakable." As he looked into her eyes a +deep anxiety or disturbance appeared beneath the superficial gaiety of +his smile. "The fellow had evidently had a quarrel, perhaps a permanent +break, with Vetch. He was in a kind of cold rage; and do you know what +he said to me? He told me,--not openly, but in pretended secrecy,--that +Vetch had never married Patty's mother--" + +For an instant Corinna gazed at him in silence. Then her words came in a +gasp of indignation. "Of course there isn't a word of truth in it!" + +"So I said to him. He insists that he has the proofs. You know what it +means?" + +"Oh, I know--poor Patty! You understand why he told you?" + +"I couldn't at first see the reason; but afterward it came to me." + +"The reason is as clear as daylight. He is infatuated, and he imagines +that you stand in his way." + +"Not only that. I think he has some idea of using whatever proofs he has +to bend Vetch to his will. He was sharp enough not to say so, for he +knew that would be pure blackmail. The ground he took was one of +nauseating morality, but I inferred that he is trying to force Vetch to +agree to this general strike, and that he is prepared to threaten him +with some kind of exposure if he doesn't. This, however, was mere +surmise on my part. The fellow is as shrewd as he is unprincipled." + +When Corinna believed it was in full measure and overflowing. "It's not +true. I know it's not true." + +"Has Patty told you anything?" + +"Nobody has told me anything. One doesn't have to have a reason for +knowing things--at least one doesn't unless one is a man. I know it +because I know it." Then, without waiting for his reply, she continued +with cheerful firmness: "The best way to treat scandal is to forget it. +Don't you think that Patty improves every day?" + +He reddened and looked away from her. "Yes, she grows more attractive, +I--" While she still waited for him to complete his sentence, he shot +out in an embarrassed tone: "Corinna, do you believe in Gideon Vetch?" + +For an instant Corinna hesitated. "I believe that he is--well, just +Gideon Vetch," she answered enigmatically. + +"Just a professional politician?" + +"Not at all. He is a great deal more than that, but what that great deal +is I cannot pretend to say." + +"Do you ever see him away from Patty?" + +"Now and then. He has been to the shop." + +"And you like him?" + +Again she hesitated. "Yes, I like him." Turning her head, she looked +straight at him with a glow in her eyes. "That is," she corrected +softly, "I should like him if it were not for John." + +"You compare him with John?" + +"Don't you?" + +"Naturally. Of course the Governor loses by that." + +"Who wouldn't?" + +Her face flushed at the thought, and as Stephen watched her, he asked in +a gentler voice, "Are you really to be married in June?" + +She smiled an assent, with her dreaming gaze on the young leaves and the +blue sky. + +"Are you happy?" he persisted. + +Her smile answered him again. "One dreads the lonely fireside as one +grows older." Then suddenly, as if the shadow of a cloud had drifted +over the bright sky, he saw the smile fade from her lips and the glow +from her upraised eyes. Somewhere within her brain a voice as hollow as +an echo was repeating, "_Isn't that life--sparrows for larks always?_" + +"Well, you know what I feel about you, and what I think about Benham," +replied Stephen. "You two together stand for all that I admire." As if +ashamed of the tone of sentiment, he continued carelessly after a +moment: "Vetch is very far from being a Benham, and yet there is +something about the man that holds one's attention. People are for ever +discussing him. A little while ago we were talking about his personal +peculiarities and his political offences. Now we are wondering how he +will handle this strike if it comes off; and what effect it will have on +his career? Benham, of course, thinks that he is an instrument in the +hands of a political group; that his office was the price they paid him +not to interfere in the strike. As for me I have no opinion. I am +waiting to see what will happen." + +They had reached the old print shop; and, as they paused beneath the +cedars in the front yard, Stephen glanced up at the window under the +quaint shingled roof. The upper storey, he knew, was rented to a couple +of tenants, and he was not surprised when he saw the curtains of dotted +swiss pushed aside and a woman's face look down on him over the red +geranium on the window-sill. The face was familiar; but, while he stared +back at it, searching his memory for a resemblance, the white curtains +dropped together again, veiling the features. Where had he seen that +woman before? What association of ideas did the sight of her recall? In +a flash, while he still groped through mental obscurity, light broke on +him. + +"Who is that woman, Corinna?" he asked. "What do you know of her?" + +"That woman?" Corinna repeated; then, as he lifted his eyes to the +window, she added, "Oh, that's Mrs. Green. A pathetic face, isn't it? I +know nothing about her except that she came in a few weeks ago, and the +caretaker tells me that she is leaving to-morrow." + +"Do you know where she came from?" + +"My dear Stephen! Why, what in the world?" A laugh broke from Corinna's +lips. "Did you ever see her before?" + +"Twice, and both times in the Capitol Square. I thought her dreadful to +look at." + +"I've only glanced at her, but she appeared to me more pathetic than +dreadful. She has been ill, I imagine, and she looks terribly poor. I'm +afraid the rent is too high, but I can't do anything, for she rented her +room from the tenants. I suppose, poor thing, that she is merely a sad +adventuress, and it is not the sad adventuresses, but the glad ones, who +usually enlist a young man's sympathy. By the way, I am lunching with +the Governor to-morrow." + +"Is it a party?" + +"No, just the family. That shows how intimate I have become with the +Vetches. Don't tell Cousin Harriet, or she would think I was beginning +to corrupt your politics. But I may use my influence to find out what +the Governor intends to do about the strike, and a cousin with a +political secret is worth having." + +With a laugh Stephen went on his way, wondering vaguely what there was +about the woman at the window, Mrs. Green Corinna had called her, that +made it impossible for him to rid his mind of her? Glancing back from +the end of the block, he saw that Corinna had entered the shop and that +the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the +dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for +some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by +gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was almost deserted? + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE + + +Corinna had not expected to see the Governor until luncheon next day; +but, to her surprise, he came to the shop just as she was about to lock +the door and go home for the afternoon. At first she thought that the +visit was merely a casual one--it was not unusual for him to drop in as +he was going by--but he had no sooner glanced about the room to see if +they were alone than he broke out with his characteristic directness. + +"There is something I want to ask you. Will you answer me frankly?" + +"That depends. Tell me what it is and then I will answer your question." + +"It is about Patty. You've seen a great deal of her, haven't you?" + +"A great deal. I am very fond of her." + +"Then perhaps you can tell me if she is interested in this young +Culpeper?" + +For a minute Corinna struggled against a burst of hysterical laughter. +Oh, if Cousin Harriet had only met him here, she thought, what a comedy +they would have made! + +"Surely if any one has an opinion about that, it must be you," she +rejoined as gravely as she could. + +"I haven't; not the shadow of one." He was plainly puzzled. "I thought +you might help me. You have a way of seeing things." + +"Have I?" The spontaneous tribute touched her. "I wish I could see +this, but I can't. Frankly, since you ask me, I may say that I have been +troubled about it. There are things that Patty hides, even from me, and +I think I have her confidence." + +"I dare say you wonder why I have come to you to-day," he said. "I can +handle most situations; but I have never had to handle the love affairs +of a girl, and I'm perfectly capable of making a mess of them. Things +like that are outside of my job." + +He seemed to her a pathetic figure as he stood there, in his boyish +embarrassment and his redundant vitality, confessing an inability to +surmount the obstacle in his way. She had never known any one, man or +woman, who was so obviously lacking in subtlety of perception, in all +those delicate intuitions on which she relied more completely than on +judgment for an accurate impression of life. Was he, with his bigness, +his earnestness, his luminous candour, only an overgrown child? Even his +physical magnetism, and she felt this in the very moment when she was +trying to analyse it, even his physical magnetism might be nothing more +than the spell exercised by primitive impulse over the too complex +problems of civilization. She had heard that he was unscrupulous--vague +charges that he had never been able to repel--yet she was conscious now +of a secret wish to protect him from the consequences of his duplicity, +as she might have wished to protect an irresponsible child. Some +mysterious sense perception made her aware that beneath what appeared to +be discreditable public actions there was the simple bed-rock of +honesty. For the quality she felt in Vetch was a profound moral +integrity, an integrity which was bred by nature in the innermost fibre +of the man. + +"If you will tell me--" she began, and checked herself with a sensation +of helplessness. After all, what could he tell her that she did not +know? + +"I want to do what is right for her," he said abruptly. "I should hate +for her to be hurt." + +While he talked it seemed to Corinna that she was living in some absurd +comedy, which mimicked life but was only acting, not reality. In her +world of reserves and implications no man would have dared to make +himself ridiculous by a visit like this. + +"Do you believe that she cares for Stephen?" she asked bluntly. + +"It didn't start with me. Miss Spencer, that's the lady who lives with +us you know, is afraid that Patty sees too much of him. He is at the +house every day--" + +"Well?" Corinna waited patiently. She was not in the least afraid of +what Stephen might do. She knew that she could trust him to be a +gentleman; but being a gentleman, she reflected, did not necessarily +keep one from breaking a woman's heart. And Patty had a wild, free heart +that might be broken. + +"I don't know what to do about it," Vetch was saying while she pondered +the problem. "As I told you a minute ago this is all outside my job." + +"Have you spoken to Patty?" + +"I started to, but she made fun of the idea--you know the way she has. +She asked me if I had ever heard of any one falling in love with a +plaster saint?" + +Corinna smiled. "So she called Stephen a plaster saint?" + +"She was chaffing, of course." + +"Well, I don't see that there is anything you can do unless you send +Patty away." + +"She wouldn't go," he responded simply; then after a moment of +embarrassed hesitation, he blurted out nervously, "Is this young +Culpeper what you would call a marrying man?" + +This time it was impossible for Corinna to suppress her amusement, and +it broke out in a laugh that was like the chiming of silver bells. Oh, +if only Cousin Harriet could hear him! Then observing the gravity of +Vetch's expression, she checked her untimely mirth with an effort. + +"That depends, I suppose. At his age how can any one tell?" In her heart +she did not believe that Stephen would marry Patty; she was not sure +even that she, Corinna, should wish him to do so. There was too much at +stake, and though her philosophy was fearless, her conduct had never +been anything but conventional. While in theory she despised discretion, +she realized that the virtue she despised, not the theory she admired, +had dominated her life. The great trouble with acts of reckless nobility +was that the recklessness was only for a moment, but the nobility was +obliged to last a lifetime. It was not difficult, she knew, for persons +like Stephen or herself to be heroic in appropriate circumstances; the +difficulty began when one was compelled to sustain the heroic rôle long +after the appropriate circumstances had passed away. Yet, in spite of +the cynical lucidity of her judgment, the romantic in her heart longed +to have Stephen, by one generous act of devotion, prove her theory +fallacious. Her strongest impulse, the impulse to create happiness, to +repair, as her father had once described it, crippled destinies; this +impulse urged her now to help Patty's pathetic romance in every way in +her power. It would be very fine if Stephen cared enough to forget what +he was losing. It would be magnificent, she felt, but it would not be +masculine. For she had had great experience; and though men might vary +in a multitude of particulars, she had found that the solidarity of sex +was preserved in some general code of emotional expediency. + +"Do you think," Vetch was making another attempt to explain his meaning, +"that he is seriously interested?" + +"I am perfectly sure," she replied, "that he is more than half in love +with her." + +"Is he the kind, then, to let himself go the rest of the way?" + +She shook her head. "That I cannot answer. From my knowledge of the +restraining force of the Culpeper fibre, I should say that he is not." + +"You mean he wouldn't think it a suitable marriage?" + +She blushed for his crudeness. "I mean his mother wouldn't think it a +suitable marriage. Patty is very attractive, but they know nothing about +her except that. You see they have had the disadvantage of knowing +everything about every one who has married, or who has even wished to +marry, into the family for the last two hundred years. It is a +disadvantage, as I've said, for the strain is so highly bred that each +generation becomes mentally more and more like the fish in caves that +have lost their eyes because they stopped trying to see. Stephen is +different in a way--and yet not different enough. It would be his +salvation if he could care enough for Patty to take a risk for her sake; +but his mother, of course, would fight against it with every particle +of her influence, and her influence is enormous." Then she met his eyes +boldly: "Wouldn't you fight against it in her place?" she asked. + +"I? Oh, I shouldn't care a hang what anybody thought if I liked the +girl," he retorted. His smile shone out warmly. "Would you?" he demanded +in his turn. + +For an instant his blunt question disconcerted her, and while she +hesitated she felt his blue eyes on her downcast face. "You can't judge +by me," she answered presently. "Only those who have been in chains know +the meaning of freedom." + +"Are you free now?" + +"Not entirely. Who is?" + +He was looking at her more closely; and when at last she raised her +eyelashes and met his gaze, the lovely glow which gave her beauty its +look of October splendour suffused her features. Anger seized her in the +very moment that the colour rushed to her cheeks. Why should she blush +like a schoolgirl because of the way this man--or any man--looked at +her? + +"Are you going to marry Benham?" he asked; and there was a note in his +voice which disturbed her in spite of herself. Though she denied +passionately his right to question her, she answered simply enough: +"Yes, I am going to marry him." + +"Do you care for him?" + +With an effort she turned her eyes away and looked beyond the green +stems and the white flowers of the narcissi in the window to the street +outside, where the shadows of the young leaves lay like gauze over the +brick pavement. + +"If I didn't care do you think that I would marry him?" she asked in a +low voice. Through the open window a breeze came, honey-sweet with the +scent of narcissi, and she realized, with a start, that this early +spring was poignantly lovely and sad. + +"Well, I wish I'd known you twenty years ago," said Vetch presently. "If +I'd had a woman like you to help me, I might have been almost anything. +Nobody knows better than I how much help a woman can be when she's the +right sort." + +She tore her gaze from the sunshine beyond, from the beauty and the +wistfulness of April. What was there in this man that convinced her in +spite of everything that Benham had told her? + +"Your wife has been dead a long time?" She spoke gently, for his tone +more than his words had touched her sympathy. + +As soon as she asked the question, she realized that it was a mistake. +An expressionless mask closed over his face, and she received the +impression that he had withdrawn to a distance. + +"A long time," was all he answered. His voice had become so impersonal +that it was toneless. + +"Well, it hasn't kept you back--not having help," she hastened to reply +as naturally as she could. "You are almost everything you wished to be +in the world, aren't you?" It was a foolish speech, she felt, but the +change in his manner had surprised and bewildered her. + +He laughed shortly without merriment. "I?" he replied, and she noticed +for the first time that he looked tired and worried beneath his +exuberant optimism. "I am the loneliest man on earth. The loneliest man +on earth is the one who stands between two extremes." As she made no +reply, he continued after a moment, "You think, of course, that I stand +with one extreme, not in the centre, but you are mistaken. I am in the +middle. When I try to bring the two millstones together they will grind +me to powder." + +She had never heard him speak despondently before; and while she +listened to the sound of his expressive voice, so full, for the hour at +least, of discouragement, she felt drawn to him in a new and personal +way. It was as if, by showing her a side of his nature the public had +never seen, he had taken her into his confidence. + +"But surely your influence is as great as ever," she said presently. A +trite remark, but the only one that occurred to her. + +"I brought the crowd with me as far as I thought safe," he answered, +"and now it is beginning to turn against me because I won't lead it over +the precipice into the sea. That's the way it always is, I reckon. +That's the way it's been, anyhow, ever since Moses tried to lead the +Children of Israel out of bondage. Take these strikers, for instance. I +believe in the right to strike. I believe that they ought to have every +possible protection. I believe that their families ought to be provided +for in order to take the weapon of starvation out of the hands of the +capitalists. I'd give them as fair a field as it is in my power to +provide, and anybody would think that they would be satisfied with +simple fairness. But, no, what they are trying to do is not to strike +_for_ themselves, but to strike _at_ somebody else. They are not +satisfied with protection from starvation unless that protection +involves the right to starve somebody else. They want to tie up the +markets and stop the dairy trains, and they won't wink an eyelash if all +the babies that don't belong to them are without milk. That's war, they +tell me; and I answer that I'd treat war just as I'd treat a strike, if +I had the power. As soon as an army began to prey on the helpless, I'd +raise a bigger army if I could and throw the first one out into the +jungle where it belonged. But people don't see things like that now, +though they may in the next five hundred years. The trouble is that all +human nature, including capitalist and labourer, is tarred with the same +brush and tarred with selfishness. What the oppressed want is not +freedom from oppression, but the opportunity to become oppressors." + +Was this only a mood, she wondered, or was it the expression of a +profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened +overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep +intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or +ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own +mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to +herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his +point of view not by looking outside of herself, but by looking within. + +"I know," she responded in her rich voice. "I think I know." + +He gazed at her with a smile which had grown as tired as the rest of +him. "Then if you know why don't you help--you others?" he asked. "Don't +you see that by standing aside, by keeping apart, you are doing all the +harm that you can? If democracy doesn't seem good enough for you, then +get down into the midst of it and make it better. That's the only +way--the only way on earth to make a better democracy--by putting the +best we've got into it. You can't make bread rise from the outside. +You've got to mix the yeast with the dough, if you want it to leaven the +whole lump." + +She had been standing with her hands clasped before her and her eyes on +the sky beyond the window; and when he paused, with a husky tone in his +voice, she spoke almost as if she were in a dream. "I believe in you," +she said, and then again, as he did not speak she repeated very slowly: +"I believe in you." + +"That helps," he answered gravely. "I don't suppose you will ever +realize how much that will help me." As he finished he turned toward the +door; and a minute afterward, without another word or look, he went out +into the street, and she saw his figure cross the flowers and the +sunlight in the window. + +When he had gone Corinna opened the door and stood watching the long +black shadows of the cedars creep over the walk of broken flagstones. +Always when she was alone her thoughts would return like homing birds to +John Benham; but this afternoon, though she spoke his name in her +reflections, she was conscious of an inner detachment from the vital +interests of her personal life. For a little while, so strong was the +mental impression Vetch had made on her, she saw his image even while +she thought the name of John Benham. Then, with an effort of will, she +put the Governor and all that he had said out of her mind. After all, +how little would she ever see of him now--how seldom would their paths +cross in the future! A strange and interesting man, a man who had, in +one instant of mental sympathy, stirred something within her heart that +no one, not even Kent Page, had ever awakened before. For that one +instant a ripple, nothing more, had moved on the face of the deep--of +the deep which was so ancient that it was older even than the blood of +her race. Then the ripple passed and the sunny stillness settled again +on her spirit. + +She thought of John Benham easily now; and while she stood there a quiet +happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years, +life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden +of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and +disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for +perfection, for the starry flower of the heights. Something that she +could worship! So often in the past it had seemed to her that she missed +it by the turn of a corner, the stop on the roadside, by the choice of a +path that led down into the valley instead of up into the hills. So +often her god had revealed the feet of clay just as she was preparing to +scatter marigolds on his altar. It appeared to her as she looked back on +the past, that life had been merely a succession of great opportunities +that one did not grasp, of high adventures that one never followed. + +The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a +big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to +stop at her door. An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she +saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling. Even a glimpse of that +flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid +current of Corinna's thoughts. Could she never forget? Must she, who +had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment +against the woman? + +With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed +the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old +print shop. In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small +straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, +more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in +her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a +dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her +appearance. If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, +Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on +perfection. + +"I've just got back," began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her +metallic voice could produce. "It's been an age since I've seen you--not +since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys', and I'm so much +interested in the news I have heard." + +For a minute Corinna stared at her. "Yes, my shop has been very +successful," she answered, after a pause in which she tried and failed +to think of a reply that would sound more disdainful. "If you are +looking for prints, I can show you some very good ones." + +"Oh, I don't mean that." Mrs. Stribling appeared genuinely amused by the +mistake. "I am not looking for prints--to tell the truth I shouldn't +know one if I saw it. I mean your engagement, of course. There isn't +anybody in the world who admires John Benham more than I do. I always +say of him that he is the only man I know who will sacrifice himself +for a principle. All his splendid record in the army--when he was over +age too--and then the way he behaved about that corporation! I never +understood just why he did it--I'm sure I could never bring myself to +refuse so much money,--but that doesn't keep me from admiring him." For +a minute she looked at Corinna with a smile which seemed as permanent as +the rest of her surface, while she discreetly sharpened her wits for the +stab which was about to be dealt. "I can't tell you how surprised I was +to hear you had announced your engagement. You know we were so sure that +he was going to marry Alice Rokeby after she got her divorce. Of course +nobody knew. It was just gossip, and you and I both know how absurd +gossip can be." + +So this was why she had stopped! Corinna flinched from the thrust even +while she told herself that there was no shadow of truth in the old +rumour, that malice alone had prompted Rose Stribling to repeat it. In a +woman like that, an incorrigible coquette, every relation with her own +sex would be edged with malice. + +"Well, I just stopped to wish you happiness. I must go now, but I'll +come again, when I have time, and look at your shop. Such a funny +idea--a shop, with all the money you've got! But no idea seems too funny +for people to-day. And that reminds me of the Governor. Have you seen +the Governor again since the evening we dined with him?" + +Her turn had come, and Corinna, for she was very human, planted the +sting without mercy. "Oh, very often. He was here a few minutes ago." + +"Then it's true? Somebody told me he admired you so much." + +Corinna smiled blandly. "I hope he does. We are great friends." Would +there always be women like that in the world, she asked herself--women +whose horizon ended with the beginning of sex? It was a feminine type +that seemed to her as archaic as some reptilian bird of the primeval +forests. How long would it be, she wondered, before it would survive +only in the dry bones of genealogical scandals? As she looked after Rose +Stribling's bright green car, darting like some gigantic dragon-fly up +the street, her lips quivered with scorn and disgust. "I wonder if she +thought I believed her?" she said to herself in a whisper. "I wonder if +she thought she could hurt me?" + +The sunshine was in her eyes, and she was about to turn and go back into +the shop, when she saw that Alice Rokeby was coming toward her with a +slow dragging step, as if she were mentally and bodily tired. The +lace-work of shadows fell over her like a veil; and high above her head +the early buds of a tulip tree made a mosaic of green and yellow lotus +cups against the Egyptian blue of the sky. Framed in the vivid colours +of spring she had the look of a flower that has been blighted by frost. + +"How ill, how very ill she looks," thought Corinna, with an impulse of +sympathy. "I wish she would come in and rest. I wish she would let me +help her." + +For an instant the violet eyes, with their vague wistfulness, their mute +appeal, looked straight into Corinna's; and in that instant an +inscrutable expression quivered in Alice Rokeby's face, as if a wan +light had flickered up and died down in an empty room. + +"The heat is too much for you," said Corinna gently. "It is like +summer." + +"Yes, I have never known so early a spring. It has come and gone in a +week." + +"You look tired, and your furs are too heavy. Won't you come in and rest +until my car comes?" + +The other woman shook her head. She was still pretty, for hers was a +face to which pallor lent the delicate sweetness of a white rose-leaf. + +"It is only a block or two farther. I am going home," she answered in a +low voice. + +"Won't you come to my shop sometimes? I have missed seeing you this +winter." The words were spoken sincerely, for Corinna's heart was open +to all the world but Rose Stribling. + +"Thank you. How lovely your cedars are!" The wan light shone again in +Alice Rokeby's face. Then she threw her fur stole from her shoulders as +if she were fainting under the weight of it, and passed on, with her +dragging step, through the lengthening shadows on the pavement. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CORINNA OBSERVES + + +Yes, Patty was in love, this Corinna decided after a single glance. The +girl appeared to have changed miraculously over-night, for her hard +brightness had melted in the warmth of some glowing flame that burned at +her heart. Never had she looked so Ariel-like and elusive; never had she +brought so hauntingly to Corinna's memory the loveliness of youth and +spring that is vivid and fleeting. + +"Can it be that Stephen is really in earnest?" asked the older woman of +her disturbed heart; and the next instant, shaking her wise head, she +added, "Poor little redbird! What does she know of life outside of a +cedar tree?" + +At luncheon the Governor, in an effort to hide some perfectly evident +anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected. It was his way, +she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity. +There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of +coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical +style. With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of +dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent +with her gaze on her plate. Only Corinna laughed, as she laughed at any +honest jest however out of place. After all, if you began to judge men +by the quality of their jokes where would it lead you? + +Patty, with her eyes drooping beneath her black lashes, sat lost in a +day dream. She dressed now, by Corinna's advice, in straight slim gowns +of serge or velvet; and to-day she was wearing a scant little frock of +blue serge, with a wide white collar that gave her the look of a +delicate boy. There were wonderful possibilities in the girl, Corinna +mused, looking her over. She had not a single beautiful feature, except +her remarkable eyes; and yet the softness and vagueness of her face lent +a poetic and impressionistic charm to her appearance. "In that dress she +looks as if she had stepped out of the Middle Ages, and might step back +again at any minute," thought Corinna. "I wonder if I can be mistaken in +Stephen, and if he is seriously in love with her?" + +"Patty is grooming me for the White House," remarked Vetch, with his +hearty laugh which sounded a trifle strained and affected to-day. "She +thinks it probable that I shall be President." + +"Why not, Father?" asked Patty loyally. "They couldn't find a better +one." + +"Do you hear that?" demanded the Governor in delight. "That is what one +coming voter thinks of me." + +"And a good many others, I haven't a doubt," replied Corinna, with her +cheerful friendliness. Through the windows of the dining-room she could +see the long grape arbour and the gray boughs of the crepe myrtle trees +in the garden. + +She had dressed herself carefully for the occasion in a black gown that +followed closely the lines of her figure. Her beauty, which a painter in +Europe had once compared to a lamp, was still so radiant that it seemed +to drain the colour and light from her surroundings. Even Patty, with +her fresh youth, lost a little of her vividness beside the glowing +maturity of the other woman. When Corinna had accepted the girl's +invitation, she had resolved that she would do her best; that, however +tiresome it was, she would "carry it off." Always a match for any +situation that did not include Kent Page or a dangerous emotion, she +felt entirely competent to "manage," as Mrs. Culpeper would have said, +the most radical of Governors. She liked the man in spite of his errors; +she was sincerely attached to Patty; and their artless respect for her +opinion gave her a sense of power which she told herself merrily was +"almost political." Though the Governor might be without the rectitude +which both Benham and Stephen regarded as fundamental, she perceived +clearly that, even if Vetch were lacking in the particular principle +involved, he was not devoid of some moral excellence which filled not +ignobly the place where principle should have been. She was prepared to +concede that the Governor was a man of many defects and a single virtue; +but this single virtue impressed her as more tremendous than any +combination of qualities that she had ever encountered. She admitted +that, from Benham's point of view, Vetch was probably not to be trusted; +yet she felt instinctively that she could trust him. The two men, she +told herself tolerantly, were as far apart as the poles. That the +cardinal virtue Vetch possessed in abundance was the one in which Benham +was inadequate had not occurred to her; for, at the moment, she could +not bring herself to acknowledge that any admirable trait was absent +from the man whom she intended to marry. + +"You would make a splendid president, Father," Patty was insisting. + +"Well, I'm inclined to think that you're right," Vetch responded +whimsically, "but you'll have to convince a few others of that, I +reckon, before we begin to plan for the White House. First of all, +you'll have to convince the folks that started the boom to make me +Governor. It looks as if some of them were already thinking that they'd +made a mistake." + +"Oh, that horrid Julius," said Patty lightly. "He doesn't matter a bit, +does he, Mrs. Page?" + +"Not to me," laughed Corinna, "but I'm not a politician. Politicians +have queer preferences." + +"Or queer needs," suggested Vetch. "You don't like Gershom, I infer; but +when you are ready to sweep, remember you mustn't be over-squeamish +about your broom." + +"I have heard," rejoined Corinna, still laughing, "that a new broom +sweeps clean. Why not try a new one next time?" + +"You mean when I run for the Presidency?" Was he joking, or was there an +undercurrent of seriousness in his words? + +They had risen from the table; and as they passed through the long +reception-room, which stretched between the dining-room and the wide +front hall, Abijah brought the information that Mr. Gershom awaited the +Governor in the library. + +"I shall probably be kept there most of the afternoon," said Vetch, and +she could see that his regret was not assumed. "The next time you come I +hope I shall have better luck." Then he hurried off to his appointment, +while Corinna stopped at the foot of the staircase and followed with +her gaze the slender balustrade of mahogany. "If they had only left +everything as it was!" she thought; and then she said aloud: "It is so +lovely out of doors. Get your hat and we'll walk awhile in the Square. I +can talk to you better there, and I want to talk to you seriously." + +After the girl had disappeared up the quaint flight of stairs, Corinna +stood gazing meditatively at the bar of sunlight over the front door. +She was thinking of what she should say to Patty--how could she possibly +warn the girl without wounding her?--and it was very gradually that she +became aware of raised voices in the library and the hard, short sound +of words that beat like hail into her consciousness. + +"I tell you we can put it over all right if you will only have the sense +to keep your hands off!" stormed Gershom in a tone that he was trying in +vain to subdue. + +"Are you sure they will strike?" + +"Dead sure. You may bet your bottom dollar on that. We can tie up every +road in this state within twenty-four hours after the order goes out--" + +Arousing herself with a start, Corinna opened the door and went out. She +could not have helped hearing what Gershom had said; and after all this +was nothing more than a repetition of the plain facts that Vetch had +already confided to her. But why, she wondered, did they persist in +holding their conferences at the top of their voices? + +In a few minutes Patty came down, wearing a sailor hat which made her +look more than ever like an attractive boy; and they descended the steps +together, and strolled past the fountain of the white heron to the gate +in front of the house. Turning to the left as they entered the Square, +they walked slowly down the wide brick pavement, which trailed by the +library and a larger fountain, to the dingy business street beyond the +iron fence at the foot of the hill. As they went by, a woman, who was +feeding the squirrels from one of the benches, lifted her face to stare +at them curiously, and something vaguely familiar in her features caused +Corinna to pause and glance back. Where had she seen her before? And how +ill, how hopelessly stricken, the haggard face looked under the thick +mass of badly dyed hair. The next minute she remembered that the woman +had lodged for a week or two above the old print shop, and that only +yesterday Stephen had asked about her. Poor creature, what a life she +must have had to have wrecked her so utterly. + +In the golden-green light of afternoon the Square was looking peaceful +and lovely. For the hour a magic veil had dropped over the nakedness of +its outlines, and the bare buildings and bare walks were touched with +the glamour of spring. Soft, pale shadows of waving branches moved back +and forth, like the ghosts of dreams, over the grassy hill and the brick +pavements. + +Turning to the girl beside her, Corinna looked thoughtfully at the fresh +young face above the white collar which framed the lovely line of the +throat. Under the brim of the sailor hat Patty's eyes were dewy with +happiness. + +"Are you happy, Patty?" + +"Oh, yes," rejoined Patty fervently, "so much happier than I ever was in +my life!" + +"I am glad," said the older woman tenderly. Then taking the girl's hand +in hers she added earnestly: "But, my dear, we must be careful, you and +I, not to let our happiness depend too much upon one thing. We must +scatter it as much as we can." + +"I can't do that," answered Patty simply. "I am not made that way. I +pour everything into one thought." + +"I know," responded Corinna sadly, and she did. She had lived through it +all long ago in what seemed to her now another life. + +For a moment she was silent; and when she spoke again there was an +anxious sound in her voice and an anxious look in the eyes she lifted to +the arching boughs of the sycamore. "Do you like Stephen very much, +Patty?" she asked. + +Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn +broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as +if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low +voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!" + +"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him +often?" Now, since she felt she had won the girl's confidence, her +purpose appeared more difficult than ever. + +"Very often," replied Patty in a thrilling tone. "He comes every day." +The luminous candour, the fearless sincerity of Gideon Vetch, seemed to +envelop her as she answered. + +"Do you think he cares for you, dear?" asked Corinna softly. + +"Oh, yes." The response was unhesitating. "I know it." + +How naive, how touchingly ingenuous, the girl was in spite of her +experience of life and of the uglier side of politicians. No girl in +Corinna's circle would ever have appeared so confiding, so innocent, so +completely beneath the spell of a sentimental illusion. The girls that +Corinna knew might be unguarded about everything else on earth; but even +the most artless one of them, even Margaret Blair, would have learned by +instinct to guard the secret of her emotions. + +"Has he asked you to marry him?" Corinna's voice wavered over the +question, which seemed to her cruel; but Patty met it with transparent +simplicity. + +"Not yet," she answered, lifting her shining eyes to the sky, "but he +will. How can he help it when he cares for me so much?" + +"If he hasn't yet, my dear"--while the words dropped from her reluctant +lips, Corinna felt as if she were inflicting a physical stab,--"how can +you tell that he cares so much for you?" + +"I wasn't sure until yesterday," replied Patty, with beaming lucidity, +"but I knew yesterday because--because he showed it so plainly." + +With a lovely protective movement the older woman put her arm about the +girl's shoulders. "You may be right--but, oh, don't trust too much, +Patty," she pleaded, with the wisdom that the years bring and take away. +"Life is so uncertain--fine impulses--even love--yes, love most of +all--is so uncertain--" + +"Of course you feel that way," responded the girl, sympathetic but +incredulous. "How could you help it?" + +After this what could Corinna answer? She knew Stephen, she told +herself, and she knew that she could trust him. She believed that lie +was capable of generous impulses; but she doubted if an impulse, however +generous, could sweep away the inherited sentiments which encrusted his +outlook on life. In spite of his youth, he was in reality so old. He was +as old as that indestructible entity, the spirit of race--as that +impalpable strain which had existed in every Culpeper, and in all the +Culpepers together, from the beginning. It was not, she realized +plainly, such an anachronism as a survival of the aristocratic +tradition. Deeper than this, it had its roots not in belief but in +instinct--in the bone and fibre of Stephen's character. It was a part of +that motive power which impelled him in the direction of the beaten +road, of the established custom, of things as they have always been in +the past. + +Her kind heart was troubled; yet before the happiness in the girl's face +what could she say except that she hoped Stephen was as fine as Patty +believed him to be? "You may be right. I hope so with all my heart; but, +oh, my dear, try not to care too much. It never does any good to care +too much." She stooped and kissed the girl's cheek. "There, my car is at +the door, and I must hurry back to the shop. I'll do anything in the +world that I can for you, Patty, anything in the world." + +As the car rolled through the gate and down the wide drive to the +Washington monument, Patty stood gazing after it, with a burning +moisture in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Terror had seized her in +an instant, terror of unhappiness, of missing the one thing in life on +which she had passionately set her heart. What had Mrs. Page meant by +her questions? Had she intended them as a warning? And why should she +have thought it necessary to warn her against caring too much for +Stephen? + +The girl had started to enter the house when, remembering suddenly that +Gershom was still there, she turned hurriedly away from the door, and +walked back down the brick pavement to the fountain beyond the library. +The squirrels still scampered over the walk; the thirsty sparrows were +still drinking; the few loungers on the benches still stared at her with +dull and incurious eyes. Not a cloud stained the intense blue of the +sky; and over the bright grass on the hillside the sunshine quivered +like an immense swarm of bees. + +As she approached the fountain where she had first met Stephen, it +seemed to her that a romantic light, a visionary enchantment, fell over +this one spot of ground, and divided it by some magic circle from every +other place in the world. The crude iron railing, the bare gravel, the +ugly spouting fountain which was stripped of every leaf or blade of +grass--these things appeared to her through an indescribable glamour, as +if they stood there as the visible gateway to some invisible garden of +dreams. Whenever she looked at this ordinary spot of earth a breathless +realization of the wonder and delight of life rushed over her. She knew +nothing of the mental processes by which these external objects were +associated with the deepest emotions of the heart. Only when she visited +this place that wave of happiness swept over her; and she lived again as +vividly as she lived in the moments when Stephen was with her and she +was looking into his eyes. + +His voice called her while she stood there; and turning quickly, she saw +that he was coming toward her down the walk. Immediately the loungers on +the benches vanished by magic; the murmur of the fountain became like +the music of harps; and the sunshine on the grassy hill was alive with +the quiver of wings. As she went toward him she was aware of the blue +sky, of the golden green of the trees, of the happy sounds of the birds, +and over all, as if it were outside of herself, of the rapturous beating +of her own heart. + +"I was looking for you," he said when he reached her. + +"And you found me at last." Her eyes were like wells of joy. + +"I'd never have given up until I found you." The words were trivial; but +it was the things he said without words that really mattered. Already +they had established a communion that was independent of speech. He had +never told her that he loved her; yet she saw it in every glance of his +eyes and heard it in every tone of his voice. + +While they walked slowly up the hill she wondered trustingly why, when +he had told her so plainly in every other way that he loved her, he +should never have put it into words. There could not be any doubt of it; +perhaps this was the reason he hesitated. The present was so perfect +that it was like the most exquisite hour of a spring afternoon. One +longed to hold it back even though one knew that it led to something +more lovely still. + +"Are you happy?" she asked, and wondered if he would kiss her again when +they parted as he had kissed her yesterday in the dusk of the hall? + +"Yes, and no." He drew nearer to her. "I am happy now like this--here +with you--but at other times I am troubled. I can't see my way clearly." + +"But why should you? Why should any one be troubled when it is so easy +to be happy?" + +"Easy?" He laughed. "If life were only as simple as that!" + +"It is if one knows what one wants." + +"Well, one may know what one wants, and yet not know if one is wise in +wanting it." + +"Oh, wise!" She shook her head with an impatient movement. "Isn't the +only wisdom to be happy and kind?" + +He looked at her thoughtfully, while a frown drew his straight dark +eyebrows together. "If you wanted a thing with all your heart, and yet +were not sure--" + +Her impatience answered him. "I couldn't want it with all my heart +without being sure." + +"Sure I mean that it is best--best for every one--not just for +oneself--" + +Her laugh was like a song. "Do you suppose there has ever been anything +since the world began that was best for every one? If I knew what I +wanted I shouldn't ask anything more. I would spread my wings and fly to +it." + +He smiled. "You are so much like your father at times--even in the +things that you say. Yes, I suppose you would fly to it because you have +been trained that way--to be direct and daring. But I am made +differently. Life has taught me; it is in my blood and bone to stop and +question, to look so long that at last I lose the will to choose, or to +leap. There are some of us like that, you know." + +"Perhaps," she smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to +be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable +fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always +through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight +onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for +what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before it eluded her. +Yet she knew that fighting would not do any good. She could do nothing +while her happiness hung on a thread. She could do nothing but fold her +hands and wait, though her heart burned hot with the injustice of it, +and she longed to speak aloud all the words that were rising to her +tightly closed lips. + +"Oh, don't you see--can't you see?" she asked brokenly, baring her heart +with a desperate impulse. Her eyes were drawing him toward the future; +and, in the deep stillness of her look, it seemed to him that she was +putting forth all her power to charm; that her youth and bloom shed a +sweetness that was like the fragrance of a flower. + +For an instant every thought, every feeling, surrendered to her appeal. +Then his face changed as abruptly as if he had put a mask over his +features; and glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that his mother +and Margaret Blair were walking along the concrete pavement under the +few old linden trees. As they approached it seemed to the girl that +Stephen turned slowly from a man of flesh and blood into a figure of +granite. In one instant he was petrified by the force of tradition. + +"It is my mother," he said in a low voice. "She has not been in the +Square for years. I was telling her yesterday how pretty it looks in the +spring." He went forward with an embarrassed air, and Mrs. Culpeper laid +a firm, possessive touch on his arm. + +"I thought a little stroll might do me good," she explained. "The car is +waiting across the street at Doctor Bradley's." Then she held out her +free hand to Patty, with a smile which, the girl said afterward to +Corinna, looked as if it had frozen on her lips. "Stephen speaks of you +very often, Miss Vetch," she said. "He talks a great deal about his +friends, doesn't he, Margaret?" + +Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood +looking guardedly into each other's eyes. "She is attractive," thought +Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, "but I can't +understand just what he sees in her." And at the same moment Patty was +saying to herself, "Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing +that he enjoys." + +Aloud the elder girl said casually, "It is so quaint living down here in +the Square, isn't it?" + +"But it is too far away from everything," replied Stephen hurriedly. "It +must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here, +Mother." + +"Very," answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was +still on her lips. + +"It doesn't seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a +spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her +heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale +face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed +in the turn of her head, in her fragile hands, in the lovely liquid +sound of her voice. + +"Cousin Corinna has promised to bring me to see you," said Margaret in +her kind and gentle way. + +"I hope you'll come," replied Patty politely; but in her thoughts she +added, "I hope you won't. I hope I'll never see you again." She couldn't +be natural; she couldn't be anything but stiff and awkward; and she was +aware all the time that Stephen was as embarrassed as she was. All the +things that she must fight against, that she must triumph over, were +embodied in that small black figure with the ivory face, so inelastic, +so unbending, so secure in its inherited authority. There was war +between her and Stephen's mother; and she stood alone, with only her +undaunted spirit to support her, while on the opposite side were +entrenched all the immovable dead ranks of the generations. "I shall +fight it out," thought the girl bitterly. "I don't care what she thinks +of me. I shall fight it out to the end." + +With her hand on Stephen's arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away. "I +feel a little tired," she explained politely to Patty, "so I am sure +that you won't mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son +help me back to the car." + +"Oh, I don't mind," replied Patty, with gay indifference. + +"I'll see you very soon," said Stephen; and it seemed to the girl as she +watched him walking toward the Washington monument that he looked as old +and as tired as his mother. + +Of course he was obliged to go. There wasn't anything else that he could +do, and yet--and yet--as Patty gazed after the three slowly moving +figures, she felt that a cold hand had reached out of the sunshine and +clutched her heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE FEAR OF LIFE + + +Stephen had intended to go back as soon as he had put his mother into +the car; but she clung so tightly to his arm, and there was something so +appealing in her fragile dependence, that, almost without realizing it, +he found that he was sitting in front of her, and that she was taking +him down to his office. + +"We will leave you and go back, Stephen," she said, while a look of +faintness spread over her features. "I feel as if one of my heart +attacks might be coming on." + +"Wouldn't you rather I went home with you?" he inquired solicitously. + +His mother shook her head and reached feebly for Margaret's hand. +"Margaret will take care of me," she replied in the weak voice before +which her husband and her children had learned to tremble. + +As he sat there uneasily in the stuffy car, which smelt of camphor and +reminded him of a hearse, he was threatened by that familiar sensation +of oppression, of closing walls. Would he ever again be free from this +impalpable terror, from this dread of being shut within a space so small +that he must smother if he did not escape? And not only places but +persons, as he had found long ago, persons with closed souls, with +narrow minds, produced in him this feeling of physical suffocation. +Margaret, with her serenity, her changeless sweetness, affected him +precisely as he was affected by the stained glass windows of a church. +He felt that he should stifle unless he could break away into a place +where there were winds and blown shadows and pure sunshine. He admired +her; he might have loved her; but she smothered him like that rich and +heavy wave of the past from which he was still struggling to free +himself. For he knew now that it was not the past he wanted; it was the +future. Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and +yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was +not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the +master, of tradition. He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel +and to live. Only through emotion, only through some courageous +adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach +liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he +could not lose his life in order that he might find it. Corinna was +right, he felt, when she called him a prig. She was right though he +hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let +himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He +longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and +yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional, +and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his +buttonhole. The thought of Patty rushed over him like the wind at dawn +or the light of the sunrise. There was deliverance; there was freedom of +spirit! She was the impulse he dared not follow, the risk he dared not +take, the red flower he dared not wear. + +"What lovely eyes Miss Vetch has," Margaret was saying. "Don't you think +so, Cousin Harriet?" + +Mrs. Culpeper sniffed at her bottle of smelling-salts. "She seemed to +me very ordinary," she answered stiffly. "How could Gideon Vetch's +daughter be anything else?" + +"Yes, it's a pity about her father," admitted Margaret placidly. "If +what Mr. Benham thinks is true, I suppose the Governor has agreed not to +interfere in this dreadful strike." + +Again Mrs. Culpeper sniffed. "Every one knows he is merely a tool in the +hands of those people," she said. + +In the weeks that followed Stephen heard his mother's opinion repeated +wherever he went. Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere, +in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated. +It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the +Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by +the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who +thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders. +There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints +that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the +faction whose tool he had become. "Don't tell me, sir, that they didn't +put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old +Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years. +Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed +facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing +for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still +possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching +morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair of virtue." + +For the people who condemned Vetch were quite as emphatic in praise of +John Benham; and in these weeks of unrest and anxiety, Corinna's face +was glowing with pride and pleasure. That Benham, in his unselfish +service, was leading the way, no one doubted. Tireless, unrewarded,--for +it was admitted by those who esteemed him most that he was never really +in touch with the crowd, that his zeal awakened no human response,--he +had sacrificed his private practice in order to devote himself day and +night to averting the strike. Stephen, inspired to hero worship, asked +himself again what the difference was, beyond simple personal rectitude, +between Vetch and Benham? Vetch, lacking, so far as the young man knew, +every public virtue except the human touch which enkindles either the +souls or the imaginations of men, could overturn Benham's argument with +a dramatic gesture, an emotional phrase. Why was it that Benham, +possessing both the character of the patriot and the graces of the +orator, should fall short in the one indefinable attribute which makes a +man the natural leader of men? + +"People admire him, but they won't follow him," Stephen thought in +perplexity. "Vetch has something that Benham lacks; and it is this +something that makes people believe in him in spite of themselves." + +This idea was in his mind when he met Benham one day on the steps of his +club, and stopped to congratulate him on the great speech he had made +the evening before. + +"By Jove, it makes me want to throw my hat into the ring!" he exclaimed, +half in jest, half in earnest. + +"I wish you would," replied the other gravely. "We need young men. It is +youth that turns the world." + +Never, Stephen thought, had Benham, appeared more impressive, more +perfectly finished and turned out; never had he appeared so near to his +tailor and so far from his audience. He was a handsome man in his rather +colourless fashion, a man who would look any part with distinction from +policeman to President. His sleek iron-gray hair had as usual the rich +sheen of velvet; his thin, sharp profile was like the face on a Roman +coin. A man of power, of intellect, of character; and yet a man who had +missed, in some inexplicable way, greatness, achievement. On the whole +Stephen was glad that Corinna had announced her engagement. She and +Benham seemed so perfectly suited to each other--and, of course, there +was nothing in that old story about Alice Rokeby. A friendship, nothing +more! Only the other day Benham had spoken casually of his "friendship" +for Mrs. Rokeby; he always called her "Mrs. Rokeby"; and Stephen had +accepted the phrase as a satisfactory explanation of their past +association. + +"I'd like to go into some public work," said the young man. "To tell the +truth I can't settle down." + +"I know," Benham responded sympathetically. "I went through it all +myself; but there is nothing like throwing oneself into some outside +work. I wish you would come into this fight. If we can avert this strike +it will be worth any sacrifice." + +That Benham was making tremendous personal sacrifices, Stephen knew, and +the young man's voice was tinged with emotion as he answered, "I'm +afraid I'm not much of a speaker." + +"Oh, you would be, if you would only let yourself go." There it was +again! Even Benham recognized his weakness; even Benham knew that he was +afraid of life. + +"Besides we need men of every type," Benham was saying smoothly. "We +need especially good organizers. The fight won't be over to-morrow. Even +if we win this time, we must organize against Vetch and defeat him once +and for all in the next elections." + +"Then you think he is really as dangerous as the papers are trying to +make him appear?" + +"I think," Benham replied shortly, "that he is in it for what he can get +out of it." + +"Well, call on me when I can help you," said Stephen, as they parted; +and a minute later when he reached the pavement, he found occasion to +repeat his impulsive offer to Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. + +"I've promised Benham that I'll do all I can to help him defeat Vetch." + +"You're right," returned the Judge, with his smile of discerning irony. +"I suppose we're obliged to fight him." + +"If we don't what will happen?" + +"That's what I'd like to see, my boy. I'd give ten years full measure +and running over to see exactly what would happen." + +"Benham is afraid his crowd may send him to the Senate." + +"Perhaps, but there is always a chance of their sending him to Jericho +instead." + +Stephen nodded. "Yes, there's trouble already, I believe, over this +strike." + +The Judge laughed with a note of cynical humour. "I can understand why +he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human +nature." + +"He's dead right, too. It is so easy to be a philosopher--or a +philanthropist--in a desert. I've felt like that ever since I came +home." + +But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice +when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind +hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief +deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is +going to count. I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling, +merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it +better. Of course it is all crude and raw. It needs cultivation and +direction; but it's there--the vital principle, even if we don't +recognize it when we see it. All the same," he concluded in a lighter +tone, "I'm glad you are going into the fight. We can't hurt a principle +by fighting it, you know." + +Then he passed on his way; and the transient enthusiasm which had +illuminated Stephen's mind drifted away like clouds of blown smoke. How +could he fight with any heart when there seemed to him nothing on either +side that was worth fighting for--nothing except the unselfish +patriotism of John Benham? He remembered the fervour, the exaltation +with which he had gone to France that first year of the war. The belief +in a righteous cause which would bring peace on earth and good will +toward men; the belief in a human fellowship which would grow out of +sacrifice; the belief in a fairer social order which would flower from +the bloodstained memories of the battlefields,--what was there left of +these romantic illusions to-day? Was it true, as Vetch had once said, +that organized killing, even in a just cause, must bring its spiritual +punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the +love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and +I won from it--what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again +the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he +had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth +fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, or +desire passionately--anything!" + +Just as Corinna had longed for perfection, for something to worship, he +found himself longing now for a cause, for any cause, even a lost one, +to which he could give himself. He wanted facts, deeds, certainties. He +was suffocated by shams and insincerities--and phrases. + +Then suddenly, this was one of the symptoms of his nervous malady, the +reaction swept over him in a wave of energy which receded almost +immediately. If he could only find deliverance from himself and his own +subjective processes! If he could only be borne away by the passion he +felt and yet could not feel completely! He wanted Patty, he knew, but +did he want her enough to justify the effort that he must make to win +her? Would she be worth to him the break with his mother, with his +traditions, with his inherited ideals? He saw her small, slight figure +in the dappled sunlight under the budding trees. He saw her vivid +flower-like face, her romantic eyes, and the arch and charming smile +with which she watched his approach. Yes, he wanted her, he wanted her, +and she was the only thing on God's earth, he told himself rhetorically, +that he did want with the whole of his nature! + +Quickening his steps, he turned in the direction of the Capitol Square, +which stretched, like the painted curtain of a theatre, across the end +of the street. A singular intuition, a presentiment, had come to him +that if he could sustain this impulse, this tide of energy until he saw +Patty, he should be cured--he should find freedom of spirit. Only +through love, he had discovered, could there be resurrection from this +spiritual death of the last two or three years. Only through some +tremendous rush of desire could he overcome the partial paralysis of his +will. His instinct, he knew, was right, but would his resolution last +until he had found Patty? + +It was early afternoon, and the faintly tinted shadows, as smooth as +silk, were falling straight across the bright green grass on the +hillside. The Square was almost deserted at this hour, except for the +old men on the benches and the squirrels that were preparing to return +to their nests in the trees. The breath of spring was over all, roving, +fragrant, provocative. + +He shrank from going straight to the house; but Patty was not in the +walks, and he realized that if he found her at all it would be within +doors. Perhaps it was better so. After all, he must become accustomed to +the mansion and all that it contained, including Gideon Vetch, if he +really loved Patty! And did he really love her? Oh, was it all to begin +over again after the days and nights when he had threshed it out alone +in desperation of mind? Had he lost not only all that was vital, but all +that was stable, that was positive and affirmative in his life? + +He stood for a moment with his eyes on the fresh young leaves which +stirred softly. Then, as if hope and courage had passed into him with +the air of spring, he turned away and walked rapidly to the gate of the +Governor's house. His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to +enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch +with Julius Gershom. Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen +watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly +out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square. She was talking +eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked +the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked. Her face was like a +pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, +beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming +archness that he had imagined so vividly. If she saw him, she made no +sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering +if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his +neglect of the past two or three weeks? But even then, accepting that +charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of +Gershom? Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of +Gershom? + +The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not +only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green +hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches +overhead. + +In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the +gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight +street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +MRS. GREEN + + +As Patty went by so quickly, she saw Stephen without appearing to glance +in his direction. For the last few weeks a flame had run over her +whenever she remembered, and there was scarcely a moment when it was out +of her mind, that she had shown her heart so openly and that, as she +expressed it bitterly, "he had hidden behind his mother." "If he comes +back again," she told herself recklessly, and she felt scorched when she +thought that he might never come back, "I'll let him see that I can +trifle as well as, or better, than he can. I'll let him see that two can +play at that kind of game." A hundred times Corinna's warning returned +to her. The words, which had made so slight an impression when she heard +them, were burned now into her memory. Oh, Mrs. Page had known all along +what it meant! She had understood from the beginning; and she had tried, +without hurting her, to make her see the blind folly of such an +infatuation. As she thought of this to-day, Patty's heart ached with +injured pride and resentment, not only against Stephen, but against the +unfairness of life. Why was it that men and circumstances would never +let one be natural and generous? Was there a conspiracy of events, as +Mrs. Page had once said, to prevent the finest impulses from coming to +flower? "I'd have done anything on earth for him," thought the girl with +passionate indignation. "I'd have made any sacrifice. I could have been +anything that he wanted." And she felt bitterly that the best in her +soul, the sacred places of her life had been invaded and destroyed. The +blighted sensation which accompanies the recoil of an emotion seemed to +suspend not only the energy of her spirit, but the very breath in her +body. A change had passed over her heart and the world around her and +the persons and events which had so recently composed her universe. She +felt now that she cared for none of them, that, one and all, they had +ceased to interest her; and that the things which filled their lives +were all vacant and meaningless forms. It was as if the vitality of +existence had been drained away, leaving an empty shell. Nothing was +real, nothing was alive but the aching core of her own wounded heart. + +"I don't care. I won't let it spoil my life," she resolved while she bit +back a sob. "Whatever happens, I am not going to let my life be ruined." +She had repeated this so often that it had begun to drone in her mind +like a line out of a hymn-book; and she was still repeating it when she +swept by Stephen without so much as a word or a look. A dangerous mood +was upon her. Nothing mattered, she felt, if she could only prove to him +that she also had been trifling; that his kiss had meant as little to +her as to him; that from the beginning to the end she had been as +indifferent as he was. + +Her step quickened into a run; and Gershom, striding, in order to keep +up with her, looked at her with the jovial laugh that she hated. "You're +in a powerful hurry to-day, ain't you?" he remarked. + +"I'm always in a hurry. You have to hurry to get anything out of life." +As she glanced up into his admiring eyes, she found herself wondering +what Stephen had thought while he watched her? She wished that it had +been anybody but Gershom. He seemed an unworthy instrument of revenge, +though, she reflected, with a touch of her father's sagacity, one +couldn't always choose the tools one would like best. Most people would +admit that he was good-looking in a common way, she supposed; and it was +only of late that she had realized how essentially vulgar he was. + +"I'm sorry you haven't time to listen," he said. "I have news for you." +Then, as she fell into a slower step, he added, with an abrupt change to +a slightly hectoring tone: "We passed that young Culpeper just now. Did +you see him?" + +She shook her head disdainfully. "I wasn't looking at him." + +"He may have been on his way to the mansion." There was a taunting note +in his voice, as if he were trying deliberately to work her into a +temper. + +"It doesn't matter." She spoke flippantly. "I don't care whether he was +or not." + +Gershom laughed. "That sounds good to me even if I take it with a grain +of salt. I was beginning to be afraid that you liked him." + +She turned on him angrily. "What business is that of yours?" + +His amiability, as soon as he had struck fire, became imperturbable. +"Well, I've known you a long time, Patty, and I take an interest in you, +you see. Now, I don't fancy this young Culpeper. He is a conceited sort +of ass like his father before him, the sort that thinks all clover is +his fodder." + +Though Gershom would have scorned philosophy had he ever heard of it, +he was well grounded in that practical knowledge of human perversity +from which all philosophers and most philosophic systems have sprung. +Had his next words been barbed with steel they could not have pierced +Patty's girlish pride more sharply. "I reckon he imagines all he's got +to do is to look sweet at a girl, and she'll fall at his feet." + +Patty's eyes flashed with anger. "He is not unusual in that, is he?" she +asked mockingly. + +"Well, you can't accuse me of that, Patty," said Gershom, with a +sincerity which made him appear less offensively oily. "I never looked +long at but one girl in my life, not since I first saw you, anyway--and +I don't seem ever to have had an idea that she would fall at my feet. +But I didn't bring you out here to begin kidding. I want to talk to you +about the Governor, and I was afraid he would catch on to something if +we stayed indoors." + +"About Father?" She looked at him in alarm. "Is there anything the +matter with Father?" + +Without turning his head, he glanced at her keenly out of the corner of +his eye. It was a trick of his which always irritated her because it +reminded her of the sly and furtive side of his character. + +"You've a pretty good opinion of the old man, haven't you, Patty?" + +"I think he is the greatest man in the world." + +"And you wouldn't like him to run against a snag, would you?" + +"What do you mean? Has anything happened to worry him?" + +He had stopped just beyond the nearest side entrance to the Square, and +he stood now, with his eyes on the automobiles before the City Hall, +while he fingered thoughtfully the ornamental scarf-pin in his green and +purple tie. "There's always more or less to worry him, ain't there?" + +She frowned impatiently. "Not Father. He is hardly ever anything but +cheerful. Please tell me what you are hinting." + +"I wasn't hinting. But, if you don't mind talking to me a minute, +suppose we get away from these confounded cars." + +He turned east, following the iron fence of the Square until they +reached the high grass bank and the old box hedge which surrounded the +garden at the back of the Governor's house. At the corner of the street, +which sank far below the garden terrace, he stopped again and laid a +restraining hand on her arm. + +"He thinks a great deal of you too." + +She shook his hand from her sleeve. "Why shouldn't he? I am his only +child." Then her voice hardened, and she glanced at him suspiciously. "I +wish for once you would try to be honest." + +"Honest?" His amusement was perfectly sincere. "I am as honest as the +day, and I've always been. That's why I'm in politics." + +"Then tell me what you are trying to say about Father. If there's +anything wrong, I'd rather be told at once." + +They were still standing on the deserted corner below the garden, and +while she waited for his answer, she glanced away from him up the side +street, which rose in a steep ascent from the business quarter of the +town. The sun was still high over the distant housetops and the light +turned the brick pavement to a rich red and shot the clouds of gray dust +with silver. The neighbourhood was one which had seen better days, and +some well-built old houses, with red walls and white porches, lent an +air of hospitality and comfortable living to the numerous cheap boarding +places that filled the street. Crowds of children were playing games or +skating on roller skates over the sidewalk; and on the porches a few +listless women gossiped idly; or gazed out over newspapers which they +did not read. + +"Well, there ain't anything wrong exactly--yet," replied Gershom. + +"But there may be, you think?" + +"That depends upon him. If he keeps headed the way he's going, and he's +as stubborn as a mule, there'll be trouble as sure as my name is +Julius." + +"Is that what you've quarrelled about of late--the way he's going?" + +"Bless your heart, honey, we ain't quarrelled! Has it sounded like that +to you? I've just been trying to make him see reason, that's all. He +ain't got a right, you know, to turn against his best friends the way +he's doing. Friends are friends whether you are in office or out, and +there's a lot that a man owes to the folks that have stood by him. I +tell you I know politics from the bottom up, and there ain't no room in +'em for the man--I don't give a darn who he is--that don't stand by his +friends. If he's the President of the United States, he'll find that he +can't afford not to stand by the people who put him there!" + +So this was the trouble! He had let out his grievance at last, and from +the smouldering resentment in his eyes, she understood that some real +or imaginary injustice had put him, for the moment at least, in an ugly +temper. If he had not met her when he left the house, if he had waited +to grow cool, to reflect, he would probably never have taken her into +his confidence. Chance again, she thought, not without bitterness. How +much of the happiness or unhappiness of life depended upon chance! + +"I don't believe it," she returned emphatically. "He always stands by +people." + +"He used to," he replied sullenly, "but that was in the old days when he +needed 'em. The truth is he's got his head turned by his election. He +thinks he's so strong that he can go on alone and keep the crowd at his +back; but he'll find he's mistaken, and that the crowd, when it ain't +worked right from the inside, is a poor thing to depend on. The crowd +does the shouting, but it's a man's friends that start the tune." + +"Are you talking about the strike?" she asked. "I thought he was in +sympathy with the strikers." + +"Oh, he says he is, but he won't prove it." + +She faced him squarely, with her head held high and her eyes cold and +determined. "What do you want me to do? Please don't beat about the bush +any longer." + +He hesitated a moment, and she inferred that he was trying to decide how +far he might venture with safety. "Well, I thought you might speak a +word to him," he said. "He sets such store by what you would like. I +thought you might drop a hint that he ought to stand by his friends." + +"To stand by his friends--that means you," she rejoined. + +"Oh, he'll know quick enough what it means! You must be smart about it, +of course, but I don't mind his knowing that I've been speaking to you. +It's for his own good that I'm talking--for the very minute that the +fellows find out he ain't been on the square with 'em, it will be +'nothing doing' for the Governor." + +"It is a threat, then?" she asked sharply. + +"I'd call it something else if I were you. Look here," he continued +briskly. "You'd like to see the old man go to the Senate, and maybe +higher up, wouldn't you?" + +"Oh, of course. What has that to do with it?" + +He winked and laughed knowingly. "Well, you just take my advice and drop +a hint to him about this business. Then, perhaps, you'll see." + +"If he doesn't take the hint, what will you do?" + +"Ask me that in the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become +offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last +word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever +met in his life." + +She had drawn disdainfully away from him; but at his last words she came +a step nearer. "I'll tell him exactly what you say," she answered; and +then she asked suddenly in a firmer tone: "Have you heard anything more +of my aunt?" + +He looked at her intently. "Why, yes. You hadn't mentioned her again, so +I thought you'd ceased to be interested. Would you like to see her?" he +demanded abruptly after a pause. + +"How can I? I don't know where she is." + +For a minute or two before replying he studied her closely. "I wish you +would let your hair grow out, Patty," he remarked at the end of his +examination, and there was a note of genuine feeling in his bantering. +"I remember how pretty you used to look as a little girl, with your hair +flying behind you like the mane of a pony." + +"Let my hair alone. Do you know where my aunt is?" + +He appeared to yield reluctantly to her insistence. "If you're so bent +on knowing--and, mind you, I tell you only because you make me--she +ain't so very far from where we are standing. I could take you to her in +ten minutes." + +She looked at him as if she scarcely believed his words. "You mean that +she is in town?" + +"Haven't you known me long enough to find out that I always mean what I +say?" + +"Then you can take me to her now?" + +He laughed shortly, and dug the end of his walking stick between the +pavement and the edge of the curbstone. "What do you reckon the Governor +would say to it?" + +"I needn't tell him--not just yet, anyhow. But are you really and truly +sure that she is my mother's sister?" + +"Well, they had the same parents, and I reckon that makes 'em sisters if +anything does. I knew 'em both out yonder in California, and I never +heard anybody suggest they weren't related." + +"Why did she come here? Was it to see me?" + +"Partly that, and partly--well, she's been pretty sick. I reckon she's +likely to go off at any time, and she wanted to be back where she was +born. She had pneumonia two years ago, and then again last winter. Her +lungs are about used up." + +"Then, if I went to see her, I'd better go now, hadn't I?" + +"It would be surer. Something may happen almost any day. That's why I +spoke to you." + +"I am glad you did. If it isn't far, will you take me now?" + +But instead of walking on with her, he dug the end of his stick more +firmly between the pavement and the curbstone. "I don't want to do you +any harm, Patty," he said gently at last. "It may give you a shock to +see her, you know. She's been through some hard times, and she's about +come to the end of her rope. Good Lord, the way life is! When I first +saw her out in California she was one of the prettiest pieces of flesh I +ever laid eyes on. She had something of your look, too, though you +wouldn't believe it now." + +But the girl had already started to cross the street. "Don't let's waste +any time talking. Which way do we go?" + +At her decision his hesitation vanished, and he joined her with a laugh +and a flourish of the diamond ring on the little finger of his left +hand. "Well, you are a sport, Patty! You always were, even when you +weren't much more than knee high to a duck. If you've made up your mind +to go, you won't be blaming me afterward?" + +"Oh, I shan't blame you, of course. Do we turn up this street?" + +"Yes, go ahead. It ain't far--just a little way up Leigh Street." + +They walked on rapidly, and presently, so swift and determined was +Patty's step, Gershom ceased to speak, and only glanced at her now and +then in a furtive and anxious way. There was a look of tragic resolution +on her small face--oh, she was meeting life in earnest, she +reflected--and even to the coarse mind and the dull imagination of the +man beside her, she assumed gradually the appearance of some ethereal +messenger. At the moment she was thinking of Stephen, but this he did +not suspect. He saw only that there was something almost unearthly in +her expression; and he felt the kind of awe that came over him on Sunday +when he entered a church. He wouldn't hurt the girl, he told himself, +with a twinge, for a pocketful of money. + +They had turned into Leigh Street, and had walked some distance in +silence, when Patty asked suddenly without looking round, "Then she +doesn't know I am coming?" + +"I told her I'd bring you whenever I could; but she ain't looking for +you this evening. There, that's the house--the one in the middle, with +that wooden swing and all those kids in the yard." + +He pointed to what had once been a fine old house of stuccoed brick, +with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on +loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red +brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been +white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with +its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of +mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and +well-preserved houses stood on the block, for of the whole +neighbourhood, it appeared to the girl, they had chosen the most +dilapidated dwelling and the one which was most crowded with children. + +"We're here all right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they +ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down +he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? +Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it +again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I +reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly to Patty: "I +always had a soft spot for the kids. Never could pass one in the street +without stopping." + +On the porch, beside a broken perambulator, which contained a black-eyed +baby with a bottle of milk, a stout man sat reading the afternoon paper, +while with one hand he patiently pushed the rickety carriage back and +forth. As they reached the porch, he laid aside his paper, and rose with +his hand still on the perambulator. + +"Oh, it's you," he said, "Mr. Gershom." + +"I've brought this lady to see Mrs. Green," returned Gershom. "How is +she?" + +The stout man shook his head and surveyed Patty curiously but not +discourteously. He had a kindly, humorous look, and she felt at once +that she preferred his blunt frankness to Gershom's facetious +insincerity. There was something in his face that suggested the +black-eyed baby sucking placidly at the rubber nipple on the bottle of +milk. + +"She's worse if anything. The doctor came this morning." The baby, +having dropped the bottle, lifted a despairing wail, and the father bent +over and replaced the nipple gently between the quivering lips. "The +rent was due yesterday," he added, "I understood that there was to be no +trouble about it." + +"Oh, there's no trouble about that. I'm responsible," replied Gershom +quickly. He was about to pass on; but changing his mind, he stopped and +drew out his pocket book. "I'll settle it now. Are there any extras?" + +"Yes, she's had to have eggs and milk, and there have been medicines. It +comes to twelve dollars in all. I'll show you the account." + +"Very well. Get anything that she needs." Then, as Gershom followed +Patty into the hall, he pointed to the fine old staircase. "It's the +back room. Go straight up. You ain't timid, are you?" + +"Timid? Oh, no." Running lightly up the stairs, the girl hesitated a +moment before the half-open door of the room at the back of the house. +Then, in obedience to a gesture from Gershom as he pushed the door +wider, she crossed the threshold, and went rapidly toward a couch in +front of the window. As she went forward there floated to her a heavy, +sweetish scent which seemed to her to be the very breath of despair. Her +first thought was that the sun had gone under a cloud; the next instant +she perceived that the window was shaded by a ragged ailantus tree and +that beyond the tree there was a high brick wall which shut out the +daylight. Then she looked at the woman lying under a ragged blanket on +the couch; and she felt vaguely that the haggard features framed in +coarse black hair awakened a troubled sense of familiarity or +recognition. The next instant there returned to her the memory of her +walk in the Square with Corinna a few weeks before, and of the strange +woman who had looked at them so curiously. + +"I have come to see you," she began gently, "Mr. Gershom brought me." + +Raising her head, the woman stared at her without replying. Her eyes +were dull and heavy, with drooping lids beneath which a sombre glow +flickered and died down. There was a wan yellow tinge over her face; and +yet now that the approach of death had refined and purified her +features, she was not without a gravity of expression which made her +strangely impressive, like some wax mask of an avenging Fate. With a +sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a +calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a +single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which +seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla +lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the +close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the +sickening sweetish odour with which she was unfamiliar, the waxen mask +and the blank, drooping eyes of the woman; all these things seemed to +exist not in her actual surroundings, but in some hideous dream from +which she was struggling to awake. Somewhere long ago, in a dreadful +nightmare, she had smelled that cloying scent and seen those half-shut +eyes looking back at her. Somewhere--and yet it was impossible. She +could only have imagined it all. + +Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's +daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?" + +"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me." + +"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over +her expressionless eyes. "Oh, you mean Julius. Yes, I told him I wanted +to see you." A quiver of animation passed like a spasm over her +features, and she inquired eagerly, "Where is he? Did he come?" + +"I'm here all right," said Gershom, stepping briskly into the range of +her vision. + +She gazed up at him as he approached her with the look of a famished +animal, a look so little human and so full of physical hunger that Patty +turned her eyes again to the calla lily on the window-sill, and then to +the young green on the ailantus tree and the brick wall beyond. To the +girl it seemed that minutes must have gone by before the next words +came. "You brought the medicine?" + +"Yes, I brought it. The doctor gave it to me; but it is hard to get, and +he said you were to have it only on condition that you do everything +that we tell you." + +"Oh, I will, I will." She reached out her hand eagerly for the package +he had taken from his coat pocket; and when Patty looked at her again a +curious change had passed over her face, revivifying it with the colour +of happiness. "I have been in such pain--such pain," she whispered. "I +was afraid it would come back before you came. Oh, I was so afraid." +Then she added hurriedly: "Is that all? Did you bring nothing else?" + +Though a look of embarrassment crossed his face, he carried off the +difficult situation with his characteristic assurance. "The doctor sent +you a little stimulant. Perhaps I'd better give you a dose now. It +might pick you up." Taking a bottle from his pocket, he poured some +whiskey into a glass and added a little water from a pitcher on the +table. "There, now," he remarked, with genuine sympathy as he held the +glass to her lips. "You'll begin to feel better in a minute. This young +lady can't stay but a little while, so you'd better try to buck up." + +"I'll try," answered the woman obediently. "I'll try--but it isn't easy +to come back out of hell." Lifting her head from the pillow, as if it +were a dead weight that did not belong to her, she stared at Patty while +her tormented mind made an effort to remember. In a minute her mouth +worked pathetically, and she burst into tears. "I can't come back now, I +can't come back now," she repeated in a whimpering tone. "But I'll be +better before long, and then I want to see you. There are things I want +to tell you when I get the strength. I can't think of them now, but they +are things about Gideon Vetch." + +"About Father?" asked the girl, and her voice trembled. + +The woman stopped crying, and looked up appealingly, while she wiped her +eyes on the ragged edge of the blanket. "Yes, about Gideon Vetch. That's +his name, ain't it?" + +"I wouldn't talk any more now, if I were you," said Gershom, putting his +hand gently on her pillow. "We'll come again when you're feeling +spryer." + +The woman nodded. "Yes, come again. Bring her again." + +"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty reassuringly; but +instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla +lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I +want you to tell me about my mother--everything. I remember her just +once, the night before they took her to the asylum. She was in spangled +skirts that stood out like a ballet dancer's, and there was a crown of +stars on her hair and a star on the end of the wand she carried. I +remember it all just as plainly as if it were yesterday--though they +tell me I was too little--" + +She broke off because the woman was gazing at her so strangely. "You +were too little," she cried, and burst into hysterical weeping. "I can't +stand it," she said wildly. "I never had a chance, and I can't stand +it." + +"I think we'd better go," said Gershom. It amazed Patty to find how +gentle he could be when his sympathy was touched. "I oughtn't to have +brought you to-day." Turning away, he left the room hurriedly, as if the +scene were too much for him. + +At this the woman controlled herself with a convulsive effort. "No, I +wanted to see you," she said. "You are pretty, but you aren't prettier +than your mother was at your age." + +For a moment the girl looked pityingly down on her. "I hope you will +soon be better," she responded in a tone which she tried to make +sympathetic in spite of the physical shrinking she felt. "Let me know +when you wish to see me, and I will come back." + +The woman shivered. "Do you mean that?" she asked. "Will you come when I +send for you? I want to see you again--once--before I die." + +"I promise you that I will come. I'll send you something, too, and so +will Father." + +"Gideon Vetch," said the woman very slowly, as if she were trying to +hold the name in her consciousness before it slipped away from her. +"Gideon Vetch." + +As the girl broke away and ran out of the room that expressionless +repetition followed her into the hall and down the staircase, growing +fainter and fainter like the voice of one who is falling asleep: +"_Gideon Vetch. Gideon Vetch._" + +On the porch, where the stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty +found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby +in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his +face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the +clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When +Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully +tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind of thought +the little one might like a chance to get out of that buggy," he +observed, while he straightened himself briskly, and adjusted his tie. + +"She must be very ill," said the girl, as they went out of the gate and +turned down the street. + +"A sure thing," replied Gershom concisely. Then he whistled sharply, and +added, "Rotten, that's what I call it." + +"She said she'd never had a chance," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "I +wonder what she meant." + +The funereal expression spread like a pall over Gershom's features, but +his intermittent whistle sounded as sprightly as ever. "Well, how many +folks in this world have ever had what you might call a decent chance?" +he asked. + +"I don't know. I hadn't thought." The girl looked depressed and +puzzled. "It's a dreadful thing to think that nobody cares when you're +dying." Then her tone grew more hopeful. "Do you suppose anybody thinks +that Father never had a chance?" she asked. + +Gershom broke into a laugh. "Well, if he had it, you may be pretty sure +that he made it himself," he retorted. + +"Then I wish he could make some for other people." + +"He says he's trying to, doesn't he? But between us, Patty, my child, +you won't forget what you have to say to the old man, will you?" + +"What have I to say? Oh, you mean about standing by his friends?" + +"That's just it. You tell him from yours truly that the best thing he +can do all round is to stick fast to his friends." + +"And that means the strikers?" + +"It means what I tell you." + +"Well, I'll repeat exactly what you say; it won't make any difference if +his mind is made up." + +"Maybe so. Are you going to tell him where you've been?" + +"I don't know. I hate to worry him; but that poor woman must need help." + +"Oh, she needs it. We all need it," remarked Gershom flippantly. Then, +as they reached the entrance to the Square, he held out his hand. "Well, +I'm off now, and I hope you aren't feeling any worse because of your +visit. The world ain't made of honeycomb, you know, and there's no use +pretending it is. But you're a darn good sport, Patty. You're as good a +sport as I ever struck up with in this little affair of life." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MYSTIFICATION + + +Walking slowly home across the Square, Patty told herself that the +future had been taken out of her hands. She seemed to have been moved +mentally, if not bodily, into another world, into a world where the +sleepy old Square, wrapped in a soft afternoon haze, still existed, but +from which Stephen Culpeper had vanished in a rosy cloud. She did not +know why she had relinquished the thought of Stephen since her visit to +the house in East Leigh Street; but some deep instinct warned her that +she had widened the gulf between them by her excursion with Gershom. "I +can't help it," she thought sensibly enough. "There wasn't anything in +it before that, and I might as well go ahead and stop thinking about +it." Her anger at Stephen's neglect had melted into a vague and +impersonal resentment, a resentment, rather for the dying woman than for +herself, against all the needless cruelties of life. Even Gershom, even +the unspeakable Gershom, had had discernment enough to see that +something good in that poor woman had been blighted and crushed. Was it +true that no one was ever given the chance to be one's best? Was this +true, not only of that dying woman, but of her father and Stephen and +Corinna and herself and all human beings everywhere? + +Lingering a moment near the Washington monument, she stood watching the +straggling groups that were crossing the Square. Bit by bit, snatches +of conversation drifted into her mind and then blew out again, leaving +scarcely the shadow of an impression. "They tell me it's going up. I +don't know, but I'll find out to-morrow." "I wouldn't wear one of those +things for a million dollars, and he says--" "Yes, I've arranged to go +unless the strike should be called next week." + +The strike? Oh, she had almost forgotten it! She had almost forgotten +the message she had promised to deliver to her father. With a gesture +that appeared to sweep her last remaining illusion behind her, she +started resolutely up the drive to the house. After all, whatever came, +she would not let them think that she was either afraid of life or +disappointed in love. She would not mope, and she would not show the +white feather. On one point she was passionately determined--no man, by +any method known to the drama of sex, was going to break her heart! + +She had quickened her steps while she made her resolve; and, a minute +later, she broke into a run when she saw that Corinna's car stood at the +door and that Corinna waited for her in the hall. Had the girl only +realized it, Corinna's heart also was troubled; and the visit was one +result of the discouraging talk she had had recently with Stephen. + +"I had to go down town, so I stopped on the way back to speak to you." +Though she said no word of her anxiety, Patty could hear it in every +note of her expressive voice and feel it in the protective pressure of +her arm. "I want you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance Wednesday +night, and I want you to look your very prettiest." + +"But I'm not even asked." + +"Oh, you are. Mrs. Harrison has just told me she was sending your +invitation with a number that had not gone out." How like Corinna it was +to put it that way! "They are giving it for that English girl who is +staying with them. She is pretty, but you must look ever so much +prettier. I want you to wear that green and silver dress that makes you +look like a mermaid." The kind voice, so full of sympathy, so forgetful +of self, flooded Patty's heart like sunshine after darkness. + +"I will go, if you wish me to," she answered, raising Corinna's hand to +her cheek. And the thought flashed through her mind, "Stephen will be +there. Even if everything is over, I'd like him to see me." + +"I'll come for you a little before ten," said Corinna; and then, as the +door of the library opened and Vetch came out, she added hurriedly: "I +must go now. Remember to look your prettiest." + +"No, don't go," begged Patty. "Father will be so disappointed." She had +remembered the message, and she felt that Corinna, whose wisdom was +infallible, might help her to understand it. Though it had sounded so +casual on the surface, her natural sagacity detected both a warning and +a menace; and the very touch of Corinna's hand, in her long white glove, +was reassuring and helpful. + +Whatever may have threatened Vetch, he seemed oblivious of it as he came +forward with his hearty greeting. "It's queer," he said, "but something +told me you were here. I looked out to make sure." His simple pleasure +touched Corinna like the artless joy of a child. It was impossible to +resist his magnetism, she thought, as she looked up into his sanguine +face, for what was it, after all, except an unaffected enjoyment of +little things, an unconquerable belief in life? + +"I stopped to ask Patty about a dance," she explained. "I must go on +immediately." + +He glanced at the girl a little anxiously. "Is she going to a party with +you? I am glad." + +In spite of his buoyant manner, there was an abstracted look in his +eyes, as if his mind were working at a distance while he talked. After +the first minute or two Patty observed this and it helped her to make +her decision. "Are you busy, Father?" she asked. "I promised Mr. Gershom +that I would give you a message--such a silly message it is too." + +"Gershom?" He repeated, and his face darkened. "What did he say to you? +No, don't go, Mrs. Page. Come into the library, and let us have the +message." + +Corinna glanced uncertainly over her shoulder. "I really must be going," +she murmured, and then yielding suddenly either to inclination or to the +pressure of Patty's hand, she crossed the threshold of the library and +walked over to the front window. Outside, beyond the yard and the +grotesque fountain, she saw the splendid outline of Washington, and +beyond this the faint afternoon haze above the spires and chimneys of +the city. "The sun will go down soon. I must hurry," she thought; yet +she stood there, without moving, looking out on the monument and the +sky. For a moment she gazed in silence; then turning quickly, she +glanced with smiling eyes about the small, stiffly furnished room, with +the leather chairs and couch and the business looking writing-table in +the centre of the floor. + +"How comfortable you look here," she observed lightly, "and how +business-like." + +"Yes, I work here a good deal in the evenings." He turned a chair toward +the window, and when she sat down, he remained for a minute still +standing, with his hand on the back of the chair, smiling thoughtfully +not at her, but at the disarray on his desk. The glow of pleasure which +the sight of her had brought was still in his face; and she thought that +she had never seen him so nearly good-looking. It occurred to her now, +as it had done so often before, that in the hour of trouble he would be +like a rock to lean on. However else he might fail, she surmised that in +human relations he would be for ever dependable. And what was life, +after all, except a complex and intricate blend of human relations? She +decided suddenly and positively that she had always liked Gideon Vetch. +She liked the way his broad bulging forehead swept back into his sandy +hair, which was quite gray on the temples; she liked the contrast +between the quizzical humour in his eyes and the earnest expression of +his generous mouth with its deep corners. He stood in her mind for the +straight and simple things of life, and she had lost her way so often +among the bewildering ramification of human motives. He had no trivial +words, she knew. He was incapable of "making conversation"; and she, who +had been bred in a community of ceaseless chatter, was mentally +refreshed by the sincerity of his interest. It was as restful, she said +to herself now, as a visit to the country. + +"So Gershom asked you to give me a message?" remarked Vetch abruptly to +Patty. "Where did you see him?" + +"He joined me when I went out," replied Patty, speaking slowly and +carefully with her eyes on Corinna. "I tried to slip away, but he +wouldn't let me. He asked me to speak to you about something that was +worrying him, and a great many others, he said. He didn't put it into +words, but I think he meant the strike--" + +Vetch looked up quickly. "Oh, that is worrying him, is it?" + +"What is it all about, Father? Why are they going to strike?" + +"Can you answer that, Mrs. Page?" The Governor turned to Corinna with a +sportive gesture, as if he were casting upon her the burden of a reply. +His smile was sketched so faintly about his mouth that it seemed merely +to emphasize the gravity of his expression. + +"I?" Corinna looked round with a start of surprise. "Why, what should I +know of it?" + +"Then they don't talk about it where you are?" + +"Oh, yes, they talk about it a great deal." She appeared to hesitate, +and then added with deliberate audacity, "but they think that you know +more about it than any one else." + +He did not smile as he answered her. "Do they expect the men to strike?" + +Though she made a graceful gesture of evasion, she met his question +frankly. "They expect them to, I gather--unless you prevent it." + +A shade of irritation crossed his features. "How can I prevent it? They +have a right to stop work." + +"They seem to think, the people I know, that it depends upon how safe +the leaders think it will be." + +"How safe? I can't tie their hands, can I?" + +"Of course I am only repeating what I hear." She gazed at him with +friendly eyes. "No one could know less about it than I do." + +"People are saying, I suppose," he continued in a tone of exasperation, +"that these men had an understanding with me before I came into office. +They seem to think that I can make the strike a success by standing +aside and holding my hands. That, of course, is pure nonsense. If the +men want to stop work, nobody has a right to interfere with them. +Certainly I haven't. But have they the right--the question hangs on this +point--to interfere with the farmers who want to get their crops to +market as badly as the strikers want to quit work? The kind of general +strike these people have in mind bears less relation to industry than it +does to war; and you know what I think about war and the rights of +non-combatants. They want to tie up the whole system of transportation +until they starve their opponents into submission. The old damnable +Prussian theory again, you see, that crops up wherever men take the +stand, which they do everywhere they have the power, that might is a law +unto itself. Now, I am with these men exactly half way, and no further. +As long as their method of striking doesn't interfere with the rights of +the public, they seem to me fair enough. But when it comes to raising +the price of food still higher and cutting off the city milk +supply--well, when they talk of that, then I begin to think of the human +side of it." He broke off abruptly, and concluded in a less serious +tone, "that's the only thing in the whole business I care about--the +human side of it all--" + +A phrase of Benham's floated suddenly into her mind, and she found +herself repeating it aloud: "There are no human rights where a principle +is involved." + +Vetch laughed. "That's not you; it's Benham. I recognize it. He's the +sort that would believe that, I suppose--the sort that would write a +political document in blood if he didn't have ink." + +"Oh, don't!" she protested. There was a grain of truth in the epigram, +but she resented it the more keenly for this. + +"Well, I may have intended it as a compliment," rejoined Vetch gaily. +"He would take it that way, I reckon. And, anyhow, you have heard him +make worse flings at me." + +She coloured, admitting and denying at the same time, the truth of his +words. "You could never understand each other. You are so different." + +He looked at her gravely; but even gravity could not wholly drive the +gleam of humour from his eyes. "At any rate I admire Benham. I have the +advantage of him there." The quickness of his wit made her smile. "But, +as you say, we are different," he added after a moment. "I reckon I've +turned my hand at times to jobs of which Benham would disapprove; but +I'd be hanged before I'd write the greatest document ever penned +in--well, in the blood of one of those squirrels out yonder in the +Square!" + +As he finished he turned his face toward the window, and following his +gaze, she saw the sunlight sparkling like amber wine on the rich grass +and the delicate green of the trees. As she looked back at him, she +wondered what his past could have been--how deep, how complex, how +varied was his experience of life? She was aware again of that curiously +primitive attraction which she had felt the other afternoon in the +shop. It was as if he appealed, not to the beliefs and sentiments with +which life had obscured and muffled her nature, but to some buried self +beneath the self that she and the world knew, to some ancient instinct +which was as deep as the oldest forests of earth. After all, was there a +hidden self, a buried forest within her soul which she had never +discovered? + +"But Patty has not given you her message!" she exclaimed, startled and +confused by the strangeness of the sensation. + +"Oh, there isn't much to tell," answered Patty, wondering if she could +ever learn, even if she practised every day, to speak and move like +Corinna. "It was only that you ought to stand by your friends." + +"To stand by my friends," repeated Vetch; then he drew in his breath +with a whistling sound. "Well, I like his impudence!" he exclaimed. + +Corinna rose with a laugh. "So do I," she observed, "and he seems to +possess it in abundance." Then she folded Patty in a light and fragrant +embrace. "You must be the belle of the ball," she said. "I have a genius +for being a chaperon." + +When she had gone, and they watched her car pass the monument, the girl +turned back into the hall, with her hand clinging tightly to Vetch's +arm. + +"Father, what do you suppose that message meant?" + +"Is it obliged to mean anything?" + +"Things generally do, don't they?" + +Vetch smiled as he looked down at her; but his smile conveyed anxiety +rather than amusement to her observant eyes. "Oh, if things are said by +Gershom, they generally mean hell," he responded. "Perhaps I'll find +out Thursday night; there's to be a meeting then, and it looks as if +somebody might make trouble." Then he patted her shoulder. "Don't worry +about Gershom, honey," he added in the way he used to speak when she +fell and hurt herself as a child. "Don't worry your mind about Gershom. +I'll take care of him." + +It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was not worrying +about Gershom, but about the woman dying all alone in that dark room in +Leigh Street. If he had only looked less disturbed she might have done +so; and when she thought of it afterward, she understood that frankness +would have been by far the wiser course. However, while she wondered +what she ought to say, the opportunity slipped by, and the ringing of +the telephone on his desk called him away from her. + +Corinna, meanwhile, was rolling down the drive over the slanting shadows +of the linden trees. She looked thoughtful, for she was trying to decide +what it was about Vetch that made her believe in him so profoundly when +she was with him and yet begin to distrust him as soon as she got far +enough away to gain a perspective? Gossip probably, she reflected. When +she was with him her confidence was the natural response of her own +unbiassed perceptions; when she left him she passed immediately into an +atmosphere that was charged with the suspicions of other people. She +remembered the stories, true or false, which had been hinted and +whispered before the last election. Malicious gossip that, and as +unfounded no doubt as the rest. She recalled the muttered insinuations +of fraudulent political stratagems, of what Benham had called the +Governor's weathercock principles. In Vetch's presence, she realized +that she invariably lost sight of these structural or surface blemishes, +and judged him by some standard which was different from the one she had +inherited with the shape of her nose and the colour of her eyes. What +troubled her was not so much the riddle of Vetch's personality as the +fact that there was another mental world beyond the one she had always +inhabited, and that this other world was filled, like her own, with +obscure moral and spiritual images. + +As she approached the club at the corner she saw Benham come out of the +door; and stopping the car she waited, smiling, until he joined her. +While she watched him cross the pavement, she rejoiced in the +thoroughbred fineness and thinness of his appearance--in his clear-cut +Roman features and in the impenetrable reticence of his expression. Yes, +she loved him as well as she could love any man; and that, she told +herself, with a touch of cynical amusement, was just so much and no +more, just enough to bring happiness, but not enough to bring pain. + +"I'll take you home," she said, as he reached her, and there seemed to +her something delightful and romantic in this accidental meeting. + +"What luck!" The severity melted from his features while he took his +place beside her. "I was thinking only this morning that I owe a +sacrifice to the god of chance. May I tell the man to drop me at my +rooms?" + +She nodded, watching him contentedly while he spoke to the chauffeur and +then turned to look at her with his level impersonal gaze. Happiness had +brought the youth back to her face. Her hair swept like burnished wings +under her small close hat, and the eyes that she raised to his were dark +and splendid. There was about her always in moments of happiness the +look of a beauty too bright to last or to grow old; and now, in this +last romance of her life, she appeared to be drenched in autumn +sunshine. + +"One does want to make sacrifices," she answered. "That is the penalty +of joy. One can scarcely believe in it before it goes." + +"Well, I believe in this. You are very lovely. Where have you been?" + +"To the Governor's. I wanted to speak to Patty. I feel sorry for Patty +to-day. I feel sorry for almost every one," she added, with an +enchanting smile, "except myself." + +"And me. Surely you don't waste your pity on me? But what of Miss Vetch? +Hasn't she her own particular happiness?" + +"I wonder--" Then, without finishing her sentence, she left the subject +of Patty because she surmised from Benham's tone that he would not be +sympathetic. "I had a long talk with the Governor. John, what do you +think will come of the strike?" + +He answered her question with another. "What did he tell you?" + +"Nothing except that the men have a right to strike if they wish to." + +He laughed. "Well, that's safe enough. But don't talk of Vetch. I +dislike him so heartily that I have a sneaking feeling I may be unjust +to him." + +It was so like him, that fine impersonal sense of fairness, that her +eyes warmed with admiration. "That is splendid," she responded. "It is +just the kind of thing that Vetch could never feel." Suddenly she knew +that she was ashamed of having believed in Vetch when she contrasted him +with John Benham. How could she have imagined for an instant that the +Governor could stand a comparison like this? + +He pressed her hand as the car stopped before the apartment house where +he lived. "In a few hours I shall see you again," he said; and his +voice, in its eagerness, reminded her of the voice of Kent Page when he +had made love to her in her girlhood. Ah, she had learned wisdom since +then! Just so much and no more, that was the secret of happiness. Give +with the mind and the heart; but keep always one inviolable sanctity of +the spirit--of the buried self beneath the self. + +The streets were almost deserted; and as the car went on, Corinna +thought that she had never seen the city look so fresh and charming. +Through the long green vista of the trees, there was a shimmer of silver +air, and wrapped in this sparkling veil, she saw the bronze statues and +the ardent glow of the sunset. Everything at which she looked was +steeped in a wonderful golden light; and this light seemed to come, not +from the burning horizon, but from the happiness that flooded her +thoughts. She saw the world again as she had seen it in her first youth, +suffused with joy that was like the vivid freshness of dawn. The long +white road, the arching trees, the glittering dust, the spring flowers +blooming in gardens along the roadside, the very faces of the people who +passed her; all these things at which she looked were illuminated by +this radiance which seemed, in some strange way, to shine not without +but within her heart. "It is too beautiful to last," she said to +herself in a whisper. "It is youth, more beautiful even than the +reality, come back again for an hour--for one little hour before it goes +out for ever." + +Then, because it seemed safer as well as wiser to be practical, to +discourage wild dreaming, she tried to direct her thoughts to +insignificant details. Yet even here that rare golden light penetrated +to the innermost recesses of her mind; and each drab uninteresting fact +glittered with a fresh interest and charm. "I forgot to order that +cretonne for the porch," she thought disconnectedly, in an endeavour to +conciliate the Fates by pretending that life was as commonplace as it +had always been. "That black background with the blue larkspur is +pretty--and I must have the porch furniture repainted the blue-green +that they do so well in Italy. That reminds me that Patty must be the +belle of the dance in her green dress. I shall see that she has no lack +of partners--at least I can manage that;--if I cannot make her happy. I +am sorry for the child--if only Stephen--but, no--I left the book I was +reading in the shop. What was the name of it? Silly and sentimental! Why +will people always write things they don't mean and know are not true +about love? Yes, the black background with the blue larkspur was the +best that I saw. I wonder what I did with the sample. Oh, why can't +everybody be happy?" + +The car turned out of the road into the avenue of elms, which led to the +Georgian house of red brick, with its quaint hooded doorway. In front of +the door there was a flagged walk edged with box; and after the car had +gone, Corinna followed this walk to the back of the house, where rows of +white and purple iris were blooming on the garden terrace. For a moment +she looked on the garden as one who loved it; then turning reluctantly, +she ascended the steps, and entered the door which a coloured servant +held open. + +"A lady's in there waiting for you," said the man, who having lost the +dialect, still retained the dramatic gestures of his race. "She would +wait, and she says she can't go without seeing you." + +With a faintness of the heart rather than the mind, Corinna looked +through the doorway, and saw the face of Alice Rokeby glimmering +narcissus white in the dusk of the drawing-room. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE SIXTH SENSE + + +As Corinna went forward, with that strange premonitory chill at her +heart, it seemed to her that all the fragrance of the garden floated +toward her with a piercing sweetness that was the very essence of youth +and spring. Through the wide-open French windows she could see the +garden terrace, the pale rows of iris, and the straight black cedars +rising against the pomegranate-coloured light of the afterglow. A few +tall white candles were shining in old silver candlesticks; but it was +by the vivid tint in the sky that she saw the large, frightened eyes of +the woman who was waiting for her. + +"If I had only known you were here, I should have hurried home," began +Corinna cordially. Drawing a chair close to her visitor, she sat down +with a movement that was protecting and reassuring. Her quick sympathies +were already aroused. She surmised that Alice Rokeby had come to her +because she was in trouble; and it was not in Corinna's nature to refuse +to hear or to help any one who appealed to her. + +Alice threw back her lace veil as if she were stifled by the transparent +mesh. "In the shop there are so many interruptions," she answered. "I +wanted to see you--" Breaking off hurriedly, she hesitated an instant, +and then repeated nervously, "I wanted to see you--" + +Corinna smiled at her. "Would you like to go out into the garden? May +is so lovely there." + +"No, it is very pleasant here." Alice made a vague, helpless gesture +with her small hands, and said for the third time, "I wanted to see +you--" + +"I am afraid you are not well." Corinna spoke very gently. "Perhaps it +is not too late for tea, or may I get you a glass of wine? All winter +I've intended to go and inquire because I heard you'd been ill. It has +been so long since we really saw anything of each other; but I remember +you quite well as a little girl--such a pretty little girl you were too. +You are ever so much younger, at least ten years younger, than I am." + +As she rippled on, trying to give the other time to recover herself, she +thought how lovely Alice had once been, and how terribly she had broken +since her divorce and her illness. She would always be appealing--the +kind of woman with whom men easily fell in love--but one so soon reached +the end of mere softness and prettiness. + +"Yes, you were one of the older girls," answered Alice, "and I admired +you so much. I used to sit on the front porch for hours to watch you go +by." + +"And then I went abroad, and we lost sight of each other." + +"We both married, and I got a divorce last year." + +"I heard that you did." It seemed futile to offer sympathy. + +"My marriage was a mistake. I was very unhappy. I have had a hard life," +said Alice, and her lower lip, as soft as a baby's, trembled nervously. +How little character there was in her face, how little of anything +except that indefinable allurement of sex! + +"I know," responded Corinna consolingly. She felt so strong beside this +helpless, frightened woman that the old ache to comfort, to heal pain, +was like a pang in her heart. + +"Everything has failed me," murmured Alice, with the restless volubility +of a weak nature. "I thought there was something that would make up for +what I had missed--something that would help me to live--but that has +failed me like everything else--" + +"Things will fail," assented Corinna, with sympathy, "if we lean too +hard on them." + +A delicate flush had come into Alice's face, bringing back for a moment +her old flower-like loveliness. Her fine brown hair drooped in a wave on +her forehead, and beneath it her violet eyes were deep and wistful. + +"What a beautiful room!" she said in a quivering voice. "And the garden +is like one in an old English song." + +"Yes, I hardly know which I love best--my garden or my shop." + +The words were so far from Corinna's thoughts that they seemed to drift +to her from some distant point in space, out of the world beyond the +garden and the black brows of the cedars. They were as meaningless as +the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the +window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were +like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a +profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby +and herself; and on this current there was borne all the inarticulate +burden of womanhood. "Poor thing, she wants me to help her," she +thought; but aloud she said only: "The roses are doing so well this +year. They will be the finest I have ever had." + +Suddenly Alice lowered her veil and rose. "I must go. It is late," she +said, and held out her hand. Then, while she stood there, with her hand +still outstretched, all that she had left unspoken appeared to rush over +her in a torrent, and she asked rapidly, while her lips jerked like the +lips of a hurt child, "Is it true, Corinna, that you are going to marry +John Benham?" + +For an instant Corinna looked at her without speaking. The sympathy in +her heart ceased as quickly as a fountain that is stopped; and she was +conscious only of that lifeless chill with which she had entered the +room. Now that the question had come, she knew that she had dreaded it +from the first moment her eyes had rested on the face of her visitor, +that she had expected it from the instant when she had heard that a +woman awaited her in the house. It was something of which she had been +aware, and yet of which she had been scarcely conscious--as if the +knowledge had never penetrated below the surface of her perceptions. And +it would be so easy, she knew, to evade it now as she had evaded it from +the beginning, to push to-day into to-morrow for the rest of her life. +Nothing stood in her way; nothing but that deep instinct for truth on +which, it seemed to her now, most of her associations with men had been +wrecked. Then, because she was obliged to obey the law of her nature, +she answered simply, "Yes, we expect to be married." + +A strangled sound broke from Alice's lips, but she bit it back before it +had formed into a word. The hand that she had thrown out blindly fell on +the fringe of her gown, and she began knitting it together with +trembling fingers. "Has he--does he care for you?" she asked presently +in that hurried voice. + +For the second time Corinna hesitated; and in that instant of +hesitation, she broke irrevocably with the past and with the iron rule +of tradition. She knew how her mother, how her grandmother, how all the +strong and quiet women of her race would have borne themselves in a +crisis like this--the implications and evasions which would have walled +them within the garden that was their world. Her mother, she realized, +would have been as incapable of facing the situation as she would have +been of creating it. + +"Yes, he cares for me," she answered frankly; and then, before the +terror that leaped into the eyes of the other woman, as if she longed to +turn and run out of the house, Corinna touched her gently on the +shoulder. "Don't look like that!" It was unendurable to her +compassionate heart that she should have brought that look into the eyes +of any living creature. + +She led Alice back to the chairs they had left; and when the servant +came in to turn on the softly shaded lamps, they sat there, facing each +other, in a silence which seemed to Corinna to be louder than any sound. +There was the noise of wonder in it, and tragedy, and something vaguely +menacing to which she could not give a name. It was fear, and yet it was +not fear because it was so much worse. Only the blank terror in Alice's +face, the terror of the woman who has lost hope, could express what it +meant. And this terror translated into sound asked presently: + +"Are--are you sure?" + +A wave of pity surged through Corinna's heart. Her strength became to +her something on which she could rest--which would not fail her; and +she understood why she had had to meet so many disappointments in life, +why she had had to bear so much that was almost unbearable. It was +because, however strong emotion was in her nature, there was always +something deep down in her that was stronger than any emotion. She had +been ruled not by passion but by law, by some clear moral discernment of +things as they ought to be; and this was why weak persons, or those who +were the prey to their own natures, leaned on her with all their weight. +In that instant of self-realization she knew that the refuge of the weak +would be for ever denied her, that she should always be alone because +she was strong enough to rely on her own spirit. + +"Before I answer your question," she said, "I must know if you have the +right to ask it." + +The wistful eyes grew bright again. How graceful she was, thought +Corinna as she watched her; and she knew that this woman, with her +clinging sweetness, like the sweetness of honeysuckle, and her shallow +violence of mood, could win the kind of love that had been denied to her +own royal beauty. This other woman was the ephemeral incarnate, the +thing for which men gave their lives. She was nothing; and therefore +every man would see in her the reflection of what he desired. + +"I have the right," she answered desperately, without pride and without +shame. "I had the right before I got my divorce--" + +"I understand," said Corinna, and her voice was scarcely more than a +breath. Though she did not withdraw the hand that the other had taken, +she looked away from her through the French window, into the garden +where the twilight was like the bloom on a grape. The fragrance became +suddenly intolerable. It seemed to her to be the scent not only of +spring, but of death also, the ghost of all the sweetness that she had +missed. "I shall never be able to bear the smell of spring again in my +life," she thought. She had made no movement of surprise or resentment, +for there was neither surprise nor resentment in her heart. There was +pain, which was less pain than a great sadness; and there was the +thought that she was very lonely; that she must always be lonely. Many +thoughts passed through her mind; but beyond them, stretching far away +into the future, she saw her own life like a deserted road filled with +dead leaves and the sound of distant voices that went by. She could +never find rest, she knew. Rest was the one thing that had been denied +her--rest and love. Her destiny was the destiny of the strong who must +give until they have nothing left, until their souls are stripped bare. +"He must have cared for you," she said at last. Oh, how empty words +were! How empty and futile! + +"He could never care again like that for any one else," replied Alice, +reaching out her hand as if she were pushing away an object she feared. +"Whatever he thinks now, he could never care that much again." + +Whatever he thinks now! A smile tinged with bitter knowledge flickered +on Corinna's lips for an instant. After all, how little, how very little +she knew of John Benham. She had seen the face he turned to the world; +she had seen the crude outside armour of his public conscience. A laugh +broke from her at the phrase because she remembered that Vetch had first +used it. This other woman had entered into the secret chamber, the +hidden places, of John Benham's life; she had been a part of the light +and darkness of his soul. To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his +dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the +discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, +had been overthrown. Certainly in their serene and sentimental +association she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of +that earlier passion. Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even +in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths +of his nature. It was Alice Rokeby--frightened, shallow, desperate, +deserted, whom he had loved. + +"What do you want?" she asked quietly. "What do you wish me to do?" + +"Oh, I don't know!" replied Alice. "I don't know. I haven't thought--but +there ought to be something. There ought to be something more permanent +than love for one to live by." + +In her anguish she had wrung a profound truth from experience; and as +soon as she had uttered it, she lifted her pale face and stared with +that mournful interrogation into the twilight. Something permanent to +live by! In the mute desperation of her look she appeared to be +searching the garden, the world, and the immense darkness of the sky, +for an answer. The afterglow had faded slowly into the blue dusk of +night; only a faint thread of gold still lingered beyond the cedars on +the western horizon. Something permanent and indestructible! Was this +what humanity had struggled for--had lived and fought and died +for--since man first came up out of the primeval jungle? Where could one +find unalterable peace if it were not high above the ebb and flow of +desire? She herself might break away from codes and customs; but she +could not break away from the strain of honour, of simple rectitude, +which was in her blood and had made her what she was. + +"Yes, there ought to be something. There is something," she said slowly. +Though her hand still clasped Alice Rokeby's, she was gazing beyond her +across the terrace into the garden. She thought of many things while she +sat there, with that look of clairvoyance, of radiant vision, in her +eyes. Of Alice Rokeby as a little girl in a white dress, with a blue +hair ribbon that would never stay tied; of John Benham when she had +played ball with him in her childhood; of Kent Page and that young love, +so poignant while it lasted, so utterly dead when it was over; of her +long, long search for perfection, for something that would not pass +away; of the brief pleasures and the vain expectations of life; of the +gray deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of voices far +off--Nothing but dead leaves and distant voices that went by! In spite +of her beauty, her brilliance, her gallant heart, this was what life had +brought to her at the end. Only loneliness and the courage of those who +have given always and never received. + +"There is something else," she said again. "There is courage." Then, as +the other woman made no reply, she went on more rapidly: "I will do what +I can. It is very little. I cannot change him. I cannot make him feel +again. But you can trust me. You are safe with me." + +"I know that," answered Alice in a voice that sounded muffled and husky. +"I have always known that." She rose and readjusted her veil. "That +means a great deal," she added. "Oh, I think it means that the world +has grown better!" + +Corinna stooped and kissed her. "No, it only means that some of us have +learned to live without happiness." + +She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the +steps and enter the small closed car in the drive. There was a touching +grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single +image all the women in the world who had lost hope. "Yet it is the weak, +the passive, who get what they want in the end," thought Corinna, as +dispassionately as if she were merely a spectator. "I suppose it is +because they need it more. They have never learned to do without. They +do not know how to carry a broken heart." Then she smiled as she turned +back into the house. "It is very late, and the only certain rules are +that one must dine and one must dress for dinner." + +A little later, when John Benham was announced and she came down to the +drawing-room, her first glance at his face told her that she must be +looking her best. She was wearing black, and beneath the white lock in +her dark hair, her face was flushed with the colour of happiness. Only +her eyes, velvet soft and as deep as a forest pool, had a haunted look. + +"I have never," he said, "seen you look better." + +She laughed. After all, one might permit a touch of coquetry in the +final renouncement! "Perhaps you have never really seen me before." + +Though he looked puzzled, he responded gaily: "On the contrary, I have +seen little else for the last two or three months." + +There was an edge of irony to her smile. "Were you looking at me or my +shadow?" + +He shook his head. "Are shadows ever as brilliant as that?" + +Then before she could answer the Judge came in with his cordial +outstretched hand and his air of humorous urbanity, as if he were too +much interested in the world to censure it, and yet too little +interested to take it seriously. His face, with its thin austere +features and its kindly expression, showed the dryness that comes less +from age than from quality. Benham, looking at him closely, thought, "He +must be well over eighty, but he hasn't changed so much as a hair of his +head in the last twenty years." + +At dinner Corinna was very gay; and her father, whose habit it was not +to inquire too deeply, observed only that she was looking remarkably +well. The dining-room was lighted by candles which flickered gently in +the breeze that rose and fell on the terrace. In this wavering +illumination innumerable little shadows, like ghosts of butterflies, +played over the faces of the two men, whose features were so much alike +and whose expressions differed so perversely. In both Nature had bred a +type; custom and tradition had moulded the plastic substance and refined +the edges; but, stronger than either custom or tradition, the individual +temperament, the inner spirit of each man, had cast the transforming +flame and shadow over the outward form. And now they were alike only in +their long, graceful figures, in their thin Roman features, in their +general air of urbane distinction. + +"We were talking at the club of the strike," said the Judge, who had +finished his soup with a manner of detachment, and sat now gazing +thoughtfully at his glass of sherry. "The opinion seems to be that it +depends upon Vetch." + +Benham's voice sounded slightly sardonical. "How can anything depend +upon a weathercock?" + +"Well, there's a chance, isn't there, that the weather may decide it?" + +"Perhaps. In the way that the Governor will find to his advantage." +Benham had leaned slightly forward, and his face looked very attractive +by the shimmering flame of the candles. + +"Isn't that the way most of us decide things," asked Corinna, "if we +know what is really to our advantage?" + +As Benham looked up he met her eyes. "In this case," he answered, with a +note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, "the +advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth +considering." + +For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, passed through +Corinna's mind. She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom, +"Oh, damn the public!"--but instead she remarked in the formal accents +her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkward impulses, "Isn't it +ridiculous that we can never get away from Gideon Vetch?" + +The Judge laughed softly. "He has a pushing manner," he returned; and +then, still curiously pursuing the subject: "Perhaps, he may get his +revenge at the meeting Thursday night." + +"Is there to be a meeting?" retorted Corinna indifferently. She was +thinking, "When John is eighty he will look like Father. I shall be +seventy-eight when he is eighty. All those years to live, and nothing +in them but little pleasures, little kindnesses, little plans and +ambitions. Charity boards and committee meetings and bridge. That is +what life is--just pretending that little things are important." + +"That's the strikers' meeting," the Judge was saying over his glass of +sherry. "The next one is John's idea. We hope to arbitrate. If we can +get Vetch interested there may be a settlement of some sort." + +"So it's Vetch again! Oh, I am getting so tired of the name of Gideon +Vetch!" laughed Corinna. And she thought, "If only I didn't have to play +on the flute all my life. If I could only stop playing dance music for a +little while, and break out into a funeral march!" + +"He has already agreed to come," said Benham, "but I expect nothing from +him. I have formed the habit of expecting nothing from Vetch." + +"Well, I don't know," replied the Judge. "We may persuade him to stand +firm, if there hasn't been an understanding between him and those +people." The old gentleman always used the expression "those people" for +persons of whose opinions he disapproved. + +"You know what I think of Vetch," rejoined Benham, with a shrug. + +It seemed to Corinna, watching Benham with her thoughtful gaze, +that the subject would never change, that they would argue all +night over their foolish strike and their tiresome meeting, and +over what this Gideon Vetch might or might not do in some problematic +situation. What sentimentalists men were! They couldn't understand, +after the experience of a million years, that the only things +that really counted in life were human relations. They were obliged +to go on playing a game of bluff with their consecrated +superstitions--playing--playing--playing--and yet hiding behind some +graven image of authority which they had built out of stone. +Sentimental, yes, and pathetic too, when one thought of it with +patience. + +When dinner was over, and the Judge had gone to a concert in town, +Corinna's mockery fell from her, and she sat in a long silence watching +Benham's enjoyment of his cigar. It occurred to her that if he were +stripped of everything else, of love, of power, of ambition, he could +still find satisfaction in the masculine habit of living--in the simple +pleasures of which nothing except physical infirmity or extreme poverty +can ever deprive one. Moderate in all things, he was capable of taking a +serious pleasure in his meals, in his cigar, in a dip in a swimming +pool, or a game of cards at the club. Whatever happened, he would have +these things to fall back upon; and they would mean to him, she knew, +far more than they could ever, even in direst necessity, mean to a +woman. + +The long drawing-room, lighted with an amber glow and drenched with the +sweetness of honeysuckle, had grown very still. Outside in the garden +the twilight was powdered with silver, and above the tops of the cedars +a few stars were shining. A breeze came in softly, touching her cheek +like the wing of a moth and stirring the iris in a bowl by the window. +The flowers in the room were all white and purple, she observed with a +tremulous smile, as if the vivid colours had been drained from both her +life and her surroundings. "What a foolish fancy," she added, with a +nervous force that sent a current of energy through her veins. "My +heart isn't broken, and it will never be until I am dead!" + +And then, with that natural aptitude for facing facts, for looking at +life steadily and fearlessly, which had been born in a recoil from the +sentimental habit of mind, she said quietly, "John, Alice Rokeby came to +see me this afternoon." + +He started, and the ashes dropped from his cigar; but there was no +embarrassment in the level glance he raised to her eyes. Surprise there +was, and a puzzled interrogation, but of confusion or disquietude she +could find no trace. + +"Well?" he responded inquiringly, and that was all. + +"You used to care for her a great deal--once?" + +He appeared to ponder the question. "We were great friends," he +answered. + +Friends! The single word seemed to her to express not only his attitude +to Alice Rokeby, but his temperamental inability to call things by their +right names, to face facts, to follow a straight line of thought. Here +was the epitome of that evasive idealism which preferred shams to +realities. + +"Are you still friends?" + +He shook his head. "No, we've drifted apart in the last year or so. I +used," he said slowly, "to go there a great deal; but I've had so many +responsibilities of late that I've fallen into the habit of letting +other interests go in a measure." + +It was harder even than she had imagined it would be--harder because she +realized now that they did not speak the same language. She felt that +she had struck against something as dry and cold and impersonal as an +abstract principle. A ludicrous premonition assailed her that in a +little while he would begin to talk about his public duty. This lack of +genuine emotion, which had at first appeared to contradict his +sentimental point of view, was revealed to her suddenly as its supreme +justification. Because he felt nothing deeply he could afford to play +brilliantly with the names of emotions; because he had never suffered +his duty would always lie, as Gideon Vetch had once said of him, "in the +direction of things he could not hurt." + +"It is a pity," she said gently, "for she still cares for you." + +The hand that held his cigar trembled. She had penetrated his reserve at +last, and she saw a shadow which was not the shadow of the wind-blown +flowers, cross his features. + +"Did she tell you that?" he asked as gently as she had spoken. + +"There was no need to tell me. I saw it as soon as I looked at her." + +For a moment he was silent; then he said very quietly, as one whose +controlling motive was a hatred of excess, of unnecessary fussiness or +frankness: "I am sorry." + +"Have you stopped caring for her?" + +The shadow on his face changed into a look of perplexity. When he spoke, +she realized that he had mistaken her meaning; and for an instant her +heart beat wildly with resentment or apprehension. + +"I am fond of her. I shall always be fond of her," he said. "Does it +make any difference to you, my dear?" + +Yes, he had mistaken her meaning. He was judging her in the dim light of +an immemorial tradition; and he had seen in her anxious probing for +truth merely a personal jealousy. Women were like that, he would have +said, applying, in accordance with his mental custom, the general law to +the particular instance. After all, where could they meet? They were as +far divided in their outlook on life as if they had inhabited different +spiritual hemispheres. A curiosity seized her to know what was in his +mind, to sound the depths of that unfathomable reserve. + +"That is over so completely that I thought it would make no difference +to you," he added almost reproachfully, as if she, not he, were to be +blamed for dragging a disagreeable subject into the light. + +Fear stabbed Corinna's heart like a knife. "But she still loves you!" +she cried sharply. + +He flinched from the sharpness of her tone. "I am sorry," he said again; +but the words glided, with a perfunctory grace, on the surface of +emotion. Suppose that what he said was true, she told herself; suppose +that it was really "over"; suppose that she also recognized only the +egoist's view of duty--of the paramount duty to one's own inclinations; +suppose--"Oh, am I so different from him?" she thought, "why cannot I +also mistake the urging of desire for the command of conscience--or at +least call it that in my mind?" For a minute she struggled desperately +with the temptation; and in that minute it seemed to her that the face +of Alice Rokeby, with its look of wistful expectancy, of hungry +yearning, drifted past her in the twilight. + +"But is it obliged to be over?" she asked aloud. "I could never care as +she does. I have always been like that, and I can't change. I have +always been able to feel just so much and no more--to give just so much +and no more." + +He looked at her attentively, a little troubled, she could see, but not +deeply hurt, not hurt enough to break down the wall which protected the +secret--or was it the emptiness?--of his nature. + +"Has the knowledge of my--my old friendship for Mrs. Rokeby come between +us?" he asked slowly and earnestly. + +While he spoke it seemed to her that all that had been obscure in her +view of him rolled away like the mist in the garden, leaving the +structure of his being bare and stark to her critical gaze. Nothing +confused her now; nothing perplexed her in her knowledge of him. The old +sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy, returned; but she understood the +cause of it now; she saw with perfect clearness the defect from which it +had arisen. He had missed the best because, with every virtue of the +mind, he lacked the single one of the heart. Possessing every grace of +character except humanity, he had failed in life because this one gift +was absent. + +"All my life," she said brokenly, "I have tried to find something that I +could believe in--that I could keep faith with to the end. But what can +one build a world on except human relations--except relations between +men and women?" + +"You mean," he responded gravely, "that you think I have not kept faith +with Mrs. Rokeby?" + +"Oh, can't you see? If you would only try, you must surely see!" she +pleaded, with outstretched hands. + +He shook his head not in denial, but in bewilderment. "I realized that I +had made a mistake," he said slowly, "but I believed that I had put it +out of my life--that we had both put it out of our lives. There were so +many more important things--the war and coming face to face with death +in so many forms. Oh, I confess that what is important to you, appears +to me to be merely on the surface of life. I have been trying to fulfil +other responsibilities--to live up to the demands on me--I had got down +to realities--" + +A laugh broke from her lips, which had grown so stiff that they hurt her +when she tried to smile. "Realities!" she exclaimed, "and yet you must +have seen her face as I saw it to-day." + +For the third time, in that expressionless tone which covered a nervous +irritation, he repeated gravely, "I am sorry." + +"There is nothing more real," she went on presently, "there is nothing +more real than that look in the face of a living thing." + +For the first time her words seemed to reach him. He was trying with all +his might, she perceived, he was spiritually fumbling over the effort to +feel and to think what she expected of him. With his natural fairness he +was honestly struggling to see her point of view. + +"If it is really like that," he said, "What can I do?" + +All her life, it seemed to Corinna, she had been adjusting the +difficulties and smoothing out the destinies of other persons. All her +life she had been arranging some happiness that was not hers. To-night +it was the happiness of Alice Rokeby, an acquaintance merely, a woman to +whom she was profoundly indifferent, which lay in her hands. + +"There is something that you can do," she said lightly, obeying now that +instinct for things as they ought to be, for surface pleasantness, which +warred in her mind with her passion for truth. "You can go to see her +again." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +CORINNA FACES LIFE + + +AT nine o'clock the next morning Corinna came through the sunshine on +the flagged walk and got into her car. She was wearing her smartest +dress of blue serge and her gayest hat of a deep old red. Never had she +looked more radiant; never had she carried her glorious head with a more +triumphant air. + +"Stop first at Mrs. Rokeby's, William," she said to the chauffeur, "and +while I am there you may take this list to market." + +As the car rolled off, her eyes turned back lovingly to the serene +brightness of the garden into which she had infused her passion for +beauty and order and gracious living. Rain had fallen in the night, and +the glowing borders beyond the house shone like jewels in a casket. +Beneath the silvery blue of the sky each separate blade of grass +glistened as if an enchanter's wand had turned it to crystal. The birds +were busily searching for worms on the lawn; as the car passed a flash +of scarlet darted across the road; and above a clear shining puddle +clouds of yellow butterflies drifted like blown rose-leaves. + +"How beautiful everything is," thought Corinna. "Why isn't beauty +enough? Why does beauty without love turn to sadness?" Her head, which +had drooped for a moment, was lifted gallantly. "It ought to be enough +just to be alive and not hungry on a morning like this." + +The house in which Mrs. Rokeby lived appeared to Corinna, as she +entered it presently, to have given up hope as utterly as its mistress +had done. Though it was nearly ten o'clock, the front pavement had not +been swept, the hall was still dark, and a surprised coloured maid, in a +soiled apron, answered the doorbell. + +"Poor thing," thought, Corinna. "I always heard that she was a good +housekeeper. It is queer how soon one's state of mind passes into one's +surroundings. I wonder if unhappiness could ever make me so indifferent +to appearances?" To the maid, who knew her, she said, "I think Mrs. +Rokeby will see me if she is awake. It is only for a minute or two." + +Then she went into the drawing-room, where the shades were still down, +and stood looking at the furniture and the curtains which were powdered +with dust. On the table, where the books and photographs were +disarranged and a fancy box of chocolates lay with the top off, there +was a crystal vase of flowers; but the flowers were withered, and the +water smelt as if it had not been changed for a week. Over the +mantelpiece the long gilt-framed mirror reflected, through a gray film, +the darkened room with its forlorn disarrangement. The whole place had +the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very +odour of unhappiness. + +"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power +to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless +endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the +dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of +confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into +harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be. She +longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the +dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones. +She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, "to get her hands on +the room." If she could only change all this hopelessness into +happiness! If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the +semblance of peace! "It is just as well that all of us can't feel things +this much," she reflected. + +"Mrs. Rokeby ain't dressed, but she says would you mind coming up?" The +maid, having attired herself in a clean apron and a crooked cap, stood +in the doorway. As Corinna followed her, she led the way up the narrow +stairs into the bedroom where Alice was waiting. + +"I thought you wouldn't be dressed," began Corinna cheerfully, "but it's +the only time I have free, and I wanted to see you this morning." + +"It is so good of you," responded Alice, putting out her hand. +"Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven't been well, and one of +the servants has gone to a funeral in the country." + +"It doesn't matter," Corinna hesitated an instant, "only I wish you +would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs." + +"I haven't been in the room for a week," replied Alice, dropping back on +the couch as if her strength had failed her. "I don't seem to care about +the house or anything else." + +As soon as her surprise at Corinna's visit had faded, she sank again +into a listless attitude. Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation +died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of passive +tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never passive, feel that she should +like to shake her. Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked +under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy +features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint. Over her nightgown, she +had thrown on a Japanese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum +blossoms which looked wilted. Everything about her, Corinna thought, +looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been +stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit. To Corinna's energetic +temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid +resignation. "Un-happiness like this is contagious," she thought. "And +all because one man has ceased to love her! What utter folly!" Aloud she +said only, "I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance." + +"To-morrow? Oh, Corinna, I couldn't!" + +"Do you remember that blue dress--the one that is the colour of wild +hyacinths?" + +"Yes, but I couldn't wear it again, and I haven't anything else." + +"Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is +becoming. You must look ethereal, and you must look happy. Men hate a +sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder +you, they resent your reproaching them." + +There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which +she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to +treat refractory circumstances is to bully them into submission. "If you +once let life get the better of you, you are lost," she said to herself. + +"You can't understand," Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes. +"You have always had what you wanted." + +Corinna laughed. "I am glad you see it that way," she rejoined, "but you +would be nearer the truth if you had said I'd always wanted what I had." + +"It seems to me that you've had everything." + +"Very likely. The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which +distance lends enchantment." + +"You mean that you haven't been happy?" + +"Oh, yes, I've been happy. If I hadn't been, with all I've had, I should +be ashamed to admit it." + +But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence. She had pitied herself +so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the +lives of others. It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and +when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and +regret. + +"Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you," she said, "but +you were so brave, poor dear, that nobody suspected it until you were +separated." + +"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many +things in life for me besides marriage." + +"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a +submissive manner but a stubborn mind. + +Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation +there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite +of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your +place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by +mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it." + +"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of +despair. + +A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, +she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside +down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which +was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have +gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only +background that is appropriate to you." + +Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna +felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna," +she returned, "but you have so little sentiment." + +"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very +well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly +about the room, because the sight of that passive figure, wrapped in +wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You +can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you +are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be +a pretty one, or it is all over with you." + +The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility +over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've +lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important +point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't +cared so much, things might have been different." + +Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I +didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool +she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain. + +Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a +stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her +head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have +never been loved to desperation and then deserted." + +"No," responded Corinna, with the ripe judgment that is the fruit of +bitter experience, "but, if I were ever loved to desperation, I should +expect to be. Desperation does things like that." + +"You couldn't bear it any better than I can. No woman could." + +"Perhaps not." Though Corinna's voice was flippant, there was a stern +expression on her beautiful face--the expression that Artemis might have +worn when she surveyed Aphrodite. "But I should never have been +deserted. I should have taken good care to prevent it." + +"I took care too," retorted Alice, with passion, "but I couldn't prevent +it." + +"Your measures were wrong. It is always safer to be on the side of the +active rather than the passive verb." + +With a careless movement, Corinna picked up her beaded bag, which she +had laid on the table, and turned to adjust her veil before the mirror. +"If you will let me manage your life for a little while," she observed, +with an appreciative glance at the daring angle of the red hat, "I may +be able to do something with it, for I am a practical person as well as +a capable manager. Father calls me, you know, the repairer of +destinies." + +"If I thought it would do any good, I'd go to the ball with you," said +Alice eagerly, while a delicate colour stained the wan pallor of her +face. + +"Do you really think," asked Corinna brightly, "that John, able +politician though he is, is worth all that trouble?" + +"Oh, it isn't just John," moaned Alice; "it is everything." + +"Well, if I am going to repair your destiny, I must do it in my own +practical way. For a time at least we will let sentiment go and get down +to facts. As long as you haven't much sense, it is necessary for you to +make yourself as pretty as possible, for only intelligent women can +afford to take liberties with their appearances. The first step must be +to buy a hat that is full of hope as soon as you can. Oh, I don't mean +anything jaunty or frivolous; but it must be a hat that can look the +world in the face." + +A keen interest awoke in Alice's eyes, and she looked immediately +younger. "If I can find one, I'll buy it," she answered. "I'll get +dressed in a little while and go out." + +"And remember the hyacinth-blue dress. Have it made fresh for +to-morrow." Turning in the doorway, Corinna continued with humorous +vivacity, "There is only one little thing we must forget, and that is +love. The less said about it the better; but you may take it on my +authority that love can always be revived by heroic treatment. If John +ever really loved you, and you follow my advice, he will love you +again." + +With a little song on her lips, and her gallant head in the red hat +raised to the sunlight, she went out of the house and down the steps +into her car. "Fools are very exhausting," she thought, as she bowed to +a passing acquaintance, "but I think that she will be cured." Then, at +the sight of Stephen leaving the Culpeper house, she leaned out and +waved to him to join her. + +"My dear boy, how late you are!" she exclaimed, when the car had stopped +and he got in beside her. + +"Yes, I am late." He looked tired and thoughtful. "I stopped to have a +talk with Mother, and she kept me longer than I realized." + +"Is anything wrong?" + +He set his lips tightly. "No, nothing more than usual." + +Corinna gazed up at the blue sky and the sunlight. Why wouldn't people +be happy? Why were they obliged to cause so much unnecessary discomfort? +Why did they persist in creating confusion? + +"Well, I hope you are coming to the dance to-morrow night," she said +cheerfully. + +"Yes. Mother has asked me to take Margaret Blair." + +"I am glad. Margaret is a nice girl. I am going to take Patty Vetch." + +He started, and though she was not looking at him, she knew that his +face grew pale. "Don't you think she will look lovely, just like a +mermaid, in green and silver?" she asked lightly. + +"I don't know," he answered stiffly. "I am trying not to think about +her." + +Corinna laughed. "Oh, my dear, just wait until you see her in that +sea-green gown!" + +That he was caught fast in the web of the tribal instinct, Corinna +realized as perfectly as if she had seen the net closing visibly round +him. Though she was unaware of the blow Patty had dealt him, she felt +his inner struggle through that magical sixth sense which is the gift +of the understanding heart, of the heart that has outgrown the shell of +the personal point of view. If he would only for once break free from +artificial restraints! If he would only let himself be swept into +something that was larger than his own limitations! + +"I am very fond of Patty," she said. "The more I see of her, the finer I +think she is." + +His lips did not relax. "There is a great deal of talk at the club about +the Governor." + +"Oh, this strike of course! What do they say?" + +"A dozen different things. Nobody knows exactly how to take him." + +"I wonder if we have ever understood him," said Corinna, a little sadly. +"I sometimes think--" Then she broke off hurriedly. "No, don't get out, +I'll take you down to your office. I sometimes think," she resumed, +"that none of us see him as he really is because we see him through a +veil of prejudice, or if you like it better, of sentiment--" + +Stephen laughed without mirth. "I don't like it better. I'd like to get +into a world--or at least I feel this morning that I'd like to get into +a world where one was obliged to face nothing softer than a fact--" + +Corinna looked at him tenderly. She had a sincere, though not a very +deep affection, for Stephen, and she felt that she should like to help +him, as long as helping him did not necessitate any emotional effort. +"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked gently, "that the trouble with +you, after all, is simply lack of courage?" At the start he gave, she +continued hastily, "Oh, I don't mean physical courage of course. I do +not doubt that you were as brave as a lion when it came to meeting the +Germans. But there are times when life is more terrible than the +Germans! And yet the only courage we have ever glorified is brute +courage--the courage of the lion. I know that you could face machine +guns and bayonets and all the horrors of war; but it seems to me that +you have never had really the courage of living--that you have always +been a little afraid of life." + +For a long while he did not answer. His eyes were on the sky; and she +watched the expression of irritation, amazement, dread, perplexity, and +shocked comprehension, pass slowly over his features. "By Jove, I've got +a feeling that you may be right," he said at last. "You probed the +wound, and it hurt for a minute; but it may heal all the quicker for +that. You've put the whole rotten business into a nutshell. I'm a coward +at bottom, that's the trouble with me. Oh, like you, of course, I'm not +talking about actual dangers. They are easy enough, for one can see them +coming. It's not fear of the Germans. It's fear of something that one +can't touch or feel--that doesn't even exist--the fear of one's +imagination. But the truth is that I've funked things for the last year +or so. I've been in a chronic blue funk about living." + +She smiled at him brightly. "It is like a bit of thistle-down. Bring it +out into the air and sunlight, and it will blow away." + +"I wonder if you're right. Already I feel better because I've told you; +and yet I've gone in terror lest my mother should discover it." + +When she spoke again she changed the subject as lightly as if they had +been discussing the weather. "You used to be interested in public +matters. Do you remember how you talked to me in your college days +about outstripping John in the race? You were full of ideas then, and +full of ambition too." She was touching a string that had never failed +her yet, and she waited, with an inscrutable smile, for the response. + +"I know," he answered, "but that was in another life--that was before +the war." + +"Do those ideas never come back to you? Have you lost your ambition?" + +"I can't tell. I sometimes think that it died in France. I got to feel +over there that these political issues were merely local and temporary. +Often, the greater part of the time, I suppose, I feel like that now. +Then suddenly all my old ambition comes back in a spurt, and for a +little while I think I am cured. While that lasts I am as eager, as full +of interest, as I used to be. But it dies down as suddenly as it sprang +up, and the reaction is only indifference and lassitude. I seem to have +lost the power to keep a single state of mind, or even an interest." + +"But do you ever think seriously of the part you might take in this +town?" + +The look of immobility passed from his face; his eyes grew warmer, and +it seemed to her that he became more alive and more human. "Oh, I think +a great deal. My ideas have changed too." He was talking rapidly and +without connection. "I am not the same man that I was a few years ago. I +may be wrong, but I feel that I've got down to a firmer basis--a basis +of facts." Then he turned to her impulsively, "I wouldn't say this to +any one else, Corinna, because no one else would understand what I +mean--but I've learned a good deal from Gideon Vetch." + +"Ah!" Her eyes were smiling. "I think I know what you mean." + +"Of course you know. But imagine Father! He would think, if I told him, +that it was a symptom of mental derangement--that some German shell had +left a permanent dent in my brain." + +"Perhaps. Yet I am not sure that you understand your father. I think he +is more like you than you fancy; that if you once pierced his reserve, +you would find him a sentimentalist at heart. There is your office," she +added, "but you must not get out now. We will turn back for a quarter of +an hour." She spoke to the chauffeur, and then said to Stephen, with a +sensation of unutterable relief, "a quarter of an hour won't make any +difference at the office to-day." + +"Perhaps not when I've lost three hours already. I sometimes think they +would never notice it if I stayed away all the time. But what I mean +about Vetch is simply that he has set me thinking. He does that, you +know. Oh, I admit that he is mistaken--or downright wrong--in a number +of ways! He is too sensational for our taste--too flamboyant; but one +can't get away from him. He has shaken the dust from us; he has jolted +us into movement. I have a feeling somehow that his personality is +spread all over the place--that we are smeared with Gideon Vetch, as the +darkeys would say." + +He was already a different Stephen from the one who had got into her car +an hour ago, and she breathed a secret prayer of thanksgiving. + +"I think even John feels that now and then," she said, and a moment +afterward, "Is it possible, do you suppose, that we shall find when it +is too late that this Gideon Vetch is the stone that the builders +rejected? A ridiculous fancy, and yet who knows, it might turn out to be +true. Stranger things have happened than that!" + +"It may be. One never can tell." Then he laughed with tolerant +affection. "I've found out the trouble with John." + +"The trouble with John?" Her voice trembled. + +"Yes, the trouble with John is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is +trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton--to build the world +over on a skull and cross-bones--and it can't be done. I admire John as +much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch +is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John +needs to make him complete." + +She nodded. "I know. You mean feeling?" + +"Human sympathy--the sympathy that means imagination and insight. That +is the only power that Vetch has, but, by Jove, it is the greatest of +all! It is the spirit that comprehends, that reconciles, and recreates. +Both Vetch and John have failed, I think; Vetch for want of education, +system, method, and John because, having all this essential framework, +he still lacked the blood and fibre of humanity. In its essence, I +suppose it is a difference of principle, the old familiar struggle +between the romantic and the realistic temperament, which divides in +politics into the progressive and the conservative forces. There is +nothing in history, I learned that at college, except the war between +these two irreconcilable spirits. Irreconcilable, they call them, and +yet I wonder, I wonder more and more, if this is not a misinterpretation +of history? It seems to me that the leader of the future, even in so +small a community as this one, must be big enough to combine opposite +elements; that he must take the good where he finds it; that he must +vitalize tradition and discipline progress--" + +"You mean that he must accept both the past and the future?" While her +heart craved the substance of truth, she dispensed platitudes with a +benevolent air. + +"How can it be otherwise? That, it seems to me, is the only logical way +out of the muddle. The difficulty, of course, is to remain +practical--not to let the vision run away with one. It will require +moderation, which Vetch has not, and adaptability, which John has never +learned." + +"And never will learn," rejoined Corinna. "He is made of the mettle that +breaks but does not bend." + +"Like my father; like all those who have petrified in the shape of a +convention. And yet the new stuff--the ideas that haven't turned to +stone--are full of froth--they splash over. Take Vetch and this strike, +for instance. I myself believe that he wants to do the right thing, to +protect the public at any cost; but he has gone too far; he has splashed +over the dividing line between principle and expediency. Will he be able +to stand firm at the last?" + +"Father says there is to be a meeting Thursday night." + +"Yes, and he'll be obliged to come to some decision then, or at least to +drop a hint as to the line he intends to pursue. I am afraid there will +be trouble either way." + +"The Governor shows the strain," said Corinna. "I saw him yesterday." + +"How can he help it? He has got himself into a tight place. Oh, there +are times when temporizing is more dangerous than action! It's hard to +see how he'll get out of it unless he cuts a way, and if he does that, +he'll probably lose the strongest support he has ever had." + +Stephen's face was transfigured now. It had lost the look of dryness, of +apathy; and she watched the glow of health shine again in his eyes as it +used to shine when he was at college. So it was not emotion that was to +restore him! It was the ancient masculine delusion, as invulnerable as +truth, that the impersonal interests are the significant ones. Well, she +was not quarrelling with delusions as long as they were beneficent! And +since it was impossible for her fervent soul to care greatly for general +principles, or to dwell long among impersonal forms of thought, she +found herself regarding this public crisis, less as a warfare of +political theories, than as a possible cure for Stephen's condition. For +the rest, except for their results, beneficial or otherwise, to the +individual citizen, problems of government interested her not at all. +The whole trouble with life seemed to her to rise, not from mistaken +theory, but from the lack of consideration with which human beings +treated one another. Happiness, after all, depended so little upon +opinions and so much upon manners. + +"Throw yourself into this work, Stephen," she urged. "It is a splendid +opportunity." + +He smiled at her in the old boyish way. "An opportunity for what?" + +"For--" It was on the tip of her tongue to say "for health"; but she +checked herself, remembering the incurable distaste men have for +calling things by their right names, and replied instead, "an +opportunity for usefulness." + +His smile faded, and he turned on her eyes that were almost melancholy, +though the fire of animation still warmed them. "I am interested now. I +care a great deal--but will it last? Haven't I felt this way a hundred +times in the last six months, only to grow indifferent and even bored +within the next few hours?" + +She looked at him closely. "Isn't there any feeling--any interest that +lasts with you?" + +He hesitated, while a burning colour, like the flush of fever, swept up +to his forehead. "Only one, and I am trying to get over that," he +answered after a moment. + +"If it is a genuine feeling, are you wise to get over it?" she asked. +"Genuine feeling is so rare. I think if I could feel an overwhelming +emotion, I should hug it to my heart as the most precious of gifts." + +"Even if everything were against it?" + +Her head went up with a dauntless gesture. "Oh, my dear, what is +everything?" It was a changed voice from the one in which she had +lectured Alice Rokeby an hour ago. "Feeling is everything." + +"It is real," he replied, looking away from her eyes. "I am sure of that +because I have struggled against it. I can't explain what it is; I don't +know what it was that made me care in the beginning. All I know about it +is that it seems to give me back myself. It is only when I let myself go +in the thought of it that I become really free. Can you understand what +I mean?" + +"I can," assented Corinna softly; and though she smiled there was a mist +over her eyes which made the world appear iridescent. "Oh, my dear, it +is the only way. Throw away everything else--every cause, every +conviction, every interest--but keep that one open door into reality." + +The car stopped before his office, and she held out her hand. "I shall +see you to-morrow night?" + +He glanced back merrily from the pavement. "Do you think I shall let you +escape me?" Then he turned away and went, with a firm and energetic +step, into the building, while Corinna took out her shopping list and +studied it thoughtfully. + +"Back to the shop," she said at last. "I have had enough for one +morning." As the car started up the street, a smile stirred her lips, "I +shall have three unhappy lovers on my hands for the dance to-morrow." +Then she laughed softly, with a very real sense of humour, "If I am +going to sacrifice myself, I may as well do it in the grand manner," she +thought, for Corinna had a royal soul. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DANCE MUSIC + + +At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Culpeper observed, with maternal +solicitude, that Stephen was looking more cheerful. While she poured his +coffee, with one eye on the fine old coffee pot and one on the animated +face of her son, she reflected that he appeared to have come at last to +his senses. "If he would only stop all this folly and settle down," she +thought. "Surely it is quite time now for him to become normal again." +As she looked at him her expression softened, in spite of her general +attitude of disapprobation, and the sharp brightness of her eyes gave +place to humid tenderness. Of all her children he had long been her +favourite, for the reason, perhaps, that he was the only one who had +ever caused her any anxiety; and though she would have gone to the stake +cheerfully for all and each of them, there would have been a keener edge +to the martyrdom she suffered in Stephen's behalf. + +"Be sure and make a good breakfast, Mr. Culpeper," she urged, glancing +down the table to where her husband was dividing his attention between +the morning paper and his oatmeal. "My poor father used to say that if +he didn't make a good breakfast he felt it all day long." + +"He was right, my dear. I have no doubt that he was right," replied Mr. +Culpeper, in the tone of solemn sentiment which he reserved for +deceased parents. Though he was dyspeptic by constitution, and inclined +to gout and other bodily infirmities, he applied himself philosophically +to a heavy breakfast such as his wife's father had enjoyed. + +"Stephen is looking so well this morning," remarked Mrs. Culpeper in a +sprightly voice. "He has quite a colour." + +Mr. Culpeper rolled his large brown eyes, as handsome and as opaque as +chestnuts, in the direction of his son. Though he would never have +observed the improvement unless his wife had called his attention to it, +his kind heart was honestly relieved to discover that Stephen looked +better. He had worried a good deal in his sluggish way over what he +thought of as "the effect of the war" on his son. With the strong +paternal instinct which beheld every child as a branch on a genealogical +tree, he had been as much disturbed as his wife by the gossip which had +reached him about the daughter of Gideon Vetch. + +"Feeling all right, my boy?" he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent +anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasperated Stephen +so profoundly. + +"Oh, first rate," responded the young man lightly. "Is there anything +you would like me to help you about?" + +"No, there's nothing I can't attend to myself--" Mr. Culpeper had begun +to reply, when catching sight of his wife's frowning face, he continued +hurriedly: "Unless you would care to glance over that deed about those +lots of your mother's?" + +Stephen smiled, for he had seen the warning change in his mother's +expression, and he was thinking that she was still a remarkably pretty +woman. "With pleasure," he returned. "I shall be busy all day, but I'll +look it over to-morrow. To-night I am going to the Harrisons' dance." + +"Oh, you're going!" exclaimed Mary Byrd, who had come in late and was +just taking her seat. "I suppose Mother is making you take Margaret +Blair?" + +Again Mrs. Culpeper made a vague frowning movement of her eyebrows and +gently shook her head; but the gesture of disapproval to which her +husband had responded obediently was entirely wasted upon her youngest +daughter. "You needn't shake your head at me, Mother," she remarked +lightly. "Of course I know you are making him take her when he would +rather a hundred times go with Patty Vetch." + +The frown on Mrs. Culpeper's face turned to a look of panic. "Mary Byrd, +you are impossible," she said sternly. + +"I saw Cousin Corinna yesterday," observed Victoria indiscreetly. "She +is going to take Patty Vetch." + +Mrs. Culpeper said nothing, but her fine black brows drew ominously +together. She had worked so busily over the coffee urn and the sugar +bowl that she had not had time to eat her breakfast, and the oatmeal in +the plate before her had grown stiff and cold before she tasted it. When +Stephen stooped to kiss her cheek before going out, she looked up at him +with a proud and admiring glance. "I hope you remembered to order +flowers for Margaret?" + +He laughed. It was so characteristic of her to feel that even his love +affairs must be managed! "Yes, I ordered gardenias. Is that right?" + +When she nodded amiably, he turned away and went out into the hall, +where he found his father waiting. "I wanted to see you a minute without +your mother," explained Mr. Culpeper, in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to subdue it to a whisper. "It's just as well, I think, +that your mother shouldn't know that I'm having those houses you looked +at attended to." + +"Oh, you are!" returned Stephen, with a curious mixture of thankfulness +and humility. So the old chap was the best sport of them all! In his +slow way he had accomplished what Stephen had merely talked about. For +the first time it occurred to the young man that his father was not by +any means so obvious or so simple as he had believed him to be. Had +Corinna spoken the truth when she called him a sentimentalist at heart? + +"It's better not to mention it before your mother," Mr. Culpeper was +saying huskily, while Stephen wondered. "She's the kindest heart in the +world. There isn't a better woman on earth; but she'd always think the +money ought to go to one of the married children. She couldn't +understand that it's good business to keep up the property. Women have +queer ideas about business." + +"Well, you're a brick, Father!" exclaimed the young man, and he meant it +from his heart. His voice trembled, and he put his hand on his father's +arm for a minute as he used to do when he was a child. Words wouldn't +come to him; but he was deeply touched, and it seemed to him that the +barrier which had divided him from his family had suddenly fallen. Never +since his return from France had he felt so near to his father as he +felt at that moment. + +"Well, well, I thought you'd like to know," rejoined Mr. Culpeper, and +his voice also shook a little. "I must be getting down town now. May I +take you in my car?" + +"No, I rather like the walk, sir. It does me good." Then, without a word +more, but with a smile of sympathy and understanding, they parted, and +Stephen went out of the house and descended the steps to the street. + +It was true, as his mother had observed, that he was happier to-day than +he had been for weeks; but this happiness was founded upon what Mrs. +Culpeper would have regarded as the most reprehensible of deceptions. He +was happier simply because, in spite of everything he had done to +prevent it, Fate had decreed that he was soon to see Patty again. The +longing of the past few weeks was to be appeased, if only for an hour, +and he was to see her again! He did not look beyond the coming night. He +did not attempt to analyse either his motive or his emotions. The future +was still obscure; life was still evolving its inscrutable problem; but +it was enough for him, at the moment, to know that he should see her +again. And this certainty, coming after the hungry pain of the last +three weeks, brought a glow to his eyes and that haunting smile, like +the smile of memory, to his lips. + +The light that Corinna had kindled illumined not a political career, but +the small vivid image of Patty. Wherever he looked he saw her flitting +ahead of him, a figure painted on sunlight. He had never found her so +desirable as in those few days since he had irrevocably given her up. +His self-denial, his vain endeavours to avoid her and forget her, seemed +merely to have poured themselves into the deep rebellious longing of his +heart. He lived always now in that hidden country of the mind, where +the winds blew free and strong and the sun never set on the endless +roads and the far horizon. + +And yet, so inexplicable are the laws of the mind, this escape from the +tyranny of convention, from the irksome round of practical details, +recoiled perversely into an increased joy of living. Because he could +escape at will from the routine, he no longer dreaded to return to it. +The light which irradiated the image of Patty transfigured the events +and circumstances amid which he moved. It shed its glory over external +incidents as well as into the loneliest vacancy, the deserted places, of +his being. Everything around and within him, the very youth in his soul, +became more intense in the hours when he allowed this emotion to assume +control of his thoughts. Just to be alive, that was enough! Just to be +free again from the sensation of stifling in trivial things, of +suffocating in the monotony which rushed over one like a torrent of +ashes. Just to escape with Patty into that wild kingdom of the mind +where the sun never set! + +When he returned home that evening, his mother met him as he entered the +hall, and followed him upstairs. + +"It is a beautiful evening for the dance, dear. They are having the +garden illuminated." + +Though he smiled back at her, his smile had that dreamy remoteness, that +look of meaning more than it revealed, which was bewildering to an acute +and practical intelligence. From long and intimate association with her +husband, Mrs. Culpeper was accustomed to dealing with ponderous barriers +to knowledge; but this plastic and variable substance of Stephen's +resistance, gave her an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. Even when +her son acquiesced, as he did usually in her demands, she suspected that +his acquiescence was merely on the surface, that in the depths of his +mind he was, as she said to herself resentfully, "holding something +back." + +"Margaret is looking so sweet," she began in her smoothest tone. "Of +course she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is, but, in her quiet way, +she is very handsome." + +"No, she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is," conceded Stephen, so +pleasantly that she realized he was repeating parrot-like the phrase she +had uttered. His thoughts were somewhere else, she observed bitterly; it +was perfectly evident that he was not paying the slightest attention to +anything that she said. + +"You must use your father's car," she remarked, as amiably as before. +"It is better to have a chauffeur, and Mary Byrd is going with Willy +Tarleton." + +"And the other girls?" he asked, for her words appeared at last to have +penetrated the haze that enveloped his mind. + +"Harriet is spending the night with Lily Whittle, and she will go from +there. Of course Victoria has given up dancing since she came home from +France, and poor Janet stopped going to parties the year she came out." + +This pitiless maternal classification of Janet aroused his amusement. +"Well, I'd be glad to take Janet anywhere, even if her nose is a little +longer than Mary Byrd's," he retorted. "She's the jolliest of the lot, +and she seems to me very well contented as she is." + +"Oh, she is," assented his mother eagerly. "I always tell her that her +disposition is worth a fortune; and she has a very good figure too. But, +of course, a pretty face is the most important thing before marriage and +the least important thing afterward," she added shrewdly, as she left +him at his door. + +In a dream he dressed himself and went down to the dining-room; in a +dream he sat through the slow ceremonious supper; in a dream he got into +his father's car; and in a dream he stopped for Margaret and drove on +again with her fragrant presence beside him. When he entered the +glaring, profusely decorated house of the Harrisons, he felt that he was +still only half awake to the actuality. + +The May night was as warm as summer, and swinging garlands of ferns and +peonies concealed electric fans which were suspended from the ceiling. +In the midst of the strong wind of the whirring fans, the dancers in the +two long drawing-rooms appeared to be blown violently in circles and +eddies, like coloured leaves in a high wind. For a few minutes after +Stephen had entered, the rooms seemed to him merely a brilliant haze, +where the revolving figures appeared and vanished like the colours of a +kaleidoscope. Near the door he became aware of the resplendent form of +his hostess, stationed appropriately against a background of peonies; +and after she had greeted him with absent-minded cordiality, he passed +with Margaret in the direction of the thundering sounds which came from +the bank of ferns behind which the musicians were hidden. + +"Shall we try this?" he shouted into Margaret's ear. + +She shook her head. "It's one of those horrid new things." Her high, +clear tones pierced the din like the music of a flute. "Let's wait until +they play something nice. I hate jazz." + +She was looking very pretty in a dress like a white cloud, with garlands +of tiny rosebuds on the skirt; and he thought, as he looked at her, that +if she had only been a trifle less fastidious and refined, she might +easily have won the reputation of a beauty. Nothing but a delicate +superiority to the age in which she had been born, stood in the way of +her success. Sixty years ago, in modest crinolines, she might have made +history; and duels would probably have been fought for her favour. But +other times, other tastes, he reflected. + +For the rest of the dance, they sat sedately between two bay-trees in +green tubs that occupied a corner of the room. Then "something nicer" +started,--a concession to Mrs. Harrison's mother, who shared Margaret's +disapproval of jazz,--and Stephen and Margaret drifted slowly out among +the revolving couples. After the third dance, relief appeared in the +person of the young clergyman, who had come to look on; and leaving +Margaret with him between the bay-trees, Stephen started eagerly to +search for Patty where the dancers were thickest. + +Across the room, he had already caught a glimpse of Corinna, in a +queenly gown of white and silver brocade. She had stopped dancing now; +and standing between Alice Rokeby and John Benham, she was glancing +brightly about her, while she waved slowly a fan of white ostrich +plumes. Among all these fresh young girls, she could easily hold her +own, not because of her beauty, but because of that deeper fascination +which she shed like a light or a perfume. She had the something more +than beauty which these girls lacked and could never acquire--a +legendary enchantment, the air of romance. Was this the result, he +wondered now, of what she had missed in life rather than of what she had +attained? Was it because she had never lived completely, because she had +preferred the dream to the event, because she had desired and refrained, +because she had missed both enchantment and disenchantment--was it +because of the profound inadequacy of experience, that she had been able +to keep undimmed the glow of her loveliness? It was not that she looked +young, he realized while he watched her, but that she looked ageless and +immortal, a creature of the spirit. While he gazed at her across the +violent whirl of colours in the ballroom, he remembered the evening star +shining silver white in the afterglow. Perhaps, who could tell, she may +have had the best that life had to give? + +Making his way, with difficulty, through the throng, he followed +Corinna's protecting gaze, until he saw that it rested on Alice Rokeby, +who was wearing a dress that reminded him of wild hyacinths. For a +moment, the sight of this other woman's face, with its soft, hungry +eyes, and its expression of passive and unresisting sweetness, gave him +a start of surprise; and he found himself knocking awkwardly against one +of the dancers. Something had happened to her! Something had restored, +if only for an evening, the peculiar grace, the appealing prettiness, +too trivial and indefinite for beauty, which he recalled vividly now, +though for the last year or two he had almost forgotten that she ever +possessed it. Yes, something had changed her. She looked to-night as she +used to look before he went away, with a faint flush over her whole +face and those soft flower-like eyes, lifted admiringly to some man, to +any man except Herbert Rokeby. Then, as he disentangled himself from the +whirl, and went toward Corinna, she came a step or two forward, and left +John Benham and Alice Rokeby together. + +"Everything is going well," she said; and he noticed, for the first +time, that her charming smile was tinged with irony, as if the humour of +the show, not the drama, were holding her attention. "I am having a +beautiful time." + +He glanced over her shoulder. "What have you done to Mrs. Rokeby?" + +She shook her head, with a laugh which, he surmised sympathetically, was +less merry than it sounded. "That is my secret. I have a magic you +know--but she looks well, doesn't she? I did her hair myself. If you +could have seen the way she had it arranged! That dress is very +becoming, I think, it makes her eyes look like frosted violets. Her +appearance is a success--but 'More brain, O Lord, more brain'!" + +"Do you suppose that type will ever pass?" he asked. + +She met his inquiring look with eyes that were golden in the coloured +light. "Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs +on which to hang their sentiments? Alice and her kind will always be +convenient substitutes for a man's admiration of himself." + +"Which he calls love, you think?" + +"Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him. +Have you seen Patty?" + +Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was +approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile +at Stephen, she floated off in the dance. Was she really as happy as she +looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more? + +He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes +eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular +visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was +eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had +brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience. Once or twice +in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood +when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France +after he had come out of the trenches. Now it was so vivid that it +brought with it a sensation of fear, as if happiness itself were +escaping his pursuit. He felt that his heart was burning with +impatience, and there was a persistent hammering in his ears as if he +had been running. What finding her would mean, what the future would +bring, he did not know, he did not even seek to discover. All he +understood was that the old indifference, the old apathy, the old +subjective, tormenting egoism, had given place to a consuming interest, +an impassioned delight. He felt only that he was thirsty for life, and +that he must drink deep to be satisfied. + +Then, suddenly, it seemed to him that the music grew softer and slower, +and the wind-blown throng faded from him into a rosy haze. From the +centre of the room, borne round and round like a flower on a stream, he +saw her face and her romantic eyes looking at him with a deep expectancy +that brought a pang to his heart. Her head was thrown back; the short +black hair blew about her like mist; and her cheeks and lips were +glowing with geranium red. At that instant she was not only the girl he +loved--she was youth and spring and adventure. + +The impatience had died now; the burning of his heart was cooled; and +life had grown miraculously simple and easy. He knew at last what he +wanted. His strength of purpose, his will to live had returned to him; +and he felt that he was cured; that he was completely himself for the +first time since his return. The dark depression, the shadows of the +prison, were behind him now. Straight ahead were the roads of that +hidden country, and for the first time he saw them flushed with an April +bloom. + +Then the music stopped; the throng scattered; and she came toward him +with a tall young man, very slim and nimble, whose name was Willy +Tarleton. In her dress of green and silver, with a wreath of leaves in +her hair, she reminded him again of a flower, but of a flower of foam. +As he held out his hand the dance began again; Willy Tarleton vanished +into air; and Patty stood looking at him in silence. After the tumult of +his impatience, it seemed to him that when they met, they must speak +words of profound significance; but all he said was, + +"It is so warm in here. Will you come out on the porch?" + +She shook her head. "I thought you were with Miss Blair?" + +"I am--I was--but I must speak to you before I go back. Come on the +porch where it is so much quieter." + +The deep expectancy was still in her eyes. "I have promised every dance. +Mrs. Page saw that my card was filled in the beginning. Why don't you +ask some of the girls who haven't any partners? It is so dreadful for +them. If men only knew!" + +"I don't know, and I don't care. I want you. If you will come on the +porch for just three minutes--" + +"Yes, it is quieter," she assented, and passed, with a dancing step, +through the French window out on the long porch which was hung with +Chinese lanterns. Beyond was the wide lawn, suffused with a light that +was the colour of amethyst, and beyond the lawn there was a narrow view +of Franklin Street, where the flashing lamps of motor cars went by, or +shadowy figures moved for a little space in obscurity. From this other +world, now and then, the sharp sound of a motor horn punctuated the +monotonous rhythm of the music within the house; while under the Chinese +lanterns, where the shadows of the poplar leaves trembled like flowers, +the struggle in Stephen's heart came to an end--the struggle between +tradition and life, between the knowledge of things as they are and the +vision of things as they ought to be, between the conservative and the +progressive principle in nature. After the long insensibility, spring +was having her way with him, as she was having it with the grass and the +flowers and the bloom on the trees. It was one of those moments of +awakening, of ecstatic vision, which come only to introspective and +imaginative minds--to minds that have known darkness as well as light. +In that instant of realization, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he stood +not for the past, but for the future, that he stood not for philosophy, +but for adventure--for the will to be and to dare. He would choose, once +for all, to take the risk of happiness; to conquer inch by inch a little +more of the romantic wilderness of wonder and delight. While he stood +there, looking down into her eyes, these impressions came to him less +in words than in a glorious sense of youth, of power, of security of +spirit. + +"I looked for you so long," he said, and then breathlessly, as if he +feared lest she might escape him, "Oh, Patty, I love you!" + +Before she could reply, before he could repeat the words that drummed in +his brain, the door into the present swung open, and the dream world, +with its flower-like shadows and its violet dusk, vanished. + +"Patty!" called Corinna's voice. "Patty, dear, I am looking for you." +Corinna, in her rustling white and silver brocade, stepped from the +French window out on the porch. "Some one has sent for you--your aunt, I +think they said, who is dying--" + +The girl started and drew back. Her face changed, while the light faded +from her eyes until they became wells of darkness. "I know," she +answered. "I must go. I promised that I would go." + +"My car is waiting. I will take you," said Corinna. + +She turned to enter the house, and Patty, without so much as a look at +Stephen's face, went slowly after her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE NIGHT + + +As the car passed through the deserted streets, Corinna placed her hand +on Patty's with a reassuring pressure. Without appearing to do so, she +was studying the girl's soft profile, now flashing out in a sudden sharp +light, now melting back again into the vagueness of the shadows. What +was there about this girl, Corinna asked herself, which appealed so +strongly to the protective impulse in her heart? Was it because this +undisciplined child, with that curious sporting instinct which supplied +the place of Victorian morality, represented for her, as well as for +Stephen, some inarticulate longing for the unknown, for the adventurous? +Did Patty's charm for them both lie in her unlikeness to everything they +had known in the past? In Corinna, as in Stephen, two opposing spirits +had battled unceasingly, the realistic spirit which accepted life as it +was, and the romantic spirit which struggled toward some unattainable +perfection, which endeavoured to change and decorate the actuality. More +than Stephen, perhaps, she had faced life; but she had not accepted it +without rebellion. She had learned from disappointment to see things as +they are; but deep in her heart some unspent fire of romance, some +imprisoned esthetic impulse, sought continually to gild and enrich the +experience of the moment. And this girl, so young, so ingenuous, so +gallant and so appealing, stood in Corinna's mind for the poetic +wildness of her spirit, for all that she had seen in a vision and had +missed in reality. + +When the car reached the Square, it turned sharply north. Sometimes it +passed through lighted spaces and sometimes through pools of darkness; +and as it went on rapidly, it seemed to Corinna that it was the one +solid fact in a night that she imagined. Patty was very still; but +Corinna felt the warm clasp of her hand, and heard her soft breathing, +which became a part of the muffled undercurrent of the sleeping city. In +all those closely packed houses, where the obscurity was broken here and +there by a lighted window, other human beings were breathing, sleeping, +dreaming, like Patty and herself, of some impractical and visionary +to-morrow. Of something which had never been, but still might be! Of +something which they had just missed, but might find when the sun rose +again! Of a miracle that might occur at any moment and make everything +different! It was after midnight; and to Corinna it seemed that the +darkness had released the collective spirit of the city, which would +retreat again into itself with the breaking of dawn. Once a cry sounded +far off and was hushed almost immediately; once a light flashed and went +out in the window beneath a roof; but as the car sped on by rows of +darkened tenements, the mysterious penumbra of the night appeared to +draw closer and closer, as if that also were a phantom of the +encompassing obscurity. + +"Is this the aunt you told me of, Patty?" asked Corinna abruptly. + +"Yes, I went to see her once--not long ago. I promised her that I'd come +back when she sent for me. She wanted to tell me something, but she was +so ill that she couldn't remember what it was. It was about Father, she +said." + +"Stephen will come for us after he has taken Margaret home. I gave him +the number." + +Patty turned and gave her a long look. They were passing under an +electric light at the time, and Corinna thought, as she looked into the +girl's face, that all the wistful yearning of the night was reflected in +her eyes. What had happened, she wondered, to change their sparkling +brightness into this brooding expectancy. + +The car stopped before the house to which Patty had come with Gershom; +and as they got out, they saw that it was entirely dark except for the +dim flicker of a jet of gas in the hall. By the pavement a car was +standing, and from somewhere at the back there came the sound of a baby +crying inconsolably in the darkness. While they entered the hall, and +went up the broad old-fashioned flight of stairs, that plaintive wail +followed them, growing gradually fainter as they ascended, but never +fading utterly into silence. When they reached the second storey, and +turned toward the back of the house, a door at the end of the passage +opened, and an old woman, with a hunch back, and a piece of knitting in +her gnarled hands, came slowly to meet them. Standing there under the +jet of gas, which flickered with a hissing noise, she looked at them +with glassy impersonal eyes and a face that was as austere as Destiny. +Afterward, when Corinna thought over the impressions of that tragic +night, she felt that they were condensed into the symbol of the old +woman with the crooked back, and the thin crying of the baby which +floated up from the darkness below. + +"We came to see Mrs. Green," explained Corinna. + +The old woman nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her +ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until +Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence +they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the +hall, and they entered the room, with the sickening sweetish smell and +the window which gave on the black hulk of the ailantus tree. From +behind a screen, which was covered with faded wall paper, the figure of +the doctor emerged while they waited, an ample middle-aged man, with the +air of having got into his clothes in a hurry and the face of a +pragmatic philosopher. He motioned commandingly for them to approach; +and going to the other side of the screen, they found the dying woman +gazing at them with eager eyes. + +"She is doing nicely," remarked the doctor, with the cheerful alacrity +of one in whom familiarity has bred contempt of death. "Keep her quiet. +One can never tell about these cases." + +He made an explanatory gesture in the direction of his pocket. "I'll go +down on the porch and smoke a cigar, and then if she hasn't had a +relapse, I think it will be safe for me to go home. You can telephone if +you need me. I am only a few blocks away." He went out with a brisk, +elastic step, while his hand began to feel for the end of the cigar in +his pocket. + +"She's bad now," said the old woman. "It's the medicine, but she'll come +to in a minute." She brought two wooden chairs with broken legs to the +foot of the bed. "You'd better sit down. It may be a long waiting." + +"I hope she'll know me," returned Patty. "She must have wanted to see +me, or she wouldn't have sent." Her eyes left the stricken face and +clung to the calla lily on the window-sill, as they had done that +afternoon when she came here with Gershom. The single blossom on the +lily had not faded; it was still as perfect as it had been then--only +two days ago!--and not one of the closed buds had begun to open beside +it. + +"Oh, she wanted to see you," answered the old woman, in a croaking voice +which seemed to Corinna to contain a sinister note. "As long as she was +able to keep on her feet she used to go and sit in the Square just to +watch you come out--" + +"Do you mean that she cared for me like that?" asked the girl, in a +hushed incredulous tone. "Was she really fond of me?" + +The cripple turned her glassy eyes on the fresh young face. "Well, I +don't know that she was fond," she responded bleakly, "but when you're +as bad off as that, there ain't many things that you can think of." + +A murmur fell from the lips of the dying woman, while she rolled her +head slowly from side to side, as if she were seeking ease less from +physical pain than from the thought in her mind. Her thick black hair, +matted and damp where it had been brushed back from her forehead, spread +like a veil over the pillow; and this sombre background lent a graven +majesty to her features. At the moment her head appeared as +expressionless as a mask; but in a few minutes, while they waited for +returning consciousness, a change passed slowly over the waxen face, and +the full colourless lips began to move rapidly and to form broken and +disconnected sentences. For a time they could not understand; then the +words came in a long sobbing breath. "It has been too long. It has been +too long." + +"That goes on all the time," said the old woman. "I've been up with her +for three nights, and she rambles almost every minute. But sick folks +are like that," she concluded philosophically. She had not laid down her +knitting for an instant; and standing now beside the bed, she jerked the +gray yarn automatically through her twisted fingers. The clicking of the +long wooden needles formed an accompaniment to the dry, hard sound of +her words. + +"Why doesn't some one hush that child?" asked Corinna impatiently. +Through the open window a breeze entered, bringing the thin restless +wail of the baby. + +"The mother tries, but she can't do anything. She thinks the milk went +wrong and gave it colic." + +The woman on the bed spoke suddenly in a clear voice. "Why doesn't he +come?" she demanded. Raising her heavy lids she looked straight into +Corinna's eyes, with a lucid and comprehending expression, as if she had +just awakened from sleep. + +Holding her knitting away from the bed with one hand, and bending over, +until her deformed shape made a hill against the bedpost, the old woman +screamed into the ear on the pillow, as if the hearer were either deaf +or at a great distance. Though her manner was not heartless, it was as +impassive as philosophy. + +"He is coming," she shrieked. + +"Is he bringing the child?" + +"She is already here. Can't you see her there at the foot of the bed?" + +The large black eyes, drained of any human expression, turned slowly +toward the figure of Patty. + +"But she is a little thing," said the woman doubtfully. "She is not +three years old yet. What has he done with her? He told me that he would +take care of her as if she belonged to him." + +The old hunchback, bending her inscrutable face, screamed again into the +ear on the pillow. + +"That was near sixteen years ago, Maggie," she said. "Have you +forgotten?" + +The woman closed her eyes wearily. "Yes, I had forgotten," she answered. +"Time goes so." + +But it appeared to Corinna, sitting there, with her eyes on the strip of +sky which was visible through the window, that time would never go on. A +pitiless fact was breaking into her understanding, shattering wall after +wall of incredulity, of conviction that such a thing was too terrible to +be true. She longed to get Patty away; but when she urged her in a +whisper to go downstairs, the girl only shook her head, without moving +her eyes from the haggard face on the pillow. The minutes dragged by +like hours while they waited there, in hushed suspense, for they +scarcely knew what. Outside in the backyard, the flowering ailantus tree +shed a disagreeable odour; downstairs the feeble crying, which had +stopped for a little while, was beginning again. While she remained +motionless at the foot of the bed, wild and rebellious thoughts flocked +through Corinna's mind. If she had only held back that message! If she +had only kept Patty away until it was too late! She thought of the girl +a few hours ago, flushed with happiness, dancing under the swinging +garlands of flowers, to the sound of that thunderous music. Dancing +there, with the restless pleasure of youth, while in another street, so +far away that it might have been in a distant city, in a different +world even, this woman, with the face of tragedy, lay dying with that +fretful wail in her ears. A different world it might have been, and yet +what divided her from this other woman except the blind decision of +chance, the difference between beauty and ugliness, nothing more. In +this dingy room, smelling of dust and drugs and the heavy odour of the +ailantus tree, she felt a presence more profoundly real, more poignantly +significant, than any material forms--the presence of those elemental +forces which connect time with eternity. This little room, within its +partial shadow, like the shadow of time itself, was touched with the +solemnity of a cathedral. It seemed to Corinna, with her imaginative +love of life, that a window into experience had opened sharply, a wall +had crumbled. For the first time she understood that the innumerable and +intricate divisions of human fate are woven into a single tremendous +design. + +While they waited there in silence the hours dragged on like years. At +last the woman appeared to sleep, and when she opened her eyes again, +her gaze had become clear and lucid. + +"Have you sent for them?" she asked. + +"Yes, I sent for them," answered the old woman, lowering her voice to a +natural pitch. "The girl is here." + +"Patty? Where is she?" + +Drawing her hand from Corinna's clasp, Patty moved slowly to the head of +the bed, and standing there beside the deformed old woman, she looked +down on the upturned face. + +"I came as I promised. Can I help you?" she asked; and her voice was so +quiet, so repressed, that Corinna looked at her anxiously. How much had +the girl understood? And, if she understood, what difference would it +make in her life--and in Stephen's life? + +"I couldn't tell you the other day because of Julius," said the woman, +in a strangled tone. "I couldn't say things before Julius." Then, +glancing toward the door, she asked breathlessly, "Didn't Gideon Vetch +come with you?" + +"Father?" responded Patty, wonderingly. "Do you want Father to come?" + +A smile crossed the woman's face, and she made a movement as if she +wanted to raise her head. "Do you call him Father?" she returned in a +pleased voice. + +At the question, Corinna sprang up and made an impulsive step forward. +"Oh, don't!" she cried out pleadingly. "Don't tell her!" + +"But he is my father," Patty's tone was stern and accusing. "He is my +father." + +The smile was still on the woman's face; but while Corinna watched it, +she realized that it was unlike any smile she had ever seen before in +her life--a smile of satisfaction that was at the same time one of +relinquishment. + +"They thought I was married to him," she said slowly. "Julius thought, +or pretended to think, that he could harm him by making me swear that I +was married to him. They gave me drugs. I would have done anything for +drugs--and I did that! But the old woman there knows better. She's got a +paper. I made her keep it--about Patty--" + +"Don't!" cried Corinna again in a sharper tone. "Oh, can't you see that +you must not tell her!" + +For the first time the woman turned her eyes away from the girl. "It is +because of Gideon Vetch," she answered slowly. "I may get well again, +and then I'll be sorry." + +"But he would rather you wouldn't." Corinna's voice was full of pain. +"You know--you must know, if you know him at all, that he would rather +you spared her--" + +"Know him?" repeated the woman, and she laughed with a dry, rattling +sound. "I don't know him. I never saw him but once in my life." + +"You never saw him but once." The words came so slowly from Patty's lips +that she seemed to choke over them. "But you said that you knew my +mother?" + +Again the woman made that dry, rattling sound in her chest. "Your mother +never saw him but once," she answered grimly. "She never saw him but +once, and that was for a quarter of an hour on the night they were +taking her to prison. I would never have told but for Julius," she +added. "I would never have told if they hadn't tried to make out that I +knew him, and that he was really your father. It would ruin him, they +said, and that was what they wanted. But when they bring it out, with +the paper they got me to sign, I want you to know that it is a lie--that +I did it because I'd have died if I hadn't got hold of the drugs--" + +"But he is my father," repeated Patty quite steadily--so steadily that +her voice was without colour or feeling. + +The only reply that came was a gasping sound, which grew louder and +louder, with the woman's struggle for breath, until it seemed to fill +the room and the night outside and even the desolate sky. As she lay +back, with the arm of the old cripple under her head and her streaming +hair, the spasm passed like a stain over her face, changing its waxen +pallor to the colour of ashes, while a dull purplish shadow encircled +her mouth. For a few minutes, so violent was the struggle for air, it +appeared to Corinna that nothing except death could ever quiet that +agonized gasping; but while she waited for the end, the sound became +gradually fainter, and the woman spoke quite plainly, though with an +effort that racked not only her strangled chest, but her entire body. +Each syllable came so slowly, and now and then so faintly, that there +were moments when it seemed that the breath in that tormented body would +not last until the words had been spoken. + +"You were going on three years old when he first saw you. They were +taking me away to prison--that's over now, and it don't matter--but I +hadn't any chance--" The panting began again; but by force of will, the +woman controlled it after a minute, and went on, as if she were +measuring her breath inch by inch, almost as if it were a material +substance which she was holding in reserve for the end. "Your father +died the first year I married him, and things went from bad to +worse--there's no use going over that, no use--They were taking me to +prison from the circus, and I had you in my arms, when Gideon Vetch came +by and saw me--" Again there was a pause and a desperate battle for air; +and again, after it was over, she went on in that strangled whisper, +while her eyes, like the eyes of a drowning animal, clung neither to +Patty nor Corinna, but to the austere face of the old hunchback. "'What +am I to do with the child?' I asked, and he stepped right out of the +circus crowd, and answered 'Give me the child. I like children'--" An +inarticulate moan followed, and then she repeated clearly and slowly. +"Just like that--nothing more--'Give me the child. I like children.' +That was the first time I ever saw him. He had come to see some of the +people in the circus, and I've never seen him since then except in the +Square. The trial went against me, but that's all over. Oh, I'm tired +now. It hurts me. I can't talk--" + +She broke into terrible coughing; and the old woman, dropping her +knitting for the first time since they had entered the room, seized a +towel from a chair by the bed. "Talking was too much for her," she said. +"I thought she'd pull through. She was so much better--but talking was +too much." + +"She is so ill that she doesn't know what she is saying," murmured +Corinna in the girl's ear. "She is out of her mind." + +"No, she isn't out of her mind," replied Patty quietly. "She isn't out +of her mind." In her ball gown of green and silver, like the colours of +sunlit foam, with a wreath of artificial leaves in her hair, her +loveliness was unearthly. "It is every bit true. I know it," she +reiterated. + +"She's bleeding again," muttered the old woman. "You'd better find the +doctor. I ain't used to stopping hemorrhages." Then, as Corinna went out +of the room, she added querulously to Patty: "She didn't have no +business trying to talk; but she would do it. She said she'd do it if it +killed her--and I reckon she don't mind much if it does--She'd have +killed herself sooner than this if I'd let her alone." From the street +below there came the sound of a motor horn; then the noise of a car +running against the curbstone; and then the opening and shutting of a +door, followed by rapid footsteps on the stairs. + +"That's the doctor now, I reckon," remarked the old woman; but the words +had scarcely left her lips when the door opened, and Corinna came back +into the room with Gideon Vetch. + +"Where is Patty?" he asked anxiously. "She oughtn't to be here." + +"Yes, I ought to be here," answered Patty. As she turned toward Gideon +Vetch, she swayed as if she were going to fall, and he caught her in his +arms. "Go home, daughter," he said almost sternly. "You oughtn't to be +here. Mrs. Page, can't you make her go home?" + +"I have tried," responded Corinna; then a moan from the bed reached her, +and she turned toward the woman who lay there. To die like that with +nobody caring, with nobody even observing it! Exhausted by the loss of +blood, the woman had fallen back into unconsciousness, and the towel the +old cripple held to her lips was stained scarlet. + +"The doctor had gone to bed. He will come as soon as he gets dressed," +said Corinna. "He warned us to keep her quiet." + +"If he don't hurry, she'll be gone before he gets here," replied the old +woman, looking round over her twisted shoulder. + +"Oh, Father, Father!" cried Patty, flinging her arms about his neck; and +then over again like a frightened child, "Father, Father!" + +He patted her head with a large consoling hand. "There, there, +daughter," he returned gently. "A little thing like that won't come +between you and me." + +With his arm still about her, he drew her slowly to the bedside, and +stood looking down on the dying woman and the old cripple, who hovered +over her with the stained towel in her hand. + +"I don't even know her name," he said, and immediately afterward, "She +must have had a hell of a life!" Though there was a wholesome pity in +his voice, it was without the weakness of sentimentality. He had done +what he could, and he was not the kind to worry over events which he +could not change. For a few minutes he stood there in silence; then, +because it was impossible for his energetic nature to remain inactive in +an emergency, he exclaimed suddenly, "The doctor ought to be here!" and +turning away from the bed, went rapidly across the room and through the +half open door into the hall. + +Outside the darkness was dissolving in a drab light which crept slowly +up above the roofs of the houses; and while they waited this light +filled the yard and the room and the passage beyond the door which +Gideon Vetch had not closed. Far away, through the heavy boughs of the +ailantus tree, day was breaking in a glimmer of purple-few birds were +twittering among the leaves. Along the high brick wall a starved gray +cat was stealing like a shadow. Drawing her evening wrap closer about +her bare shoulders, Corinna realized that it was already day in the +street. + +"She's gone," said the old hunchback, in a crooning whisper. Her twisted +hand was on the arm of the dead woman, which stretched as pallid and +motionless as an arm of wax over the figured quilt. "She's gone, and she +never knew that he had come." With a gesture that appeared as natural as +the dropping of a leaf, she pressed down the eyelids over the +expressionless eyes. "Well, that's the way life is, I reckon," she +remarked, as an epitaph over the obscure destiny of Mrs. Green. + +"Yes, that's the way life is," repeated Corinna under her breath. +Already the old cripple had started about her inevitable ministrations: +but when Corinna tried to make Patty move away from the bedside, the +girl shook her head in a stubborn refusal. + +"I am trying to believe it," she said. "I am trying to believe it, and I +can't." Then she looked at them calmly and steadily. "I want to think it +out by myself," she added. "Would you mind leaving me alone in here for +just a few minutes?" + +Though there was no grief in her voice--how could there be any grief, +Corinna asked herself?--there was an accent of profound surprise and +incredulity, as of one who has looked for the first time on death. +Standing there in her spring-like dress beside the dead woman who had +been her mother, Corinna felt intuitively that Patty had left her +girlhood behind her. The child had lived in one night through an inner +crisis, through a period of spiritual growth, which could not be +measured by years. Whatever she became in the future, she would never be +again the Patty Vetch that Corinna and Stephen had known. + +Yes, she had a right to be alone. Beckoning to the old woman to follow +her, Corinna went out softly, closing the door after her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE DAWN + + +Outside in the narrow passage, smelling of dust and yesterday's cooking, +the pallid light filtered in through the closed window; and it seemed to +Corinna that this light pervaded her own thoughts until the images in +her mind moved in a procession of stark outlines against a colourless +horizon. In this unreal world, which she knew was merely a distorted +impression of the external world about her, she saw the figure of the +dead woman, still and straight as the effigy of a saint, the twisted +shape of the old hunchback, and after these the shadow of the starved +cat stealing along the top of the high brick wall. What was the meaning +in these things? Where was the beauty? What inscrutable purpose, what +sardonic humour, joined together beauty and ugliness, harmony and +discord, her own golden heritage with the drab destinies of that dead +woman and this work-worn cripple? + +"I can't stand it any longer," she thought. "I must breathe the open +air, or I shall die." + +Then, just as she was about to hurry toward the stairs, she checked +herself and stood still because she realized that the old woman had +followed her and was droning into her ear. + +"Yes, ma'am, that's the way life is," the impersonal voice was +muttering, "but it ain't the only way that it is, I reckon. I sees so +many sick and dying folks that you'd think I was obliged to look at +things unnatural-like. But I don't, not me, ma'am. It ain't all that +way, with nothing but waiting and wanting, and then disappointment. Even +Maggie had her good times somewhere in the past. You can't expect to be +always dressed in spangles and riding bareback, that's what I used to +say to her. You've got to take your share of bad times, same as the rest +of us. And look at me now. I've done sick nursing for more'n fifty +years--as far back as I like to look--but it ain't all been sick +nursing. There's been a deal in it besides. + +"Naw'm, I've got a lot to be thankful for when I begin to take stock." +Her wrinkled face caught the first gleam of sunlight that fell through +the unwashed window panes. "I've done sick nursing ever since I was a +child almost; but I've managed mighty well all things considering, and +I've saved up enough to keep me out of the poor house when I get too old +to go on. When I give up I won't have to depend on charity, and the city +won't have to bury me either when I'm dead. And I've got a heap of +satisfaction out of my red geraniums too. I don't reckon you ever saw +finer blooms--not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the +complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know it." + +Her old eyes shone; her sunken mouth was trembling, not with self-pity, +Corinna realized, with a pang that was strangely like terror, but with +the courage of living. The pathos of it appeared intolerable for a +moment; and gathering her cloak about her, Corinna felt that she must +cover her eyes and fly before she broke out into hysterical screaming. +Then the terror passed; and she saw, in a single piercing flash of +insight, that what she had mistaken for ugliness was simply an +impalpable manifestation of beauty. Beauty! Why it was everywhere! It +was with her now in this squalid house, in the presence of this crippled +old woman, unmoved by death, inured to poverty, screwing, grinding, +pinching, like flint to the crying baby, and yet cherishing the blooms +of her red geranium, her passionate horror of the poor house, and her +dream of six feet of free earth not paid for by charity at the end. Yes, +that was the way of life. Blind as a mole to the universe, and yet +visited by flashes of unearthly light. + +"Thank you," said Corinna hurriedly. "I must go down. I must get a +breath of air, but I will come back in a little while." Then she started +at a run down the stairs, while the old woman gazed after her, as if the +flying figure, in the cloak of peacock-blue satin and white fur, was +that of a demented creature. "Air!" she repeated, with scornful +independence. "Air!", and turning away in disgust, she limped painfully +back to wait outside of the closed door. Here, when she had seated +herself in a sagging chair, she lifted her bleak eyes to the +smoke-stained ceiling, and repeated for the third time in a tone of +profound contempt: "Air!" + +At the foot of the stairs, Corinna ran against Gideon Vetch. "She died +soon after you went out," she said, "but Patty is still there." + +"I'll go up to her," he answered; and then as he placed his foot on the +bottom step, he looked back at her, and added, "I tried to spare her +this." + +She assented almost mechanically. Fatigue had swept over her from head +to foot like some sinister drug and she felt incapable of giving out +anything, even sympathy, even the appearance of compassion. "Then it is +all true?" she asked. "Patty is not your child?" + +A shadow crossed his face, but he did not hesitate in his reply. "I +never had a child. I was never married." + +"You took her like that--because the mother was going to prison?" + +He nodded. "She was a child. What difference did it make whether she was +mine or not? She was the nicest little thing you ever saw. She is +still." + +"Yes, she is still. But you never knew what became of the mother?" + +"I didn't know her real name. I didn't want to. The circus people called +her Queenie, that was all I knew. She'd stuck a knife into a man in a +jealous rage, and he happened to die. They said the trial would be +obliged to go against her. I was leaving California that night, and I +brought the child with me. I have never been back--" He spread out his +broad hand with a gesture that was strangely human. "You would have done +it in my place?" + +She shook her head. "No, I should have wanted to, but I couldn't. I am +not big enough for that." + +He was already ascending the stairs, but at her words, he turned and +smiled down on her. "It was nothing to make a fuss about," he said. +"Anybody would have done it." + +Then he mounted the stairs lightly for his great height, taking two +steps at a time, while she passed out on the porch where Stephen was +waiting for her. As he rose wearily from the wicker rocking chair beside +the empty perambulator, she felt as if he were a stranger. In that one +night she seemed to have put the whole universe between her and the old +order that he represented. + +"I kept my car waiting for you," he began. "It was better to let your +man go home." + +She smiled at him in the pale light, and he broke out nervously: "You +look as if you would drop. What have they done to you?" Though she wore +the cloak of peacock-blue over her evening gown, the pointed train wound +on the floor behind her, and the fan of white ostrich plumes, which she +had forgotten to leave in the car, was still in her hand. Her face was +wan and drawn; there were violet circles under her eyes; and she looked +as if she had grown ten years older since the evening before. It was the +outward impression of the night, he knew. In this house one passed back +again into the power of time; youth could not be prolonged here for a +single night. + +"I don't know what it means," he said, with a mixture of exasperation +and curiosity. "I wish you would tell me what it means." + +"I feel," she answered, in an expressionless tone, as if the +insensibility of her nerves had passed into her voice, "that I have +faced life for the first time." + +"Tell me what it means," he reiterated impatiently. + +Dropping into the chair from which he had risen, she drew her train +aside while the doctor passed them hurriedly, with a muttered apology, +and went into the house. Then, leaning forward, with the fan clasped in +her hands, and her eyes on the straight deserted street, which ended +abruptly on the brow of a hill, she repeated word for word all that the +dying woman had said. The sun had not yet risen, but a faint opalescent +glow suffused the sky in the east, and flushed with a delicate colour +the round cobblestones in the street and the herring-bone pattern of the +pavement, where blades of grass sprouted among the bricks. Though she +did not look up at Stephen's face, she was aware while she talked of +some subtle emanation of thought outside of herself, as if the struggle +in his mind had overflowed mechanical processes and physical boundaries, +and was escaping into the empty street and the city beyond. And this +silent struggle, so charged with intensity that it produced the effect +of a cry, became for her merely a part, a single voice, in that greater +struggle for victory over circumstances which went on ceaselessly day +and night in the surrounding houses. Everywhere about her there was the +vague groping toward some idea of freedom, toward independence of +spirit; everywhere there was this perpetual striving toward a universe +that was larger. The dwellers in this crowded house, with their vision +of space and sunlight; the village with its vision of a city; the city +with its vision of a country; the country with its vision of a republic +of the world--all these universal struggles were condensed now into the +little space of a man's consciousness. To Corinna, in whose veins flowed +the blood of Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor, it seemed that the greater +victory must lie with those who charged from out the cover of philosophy +into the mystery of the unknown. If she had been in Stephen's place, she +knew that she should have taken the risk, that she should have flung +herself into the enterprise of life as into a voyage of discovery. Yet, +at the moment, appreciating all that it meant to him, she asked herself +if she had been wise to let him see the thought in her mind. For an +instant, after telling him, she hesitated, and in this instant Stephen +spoke. + +"So he isn't her father?" + +"No, he isn't her father. He had never seen her mother; he did not even +know her name, for he met the woman by accident when she was arrested in +the circus. Patty was over two years old then--about two and a half, I +think. Gideon Vetch took the child because of an impulse--a very human +impulse of pity--but he knew nothing of her parentage. He knows nothing +now, not even her real name. It is much worse than we ever imagined. Try +to understand it. Try to take it in clearly before you act rashly. There +is still time to weigh things--to stop and reflect. Nothing whatever is +known of Patty's birth, except that her father, so the woman said, died +in the first year of their marriage, before the child was born, and less +than two years later the mother was sent to prison for killing another +man--" + +She broke off hurriedly, wiping her lips as if the mere recital of the +sordid facts had stained them with blood. It all sounded so horrible as +she repeated it--so incredibly evil! + +"Oh, my dear boy, try to take it in however much it may hurt you," she +pleaded, turning a coward not on her own account, not even on his, but +for the sake of something deeper and more sacred which belonged to them +both and to the tradition for which they stood. A passionate longing +seized her now to protect Stephen from the risk that she had urged him +to take. + +"I understand. It is terrible for her," he answered. + +"I hate you to see Patty. Poor child, she looks seared." Then a possible +way occurred to her, even though she hated herself while she suggested +it. "I am not sure that it is wise for you to wait. There are so many +things you must think of. There is first of all your family--" + +He laughed shortly. "It is late in the day to remember that." + +"I know." A look of compunction crossed her face. "Forgive me." + +"Of course I think of them," he said presently. "Poor Dad. He is the +best of us all, I believe." Though there was an expression of pain in +his eyes, she noticed that the unnatural lethargy, the nervous +irritation, had disappeared. He looked as if a load had dropped from his +shoulders. + +As with many women who have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a +man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was +almost a shock to her. She had believed that her knowledge of him was +perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her +analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental +misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative +and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic +in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk +while he accepts the extraordinary one. She had forgotten that men of +Stephen's nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same +time capable of large ones; that, though they may not endure petty +discomforts with fortitude, they are able, in moments of vivid +experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid nobility. For +the old order was not merely the outward form of the conservative +principle, it was also the fruit of heroic tradition. + +"You must think it over, Stephen," she pleaded. "Go away now, and try +to realize all that it will mean to you." + +"Thinking doesn't get me anywhere," he replied. His face was pale and +thoughtful; and Corinna knew, while she watched him, that he had found +freedom at last; that he had come into his manhood. "I've made my +choice, and I'll stand by it to-day even if I regret it to-morrow. +You've got to take chances; to leave the safe road and strike out into +open country. That's living. Otherwise you might as well be dead. I +can't just cling like moss to institutions that other people have made; +to the things that have always been. I've got to take chances--and I'm +enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me--" + +The part of Corinna's nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the +part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in +sympathy with his resolve. Though she gazed down the straight deserted +street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the +cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible +world. + +"I understand, dear," she answered softly. "I can't tell whether or not +it is the safe way; but I know it is the gallant way." + +"It is the only way," he responded steadily. "If I am ever to make +anything of my life, this is the test. I see that I've got to meet it. I +shall probably have to meet it every day of my life--but, by Jove, I'll +meet it! Patty isn't just Patty to me. She is strength and courage. She +is the risk of the future. I suppose she is the pioneer in my blood, or +my mind. I can't help what she came from, nor can she. I've got to take +that as I take everything else, with the belief that it is worth all the +cost. The thing I feel now is that she has given me back myself. She has +given me a free outlook on life--" + +He stopped abruptly, for there was the sound of footsteps in the house, +and after a minute or two, Patty and Gideon Vetch came out on the porch. +The girl looked, except for the red of her mouth, as if the blood had +been drawn from her veins, and her eyes were like dark pansies. All the +light had faded from them, changing even their colour. + +"Patty," said Stephen; and he made a step toward her, with his hands +outstretched as if he would gather her to him. Then he stopped and fell +back, for the girl was shrinking away from him with a look of fear. + +"I can't talk now," she answered, smiling with hard lips. "I am tired. I +can't talk now." Running ahead she went down the steps, through the +gate, and into Vetch's car which was standing beside the curbstone. + +"She's worn out," explained Vetch. "I'll take her home, and you'd better +try to get some sleep, Mrs. Page. You look as tired as Patty." + +"Let me go with you," returned Corinna. "Your car is closed, and Patty +and I are both bareheaded." For a moment she turned back to put her hand +on Stephen's arm. "I must sleep," she said. "I shan't go to the shop +to-day." + +Vetch was waiting at the door of the car, and when she stumbled over her +train, she fell slightly against him. "How exhausted you are," he +observed gently, "and what a rock you are to lean on!" + +She looked at him with a smile. "Those are the very words I've used +about you." + +He laughed and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his +unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on +them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps +you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference +between her and me. Won't you try to see that, daughter?" + +"Oh, Father!" exclaimed Patty with a sob, "it makes all the difference +in the world!" + +"There it is," said Vetch with anxious weariness. "That is all I can get +out of her." + +"She is so tired," replied Corinna. "Let her rest." Though her gaze was +on the street, she saw still the dusk beyond the ailantus tree and the +old woman, with the crooked back, pressing down the eyelids over those +staring eyes. + +They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached +the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to +Corinna. "I can never tell you," she began, "I can never tell +you--" Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the +staircase beyond the library. + +"Let her rest," said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch. +"Leave her to herself. She needs sleep, but she is very young--and for +youth there is no despair that does not pass." + +"You are as tired as she is," he returned. + +She nodded. "I am going home to sleep, but the look of that child +worries me." + +"I kept it from her for sixteen years," he said slowly, "and she found +out by an accident." + +"I never suspected, or I might have prevented it." + +"No, I trusted too much to chance. I have always trusted to chance." + +"I think," she said, "that you have trusted most to your good +instincts." + +He smiled, and she saw that he was deeply touched. "Well, I'm trusting +to them now," he responded. "They have led me between two extremes, and +it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets. I've got them all +against me, but it isn't over yet, by Jove! It is a long road that has +no turning--" + +They had descended the steps together, and walking a little way beyond +the drive, they stood in the bright green grass looking up at the clear +gold of the sunrise. + +"There is a meeting to-night," she said. + +"Of the strikers--yes, I may win them. I can generally win people if +they let me talk--but the trouble goes deeper than that. It isn't that I +can't carry them with me for an hour. It is simply that I can't make any +of them see where we are going. It is a question not of loyalty, but of +understanding. They can't understand anything except what they want." + +"Whether you win or not," she answered, "I am glad that at last I am on +your side." + +His face lighted. "On my side? Even if it means failure?" + +As she looked up at him the sunrise was in her face. The sky was turning +slowly to flame-colour, and each dark pointed leaf of the magnolia tree +stood out illuminated against a background of fire. "It may be failure, +but it is magnificent," she said. + +He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood +there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice +before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal +life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being, +something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was +responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. All that +she had missed in life--completeness, perfection--seemed to shine about +her for an instant before it passed on into the sunlight. A fancy, +nothing more! A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth! For if she +had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have +said, "Give me what I have never had. Make me what I have never been." +But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not +alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in +flight. + +"I thank you," he answered in a low voice. "I shall remember that." + +The moment had passed, and she held out her hand with a smile. "I shall +come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night," she +said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in +silence. + +A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing +in the bright grass with the sunrise above his head. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH + + +That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor's +house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps. + +"I waited for you," he said; and then as the car moved away, he took her +hand and turned back to the porch. + +"I couldn't come before," explained Corinna. "I had a headache all day, +and it kept me in bed. Have you seen Patty?" + +"I have seen her, but that is all. I can do nothing with her." + +"But she cares for you." + +"She doesn't deny it. That's not the trouble. Something about Vetch +stands in the way. I can't make out what she means." + +"Let me talk to her," responded Corinna reassuringly. "Is the Governor +here?" + +"No, he has gone to the strikers' meeting. They must reach some decision +to-night it appears. I have talked with him, and I believe he will stand +firm whatever happens. It means, I think, that his career is over." + +"It is too late for him to win over the conservative forces?" + +"It was always too late. In a battle of extremes the most dangerous +position is in the centre." + +"He told me something like that once. The trouble with him is that he +hasn't a point of view, but a vision. He sees the whole, and politics is +only a little part of it." + +"Yes, he sees a human fight, while they are trying to make a political +squabble. He may win them over to-night, but this is only the beginning. +The real fight is against individual self-interest." He laughed in an +undertone. "I remember he told me once that the only trouble with +Christianity was the Christians. 'You can't have Christianity', he said, +'until Christians are different'. That's just as true, of course, of +politics. The only trouble with politics is the politicians." + +"Well, it's a muddle," she responded impatiently. "However you look at +it. Come back in an hour or two, and I may be able to help you." Her +cheerful smile shone on him for an instant; then she entered the house +and closed the door after her. + +In one of the worn leather chairs in the library, Patty was sitting +perfectly still, with her eyes fixed on the orderly row of papers on the +Governor's desk. She wore a white dress with a black ribbon at her +waist, and in the dim light, with her pale face and her cloudy hair, she +had a ghostly look as if she would turn to mist at a touch. When Corinna +entered, she rose and held out her hands. "You are so good," she said. +"I never dreamed that any body could be so good and so beautiful too!" + +"My dear," began Corinna brightly, and while she spoke she drew the girl +to the leather-covered couch by the window, and sat down still holding +the cold hands in her warm ones. "So you are going to marry Stephen." + +"I can't," replied Patty, and she turned her face slightly away as if +she shrank from meeting Corinna's eyes. "I can't after what I know. I +can't do it because of Father." + +"Because of your father?" repeated Corinna. "But surely your father +wishes you to be happy?" + +"Oh, I know he does. It isn't that. But this will all come out. That is +what Julius Gershom meant when he threatened. They are trying to do him +some harm--Father, I mean--" + +"I understand that, but still how in the world--" + +Before she could finish her sentence Patty interrupted in an hysterical +voice--the voice of youth that is always dramatic: "Nobody will ever +mean as much to me as Father does," she cried. "I know that now. I've +known it ever since I found out that he began it just out of +kindness--that I had no claim on him of any kind--" + +"That is natural, dear, but still I don't understand." + +Rising from the couch, Patty moved to a chair in front of Corinna, and +sinking into it, began nervously plaiting and unplaiting a fold of her +white dress. "I can do anything with Julius Gershom if I am nice to +him," she murmured. "If he stands by Father most of the others will +also." + +With a gasp Corinna sat up very straight and tried to see Patty's eyes +in the obscurity. What sordid horror was the child facing now? What +unspeakable degradation? "You can't think of marrying Gershom, Patty!" +she exclaimed, with a gesture of loathing. "You must be out of your mind +even to dream of it!" + +"I can make him do anything I want if I will promise to marry him," she +answered in a steady voice, though a shiver of aversion passed over her. + +Corinna drew her breath sharply, restraining at the same time an impulse +to laugh. Oh, the mock heroics of youth! Of youth with its fantastic +heroism and its dauntless inexperience! "If you only knew," she breathed +indignantly, "if you only knew what marriage means!" + +Patty turned and gave her a long look. "I could do more than that for +Father," she answered. + +So this was the other side of Gideon Vetch--of that man of ignoble +circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand +him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his +power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was +inspired by an exalted illusion--the illusion of human perfectibility. +In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the +dissolution and readjustment of ideals; in the modern conflict between +the spirit that accepts and the spirit that rejects; in this age of +destiny--was not an unconquerable optimism, an invincible belief in +life, the one secure hope for the future? It is the human touch that +creates hope, she thought; and the power of Gideon Vetch was revealed to +her as simply the human touch magnified into a force. + +She became aware after a minute that Patty was speaking. "I can never +tell you--I can never tell any one what he used to be to me when I was a +little girl, and he was very poor. Sometimes--for a long time--I +couldn't have a nurse, and he would dress and undress me, and leave me +with the neighbours when he went away to work. I can see him now heating +milk for me over an old oil lamp. Once when I was ill he sat up night +after night with me. Oh, I don't mean that he was perfect, but that he +was kind--always. I know the quarrels he had--that he has still with the +people who won't go his way. The one thing he can't forgive in people is +that they never forget themselves, that they never think of anything +except what they want. That angers him, and he flies out. I know that. +But there's no use trying I can't make anybody, I can't make even you, +know all that he did for me--" The words ended in tears; and she sat +there, lost in memory, while the dim light seemed to absorb her white +dress and her pale features and the small hand that lay on the fringe of +her black sash. + +"My dear, my dear," murmured Corinna because she could think of no words +that sounded less ineffectual. + +There was a ring at the doorbell while she spoke and after a pause +which appeared to her interminable, she heard the shuffling tread of old +Abijah, and then the clear tone of Stephen's voice, followed immediately +by another speaker who sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not +recall now where she had listened to him before. It was not Julius +Gershom, she knew, though it might be some man that she had heard at a +meeting. + +"Let me speak to Mrs. Page first," said Stephen. "Ask her if she will +come into the drawing-room." + +For an instant Corinna hung back, with the chill of dread at her heart; +and in that instant Patty flew past her like a startled spirit, while +the ends of her black sash streamed behind her. With the penetrating +insight of love the girl had surmised, had seen, had understood, before +a word of explanation had reached her, before even the door had swung +open, and she had met the blanched faces of the men in the hall. "It is +Father," she said quietly. "They have hurt him. Oh, I knew all the time +that they were going to hurt him!" + +Corinna, standing close at her side without touching her, for some +intuition told her that the girl did not wish any support, was aware of +the faces of these men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights, +out of the shadows in the hall--first Stephen's face, with its shocked +compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless; +then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of +its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to +her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an +expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but of the +stony fortitude of the ages. Beyond this there was the open door and the +glamour of the spring night, and in the night another group with its +dark burden. + +"I met them just outside, and they told me," said Stephen. "Gershom +thinks it was an accident, but we shall never know probably. Two +opposing sides were fighting it out. A question had come up--nobody can +remember what it was--nothing important, I think--but two men came to +blows and he got in between them--he stood in the way--and somebody shot +him--" + +He was talking, Corinna realized, in an effort to hold Patty's gaze, to +divert her eyes by the force of his look from the burden which the men +were bringing slowly up the steps outside and into the hall. + +"Nobody meant to harm him," said Gershom suddenly, speaking from the +edge of the group. "The pistol went off by mistake. He got in the way +before any one saw him--" But from his look, Corinna knew that it was +not an accident, that they had shot him because he came between them and +the thing that they wanted. + +The slow steps crossed the hall into the library, and above the measured +beat and pause of the sound, Corinna heard the voice of Vetch as +distinctly as if he were standing there before her in the centre of the +group. "The loneliest man on earth is the one who stands between two +extremes." Yes, at the end as well as at the beginning, he had stood +between two extremes! Then Patty's cry of anguish floated to her from +the room across the hall into which they had taken him. "Father! +Father!" Only that one word over and over again. "Father! Father!" Only +that one word uttered steadily and softly in a tone of imploring +helplessness like the wail of a frightened child. It never ceased, this +piteous sobbing, until at last the doctor went out, and left Corinna +alone with the girl and Gideon Vetch. Then Patty fell on her knees +beside the couch where he lay, and a silence that was almost suffocating +closed over the room. + +The house had become very still. While Corinna waited there at Patty's +side, the only noise came from the restless movement of the city, which +sounded far off and vaguely ominous, like the disturbance in a nightmare +from which one has just awakened. She had turned off the unshaded +electric light; and for a few minutes Patty knelt alone in a merciful +dimness, which left her white dress and the composed features of the +dead man the only luminous spots in the room. It was as if these two +pallid spaces were living things in the midst of inanimate darkness. For +a moment only this impression lasted, for overcome by the pathos of it, +Corinna crossed the room with noiseless footsteps and lighted the wax +candles on the mantelpiece. + +Death had come so suddenly that, lying there in the trembling light of +the candles, Vetch appeared to be merely resting a moment in his +energetic career. His rugged features still wore their look of exuberant +vitality, of triumphant faith. There was about him even in death the +radiance of his indestructible illusion. As Corinna looked down on him, +it seemed incredible to her that he should not stretch himself in a +moment, and rise and go out again into the struggle of living. It seemed +incredible that his work should be finished for ever when he was still +so unspent, so full of tireless activity. Was death always like this--a +victory of material and mechanical forces? An accident, an automatic +gesture, and the complex power which stood for the soul of Gideon Vetch +was dissolved--or released. The crumbling of a rock, the falling of a +leaf! Her eyes left the face of the dead man, left Patty's bowed head at +her side, and travelled beyond the open window into the glamour and +mystery of the night, and beyond the night into the sky-- + +There was a knock at the door, and she turned away and went out to join +the men in the hall. What had it meant to them, she wondered. How much +had they understood? How much had they ever understood of that symbol of +a changing world which they had loved and hated under the name of Gideon +Vetch? + +"Give her a few minutes more," she said. "Leave her alone with him." + +There were four men waiting--her father, Stephen, old Darrow, and +Julius Gershom--and these four, she felt, were the men who had known +Vetch best, and who, with the exception of Darrow, had perhaps +understood least what he meant. No one had understood him, least of all, +she saw now, had she herself understood him-- + +Gershom spoke first. "He was the biggest man we've ever had," he said, +"and we never doubted it--" Yet he had never for an instant, Corinna +knew, seen Vetch as he really was, or recognized the end for which he +was fighting. + +"He was the only one who could have held us together," sighed old +Darrow, and his face looked as if a searing iron had passed over it. +"This will put us back at least fifty years--" + +The Judge was gazing through the open door out into the night, where +lamps shone in the Square and a luminous cloud hung over the city, that +city which was outgrowing its youth, outgrowing the barriers of +tradition, outgrowing alike the forces of reaction and the forces of +progress. + +"A few months," he said slowly, "and nothing accomplished that one can +point out and say that we owe directly to him. Yet I doubt if a single +one of us will ever forget him. I doubt if a single one of us will ever +be exactly, in every little way, just what we should have been if we had +never known Vetch, or spoken to him. The merest ripple of change, +perhaps, but it counts--it counts because in touching him we touched a +humanity that is as rare as genius itself." Yet they had killed him, +Corinna knew, because they could not understand him! + +For a moment there was silence, and then Stephen spoke in a whisper: +"There are some things that you can't see until you stand far enough +away from them. I doubt if any of us really saw him until to-night. +To-morrow he will begin to live." As he lifted his eyes to Corinna's +face, she saw in them a fidelity that pledged itself to the future. + +"Go to Patty," she whispered. "Go to her and repeat what you have said +to us." Putting her hand on his arm, she led him into the room where the +girl was kneeling, and then drew back while he went quickly forward. +Watching from the threshold, she saw Patty look up uncertainly, and rise +slowly from the floor where she had been kneeling; she saw Stephen put +out his arms with a movement of love and pity; and she saw the girl +hesitate for an instant, and then turn to his clasp as a hurt child +turns for comfort. That was youth, that was the future, thought Corinna, +and closing the door softly, she left them together. Yes, youth was for +the future, and for herself, _she_ realized with a pang, were the things +that she had never had in the past. Only the things that she had never +had were really hers! Only the unfulfilled, she saw in that moment of +illuminating insight, is the permanent. + +Passing the group in the hall, she went out on the porch, and looked +with swimming eyes over the fountain into the Square. Beyond the white +streams of electricity and the black patterns of the shadows, she saw +the sharp outlines of the city, and beyond that the immense blue field +of the sky sown thickly with stars. Life was there--life that embraced +success and failure, illusion and disillusion, birth and death. In the +morning she would go back to it--she would begin again--in the morning +she would will herself to pick up the threads of middle age as lightly +as Stephen and Patty would pick up the threads of youth. To-morrow she +would start living again--but to-night for a few hours she would rest +from life; she would look back now, as she had looked back that morning, +to where a man was standing in the bright grass with the sunrise above +his head. + + + + + +BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW + + LIFE AND GABRIELLA + + ONE MAN IN HIS TIME + + PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET + + THE ANCIENT LAW + + THE BATTLE-GROUND + + THE BUILDERS + + THE DELIVERANCE + + THE DESCENDANT + + THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS + + THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH + + THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN + + THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE + + THE WHEEL OF LIFE + + VIRGINIA + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME*** + + +******* This file should be named 15603-8.txt or 15603-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/6/0/15603 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: One Man in His Time</p> +<p>Author: Ellen Glasgow</p> +<p>Release Date: April 11, 2005 [eBook #15603]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>ONE MAN IN HIS TIME</h1> + +<h4>by</h4> + +<h2>ELLEN GLASGOW</h2> + +<h3>1922</h3> +<p> </p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>"One man in his time plays many parts."</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><i>NOTE</i></p> + +<p><i>No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past or +present.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>CONTENTS</p> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> + <a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I. THE SHADOW</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II. GIDEON VETCH</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III. CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV. THE TRIBAL INSTINCT</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V. MARGARET</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI. MAGIC</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII. CORINNA GOES TO WAR</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD AND PATTY</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX. SEPTEMBER ROSES</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X. PATTY AND CORINNA</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI. THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII. A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII. CORINNA WONDERS</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV. A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV. CORINNA OBSERVES</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI. THE FEAR OF LIFE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII. MRS. GREEN</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII. MYSTIFICATION</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX. THE SIXTH SENSE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX. CORINNA FACES LIFE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI. DANCE MUSIC</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII. THE NIGHT</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII"><b>CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN</b></a><br /> + <a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV"><b>CHAPTER XXIV. THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH</b></a><br /> + </p> + +<p> + <a href="#BOOKS_BY_ELLEN_GLASGOW"><b>BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW</b></a><br /> + </p> + +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>ONE MAN IN HIS TIME</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE SHADOW</h3> + + +<p>The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through the +Capitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountains +were in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees the +sky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over the +head of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shot +suddenly before it vanished amid the spires and chimneys of the city, +which looked as visionary and insubstantial as the glowing horizon.</p> + +<p>Stopping midway of the road, Stephen Culpeper glanced back over the +vague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spun +mauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a new +and inscrutable force—the force of an idea—had risen within the last +few months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meant +in his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watched +the decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the past +remained untouched. Not the old buildings, not the old trees, not even +the old memories. Clustering traditions had fled in the white blaze of +electricity; the quaint brick walks, with their rich colour in the +sunlight, were beginning to disappear beneath the expressionless mask of +concrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather's +day; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and naked +and undistinguished—yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising. +Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finer +things, had overwhelmed the world of established customs in which he +lived.</p> + +<p>As he lifted his face to the sky, his grave young features revealed a +subtle kinship to the statues beneath the mounted Washington in the +drive, as if both flesh and bronze had been moulded by the dominant +spirit of race. Like the heroes of the Revolution, he appeared a +stranger in an age which had degraded manners and enthroned commerce; +and like them also he seemed to survey the present from some +inaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and a +certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his +well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal. +Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he +was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him." +His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the +faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member +of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Only +the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an +uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling +buried beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished an +inarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds. The war had left +him with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and this +increased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and his +inability to make a sustained effort to change it.</p> + +<p>The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appeared +to swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred the +white slopes with violet shadows. In the topmost branches of an old +sycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like a +luminous thread. The twilight was intensely still, and the noises of the +city fell with a metallic sound on his ears, as if a multitude of bells +were ringing about him. While he walked on past the bald outline of the +restored and enlarged Capitol, this imaginary concert grew gradually +fainter, until he heard above it presently the sudden closing of a +window in the Governor's mansion—as the old gray house was called.</p> + +<p>Pausing abruptly, the young man frowned as his eyes fell on the charming +Georgian front, which presided like a serene and spacious memory over +the modern utilitarian purpose that was devastating the Square. Alone in +its separate plot, broad, low, and hospitable, the house stood there +divided and withdrawn from the restless progress and the age of +concrete—a modest reminder of the centuries when men had built well +because they had time, before they built, to stop and think and +remember. The arrested dignity of the past seemed to the young man to +hover above the old mansion within its setting of box hedges and +leafless lilac shrubs and snow-laden magnolia trees. He saw the house +contrasted against the crude surroundings of the improved and disfigured +Square, and against the house, attended by all its stately traditions, +he saw the threatening figure of Gideon Vetch. "So it has come to this," +he thought resentfully, with his gaze on the doorway where a round +yellow globe was shining. Ragged frost-coated branches framed the +sloping roof, and the white columns of the square side porches emerged +from the black crags of magnolia trees. In the centre of the circular +drive, invaded by concrete, a white heron poured a stream of melting ice +from a distorted throat.</p> + +<p>The shutters were not closed at the lower windows, and the firelight +flickered between the short curtains of some brownish muslin. As Stephen +passed the gate on his way down the hill, a figure crossed one of the +windows, and his frown deepened as he recognized, or imagined that he +recognized, the shadow of Gideon Vetch.</p> + +<p>"Gideon Vetch!" At the sound of the name the young man threw back his +head and laughed softly. A Gideon Vetch was Governor of Virginia! Here +also, he told himself, half humorously, half bitterly, democracy had +won. Here also the destroying idea had triumphed. In sight of the bronze +Washington, this Gideon Vetch, one of "the poor white trash," born in a +circus tent, so people said, the demagogue of demagogues in Stephen's +opinion—this Gideon Vetch had become Governor of Virginia! Yet the +placid course of Stephen's life flowed on precisely as it had flowed +ever since he could remember, and the dramatic hand of Washington had +not fallen. It was still so recent; it had come about so unexpectedly, +that people—at least the people the young man knew and esteemed—were +still trying to explain how it had happened. The old party had been +sleeping, of course; it had grown too confident, some said too +corpulent; and it had slept on peacefully, in spite of the stirring +strength of the labour leaders, in spite of the threatening coalition of +the new factions, in spite even of the swift revolt against the stubborn +forces of habit, of tradition, of overweening authority. His mother, he +knew, held the world war responsible; but then his mother was so +constituted that she was obliged to blame somebody or something for +whatever happened. Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, held +the war responsible for Gideon Vetch—as if the great struggle had cast +him out in some gigantic cataclysm, as if it had broken through the once +solid ground of established order, and had released into the world all +the explosive gases of disintegration, of destruction.</p> + +<p>For himself, the young man reflected now, he had always thought +otherwise. It was a period, he felt, of humbug radicalism, of windbag +eloquence; yet he possessed both wit and discernment enough to see that, +though ideas might explode in empty talk, still it took ideas to make +the sort of explosion that was deafening one's ears. All the flat +formula of the centuries could not produce a single Gideon Vetch. Such +men were part of the changing world; they answered not to reasoned +argument, but to the loud crash of breaking idols. Stephen hated Vetch +with all his heart, but he acknowledged him. He did not try to evade the +man's tremendous veracity, his integrity of being, his inevitableness. +An inherent intellectual honesty compelled Stephen to admit that, "the +demagogue", as he called him, had his appropriate place in the age that +produced him—that he existed rather as an outlet for political +tendencies than as the product of international violence. He was more +than a theatrical attitude—a torrent of words. Even a free country—and +Stephen thought sentimentally of America as "a free country"—must have +its tyrannies of opinion, and consequently its rebels against current +convictions. In the older countries he had imagined that it might be +possible to hold with the hare and run with the hounds; but in the land +of opportunity for all there was less reason to be astonished when the +hunted turned at last into the hunter. Where every boy was taught that +he might some day be President, why should one stand amazed when the +ambitious son of a circus rider became Governor of Virginia? After all, +a fair field and no favours was the best that the most conservative of +politicians—the best that even John Benham could ask.</p> + +<p>Yes, there was a cause, there was a reason for the miracle of disorder, +or it would not have happened. The hour had called forth the man; but +the man had been there awaiting the strokes, listening, listening, with +his ear to the wind. It had been a triumph of personality, one of those +rare dramatic occasions when the right man and the appointed time come +together. This the young man admitted candidly in the very moment when +he told himself that he detested the demagogue and all his works. A man +who consistently made his bid for the support of the radical element! +Who stirred up the forces of discontent because he could harness them +to his chariot! A man who was born in a circus tent, and who still +performed in public the tricks of a mountebank! That this man had power, +Stephen granted ungrudgingly; but it was power over the undisciplined, +the half-educated, the mentally untrained. It was power, as John Benham +had once remarked with a touch of hyperbole, over empty stomachs.</p> + +<p>There were persons in Stephen's intimate circle (there are such persons +even in the most conservative communities) who contended that Vetch was +in his way a rude genius. Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, for instance, +insisted that the Governor had a charm of his own, that, "he wasn't half +bad to look at if you caught him smiling," that he could even reason +"like one of us," if you granted him his premise. After the open debate +between Vetch and Benham—the great John Benham, hero of war and peace, +and tireless labourer in the vineyard of public service—after this +memorable discussion, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page had remarked, in his +mild, unpolemical tone, that "though John had undoubtedly carried off +the flowers of rhetoric, there was a good deal of wholesome green stuff +about that fellow Vetch." But everybody knew that a man with a comical +habit of mind could not be right.</p> + +<p>Again the figure crossed the firelight between the muslin curtains, and +to Stephen Culpeper, standing alone in the snow outside, that large +impending presence embodied all that he and his kind had hated and +feared for generations. It embodied among other disturbances the law of +change; and to Stephen and his race of pleasant livers the two sinister +forces in the universe were change and death. After all, they had made +the world, these pleasant livers; and what were those other people—the +people represented by that ominous shadow—except the ragged prophets of +disorder and destruction?</p> + +<p>Turning away, Stephen descended the wide brick walk which fell +gradually, past the steps of the library and the gaunt railing round a +motionless fountain, to the broad white slope of the Square with its +smoky veil of twilight. Farther away he saw the high iron fence and +heard the clanging of passing street cars. On his left the ugly shape +of the library resembled some crude architectural design sketched on +parchment.</p> + +<p>As he approached the fountain, a small figure in a red cape detached +itself suddenly from the mesh of shadows, and he recognized Patty Vetch, +the irrepressible young daughter of the Governor. He had seen her the +evening before at a charity ball, where she had been politely snubbed by +what he thought of complacently as "our set." From the moment when he +had first looked at her across the whirling tulle and satin skirts in +the ballroom, he had decided that she embodied as obviously as her +father, though in a different fashion, the qualities which were most +offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards +of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair +curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt +nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows +over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on +the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, +but he couldn't help looking at her. If she had been on the cover of a +magazine, he had told himself sternly, he should never have bought it. +He had correct ideas of what a lady should be (they were inherited from +the early eighties and his mother had implanted them), and he would +have known anywhere that Patty Vetch was not exactly a lady. Though he +was broad enough in his views to realize that types repeat themselves +only in variations, and that girls of to-day are not all that they were +in the happy eighties—that one might make up flashily like Geraldine +St. John, or dance outrageously like Bertha Underwood, and yet remain +in all essential social values "a lady"—still he was aware that the +external decorations of a chorus girl could not turn the shining +daughter of the St. Johns for an imitation of paste, and, though the +nimble Bertha could perform every Jazz motion ever invented, one would +never dream of associating her with a circus ring. It was not the things +one did that made one appear unrefined, he had concluded at last, but +the way that one did them; and Patty Vetch's way was not the prescribed +way of his world. Small as she was there was too much of her. She +contrived always to be where one was looking. She was too loud, too +vivid, too highly charged with vitality; she was too obviously +different. If a redbird had flown into the heated glare of the ballroom +Stephen's gaze would have followed it with the same startled and +fascinated attention.</p> + +<p>As the girl approached him now on the snow-covered slope, he was +conscious again of that swift recoil from chill disapproval to reluctant +attraction. Though she was not beautiful, though she was not even pretty +according to the standards with which he was familiar, she possessed +what he felt to be a dangerous allurement. He had never imagined that +anything so small could be so much alive. The electric light under which +she passed revealed the few golden freckles over her childish nose, the +gray-green colour of her eyes beneath the black eyelashes, and the +sensitive red mouth which looked as soft and sweet as a carnation. It +revealed also the absurd shoes of gray suede, with French toes and high +and narrow heels, in which she flitted, regardless alike of danger and +of common sense, over the slippery ground. The son of a strong-minded +though purely feminine mother, he had been trained to esteem discretion +in dress almost as highly as rectitude of character in a woman; and by +no charitable stretch of the imagination could he endow his first +impression of Patty Vetch with either of these attributes.</p> + +<p>"It would serve her right if she fell and broke her leg," he thought +severely; and the idea of such merited punishment was still in his mind +when he heard a sharp gasp of surprise, and saw the girl slip, with a +frantic clutch at the air, and fall at full length on the shining +ground. When he sprang forward and bent over her, she rose quickly to +her knees and held out what he thought at first was some queer small +muff of feathers.</p> + +<p>"Please hold this pigeon," she said, "I saw it this afternoon, and I +came out to look for it. Somebody has broken its wings."</p> + +<p>"If you came out to walk on ice," he replied with a smile, "why, in +Heaven's name, didn't you wear skates or rubbers?"</p> + +<p>She gave a short little laugh which was entirely without merriment. "I +don't skate, and I never wear rubbers."</p> + +<p>He glanced down at her feet in candid disapproval. "Then you mustn't be +surprised if you get a sprained ankle."</p> + +<p>"I am not surprised," she retorted calmly. "Nothing surprises me. Only +my ankle isn't sprained. I am just getting my breath."</p> + +<p>She had rested her knee on a bench, and she looked up at him now with +bright, enigmatical eyes. "You don't mind waiting a moment, do you?" +she asked. To his secret resentment she appeared to be deliberately +appraising either his abilities or his attractions—he wasn't sure which +engaged her bold and perfectly unembarrassed regard.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't mind in the least," he replied, "but I'd like to get you +home if you have really hurt yourself. Of course it was your own fault +that you fell," he added truthfully but indiscreetly.</p> + +<p>For an instant she seemed to be holding her breath, while he stood there +in what he felt to be a foolish attitude, with the pigeon (for all +symbolical purposes it might as well have been a dove) clasped to his +breast.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," she responded presently in a voice which was full of +suppressed anger. "Everything is my fault—even the fact that I was +born!"</p> + +<p>Shocked out of his conventional manner, he stared at her in silence, and +the pigeon, feeling the strain of his grasp, fluttered softly against +his overcoat. What was there indeed for him to do except stare at a lack +of reticence, of good-breeding, which he felt to be deplorable? His fine +young face, with its characteristic note of reserve, hardened into +sternness as he remembered having heard somewhere that the girl's mother +had been killed or injured when she was performing some dangerous act at +a country fair. Well, one might expect anything, he supposed, from such +an inheritance.</p> + +<p>"May I help you?" he asked with distant and chilly politeness.</p> + +<p>"Oh, can't you wait a minute?" She impatiently thrust aside his offer. +"I <i>must</i> get my breath again."</p> + +<p>It was plain that she was very angry, that she was in the clutch of a +smothered yet violent resentment, which, he inferred with reason, was +directed less against himself than against some abstract and impersonal +law of life. Her rage was not merely temper against a single human +being; it was, he realized, a passionate rebellion against Fate or +Nature, or whatever she personified as the instrument of the injustice +from which she suffered. Her eyes were gleaming through the web of light +and shadow; her mouth was trembling; and there was the moisture of +tears—or was it only the glitter of ice?—on her round young cheek. And +while he looked, chilled, disapproving, unsympathetic, at the vivid +flower-like bloom of her face, there seemed to flow from her and envelop +him the spirit of youth itself—of youth adventurous, intrepid, and +defiant; of youth rejecting the expedient and demanding the impossible; +of youth eternally desirable, enchanting, and elusive. It was as if his +orderly, complacent, and tranquil soul had plunged suddenly into a bath +of golden air. Vaguely disturbed, he drew back and tried to appear +dignified in spite of the fluttering pigeon. He had no inclination for +a flirtation with the Governor's daughter—intuitively he felt that such +an adventure would not be a safe one; but if a flirtation were what she +wanted, he told himself, with a sense of impending doom, "there might be +trouble." He didn't know what she meant, but whatever it was, she +evidently meant it with determination. Already she had impressed him +with the quality which, for want of a better word, he thought of as +"wildness." It was a quality which he had found strangely, if secretly, +alluring, and he acknowledged now that this note of "wildness," of +unexpectedness, of "something different" in her personality, had held +his gaze chained to the airy flutter of her scarlet skirt. He felt +vaguely troubled. Something as intricate and bewildering as impulse was +winding through the smoothly beaten road of his habit of thought. The +noises of the city came to him as if they floated over an immeasurable +distance of empty space. Through the spectral boughs of the sycamores +the golden sky had faded to the colour of ashes. And both the empty +space and the ashen sky seemed to be not outside of himself, but a part +of the hidden country within his mind.</p> + +<p>"You were at the ball," she burst out suddenly, as if she had been +holding back the charge from the beginning.</p> + +<p>"At the ball?" he repeated, and the words were spoken with his lips +merely in that objective world of routine and habit. "Yes, I was there. +It was a dull business."</p> + +<p>She laughed again with the lack of merriment he had noticed before. +Though her face was made for laughter, there was an oddly conflicting +note of tragedy in her voice. "Was it dull? I didn't notice."</p> + +<p>"Then you must have enjoyed it?"</p> + +<p>"But you were there. You saw what happened. Every one must have seen." +Her savage candour brushed away the flimsy amenities. He knew now that +she would say whatever she pleased, and, with the pigeon clasped tightly +in his arms, he waited for anything that might come.</p> + +<p>"You pretend that you don't know, that you didn't see!" she asked +indignantly.</p> + +<p>As she looked at him he thought—or it may have been the effect of the +shifting light—that her eyes diffused soft green rays beneath her black +eyelashes. Was there really the mist of tears in her sparkling glance?</p> + +<p>"I am sorry," he said simply, being a young man of few words when the +need of speech was obvious. The last thing he wanted, he told himself, +was to receive the confidences of the Governor's daughter.</p> + +<p>At this declaration, so characteristic of his amiable temperament, her +anger flashed over him. "You were not sorry. You know you were not, or +you would have made them kinder!"</p> + +<p>"Kinder? But how could I?" He felt that her rage was making her +unreasonable. "I didn't know you. I hadn't even been introduced to you." +It was on the tip of his tongue to add, "and I haven't been yet—" but +he checked himself in fear of unchaining the lightning. It was all +perfectly true. He had not even been introduced to the girl, and here +she was, as crude as life and as intemperate, accusing him of +indifference and falsehood. And after all, what had they done to her? No +one had been openly rude. Nothing had been said, he was sure, absolutely +nothing. It had been a "charity entertainment," and the young people of +his set had merely left her alone, that was all. The affair had been far +from exclusive—for the enterprising ladies of the Beech Tree Day +Nursery had prudently preferred a long subscription list to a limited +social circle—and in a gathering so obscurely "mixed" there were, +without doubt, a number of Gideon Vetch's admirers. Was it maliciously +arranged by Fate that Patty Vetch's social success should depend upon +the people who had elected her father to office?</p> + +<p>"As if that mattered!"</p> + +<p>Her scorn of his subterfuge, her mocking defiance of the sacred formula +to which he deferred, awoke in him an unfamiliar and pleasantly piquant +sensation. Through it all he was conscious of the inner prick and sting +of his disapprobation, as if the swift attraction had passed into a +mental aversion.</p> + +<p>"As if that mattered!" he echoed gaily, "as if that mattered at all!"</p> + +<p>Her face changed in the twilight, and it seemed to him that he saw her +for the first time with the peculiar vividness that came only in dreams +or in the hidden country within his mind. The sombre arch of the sky, +the glimmer of lights far away, the clustering shadows against the white +field of snow, the vague ghostly shapes of the sycamores—all these +things endowed her with the potency of romantic adventure. In the winter +night she seemed to him to exhale the roving sweetness of spring. Then +she spoke, and the sharp brightness of his vision was clouded by the old +sense of unreality.</p> + +<p>"They treated me as if I were a piece of bunting or a flower in a pot," +she said. "They left me alone in the dressing-room. No one spoke to me, +though they must have known who I was. They know, all of them, that I am +the Governor's daughter."</p> + +<p>With a start he brought himself back from the secret places. "But I +thought you carried your head very high," he answered, "and you did not +appear to lack partners." Some small ironic demon that seemed to dwell +in his brain and yet to have no part in his real thought, moved him to +add indiscreetly: "I thought you danced every dance with Julius Gershom. +That's the name of that dark fellow who's a politician of doubtful cast, +isn't it?"</p> + +<p>She made a petulant gesture, and the red wings in her hat vibrated like +the wings of a bird in flight. There flashed though his mind while he +watched her the memory of a cardinal he had seen in a cedar tree against +the snow-covered landscape. Strange that he could never get away from +the thought of a bird when he looked at her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Julius Gershom! I despise him!"</p> + +<p>She shivered, and he asked with a sympathy he had not displayed for +mental discomforts: "Aren't you dreadfully chilled? This kind of thing +is a risk, you know. You might catch influenza—or anything."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I might, if there is any about," she replied tartly, and he saw +with relief that her petulance had faded to dull indifference. "I was +obliged to dance with somebody," she resumed after a minute, "I couldn't +sit against the wall the whole evening, could I? And nobody else asked +me,—but I don't like him any the better for that."</p> + +<p>"And your father? Does he dislike him also?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"How can one tell? He says he is useful." There was a playful tenderness +in her voice.</p> + +<p>"Useful? You mean in politics?"</p> + +<p>She laughed. "How else in the world can any one be useful to Father? It +must be freezing."</p> + +<p>"No, it is melting; but it is too cold to play about out of doors."</p> + +<p>"Your teeth are chattering!" she rejoined with scornful merriment.</p> + +<p>"They are not," he retorted indignantly. "I am as comfortable as you +are."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not comfortable at all. Something—I don't know what it +was—happened to my ankle. I think I twisted it when I fell."</p> + +<p>"And all this time you haven't said a word. We've talked about nothing +while you must have been in pain."</p> + +<p>She shook her head as if his new solicitude irritated her, and a quiver +of pain—or was it amusement?—crossed her lips. "It isn't the first +time I've had to grit my teeth and bear things—but it's getting worse +instead of better all the time, and I'm afraid I shall have to ask you +to help me up the hill. I was waiting until I thought I could manage it +by myself."</p> + +<p>So that was why she had kept him! She had hoped all the time that she +could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was +impossible. Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic +imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her. By Jove, what pluck +she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the +realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so +lightly, it could mean only that her short life had been full of +misadventures beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial. She could +"play the game" so perfectly, he grasped, because she had been obliged +either to play it or go under ever since she had been big enough to read +the cards in her hand. To be "a good sport" was perhaps the best lesson +that the world had yet taught her. Though she could not be, he decided, +more than eighteen, she had acquired already the gay bravado of the +experienced gambler with life.</p> + +<p>"Let me help you," he said eagerly, "I am sure that I can carry you, you +are so small. If you will only let me throw away this confounded bird, I +can manage it easily."</p> + +<p>"No, give it to me. It would die of cold if we left it." She stretched +out her hand, and in silence he gave her the wounded pigeon. Her +tenderness for the bird, conflicting as it did with his earlier +impression of her, both amused and perplexed him. He couldn't reconcile +her quick compassion with her resentful and mocking attitude toward +himself.</p> + +<p>At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and +stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite unnecessary +to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't need to be +carried," she said. "That sort of thing went out of fashion ages ago. If +you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill."</p> + +<p>She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the +hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most +embarrassing one through which he had ever lived. The fugitive gleam, +the romantic glamour, had vanished now. He wondered what it was about +her that he had at first found attractive. It was the spirit of the +place, he decided, nothing more. With every step of the way there closed +over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence, his +instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour. Conventions were the +breath of his young nostrils, and yet he was passing through an +atmosphere, without, thank Heaven, his connivance or inclination, where +it seemed to him the hardiest convention could not possibly survive. +When the lights of the mansion shone nearer through the bared boughs, he +heaved a sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>"Have I tired you?" asked the girl in response, and the curious lilting +note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden +suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging some +hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that she +would be capable of such a performance, or of anything else that invited +her amazing vivacity. His one hope was that he might leave her in some +obscure corner of the house, and slip away before anybody capable of +making a club joke had discovered his presence. The hidden country was +lost now, and with it the perilous thrill of enchantment.</p> + +<p>He rang the bell, and the door was opened by an old coloured butler who +had been one of the family servants of the Culpepers. How on earth, +Stephen wondered, could the Governor tolerate the venerable Abijah, the +chosen companion of Culpeper children for two generations? While he +wondered he recalled something his mother had said a few weeks ago about +Abijah's having been lured away by the offer of absurd wages. "You +needn't worry," she had added shrewdly, "he will return as soon as he +gets tired of working."</p> + +<p>"I hurt my ankle, Abijah," said the girl.</p> + +<p>"You ain't, is you, Miss Patty?" replied Abijah, in an indulgent tone +which conveyed to Stephen's delicate ears every shade of difference +between the Vetchs' and the Culpepers' social standing.</p> + +<p>"How are you, Abijah?" remarked the young man with the air of lordly +pleasantry he used to all servants who were not white. Beyond the fine +old hall he saw the formal drawing-room and the modern octagonal +dining-room at the back of the house.</p> + +<p>"Howdy, Marse Stephen," responded the negro, "I seed yo' ma yestiddy en +she sutney wuz lookin well an' peart."</p> + +<p>He opened the door of the library, and while Stephen entered the room +with the girl's hand on his arm, a man rose from a chair by the fire and +came forward.</p> + +<p>"Father, this is Mr. Culpeper," remarked Patty calmly, as she sank on a +sofa and stretched out her frivolous shoes.</p> + +<p>In the midst of his embarrassment Stephen wondered resentfully how she +had discovered his name.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>GIDEON VETCH</h3> + + +<p>"Your daughter slipped on the ice," explained the young man, while the +thought flashed through his mind that Patty's father was accepting it +all, with ironical humour, as some queer masquerade.</p> + +<p>It was the first time that Stephen had come within range of the +Governor's personal influence, and he found himself waiting curiously +for the response of his sympathies or his nerves. Once or twice he had +heard Vetch speak—a storm of words which had played freely from the +lightning flash of humorous invective to the rolling thunder of +passionate denunciation. Such sound and fury had left Stephen the one +unmoved man in the audience. He had been brought up on the sonorous +rhetoric and the gorgeous purple periods of the classic orations; and +the mere undraped sincerity—the raw head and bloody bones eloquence, as +he put it, of Vetch's speech had been as offensive to his taste as it +had been unconvincing to his intelligence. The man was a mountebank, +nothing more, Stephen had decided, and his strange power was simply the +reaction of mob hysteria to the stage tricks of the political clown.</p> + +<p>Yes, the man was a mountebank—but was he nothing more than a +mountebank? Like most men of his age, Stephen Culpeper was inclined to +swift impressions rather than hasty judgments of people; and he was +conscious, while he listened in silence to the murmuring explanations +of the girl, that the immediate effect was a sensation, not an idea. At +first sight, the Governor appeared merely ordinary—a tall, rugged +figure, built of good bone and muscle and sound to the core, with the +look of arrested energy which was doubtless an inheritance from the +circus ring. There was nothing impressive about him; nothing that would +cause one to turn and look back in a crowd. What struck one most was his +air of extraordinary freshness and health, of sanguine vitality. His +face was well-coloured and irregular in outline, with a high bulging +forehead and thick sandy hair which was already gray on the temples. In +the shadow his eyes did not appear remarkably fine; they seemed at the +first glance to be of an indeterminate colour—was it blue or gray?—and +there was nothing striking in their deep setting under the beetling +sandy eyebrows. All this was true; and yet while Stephen looked into +them over the Governor's outstretched hand, he told himself that they +were the most human eyes he had ever seen. Afterward, when he groped +through his vocabulary for a more accurate description, he could not +find one. There was shrewdness in Gideon Vetch's eyes; there was +friendliness; there was the blue sparkle of contagious humour—a ripple +of light that was like visible laughter—but above all there was +humanity. Though Stephen did not try to grasp the vivid impressions that +passed through his mind, he felt intuitively that he had learned to know +Gideon Vetch through his look and manner as well as he should have known +another man after weeks or months of daily intercourse. Whatever the +man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there +was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile. +He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or +low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up +as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without +condescension. It was the law of his nature that he should give himself +emphatically to the just and the unjust alike.</p> + +<p>"He came home with me because I hurt my foot," Patty was saying.</p> + +<p>Had she forgotten already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was +not her foot but her ankle? His suspicions returned while he looked at +her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel +impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure. Like Gideon +Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding the smallest +fragment of a fact; and the young man wondered if it were characteristic +either of "the plain people," as he called them, or of circus riders as +a class, that their minds should go habitually unclothed yet unashamed.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked: "Did +you hurt yourself, Patty?" while he bent over and laid his hand on her +ankle.</p> + +<p>A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and +when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of +affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him.</p> + +<p>"Not much," she replied carelessly. Then she held out the drooping +pigeon. "I found this bird. Is there anything we can do for it?"</p> + +<p>The Governor took the bird from her, and examined it under the light +with the manner of brisk confidence which directed his slightest action. +The man, for all his restless activity, appeared to be without excess or +exaggeration when it was a matter of practical detail. He apparently +employed his whole efficient and enterprising mind on the incident of +the bird.</p> + +<p>"The wings aren't broken," he said presently, lifting his head, "but it +is weak from hunger and exhaustion," and he rang the bell for Abijah. +"Rice and water and a warm basket," he ordered when the old negro +appeared. "You had better keep it in the house until it recovers." Then +dismissing the subject, he turned back to Stephen.</p> + +<p>"Well, I am glad to see you, Mr. Culpeper," he said. "You had a hard +beginning, but, as they used to tell me when I was a kid, a hard +beginning makes a good ending."</p> + +<p>For the first time a smile softened his face, and the roving blue gleam +danced blithely in his eyes. A moment before the young man had thought +the Governor's face harsh and ugly. Now he remembered that the Judge had +said "the man was not half bad to look at if you caught him smiling." +Yes, he had a charm of his own, and that charm had swept him forward +over every obstacle to the place he had reached. A single gift, +indefinable yet unerring—the ability to make men believe absurdities, +as John Benham had once said—and the material disadvantages of poverty +and ignorance were brushed aside like trivial impediments. A strange +power, and a dangerous one in unscrupulous hands, the young man +reflected.</p> + +<p>"I remember your face," pursued the Governor, while his smile faded—was +brevity, after all, the secret of its magic? "You were at one of my +speeches last autumn, and you sat in the front row, I think. I recall +you because you were the only person in the audience who looked bored."</p> + +<p>"I was." Frankness called for frankness. "I am not keen about speeches."</p> + +<p>"Not even when Benham speaks?" The voice was gay, but through it all +there rang the unmistakable tone of authority, of conscious power. There +was one person, Stephen inferred, who had never from the beginning +disparaged or ridiculed Gideon Vetch, and that person was Gideon Vetch +himself. John Benham had once said that the man was a mere posturer—but +John Benham was wrong.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, you see, Benham is different," replied the young man as +delicately as he could. "He is apt to say only what I think, you know."</p> + +<p>So far there had been no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner, +no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and +presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had +looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, +facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the +break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man +because he had been so imperfectly prepared for it.</p> + +<p>"And because he is different, of course you think he'd make a better +Governor than I shall," said Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way +with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You +never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it +knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've been +on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so much +as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too much +electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; but you haven't +even looked back to find out whether you are right or wrong. Talk about +public spirit! Why, there isn't an ounce of live public spirit left +among you, in spite of all the moonshine your man Benham talks about the +healing virtues of tradition and the sacred taboo of your political +Pharisees. There wasn't one of you that didn't hate like the devil to +see me Governor of Virginia—and yet how many of you took the trouble to +find out what I am made of, or to understand what I mean? Did you even +take the trouble to go to the polls and vote against me?"</p> + +<p>Though Stephen flushed scarlet, he held his ground bravely. It was true +that he had not voted—he hated the whole sordid business of +politics—but then, who had ever suspected for a minute that Gideon +Vetch would be elected? His brief liking for the man had changed +suddenly to exasperation. It seemed incredible to him that any Governor +of Virginia should display so open a disregard of the ordinary rules of +courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such +a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him +an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the +agitator simply because his opponent had reluctantly yielded him an +opportunity!</p> + +<p>"Well, I heard you speak, but that didn't change me!" he retorted with a +smile.</p> + +<p>The Governor laughed, and the sincerity of his amusement was evident +even to Stephen. "Could anything short of a blasting operation change +you traditional Virginians?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>His face was turned to the fire, and the young man felt while he +watched him that a piercing light was shed on his character. It was as +if Stephen saw his opponent from an entirely fresh point of view, as if +he beheld him for the first time with the sharp clearness which the +flash of his anger produced. The very absence of all sense of dignity +impressed him suddenly as the most tremendous dignity a human being +could attain—the unconscious dignity of natural forces—of storms and +fire and war and pestilence. Because the man never thought of how he +appeared, he appeared always impregnable.</p> + +<p>"I shall not argue," said the young man, with a smile which he +endeavoured to make easy and natural. "The time for argument is over. +You played trumps."</p> + +<p>Vetch laughed. "And it wasn't my last card," he answered bluntly.</p> + +<p>"The game isn't finished." Though Stephen's voice was light it held a +quiver of irritation. "He laughs best who laughs last." The other had +started the row, and, by Jove, he would give him as much as he wanted! +He recalled suddenly the charges that there was more than the customary +political log-rolling—that there were mysterious "discreditable +dealings" in the Governor's election to office.</p> + +<p>But it appeared in a minute that Gideon Vetch was adequate to any demand +which the occasion might develop. Already Stephen was beginning to +regard him less as a man than as an energetic idea, as activity +incarnate.</p> + +<p>"If you mean to imply that the laugh may be on me at the last," he +returned, while the points of blue light seemed to pierce Stephen like +arrows—no, like gimlets, "well, you're wrong about one part of it—for +if that ever happens, I'll laugh with you because of the sheer rotten +irony."</p> + +<p>For the first time the other noticed how the Governor was dressed—in a +suit of some heavy brown stuff which looked as if it had been sprinkled +and needed pressing. He wore a green tie and a striped shirt of the +conspicuous kind that Stephen hated. Though the younger man was keenly +critical of clothes, and perseveringly informed himself regarding the +smallest details of fashion, he acknowledged now that he had at last met +a man who appeared to wear his errors of dress as naturally as he wore +his errors of opinion. The fuzzy brown stuff, the green tie with red +spots, the striped shirt—was it blue or purple?—all became as much a +part of Gideon Vetch as the storm-ruffled plumage was part of an eagle. +If the misguided man had attired himself in a toga, he would have +carried the Mantle without dignity perhaps, but certainly with +picturesqueness.</p> + +<p>"I'll hold you to your promise—or threat," said Stephen lightly, as he +turned from the Governor to his daughter. Why, in thunder, he asked +himself, had he stayed so long? What was there about the fellow that +held one in spite of oneself? "I hope you will be all right again in a +few days," he said formally as his eyes met Patty's upraised glance. In +the warm room all the glamour of the twilight—and of that hidden +country within his mind—had faded from her. She looked fresh and +blooming and merely commonplace, he thought. A brief half hour ago he +had felt that he was in danger of losing his head; now his rational part +was in the ascendant, and his future appeared pleasantly tranquil. Then +the girl smiled that faint inscrutable smile of hers, and the +disturbing green rays shot from her eyes. A thrill of interest stirred +his pulses while something held him there against his will and his +better judgment, as if he were caught fast in the steel spring of a +trap.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's nothing," replied Patty, with her air of mockery. "If there +were no worse things than that!"</p> + +<p>He did not hold out his hand, though there was a flutter toward him of +her fingers—pretty fingers they were for a girl with no blood that one +could mention in public. There was a faint hope in his mind that he +might still vanish unthanked and undetained. The one quality in father +and daughter which had arrested his favourable attention—the quality of +"a good sport"—would probably aid in his escape.</p> + +<p>"Drop in some evening, and we'll have a talk," said the Governor in his +slightly theatrical but extremely confident manner, "there are things +I'd like to say to you. You are a lawyer, if I remember, in Judge +Horatio Page's firm, and you were in the war from the beginning."</p> + +<p>Stephen smiled. "Not quite." They were at the front door, and all hope +of escaping into the desirable obscurity from which he had sprung fled +from his mind.</p> + +<p>"He is a great old boy, the Judge," resumed Gideon Vetch blandly, "I had +a talk with him one day before the elections, when you other fellows +were sitting back like a lot of lunatics and waiting for the Democratic +primaries to put things over. He is the only one in the whole bunch of +you who stopped shouting long enough to hear what I had to say. I like +him, sir, and if there is one thing you will never find me doing it is +liking the wrong man. I may not know Greek, but I can read men."</p> + +<p>The front door was open, and the blast of cold air dispersed all the +foolish fancies that had gathered in Stephen's brain. Beyond the +fountain and the gate he could see the broad road through the Square and +the dark majestic figure of Washington on horseback. The electric signs +were blazing on the roofs of the shops and hotels which had driven the +original dwelling houses out of the neighbouring streets.</p> + +<p>Turning as he was descending the steps, the young man looked into the +Governor's face. "Are you sure that you read Julius Gershom correctly?" +he inquired.</p> + +<p>For a minute—it could not have been longer—the Governor did not reply. +Was he surprised for once into open discomfiture, or was his nimble wit +engaged in framing a plausible answer? Within the house, where so much +was disappointing and incongruous, Stephen had not felt the lack of +harmony between Gideon Vetch and his surroundings; but against the fine +proportions and the serene stateliness of the exterior, the Governor's +figure appeared aggressively modern.</p> + +<p>"Julius Gershom!" repeated Vetch. "Well, yes, I think I know my Julius. +May I ask if you do?" The ironical humour which flashed like a sharp +light over his countenance played with the idea.</p> + +<p>"Not by choice." Stephen looked back laughing. There was one thing to be +said in the Governor's favour—he invited honesty and he knew how to +receive it. "But I read of him in the newspapers when I cannot avoid it. +He does some dirty work, doesn't he?"</p> + +<p>Again the Governor paused before replying. There was a curious gravity +about his consideration of Gershom in spite of the satirical tone of his +responses. Was it possible that he was the one man in town who did not +treat the fellow as a ridiculous farce?</p> + +<p>"If by dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles—well, +somebody has to do it, hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a +clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the +slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush—and you +complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle +too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was +necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn't +he? There are people," he added, "who believe that the wind he raised +swept me into office."</p> + +<p>"I object to his methods," insisted Stephen, "because they seem to me +dishonest."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps." The blue eyes—how could he have thought them gray?—had +grown quizzical. "But he wasn't moving in the best company, you know. He +who sups with the Devil must fish with a long spoon."</p> + +<p>"You mean that you defend that sort of thing—that you openly stand for +it?"</p> + +<p>"I stand for nothing, sir," replied Gideon Vetch sharply, "except +justice. I stand for a square deal all round, and I stand against the +exploitation or oppression of any class. This is what I stand for, and I +have stood for it ever since I was a small, gray, scared rabbit of a +creature dodging under hedgerows."</p> + +<p>It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met +it without subterfuge or evasion. "And you believe that such people as +Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?" he +demanded.</p> + +<p>"I'll answer that some day; but it's a long answer, and I can't speak it +out here in the cold," responded the Governor, while his blustering +manner grew sober. "Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not. You +may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth. I am a reformer, and all I care +about is pushing on the idea. I use any tools that I find; and one of +the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use +bad ones. If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad—well, it is +all in the day's job. But the cause is what matters—the thing you are +making, not the implements with which it is made. You dislike my methods +of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test +of achievement, they have proved to be sound. I have got somewhere; not +all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, without +patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the +market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or +did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the +simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like +nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be +traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am +an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as +old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half a loaf +is to ask for a whole one. Come again, and I'll talk to you."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I'll come again," Stephen answered, and he knew that he should. +Whether he willed it or not he would be drawn back by the Governor's +irresistible influence. The man had aroused in him an intense, a +devouring curiosity. He wanted to know his thoughts and his life, the +mystery of his birth, of his upbringing, of his privations and denials. +Above all he wanted to know why he had succeeded, what peculiar gift had +brought him out of obscurity, and had given him the ability to use men +and circumstances as if they were tools in his hands.</p> + +<p>When the young man ran down the steps there was a pleasant excitement +tingling in his veins, as if he were feeling the glow of forbidden wine. +Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing +the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch +darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She +hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock +of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an +instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked +rapidly past the fountain to the open gate.</p> + +<p>The snow was dimly lighted on the long slope to the library; and +straight ahead, in the circle beneath the statue of Washington, the +bronze silhouette of a great Virginian stood sharply cut against the +luminous haze of the street. From the chimney-stack of a factory near +the river a wreath of gray smoke was flung over the tree-tops, where it +broke and drifted in feathery garlands. Across the road a group of three +trees was delicately etched, with each separate branch and twig, on the +slate-coloured evening sky.</p> + +<p>He had passed through the gate when a voice speaking suddenly at his +side caused him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he +had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place +from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There +was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it +produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child +when his hand was unexpectedly touched in the dark.</p> + +<p>"I beg your pardon," he said to the vague shape at the foot of a tree. +"Did you speak to me?"</p> + +<p>The shadows divided, and what seemed to him the edge of darkness moved +forward into the dimly lighted space at his side. He saw now that it was +the figure of a woman in a long black cloak, with the dilapidated +remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came +toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately +afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the +tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her +eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget. They were eyes that +would haunt his sleep that night like the face of the drowned man in the +nursery rhyme.</p> + +<p>"Will you tell me," asked the woman hurriedly, "who lives in this +house?"</p> + +<p>It was a queer question, he thought, for any one to ask in the Square; +but she was probably a stranger.</p> + +<p>"This is the Governor's house," he answered courteously. "I suppose you +are a stranger in town."</p> + +<p>"I got here a few hours ago, and I came out for a breath of air. I was +four days and nights on the way."</p> + +<p>To this he made no reply, and he was about to pass on again, when her +voice arrested him.</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't mind telling me, would you, the Governor's name?"</p> + +<p>"Not in the least. His name is Gideon Vetch."</p> + +<p>"Gideon Vetch?" She repeated the name slowly, as if she were impressing +it on her memory. "That's a queer name for a Governor. Was he born in +this town?"</p> + +<p>"I think not."</p> + +<p>"And who lives with him? I saw a girl come out awhile ago. Is she his +daughter, perhaps—or his wife—though she looked young for that."</p> + +<p>"It must have been his daughter. His wife is not living."</p> + +<p>"Is she his only child? Or has he others?" There was a quiver of +suspense in her voice, and turning he looked at her more closely. Was it +possible that she had known Gideon Vetch in his obscure past?</p> + +<p>"She is his only child," he replied.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's nice for her. Is she pretty?" An odd question if it had +been put by a man; but he had been trained to accept the fact that women +are different.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you would call her pretty." As he spoke the words there flashed +through his mind the picture of Patty Vetch as he had seen her that +afternoon, in her red cape and her small hat with the red wings, against +the snowy hill under the overhanging bough of the sycamore. Was she +really pretty, or was it only the witchery of her surroundings? Now that +he was out of her presence the attraction had faded. He was still +smarting from the memory of that dancing figure.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a fine house," said the woman, "and it looks large for just +two people. I thank you for telling me."</p> + +<p>The pathos of her words appealed to the generous chivalry of his nature. +He felt sorry for her and wondered if he might offer her money.</p> + +<p>"I hope you found lodgings," he said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've found a room near here—on Governor Street, I think they call +it."</p> + +<p>"And you are not in want? You do not need any help?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head while the rusty mourning veil shrouded her features. +"Not yet," she answered. "I'm not a beggar yet." Though her tone was not +well-bred, he realized that she was neither as uneducated nor as +degraded as he had at first believed.</p> + +<p>"I am glad of that," he responded; and then lifting his hat again, he +hurried quickly away from her up the road beneath the few old linden +trees that were left of an avenue. Glancing back as he reached the +Capitol building, he saw her black figure moving cautiously over the +snow toward one of the gates of the Square.</p> + +<p>"That was a nightmare," he thought, "and now for the pleasant dream. +I'll go to the old print shop and see my Cousin Corinna."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP</h3> + + +<p>As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old +print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at +forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid +the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate +early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she +had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously +with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her +father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Ambassador to +Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had +settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had +opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an +engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the +upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside +the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and +a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where +you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she +had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did +it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At +forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be +lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a +girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm, +the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing +heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to +remember, trite as it was—the singing heart—that was Corinna. She had +had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she +had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and +adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and +common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty +if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of +Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that +she liked almost every one—every one, that is, except Rose Stribling, +whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose +Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red +Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of +the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he +ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose Stribling, all blue eyes +and white linen, had nursed him at the last. At that time Corinna was in +America, and she hadn't so much as looked at Kent for years; but a woman +has a long memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss +of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet +the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose +Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black +patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to +Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it +intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could +have been half so lovely when she was a girl, before the faint shadows +and the tender little lines lent depth and mystery to her eyes, and the +single white lock swept back amid the powdered dusk of her hair.</p> + +<p>While the young man walked rapidly up Franklin Street, he saw before him +the long delightful room beyond the pyramidal cedars and the hedge of +box. He saw the ruddy glow of the fire mingling with the paler light of +amber lamps, and this mingled radiance shining on the rich rugs, the few +old brocades, and the rare English prints which covered the walls. He +saw wide-open creamy roses in alabaster bowls which were scattered +everywhere, on tables, on stools, on window-seats, and on the rich +carving of the Spanish desk in one corner. Against the curtains of gold +silk there was the bough of twisted pine he had broken, and against the +pine branch stood the figure of Corinna in her gown of soft red, which +melted like a spray of autumn foliage into the colours of the room. She +was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of +a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that +she looked like an October morning?</p> + +<p>As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull +gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the +thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a Japanese print. When +he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was +holding a basket of marigolds.</p> + +<p>"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in +water."</p> + +<p>She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she +was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two +old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the +hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he +inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was +as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had passed out of +the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance +and pleasant magic. The other was real life—life for all but the happy +few, he found himself thinking—this was merely the enchanted fairy-ring +where children played at making believe.</p> + +<p>"I hoped I'd catch you," he said, stretching out his hands to the log +fire. "I felt somehow that you hadn't gone, late as it is." While he +spoke he was thinking, not of Corinna, but of the strange woman he had +left in the Square. Queer how that incident had bitten into his mind. +Try as he might he couldn't shake himself free from it.</p> + +<p>"Father is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I +stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't +matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight. +Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I +haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell +me."</p> + +<p>"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who +were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as +the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that +it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the +feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings +were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of +the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities.</p> + +<p>"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge +Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any +world or any fireside—imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir +Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the shining dark eyes +of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment, +like an ambassador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your +fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get +is the conversation of an old fogy like me."</p> + +<p>"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt +powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the +shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular, +tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who +was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when +Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The +men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For +the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite +of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted +fairy-ring where no fact ever entered.</p> + +<p>With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the +tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing +over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness, +though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the +red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers.</p> + +<p>"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said. +"Wasn't it nice of him?"</p> + +<p>"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered.</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she +inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone. +"Benham is my friend—my best friend almost though he is so much older. +There isn't a man living whom I admire more."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then—was it in innocence or in +malice?—she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?"</p> + +<p>For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she +had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to +mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper +purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual +question?</p> + +<p>"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since +her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her."</p> + +<p>Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than +revealed her obscure motives.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further +entanglements," she observed. "I always thought—everybody thought that +she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham."</p> + +<p>Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she +saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had +developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it +seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most +loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest.</p> + +<p>"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows."</p> + +<p>There was really nothing else that he could answer. Though he could +discuss Alice Rokeby, one of those vague, sweet women who seem designed +by Nature to develop the sentiment of chivalry in the breast of man, he +felt that it would be disloyal to speak lightly of his hero, John +Benham. "You could never guess where I've been," he said with relief +because he had got rid of the subject. "I might as well tell you in the +beginning that I have just left the Governor."</p> + +<p>"Gideon Vetch!" exclaimed Corinna, as she dropped into a chair at his +side. "Why, I thought you were as far apart as the poles!"</p> + +<p>"So we were until ten minutes—no, until exactly an hour ago."</p> + +<p>"It makes my blood boil when I think of that circus rider in the +Governor's mansion," said the General indignantly. "Do you know what my +father would have called that fellow? He would have called him a common +scalawag—a common scalawag, sir!"</p> + +<p>The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed, +that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy. +"Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The +trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village +stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians +were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may +have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out +with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the +archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept—. We +must let in new blood."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got +to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?"</p> + +<p>"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be +only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made +up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say +that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view, +it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him +the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of +things."</p> + +<p>"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he +spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the +fellow ain't even in your class, sir!"</p> + +<p>"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the +Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make +a friendship."</p> + +<p>"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted +to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the +way."</p> + +<p>The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of +Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me +more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows +human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles +of the Confederacy."</p> + +<p>"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's +something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one +in spite of oneself."</p> + +<p>The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed +presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent +candour. Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours +it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his +Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment—straight +and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard +simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't—and +I'll say as much for our friend Gideon."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is +honestly dishonest?"</p> + +<p>The Judge's suavity clothed him like velvet. "I know nothing about his +honesty. I doubt if any one does. He may be a liar and yet speak the +truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives. But I am not maintaining +that he is entirely right, you understand—merely that like the rest of +us he is not entirely wrong. I am not taking sides, you know. I am too +old to fight anybody's battles—even distressed Virtue's."</p> + +<p>"Then you think—you really think that he is sincere?" asked Stephen.</p> + +<p>"Sincere? Well, yes, in a measure. Nothing advertises one so widely as a +reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for +self-advertisement. He has found that it pays in politics to speak the +truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice. It takes courage, of +course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous +than the rest of us. To that extent, I should say that he has the +advantage of us."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean to imply," demanded the General wrathfully, "that a common +circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is +better than this lady and myself, sir?"</p> + +<p>"Well, hardly better than Corinna," replied the Judge. "Indeed, I was +about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and +Vetch. There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of +Corinna."</p> + +<p>"Father!" gasped Corinna. "Stephen, do you think he has gone out of his +mind?"</p> + +<p>"That is the first sign that wisdom has broken its cage," commented her +father. "No, my dear, I did not mean that you look like him; you are far +handsomer. I meant simply that you both habitually speak the truth, and +because you speak the truth the world mistakes you for a successful +comedian and Vetch for a kind of political Robin Hood."</p> + +<p>"Well, he is trying to hold us up in highwayman fashion, isn't he?" +asked Corinna.</p> + +<p>"Does it look that way?" inquired the Judge, with his beaming smile +which cast an edge of genial irony on everything that he said. "On the +contrary, it seems to me that Vetch is telling us the things we have +known about ourselves for a very long time. He says the world might be a +better place if we would only take the trouble to make it so; if we +would only try to live up to our epitaphs, I believe he once remarked. +He says also, I understand, that he is trying to climb to the top over +somebody else; and when I say 'he' I mean, of course, his order or his +class, whatever the fashionable phrase is. Now, unfortunately, there +appears to be but one way of reaching the top of the world, doesn't +there?—and that is by climbing up on something or somebody. Even you, +my dear Stephen, who occupy that high place, merely inherited the seat +from somebody who scrambled up there a few centuries ago. Somebody else +probably got broken shoulders before your nimble progenitor took +possession. Of course I am willing to admit that time does create in us +the sense of a divine right in anything that we have owned for a number +of years, as if our inheritance were the crown of some archaic king. I +myself feel that strongly. If it came to the point, though I have said +that I am too old to fight for distressed Virtue, I should very likely +die in the last ditch for every inch of land and every worthless object +I ever owned. When Vetch talks about taxing property more heavily I am +utterly and openly against him because it is my instinct to be. I refuse +to give up my superfluous luxuries in the cause of equal justice for +all, and I shall fight against it as long as there is a particle of +fight left in my bones. But because I am against him there is no reason, +I take it, why I shouldn't enjoy the pleasure of perceiving his point of +view. It is an interesting point of view, perhaps the more interesting +because we think it is a dangerous one. To approach it is like rounding +a sharp curve at high speed."</p> + +<p>As he rose to his feet and reached for his walking stick, Stephen +remembered that in England the Judge was supposed to have the fine +presence and the flashing eagle eyes of Gladstone. Were they alike also, +he wondered, in their fantastic mental processes?</p> + +<p>"It's time for me to go, Corinna," said the old man, stooping to kiss +his daughter, "so I shan't see you until to-morrow." Then turning to +Stephen, he added with a whimsical smile, "If you are so much afraid of +Vetch, why don't you fight him with his own weapons? What were you +doing, you and John, when the people voted for him?"</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth nobody ever dreamed that he would be elected," +replied Stephen, flushing. "Who would have thought that an independent +candidate could win over both parties?"</p> + +<p>The Judge had moved to the door, and he looked back, as Stephen +finished, with a dramatic flourish of his long white hand. "Well, +remember next time, my dear young sir," he answered, "that in politics +it is always the impossible that happens." The long white hand fell +caressingly on the shoulders of old Powhatan Plummer, and the two men +passed out of the door together.</p> + +<p>When Stephen turned to Corinna, she was resting languidly against the +tapestry-covered back of her chair, while the firelight flickering in +her eyes changed them to the deep bronze of the marigolds on the table. +With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to +him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall.</p> + +<p>"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked, +pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of +Bedford.</p> + +<p>She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my +reasons."</p> + +<p>As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly +over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich +mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the +bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints +of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer. Was not Corinna's place +among those vanished beauties of a richer age, rather than among the +sour-faced reformers and the Gideon Vetches of to-day? The wonderful +tone of the old prints, the silvery dusk, or the softly glowing colours +that were like the sunset of another century; the warmth and splendour +of the few brocades she had picked up in Italy; the suave religious +feeling of the worn red velvet from some church in Florence; the candles +in wrought-iron sconces, the shimmering firelight and the dreamy +fragrance of tea roses—all these things together made him think +suddenly of sunshine over the Campagna and English gardens in the month +of May and the burning reds and blues and golden greens of the Middle +Ages. Corinna with her unfading youth became a part of all the +loveliness that he had ever seen—of all beauty everywhere.</p> + +<p>"I haven't had a chance to tell you," she said, "that I am going to meet +the Governor."</p> + +<p>"Where? At the Berkeleys'?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, at the Berkeleys' dinner on Thursday. Are you going?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Mrs. Berkeley called me up this morning and asked me if I +would take somebody's place. She didn't say whose place it was, but she +did divulge the fact that the dinner is given to Vetch. I told her I'd +come—that I was so used to taking other people's places I could fill +six at the same time. But a dinner to Vetch! I wonder why she is doing +it?"</p> + +<p>"That's easy. Mr. Berkeley wants something from the Governor. I don't +know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very +badly."</p> + +<p>"And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me +an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of +man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the +opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he +is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs. +Stribling?"</p> + +<p>"Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should +that interest you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they say—at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any +misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it—that Mrs. Stribling's +latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself."</p> + +<p>He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not +mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and +unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war +had cured her."</p> + +<p>"The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," +he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as +a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more +obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard +enough to get rid of that."</p> + +<p>"I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make +you human—and you've never been really human all through, you know—was +not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they +made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France—he had +gone into the war before his country—and to the nervous malady, the +disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more +esteem, but to lose some that you've got. Your salvation lies in the +opposite direction from where flags are waving. If you could only +deliberately arrange to do something that would lower your reputation in +the eyes of gouty old gentlemen or mothers with marriageable daughters! +If you could manage to get your nose broken, or elope with a chorus +girl, or commit an unromantic murder, I should begin to have hopes of +you."</p> + +<p>"I may do something as bad some day and surprise you."</p> + +<p>"It would surprise me. But I'm not sure, after all, that I don't like +you better as you are, with your fine air of superiority. It makes one +believe, somehow, in human perfectibility. Now, I can never believe in +that when I realize how I feel about Rose Stribling. There is nothing +perfectible in such emotions."</p> + +<p>"Rose Stribling! Beside you she is like a pumpkin in the basket with a +pomegranate!"</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed with frank pleasure. "There are a million who would +prefer the pumpkin to the pomegranate," she answered. "Rose Stribling, +you must admit, is the type that has been the desire of the world since +Venus first rose from the foam."</p> + +<p>"Can you imagine Mrs. Stribling rising from foam?" Stephen retorted +impertinently.</p> + +<p>"No, Venus has grown fatter through the ages," assented Corinna, "but +the type is unchanged. Now, among all the compliments that have been +paid me in my life, no one has ever compared me to the Goddess of Love. +I have been painted with the bow of Diana, but never with the doves of +Venus."</p> + +<p>Because he felt that her gaiety rippled over an undercurrent of pain, +Stephen bent forward and touched her hand with an impulse of tenderness.</p> + +<p>"You are more beautiful than you ever were in your life," he said. +"There isn't a woman in the world who can compare with you." Then he +laughed merrily. "I shall watch you two to-morrow evening, you and Rose +Stribling."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry," replied Corinna in a troubled voice. "I may tell you the +truth since Father says it is the last thing any one ever believes—and +the truth is that she makes me savage—yes, I mean it—she makes me +savage."</p> + +<p>"I know what the Judge means when he says you are like Vetch," returned +Stephen abruptly. Then, without waiting for her reply, he added in an +impulsive tone: "Triumph over her to-morrow night, Corinna. Go out to +fight with all your weapons and seize the trophies from Mrs. Stribling."</p> + +<p>"You funny boy!" exclaimed Corinna, but the sadness had left her voice +and her eyes were shining. "Why, I am twelve years older than Rose +Stribling, and those twelve years are everything."</p> + +<p>"Those twelve years are nothing unless you imagine that you are in a +novel. It is only in books that there is a chronology of the emotions."</p> + +<p>"She is a fat blonde without a heart," insisted Corinna, "and they are +invulnerable."</p> + +<p>"Well, snatch Vetch away from her. He deserves something better than +that combination."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she can't hurt him very much, even though she no longer has a +husband to get in her way. Have you ever wondered how George Stribling +stood her? It must have been a relief to find himself safely dead."</p> + +<p>"He stood her as one stands sultry weather probably, but with less hope +of a change. He had that slow and heavy philosophy that wears well. I +think it even dawned upon him now and then that there was something +funny about it."</p> + +<p>"Of course he knew that she married him for his money," said Corinna, +"but that is the last thing the natural man appears to resent."</p> + +<p>Stephen rose and bent over her. "Promise me that you will save Vetch," +he implored mockingly.</p> + +<p>"Why this sudden interest in Vetch?" Corinna rose also and reached for +her fur coat. "It makes me curious to meet him. Yes, I promise you that +I will go to-morrow night attired as for a carnival in all the mystery +of a velvet mask. I may not save Vetch, but I think at least that I can +eclipse Rose Stribling. My motive may not be admirable, but it is as +feminine as a string of beads."</p> + +<p>He kissed her hand. "Bless your heart because you are both human and my +cousin." For an instant he hesitated, and then as they reached the door +together, he turned with his hand on the knob, and looked into her eyes. +"The Governor has a daughter. Did you know it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Why, of course I know it. Isn't Patty Vetch as well advertised as the +newest illustrated weekly?"</p> + +<p>"I was wondering," again he hesitated over the words, "if you had seen +her and what you think of her?"</p> + +<p>"I have seen her twice. She was in here the other day to look at my +prints, and," her brilliant eyes grew soft, "well, I feel sorry for +her."</p> + +<p>"Sorry? But do you like her?"</p> + +<p>"Haven't you always told me that I like everybody?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "With one exception!"</p> + +<p>"With one particular exception!"</p> + +<p>"But honestly, Corinna." His tone was insistent. "Do you like Patty +Vetch?"</p> + +<p>"Honestly, my dear Stephen, I do. There is something—well, something +almost pathetic about the girl; and I think she is genuine. One day last +week she came here and made me tell her everything I could about my +prints. I don't mean really that she made me, you know. There wasn't +anything forward about her then, though I hear there is sometimes. She +seemed to me a restless, lonely, misdirected intelligence hungry to know +things. That is the only way I can describe her, but you will +understand. She has had absolutely no advantages; she doesn't even know +what culture means, or social instinct, or any of the qualities you were +born with, my dear boy; but she feels vaguely that she has missed +something, and she is reaching out gropingly and trying to find it. I +like the spirit. It strikes me as American in the best sense—that young +longing to make up in some way for her deficiencies and lack of +opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her +upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know. +I like the courage that is in the girl—I am sure it is courage—and her +straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things +she was never taught, to make herself over if need be."</p> + +<p>"Is this Patty Vetch, Corinna, or your own dramatic instinct?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's Patty Vetch! I had no interest in her whatever. Why should I +have had? But I liked the way she went straight as a dart at the thing +she wanted. There was no affectation about her, no pretence of being +what she was not. She asked about prints because she saw the name and +she didn't know what it meant. She would have asked about Browning, or +Swinburne, or Meredith in exactly the same way if this had been a +book-shop. She wanted to know the difference between a mezzotint and a +stipple print. She wanted to know all about the portraits too, and the +names of the painters and who Lady Hamilton was and the Duchess of +Bedford and the Ladies Waldegrave and 'Serena,' and if Morland's +Cottagers were really as happy as they were painted? She asked as many +questions as Socrates, and I fear got as inadequately answered."</p> + +<p>"Well, she didn't strike me as in the least like that; but you can be a +great help to her if she is really in earnest."</p> + +<p>"She didn't strike you like that, my dear, simply because you are a man, +and some girls are never really themselves with men; they are for ever +acting a part; a vulgar part, I admit, but one they have learned before +they were born, the instinctive quarry eluding the instinctive hunter. +The girl is naturally shy; I could tell that, and she covers it with a +kind of boldness that isn't—well, particularly attractive to one of +your fastidious mind. Yet there is something rather taking about her. +She reminds me of a small, bright tropical bird."</p> + +<p>"Of a Virginia redbird, you mean."</p> + +<p>"A redbird? Then you have seen her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've seen her—only twice—but the last time she indulged her +sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle."</p> + +<p>"I suppose she would joke like that. Even the modern girl that we know +isn't in the best possible taste. And you must remember that Patty Vetch +is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope +she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't +come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like +that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one +can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the +window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let me take you home?"</p> + +<p>They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her +smile of whimsical gaiety.</p> + +<p>"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown +you will wear for your triumph."</p> + +<p>It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her +laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn +hope!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE TRIBAL INSTINCT</h3> + + +<p>The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude, +was holding carnival in the town. Faster and faster buildings were +rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it +is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected. Everywhere +people were pushing one another into the slums or the country. +Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was +coming on in a torrent. Two opposing principles, the conservative and +the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive +principle had won. To add more and more numbers; to build higher and +higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had +been already added or built or pushed—these impulses had united at last +into a frenzied activity. And while the building and the pushing and the +improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into +the city, and the city grew out into the country. Beneath it all, +informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the +symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless +of quality or condition, is civilization. For the many-headed god is a +god of sacrifice. He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress.</p> + +<p>Long ago the village had disappeared. Long ago the spacious southern +homes, with their walled gardens of box and roses and aromatic shrubs in +spring, had receded into the shadowy memories of those whom the modern +city pointed out, with playful solicitude, as "the oldest inhabitants." +None except the very oldest inhabitants could remember those friendly +and picturesque streets, deeply shaded by elms and sycamores; those +hospitable houses of gray stucco or red brick which time had subdued to +a delicate rust-colour; those imposing Doric columns, or quaint Georgian +doorways; those grass-grown brick pavements, where old ladies in +perpetual mourning gathered for leisurely gossip; those wrought-iron +gates that never closed; those unshuttered windows, with small gleaming +panes, which welcomed the passer-by in winter; or those gardens, steeped +in the fragrance of mint and old-fashioned flowers, which allured the +thirsty visitor in summer. These things had vanished years ago; yet +beneath the noisy commercial city the friendly village remained. There +were hours in the lavender-tinted twilights of spring, or on autumn +afternoons, while the shadows quivered beneath the burnished leaves and +the sunset glowed with the colour of apricots, when the watcher might +catch a fleeting glimpse of the past. It may have been the drop of dusk +in the arched recess of a Colonial doorway; it may have been the faint +sunshine on the ivy-grown corner of an old brick wall; it may have been +the plaintive melody of a negro market-man in the street; or it may have +been the first view of the Culpeper's gray and white mansion; but, in +one or all of these things, there were moments when the ghost of the +buried village stirred and looked out, and a fragrance that was like the +memory of box and mint and blush roses stole into the senses. It was +then that one turned to the Doric columns of the Culpeper house, +standing firmly established in its grassy lawn above the street and the +age, and reflected that the defeated spirit of tradition had entrenched +itself well at the last. Time had been powerless against that fortress +of prejudice; against that cheerful and inaccessible prison of the +tribal instinct. Poverty, the one indiscriminate leveller of men and +principles, had never attacked it, for in the lean years of +Reconstruction, when to look well fed was little short of a disgrace in +Virginia, an English cousin, remote but clannish, had died at an +opportune moment and left Mr. Randolph Byrd Culpeper a moderate fortune. +Thanks to this event, which Mrs. Culpeper gratefully classified as the +"intervention of Providence," the family had scarcely altered its manner +of living in the last two hundred years. To be sure there were modern +discomforts which related to the abolition of slavery and the +prohibition of whiskey; but since the Culpepers had been indulgent +masters and light drinkers, they had come to regard these deprivations +as in the nature of blessings. Solid, imposing, and as richly endowed as +an institution of learning, the Culpeper generations had weathered both +the restraints and the assaults of the centuries. The need to make a +living, that grim necessity which is the mother of democracy, had +brushed them as lightly as the theory of evolution. Saturated with +tradition as with an odour, and fortified by the ponderous moral purpose +of the Victorian age, they had never doubted anything that was old and +never discovered anything that was new. About them as about the hidden +village, there was the charm of mellowness, of unruffled serenity. Some +ineradicable belief in things as they have always been had preserved +them from the aesthetic derangement of the Mid-Victorian taste; and in +standing for what was old, they had stood, inadvertently but +courageously, for what was excellent. Security, permanence, +possession—all the instincts which blend to make the tribe and the +community, all the agencies which work for organized society and against +the wayward experiment in human destiny—these were the stubborn forces +embodied in the Culpeper stock.</p> + +<p>The present head of the family, that Randolph Byrd Culpeper who had been +only ten years old when Providence intervened, was now a fine-looking, +heavily built man of sixty-five, with prominent dark eyes under sleepy +lids, abundant iron-gray hair which was brushed until it shone, and a +drooping moustache that was still as brown as it had been in his youth. +He had an impressive though stolid bearing, an amiable expression, an +engaging smile, and the manner of a weary monarch. It was his boast that +he had never done anything for the first time without ascertaining +precisely how it had been done by the highest authority before him. +Devoid of even the rudiments of an imagination, he had never been +visited in a nightmare by the suspicion that the name of Culpeper was +not the best result of the best of all possible worlds. As long as his +prejudices were not offended his generosity was inexhaustible. For the +rest, he bore his social position as reverently as if it were a plate in +church, had never spoken a profane word or recognized a joke in his +life, and still dined at two o'clock in the afternoon because his +grandfather, who was dyspeptic by constitution, had been unable to +digest a late dinner. At the time of his marriage, an unusually happy +one, he was regarded as "the handsomest man of his day"; and he was +still yearned over from a distance by elderly ladies of suppressed +romantic temperaments.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper, a small imperious woman of distinguished lineage and +uncertain temper, had gone through an entire life seeing only one thing +at a time, and never seeing that one thing as it really was. If her +husband embodied the moral purpose, she herself was an incarnation of +the evasive idealism of the nineteenth century. Her universe was +comprised in her family circle; her horizon ended with the old brick +wall between the alley and the Culpepers' garden. All that related to +her husband, her eight children and her six grandchildren, was not only +of supreme importance and intense interest to her, but of unsurpassed +beauty and excellence. It was intolerable to her exclusive maternal +instinct that either virtue or happiness should exist in any degree, +except a lesser measure, outside of her own household; and praise of +another woman's children conveyed to her a secret disparagement of her +own. Having naturally a kind heart she could forgive any sin in her +neighbours except prosperity—though as Corinna had once observed, with +characteristic flippancy, "Continual affliction was a high price to pay +for Aunt Harriet's favour." In her girlhood she had been a famous +beauty; and she was still as fine and delicately tinted as a carving in +old ivory, with a skin like a faded microphylla rose-leaf, and stiff +yellowish white hair, worn à la Pompadour. Her mind was thin but firm, +and having received a backward twist in its youth, it had remained +inflexibly bent for more than sixty years. Unlike her husband she was +gifted with an active, though perfectly concrete imagination—a kind of +superior magic lantern that shot out images in black and white on a +sheet—and a sense of humour which, in spite of the fact that it lost +its edge when it was pointed at the family, was not without practical +value in a crisis.</p> + +<p>On the evening of Stephen's adventure in the Square, the Culpeper family +had gathered in the front drawing-room, to await the arrival of a young +cousin, whom, they devoutly hoped, Stephen would one day perceive the +wisdom of marrying. The four daughters—Victoria, the eldest, who had +nursed in France during the war; Hatty, who ought to have been pretty, +and was not; Janet, who was candidly plain; and Mary Byrd, who would +have been a beauty in any circle—were talking eagerly, with the +innumerable little gestures which they had inherited from Mrs. +Culpeper's side of the house. They adored one another; they adored their +father and mother; they adored their three brothers and their married +sister, whose name was Julia; and they adored every nephew and niece in +the connection. Though they often quarrelled, being young and human, +these quarrels rippled as lightly as summer storms over profound depths +of devotion.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I do wish," said Mary Byrd, who had "come out" triumphantly the +winter before, "that Stephen would marry Margaret." She was a slender +graceful girl, with red-gold hair, which had a lustrous sheen and a +natural wave in it, and the brown ox-like eyes of her father. There was +a great deal of what Peyton, the second son, who lived at home, and was +the most modern of the family, called "dash" about her.</p> + +<p>"It was the war that spoiled it," said Janet, the plain one, who +possessed what her mother fondly described as "a charm that was all her +own." "I sometimes think the war spoiled everything."</p> + +<p>At this Victoria, the eldest, demurred mildly. Ever since she had nursed +in France, she had assumed a slightly possessive manner toward the war, +as if she had in some mysterious way brought it into the world and was +responsible for its reputation. She was tall and very thin, with a +perfect complexion, a long nose, and a short upper lip which showed her +teeth too much when she laughed. Her hair was fair and fluffy; and Mrs. +Culpeper, who could not praise her beauty, was very proud of her +"aristocratic appearance."</p> + +<p>"Why, he never even mentions the war," she protested.</p> + +<p>"I don't care. I believe he thinks about it," insisted Janet, who would +never surrender a point after she had once made it.</p> + +<p>"He's different, anyhow," said Hatty, the one who had everything, as her +mother asserted, to make her pretty, and yet wasn't. "He isn't nearly so +normal. Is he, Mother?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper raised troubled eyes from the skirt of her pale gray silk +gown which she was scrutinizing dejectedly. "How on earth could I have +got that spot there?" she remarked in her brisk yet soft voice. "I am +afraid you are right, dear, about Stephen. He certainly hasn't been like +himself for some time. I have felt really anxious, I suppose it was the +war."</p> + +<p>While the war had lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of +vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but +from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an +international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course +of her family affairs. For the past two years she had refused to think +of it except under pressure; and then she recalled it only as the +occasion when Victoria and Stephen had been in France, and poor Peyton +in a training camp. Her feeling had been violent, but entirely personal, +while Mr. Culpeper, who possessed the martial patriotism characteristic +of Virginians of his class and generation, had been animated by the +sacrificial spirit of a hero.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Stephen is all right," declared Peyton, who felt impelled to take +the side of his brother in a family discussion. He was an incurious and +gay young man, of active sporting interests and immaculate appearance, +with so few of the moral attributes of the Culpepers that his mother +sometimes wondered how he could possibly be the son of his father. +Indeed there were times when this wonder extended to Mary Byrd, for it +seemed incredible that anything so "advanced" as the outlook of these +two should have been a legitimate offspring of either the Culpeper or +the Warwick point of view.</p> + +<p>"He would be all right," maintained Janet, "if he would only marry +Margaret. I am sure she likes him."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know. There's that young clergyman," rejoined Hatty, "and +Margaret is so pious. I suppose that's why she has never been popular +with men."</p> + +<p>"My dear child," breathed Mrs. Culpeper in remonstrance, and she added +emphatically, as if the doubt were a disparagement of Stephen's +attractions, "Of course she likes him. Why, it would be a perfectly +splendid marriage for Margaret Blair."</p> + +<p>"It isn't possible," asked Mary Byrd, for if her manners were modern, +her prejudices were old-fashioned, "that Stephen could have met any one +else over there?" She was wearing an elaborate, very short and very low +gown of pink velvet, not one of the simple blue or gray silk dresses, +with modest round necks, in which her sisters attired themselves in the +evening. A little later she and Peyton would go on to a dance; for her +mother's consternation when the frock had been unpacked from its Paris +wrappings had been temporarily mitigated by the assertion that unless +one danced in gowns like that, one simply couldn't be expected to dance +at all. "Of course, if you wish me to be a wall-flower like Margaret +Blair," Mary Byrd had protested with wounded dignity; and since Mrs. +Culpeper wished nothing on earth so little as that, her only response +had been, "Well, I hope to heaven that you won't let your father see +it!"</p> + +<p>Now, as her husband was heard descending the stairs, she said hurriedly: +"Mary Byrd, if you won't put a scarf over your knees, I wish you would +wear one around your neck."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Father won't mind," retorted Mary Byrd flippantly. "He is a real +sport, and he knows that you have to play the game well if you play it +at all." Then turning with her liveliest air, she remarked as Mr. +Culpeper entered: "Father, darling, I've just said that you were a +sport."</p> + +<p>Mr. Culpeper surveyed her with portentous disapproval. He adored her, +and she knew it, but because it was impossible for his features to wear +any expression lightly, the natural gravity of his look deepened to a +thundercloud.</p> + +<p>"Is Mary Byrd going in swimming?" he demanded not of his daughter, but +of the family.</p> + +<p>"No, you precious, only in dancing," replied Mary Byrd, as she rose +airily and placed a kiss above the thundercloud on his forehead.</p> + +<p>"Will you go looking like this?"</p> + +<p>"Not if I can possibly look any worse." She swayed like a golden lily +before his astonished gaze. "Can you suggest any way that I might?"</p> + +<p>"I cannot." His face cleared under the kiss, and he held her at arm's +length while paternal pride softened his look. "Do you really mean that +you won't shock the young men away from you?" It was as near a jest as +he had ever come, and a ripple of amusement passed over the room.</p> + +<p>"I may shock them, but not away." The girl was really a wonder. How in +the world, he asked himself, did she happen to be his daughter?</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that all the other girls dress like this?" It was his final +appeal to an arbitrary but acknowledged authority.</p> + +<p>"All the popular ones. You can't wish me to dress like the unpopular +ones, can you?"</p> + +<p>His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his +father had displayed in a greater surrender.</p> + +<p>"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded; +and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this +convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct.</p> + +<p>As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble +mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less +resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and +haughty—the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and +knows that his blood is blue.</p> + +<p>"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I +heard him upstairs."</p> + +<p>She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming. +That is her ring now."</p> + +<p>Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe +herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was +the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I +should call Margaret our last violet—"</p> + +<p>A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It +sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's +just as certain to be left on the stem—" Then she broke off, still +pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet +entered the room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>MARGARET</h3> + + +<p>As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fashioned lock, Stephen +remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because +Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening. "It takes you so long to +change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your +room," she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up +the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the +girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some +day—some remote day probably—become his wife. He was not in love with +Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was +not in love with him—that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be +called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who +read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also +that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of +four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past +experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less +intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this +carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her +usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have +married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would +have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of +tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous +ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the +compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of +the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for +romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would +have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James +River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had +sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness +could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something +wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived. +In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated +traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he +had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing +together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of +smothering for lack of space in which to breathe, had driven him like a +hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he +discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more +quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents +stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been +suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific +terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in +on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy +and afterward to analyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other +lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations +or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to +turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could +understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of +depression was psychoanalysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to +be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound +revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved—an apathy +of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark +unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this +morass of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only +hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete +plunge into the future. His reason told him this, and yet, though he +longed passionately to let himself go—to make the wild dash for +freedom—his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he +suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were +hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fortitude +to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as +in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic +spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw +things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by +circumstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between +tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age +and youth.</p> + +<p>Yes, it was "something different" that he craved. He had known Margaret +too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in +any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs +to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the +unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and +preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read. +As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was +gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions, +never exacted more of one's time than one cared to give, never +interfered with more important, if not more admirable, pursuits. That +was the rarest of combinations, he knew—the delightful mingling of +every virtue he held desirable in woman—and yet, rare and delightful as +he acknowledged it to be, he was obliged to confess that it awakened not +the faintest quiver of his pulses. Margaret aroused in him every +sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that +at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him +to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their +association had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in +accordance with the system under which he lived, he had assumed that +woman's part in love was as heroically passive as it had been in +religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she +was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love +with her? Until this evening he had always told himself that it would +come right in the end, that he was in his own phrase simply "playing for +time." Margaret was handsomer, if less piquant, than Patty Vetch. She +possessed every quality he had found lacking in poor Patty; yet he +admitted ruefully that he felt the vague sense of disappointment which +follows when one is offered a dish of one's choice and finds that the +expected flavour is missing.</p> + +<p>There was a peremptory knock at his door, and his mother looked in +reproachfully. "You must hurry, Stephen, or everything will be burned to +a cinder."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry," he replied with compunction, "I didn't realize that I was +late."</p> + +<p>Her expression was stern but kind. "If you could only learn to be +punctual, dear. Of course while we felt that you were not quite +yourself, we tried not to worry about it. But you have been home so long +now that you ought to be able to drop back into your old habits."</p> + +<p>She was right, he knew; the exasperating thing about her was that she +was always right. It was reasonable, it was logical, that after two +years he should be able to drop back into his old habits of life; and +yet he realized, with the intensity of revolt, that these habits +represented for him the form of bondage from which he desired +passionately to escape. He could not oppose his mother, and the +knowledge that he could not oppose her increased his annoyance. As far +back as he could remember she had governed her household as a benevolent +despot; and the fact that she lived entirely for others appeared to him +to have endowed her with some unfair advantage. Her very unselfishness +had developed into an unscrupulous power to ruin their lives. How was it +possible to weigh one's personal preferences against an irresistible +force which was actuated simply and solely by the desire for one's good? +Who could withstand a virtue which had encased itself in the first +principle of religion—which gave all things and demanded nothing except +the sacrifice of one's immortal soul?</p> + +<p>"I am ready now," he said; and then as they went downstairs together, he +added contritely: "After this I'll try to remember."</p> + +<p>"I hope you will, my dear. It vexes your father." Even in his childhood +Stephen had understood that his father's "vexation" existed only as an +instrument of correction in the hands of his mother. Though he had +discovered by the time he was three years old that the image was nothing +more than a nursery bugaboo, there were occasions still when the figure +was solemnly dressed up and paraded before his eyes.</p> + +<p>"So it's the Dad, bless him!" he exclaimed, for if he loved his mother +in spite of her virtues, he joined heartily in the family worship of the +head of the house. "Well, he has had a word with Margaret anyway, and he +ought to thank me for that."</p> + +<p>"Dear Margaret," murmured Mrs. Culpeper, "she is looking so sweet +to-night."</p> + +<p>That Margaret was looking very sweet indeed, Stephen acknowledged as +soon as he entered the room, where the firelight suffused the Persian +rugs (which had replaced the earlier Brussels carpet woven in a mammoth +floral design), the elaborately carved and twisted rosewood chairs and +sofas, upholstered in ruby-coloured brocade, the few fine old pieces of +Chippendale or Heppelwhite, the massive crystal chandelier, and the +precise copies of Italian paintings in gorgeous Florentine frames. Here +and there hung a family portrait, one of Amanda Culpeper, a famous +English beauty, with a long nose and a short upper lip, not unlike +Victoria's. This painting, which was supposed to be by Sir Joshua +Reynolds, was a source of unfailing consolation to Victoria, though +Stephen preferred the Sully painting of his grandmother, Judith +Randolph, who reminded him in some subtle way of Margaret Blair. In his +childhood he had believed this drawing-room to be the most beautiful +place on earth, and he never entered it now without a feeling of regret +for a shattered illusion.</p> + +<p>As he took Margaret's hand her expression of intelligent sympathy went +straight to his heart; and he told himself emphatically that after all +the familiar graces in women were the most lovable. She was a small +fragile girl, with a lovely oval face, nut-brown hair that grew in a +"widow's peak" on her forehead, and the prettiest dark blue eyes in the +world. Her figure drooped slightly in the shoulders, and was, as Mary +Byrd pointed out in her dashing way, "without the faintest pretence to +style." But if Margaret lacked "style," she possessed an unconscious +grace which seemed to Stephen far more attractive. It was delightful to +watch the flowing lines of her clothes, as if, he used to imagine in a +fanciful strain, she were poured out of some slender porcelain vase. Her +dress to-night, of delicate blue crêpe, began slightly below the throat +and reached almost to her ankles. It was a fashion which he had always +admired; but he realized that it gave Margaret, who was only twenty-two, +a quaint air of maturity.</p> + +<p>"I am so sorry I am late," he said, "but I had to go back to the office +for a paper I'd forgotten." It was the truth as far as it went; and yet +because it was not the whole truth, because his delay was due, not to +his return for the paper, but to his meeting with Patty Vetch in the +Square, his conscience pricked him uncomfortably. When deceit was so +easy it ceased to be a temptation.</p> + +<p>She looked at him with an expression of guileless sympathy. "After +working all day I should think you would be tired," she murmured. That +was the way she would always cover up his errors, large or small, he +knew, with a trusting sweetness which made him feel there was dishonour +in the merest tinge of dissimulation.</p> + +<p>Mary Byrd was talking as usual in high fluting notes which drowned the +gentle ripple of Margaret's voice.</p> + +<p>"I was just telling Margaret about the charity ball," she said, "and the +way the girls snubbed Patty Vetch in the dressing-room."</p> + +<p>"And it was a very good account of young barbarians at play," commented +Mr. Culpeper, who was a romantic soul and still read his Byron.</p> + +<p>"Patty Vetch? Why, isn't that the daughter of the Governor?" asked Mrs. +Culpeper, without a trace of her husband's sympathy for the victim of +the "snubbing." A moment later, in accordance with her mental attitude +of evasive idealism, she added briskly: "I try not to think of that man +as Governor of Virginia."</p> + +<p>Of course the subject had come up. Wherever Stephen had been in the past +few weeks he had found that the conversation turned to the Governor; and +it struck him, while he followed the line of girls headed by his +mother's erect figure into the dining-room, that, for good or bad, the +influence of Gideon Vetch was as prevalent as an epidemic. All through +the long and elaborate meal, in which the viands that his ancestors had +preferred were served ceremoniously by slow-moving coloured servants, he +listened again to the familiar discussion and analysis of the demagogue, +as he still called him. How little, after all, did any one know of +Gideon Vetch? Since he had been in office what had they learned except +that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in +political ones?</p> + +<p>"I wonder if Stephen noticed the girl at the ball?" said Mrs. Culpeper +suddenly, looking tenderly at her son across the lovely George II +candlesticks and the dish of expensive fruit, for she could never +reconcile with her ideas of economy the spending of a penny on +decorations so ephemeral as flowers.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he couldn't have helped it," responded Mary Byrd. "Every one saw +her. She was dressed very conspicuously."</p> + +<p>"Do you imply that you were not?" inquired her father, without facetious +intention.</p> + +<p>Mary Byrd beamed indulgently in his direction. "Oh, you don't know what +it is to be conspicuous, dear," she answered. "What did you think of her +dress, Stephen?"</p> + +<p>He met her question with a blush. Was he really so modest after the war +and France and everything?—Victoria wondered in silence.</p> + +<p>"It was something red, wasn't it?" he rejoined vaguely.</p> + +<p>"It was scarlet tulle." Mary Byrd, as her mother had once observed, +"hadn't an indefinite bone in her body." Then she imparted an additional +incident. "She got it badly torn. I saw her pinning it up in the +dressing-room."</p> + +<p>"I should have been sorry for her," said Margaret simply; and he felt +that he had never in his life been so nearly in love with her.</p> + +<p>"Is she pretty?" asked Mrs. Culpeper, appealing directly to Stephen as +a man and an authority. It was the question the strange woman had put to +him in the Square, and ironical mirth seized the young man as he +remembered.</p> + +<p>"Do you think her pretty, Stephen?" repeated Margaret, and waited, with +an expression of impartial interest, for his reply.</p> + +<p>For an instant he hesitated. Did he think Patty Vetch pretty or not? "I +hardly know," he answered. "I suppose it depends upon whether you like +that kind of thing or not. Why don't you ask Peyton?" At the time he +couldn't have told himself whether he admired Patty or not. She +surprised him, she struck a new note, the note of the unexpected, but +whether he liked or disliked it, he could not tell. "There is something +unusual about her," he concluded hurriedly, feeling that he had not been +quite fair.</p> + +<p>"Well, I think she's good looking enough," Peyton, the incurious young +man of "advanced" tastes, was replying. "She seems to have a kind of +fascination. I don't know what it is, but I dare say she inherited it +from her father. The Governor may be unsound in his views and uncertain +in his methods, but I've yet to see any one who could resist his smile."</p> + +<p>"The Judge admires him," remarked Stephen, with the air of a man who +tosses a bomb into a legislative assembly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Stephen," protested Victoria on a high note of interrogation, "how +can he?"</p> + +<p>"The Judge likes to keep up well with the times," observed Mr. Culpeper, +whose final argument against any innovation was the inquiry, "What do +you suppose General Lee would have thought of it?" Pausing an instant +while the family hung breathlessly on his words, he continued +heroically: "Now, it doesn't bother me to be called an old fogy."</p> + +<p>"There's no use trying to hide the fact that the Judge isn't quite what +he used to be," said Mrs. Culpeper in an unusually tolerant tone. "He +has let his habit of joking grow on him until you never know whether he +is serious or simply poking fun at you."</p> + +<p>"The next thing we hear," suggested Peyton, who was quite dreadful at +times, "will be that the old gentleman admires the daughter also."</p> + +<p>"He doesn't like conspicuous women," rejoined Victoria. "He told me so +only the other day when Mrs. Bradford announced that she was going to +run for the legislature."</p> + +<p>"That's the kind of conspicuousness we all object to," commented Peyton; +"Patty Vetch isn't that sort."</p> + +<p>Janet was more merciful. "Well, you are obliged to be conspicuous to-day +if you want anybody to notice you," she said. "Look at Mary Byrd."</p> + +<p>Mary Byrd tossed her bright head as gaily as if a compliment had been +intended. "Oh, you needn't think I like to dress this way," she +retorted, "or that I don't sometimes get tired of keeping up with +things. Why, there are hours and hours when I simply feel as if I should +drop."</p> + +<p>"Well, as long as you look like that you needn't hope for a change," +remarked Stephen admiringly. Then, turning his gaze away from her too +obvious brightness, he looked into the tranquil depths of Margaret's +blue eyes, and thought how much more restful the old-fashioned type of +woman must have been. Men didn't need to bestir themselves and sharpen +their wits with women like that; they were accepted, with their +inherent virtues or vices, as philosophically as one accepted the +seasons.</p> + +<p>It was a dull supper, he thought, because his mind was distracted; but a +little later, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and the family +had drifted away in separate directions—Mary Byrd and Peyton to a +dance, his father to his library, and his mother and the three other +girls to a game of bridge in the next room, he received an amazing +revelation of Margaret's point of view. His sentiment for the girl had +always suffered, he was aware, from too many opportunities. He had +sometimes wished that an obstacle might arise, that the formidable +parents would try for once to tear them apart instead of thrust them +together, but, in spite of the changeless familiarity of their +association, he was presently to discover how little he had known of the +real Margaret beneath the flowing grace and the nut-brown hair and the +eyes like blue larkspur. Though the tribal customs had shaped her body +and formed her manners, a rare essence of personality escaped like a +perfume from the hereditary mould of the race.</p> + +<p>As he looked at her now, sitting gracefully on the ruby brocade of one +of the rosewood chairs, with her lovely head framed by the band of +intricate carving, he was aware that the delicate subtleties and +shadings of her feminine charm made an entirely fresh appeal to his +perceptions, if not to his senses. He had never admired her appearance +more than he did at that instant; and yet his gaze was as dispassionate +as the one he bestowed on the Sully portrait of which she reminded him. +Her eyes were very soft; there was a faint smile on her thin pink lips +which gave the look of coldness, of reticence to her face. With her head +bent and her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting +pensively—for what? It occurred to him suddenly with a shock that she +was deeper, far deeper than he had ever suspected.</p> + +<p>"You are so different from the other girls, Margaret," he said at last, +oppressed by the old difficulty of making conversation. "You don't +belong to the same world with Mary Byrd and—" He was going to add +"Patty Vetch," but he checked himself before the name escaped him.</p> + +<p>She seemed to melt rather than break from her attitude of waiting, so +gently did her movements sink into the shadowy glow of the firelight.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't," she replied, with a touch of sadness. "I sometimes wish +that I did."</p> + +<p>"You wish that you did!" Here was surprise at last. "But, why, in +Heaven's name, should you wish that when you are everything that they +ought to be?"</p> + +<p>"As if that mattered!" There was a tone in her voice that was new to +him. "It's gone out of fashion to be superior. Nobody even cares any +longer about your being what you ought to be. I've been trained to be +the kind of girl that doesn't get on to-day, full of all sorts of +forgotten virtues and refinements. Nobody looks at me because everybody +is staring so hard at the girls who are improperly dressed. There is +only one place where I can be sure of having attention, and that is in +an Old Ladies' Home. Old ladies admire me."</p> + +<p>For the second time that day he found himself startled by the +eccentricities of the feminine mind; but in Margaret's passive +resignation there was none of Patty's rebellion against the cruelty and +injustice of life. Generations of acquiescence were in the slender +figure before him; and he realized that the completeness of her +surrender to Fate must have softened her destiny. Both girls were +victims of the changing fashion in women, of an age that moved not in a +stream, but in a whirlpool.</p> + +<p>"I admire you," he said in a caressing voice, "more than I admire any +one else in the world."</p> + +<p>She had been gazing into the fire, and as she turned slowly in answer to +his words, it seemed to him that the blue of a summer sky shone on him +from beneath the tremulous shadow of her eyelashes.</p> + +<p>"The trouble," she replied, with an appealing glance, "is that I don't +know how to be common. There isn't any hope of a girl's being popular if +she doesn't know how to be common. I would be if I could," she confessed +plaintively, "but I haven't the faintest idea how to begin."</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll never learn," he insisted. In awakening his sympathy she +had awakened also a deep-rooted protective instinct. He felt that he +longed to guard and defend her, as a brother of course, and if this +newer and tenderer sentiment was the result of feminine calculation, he +was too chivalrous or too inexperienced to perceive it. What he +perceived was simply that this lovely girl, whom he had known from +infancy, had opened her heart and taken him into her confidence. To +admit that she was not a success in her small social world, proved her, +he felt, to be both frank and courageous.</p> + +<p>"Of course they don't call their way common," she pursued, with what +seemed to him the most touching candour. "Their word for it is 'pep'." +She pronounced the vulgar syllable as if she abhorred it. "That is what +I haven't got, and that's why I have never been a real success in +anything except church work. Even in the Red Cross it was 'pep' that +counted most, and that was the reason they never sent me to Europe. +Mother tried to make me into the kind of girl that men admired when she +was young; but the type has gone out of fashion to-day just as much as +crinolines or a small waist. If I were clever I suppose I could make +myself over and begin to jump about and imitate the sort of animation I +never had; but I'm not really clever, for I've tried and I can't do it. +It only makes me feel silly to pretend to be what I am not."</p> + +<p>Her confession struck him, while he listened to it, as the sweetest and +most womanly one he had ever heard.</p> + +<p>"I cannot imagine your pretending," he answered, and felt that the +remark was as inane as if he had quoted it from a play. After a moment, +as she seemed to be waiting for something, he continued with greater +assurance, "I dare say they have a quality that the older generation +missed. It isn't just commonness. The modern spirit means, I suppose, a +breathless vitality. We are more intensely alive than our ancestors, +perhaps, more restless, more inclined to take risks."</p> + +<p>The phrases he had used made him think suddenly of Gideon Vetch. Was +that the secret of the Governor's irresistible magnetism, of his +meteoric rise into power? He embodied the modern fetish—success; he +was, in the lively idiom of the younger set,—personified "pep." After +all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? +Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, +of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps +it could build as well. There might be more in it, he was beginning to +discern, than mere lack of control, than vulgar hysteria and +undisciplined violence. The quality expressed by that dreadful word was +the sparkle on the edge of the tempest, the lightning flash that +revealed the presence of electricity in the air. After all, the god of +the future was riding the whirlwind.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if we can be wrong, you and I?" he went on presently, +forgetting the intensely personal nature of Margaret's disclosures, +while he followed the abstract trend of his reflections. "Isn't it +conceivable that we are standing, not for what is necessarily better, +but simply for what is old? Isn't the conservative merely the creature +of habit? I suppose the older generation always looks disapprovingly at +the younger, and, in spite of our youth, we really belong to the past +generation. We see things through the eyes of our parents. We are +mentally middle-aged—for middle age is a state of mind, after all. You +and I were broken in by tradition—at least I know I was, and even the +war couldn't free me. It only made me restless and dissatisfied. It +destroyed my belief in the past without giving me faith in the future. +It left me eager to go somewhere; but it failed to offer me any +direction. It put me to sea without a compass."</p> + +<p>Clasping his hands behind his head, he leaned back against the carving +of his chair, and fixed his gaze on the portrait of the English +ancestress over the mantelpiece. The firelight flickered over his firm, +clear-cut features, over the sleek dark hair, which was brushed +straight back from his forehead, and over his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes in which a dusky glow came and went. Margaret, watching him with +her pensive smile, thought that she had never seen him look so +"interesting."</p> + +<p>"We used to talk in those first days about the 'spiritual effect' of the +war," he resumed dreamily, speaking more to himself than to his +companion. "As if organized violence could have a steadying +effect—could have any results that are not the offspring of violence. +It is hard for me to talk about it. I've never even tried before to put +it into words; but we are both suffering from the same cause, I think. I +know it has played the very deuce with my life. It has made me +discontented with what I have; but it hasn't shown me anything else that +was worth striving for. I seem to have lost the power of wanting because +I've discovered that nothing is worth having after you get it. Every +apple has turned into Dead Sea fruit."</p> + +<p>He had never before spoken so freely, and when he had finished he felt +awkward and half resentful. Margaret's extraordinary frankness had +started him, he supposed, on a similar strain; but he wished that he had +kept back all that sentimental nonsense about what his mother called +disapprovingly, his "frame of mind." Any frame of mind except the +permanently settled appeared unsafe to Mrs. Culpeper; and her son felt +at the moment that her opinion was justified. Somehow the whole thing +seemed to have resulted from his meeting with Gideon Vetch. It was Vetch +who had "unsettled" him, who had taken the wind out of the stiff sails +of his prejudices. Had the war awakened in him, he wondered, the need of +crude emotional stimulants, the dangerous allurement of the unfamiliar, +the exotic? Would it ever pass, and would life become again normal and +placid without losing its zest and its interest? For it was the zest of +life, he realized, that he had encountered in Gideon Vetch.</p> + +<p>"But you are a man," Margaret was saying plaintively. "Everything is +easier for a man. You can go out and do things."</p> + +<p>"So can women now. You can even go into politics."</p> + +<p>She made a pretty gesture of aversion. "Oh, I've been too well brought +up! There isn't any hope for a girl who is well brought up except the +church, and even there she can't do anything but sit and listen to +sermons. Mother's consolation," she added with a soft little laugh, "is +that I should have been a belle and beauty in the days when Madison was +President."</p> + +<p>Then putting the subject aside as if she had finished with it for ever, +she began talking to him about the books she was reading. Of all the +girls he knew she was the only one who ever opened a book except one +that had been forbidden.</p> + +<p>An hour later, when Margaret went home with her father, Stephen turned +back, after putting her into the car, with a warmer emotion in his heart +than he had ever felt for her before. She was not only lovely and +gentle; she had revealed unexpected qualities of mind which might +develop later into an attraction that he had never dreamed she could +possess. Never, he felt, had the outlook appeared so desirable. He was +in that particular dreaminess of mood when one is easily borne off on +waves of sentiment or imagination; and it is possible that, if his +mother had been able to refrain from improving perfection, he might +have found himself sufficiently in love with Margaret for all practical +purposes. But Mrs. Culpeper, who had no need of dissimulation since she +had always got things by showing that she wanted them entirely for the +good of others, was incapable of leaving her son to work out his own +future. When he entered the house again he found her awaiting him at the +foot of the staircase.</p> + +<p>"I hope you had a pleasant evening, Stephen."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Mother, very pleasant."</p> + +<p>"Margaret is a dear girl, and so well brought up. Her mother has a great +deal for which to be thankful."</p> + +<p>"A great deal, I am sure." A sharp sense of irritation had dispelled the +dreamy sentiment with which he had parted from Margaret. To his mother, +he knew, the evening appeared only as one more carefully planned and +carelessly neglected opportunity; and the knowledge of this exasperated +him in a measure that was absurdly disproportionate to the cause.</p> + +<p>"She is so refreshing after the things you hear about other girls," +pursued Mrs. Culpeper. "Poor Mrs. St. John was obliged to go to a rest +cure, they say, because of the worry she has had over Geraldine; and the +other girls are almost as troublesome, I suppose. That is why I am so +thankful that you should have taken a fancy to Margaret. She is just the +kind of girl I should like to have for a daughter-in-law."</p> + +<p>"You'll have a long time to wait, Mother. I don't want to marry anybody +until I need a nurse in my old age."</p> + +<p>He spoke jestingly, but his mother, with her usual tenacity, held fast +to the subject. Under the flickering gas light in the hall (they were +still suspicious of the effect of electricity on Mr. Culpeper's eyes) +her face looked grimly determined, as if an indomitable purpose had +moulded every feature and traced every line in some thin plastic +substance.</p> + +<p>"I have set my heart on this, Stephen."</p> + +<p>At this he laughed aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her +instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly +without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the +unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost +her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know +whether the dread of being nagged or the fear of hurting her had +influenced him most; and when he looked back he could recall only a +series of ineffectual efforts at evasion or denial. It is true that he +had once adored her—that he still loved her—but it was a love, like +his father's, which was forbearing but never free, which was always +furtive and a little ashamed of its own weakness. Ever since he could +remember she had triumphed over their inclinations, their convictions, +and even their appetites, for they had eaten only what she thought good +for them. She had invariably gained her point; and she had gained it +with few words, without temper or agitation, by sheer force of +character. If she had been a moral principle she could not have moved +more relentlessly.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Blair and I used to talk it over when you and Margaret were +children," she continued, in the inflexible tone with which she was +accustomed to carry her point. "Even then you were fond of her."</p> + +<p>He looked at her with a gleam of the tolerant amusement he had caught +from his father's expression. "Can you imagine anything more certain to +turn a man against a marriage than the thought that it was arranged for +him in his infancy?" he objected.</p> + +<p>"Not if he knew that his mother had set her heart on it?" She looked +hurt but resolute.</p> + +<p>"Don't set your heart on it, Mother. Let me dree my own weird."</p> + +<p>"My dear boy, it is for your own good. I am sure that you know I am not +thinking of myself. I may say with truth that I never think of myself."</p> + +<p>It was true. She never thought of herself; but he had sometimes wondered +what worse things could have happened if she had occasionally done so.</p> + +<p>"I know that, Mother," he answered simply.</p> + +<p>"I have but one wish in life and that is to see my children happy," she +said, with an air of injured dignity which made him feel curiously +guilty.</p> + +<p>It was the old infallible method, he knew. She would never yield her +point; she would never relax her pressure; she would never admit defeat +until he married another woman.</p> + +<p>"I want nobody else in your place, Mother. Goodnight, and try to set +your heart on something else."</p> + +<p>As he undressed a little later he was thinking of Margaret—of her low +white brow under the "widow's peak," of her soft blue eyes, of her +goodness and gentleness, and of the thrill in her voice when she had +made that touching confession. Margaret's voice was the last thing he +thought of before falling asleep; but hours afterward, when the dawn was +beginning to break, he dreamed of Patty Vetch in her red cape and of +that hidden country of the endless roads and the far horizons.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>MAGIC</h3> + + +<p>The next day after luncheon, as Stephen walked from his club to his +office, he lived over again his evening with Margaret. "If she cared for +me it might be different," he mused; and then, through some perversity +of memory, Margaret's pensive smile became suddenly charged with +emotion, and he asked himself if he had not misinterpreted her innocent +frankness? Even if she cared, he knew that she would die rather than +betray her preference by a word or a look. "Whether she cares or not, +and it is just possible that she does care in her heart, she will marry +me if I ask her," he thought; and decided immediately that there was no +necessity to act impulsively in the matter. "If I ask her she will +persuade herself that she loves me. She will marry me just as hundreds +of women have married men in the past; and we should probably live as +long and as happily as all the others." That was the way his father and +mother had married; and why were he and Margaret different from the +generations before them? What variable strain in their natures impelled +them to lead their own separate lives instead of the collective life of +the family? "I suppose Mother is right as far as she sees," he admitted. +"To marry Margaret and settle down would be the best thing that could +happen to me." Yet he had no sooner put the thought into words than the +old feeling of suffocation rushed over him as if his hopes were +smothered in ashes.</p> + +<p>Yes, he would settle down, of course, but not now. Next year perhaps, or +the year after, he would sincerely fall in love with Margaret, and then +everything would be different.</p> + +<p>He was passing through the Square at the moment; and while he played +with the idea of his marriage with Margaret, he found himself glancing +expectantly at the car which was waiting in front of the Governor's +door. "I wonder if she is going out," he thought, while a superficial +interest brightened the dull hours before him. "It would be no more than +she deserved if I were to go in and ask after her ankle." In obedience +to the mocking impulse, he entered the gate and reached the steps just +as Patty came out on the porch. She was walking with ease, he noticed at +once, and she wore again the red cape and the little hat with red wings.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you!"</p> + +<p>"I stopped to ask after your ankle," he retorted with ironic gaiety. "I +am glad it doesn't keep you from walking."</p> + +<p>"That's the new way of treating a sprain," she replied calmly. "Haven't +you heard of it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've heard of it." He glanced down at her stocking of thin gray +silk. "But I thought even then there were bandages."</p> + +<p>She smiled archly—he felt that he wanted to slap her—and glanced up at +him with playful concern. The gray-green rays were brighter in the +daylight than he had remembered them and her mocking lips were the +colour of cherries. He thought of the thin pink curve of Margaret's +mouth and wondered if the war had corrupted his taste.</p> + +<p>Yes, Margaret was womanly; she was well bred; she possessed every +attribute that in theory he admired; yet she had never awakened this +sparkling interest, this attraction which was pungently flavoured with +surprise that he could be so strangely attracted. He could gaze unmoved +by the hour on Margaret's smooth loveliness; but the tantalizing vision +of this other girl's face, of her cloudy black hair and her clear skin +and her changeable eyes, with their misty gleam like a firefly lost in a +spring marsh—all these things were a part not of the tedious actuality, +but of that hidden country of romance and adventure. For the first time +since his return from France, he was carried far outside of himself on +the wave of an impulse; he was interested and excited. Not for an +instant did he imagine that he was falling in love. His thoughts did not +leave the immediate present when he was with her; and a part of the +adventure was the feeling that each vivid moment he spent with her might +be the last. It was, he would have said had he undertaken to analyse the +situation, merely an incident; but it was an incident that delighted +him. He knew nothing of Patty Vetch except that she charmed him against +his will; and, for the moment at least, this was sufficient.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there are sprains and sprains," she answered, with the quiver of +her lip he remembered so disturbingly. "Didn't you learn that in the +trenches?" Was she really pretty, or was it only the provocative appeal +to his imagination, the dangerous sense that you never knew what she +would dare to say next?</p> + +<p>"I didn't go there to learn about sprains," he responded gravely.</p> + +<p>"Nor about maneuvers apparently?" She hesitated over the word as if it +were unfamiliar.</p> + +<p>At her charge the light of battle leaped to his eyes. "Then it was a +maneuver? I suspected as much."</p> + +<p>The audacity of her! The unparalleled audacity! "But I am not so much +interested in maneuvers," he added merrily, "as I am in the strategy +behind them."</p> + +<p>She looked puzzled, though her manner was still mocking. "Is there +always strategy," she pronounced the word with care, "behind them?"</p> + +<p>"Always in the art of warfare."</p> + +<p>"But can't there be a maneuver without warfare?" He could see that she +was venturing beyond her depths; but he realized that a confession of +ignorance was the last thing he must ever expect from her. Whatever the +challenge she would meet it with her natural wit and her bright +derision.</p> + +<p>"Never," he rejoined emphatically. "A campaign goes either before or +afterward."</p> + +<p>A thoughtful frown knit her forehead. "Well, one didn't go before, did +it?" she inquired with an innocent air. "So I suppose—"</p> + +<p>He ended her sentence on a note of merriment. "Then I must be prepared +for the one that will follow!"</p> + +<p>She threw out her hand with a gesture of mock despair. "Oh, you may have +been mistaken, you know!"</p> + +<p>"Mistaken? About the campaign?"</p> + +<p>"No, about the maneuver. Perhaps there wasn't any such thing, after +all."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps." Though his voice was stern, his eyes were laughing. "I am not +so easily fooled as that."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if you could be fooled at all." It was the first bit of +flattery she had tossed him, and he found it strangely agreeable.</p> + +<p>"I am not sure of that," he answered, "but the thing that perplexes +me—the only thing—is why you should have thought it worth while."</p> + +<p>Her eyes grew luminous with laughter, and the little red wings quivered +as if they were about to take flight over her arching brows. "How do you +know that I thought about it at all? Sometimes things just happen."</p> + +<p>"But not in this case. You had arranged the whole incident for the +stage."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that I fell down on purpose?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that you were laughing up your sleeve all the time. You weren't +hurt and you knew it."</p> + +<p>Her expression was enigmatical. "You think then that I arranged to fall +down and risk breaking my bones for the sake of having you pick me up?" +she asked demurely.</p> + +<p>Put so plainly the fact sounded embarrassing, if not incredible. "I +think you fell for the fun of it. I think also that you didn't for a +second risk breaking your bones. You are too nimble for that."</p> + +<p>"I ought to be," she retorted daringly, "since I was born in a circus."</p> + +<p>Surprised into silence, he studied her with a regard in which admiration +for her courage was mingled with blank wonder at her recklessness. If +she had inherited her father's gift of expression, she appeared to +possess also his dauntless humour. For an instant Stephen felt that her +gaiety had entered into his spirit; and while his impression of her +danced like wine in his head, he answered her in her own tone of mocking +defiance.</p> + +<p>"Well, everything that is born in a circus isn't a clown."</p> + +<p>Her eyes widened. "Is that meant for a compliment?"</p> + +<p>"No, merely for a reminder. But if you were born in a circus, I assume +that you didn't perform in one."</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No, they took me away when I was a baby—just after +Mother died. I never lived with the circus people, and Father didn't +either except when he was a child. Not that I should have been ashamed +of it," she hastened to explain. "They are very interesting people."</p> + +<p>"I am sure of it," he answered gravely, and he was very sure of it now.</p> + +<p>"When I was a child," she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, "I used to +make Father tell me all he could remember about the 'freaks,' as they +called them. The fat woman—her name was really Mrs. Coventry—was very +kind to him when he was little, and he never forgot it. He never forgets +anybody who has ever been kind to him," she concluded with simple +dignity.</p> + +<p>An emotion which he could not define held Stephen speechless; and before +he could command his words, she began again in the same cool and quiet +voice. "His mother ran away to marry his father. She came of a very good +family in Fredericksburg, and her people never forgave her or spoke to +her afterward. But she was happy, and she never regretted it as long as +she lived. It was love at first sight. Grandfather was Irish and he +was—was—" she hesitated for a word, and at last with evident care +selected, "magnificent." "He was magnificent," she repeated +emphatically, "and she saw him first on horseback when she was out +riding. Her horse became frightened by one of the animals in the circus, +and he caught it and stopped it. It began that way, and then one night +she stole out of the house after her family had gone to bed, and they +ran away and were married. I think she was right," she added +thoughtfully, "but then I reckon—I mean I suppose it is in my blood to +take risks."</p> + +<p>She looked up at him and he responded. "But where did you learn to see +things like this, and to put them into words? Not in a circus?"</p> + +<p>"I told you I couldn't remember the circus. Mother was in one, and +though Father never told me how he fell in love with her—he never talks +of her—I think it must have been when he went back to see the people. +He always took an interest in them and tried to help them. He does +still. Even now, if anybody belonging to a circus asks him for +something, he never refuses him. When he was twelve years old somebody +took him away and sent him to school, but he always says he never +learned anything at school except misinformation about life. No books, +he says, ever taught him the truth except the Bible and 'Robinson +Crusoe.' He used to read me chapters of those every day—and he does +still when he has the time."</p> + +<p>What a strange world it was! How full of colour and incident, how +drenched with the quality of the unusual!</p> + +<p>"And what did you learn?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I?" She was speaking earnestly. "Oh, I learned a great many—no, a +multitude of things about life."</p> + +<p>At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight. "With a special course of +instruction in maneuvers," he rejoined.</p> + +<p>Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with +defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have learned +about—strategy."</p> + +<p>How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack! It was easy +to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle +in her wit.</p> + +<p>"Oh, then you will out-general me entirely! Isn't it enough to force me +to acknowledge your superior tactics?"</p> + +<p>She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter. "Tactics? Have I been +using superior tactics without knowing it?"</p> + +<p>"That I can't answer. Is there anything that has escaped your +instinctive understanding?"</p> + +<p>She laughed softly. "Well, there's one thing you may be sure of. I'll +know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again." +Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the +steps and into the car. "I wish Father were here," she said, looking out +at him. "He wants to talk to you."</p> + +<p>"I should like to talk to him. I shall come again, if I may."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home." As the car +started she called out teasingly. "My next maneuver may be more +successful, you know!"</p> + +<p>How provoking she was, and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as +sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked +himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display +of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time—not, like +Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the +general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he +felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or +pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition—a perpetual +motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, he realized, was +where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in +the turmoil. He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to +become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was +simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to +meditate, never to reason upon one's course; but to sweep onward, +somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, +variability—were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern +mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to +convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the +triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; +martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading +mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that +democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? +Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some +justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for +ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to +believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the +disorder. If he could find that it contained a single redeeming +principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be +able to surrender his disbelief.</p> + +<p>He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the +house, spoke to him abruptly.</p> + +<p>"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?"</p> + +<p>With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare, +he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the +evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less +repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her +features gave a certain dignity to her expression—the look of one who +is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or +dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been +attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes +were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse +black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye.</p> + +<p>"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was +you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass +on; but he made a movement to detain her.</p> + +<p>"Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I am a stranger here." Her accents were ordinary, yet there was +a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner. Whatever she was, +she was not commonplace.</p> + +<p>"But you were waiting to see him?" he said.</p> + +<p>Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion. "Oh, +yes, I thought I might see him. I've never seen a Governor."</p> + +<p>"You do not wish to speak to him?"</p> + +<p>"No; why should I wish to speak to him? I'm a stranger, that's all. I +like to see whatever is going on. Was that his daughter who went out +just now?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, that was his daughter."</p> + +<p>"Then she is pretty—almost as pretty as—Thank you, sir. I will go +along now. I'm staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the +chance to watch the squirrels in the Square."</p> + +<p>The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could +not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth. Again +he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past? It +was possible; it was not even improbable. Once, even ten or fifteen +years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and +he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a +fastidious taste.</p> + +<p>The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer +gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a +man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk from the fountain at the +foot of the hill. By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive +joviality—the mark of the successful local politician—Stephen +recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who +had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career. "What an +unconscionable bounder the fellow is," thought Stephen as he passed him. +What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in +his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too +low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends +which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips.</p> + +<p>"I suppose he is on his way to the Governor," mused the young man idly. +"How on earth does Vetch stand him?"</p> + +<p>But to his surprise, when he glanced back again, he saw that Gershom had +passed the mansion, and was hurrying down the walk which the strange +woman had followed a moment before. Stephen could still see her figure +approaching a distant gate; and he observed presently that Gershom was +not far behind her, and that he appeared to be speaking her name. She +started and turned quickly with a movement of alarm; and then, as +Gershom joined her, she went on again in the direction she had first +taken. A few minutes later their rapidly moving figures left the Square +and passed down the street beyond the high iron fence.</p> + +<p>"I wonder what it means?" thought Stephen indifferently. "I wonder what +the deuce Gershom has got up his sleeve?"</p> + +<p>By the time he reached his office the wonder had vanished; but it +returned to him on his way home that afternoon when he dropped into the +old print shop for a word with Corinna.</p> + +<p>"I passed that fellow Gershom in the Square to-day," he said. "Do you +know him by sight?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "What is he like? Patty tells me that he has become +a nuisance."</p> + +<p>"Ah, then you have seen Patty?"</p> + +<p>A smile turned her eyes to the colour of November leaves. "She was here +for an hour this morning. I have great hopes of her. I think she is +going to supply me with an interest in life."</p> + +<p>"Then she still amuses you?"</p> + +<p>"Amuses me? My dear, she enchants me. She stands for the suppressed +audacities of my past."</p> + +<p>He looked at her thoughtfully. "I wonder how much of her is real?"</p> + +<p>"Probably half. She is real, I think, in her courage, but not in her +conventions."</p> + +<p>"Well, I confess that she puzzles me. I can't see just what she means."</p> + +<p>"I doubt if she means anything. She is a vital spirit; she chafes at +chains; and she is smarting from a sense of inferiority. There is a +thirst for power in her little body that may make her either an actress +or a politician."</p> + +<p>"Now, it seems to me that if she has any sense it is one of superiority. +She treated me like a brick under her feet."</p> + +<p>For a minute Corinna was silent. The smile on her lips had grown +tenderly humorous; and there was a softness in her eyes which made him +sorry that he had not known her when he was a child. "Do you know what +she told me to-day?" she said. "She studies a page of the dictionary +every morning, and she tries to remember and practise all day the new +words that she learns. She is now in the letter M."</p> + +<p>A peal of merriment interrupted her. "That explains it!" exclaimed +Stephen with unaffected delight, "maneuver—misinformation—multitude—"</p> + +<p>"So she has practised on you too?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they all practise on me," he retorted. "It is what I was made for."</p> + + +<p>"Well, as long as it is only words, you are safe, I suppose."</p> + +<p>He denied this with a gesture. "It is everything you can possibly +practise with—from puddings to pigeons."</p> + +<p>"My poor dear, so you have been eating Margaret's puddings. Weren't they +good ones?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, perfection! But I wasn't thinking of Margaret."</p> + +<p>"I know you weren't. For your mother's sake I wish that you were."</p> + +<p>His face looked suddenly tired. "Margaret is perfection, I know; but I +feel sometimes that only perfect people can endure perfection."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know." Her smile had faded now. "I admire Margaret tremendously, +but I feel closer to Patty."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. I am not sure. Somehow I have been sure of nothing since I +came out of the trenches—least of all of myself. I am trying to find +out now what I am in reality."</p> + +<p>As he rose to go she held out her hand. "I think,—I am not certain, but +I think," she responded gaily, "that Patty's dictionary may give you the +definition."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>CORINNA GOES TO WAR</h3> + + +<p>"Yes, I've had a mean life," thought Corinna, while she stood before her +mirror carefully placing a patch on her cheek. In her narrow gown of +black velvet, with the silver heels of her slippers shining beneath the +transparent draperies, she had more than ever the look of festival, of +October splendour. If her beauty had lost in roundness and softness, it +had gained immeasurably in authority, in that air of having been a part +of great events, of historic moments which clung to her like a legend. +Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for +her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the +painted lily? Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry, +nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness. She had given +herself for what? For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a +damaged illusion. The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been +worse than tragic; it had been comic—since it had left her beggared. +Looking back upon it now she saw that it had lacked even the mournful +dignity of a broken heart.</p> + +<p>"I have had a mean life; but it isn't over yet, and I may make something +better of the rest of it," she thought. "At least I have fighting blood +in my veins, and I will never give up. After all, even if my life has +been mean, I haven't been—and that is what really counts in the end. +If I haven't been happy, I have tried to be gallant—and it takes +courage to be gallant with an aching heart—"</p> + +<p>As she fastened the long string of pearls—one of Kent Page's early +gifts—she drew back from the mirror, with the light of philosophy, if +not of happiness, overflowing her eyes. With her grace and her radiance +she stood for the flower of the Virginian aristocratic tradition; with +her sincerity and her fearlessness she embodied the American democratic +ideal. Her forefathers had brought representative government to the New +World. They had sat in the first General Assembly ever summoned in +America; and through the generations they had fought always on the side +of liberty tempered by discipline, of democracy exalted by patriotism. +They had stood from the beginning for dignity, for manners, for the +essence of social culture which places art at the service of life. +Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always +they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing +cult of the second best. From this source, from the inherited instinct +for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order +and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of +life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body. She had +been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an age when +beauty had been bartered for usefulness. Would the delicate +discriminations in which she had been trained, the lights and shadows of +her soul, become submerged in the modern effort to reduce all +distinctions to a level, all diversities to an average?</p> + +<p>Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room, +with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue +silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit +darkness. There had been luxury always. Money she had had in abundance; +yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not +have exchanged it all—everything that money could bring her—for the +dinner of herbs where love was. She had possessed everything except the +one thing she had wanted. She had served the tin gods in temples of gold +and jade. With the deep instinct for perfection in her blood, she had +spent her life in an endless compromise with the inferior.</p> + +<p>"Was there something lacking in me?" she asked now of her glowing +reflection. "Was there some vital spark left out when I was born? And +to-night? Why should I care how it goes? What is Rose Stribling to me or +I to her?" Why should she still cherish that dull resentment, that +smothered sense of injury in her heart? Was it the burden of her +inheritance, the weakness of the older races, that she could not +forget? She had loved a man who was unworthy; she had loved him for no +better reason, she understood now, than a superficial charm, a romantic +appeal. The fault was in the man, she knew, yet she had forgiven the +man long ago, while she still hated Rose Stribling. Perversity, +inconsistency—but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it. "If +she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but +she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day. It was +vanity then, and it is vanity now. You cannot hurt her heart—only her +pride—"</p> + +<p>Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her +image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue +velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on +that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she +had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost +much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and the +transparent gaze, but she had lost neither charm nor radiance.</p> + +<p>"So we are invited to meet Gideon Vetch," remarked the Judge as they +went down the steps; and from the whimsical sound of his voice, she knew +that there was a smile on his face. The house, with its picturesque +English front half hidden by Virginia creeper, stood at the end of a +long avenue, in the centre of a broad lawn planted in fine old elms.</p> + +<p>"Yes, there must be some reason for the dinner, but Sarah Berkeley did +not tell me."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be glad to see the Governor again," said the Judge, leaning +comfortably back as the car rolled down the avenue to the road, "but you +will have a dreary evening, I fear, unless John should be there."</p> + +<p>Corinna smiled in the darkness. So even her father, who so rarely +noticed anything, had observed her growing interest in John Benham. +After all, might this be—this sudden revival of an old sentiment in +John's heart—"the something different," the ultimate perfection for +which she had sought all her life? "He is beginning to mean more to me +than any one else," she thought. "If only I had never heard that old +gossip about Alice Rokeby."</p> + +<p>Leaning over, she patted the Judge's hand. "Don't have me on your mind, +Father darling. Go ahead and enjoy the Governor as much as you can. I am +easy to amuse, you know, and besides, I have my own particular iron in +the fire to-night."</p> + +<p>"You are never without expedients, my child, but I hope this one has no +bearing on Vetch."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but it has. Like Esther, the queen, I have put on royal apparel for +an ulterior object. Did you notice that I had made myself as terrible as +an army with banners?"</p> + +<p>"I thought you were looking unusually lovely," replied the Judge +gracefully. "But you are always so handsome that I suspected no guile."</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed merrily. "But I am full of guile, dear innocent! I go +forth to conquer."</p> + +<p>"Not the Governor, I hope?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, the Governor is nothing—a prize, nothing more. My antagonist +is Mrs. Stribling."</p> + +<p>"Rose Stribling?" The Judge was mildly astonished. "Why, I remember her +as a little girl in white dresses."</p> + +<p>Corinna's smile became scornful. "Well, she isn't a little girl any +longer, and she oughtn't to be in white dresses."</p> + +<p>"Dear me, dear me," rejoined the old gentleman. "I am aware that you +have a dramatic temperament, but it is scarcely possible that you are +jealous of little Rose. She is a good deal younger than you, if I am not +mistaken—but my memory is not all that it once was."</p> + +<p>"She is twelve years younger and at least twenty years more malicious," +retorted Corinna lightly. "But those twelve years aren't as long as they +were in your youth, my dear. A generation ago they would have spelt an +end of my conquests; to-day they mean only new worlds to conquer."</p> + +<p>The Judge looked perplexed. "Am I to infer from this that you have +designs on the Governor? And may I inquire what use you intend to make +of him after you have captured him from the enemy?"</p> + +<p>Corinna shrugged her shoulders. "I hadn't thought of that. Release him, +probably. But, whatever happens, I shall have saved him from a worse +fate. For that he ought to thank me, and he will if he is reasonable."</p> + +<p>"Few men are reasonable in captivity. Do you think, by the way, that +Mrs. Stribling would like another husband, and such a husband as our +friend the demagogue?"</p> + +<p>"I think she would like a political career, and of course her only way +of obtaining a career of any kind is to marry one. Though she isn't +discerning, she has sense enough to perceive that. They tell me that the +Governor is starting straight for the Senate, and the wife of a +senator—of any senator—might have a very good time in Washington. +Besides, there is always the chance of course that the winds of public +folly may blow him into the White House."</p> + +<p>"If what you say is true it would be a hard fate for an honest rogue," +admitted the Judge. "In your hands he would at least go unharmed."</p> + +<p>"Oh, unharmed certainly. Perhaps helped."</p> + +<p>"Then it is better so. But the thing that interests me in Vetch, is not +his value as a matrimonial or romantic prize; I am concerned solely and +simply with his opinions."</p> + +<p>"Well, you will have the advantage of Mrs. Stribling and me, for we +shall probably find the cigars an impediment to our attack. At any rate, +we ought to have a less tedious evening than you expect."</p> + +<p>A little later, when she entered the long drawing-room where the other +guests were already assembled, Corinna threw an inquiring glance in the +direction of Mrs. Stribling. Could the shallow pink and white loveliness +of that other woman, the historic type of the World's Desire, bear +comparison with her own starry beauty? It was a petty rivalry. She had +entered into it half in jest, half in irritation, yet some sportsmanlike +instinct prompted her to play the game to the end. She would prove to +Rose Stribling that those twelve years of knowledge and suffering had +taught her not to surrender, but to conquer.</p> + +<p>The Berkeleys were what was still known in their small social world as +"quiet people." They entertained little, and always with a definite +object which they were not afraid to disclose. Their house, an +incongruous example of Mid-Victorian architecture, was still suffused +for them with the sentimental glamour of their wedding day. The walls, +untouched for years, were covered with embossed paper and panelled in +yellow oak. The furniture, protected for five months of the year by +covers of striped linen, was stiffly upholstered in pea-green brocade; +and the pictures, hanging very high, were large but inferior oil +paintings in heavily gilded frames that represented preposterous sheaves +of wheat or garlands of roses. Forty years ago the house reproduced +within and without "the best taste" of the period, and was as bad as the +Berkeleys could afford to make it. Since then fashions had come and +gone; yet the hospitable home remained as unchanged as the politics of +the host or the figure of the hostess. The Berkeleys were still content +to be "old-fashioned people," with the fine feeling and the +indiscriminate taste of an era which had flowered not in architecture +but in character, when the standard of living was high and the style in +furniture correspondingly low. To-night the ten guests (the Berkeleys +never gave large dinners) had been carefully chosen, and the evening +would probably be distinguished by good talk and good wine. Though they +were law-abiding persons to the core, the bitterness of the Eighteenth +Amendment had not penetrated to the subterranean darkness where Mr. +Berkeley's treasures were stored.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Berkeley, a brisk, compact little woman, with a pretty florid face +and the prominent bosom and tapering waist of forty years ago, turned +from the Governor as Corinna and the Judge entered, and hurried forward +in her animated way, which reminded one of the manner of a child that is +trying to make a success of a dolls' party. Beyond Mr. Berkeley, a +short, neutral-tinted man without emphasis of personality, Corinna saw +Mrs. Stribling's tall, full figure draped in a gown of jade-coloured +velvet, with a daringly short skirt from which a narrow, sharply pointed +train wound like a serpent. Her heavy hair, of an unusual shade of pale +gold, had the smooth, polished look of metal which had been moulded in +waves close to her head. In spite of her active life and her disastrous +affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy +surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent +attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for +the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one, +except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair +between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had +thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But +time had dragged on; Corinna had come home again; and Alice Rokeby's +violet eyes had grown deeper and more wistful, with a haunted look in +them as if they were denying a hungry heart. She had never dressed well; +she had never, as Mrs. Stribling remarked, known how to bring out her +best points; and to-night she had been even less successful than usual. +Both Corinna and Mrs. Stribling could have told her that she should have +avoided violent shades; and yet she was wearing now a dress of vivid +purple which made her pale rose-leaf complexion look almost sallow. +Though she could exercise when she chose a strangely passive attraction, +her charm usually failed in the end for lack of intelligent guidance.</p> + +<p>A little beyond Alice Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures, +John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch, +who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted +from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over +a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large +beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to +cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a +moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash +of satirical amusement in his eyes. He was a tall thin man of middle +age, with a striking appearance and the straight composed features of an +early American portrait. His dark hair, brushed back from his forehead, +had the shining gloss that comes of good living and careful grooming, +and this gloss was reflected in his smiling gray eyes and in the healthy +red of his well-cut though not quite generous mouth. He was a charming +guest, an impressive speaker, a sympathetic listener; yet there had +always seemed to Corinna to be a subtle deficiency in his character. It +was only of late, since their friendship had turned into a warmer +feeling, that she had been able to overcome that sense of something +wanting which had troubled her when she was with him. She could define +no quality that was absent; but the impression he still gave her at +times was one of a man tremendously gifted and yet curiously inadequate. +A mental thinness perhaps? An emotional dryness? Or was it merely that +here also she felt, rather than perceived, the intrinsic weakness of the +old order?</p> + +<p>Beyond Benham, Gideon Vetch, rugged, sanguine, and wearing the wrong tie +with his evening clothes as valiantly as he had worn the rumpled brown +suit in which Stephen had last seen him, was talking in a loud voice to +Miss Maria Berkeley—one of those serene single women arrayed in +dove-colour who belong as appropriately as crewel work or antimacassars +to another century. If Patty was shy and self-conscious, it was evident +that her state of mind was not shared by her father. He was interested +because he was expressing a cherished opinion, and he was talking in an +emphatic tone because he hoped that he might be overheard. When Mrs. +Berkeley drew him away in order to introduce him to Corinna, he resumed +his theme immediately, as if he were addressing a public meeting and had +scarcely noticed that there had been a change in his audience. "Miss +Berkeley was asking me what I thought of the effects of prohibition," +he explained presently with his smile of unguarded friendliness. How +was it possible to arrest the attention of a man who insisted on talking +of prohibition?</p> + +<p>At the table a little later Corinna asked herself the question again, +while she made light conversation for the retired general who had taken +her in—an anecdotal, bewhiskered presence, with the husky voice and the +glazed eyes of successful pomposity. Glancing occasionally at Vetch who +sat on her left, she found that he was describing to Mrs. Berkeley the +best protection against forest fires. As far as Corinna was concerned, +she felt that she might as well have been a view from the window, or the +portrait of Mr. Berkeley's great aunt that hung over the mantelpiece. He +had probably, she reflected, classified her lightly as "another +gray-haired woman," and passed on to Rose Stribling, who bloomed +triumphantly between John Benham and Stephen Culpeper. Vetch was so +different from what Corinna had expected to find him that, in some vague +way, she felt disappointed and absurdly resentful. Had her imagination, +she wondered, prepared her to meet one of the picturesque radicals of +fiction? Had she looked for a middle-aged Felix Holt; and was this why +the Governor's prosaic figure, his fresh-coloured, undistinguished face +and his vehement, spectacular gestures, dispelled immediately the +interest she had felt in the meeting? There were no salient points in +his appearance, nothing that she could detach from the rest in her +mental image of him. There was no single characteristic of which she +could say: "He may be common; he may be vulgar; but he strikes the note +of greatness here—and here—and here." With such a man, she felt, the +direct and obvious appeal of Rose Stribling would be victorious. He +could discern pink and white and blue and gold; but the indeterminate +shades, the subtleties and mysteries of charm were enigmatical to him. +His emotions would be as literal as his convictions or his oratory. Yet +there must be some faculty in him which did not appear on the surface, +some primitive grasp of realities in his understanding of men. Why +should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, she asked +herself the next minute, be greater than the influence of John Benham, +who possessed every admirable trait except the ability to make people +follow him? What was this fundamental difference in material or +structure which divided them so completely? When she had traced it to +its source would she discover the secret of Vetch's conquering +personality?</p> + +<p>Looking away from the General, her eyes rested for a moment on Stephen +Culpeper, who was listening with his reserved impersonal attention to +the amusing prattle of Patty Vetch. Obeying an imperative rule, Mrs. +Berkeley had placed her youngest guests together; and yet, if Stephen +had been seventy-five instead of twenty-six, he could sparcely have had +less in common with the Governor's daughter. With her small glossy head, +and her scarlet cheeks and lips above the fan of ostrich feathers, the +girl reminded Corinna of a spray of Christmas holly, all dark and bright +and shining. Ever since Patty's first visit to the print shop Corinna +had felt a genuine liking for her. The girl had something deeper than +charm, reflected the older woman; she had determination and endurance, +the essentials of character. Of course she was crude, she was ignorant; +but these are never insurmountable obstacles except to the dull. With +intelligence and resourcefulness all things are possible—even the +metamorphosis of a circus rider's daughter into a woman of the world.</p> + +<p>Becoming suddenly aware that Vetch was silent, and that Mrs. Berkeley +had turned to Judge Page on her left, Corinna looked for the first time +into the frank blue eyes of the Governor. Strange eyes they were, she +thought, the one striking feature in a face that was ordinary. It was +like looking down into the very fountain of life—no, of humanity.</p> + +<p>"I have been watching your daughter," she began casually. "She is very +pretty."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is pretty enough"—his tone was playful—"but I don't like +this craze for short hair."</p> + +<p>She looked him over calmly. Indirect methods would be wasted on such an +opponent. "You must admire Mrs. Stribling's."</p> + +<p>"I do. Don't you?" His glance roved to the ample beauty beside John +Benham. "It looks exactly like a rope of flax."</p> + +<p>"A rope suggests a hanging to me," she rejoined grimly.</p> + +<p>He laughed, and she noticed that his eyes were brimming over with +humour. Yes, they were extraordinary eyes, and they made one feel +sympathetic and friendly. The man had a quality, she couldn't deny it.</p> + +<p>"We don't hang any longer," he replied.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, we do sometimes—without the law."</p> + +<p>The blue sparkles in his eyes contracted to points of light. She had at +last, by arresting his wandering attention, succeeded in making him look +at her.</p> + +<p>"I wonder what you mean," he mused aloud, and added frankly, "I've never +seen you before, have I?"</p> + +<p>"Have I?" she mimicked gaily. "Wouldn't you remember me? Or are all +gray-haired women alike to you?"</p> + +<p>His gaze travelled to her hair. "I didn't mean it that way. Of course I +should have remembered." He spoiled this by adding: "I never forget a +face," and continued before she could answer, "I don't know whether your +hair is gray or only powdered a little; but you are as young as—as +summer."</p> + +<p>"Or as your political party."</p> + +<p>"That's good. I like a nimble wit." He was plainly amused. "But my party +isn't young, you know. It is as old as Esau and Jacob. Oh, yes, I've +read my Bible. I was brought up on it."</p> + +<p>"That is why your speech is so direct," she said when he paused, +concluding slowly after a minute, "and so sincere."</p> + +<p>"You feel that I am sincere?"</p> + +<p>She met his eyes gravely. "Doesn't every one?"</p> + +<p>He laughed shortly. "Ah, you know better than that!"</p> + +<p>"Well, my father does. He says that it is your sincerity that makes you +resemble me."</p> + +<p>To her surprise he did not laugh at this. "Do I resemble you?" he asked +simply.</p> + +<p>"Father thinks so. He says that people won't take us seriously because +we tell them the truth."</p> + +<p>An impression drifted like smoke across the blue of his eyes. Who was +it, she wondered, who had said that his eyes were gray? "Don't they take +you seriously?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"As a woman, yes. As a human being, no."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "You are too deep. I can't follow. I understand only the +plain bright ideas of the half educated, you know."</p> + +<p>Her brilliant glance shone on him steadily. "I shan't try to explain. +What one doesn't understand without an explanation isn't worth knowing. +But somebody must take you seriously, or you wouldn't be where you are."</p> + +<p>"Do you know where I am?" he demanded impulsively.</p> + +<p>"I know that you are Governor of Virginia."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that! I thought you meant something more than that," he returned +with a note of disappointment in his voice.</p> + +<p>"What could I mean more than that? Isn't it the first step upward in a +political career?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. But I was thinking of something else. The chief thing seems to +me to be to work a way out of the muddle. Anybody may be Governor or +even President if he tries hard enough—but it is a different matter to +bring some kind of order out of this confusion. I've got an idea that +I've been hammering at for the last twenty years. Not a great one, +perhaps, though I think it is; and I'd like to get a chance to put it +into practice before I die. I want to wake up people and tell them the +truth."</p> + +<p>Was he, for all his matter-of-fact appearance, simply another political +dreamer, another visionary without a definite vision?</p> + +<p>"And will they listen when you tell them?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Who knows what may happen? When I was a kid in the +circus—you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a +travelling circus"—how simply he brought this out!—"the fat woman, we +called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When +the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the +people will learn wisdom."</p> + +<p>"But you have caught your larks, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"No, I used to set snares by the hundred, but I never caught anything +better than a sparrow."</p> + +<p>A wistful look crossed her face, and for an instant the youth seemed to +droop and fade in her eyes. "Isn't that life?—sparrows for larks +always?"</p> + +<p>His sanguine spirit rejected this as she had known that it would. "Life +is all right," he replied, "as long as there's a fighting chance left to +you. That is the only thing that makes it worth while, fighting to win."</p> + +<p>She gazed meditatively at the points of flame on the white candles. "I +suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a +part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of +us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am a part of it," he answered slowly. "I see it as it is, I +think. It is pure buncombe, of course, to say that it hasn't its ugly +side; but I believe, if I have a chance, that I can make something of +it." He paused a moment while he hesitated over the silver beside his +plate; but there was no uncertainty in his voice when he went on again, +after deliberately picking up the fork he preferred. It was a little +thing to remember a man by—the merest trifle—but she never forgot it. +Only a big man could be as natural as that, she reflected. "I reasoned +it all out before I went into politics," he was saying. "I didn't get it +out of books either—unless you count the Bible and 'Robinson Crusoe,' +which are the only two I ever read as a boy. But the way I worked it out +at last was that democracy, like life, isn't anything that's already +finished. It is raw stuff. We are making it every minute of the time; +and it depends on us whether we put it through as a straight job or a +failure. Democracy, as I see it, isn't a word or a phrase out of a book, +or a formula, or anything that has frozen into a fixed shape or pattern. +It is warm and fluid, and it is teeming with living forms. It is as much +alive as the earth or air or water, and it can be used to develop as +many varying energies. That is why it is all so amazingly interesting. +As long as you don't fall away from that thought you have your feet +planted on solid ground—you can face things squarely—"</p> + +<p>"You preach a kind of political pragmatism," she said as he paused.</p> + +<p>"Pragmatism? That's a muscular word, but I don't know it. I wonder if +Robinson Crusoe discovered it."</p> + +<p>"If Robinson Crusoe didn't discover it, he lived it," she rejoined +gaily; and then, as the voice of Mrs. Berkeley was heard purring softly +on Vetch's other side, Corinna turned to the bewhiskered General, whose +only sense, she had already ascertained, was the historic sense.</p> + +<p>While she leaned back, with her head bent in the direction of his husky +voice, she was visited by a piercing realization of the emptiness, the +artificiality of her life. Futility—weariness—disenchantment—a gray +lane without a turning that stretched on into nothingness! Many thoughts +were blown through her mind like leaves in a high wind. She saw herself +from the beginning—striving without rest—searching—searching—for +what? For happiness—for perfection—for the starry flower that she had +never found. All was tawdry, all was tarnished, all was unreal. In +looking back she saw that the festival of her life was an affair of +tinselled splendour and glittering dust. Was this only the impression of +Vetch on her mood? Did he possess some magic gift of personality which +caused the artificial, the counterfeit, to wither in his presence?</p> + +<p>Conversation was not animated; and while she listened with a smile to +dreary anecdotes of the War Between the States, she allowed her gaze to +wander slowly down the table to where Alice Rokeby sat, with her large +soft eyes, so vague and wistful, asking of life, "Why have you passed me +by?" Now and then these eyes, which reminded Corinna of the eyes in a +dream, would turn timidly to John Benham, and then there would steal +into them that strange look of hunger, of desperation. What did it mean? +Corinna wondered. Surely there was no truth in the old gossip that she +had heard long ago and forgotten?</p> + +<p>John Benham had put a question to the Governor across the table; and he +sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The +light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen +Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of +delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions +fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated +to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in +that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair +accentuated the height of his forehead, and produced at first sight an +impression of intellectual superiority. His nose was long and slightly +aquiline; his mouth firm and clear-cut, with thin lips that closed +tightly; his chin jutted a little forward, giving a hatchet-like +severity to his profile. It was the face of a fair fighter, of a man who +could be trusted absolutely beyond personal limitations, of a man who +would always keep the vision of the end through any enterprise, who +would always put the curb of expediency on emotional impulses, who would +invariably judge a theory not by its underlying principle, but by its +practical application. A charming face, too, complex and imaginative, a +face which made the rugged and open countenance of the Governor appear +primitive and undeveloped. Corinna admired Benham; she respected him; +she liked—was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him? +Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy, +of something wanting, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either +left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes +of his mind.</p> + +<p>Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs. +Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable +allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the +flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming +enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty +Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from +one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna, +for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the +admiration of Gideon Vetch. The lesson it taught, she repeated +cynically, was simply that it was futile to stray too far from one's +type. Vetch had talked to her as he might have talked to her father or +to the husky warrior on her right; but he had never once looked at her. +His attention would be arrested by large, sudden, bright things like the +rosy curve of Mrs. Stribling's shoulders or the shining ropes of her +hair.</p> + +<p>"How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!" thought +Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than +resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was +her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her +adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate +Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep +meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and +the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers. +Had he read the thought in her mind? Was the tenderness in his glance +only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days?</p> + +<p>She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the +eyes of Alice Rokeby—those eyes that asked perpetually of life, "Why +have you passed me by?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE WORLD AND PATTY</h3> + + +<p>On the way home, leaning against her father who had not spoken since the +car started, Patty shut her eyes and went over, one by one, the +incidents of the dinner. What had she done that was right? What had she +done that was wrong? Was her dress just what it ought to have been? Had +she talked to Stephen Culpeper about the things people are supposed to +discuss at a dinner? Had he seen how embarrassed she was beneath her +pretence of gaiety? Would she be better looking if she were to let her +hair grow long again? What had Mrs. Page, who looked as if she had +stepped down from one of those old prints, thought of her?</p> + +<p>Beneath the hard brightness of her manner there was a passionate groping +toward some dimly seen but intensely felt ideal. She longed to learn if +she could only learn without confessing her ignorance. Her pride was the +obstinate, unreasonable pride of a child.</p> + +<p>"If I could only find out things without asking!" The image of Stephen +rose in her mind, which worked by flashes of insight rather than orderly +processes. She saw his earnest young face, with the sleek dark hair, +which swept in a point back from his forehead, his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes, and the firm, slightly priggish line of his mouth. He seemed miles +away from her, separated by some imponderable yet impassable barrier. +The first time her gaze had rested on him at the charity ball she had +thought impetuously, "Any girl could fall in love with a man like that!" +and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who +appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself. The next +day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had +obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the +gambler's instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity. After all, had not +experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that +nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next +turn of fortune? She had been startled out of her composure by the sight +of Stephen at the dinner; and yet she had not been conscious of any +particular wish to see him again, or to sit at his side through two +hours of embarrassment and uncertainty. Now, on the way home, she was +suffering acutely from the burden of failure, from the smarting +realization of her own ignorance and awkwardness. Her one bitter-sweet +consolation was the knowledge that she had been "a good loser," that she +had carried off her humiliation with a scornful pride which must have +blighted like frost any tenderly budding shoots of compassion. "I'll +show them that they mustn't pity me!" she thought, while her eyes blazed +in the darkness. "I'll prove to them that I think myself every bit as +good as they are!" She knew that her manner had been ungracious; but she +knew also that something stronger than her will, some instinct which was +rooted deep in the secret places of her nature, had made it impossible +for her to appear otherwise. Impassioned, undisciplined, and capable of +fierce imaginative loyalties and aversions, the strongest force in her +character was this bitter ineradicable pride. To accept no benefits that +she could not return; to fall under no obligation that would involve a +feeling of gratitude; to pay the piper to the utmost penny whenever she +called the tune—these were the only laws that she acknowledged. Though +she longed ardently for the admiration of Stephen Culpeper, she would +have died rather than relinquish the elfin mockery of her challenge.</p> + +<p>"Well, did you enjoy it, Patty?" Her father turned to her with sudden +tenderness, though the frown produced by some engrossing train of +thought still gathered his heavy brows.</p> + +<p>She caught his hand while her small face relaxed from its expression of +rigid disdain. "I had simply the time of my life," she responded with +convincing animation. "That Mrs. Page is the most beautiful woman I ever +saw—but she can't be very young. I wonder what she was like when she +was my age?"</p> + +<p>Vetch laughed. "Not like a short-haired imp with green eyes anyway," he +replied. "Mrs. Stribling looked very handsome, too, I thought."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she's handsome enough," admitted Patty. "But she hasn't any sense. +I listened to what she was saying, and she just asked questions all the +time. Mrs. Page is different. You can tell that she has been all over +the world. She knows things."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose she does," said Vetch. "What did you think of Benham?"</p> + +<p>"He is good looking," answered the girl deliberately, "but I don't like +him. He is making fun of you."</p> + +<p>"Is he?" returned Vetch curiously. "Now, I wonder if you're right about +that. At any rate he asked me a question to-night that I should like a +chance to answer on the platform."</p> + +<p>"He was in the army," said Patty, "and every one says he was a hero. The +women were talking about him while you were smoking. They all admire him +so. It seems that he went into an officer's training camp as soon as war +was declared though he was over age; and then just recently he has done +something that every one thinks splendid. He refused a tremendous fee +from some corporation—what did they mean by a corporation?—because he +thought the money was made dishonestly. Mrs. Page says he has as many +public virtues as a civic forum. What is a forum, Father?"</p> + +<p>Vetch laughed without replying directly to her question. "Did she say +that?" he responded. "And what did she mean by it, I wonder?"</p> + +<p>"It sounded clever," said Patty, "but I didn't understand. What is a +forum, Father?"</p> + +<p>Vetch thought a moment. "Mrs. Page would probably tell you," he replied, +"that it is the temple of the improbable."</p> + +<p>Patty stirred impatiently. "Now you are trying to talk like Mrs. Page," +she rejoined. "I wish I knew what things meant."</p> + +<p>"When you find out what they mean, Patty, they will cease to interest +you."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'd rather be less interested and more comfortable," said Patty, +with a trace of exasperation in her voice. "To-night, for instance, I +hadn't the faintest idea how to behave. Look at all those books I've +read, too, when I might just as well have been enjoying myself. I've +found out to-night, Father, that books can't tell you everything—not +even books on etiquette."</p> + +<p>Vetch broke into a laugh of boisterous amusement. "So that is how you +have been spending your time!" he exclaimed. "You'd better trust to your +common sense, my dear; it will carry you straighter."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. +When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the +dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all +talk slang, every one of them—only they don't talk the kind that Julius +Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. +Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night—she +looked exactly like a frozen fish—though just the moment before Mr. +Culpeper had called somebody a 'rotter'. I heard him."</p> + +<p>The Governor dismissed it all with a wave of his hand. "Trifles, +trifles," was his only comment.</p> + +<p>The car had entered the Square, and in a moment it was passing the +Washington statue and the Capitol building. Until it stopped before the +steps of the mansion, Patty did not reply; then springing up with a +flutter of her scarlet skirt, she exclaimed airily, "But I am a trifle, +too, Father!"</p> + +<p>As he held out his hand from the ground, Vetch looked at her with an +expression in which pride and pity were strangely mingled. "Then you are +one of the trifles that make life worth living," he replied.</p> + +<p>He had taken out his latch-key and was about to insert it in the lock, +when the door opened and Gershom stood before them.</p> + +<p>"I waited for you," he said to Vetch. "There's a matter I must see you +about to-night." His ruddy face was tinged with purple, and he had the +look of a man who has just been aroused from a nap.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sleepy, and I'm going to bed," retorted Patty in reply to his +glance rather than his words, and her tone was bitterly hostile.</p> + +<p>"Then I'll see you to-morrow." He had followed her into the wide hall +while the Governor closed the door and stopped to take off his overcoat. +"Did you have a good time?"</p> + +<p>She responded with a disdainful movement of her shoulders which might +have been a shrug if she had had French instead of Irish blood in her +veins. In her evening cloak of green velvet trimmed with gray fox she +had the look of a small wild creature of the forest. Beneath her thick +eyelashes her eyes shone through a greenish mist; and at the moment +there was something frightened and furtive in their brightness.</p> + +<p>"Of course," she replied defiantly, moving away from him in the +direction of the staircase. "I had a wonderful time—perfectly +wonderful. The people were all so interesting." Her pronunciation was as +deliberately correct as if she were reading from a dictionary. It was +the air of superiority that she always assumed with Gershom, for in no +other way, she had learned from experience, could she irritate him so +intensely.</p> + +<p>His jovial manner gave place to a crestfallen look. "Who was there? I +reckon I know the names anyway."</p> + +<p>He affected a true republican scorn of appearances; and standing there, +in his dishevelled business clothes beside Patty's ethereal youth, he +looked as hopelessly battered by reality as a political theory, or as +old General Powhatan Plummer of aristocratic descent.</p> + +<p>Patty had often wondered what it was about the man that aroused in her +so unconquerable an aversion. He was not ugly compared to many of the +men her father had brought to the house; and ten years ago, when she +first met him in the little country town where they were living, his +curling black hair and sharp black eyes had seemed to her rather +attractive than otherwise. If he had been merely untidy and unashamed in +dress, she might have tolerated the failing as the outward sign of a +distinguished social philosophy; but, even in those early days, his +Jeffersonian simplicity had yielded to an outbreak of vanity. Though his +clothes were unbrushed and his boots were unpolished, he wore a +sparkling pin in his tie and several sparkling rings on his fingers. +There was something else, too, some easy tone of patronage, some +familiar inflexion, which as a child she had hated. Now, after the +evening with Stephen Culpeper, she shrank from him with a disgust which +was made all the keener by contrast. A pitiless light had fallen over +Gershom while he stood there beside her, as if his bad taste and his +pathetic ambition to appear something that he was not, had become +exaggerated into positive vices. She was too young to perceive the +essential pathos of all wasted effort, of all misdirected attempts to +overcome the disadvantages of ignorance; and while she looked at him +now, she saw only the vulgarity. Like all those who have suffered from +insufficient opportunities and wounded pride, Patty Vetch was without +mercy for the very weaknesses that she had risen above. After the +evening at the Berkeleys' she felt that she should be less ashamed of a +drunkard than of a man who wore diamonds because he thought that it was +the correct thing to do. She remembered suddenly that on her fourteenth +birthday she had bought a pair of paste earrings with ten dollars her +father had given her; and for the sting of this reminder she knew that +she should never forgive Gershom. Oh, she had no patience with a man who +couldn't find out things and learn without asking questions! Hadn't she +tried and tried, and made mistakes and tried again, and still gone on +trying by hook or by crook; as her father would say, to find out the +thousand and one things she oughtn't to do? If she, even as a child, had +struggled so hard to improve herself and change in the right way, not +the wrong way—then why shouldn't he? Her father, of course, wasn't +polished, but he was as unlike Gershom as if they had been born as far +apart as the poles. Even to her untrained eyes it was evident that Vetch +possessed the authority of personality—a sanction that was not social +but moral. Some inherent dislike for anything that was not solid, that +was not genuine, had served Vetch as a kind of aesthetic discrimination.</p> + +<p>"I know Benham," Gershom was saying eagerly. "I've worked with him. +Smart chap, don't you think? Ever heard him speak?"</p> + +<p>"No, I hate speeches."</p> + +<p>"Did he and the Governor have any words?"</p> + +<p>"Of course they didn't—not at dinner," she replied with a crushing +manner. "Father is waiting for you."</p> + +<p>"Then you'll see me to-morrow? I've got a lot I want to say to you. And +I'll tell you this right now, Patty, my dear, you may run round with +these high-faluting chaps like Culpeper as much as you please; but how +many dinner parties do you think you'd be invited to if I hadn't put the +old man where he is?"</p> + +<p>At this she turned on him furiously, her eyes blazing through their +greenish mist. "I don't owe you anything, and you know it!" she retorted +defiantly. Then before he could detain her she broke away from him and +ran up the stairs. How dared he pretend that he had placed her under an +obligation! As if it made any difference to her whether her father were +Governor or not!</p> + +<p>As she fled upward she heard Gershom follow Vetch into the library, and +she knew that they would sit talking there until long after midnight. +These discussions had become frequent of late; and she surmised vaguely, +though Vetch never mentioned Gershom's name to her, that the two men +were no longer upon the friendly terms of the old days. Ever since +Vetch's election, it had seemed to her that the pack of hungry +politicians had closed in about him; and only the day before, when she +had gone over to the Governor's office in the Capitol building, she had +run away from what she merrily described as "the famished wolves" +waiting outside his door. It was clear even to her that the political +leaders who had supported Vetch were beginning already to distrust him. +They had sought, she realized, to use his popularity, his eloquence, his +earnestness, for their own ends; and they were making the historic +discovery that the man who possesses these affirmative qualities is +seldom without the will to preserve them. In their superficial ploughing +of the soil, Vetch's adherents had at last struck against the rock of +resistance. A man of ambition, or a man of prejudice, they might have +controlled; but, as Patty had learned long ago, Vetch was that most +difficult of political problems—the man of an idea.</p> + +<p>Sitting before her dressing-table she glanced over the room, which was +hung with the gaily decorated chintz she had bought after months of +secret longing for roses and hollyhocks in her bedroom. Now she felt +that it looked cheap and flimsy because she had sacrificed material to +colour. She wanted something different to-night; she wanted something +better. Turning to the mirror she gazed back at her vivid face, with the +large deep eyes, so full of poignant expectancy, and the soft dimpled +chin. From her expression she might have been dreaming of happiness; but +the thought in her mind was simply, "The powder I use is too white. +Those women to-night used powder that did not show. I must get some +to-morrow." She was pretty,—even Stephen thought she was pretty. She +could see it in his eyes when he looked at her; but her prettiness was +merely the bloom of youth, nothing more. It was not that changeless +beauty of structure—that beauty, as she recognized, of the very bone, +which made Mrs. Page perennially lovely. "In ten, fifteen, at the most +in twenty years, I shall have lost it all," she thought. "Then I shall +get fat and common looking; and everything will be over for me because a +little youthful colour and sparkle was all that I had. I have nothing to +hold on to—nothing that will last. I don't know anything—and yet how +could I be expected to know anything after the dull life I've had? In my +whole life I've never known a woman that could help me. I've had to find +out everything for myself—"</p> + +<p>With her gaze still on the mirror, she laid the brush on its back of +pink celluloid—how much she had admired it when she bought it!—and +leaned forward with her hands clasped on the cover of the +dressing-table. Her hair still flying out from the strokes of the brush +surrounded her small eager face like a cloud. From the open neck of her +kimono, embroidered in a pattern of cranes and wistaria, the thin +girlish lines of her throat rose with an appealing fragility, like the +stem of some delicate flower.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if Mother could have helped me if she had lived?" she asked +presently of her reflection. "I wonder if she was different from all the +other women I've known?" Through her mind there passed swiftly a hundred +memories of her childhood. First there came the one vivid recollection +of her mother, a flashing, graceful figure, as light as thistle-down, in +a skirt of spangled tulle that stood out from her knees. The face Patty +could not remember, but the spangles were indelibly impressed on her +mind, the spangles and a short silver wand, with a star on the end of +it, which that fairy-like figure had held over her cradle. Of her mother +this was all she had left, just this one unforgettable picture, and then +a long terrible night when she had not seen her, but had heard her +sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, somewhere in the darkness. The next day, when +she cried for her, they had said that she was gone, and the child had +never seen her again. In the place of her pretty mother there had been a +big, rugged man, whom she had never seen before, and when she cried this +man had taken her in his arms, and tried to quiet her. Afterward, when +she grew bigger and asked questions, one of the neighbours had told her +that her mother had lost her mind from a fall in the circus, that they +had taken her away to an asylum, and that now she was dead.</p> + +<p>"And wherever she is, she ought to go down on her knees and thank +Gideon Vetch for the way he's looked after you," said the woman.</p> + +<p>"But didn't he look after her too?" asked the child.</p> + +<p>At this the woman laughed shrilly, lifting the soaking clothes with her +capable red hands, and then plunging them down into the soapsuds." +Well, I reckon that's more than the Lord Almighty would expect of him!" +she replied emphatically but ambiguously.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why Father never took me to see her. I'm sure I'd have +remembered it."</p> + +<p>The woman looked at her darkly. "There are some places that children +don't go to."</p> + +<p>"How long ago did she die?"</p> + +<p>Patty waited patiently for an answer; but when at last the neighbour +raised her head again from the tub, it appeared that her reticence had +extended from her speech to her expression which looked as if it had +closed over something. "You'll have to ask your father that," she +returned in a phrase as cryptic as the preceding one. "I ain't here to +tell you things."</p> + +<p>After this the child set her lips firmly together, and asked no more +questions. Her father had become not one parent, but both to her; and it +seemed that whereever she looked he was always there, overshadowing like +a mountain everything else on her horizon. In the beginning they had +been very poor; but he had never let her suffer for things, although for +weeks at a time she knew that he had gone without his tobacco in order +to buy her toys. Until she went to the little village school, she had +always had an old woman to look after her, and later on, when their +circumstances appeared miraculously to improve, he employed the slim, +gray, uninteresting spinster who slept now a few doors away from her. +There were hours when it seemed to her that she had never learned the +meaning of tediousness until the plain but hopeful Miss Spencer came to +live with her.</p> + +<p>Rising from her chair, she moved away from the mirror, and wandered +restlessly to the pile of fashion magazines and festively decorated +"books on etiquette" that littered the table beside the chintz-covered +couch. "They don't know everything!" she thought contemptuously. How +hard she had tried to learn, and yet how confused, how hopeless, it all +seemed to her to-night! All the hours that she had spent in futile study +appeared to her wasted! At her first dinner she had felt as bewildered +and unhappy as if she had never opened one of those thick gaudy volumes +that had cost so much—as much as a box of chocolates every day for a +week. "I don't care," she said aloud, with sullen resolution. "I am +going to let them see that I don't want any favours."</p> + +<p>The next afternoon she went out early in order to escape Gershom; but +when she came in, after a restless wandering in shops and a short drive, +she met him just as he was turning away from the door.</p> + +<p>"Something told me I'd find you at this hour," he remarked with +unfailing good humour. "Come out and walk about in the Square. It will +do you good."</p> + +<p>She shook her head impatiently. "I'm tired. I don't like walking."</p> + +<p>"Well, I reckon it's easier to sit anyway. We'll go inside."</p> + +<p>"No, if I've got to talk to you I'd rather do it out of doors," she +replied, turning back toward the gate.</p> + +<p>"That's right. The air's fine. I shouldn't wonder if the bad weather +ain't all over."</p> + +<p>"I don't mind the bad weather," she retorted pettishly because it was +the only remark she could think of that sounded disagreeable.</p> + +<p>They passed through the gate, and walked rapidly in the direction of the +Washington monument, which lifted a splendid silhouette against a deep +blue background of sky. It was one of those soft, opal-tinted February +days which fall like a lyric interlude in the gray procession of winter. +The sunshine lay like flowing gold on the pavement; and the breeze that +stirred now and then in the leafless boughs of the trees was as roving +and provocative as the air of spring. In the winding brick walks of the +Square children were at play with the squirrels and pigeons; and old +men, with gnarled hands and patient hopeless faces, sat warming +themselves in the sunshine on the benches. "Life!" she thought. "That's +life. You can't get away from it." Then one of the old men broke into a +cackle of cheerful laughter, and she added: "After all nobody is ever +pathetic to himself."</p> + +<p>"I believe I'll go in," she said, turning to Gershom. "I want to take +off my hat."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Your hat's all right, ain't it? It looks pretty good to +me."</p> + +<p>A shiver of aversion ran through her. If only he wouldn't try to be +funny! If only he had been born without that dreadful sense of humour, +she felt that she might have been able to tolerate him.</p> + +<p>"Please don't," she replied fretfully.</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't, if you'll walk a little slower. I told you I had +something to say to you."</p> + +<p>"I don't want to hear it. There's no use talking about it. I'll say the +same thing if you ask me for a hundred years."</p> + +<p>A chuckle broke from him while he stood jauntily fingering the diamond +in his tie, as if it were some talisman which imparted fresh confidence. +Oh, it was useless to try to put a man like that in his place—for his +place seemed to be everywhere!</p> + +<p>"Well, it won't do any harm," he said at last. "As long as I like to +listen to it."</p> + +<p>"I wish you would leave me alone."</p> + +<p>"But suppose I can't?" He was still chaffing. He would continue to +chaff, she was convinced, if he were dying. "Suppose I ain't made that +way?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care how you're made. You may talk to Father if you like; but +I'm going upstairs to take off my hat."</p> + +<p>His chuckle swelled into a roar of laughter. "Talk to Father! Haven't I +been talking to Father over at the Capitol for the last three hours?"</p> + +<p>They had reached the gate beyond the monument, and swinging suddenly +round, she started back toward the house. As she passed him he touched +the end of her fur stole with a gesture that was almost imperative. His +eyes had dropped their veil of pleasantry, and she was aware, with a +troubled mind, that he was holding back something as a last resource if +she continued to prove intractable. Again and again she had this feeling +when she was with him—an uneasy intuition that his good humour was not +entirely unassumed, that he was concealing a dangerous weapon beneath +his offensive familiarity.</p> + +<p>"After all I may be going to surprise you," he said lightly enough, yet +with this disturbing implication of some meaning that she could not +discern. "What if I tell you that I've no intention of making love to +you?"</p> + +<p>"You mean there is something else you want to see me about?" She +breathed a sigh of relief, and her light steps fell gradually into the +measure of his. Her conscience pricked her unpleasantly when she +remembered that there had been a time when she would have spoken less +curtly. Well, what of that? It was characteristic of her energetic mind +that past mistakes were dismissed as soon as they were discovered. When +one started out in life knowing nothing, one had to learn as best one +could, that was all! Every day was a new one, so why bother about +yesterday? There was trouble enough in the world as it was, without +dragging back what was over.</p> + +<p>"Please tell me what it is," she said impatiently.</p> + +<p>He looked at her with curious intentness. "It is about an aunt of +yours—Mrs. Green. I met her when I was in California."</p> + +<p>Her surprise was so complete that he must have been gratified.</p> + +<p>"An aunt of mine? I haven't any aunt."</p> + +<p>For a minute he hesitated. Now that he had come to practical matters his +careless jocularity had given place to a manner of serious deliberation. +"Then your father hasn't told you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Is she his sister?" Her distrust of Gershom was so strong that she +could not bring herself to a direct reply.</p> + +<p>"So he hasn't?" After all she might as well have answered his question. +"No, she isn't his sister." His smile was full of meaning.</p> + +<p>"Then she must be"—there was a change in her voice which he was quick +to detect—"she must be the sister of my mother."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you know that she had one?" he enquired. "Don't you remember +seeing her when you were a child?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No, I don't remember her, and Father has never +spoken of her."</p> + +<p>At this he glanced at her sharply, and then looked away over the tops of +the trees to the political mausoleum of the City Hall. "We take that as +a sort of joke now," he remarked irrelevantly, "but the time was—and +not so long ago either—when we boasted of it more than of the Lee +monument. Cost a lot too, they say! Queer, ain't it, the way we spend a +million dollars or more on a thing one year, and the next want to kick +it out on the junk heap? I reckon it's the same way about behaviour too. +It ain't so much what you do as the time you do it in that seems to make +the difference." As she showed no inclination to follow this train of +moralizing, he asked suddenly, "Do you remember your mother?"</p> + +<p>"Only once. I remember seeing her once." He had not imagined that her +voice could become so gentle.</p> + +<p>"Did they ever tell you what became of her?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know that. She lost her mind. They told me that she died in the +asylum."</p> + +<p>He was still watching her closely, as if he were observing the effect on +her nerves of each word he uttered. "Did they tell you the cause of it?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "That was all they ever told me."</p> + +<p>"You mean your father never mentioned it to you? Are you sure he never +spoke of Mrs. Green?"</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't have forgotten. But, if she is my mother's sister, why has +she never written to me?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's just it! She was afraid your father wouldn't like it. There +was a difference of some kind. I don't know what it was about—but they +didn't get on—and—and—"</p> + +<p>"I am sure Father was right. He is always right," she said loyally.</p> + +<p>"Well, he may have been. I'm not denying that; but it's an old story +now, and I wouldn't bring it up again, if I were you. He has enough +things to carry without that."</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment before replying. "Yes, I suppose it's better not +to speak of it. He has too many worries."</p> + +<p>"I knew you'd see it that way; you're a girl of sense. And if Mrs. Green +should ever come here, must I tell her that you would like to see her?"</p> + +<p>"Does she think of coming here? California is so far away."</p> + +<p>"Well, people do come, don't they? And I know she'd like to see you. She +was very fond of your mother. I used to know both of 'em in the old days +when I was a boy."</p> + +<p>"Of course I'd like to see her if she could tell me about my mother. I +want to ask questions about her—only it makes Father so unhappy when I +bring up the past."</p> + +<p>"It would, I reckon. Things like that are better forgotten." Then, +dismissing the subject abruptly, he remarked in the old tone of +facetious familiarity, "I never saw you looking better. What have you +done to yourself? You are always imitating some new person every time I +see you."</p> + +<p>"I am not!" Her temper flashed out. "I never imitate anybody." Yet, even +as she passionately denied the charge, she knew that it was true. For a +week, ever since her first visit to the old print shop, she had tried to +copy Corinna's voice, the carriage of her head, her smile, her gestures.</p> + +<p>"Well, you needn't," he assured her with admiring pleasantry. "As far as +looks go—and that's a long way—I haven't seen any one that was better +than you!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>SEPTEMBER ROSES</h3> + + +<p>The afternoon sunshine streamed through the dull gold curtains into the +old print shop where Corinna sat in her tapestry-covered chair between +the tea-table and the log fire. She was alone for the moment; and lying +back in the warmth and fragrance of the room, she let her gaze rest +lovingly on one of the English mezzotints over which a stray sunbeam +quivered. The flames made a pleasant whispering sound over the cedar +logs; her favourite wide-open creamy roses with golden hearts scented +the air; and the delicate China tea in her cup was drawn to perfection. +As she lay back in the big chair but one thing disturbed her +serenity—and that one thing was within. She had everything that she +wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood +was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear +bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the +present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid +surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to +interest her because she knew them too well. She knew by heart the very +machinery of their existence, the secret mental springs which moved them +so mechanically; and she felt to-day that if they had been watches, she +could have taken them apart and put them together again without +suspending for a minute the monotonous regularity of their works. Even +Gideon Vetch, who might have held a surprise for her, had differed from +the rest in one thing only: he had not seen that she was beautiful! And +it wasn't that she was breaking. To-day because of her mood of +depression, she appeared drooping and faded; but that night, a week ago, +in her velvet gown and her pearls, she had looked as handsome as ever. +The truth was simply that Vetch had glanced at her without seeing her, +as he might have glanced at the gilded sheaves of wheat on a picture +frame. He had been so profoundly absorbed in his own ideas that she had +been nothing more individual than one of an audience. If he were to meet +her in the street he would probably not recognize her. And this was a +man who had never before seen a woman whose beauty had passed into +history, a man who had risen to his place through what the Judge had +described with charitable euphemism, as "unusual methods." "The odd part +about Vetch," the Judge had added meditatively on the drive home, "is +that he doesn't attempt to disguise the kind of thing that we of the old +school would call—well, to say the least—extraordinary. He is as +outspoken as Mirabeau. I can't make it out. It may be, of course, that +he has a better reading of human nature than we have, and that he knows +such gestures catch the eye, like long hair or a red necktie. It is very +much as if he said—'Yes, I'll steal if I'm driven to it, but—confound +it!—I won't lie!'"</p> + +<p>After all, the sting to her vanity had been too slight to leave an +impression. There must be another cause for the shadow that had fallen +over her spirits. Even a reigning beauty of thirty years could scarcely +expect to be invincible; and she had known too much homage in the past +to resent what was obviously a lack of discrimination. Her +disappointment went deeper than this, for it had its source in the +stories she had heard of Vetch that sounded original and dramatic. She +had imagined a personality that was striking, spectacular, or at least +interesting; and the actual Gideon Vetch had seemed to her merely +unimpressive and ordinary. Beside John Benham (as the thought of Benham +returned to her, her spirit rose on wings out of the shadow), beside +John Benham, in the drawing-room after dinner, Vetch had appeared at a +disadvantage that was almost ridiculous; and, as Stephen Culpeper had +hastened to point out, this was merely a striking illustration of the +damning contrast between the Governor's chequered political career and +Benham's stainless record of service.</p> + +<p>A smile curved her lips as she gazed at the quivering sunbeams. Was that +deep instinct for perfection, the romantic vision of things as they +ought to be, awaking again? Did the starry flower bloom not in the +dream, but in reality? The passion to create beauty, to bring happiness, +which had been extinguished for years, burned afresh in her heart. Yes, +as long as there was beauty, as long as there was nobility of spirit, +she could fight on as one who believed in the future.</p> + +<p>A shadow darkened the window, and a moment afterward there was a fall of +the old silver knocker on her door. She thought at first—the shadow had +seemed so young—that it was Stephen; but when she opened the door, she +saw, with a lovely flush, that it was John Benham.</p> + +<p>"You expected me?" he asked, raising her hand to his lips.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I knew that you would come," she answered, and the flush died +away slowly as she turned back to the fire. In the moment of recognition +all the despondency had vanished so utterly that it had not left even a +memory. He had brought not only peace, but youth and happiness back to +her eyes.</p> + +<p>He came in as impressively as he presented himself to an audience; and +with the glow of pleasure still in her heart, she found her keen and +observant mind watching him almost as if he were a stranger. This had +been her misfortune always, the ardent heart joined to the critical +judgment, the spectator chained eternally to the protagonist. She +received a swift impression that he had prepared his words and even his +gestures, the kiss on her fingers. Yet, in spite of this suggestion of +the actor, or because of it, he possessed, she felt, great distinction. +The straight backward sweep of his hair; the sharp clearness of his +profile; the steady serenity of his gray eyes; the ease and suppleness +and indolent strength of his tall thin figure—all these physical +details expressed the reserves and inhibitions of generations. The only +flaw that she could detect was that dryness of soul that she had noticed +before, as of soil that has been too heavily drained. She knew that he +excelled in all the virtues that are monumental and public, that he was +an honourable opponent, a scrupulous defender of established rules and +precedents. He would always reach the goal, but his race would never +carry him beyond the end of the course; he would always fulfil the law, +but he would never give more than the exact measure; he would always +fight for the risen Christ, but he would never have followed the humble +bearer of the Cross. His strength and weakness were the kind which had +profoundly influenced her life. He represented in her world the +conservative principle, the accepted standard, the acknowledged +authority, custom, stability, reason, and moderation.</p> + +<p>As he sat down in front of the fire, he looked at her with a gentle +possessive gaze.</p> + +<p>"Of course you have never sold a print," he remarked in a laughing tone, +and she responded as flippantly.</p> + +<p>"Of course!"</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you call it a collection?"</p> + +<p>"Because people wouldn't come."</p> + +<p>"Then why didn't you keep them at home where you have so much that is +fine?"</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Because people couldn't come. I mean the people I don't +know. I have a fancy for the people I have never met."</p> + +<p>"On the principle that the unknown is the desirable."</p> + +<p>She nodded. "And that the desirable is the unattainable."</p> + +<p>His gray eyes were warmed by a fugitive glow. "I shouldn't have put it +that way in your case. You appear to have everything."</p> + +<p>"Do I? Well, that twists the sentence backward. Shall we say that the +attainable is the undesirable?"</p> + +<p>"Surely not. Can you have ceased already to desire these lovely things? +Could that piece of tapestry lose its charm for you, or that Spanish +desk, or those English prints, or the old morocco of that binding? Do +you feel that the colours in that brocade at your back could ever become +meaningless?"</p> + +<p>"I am not sure. Wouldn't it be possible to look at it while you were +seeing something else, something so drab that it would take the colour +out of all beauty?" She was looking at him over the tea-table, and while +she asked the question she raised a lump of sugar in the quaint old +sugar tongs she had brought home from Florence.</p> + +<p>He shook his head. "I am denied sugar. Has it ever occurred to you that +middle age ought to be called the age of denial?" Then his tone changed. +"But I wonder if you begin to realize how fortunate you are? You have +the collector's instinct and the means to gratify it. To discover with +you is to possess—don't you understand the blessing of that? You love +beauty as a favoured daughter, not as one of the disinherited who can +only peer through the windows of her palace."</p> + +<p>"But you also—you love beauty as I do."</p> + +<p>"But I can't own it—not as you do." He was speaking frankly. "I haven't +the means. At least what I have I have made myself, and therefore I +guard it more carefully. It is only those who have once been poor who +are really under the curse of money, for that curse is the inability to +understand that money is less valuable than anything else on earth that +you happen to need or desire. Now to me the most terrible thing on earth +is not to be without beauty, but to be without money—"</p> + +<p>She smiled. "You are talking like Gideon Vetch."</p> + +<p>He caught at the name quickly. "Like Gideon Vetch? You mean that I sound +ignoble?"</p> + +<p>The laughter in his eyes made him look almost boyish, and she felt that +she had come suddenly close to him. After all he was very attractive.</p> + +<p>"Is he ignoble?" she asked. "I have seen him only once, and that was at +the dinner a week ago."</p> + +<p>He looked at her intently. "I should like to know what you think."</p> + +<p>"I hardly know—but—well, I must confess that I was disappointed."</p> + +<p>"You expected something better?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated over her answer. "I expected something different. I +suppose I looked for the dash of purple—or at least of red—in his +appearance."</p> + +<p>"And he seemed ordinary?"</p> + +<p>"In a way—yes. His features are not striking, and yet when he talks to +you and gets interested in his own ideas, he sheds a kind of warmth that +is like magnetism. I couldn't analyse it, but it is there."</p> + +<p>"That, I suppose, is the charm of which they talk. Warmth, or perhaps +heat, is a better word for it. Fortunately I'm proof against it because +of what you might call an asbestos temperament; but I've seen it catch +fire in a crowd, and it sweeps over an audience like a blaze over a +prairie. It is a cheap kind of oratory; yet it is a power in +unscrupulous hands—and Vetch is unscrupulous."</p> + +<p>"You believe that?"</p> + +<p>"I know it. It has been proved again and again that he will stoop to any +means in order to advance his ideas, which mean of course his ambition. +Oh, I'm not denying that in the main he is sincere, that he believes in +his phrases. As a matter of fact one has only to look at his +appointments, those that he is able to make by his own authority! There +isn't a doubt in the world that he deliberately sold his office in +exchange for his election—"</p> + +<p>So this was one honest man's view of Gideon Vetch! John Benham believed +this accusation, for some infallible intuition told her that Benham +would never have repeated it, even as a rumour, if he had not believed +it. Her father's genial defence of the Governor; his ironic +aristocratic sympathy with the radical point of view appeared +superficial and unconvincing beside Benham's moral repudiation. And yet +what after all was the simple truth about Gideon Vetch? What was the +true colour of that variable personality, which appeared to shift and +alter according to the temperament or the convictions of each observer? +She had never known two men who agreed about Vetch, except perhaps +Benham and his disciple, Stephen Culpeper. Each man saw Vetch +differently, and was this because each man saw in the great demagogue +only the particular virtue or vice for which he was looking, the +reflection of personal preferences or aversions? It seemed to her +suddenly that the Governor, whom she had thought commonplace, towered an +immense vague figure in a cloud of misinterpretation and +misunderstanding. His followers believed in him; his opponents +distrusted him; but was this not true of every political leader since +the beginning of politics? The power to inspire equally devotion and +hatred had been throughout history the authentic sign of the saviour and +of the destroyer. Her curiosity, which had waned, flared up more +strongly than ever.</p> + +<p>"I should like to know," she said aloud, "what he is truthfully?"</p> + +<p>Benham laughed as he rose to go. "Do you think he can be anything +truthfully?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, even if it is only a demagogue."</p> + +<p>"Only a demagogue! My dear Corinna, the demagogue is the one everlasting +and unalterable American institution. He is the idol of the Senate +chamber; the power behind the Constitution."</p> + +<p>"But what does he really stand for—Vetch, I mean?"</p> + +<p>"Ask him. He would enjoy telling you."</p> + +<p>"Would he enjoy telling me the truth?"</p> + +<p>With the laughter still in his eyes Benham drew nearer and stood looking +down on her. "Oh, I don't mean that he is pure humbug. I haven't a +doubt, as I told you, that he believes, sufficiently at least for +election purposes, in the fallacies that he advocates, even in the old +age pension, the minimum, or more accurately, the maximum wage, and of +course in what doesn't sound so Utopian since we have experimented with +it, that favourite dogma of the near-Socialists, the Government +ownership of railroads. His main theory, however, appears to be some +far-fetched abstraction which he calls the humanizing of +industry—you've heard that before! Mere bombast, you see, but the kind +of thing that is dangerous in a crowd. It is the catchpenny politics +that has been the curse of our country."</p> + +<p>"And of course he is not a gentleman." Corinna's voice was regretful. "I +may be old-fashioned, but I can't help feeling that the Governor ought +to be a gentleman. That sounds like General Plummer, I know," she +concluded apologetically.</p> + +<p>"The archaic cult of the gentleman? Well, I like to think that in +Virginia it still has a few obscure followers. It is a prejudice that I +dare to admit only when I am not on the platform, for the belief in the +gentleman has become a kind of underground religion, like the worship in +the Catacombs."</p> + +<p>Her eyes had grown wistful when she answered: "It is the price we pay +for democracy."</p> + +<p>"The price we pay is the reign of social justice in theory, and in +practice the rule of the Gideon Vetches of history. Oh, I admit that it +may all work out in the end! That is my political creed, you know—that +everything and anything may work out in the end. If I stood simply for +tradition without progress, I should long ago have been driven to the +wall."</p> + +<p>"I feel as you do," she said after a moment, "and yet I am curious to +see what will become of our experimental Governor."</p> + +<p>"And I also. The man may have executive ability, and it is possible that +he may give us an efficient administration. But, of course, it is merely +a stepping-stone for his inordinate greed for power. His vanity has been +inflamed by success, and he sees the Senate, it may be even the +Presidency, ahead of him."</p> + +<p>Though she smiled there was a note of earnestness in her voice. "Well, +why not? There was once a rail splitter—"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know. But the rail splitter was born a president; and it is a far +cry to a circus rider who was not born even a gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. Yet, right or wrong, hasn't the war stretched a little the +safety net of our democracy? Isn't it just possible to-day that we might +find a circus rider who was born a president too?" Then before he could +toss back her questions she asked quickly, "After all, he didn't +actually ride, did he?"</p> + +<p>Benham shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had acquired in France. +"I've heard so, but I don't know. They tell queer tales of his early +years. That was before the golden age of the movies, you see; and I +suspect that the movies rather than the war introduced the mock heroic +into politics."</p> + +<p>He was still standing at her side, looking down into her upraised eyes, +which made him think of brown velvet. For a long pause after speaking he +remained silent, drinking in the fragrance of the room, the whispering +of the flames, and the dreamy loveliness of Corinna's expression. A +change had come over her face. In the flushed light she looked young and +elusive; and it seemed to him that, beneath the glowing tissue of flesh, +he gazed upon an indestructible beauty of spirit.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what I was thinking?" he asked presently. "I was thinking +that I'd known all this before—that I'd been waiting for it always—the +firelight on these splendid colours, the smell of the roses, the sound +of the flames, and the way you looked up at me with that memory in your +eyes. 'I have been here before'."</p> + +<p>A quiver as faint as the shadow of a flower crossed her face. "Yes, I +remember. It is an odd feeling. I suppose every one has felt it at +times—only each one of us likes to think that he is the particular +instance."</p> + +<p>"It is trite, I know," he said with a smile, "but feeling is never very +original, is it? Only thought is new."</p> + +<p>"But I would rather have feeling, wouldn't you?" she asked in a low +voice, and sat waiting in a lovely attitude, prepared without and +within, for the moment that was approaching. There was no excitement in +such things now, she had had too much experience; but there was an +unending interest.</p> + +<p>"Then it isn't too late?" he asked quickly; and again after a pause in +which she did not answer: "Corinna, is it too late?"</p> + +<p>For a minute longer she looked up at him in silence. The glow was still +in her eyes; the smile was still on her lips; and it seemed to him that +she was wrapped in some enchantment which wrought not in actual life but +in allegory—that the light in which she moved belonged less to earth +than to Botticelli's springtime. Was romance, after all, he thought +sharply, the only reality? Could one never escape it?</p> + +<p>While he looked down on her she had stirred, as if she were awaking from +a dream, or a memory, and stretched out her hand.</p> + +<p>"Is it ever too late," she responded, "as long as there is any happiness +left in the world?"</p> + +<p>She smiled as she answered him; but suddenly her smile faded and that +faint shadow passed again over her face. In the very moment when he had +bent toward her, there had drifted before her gaze the soft anxious eyes +of Alice Rokeby, and the look in them as they followed John Benham that +evening a week ago.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," said Benham softly. Then his voice broke and he drew back +hurriedly, for a figure had darkened the low window, and a minute +afterward the door opened and Patty Vetch entered the room.</p> + +<p>"The latch was not fastened, so I came in," she began, and stopped as +her look fell on Benham. "I—I hope you don't mind," she added in +confusion.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>PATTY AND CORINNA</h3> + + +<p>Patty had come straight to Corinna after a conversation with Stephen. +She needed sympathy, and she had meant to be frank and confiding; but +when Benham left them alone in the lovely room, which made her feel as +if she had stepped into one of the stained glass windows in the old +church she attended, her courage failed, and she forgot all the +impulsive words she had learned by heart in the street.</p> + +<p>"I am so glad," said Corinna sweetly. "I went to see you after luncheon +to-day, and I was very much disappointed not to find you at home."</p> + +<p>"That was why I came," answered Patty. "Your card was there when I got +in, and I couldn't bear missing you."</p> + +<p>"That was right, dear. It was what I hoped you would do."</p> + +<p>Turning back to the fire, Corinna stooped and flung a fresh log on the +Florentine andirons. Then, without glancing at the girl, she sat down in +one of the deep chairs by the hearth, and motioned invitingly to a place +at her side. She was determined to win Patty's heart, and she wanted to +be near enough to reach out her hand when the right moment came. That +moment had not come yet, and she knew it, for she was wise from +experience. There was time enough, and she felt no impulse to hasten +developments. She was strongly attracted, and since her sympathy was +easily stirred, she wished, without any great desire, to help the girl +if she could. The only way, she realized, was to watch and hope, to play +the waiting game as far as this was possible to her active nature. For, +above all things, Corinna hated to wait; and this potent energy of soul, +this vital flame, had given the look of winged radiance to her eyes.</p> + +<p>"You are always so happy," said Patty breathlessly, as she leaned +forward and held out her hands to Corinna as if she were the fire. +"Everything about you seems to give out joy every minute."</p> + +<p>"You dear!" murmured Corinna softly, for admiration was to her nature +what sunshine is to a flower. "I am happy to-day—happy as I thought I +should never be again. I am so happy that I should like to take the +whole world to my heart and heal its misery." Then she added hastily +before the girl could reply: "You came just at the right moment. I have +wanted a talk with you, and there couldn't be a better opportunity than +this. The other night I tried to join you after dinner; but Mrs. +Berkeley got all the women together, and I didn't have a chance to speak +a word to you alone. You looked charming in that scarlet dress. Your +head is shaped so prettily that I think you are wise to cut your hair. +It makes you look like a page of the Italian Renaissance."</p> + +<p>"Do you really like it?" asked Patty, and her voice trembled with +pleasure. "Father hates it, but men never know."</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed. "Not much more about fashions than they know about +women."</p> + +<p>"And that isn't anything, is it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, perhaps they'll learn some day—by the time I am dead and you are +old. You look so young, you can't be over eighteen."</p> + +<p>"I'll be nineteen next summer—at least I think I shall, for nobody +knows exactly when my birthday comes."</p> + +<p>"Not even your father?"</p> + +<p>"No, he guesses it's in June, but he isn't perfectly sure, and he hasn't +any idea what day of the month it is. He gives me a birthday gift +whenever he happens to think of it."</p> + +<p>For a minute Corinna gazed thoughtfully into the fire. "It is queer the +things men can't remember," she said at last. "Now, my father always +forgets, or pretends to, that I've ever been married."</p> + +<p>"Then I needn't be so surprised," rejoined Patty brightly, "when mine +forgets that I ever was born!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he doesn't forget it really, my dear. He adores you."</p> + +<p>"He is an angel to me," answered the girl with passionate loyalty. "I've +never had any one else, you know, and he has been simply everything. +Only I do wish he wouldn't have that tiresome Miss Spencer to live with +us."</p> + +<p>"But you ought to have some one with you."</p> + +<p>"Not some one like that. She doesn't know as much as I do; but Father +thinks she is all right because she lets her hair turn gray and wears +long dresses."</p> + +<p>Corinna's laugh was like music. "It takes more than that to make a +virtuous mind!" she exclaimed, but she was not thinking of Miss Spencer.</p> + +<p>"Do you know," said Patty, leaning forward and speaking with the +earnestness of a child, "I doubt if Father ever looked at a well-dressed +woman until he met you."</p> + +<p>Was it natural ingenuousness, or did the girl have a deeper motive? For +an instant Corinna wondered; then she returned merrily: "Certainly he +wouldn't look at me when Mrs. Stribling is near."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he admires Mrs. Stribling very much," replied Patty gravely, "but +I don't. She isn't a bit real."</p> + +<p>Corinna's gaze softened until it swept the girl's face like a caress. "I +hope you won't mind my calling you Patty," she responded irrelevantly. +"It is so hard to say Miss Vetch, for I can see that we are going to be +friends."</p> + +<p>"Oh, if you will!" cried Patty breathlessly, and she added eagerly, "I +have never had a real friend, you know, and you are so beautiful. You +are more beautiful than anybody I ever saw on the stage."</p> + +<p>"Or in the movies?" Corinna's voice was mirthful, but there was a deep +tenderness in her eyes. Was the girl as shallow as she appeared, or was +there, beneath her vivid enamel-like surface, some rich plastic +substance of character? Was she worth helping, worth the generous +friendship that Corinna could give, or was she merely a bit of human +driftwood that would burn out presently in the thin flame of some +transient passion? "I'll take the risk," thought Corinna. "A risk is +worth taking," for there was sporting blood in her veins. While she sat +there in silence, listening to the artless unfolding of the girl's +thoughts, she appeared to be searching for the hidden possibilities in +that crude young spirit. So often in the past the older woman had given +herself abundantly only to meet disappointment and ingratitude. Why +should it be different now? What was there in this unformed child that +appealed so strongly to her sympathy and tenderness? Not beauty surely, +for Patty was merely pretty. Charm she had unmistakably; but it was a +charm that men would feel rather than women; and of all the feminine +varieties that Corinna had known in the past, she disliked most heartily +"the man's woman." Was her impulse to help only the need of a fresh +interest, the craving for a new amusement? The heart of life she had +never reached. Something was missing—the unfading light, the starry +flower that she had never found in her search. Now at last, in a golden +middle age, she told herself that she would build her happiness not on +perfection, but on the second best of experience. She would accept the +milder joys, the daily miracles, the fulfilled adventures. And so, +partly because she liked the girl, and partly because of a generous +whim, she said presently:</p> + +<p>"You shall have a friend—a real friend—from this day."</p> + +<p>Patty who had been gazing into the fire turned on her a face that was as +sparkling as a sunbeam. "I would rather have you for a friend than +anybody in the world," she responded in a voice so caressing that +Stephen would not have believed it belonged to her.</p> + +<p>"I am sure that I can be useful to you," said Corinna, for the gratitude +in the girl's voice touched and embarrassed her, "and I know that you +can be to me. How would you like to come every morning and help me for +an hour or two in my shop? There isn't anything to do, but we may get to +know each other better." After all, she might as well show a fighting +spirit and see the adventure through to the end.</p> + +<p>Patty's eyes shone, but all she said was, "Oh, I'd love to! It is so +beautiful here."</p> + +<p>"Do you like it?" asked Corinna, and wondered how much the girl really +saw. Did she have the eyes and the soul to see and feel beauty? "I have +some good things at home. You must come out there."</p> + +<p>"If you'll only let me sit and watch you!" exclaimed Patty fervently.</p> + +<p>"As long as you like." A smile crossed Corinna's lips, as she imagined +those large bright eyes, like stars in a spring twilight, shining on her +hour after hour. How could she possibly endure their unfaltering +candour? How could she adjust her life to their adoring regard? "How +long has your mother been dead, Patty?" she asked suddenly. "Do you +know—of course you don't—scarcely anybody has ever heard it—that I +had a child once, a little girl, and she lived only one day."</p> + +<p>"And she might have been like you," was all Patty said, but Corinna +understood.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember your mother, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Only a little," answered Patty, and then she told of the spangled skirt +and the silver wand with the star on the end of it. "That is all I can +remember."</p> + +<p>She rose with a shy movement and held out her hand. "Then I may come +to-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Every day if you will, and most of all on the days when you need a +friend." Bending her head, she kissed the girl lightly on the cheek. "Do +you like my cousin Stephen?" she asked suddenly.</p> + +<p>A look of scorn came into Patty's eyes. "He is so superior," she +answered, with a gesture of complete indifference. "I don't like +superior persons."</p> + +<p>"Ah," thought Corinna, watching her closely, "she is really interested, +poor child!"</p> + +<p>After this the girl went out into a changed world—into a world which +had become, as if by a miracle, less impersonal and unfriendly. The +amber light of the sunset seemed to envelop her softly as if she were +surrounded by happiness. It was like first love without its troubled +suspense, this new wonderful feeling! It was like a religious awakening +without the sense of sin that she associated with her early conversion. +Nothing, she felt, could ever be so beautiful again! Nothing could ever +mean so much to her in the rest of life! In one moment, almost by magic, +she had learned her first lesson in discrimination, in the relative +values of experience; she had attained her first clear perception of the +difference between the things that mattered a little and the things that +mattered profoundly.</p> + +<p>The every-day world had faded from her so completely that it seemed a +natural incident—it caused her scarcely a start of surprise—when she +met Stephen Culpeper under the Washington monument. He had evidently +just left his office, for there was a bulky package of papers in his +hand; and he greeted her as if it were the merest accident that had +taken him through the Square. As a matter of fact it was less of an +accident than he made it appear, for he had declined to go home in the +Judge's car because of some vague hope that by walking he might meet +either Patty or Gideon Vetch. Since the evening of the Berkeleys' dinner +the young man's interest had shifted inexplicably from Patty to her +father.</p> + +<p>"You looked so much like Mr. Benham a little way off," said Patty, as +he turned to walk back with her, "that I might have mistaken you for +him."</p> + +<p>"If you only knew it," he replied, laughing, "you have paid me the +highest compliment of my life."</p> + +<p>She blushed. "I didn't mean it as a compliment."</p> + +<p>"That makes it all the better. But don't you like Benham?"</p> + +<p>Patty pondered the question. "I can't get near enough to him either to +like or dislike him. He is very good looking."</p> + +<p>"He is more than good looking. He is magnificent."</p> + +<p>"You think a great deal of him?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't think more," he responded with young enthusiasm. "Every one +feels that way about him. He stands for—well, for everything that one +would like to be."</p> + +<p>"I've heard of him, of course," said the girl slowly. "Father has been +fighting him ever since he went into politics; but I never saw Mr. +Benhem close enough to speak to him until the other evening." She raised +her black lashes and looked straight at Stephen with her challenging +glance. "All the men seemed so serious, except you."</p> + +<p>He laughed and flushed slightly. "And I did not?"</p> + +<p>Though her manner could not have been more indifferent, there was an +undercurrent of feeling in her voice, as if she meant something more +than she had put into words. He might take it as he chose, lightly or +seriously, her look implied—and it was, he admitted, a thrilling look +from such eyes as hers.</p> + +<p>"You are nearer my age," she rejoined, "though you do seem so old +sometimes."</p> + +<p>A depressing dampness fell on his mood. "Do I seem old to you? I am only +twenty-six."</p> + +<p>Her inquiring eyebrows were raised in mockery. "That is too old to play, +isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I might try," he answered, and added curiously, "I wonder whom +you find to play with? Not your father?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, not Father. He is as serious as Mr. Benham, only he laughs a +great deal more. Father jokes all the time, but there is something +underneath that isn't a joke at all."</p> + +<p>"I should like to talk to your father. I want to find out, if I can, +what he really believes."</p> + +<p>"You won't find out that," said Patty, "by talking to him."</p> + +<p>"You mean he will not tell me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he may tell you; but you won't know it. Half the time when he is +telling the truth, it sounds like a joke, and that keeps people from +believing him. He says the best way to keep a secret is to shout it from +the housetops; and I've heard him say things straight out that sounded +so far fetched nobody would think he was in earnest. I was the only +person who knew that he was speaking the truth. They call that a +'method', the politicians. They used to like it before he was elected; +but now it makes them restless. They complain that they can't do +anything with him."</p> + +<p>"That," remarked Stephen, as she paused, "appears to be the chronic +complaint of politicians."</p> + +<p>"Does it? Well, Mr. Gershom is always saying now that Father can't be +depended on. It was much more peaceable," she concluded with artless +confidence, "when he let them manage him. Now there are discussions and +disagreements all the time. It all seems to be about what they think +people want. Have you any idea what they want?"</p> + +<p>"Does anybody know what they want—except when they want money?"</p> + +<p>"Well, some of them would like Father to go to the Senate," she returned +naïvely, "and some of them wouldn't. Do you think that Mr. Benham would +be better in the Senate?"</p> + +<p>"I think so, of course. But you mustn't judge, you know, by what my +thoughts happen to be."</p> + +<p>"I'm not judging. I hate politics. I always have. I want to get as far +away from them as I can."</p> + +<p>He looked at her intently. "And where would you like to go?"</p> + +<p>"Into the movies." Her eyes sparkled at the thought. "At least I wanted +to go into the movies until I saw Mrs. Page this afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Kent Page?" he asked in astonishment. "My Cousin Corinna?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, in the old print shop. Isn't she adorable?"</p> + +<p>He smiled at her fervour. "I have always found her so. But what has she +to do with your change of ambition?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing, except that she is lovelier than any actress I ever saw."</p> + +<p>They had reached the house, and while they ascended the steps, the sound +of the Governor's voice, raised in vehement protest, floated to them +through the half-open door.</p> + +<p>"He must be talking to Julius Gershom," whispered Patty. "It is always +like that."</p> + +<p>"I don't care a damn for the whole bunch of you," said Vetch suddenly. +"You can go and tell that to the crowd!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll come back again after I've told them," Gershom replied in an +insolent tone; and the next moment the door swung back and he appeared +on the threshold.</p> + +<p>At sight of Patty and Stephen he attempted to cover his embarrassment +with a jest. "Your father and I were having one of our little arguments +about a Ladies' Aid Society," he said. "He is beginning to kick against +too much ice cream."</p> + +<p>"Well, if you argue as loud as that," replied the girl with +imperturbable coolness, "it won't be necessary to go and tell it to the +crowd."</p> + +<p>In an instant she had changed from the sparkling elusive creature +Stephen had known into a woman of authority and composure. What an +eternal enigma was the feminine mind! He had flattered himself that he +had reached the end of her superficial attractions; and in a minute, by +some startling metamorphosis, she was changed from a being of +transparent shallows into the immemorial riddle of sex. She might be +anything, or everything, except the ingenuous girl of the moment before.</p> + +<p>"We must learn to lower our voices," said the Governor in a laughing +tone. His anger, if it were anger, had blown over him like a summer +storm, and the clear blue of his glance was as winning as ever. "I've +been looking into the matter of that appointment Judge Page asked me +about," he added, "and I think I may see my way to oblige him."</p> + +<p>"If you are free for half an hour I'd like to have the talk we spoke of +the other day," answered Stephen.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm free except for Darrow. You won't mind Darrow."</p> + +<p>He turned toward the library on the left of the hall; and as Stephen +entered the room, after a gay and friendly smile in Patty's direction, +he told himself that the man promised to be more interesting than any +girl he had ever known.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE</h3> + + +<p>A tall old man was standing by the window in the library, and as he +turned his face away from the light of the sunset, Stephen had a vague +impression that he had seen him before—not in actual life but in some +half-forgotten picture or statue. The Governor's visitor was evidently a +carpenter, with a tall erect figure and a face which had in it a dignity +that belonged less to an individual than to an era. Beneath his abundant +white hair, his large brown eyes still shone with the ardour of a +convert or a disciple, and his blanched, strongly marked features had +the aristocratic distinction and serenity that are found in the faces of +the old who have lived in communion either with profound ideas or with +the simple elemental forces of sky and sea. In spite of his gnarled +hands and the sawdust that had lodged in the frayed creases of his +clothes, he was in his way, Stephen realized, as great a gentleman and +as typical a Virginian as Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. Both men were +the descendants of a privileged order; both were inheritors of a formal +and authentic tradition.</p> + +<p>"This is Mr. Darrow," said Vetch in a voice which contained a note of +affectionate deference. "I think he knew your father, Culpeper. Didn't +you tell me, Darrow, that you had known this young man's father?"</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I only said I'd worked for him," replied Darrow, with an air +of genial irony which brought the Judge to Stephen's mind again. "That's +a big difference, I reckon. I did some repairs a few years ago on a row +of houses that belonged to Mr. Culpeper; but the business was all +arranged by the agent."</p> + +<p>"That was part of the estate, I suppose," explained Stephen. "My father +leaves all that to his agent."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I thought as much," replied Darrow simply; and after shaking hands +with his rough, strong clasp, he sat down in a chair by the window. +"They've made a lot of changes inside this house," he remarked. "Before +they added on that part at the back the dining-room used to be in the +basement. I remember doing some work down there when I was a young man +and there was going to be a wedding."</p> + +<p>"Well, that long room is very little use to me," returned Vetch. "As far +as I am concerned they might have left the house as it was built." Then +turning abruptly to Stephen, he said sharply: "You heard Gershom's +parting shot at me, didn't you?" There was a gleam of quizzical humour +in his eyes, and Stephen found himself asking, as so many others had +asked before him, "Is the man serious, or is he making a joke? Does he +wish me to receive this as a confidence or with pretended hilarity?"</p> + +<p>"Something about telling the crowd?" he answered. "Yes, I heard it."</p> + +<p>"We were having a tussle," continued Vetch lightly. "The fat's in the +fire at last."</p> + +<p>Stephen laughed drily. "Then I hope you will keep it there."</p> + +<p>"You mean you would like an explosion?"</p> + +<p>"I mean that anything that could clear up the situation would be +welcome."</p> + +<p>At this Vetch turned to Darrow and observed whimsically: "He doesn't +seem to fancy our friend Gershom."</p> + +<p>Darrow looked round with a smile from the window. "Well, there are times +when I don't myself," he confessed in his deliberate way. "Of all +bullies, your political bully is the worst. But he is not bad, he is +just foolish. His heart is set on this general strike, and he can't set +his heart on anything without losing his head." As the old man turned +his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile +reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving. Was +this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had +entered the room?</p> + +<p>"To tell the truth," said Stephen frankly, "the fellow strikes me as +particularly obnoxious; but I may be prejudiced."</p> + +<p>"I think you are," responded Vetch. "I owe Gershom a great deal. He was +useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I +don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met +Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish +candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like +your face, and I'm going to talk frankly to you."</p> + +<p>"You may," replied the young man impulsively. It was impossible to +resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor's +manner. The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was +mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the +charlatan. In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had +already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator +that dwelt apart in his brain.</p> + +<p>"You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow," +resumed Vetch, with his charming smile. "I can safely assume that if you +didn't want something, you wouldn't be here. Good Lord, if a man so much +as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think +that he is either a half-wit or a ne'er-do-well."</p> + +<p>"At least I want nothing for myself," laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply.</p> + +<p>"Nor does Darrow, God bless him!—nor, for the matter of that, does +Judge Page. I've got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you +are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board." The gleam of +humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice.</p> + +<p>"We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley. He is +the man you need."</p> + +<p>"For a hobby, yes. That's all right, of course, but, my dear young sir, +you can't run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can +administer it as a philanthropy."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. But can you administer it successfully without philanthropy?"</p> + +<p>At this Darrow turned with a smile. "Can't you see that he is fooling +with you?" he said. "Prison reform is one of his fads—that and the +rights of the indigent aged and orphans and animals and any other mortal +thing that has to live on what he calls the stones of charity. He knows +why you came, and he likes you the better because of it."</p> + +<p>"Gershom and I have had a word or two about that board," resumed Vetch; +and as he stopped to strike a match, Stephen noticed that the cigar he +held was of a cheap and strong brand. "Between the Legislature on one +side and that bunch of indefatigable lobbyists on the other, I shan't be +permitted presently to appoint the darkey who waits on my table." The +cigar was lighted now, and to Stephen's sensitive nostrils the air was +rapidly becoming too heavy. Oddly enough, he reflected, nothing had +"placed" Vetch so forcibly as the brand of that cigar.</p> + +<p>"That," observed the young man briefly, "is the penalty of political +office."</p> + +<p>"So long as I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to +pull on the curb; but now that I've won the race, they'll find that I'm +my own master. Won't you smoke?"</p> + +<p>Stephen shook his head. "Not now. There is always the next race to be +considered, I suppose."</p> + +<p>The Governor's rugged, rather heavy features hardened suddenly until +they looked as if they were formed of some more durable substance than +flesh. Under the thick sandy hair his eyes lost their blueness and +appeared as gray as Stephen had once thought them. "Have you ever +heard," he asked with biting sarcasm, "that I was easy to manage and +that that was why certain people put me in office?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I've heard that." As the young man replied, Darrow turned from the +window and looked at him attentively.</p> + +<p>"And may I ask what else you have heard?" inquired Vetch.</p> + +<p>Stephen laughed and coloured. "I've heard that it was becoming difficult +to do anything with you."</p> + +<p>"Because I have the people behind me?"</p> + +<p>"Well, because you think you have the people behind you."</p> + +<p>Vetch leaned forward with a confiding movement, and flicked the ashes +of his objectionable cigar on the immaculate sleeve of Stephen's coat. +Yet, even in the careless gesture, a breath of freshness and health, of +mental and physical cleanliness, seemed to emanate like an invigorating +breeze from his robust spirit. "Of course I admit," he said +thoughtfully, "that we are obliged to have some kind of party +organization to begin with. There must be method and policy and all +sorts of team-pulling and log-rolling until you get started. That kind +of thing is useful just as far as it helps and not a step farther. I won +my fight as an Independent—and, by George, I'll remain an Independent! +I've got the upper hand now. I am strong enough to stand alone. If any +party on earth thinks it can manage me—well, I'll show it that I can be +my own party!"</p> + +<p>Was it true, what they said of him,—that success had already gone to +his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a +political rope with which he might hang himself? Or was there some solid +foundation of fact in his blustering assumption of power? Was he +actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future? From +a mass of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly +except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one +side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the +other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was +as real and as intangible as light or colour.</p> + +<p>"Do you think that is possible?" he asked sceptically. "In a democracy +like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?"</p> + +<p>"Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the +majority."</p> + +<p>"You may have this support—I neither affirm nor deny it—but upon what +does it rest? What do you offer the people that is better than the +principles or the promises of the old parties? I heard you speak once, +but you did not answer this question—to my mind the only question that +is vital. You talked a great deal about humanizing industry—a vague +phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all +the vices as well as all the virtues of the race. Benham could use that +phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and +commits one to nothing."</p> + +<p>Vetch's face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a +rush of energy to the brain. His eyes became blue again, and as keen as +the blade of a knife.</p> + +<p>"I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make +something out of the muddle if I am given a chance," he replied. "Oh, I +know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now—that they have been +ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount! But I know also that +you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the +American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork. For a +little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will +crop out in spite of you. Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the +inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism. In the thought of +the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense +of the American mind. I am one of the first signs of the new times."</p> + +<p>"And you believe that you prove this," asked Stephen frankly, "by +turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested +politicians? You show your ability to govern by evading the first +requirement of good government—that there should be honest and able men +in control of public offices?"</p> + +<p>A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. "I told you the other day," +answered Vetch in a low voice, "that I used the tools at my command, and +I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones. People say +that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy +that deals with life so completely? They say also that I am without +public conscience—another name for opinions that have crystallized into +prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me +vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I +employ."</p> + +<p>It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification +of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a +political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he +asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the +race, was in the keeping of demagogues?</p> + +<p>"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to +justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public +affairs?"</p> + +<p>To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal +question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn't agree with +you."</p> + +<p>At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn't mean what we +do," he said quietly. "I've seen honest men that I knew ought to have +been in prison."</p> + +<p>"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered +Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer, +somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important +enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?"</p> + +<p>Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty, +by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were +something we had actually possessed," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but +I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better. +You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view—to get +at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never +find its way to the public."</p> + +<p>"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance +at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I'd talk to you so +frankly?"</p> + +<p>Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I +don't mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves +another."</p> + +<p>"I like you the better for that." A cluster of fine lines appeared at +the corners of the Governor's laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you +must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not +as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an +extremist—well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world +as it is and you see it as you wish it to be—that is the difference +between us. I have lived with realities; I know actual conditions—and +you know only what you have been told or imagined. Oh, I admit that you +saw an edge of reality in the trenches; but, after all, life in the +trenches was as abnormal as life in the movies. Each represents an +extreme. What you know of average human life, of hunger and pain and +labour, could be learned in an academy for young ladies. Yet you imagine +that it is experience! You have lived so long in your lily-pond, with +the rushes hemming you in, that when you hear all the frogs croaking on +the same note, you think complacently, 'that is the voice of the +people'. Why, I tell you, man, you are so ignorant of the conditions in +this very town, that Darrow could take you out and show you things that +would make you feel like Robinson Crusoe!"</p> + +<p>Stephen turned eagerly to the old man at the window. "I am ready for +you, Mr. Darrow."</p> + +<p>Darrow nodded with a reluctant assent. "I've got my Ford around the +corner," he answered. "If you would like to go up town with me I can +show you a thing or two that might interest you."</p> + +<p>"You mean the conditions in this city?"</p> + +<p>"The conditions in all cities. They differ only in the name of the +town."</p> + +<p>"He will show you a little—just a little—of what getting back to peace +means," said Vetch earnestly. "By next winter it will be worse, of +course, but it has already begun. The rate of wages is falling—for +wages always fall first—and the cost of living is still as high as in +war times. Rents are going up every day, Darrow can tell you more about +the speculation in rents than I can, and the housing of the +working-classes, both white and coloured, is growing worse. We shall +soon be facing the most serious problem of the system under which we +live, the problem of the unemployed. Already it is beginning. Darrow was +telling me just before you came in of a man in one of the houses where +he has been working—a returned soldier too—who has walked the streets +for weeks in search of work. He has been unable to pay his rent, so of +course he is obliged to move somewhere, if he can find a place to move +into. Oh, I realize perfectly what you are going to say! The brief +prosperity of the war still envelops the labouring man in your mind; and +you are preparing to remind me of the lace curtains and victrolas of +yesterday. Yes, I admit that lace curtains and victrolas are not +necessities. It was a case where nature cropped out in the wrong spot. +Even the working-man may have suppressed desires, you see, and lace +curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the +poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the +economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the +civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!"</p> + +<p>As the man's words poured out in his rich, deep voice, Stephen stared at +him in a silence which reminded him humorously of the pause in church +before the sermon began. Was this the reason of Vetch's influence and +authority—this flow of ideas, as from a horn of plenty, that left the +listener both charmed and bewildered?</p> + +<p>"I admit it all," rejoined the young man, "except that you have +discovered the remedy."</p> + +<p>The Governor laughed and settled back in his big leather-covered chair. +"You think that I blow my own horn too loudly," he continued, "but, +after all, who knows how to blow it half so well as I do? For the same +reason some over-sensitive nerve of yours may wince at my behaviour at +times, my lack of dignity or reserve; but have I ever lost a vote—I put +it to you plainly—or the shadow of a vote by an occasional resort to +spectacular advertising? It pays to advertise in politics, we all know +that!—but it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the +goods. I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and +you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself +ridiculous because I strike an attitude. The people laughed—but, by +George, they laughed with me! Oh, I know you think that I am wandering +from my point; but I haven't forgotten your question, and I am going to +answer it, if you will give me time. You ask me what I believe—"</p> + +<p>"If you could tell me in few words and plainly."</p> + +<p>"Well, first of all, I make no pretence. I do not promise to work +miracles. I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in +platitudes. I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out +of unregenerate human nature. As long as we have cherries we shall have +blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians. I +acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as +good results as I can out of the mixture. Definitely I stand for a +progressive reorganization of society—for a fairer social order and a +practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of +increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old +disorganized slavery. I believe in the trite formula we workers +preach—in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the +inevitable step from the mother's pension, the gradual nationalization +of mines and railroads. I believe in these things which are the +commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the +people follow me. It is something bigger than all this that catches the +crowd. What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the +man who acts. I stand to them not for words—though you and Benham think +I've made my way by a gift of tongue—but for deeds—for things +performed as well as planned. Other men can tell them what they want. My +hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want—a very +big difference! Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest. I have read a +few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot +when I get started. But the words I use are living words, if you notice +them. I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the +things that I think. Well, that is my secret—my pose, if you prefer—to +present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea. There are +plenty of imposing statues standing around. What they see in me is a +human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will +fight to the last ditch to get it for them."</p> + +<p>It was plausible; it sounded convincing and logical; and yet, even while +Stephen responded to the Governor's personal touch, some obstinate fibre +of race or inflexible bent of judgment, refused to surrender. Vetch was +probably sincere—it was fairer to give him the benefit of the +doubt—but on the surface at least he was parading a spectacular pose. +The rôle of the Friend of the People has seldom been absent from the +drama of history.</p> + +<p>With a glance at the window, where twilight was falling, Stephen rose, +and held out his hand. "I shall remember your frankness," he said, "the +next time I hear you speak. That, I hope, will be soon."</p> + +<p>"And you will wait until then to be converted?"</p> + +<p>"I shall wait until then to be wholly convinced."</p> + +<p>"Well, Darrow may have better results. You go with Darrow?"</p> + +<p>"If he will take me?" The deference with which the old man had inspired +the Governor showed in Stephen's manner. "I shall be grateful for a lift +on the way home."</p> + +<p>Darrow had risen also; and after shaking hands with Vetch, he looked +back at the younger man from the doorway. "I'll have my Ford round here +in five minutes. Meet me at the nearest gate."</p> + +<p>He went out hurriedly; and as Stephen followed him, after the delay of a +few minutes, he found himself face to face with Patty, who was coming +from "the blue room" on the opposite side of the hall.</p> + +<p>"I hope you got what you came for," she said gaily.</p> + +<p>"I came for nothing," he retorted lightly, "and I'm sure I got it."</p> + +<p>"Well, that won't matter so much since it wasn't for yourself," she +mocked. "Nobody ever wants anything for himself in politics. Father +could tell you that."</p> + +<p>"He told me a good many things—but not that."</p> + +<p>"Did he tell you," she inquired daringly, "why he is falling out with +Julius Gershom?"</p> + +<p>"Is he falling out with him?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't you see it—and hear it—when you came in?"</p> + +<p>"I suspected as much; but after all it was none of my business."</p> + +<p>"And you confine your curiosity to your own business?"</p> + +<p>"Not entirely," he answered, and wondered if she were experimenting +with the letter "C". "For instance I am curious about you."</p> + +<p>Her eyes challenged him with their old defiance. "And I am certainly not +your business."</p> + +<p>"I admit that you are not—but that does not decrease my curiosity."</p> + +<p>For a moment her smile grew wistful. "And what, I wonder," she asked, +with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to +know?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly. There was no longer in his +mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation. On the +contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to +look like this. She was not beautiful—yet he realized that she did not +need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the +heartstrings. A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very +instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a +whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though +it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as +divinely fresh and wonderful as first love.</p> + +<p>"Is it too little?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it +was faint in his ears.</p> + +<p>She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning. "That +depends," she answered, and suddenly, without warning, she passed to the +lightest and gayest of tones. "Everything depends on something else, +doesn't it? Now Father is coming out, and I must run upstairs and +dress."</p> + +<p>It was a dismissal, he knew, and yet he hesitated. "May I come again +soon?" he asked, and held out his hand.</p> + +<p>To his surprise Patty greeted his question with a laugh. "Do you really +like politics so much?" she retorted; and fled lightly toward the +staircase beyond the library.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS</h3> + + +<p>Darrow's little car was waiting before the entrance; and as soon as +Stephen had taken his place by the old man's side, they shot forward +into the smoky twilight. A policeman, standing in the circle of +electric light at the corner, held up a warning hand; and then, as he +recognized Darrow, he nodded with a smile, and there stole into his face +the look of deference which Stephen had seen in the Governor's eyes. +Glancing up at the sombre ruggedness of the profile beside him, the younger man asked himself curiously from what source of character or +Circumstance this old man had derived his strange impressiveness and his +Authority over men. With his gaunt length, his wide curving nostrils, +his thick majestic lips, he looked, as Stephen had first seen him, a +rock-hewn Pharaoh of a man. An unusual type to survive in modern +America—republican and imperial! Did he represent, this carpenter who +was also a politician, the political despotism of the worker—the crook +and scourge of the labourer's power?</p> + +<p>Suddenly, while he wondered, Darrow turned toward him. "What do you +think of the Governor?"</p> + +<p>"I hardly know," answered Stephen thoughtfully. "It is too soon to ask; +but I think he is honest."</p> + +<p>"He is more than honest," rejoined the other quietly. "He is human. He +understands. He belongs to us."</p> + +<p>"Belongs?" Stephen repeated the word with a note of interrogation.</p> + +<p>Very slowly the old man answered. "I mean that he is more than anything +that he says or thinks. He is bigger than his message."</p> + +<p>"I suppose he stands for a great deal?"</p> + +<p>"A man stands only for what he is, not for an inch more, not for an inch +less. The trouble with all the leaders we've had in the past was that +their thought outstripped their characters. They believed more than they +were and they broke down under it. I'm an old man now. I've watched them +come and go."</p> + +<p>"You think that Vetch is a great leader?"</p> + +<p>"I think he is a great leader, but I don't mean that I think he will +ever lead us anywhere."</p> + +<p>"You feel that he is losing his grip on the crowd?"</p> + +<p>Up from Main Street the workers were pouring out of the factories; and +while they moved in a dark stream through the light and shadow on the +pavement, the faces flowed past Stephen with a pallid intensity which +made him think of dead flowers drifting on a river. In all those faces +how little life there seemed, how little individuality and animation!</p> + +<p>"When I was a small kid I used to live by the seashore," said the old +man presently in his dry, emphatic tones. "Many is the time I've stood +and watched the tide coming in, and I never once saw it come in that it +didn't go out again."</p> + +<p>"Then you believe that the tide is turning against Vetch?"</p> + +<p>For a minute, while they sped on in the obscurity of a side street, +Darrow meditated.</p> + +<p>"No, sir, I ain't saying that much—not yet. But the way I calculate is +something like this. Vetch came in on a wave of popular emotion, and a +wave of popular emotion is just about like the tide of the sea. It may +rise a certain distance, but it can't stand still, and it can't go any +farther. It's obliged to turn; and when it turns, it's pretty sure to +bring back a good deal that it carried with it. A crowd impulse—as they +call it in the pulpit and on the platform—is a dangerous thing. It's +dangerous because you can't count on it."</p> + +<p>"It looks to me as if Vetch counted upon it a little too much."</p> + +<p>"That's his nature. He was born on the sunny side of the street. He +thinks because he sees the way to help people that they want to be +helped. I've been mixed up in politics now for fifty years, and in the +labour movement, as they say, ever since it began to move in the +South—and I've found out that people don't really want to be +helped—they want to be fooled. Vetch offers 'em facts, and all the time +it ain't facts they're wanting, but names."</p> + +<p>"I see," assented Stephen. "Names that they can repeat over and over +until they get at last to believe that they are things. Long +reverberating names like Democratic or Republican—"</p> + +<p>Darrow laughed grimly. "That's right, sir, that's the way I've worked it +out in my mind. The crowd will come a little way after a fact; but in +the end it gets tired because the fact won't work magic, like that +conjure-stuff of the darkeys, and then it turns and goes back to the old +names that mean nothing. Only when a crowd moves all together it's +dangerous because it's like the flood-tide and ebb-tide of the sea."</p> + +<p>"And the most irritating part of it," said Stephen, with an insight +which had sometimes visited him in the trenches, "is that it gets what +it deserves because it can always have whatever it wants—even the truth +and honest government."</p> + +<p>They were passing rows of narrow old-fashioned tenement-houses, +standing, like crumbling walls of red brick, behind sagging wooden +fences; and suddenly, while Stephen's eyes were on the lights that came +and went so fitfully in the basement dining-rooms, Darrow stopped the +car in the gutter of cobblestones, and motioned in silence toward the +pavement. As Stephen got out, he glanced vaguely round him at the +strange neighbourhood.</p> + +<p>"Where are we?"</p> + +<p>"North of Marshall Street. A quarter which was once very prosperous; but +that was before your day. This is one of several rows of old houses, +well-built in their time, better built, indeed, than any houses we're +putting up now; but their day is over. The cost of repairing them would +be so great that the agent is deliberately letting the property run down +in the hope that this part of the street will soon be turned over to +negroes. The negroes are so crowded in their quarter that they are +obliged to expand, and when they do, this investment will yield a still +higher interest. Coloured tenants stand crowding better than white ones, +and they will pay a better rent for worse housing. As it is the rent of +these houses has doubled since the beginning of the war."</p> + +<p>"Good God!" said Stephen. "Do we stop here?"</p> + +<p>"I want you to see Canning, the man the Governor told you about. He +can't pay his rent, which was raised last Saturday, and the family is +moving to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"He ought to be paid for living here. Where will he go?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, people can always find a worse place, if they look long enough. +Canning was in the war, by the way. He's got some nervous trouble—not +crazy enough to be taken care of—just on edge and unstrung. The war +used him up, I reckon, and anxiety and undernourishment used up his wife +and children. It all seems to have come out in the baby—queerest little +kid you ever saw—born about a year ago. Mighty funny—ain't it?—the +way we let children just a few squares away from us grow up pinched, +half-starved, undersized, uneducated, and as little moral as the gutters +can make 'em, and all the time we're parading and begging and even +collecting the pennies out of orphan asylums, for the sake of the +children on the other side of the world. But it's a queer thing, +charity, however you happen to look at it. My father used to say—and he +had as much sense as any man I ever met—that charity is the greatest +traveller under the sun; and even if it begins at home it ain't ever +content to stop there over night."</p> + +<p>Standing there in the dim street, before the silent rows of bleak houses +with their tattered window-shades and their fitful lights, Stephen +stared wonderingly at the gaunt shape of the man before him. For the +first time he was brought face to face with the other half of his world, +with the half of the world where poverty and toil are stark realities. +This was the way men like Darrow were thinking, men perhaps like Gideon +Vetch! These men saw poverty not as a sentimental term, but as a human +experience. They knew, while he and his kind only imagined. With a +sensation as acute as physical nausea, a sensation that the thought of +the Germans used to bring when he was in the trenches, there swept over +him a memory of the social hysteria which had followed, like a mental +pestilence or famine, in the track of the war. The moral platitudes, the +sentimental philanthropy, and the hypocritical command of conscience to +put all the world, except our own cellars, in order, where were these +impulses now in a time which had gone mad with the hatred of work and +the craving for pleasure? Yet he had once thought that he was returning +to a world which could be rebuilt on a foundation of justice, and it was +this lost belief, he knew, which had made him bitter in spirit and +unfair in judgment.</p> + +<p>The gate swung back with a grating noise, and they entered the yard, and +walked over scattered papers and empty bottles to the narrow flight of +brick steps, which led from the ground to the area in front of the +basement dining-room. As Stephen descended by the light from the +dust-laden window, a chill dampness rose like a fog from the earth below +and filled his nostrils and mouth and throat—a dampness which choked +him like the effluvium of poverty. Glancing in from the area a moment +later, he saw a scantily furnished room, heated by an open stove and +lighted by a single jet of gas, which flickered in a thin greenish +flame. In the centre of the room a pine table, without a cloth, was laid +for supper, and three small children, in chairs drawn close together, +were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, +in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the +adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing +sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag +carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the +pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an +infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying the scene.</p> + +<p>More than anything else in the room, more even than the sodden +hopelessness of the man's expression, the hopelessness of neurasthenia, +this baby, tied with a strip of gingham in his high chair, arrested and +held Stephen's attention. Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but +of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old +man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, +with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience. And this +look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken +aloud: "I am tired before I begin. I am old before I begin. I am ending +before I begin."</p> + +<p>Darrow knocked at the door, and the woman opened it with the coffee-pot +still in her hand.</p> + +<p>"So you've come back," she said in a voice that was without surprise and +without gratitude.</p> + +<p>"I came back to ask what you've done about a place. This gentleman is +with me. You don't mind his stepping inside a minute?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I don't mind. I don't mind anything." She drew back as she +answered, and the two men entered the room and stood gazing at the stove +with the look of embarrassment which the sight of poverty brings to the +faces of the well-to-do.</p> + +<p>"When are you moving?" asked Darrow, withdrawing his gaze from the +glimmer of the embers in the stove, and fixing it on the steam that +issued from the coffee-pot.</p> + +<p>"In the morning. We've found a cheaper place, though with rent going up +every week, it looks as if we'd soon have nowhere worse to move to, +unless it's gaol alley." Her tone dripped bitterness, and the lines of +her pale lips settled into an expression of scornful resignation.</p> + +<p>Without replying to her words, Darrow nodded in the direction of the +young man, who had never looked up, but sat in the same rigid attitude, +with his vacant eyes staring at the hole in the carpet.</p> + +<p>"Any better?"</p> + +<p>"How can he be better," returned the woman grimly, "when all he does is +to walk the streets until he's fit to drop, and then drag himself home +and sit there like that for hours, too worn out even to lift his eyes +from the floor. This is the last coffee I've got. I've been saving it +since Christmas, but I made it for him because he seems more down than +usual to-night." Then a nervous spasm shook her thin figure, and she +added in a fierce whisper: "He's sick, that's the matter with him. He +ain't sick enough to be in a government hospital, but he'd be better off +if he was. Even when he gets work he ain't able to stick to it. The +folks that hire him don't have any patience. As long as he was over +yonder in France it looked as if every woman in America was knitting for +him; and now since he's back here he can't get a job to keep him and the +children alive."</p> + +<p>"How have you fed the children?"</p> + +<p>"On what I could get cheapest. You see how sickly and peaked they look, +and it's been awful damp in these rooms sometimes. The doctor says he +ain't sick; it ain't his body, it's his mind. He says he's had a kind +of horror inside of him ever since he came home. He's turned against +everything he used to do, and even everything he used to believe in."</p> + +<p>"That's hell!" exclaimed Stephen suddenly; and at her surprised glance, +he added, "I've been there and I know. Nerves, they say, but just as +real as your skin." He looked away from her to the man on the sofa. "To +have <i>that</i>, and be in poverty!" Turning away from the father, his +glance met the calm eyes of the baby fixed on him with that gaze which +was as old and as pitiless as philosophy.</p> + +<p>"Ma, may I help myself?" screamed one of the children, drumming loudly +on the table. "I'd rather have bread and molasses!" cried another; and +"Oh, Ma, when we move to-morrow will you let me take the kitten I +found?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I've talked to the Governor," said Darrow, in his level voice +which sounded to Stephen so unemotional, "and I think we can find a job +for your husband."</p> + +<p>Suddenly the man on the sofa looked up. "I voted against him," he +whispered angrily.</p> + +<p>Darrow laughed shortly. "You don't know the Governor if you think he'd +hold that against you," he replied. "But for that little weakness of his +he might not be a political problem."</p> + +<p>"That's the way he goes on," remarked the woman despairingly. "Always +saying things straight out that other people would keep back. He don't +care what happens, that's the whole truth of it. He don't care about +anything on earth, not even his tobacco."</p> + +<p>"Life!" thought Stephen, with a dull pain in his heart. "That's what +life is!" And the old familiar feeling of suffocation, of distaste for +everything that he had ever felt or thought or believed, smothered him +with the dryness of dust. Going quickly over to the sofa, he laid his +hand on the man's shoulder, and spoke in a high ringing voice which he +tried to make cheerful. "It will pass, old fellow," he said, and could +have laughed aloud at the insincerity of his tone. "I know because I've +been there." And he added cynically, as a kind of sacrifice on the altar +of truth: "Everything will pass if you only wait long enough."</p> + +<p>The man started and looked up. With an air of surprise he glanced round +the dingy room, at his wife, at the whimpering children, at the +dispassionate baby enthroned in his high chair, and at the majestic +profile of Darrow. "It's the rottenness of the whole blooming show," he +said doggedly. "It ain't just the hole I'm in. I could put up with that +if it wasn't for the rottenness of it all."</p> + +<p>"I know," replied Stephen quietly. "There are times when the show does +look rotten, but we're all in it together."</p> + +<p>Then, because he felt that he could stand it no longer, he turned +abruptly, and went out into the dusk of the area. In a few minutes +Darrow joined him, and in silence the two men felt their way up the +brick steps to the bare ground of the front yard.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what I ought to do, but I've got to do something," said +Stephen, when he had opened the gate and passed through to the pavement +where the car waited. Lifting his sensitive young face, he stared up at +the row of decaying tenements. "What places for homes!"</p> + +<p>For a moment Darrow looked at him without speaking; and then he +answered in a voice which sounded as impersonal as the distant rumble of +street cars. "I thought you might be interested because these houses, +these and the other rows on the next block or two, are part of the +Culpeper estate."</p> + +<p>"The Culpeper estate?" repeated Stephen in an expressionless tone; and +raising his eyes again he looked up at the bleak houses. In that +instant, it seemed to him that he was seeing, not the sharp projection +of the roofs against the ashen sky, but a long line of pleasant and +prosperous generations. Beyond him stood his father, beyond his father +stood his grandfather, beyond the tranquil succession of his +grandfathers stood—what? Civilization? Humanity?</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," he asked quietly, "that we—our family—own these +houses?"</p> + +<p>"The whole block, and the next, and the next. It is the Culpeper estate. +You've never seen 'em before, I reckon. I doubt even if your father has +ever seen 'em. The agent attends to all this, and if the agent didn't +see that the rents were as high as people would pay, or were paying in +the next places, he would be soon out of a job. I'm not blaming him, you +know. I've got a son-in-law who is a real estate agent. It's just one of +the cases where it's nobody's fault, and everybody's."</p> + +<p>Without replying, Stephen turned away and got into the car. He felt +bruised and sick, and he wanted to be alone, to think things out by +himself in the darkness. "This is only one instance," he thought, as +they started down the dim street toward the white blaze of the business +quarter in the distance. "Only one out of millions! In every city. All +over the world it is the same. Wherever there is wealth it casts its +shadow of poverty."</p> + +<p>"I used to bother about it too when I was young," said the old man at +his side. "I used to feel, I reckon, pretty near as bad as you are +feeling now, but it don't last. When you get on a bit you'll sort of +settle down and begin to work it out. That's life. Yes, but it ain't the +whole of life. It ain't even the biggest part. Those folks we've been to +see have had their good times like the rest of us, only we saw 'em just +now when they were in the midst of a bad time. Life ain't confined to a +ditch any more than it is to what Gideon calls a lily-pond. Keep your +balance, that's the main thing. Whatever else you lose, you must be sure +to keep your balance, or you'll be in danger of going overboard."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that there is no remedy for conditions like this?"</p> + +<p>The old man pondered his answer so long that Stephen thought he had +either given up or forgotten the question.</p> + +<p>"The only remedy I have ever been able to see is to work not on +conditions, but on human nature," he replied. "Improve human nature, and +then you will improve the conditions in which it lives. Improve the rich +as well as the poor. Teach 'em to be human beings, not machines, to one +another—that's Gideon's idea, you know,—humanize—Christianize, if you +like it better—civilize. It's a pretty hopeless problem—the individual +case—charity is all rotten from root to branch. If you could see the +harm that's been done by mistaken charity! Why, look at my friend, Mrs. +Page, now. She tried to work it out that way, and what came of it +except more rottenness? And yet until the State looks after the +unemployed, there is obliged to be charity."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean Mrs. Kent Page?" asked Stephen in surprise, and remembered +that his mother had once accused Corinna of trying to "undermine +society."</p> + +<p>"She is one of my best friends," answered the old man, with mingled +pride and affection. "I go to see her in her shop every now and then, +and I reckon she values my advice about her affairs as much as +anybody's. Well, when she came home from Europe she found that she +owned a row of tenements like this one, and her agent was profiteering +in rents like most of the others. I wish you could have seen her when +she discovered it. Splendid? Well, I reckon she's the most splendid +thing this old world has ever had on top of it! She went straight to +work and had those houses made into modern apartments—bathrooms, steam +heat, and back yards full of trees and grass and flowers, just like +Monroe Park, only better. The rent wasn't raised either! She put that +back just where it was before the war; and then she let the whole row to +the tenants for two years. You never saw anything like the interest she +took in that speculation—you'd have thought to hear her that she was +setting out to bring what the preachers call the social millennium."</p> + +<p>"She never mentioned it to me," said Stephen, with interest. "How did it +turn out?"</p> + +<p>Darrow threw back his great head with a laugh. "I don't reckon she did +mention it, bless her! It don't bear mentioning even now. Why, when she +went back last fall to see those houses, she found that the tenants had +all moved into dirty little places in the alley, and were letting out +the apartments, at five times the rent they paid, to other tenants. +They were doing a little special profiteering of their own—and, bless +your life, there wasn't so much as a blade of grass left in the yards, +even the trees had been cut down and sold for wood. And you say she +never mentioned it?"</p> + +<p>"How could she? But, after all, I suppose the question goes deeper than +that?"</p> + +<p>"The question," replied Darrow, with an energy that shook the little +car, "goes as deep as hell!"</p> + +<p>They were driving rapidly up Grace Street; and as they shot past the +club on the corner, Stephen noticed the serene aristocratic profile of +Peyton at one of the brilliantly lighted windows. A little farther on, +when they turned into Franklin Street, he saw that the old print shop +was in darkness, except for the lights in the rooms of the caretaker +and the lodgers in the upper storey. Corinna had gone home, he supposed, +and he wondered idly if she were with Benham? As they went on they +passed the house of the Blairs, where he caught a glimpse of Margaret on +the porch, parting from the handsome young clergyman. The sight stirred +him strangely, as if the memory of his dead life had been awakened by a +scent or a faded flower in a book. How different he was from the boy +Margaret had known in that primitive period which people defined as +"before the war"! It was as if he had belonged then to some primary +emotional stratum of life. All the complex forces, the play and +interplay of desire and repulsion, of energy and lassitude, had +developed in the last two or three years.</p> + +<p>On either side, softly shaded lights were shining from the windows, and +women, in rich furs, were getting out of luxurious cars. It was the +world that Stephen knew; life moulded in sculptural forms and encrusted +with the delicate patina of tradition. Here was all that he had once +loved; yet he realized suddenly, with a sensation of loneliness, that +here, not in the mean streets, he felt, as Vetch would have said, +"stranger than Robinson Crusoe." Something was missing. Something was +lost that he could never recover. Was it Vetch, after all, who had shown +him the way out, who had knocked a hole in the wall?</p> + +<p>When Darrow stopped the car before the Culpeper gate, Stephen turned and +held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. "I shall see you again."</p> + +<p>Crossing the pavement with a rapid step, he entered the gate and ran up +the steps to the porch between the white columns. As he passed into the +richly tempered glow of the hall, it seemed to him that an invisible +force, an aroma of the past, drifted out of the old house and enveloped +him like the sweetness of flowers. He was caught again, he was +submerged, in the spirit of race.</p> + +<p>A little later, when he was passing his mother's door, he glanced in and +saw her standing before the mirror in her evening gown of gray silk, +with the foam-like ruffles of rose-point on her bosom and at her elbows, +which were still round and young looking.</p> + +<p>Catching his reflection in the glass, she called out in her crisp tones, +"My dear boy, where on earth have you been? You know we promised to dine +with Julia, and then to go to those tableaux for the benefit of the +children in Vienna. She has worked so hard to make them a success that +she would never forgive us if we stayed away."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know. I had forgotten," he replied. Why was he always +forgetting? Then he asked impulsively, while pity burned at white heat +within him, "Is Father here? I want to speak to him before we go out."</p> + +<p>"He came in an hour ago," said Mrs. Culpeper; and as she spoke the mild +leonine countenance of Mr. Culpeper, vaguely resembling some playful and +domesticated king of beasts, appeared at the door of his dressing-room.</p> + +<p>"Do you wish to see me, my boy?" he asked affectionately. "We were just +wondering if you had forgotten and stayed at the club."</p> + +<p>"No, I wasn't at the club. I've been looking over the Culpeper estate—a +part of it." Stephen's voice trembled in spite of the effort he made to +keep it impersonal and indifferent. "Father, do you know anything about +those old houses beyond Marshall Street?"</p> + +<p>It was the peculiar distinction of Mr. Culpeper that, in a community +where everybody talked all the time, he had been able to form the habit +of silence. While his acquaintances continually vociferated opinions, +scandals, experiences, or anecdotes, he remained imperturbably reticent +and subdued. All that he responded now to Stephen's outburst was, "Has +anybody offered to buy them?"</p> + +<p>"Why, what in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Culpeper, who was neither +reticent nor subdued. From the depths of the mirror her bright brown +eyes gazed back at her husband, while she fastened a cameo pin, +containing the head of Minerva framed in pearls, in the rose-point on +her bosom.</p> + +<p>"To buy them?" repeated Stephen. "Why, they are horrors, Father, to live +in—crumbling, insanitary horrors! And yet the rent has been doubled in +the last two or three years."</p> + +<p>From the mirror his mother's face looked back at him, so small and +clear and delicately tinted that it seemed to him merely an exaggerated +copy of the cameo on her bosom, "I hope that means we shall have a +little more to live on next year," she said reflectively, while the +expression that Mary Byrd impertinently called her "economic look" +appeared in her eyes. "What with the high cost of everything, and the +low interest on Liberty Bonds, and the innumerable relief organizations +to which one is simply forced to contribute, it has been almost +impossible to make two ends meet. Poor Mary Byrd hasn't been able to +give a single party this winter."</p> + +<p>Before Stephen's gaze there passed a vision of the dingy basement room, +the embittered face of the woman, the sickly tow-headed children, the +man who could not lift his eyes from the hole in the carpet, and the +baby with that look of having been born not young, but old, the look of +pre-natal experience and disillusionment. And he heard Darrow's dry +voice complaining because the well-to-do classes still gave to starving +orphans across the world. After all, what was there to choose between +the near-sighted and the far-sighted social vision? How narrow they both +appeared and how crooked! Darrow would let all the children of Europe +starve as long as their crying did not interfere with the aims of his +Federation of Labour; Stephen's sister Julia, with her instinct for +imitation and her remote sense of responsibility, would step over the +poverty at her door, while she held out her hands, in the latest +fashionable gesture of philanthropy, to the orphans in France or Vienna. +And beside them both his mother, who because of her constitutional +inability to see anything beyond the family, perceived merely the fact +that her own child would be disappointed if the tableaux for the benefit +of starving children somewhere did not go off well. The question, he +realized, was not which one of the three points of view was the most +admirable, but simply which one served best the ultimate purpose of the +race. Selfishness seemed to have as little as altruism to do with the +problem. Was Corinna, who had failed in philanthropy and chosen beauty, +the only wise one among them?</p> + +<p>"But children are living in these houses," he said, "and not only +living—they are forced to move out because the rent has become so high +that they must find a worse place. I've just seen it with my own eyes. +Three sickly little children and a dreadful baby—a baby that knows +everything already."</p> + +<p>A quiver of pain crossed Mr. Culpeper's handsome features; but he said +only, "I will speak to the agent."</p> + +<p>"Won't you look into it yourself?" asked Stephen hopelessly. "The agent +is only the agent—but the responsibility is yours—ours. Of course the +agent doesn't want to make expensive repairs when he can get as high +rent without doing so. He knows that people are obliged to have a roof +over them; and if the roofs are too bad for white people, he can always +find negroes to pay anything that he asks. Can't you see what it is in +reality—that we are preying on the helpless?"</p> + +<p>Turning suddenly from the mirror, Mrs. Culpeper crossed the floor +hastily and put her arms about her son's shoulders. Her face was very +motherly and there was a compassionate light in her eyes, "My dear, dear +boy," she murmured in the soothing tone that one uses to the ill or the +mentally unbalanced. "My dear boy, you must really go and dress. Julia +will never forgive us." In her heart she was sincerely grieved by what +he had told her. She would have helped cheerfully if it had been +possible to her nature; but stronger than compassion, stronger even than +reason, was the instinct of evasive idealism which the generations had +bred. He understood, while he looked down on her white hair and unlined +face, that even if he took her with him to that basement room, she would +see it not as it actually was, but as she wished it to be. Her +romanticism was invulnerable because it had no contact, even through +imagination, with the edge of reality.</p> + +<p>And he knew also, while she held him in her motherly arms, that +something had broken down within his soul—some barrier between himself +and humanity. The wall of tradition and sentiment no longer divided him +from Darrow, or Gideon Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything +but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited +place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a +nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look +of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a +spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the +very law of his being, which was the law of order, of manners, of +self-control, the inbred horror, older than himself or his parents, of +giving himself away, of making a scene of his own emotions, this +ancestral custom of good breeding closed over him like the lid of a +coffin.</p> + +<p>With a smile he looked into the anxious face of his father. "Isn't there +some way out of it, Dad?"</p> + +<p>The muscles about Mr. Culpeper's mouth contracted as if he were going +to cry; but when he spoke his voice was completely under control. "I +can't interfere, son, with the way the agent manages the property," he +answered, "but, of course, if you have discovered a peculiarly +distressing case—if it is an object of charity—"</p> + +<p>He paused abruptly in amazement, for Stephen was laughing, laughing in a +way, as Mrs. Culpeper remarked afterward, that nobody had ever even +thought of laughing before the whole world had become demoralized.</p> + +<p>"Damn charity!" he exclaimed hilariously. "I beg your pardon, Mother, +but if you only knew how inexpressibly funny it is!" Then the laughter +stopped, and a wistful look came into his eyes, for beyond the broken +walls he saw Patty Vetch in her red cape, and around her stretched the +wind-swept roads of that hidden country.</p> + +<p>A minute later, as he left the room, his mother's eyes followed him +anxiously. "Poor boy, we must bear with him," she said in melting +maternal accents.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>CORINNA WONDERS</h3> + + +<p>After a winter of Italian skies spring had come in a night. It was a +morning in April, blue and soft as a cloud, with a roving fragrance of +lilacs and hyacinths in the air. Already the early bloom of the orchard +had dropped, and the freshly ploughed fields, with splashes of henna in +the dun-coloured soil, were surrounded by the budding green of the +woods.</p> + +<p>As Mrs. Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna's shop, she noticed that +the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing +narcissi. For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, +framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and +anxious. Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the +tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were suddenly touched with spring.</p> + +<p>"How delicious the flowers smell," she remarked when Corinna opened the +door; and then, as she entered the room and glanced curiously round her, +she asked incredulously, "Do people really pay money for these old +illustrations, Corinna?"</p> + +<p>"Not here, Cousin Harriet. I bought these in London."</p> + +<p>"And they cost you something?"</p> + +<p>"Some of these, of course, cost more than others. That," Corinna pointed +to a mezzotint of the Ladies Waldegrave by Valentine Green, "cost a +little less than ten thousand dollars."</p> + +<p>"Ten thousand dollars!" Mrs. Culpeper gazed at the print as +disapprovingly as if it were an open violation of the Eighteenth +Amendment. "We didn't pay anything like that for our largest copy of a +Murillo. Well, I may not be artistic, but, for my part, I could never +understand why any one should want an old book or an old picture." +Sitting rigidly upright in one of the tapestry-covered chairs, she added +condescendingly: "Stephen admires this room very much."</p> + +<p>"Stephen," remarked Corinna pleasantly, "is a dear boy."</p> + +<p>"Just now," returned Stephen's mother, with her accustomed air of duty +unflinchingly performed, "he is giving us a great deal of anxiety. Never +before, not even when he was in the war, have I spent so many sleepless +nights over him."</p> + +<p>"I am sorry. Poor Stephen, what has he done?"</p> + +<p>"I have always hoped," observed Mrs. Culpeper firmly, "that Stephen +would marry Margaret."</p> + +<p>"I am aware of that." A flicker of amusement brightened Corinna's eyes. +"So, I think, is Stephen."</p> + +<p>"I have tried to be honest. It seems to me that a mother's wish should +carry a great deal of weight in such matters."</p> + +<p>"It ought to," assented Corinna, "but I've never heard of its doing so."</p> + +<p>"Everything would have been satisfactory if he had not allowed himself +to be carried away by a foolish fancy."</p> + +<p>"I cannot imagine," said Corinna primly, "that Stephen could ever be +foolish. It gives me hope of him."</p> + +<p>Impaling her, as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as +a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, "How much do you know of this +affair, my dear?"</p> + +<p>In spite of her natural courage Corinna was seized with a shiver of +apprehension. "Do you think it is an affair?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I think it is worse. I think it is an infatuation."</p> + +<p>"What, Stephen? Not really?" Corinna's voice was mirthfully incredulous.</p> + +<p>"I have seen the girl once or twice," resumed Mrs. Culpeper, "and she +seems to me objectionable from every point of view."</p> + +<p>"Only from the Culpeper one," protested Corinna. "I find her very +attractive."</p> + +<p>"Well, I do not." Mrs. Culpeper had relapsed into her tone of habitual +martyrdom. "If Stephen chooses to kill me," she added, "he may do it."</p> + +<p>Corinna leaned toward her ingratiatingly. "Don't you admit, Cousin +Harriet, that I have improved Patty tremendously?"</p> + +<p>"I see no difference."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but there is one—a great difference! If you had come to one of the +Governor's receptions last winter, you couldn't have told that she +wasn't—well, one of us. She has been so quick to pick up things that it +is amazing."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper lifted the transparent mesh from the point of her nose. +"Do you know," she demanded, "that the girl was born in a circus tent?"</p> + +<p>"So I have heard. It was a romantic beginning."</p> + +<p>Foiled but undaunted, the older woman fixed on Corinna the stare with +which she would have attempted the conversion of an undraped pagan if +she had ever encountered one. Though she was unconscious of the fact as +she sat there, suffering yet unbending, in the Florentine chair, she +represented the logical result of the conservative principle in nature, +of the spirit that forgets nothing and learns nothing, of the instinct +of the type to reproduce itself, without variation or development, until +the pattern is worn too thin to endure. That Stephen had inherited this +passive force, Corinna knew, but she knew also, that it was threatened +by his incurable romanticism, by that inarticulate longing for heroic +adventures.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, as if moved by a steel spring, Mrs. Culpeper rose. "I know you +have a great deal of influence over Stephen," she said, "and I hoped +that, instead of encouraging him in his folly, you would sympathize with +me."</p> + +<p>"I do sympathize with you, Cousin Harriet—only I have learned that it +is sometimes very difficult to decide what is folly and what is wisdom +in a man's life."</p> + +<p>"There can scarcely be a doubt, I think, about this. Surely you cannot +imagine that there would be happiness for my son in a marriage with the +daughter of Gideon Vetch?"</p> + +<p>There was a dreamy sweetness in Corinna's eyes. "I can't answer that, +Cousin Harriet, because I don't know. But are you sure it has gone as +far as that? Has Stephen really thought of marriage?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. He tells me nothing," replied Mrs. Culpeper hopelessly, +and she added after a pause: "But I can't help having eyes. It is either +that—or he is going into politics." Her tone was as despairing as if +she had said, "he is coming down with fever."</p> + +<p>For a minute Corinna hesitated; then she responded cheerfully, "If it +is any comfort to you, Cousin Harriet, I feel that you are making a +mountain out of a mole hill. When it comes to the point, I believe that +Stephen will revert to type like the rest of us."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper clutched desperately at the straw that was offered her. +"You think he won't ask her to marry him?"</p> + +<p>"If he does," said Corinna firmly, "I shall be more surprised than I +have ever been in my life."</p> + +<p>The look of martyrdom faded slowly from her visitor's features. "You say +this because you know Stephen?"</p> + +<p>"Because I know Stephen—and men," answered Corinna, while she thought +of John Benham. "Frankly, I think it would be a splendid thing for +Stephen to do. It would prove, you know, that he cared enough to make a +sacrifice. I think it would be splendid; but I think also that we are of +the breed that looks too long before it leaps. Our great adventures take +place in dreams or in talk. We like to play with forlorn hopes; but the +only forlorn hope we have actually embraced is the conservative +principle; and we couldn't let that go, even if we tried, because it is +bred in our bone. So I believe that the ^hereditary habit will drag +Stephen safely back before he rushes into danger. He may play with the +thought of Patty, but he will probably marry Margaret."</p> + +<p>If Mrs. Culpeper's too refined features could have expressed passion, it +would have been the passion of thankfulness. "It was worth coming," she +said, "to hear you say that of Stephen."</p> + +<p>When at last she had gone, primly grateful for the scrap of comfort, +Corinna stood for a minute with her eyes on the sunbeams at the window. +Outside there were the roving winds and the restless spirit of April; +and feeling suddenly that she could stand the close walls and the +familiar objects no longer, she put on her hat and gloves and went out +into the street. Scarcely knowing why, with some vague thought that she +might go to see Patty, she turned in the direction of the Capitol +Square, walking with her buoyant grace which seemed a part of the +fugitive beauty of April. The air was so fragrant, the sunshine so +softly burning, that it was as if summer were advancing, not gradually, +but in a single miracle of florescence. It was one of those days which +release all the secret inexpressible dreams of the heart. Every face +that she passed was touched with the wistful longing which is the very +essence of spring. She saw it in the faces of the women who hurried, +warm, flushed, and impatient, from the shops or the markets; she saw it +in the faces of the men returning from work and thinking of freedom; and +she saw it again in the long sad faces of the dray-horses standing +hitched to a city cart at the corner.</p> + +<p>In the Square the sunlight lay in splinters over the young grass, which +was dotted with buttercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the +trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves. Back and forth from the +grassy slopes to the winding brick walks, squirrels darted, busy and +joyous; and a few old men, never absent from the benches, were smiling +vaguely at the passers-by.</p> + +<p>When she reached the gate of the Governor's house, her wish to see Patty +had vanished, and she decided that she would go on to the library and +ask for a book that she had recently heard John Benham discussing. How +much of her life now, in spite of its active impersonal interests, was +beginning to centre in John Benham! They were planning to be married in +June, and beyond that month of roses, which was once so saturated with +memories of her early romance, she saw ahead of her long years of +tranquil happiness. Well, she could not complain. After all, was not +tranquil happiness the best that life had to offer?</p> + +<p>She had ascended the steps of the library, and was about to enter the +swinging doors, when she turned and glanced back at the dappled boughs +of an old sycamore, outlined so softly, with its budding leaves, against +the green hill and the changeable blue of the sky. The long walk was +almost deserted. A fountain played gently at the end of the slope; a few +coloured nurses were dozing on a bench, while their be-ribboned charges +scattered peanuts before a fluttering crowd of sparrows, pigeons, and +squirrels; and, leaning on a rude crutch, a lame old negro woman was +dragging a basket of brushwood to the brow of the hill. The scene was +very peaceful, wrapped in that languorous stillness which is the +pervading charm of the South; and beyond the high spikes of the iron +fence, the noise of passing street cars sounded far off and unreal.</p> + +<p>She was still standing there, with her dreamy eyes on the old negress +toiling up the hill with her basket of brushwood, when a man passed the +fountain hurriedly, and came with a brisk, springy stride up the brick +walk below the library. As she watched him, at first without +recognition, she thought vaguely that his rugged figure made a picture +of embodied activity, of physical energy and enjoyment. The next minute +he reached the old negress, glanced at her casually in passing, and +turning abruptly round, lifted the basket, and carried it to the top of +the hill. Then, as he looked back at the old woman, who limped after +him, he laughed with boyish merriment, and Corinna saw in amazement that +the man was Gideon Vetch.</p> + +<p>"He is obliged to be theatrical," remarked a voice behind her, and +glancing over her shoulder she saw that she had been joined by a +severe-looking young woman with several books under her arm.</p> + +<p>"Is it that?" asked Corinna doubtfully, and she added to herself after a +moment, "I wonder?"</p> + +<p>A little later, as she was leaving the Square, Stephen overtook her, and +she told him of the incident. "The Governor is always breaking out like +an epidemic where you least expect him," she concluded with a smile.</p> + +<p>"I know. I've caught him." Though the young man's eyes reflected her +smile, his tone was serious. "I can't rid myself of the fellow."</p> + +<p>"Have you been to see him this morning?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "I should say not! But I've been in a worse fix. I've just +walked up the street with—well, imagine it!—that bounder Gershom."</p> + +<p>"So you both haunt the Square?"</p> + +<p>At the question Stephen turned and faced her frankly. "How, in Heaven's +name, does she stand him?"</p> + +<p>"That's a riddle. To me he is impossible."</p> + +<p>"He is more than that. He is unspeakable." As he looked into her eyes a +deep anxiety or disturbance appeared beneath the superficial gaiety of +his smile. "The fellow had evidently had a quarrel, perhaps a permanent +break, with Vetch. He was in a kind of cold rage; and do you know what +he said to me? He told me,—not openly, but in pretended secrecy,—that +Vetch had never married Patty's mother—"</p> + +<p>For an instant Corinna gazed at him in silence. Then her words came in a +gasp of indignation. "Of course there isn't a word of truth in it!"</p> + +<p>"So I said to him. He insists that he has the proofs. You know what it +means?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know—poor Patty! You understand why he told you?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't at first see the reason; but afterward it came to me."</p> + +<p>"The reason is as clear as daylight. He is infatuated, and he imagines +that you stand in his way."</p> + +<p>"Not only that. I think he has some idea of using whatever proofs he has +to bend Vetch to his will. He was sharp enough not to say so, for he +knew that would be pure blackmail. The ground he took was one of +nauseating morality, but I inferred that he is trying to force Vetch to +agree to this general strike, and that he is prepared to threaten him +with some kind of exposure if he doesn't. This, however, was mere +surmise on my part. The fellow is as shrewd as he is unprincipled."</p> + +<p>When Corinna believed it was in full measure and overflowing. "It's not +true. I know it's not true."</p> + +<p>"Has Patty told you anything?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody has told me anything. One doesn't have to have a reason for +knowing things—at least one doesn't unless one is a man. I know it +because I know it." Then, without waiting for his reply, she continued +with cheerful firmness: "The best way to treat scandal is to forget it. +Don't you think that Patty improves every day?"</p> + +<p>He reddened and looked away from her. "Yes, she grows more attractive, +I—" While she still waited for him to complete his sentence, he shot +out in an embarrassed tone: "Corinna, do you believe in Gideon Vetch?"</p> + +<p>For an instant Corinna hesitated. "I believe that he is—well, just +Gideon Vetch," she answered enigmatically.</p> + +<p>"Just a professional politician?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all. He is a great deal more than that, but what that great deal +is I cannot pretend to say."</p> + +<p>"Do you ever see him away from Patty?"</p> + +<p>"Now and then. He has been to the shop."</p> + +<p>"And you like him?"</p> + +<p>Again she hesitated. "Yes, I like him." Turning her head, she looked +straight at him with a glow in her eyes. "That is," she corrected +softly, "I should like him if it were not for John."</p> + +<p>"You compare him with John?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Naturally. Of course the Governor loses by that."</p> + +<p>"Who wouldn't?"</p> + +<p>Her face flushed at the thought, and as Stephen watched her, he asked in +a gentler voice, "Are you really to be married in June?"</p> + +<p>She smiled an assent, with her dreaming gaze on the young leaves and the +blue sky.</p> + +<p>"Are you happy?" he persisted.</p> + +<p>Her smile answered him again. "One dreads the lonely fireside as one +grows older." Then suddenly, as if the shadow of a cloud had drifted +over the bright sky, he saw the smile fade from her lips and the glow +from her upraised eyes. Somewhere within her brain a voice as hollow as +an echo was repeating, "<i>Isn't that life—sparrows for larks always?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Well, you know what I feel about you, and what I think about Benham," +replied Stephen. "You two together stand for all that I admire." As if +ashamed of the tone of sentiment, he continued carelessly after a +moment: "Vetch is very far from being a Benham, and yet there is +something about the man that holds one's attention. People are for ever +discussing him. A little while ago we were talking about his personal +peculiarities and his political offences. Now we are wondering how he +will handle this strike if it comes off; and what effect it will have on +his career? Benham, of course, thinks that he is an instrument in the +hands of a political group; that his office was the price they paid him +not to interfere in the strike. As for me I have no opinion. I am +waiting to see what will happen."</p> + +<p>They had reached the old print shop; and, as they paused beneath the +cedars in the front yard, Stephen glanced up at the window under the +quaint shingled roof. The upper storey, he knew, was rented to a couple +of tenants, and he was not surprised when he saw the curtains of dotted +swiss pushed aside and a woman's face look down on him over the red +geranium on the window-sill. The face was familiar; but, while he stared +back at it, searching his memory for a resemblance, the white curtains +dropped together again, veiling the features. Where had he seen that +woman before? What association of ideas did the sight of her recall? In +a flash, while he still groped through mental obscurity, light broke on +him.</p> + +<p>"Who is that woman, Corinna?" he asked. "What do you know of her?"</p> + +<p>"That woman?" Corinna repeated; then, as he lifted his eyes to the +window, she added, "Oh, that's Mrs. Green. A pathetic face, isn't it? I +know nothing about her except that she came in a few weeks ago, and the +caretaker tells me that she is leaving to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Do you know where she came from?"</p> + +<p>"My dear Stephen! Why, what in the world?" A laugh broke from Corinna's +lips. "Did you ever see her before?"</p> + +<p>"Twice, and both times in the Capitol Square. I thought her dreadful to +look at."</p> + +<p>"I've only glanced at her, but she appeared to me more pathetic than +dreadful. She has been ill, I imagine, and she looks terribly poor. I'm +afraid the rent is too high, but I can't do anything, for she rented her +room from the tenants. I suppose, poor thing, that she is merely a sad +adventuress, and it is not the sad adventuresses, but the glad ones, who +usually enlist a young man's sympathy. By the way, I am lunching with +the Governor to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"Is it a party?"</p> + +<p>"No, just the family. That shows how intimate I have become with the +Vetches. Don't tell Cousin Harriet, or she would think I was beginning +to corrupt your politics. But I may use my influence to find out what +the Governor intends to do about the strike, and a cousin with a +political secret is worth having."</p> + +<p>With a laugh Stephen went on his way, wondering vaguely what there was +about the woman at the window, Mrs. Green Corinna had called her, that +made it impossible for him to rid his mind of her? Glancing back from +the end of the block, he saw that Corinna had entered the shop and that +the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the +dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for +some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by +gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was almost deserted?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE</h3> + + +<p>Corinna had not expected to see the Governor until luncheon next day; +but, to her surprise, he came to the shop just as she was about to lock +the door and go home for the afternoon. At first she thought that the +visit was merely a casual one—it was not unusual for him to drop in as +he was going by—but he had no sooner glanced about the room to see if +they were alone than he broke out with his characteristic directness.</p> + +<p>"There is something I want to ask you. Will you answer me frankly?"</p> + +<p>"That depends. Tell me what it is and then I will answer your question."</p> + +<p>"It is about Patty. You've seen a great deal of her, haven't you?"</p> + +<p>"A great deal. I am very fond of her."</p> + +<p>"Then perhaps you can tell me if she is interested in this young +Culpeper?"</p> + +<p>For a minute Corinna struggled against a burst of hysterical laughter. +Oh, if Cousin Harriet had only met him here, she thought, what a comedy +they would have made!</p> + +<p>"Surely if any one has an opinion about that, it must be you," she +rejoined as gravely as she could.</p> + +<p>"I haven't; not the shadow of one." He was plainly puzzled. "I thought +you might help me. You have a way of seeing things."</p> + +<p>"Have I?" The spontaneous tribute touched her. "I wish I could see +this, but I can't. Frankly, since you ask me, I may say that I have been +troubled about it. There are things that Patty hides, even from me, and +I think I have her confidence."</p> + +<p>"I dare say you wonder why I have come to you to-day," he said. "I can +handle most situations; but I have never had to handle the love affairs +of a girl, and I'm perfectly capable of making a mess of them. Things +like that are outside of my job."</p> + +<p>He seemed to her a pathetic figure as he stood there, in his boyish +embarrassment and his redundant vitality, confessing an inability to +surmount the obstacle in his way. She had never known any one, man or +woman, who was so obviously lacking in subtlety of perception, in all +those delicate intuitions on which she relied more completely than on +judgment for an accurate impression of life. Was he, with his bigness, +his earnestness, his luminous candour, only an overgrown child? Even his +physical magnetism, and she felt this in the very moment when she was +trying to analyse it, even his physical magnetism might be nothing more +than the spell exercised by primitive impulse over the too complex +problems of civilization. She had heard that he was unscrupulous—vague +charges that he had never been able to repel—yet she was conscious now +of a secret wish to protect him from the consequences of his duplicity, +as she might have wished to protect an irresponsible child. Some +mysterious sense perception made her aware that beneath what appeared to +be discreditable public actions there was the simple bed-rock of +honesty. For the quality she felt in Vetch was a profound moral +integrity, an integrity which was bred by nature in the innermost fibre +of the man.</p> + +<p>"If you will tell me—" she began, and checked herself with a sensation +of helplessness. After all, what could he tell her that she did not +know?</p> + +<p>"I want to do what is right for her," he said abruptly. "I should hate +for her to be hurt."</p> + +<p>While he talked it seemed to Corinna that she was living in some absurd +comedy, which mimicked life but was only acting, not reality. In her +world of reserves and implications no man would have dared to make +himself ridiculous by a visit like this.</p> + +<p>"Do you believe that she cares for Stephen?" she asked bluntly.</p> + +<p>"It didn't start with me. Miss Spencer, that's the lady who lives with +us you know, is afraid that Patty sees too much of him. He is at the +house every day—"</p> + +<p>"Well?" Corinna waited patiently. She was not in the least afraid of +what Stephen might do. She knew that she could trust him to be a +gentleman; but being a gentleman, she reflected, did not necessarily +keep one from breaking a woman's heart. And Patty had a wild, free heart +that might be broken.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what to do about it," Vetch was saying while she pondered +the problem. "As I told you a minute ago this is all outside my job."</p> + +<p>"Have you spoken to Patty?"</p> + +<p>"I started to, but she made fun of the idea—you know the way she has. +She asked me if I had ever heard of any one falling in love with a +plaster saint?"</p> + +<p>Corinna smiled. "So she called Stephen a plaster saint?"</p> + +<p>"She was chaffing, of course."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't see that there is anything you can do unless you send +Patty away."</p> + +<p>"She wouldn't go," he responded simply; then after a moment of +embarrassed hesitation, he blurted out nervously, "Is this young +Culpeper what you would call a marrying man?"</p> + +<p>This time it was impossible for Corinna to suppress her amusement, and +it broke out in a laugh that was like the chiming of silver bells. Oh, +if only Cousin Harriet could hear him! Then observing the gravity of +Vetch's expression, she checked her untimely mirth with an effort.</p> + +<p>"That depends, I suppose. At his age how can any one tell?" In her heart +she did not believe that Stephen would marry Patty; she was not sure +even that she, Corinna, should wish him to do so. There was too much at +stake, and though her philosophy was fearless, her conduct had never +been anything but conventional. While in theory she despised discretion, +she realized that the virtue she despised, not the theory she admired, +had dominated her life. The great trouble with acts of reckless nobility +was that the recklessness was only for a moment, but the nobility was +obliged to last a lifetime. It was not difficult, she knew, for persons +like Stephen or herself to be heroic in appropriate circumstances; the +difficulty began when one was compelled to sustain the heroic rôle long +after the appropriate circumstances had passed away. Yet, in spite of +the cynical lucidity of her judgment, the romantic in her heart longed +to have Stephen, by one generous act of devotion, prove her theory +fallacious. Her strongest impulse, the impulse to create happiness, to +repair, as her father had once described it, crippled destinies; this +impulse urged her now to help Patty's pathetic romance in every way in +her power. It would be very fine if Stephen cared enough to forget what +he was losing. It would be magnificent, she felt, but it would not be +masculine. For she had had great experience; and though men might vary +in a multitude of particulars, she had found that the solidarity of sex +was preserved in some general code of emotional expediency.</p> + +<p>"Do you think," Vetch was making another attempt to explain his meaning, +"that he is seriously interested?"</p> + +<p>"I am perfectly sure," she replied, "that he is more than half in love +with her."</p> + +<p>"Is he the kind, then, to let himself go the rest of the way?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "That I cannot answer. From my knowledge of the +restraining force of the Culpeper fibre, I should say that he is not."</p> + +<p>"You mean he wouldn't think it a suitable marriage?"</p> + +<p>She blushed for his crudeness. "I mean his mother wouldn't think it a +suitable marriage. Patty is very attractive, but they know nothing about +her except that. You see they have had the disadvantage of knowing +everything about every one who has married, or who has even wished to +marry, into the family for the last two hundred years. It is a +disadvantage, as I've said, for the strain is so highly bred that each +generation becomes mentally more and more like the fish in caves that +have lost their eyes because they stopped trying to see. Stephen is +different in a way—and yet not different enough. It would be his +salvation if he could care enough for Patty to take a risk for her sake; +but his mother, of course, would fight against it with every particle +of her influence, and her influence is enormous." Then she met his eyes +boldly: "Wouldn't you fight against it in her place?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"I? Oh, I shouldn't care a hang what anybody thought if I liked the +girl," he retorted. His smile shone out warmly. "Would you?" he demanded +in his turn.</p> + +<p>For an instant his blunt question disconcerted her, and while she +hesitated she felt his blue eyes on her downcast face. "You can't judge +by me," she answered presently. "Only those who have been in chains know +the meaning of freedom."</p> + +<p>"Are you free now?"</p> + +<p>"Not entirely. Who is?"</p> + +<p>He was looking at her more closely; and when at last she raised her +eyelashes and met his gaze, the lovely glow which gave her beauty its +look of October splendour suffused her features. Anger seized her in the +very moment that the colour rushed to her cheeks. Why should she blush +like a schoolgirl because of the way this man—or any man—looked at +her?</p> + +<p>"Are you going to marry Benham?" he asked; and there was a note in his +voice which disturbed her in spite of herself. Though she denied +passionately his right to question her, she answered simply enough: +"Yes, I am going to marry him."</p> + +<p>"Do you care for him?"</p> + +<p>With an effort she turned her eyes away and looked beyond the green +stems and the white flowers of the narcissi in the window to the street +outside, where the shadows of the young leaves lay like gauze over the +brick pavement.</p> + +<p>"If I didn't care do you think that I would marry him?" she asked in a +low voice. Through the open window a breeze came, honey-sweet with the +scent of narcissi, and she realized, with a start, that this early +spring was poignantly lovely and sad.</p> + +<p>"Well, I wish I'd known you twenty years ago," said Vetch presently. "If +I'd had a woman like you to help me, I might have been almost anything. +Nobody knows better than I how much help a woman can be when she's the +right sort."</p> + +<p>She tore her gaze from the sunshine beyond, from the beauty and the +wistfulness of April. What was there in this man that convinced her in +spite of everything that Benham had told her?</p> + +<p>"Your wife has been dead a long time?" She spoke gently, for his tone +more than his words had touched her sympathy.</p> + +<p>As soon as she asked the question, she realized that it was a mistake. +An expressionless mask closed over his face, and she received the +impression that he had withdrawn to a distance.</p> + +<p>"A long time," was all he answered. His voice had become so impersonal +that it was toneless.</p> + +<p>"Well, it hasn't kept you back—not having help," she hastened to reply +as naturally as she could. "You are almost everything you wished to be +in the world, aren't you?" It was a foolish speech, she felt, but the +change in his manner had surprised and bewildered her.</p> + +<p>He laughed shortly without merriment. "I?" he replied, and she noticed +for the first time that he looked tired and worried beneath his +exuberant optimism. "I am the loneliest man on earth. The loneliest man +on earth is the one who stands between two extremes." As she made no +reply, he continued after a moment, "You think, of course, that I stand +with one extreme, not in the centre, but you are mistaken. I am in the +middle. When I try to bring the two millstones together they will grind +me to powder."</p> + +<p>She had never heard him speak despondently before; and while she +listened to the sound of his expressive voice, so full, for the hour at +least, of discouragement, she felt drawn to him in a new and personal +way. It was as if, by showing her a side of his nature the public had +never seen, he had taken her into his confidence.</p> + +<p>"But surely your influence is as great as ever," she said presently. A +trite remark, but the only one that occurred to her.</p> + +<p>"I brought the crowd with me as far as I thought safe," he answered, +"and now it is beginning to turn against me because I won't lead it over +the precipice into the sea. That's the way it always is, I reckon. +That's the way it's been, anyhow, ever since Moses tried to lead the +Children of Israel out of bondage. Take these strikers, for instance. I +believe in the right to strike. I believe that they ought to have every +possible protection. I believe that their families ought to be provided +for in order to take the weapon of starvation out of the hands of the +capitalists. I'd give them as fair a field as it is in my power to +provide, and anybody would think that they would be satisfied with +simple fairness. But, no, what they are trying to do is not to strike +<i>for</i> themselves, but to strike <i>at</i> somebody else. They are not +satisfied with protection from starvation unless that protection +involves the right to starve somebody else. They want to tie up the +markets and stop the dairy trains, and they won't wink an eyelash if all +the babies that don't belong to them are without milk. That's war, they +tell me; and I answer that I'd treat war just as I'd treat a strike, if +I had the power. As soon as an army began to prey on the helpless, I'd +raise a bigger army if I could and throw the first one out into the +jungle where it belonged. But people don't see things like that now, +though they may in the next five hundred years. The trouble is that all +human nature, including capitalist and labourer, is tarred with the same +brush and tarred with selfishness. What the oppressed want is not +freedom from oppression, but the opportunity to become oppressors."</p> + +<p>Was this only a mood, she wondered, or was it the expression of a +profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened +overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep +intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or +ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own +mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to +herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his +point of view not by looking outside of herself, but by looking within.</p> + +<p>"I know," she responded in her rich voice. "I think I know."</p> + +<p>He gazed at her with a smile which had grown as tired as the rest of +him. "Then if you know why don't you help—you others?" he asked. "Don't +you see that by standing aside, by keeping apart, you are doing all the +harm that you can? If democracy doesn't seem good enough for you, then +get down into the midst of it and make it better. That's the only +way—the only way on earth to make a better democracy—by putting the +best we've got into it. You can't make bread rise from the outside. +You've got to mix the yeast with the dough, if you want it to leaven the +whole lump."</p> + +<p>She had been standing with her hands clasped before her and her eyes on +the sky beyond the window; and when he paused, with a husky tone in his +voice, she spoke almost as if she were in a dream. "I believe in you," +she said, and then again, as he did not speak she repeated very slowly: +"I believe in you."</p> + +<p>"That helps," he answered gravely. "I don't suppose you will ever +realize how much that will help me." As he finished he turned toward the +door; and a minute afterward, without another word or look, he went out +into the street, and she saw his figure cross the flowers and the +sunlight in the window.</p> + +<p>When he had gone Corinna opened the door and stood watching the long +black shadows of the cedars creep over the walk of broken flagstones. +Always when she was alone her thoughts would return like homing birds to +John Benham; but this afternoon, though she spoke his name in her +reflections, she was conscious of an inner detachment from the vital +interests of her personal life. For a little while, so strong was the +mental impression Vetch had made on her, she saw his image even while +she thought the name of John Benham. Then, with an effort of will, she +put the Governor and all that he had said out of her mind. After all, +how little would she ever see of him now—how seldom would their paths +cross in the future! A strange and interesting man, a man who had, in +one instant of mental sympathy, stirred something within her heart that +no one, not even Kent Page, had ever awakened before. For that one +instant a ripple, nothing more, had moved on the face of the deep—of +the deep which was so ancient that it was older even than the blood of +her race. Then the ripple passed and the sunny stillness settled again +on her spirit.</p> + +<p>She thought of John Benham easily now; and while she stood there a quiet +happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years, +life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden +of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and +disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for +perfection, for the starry flower of the heights. Something that she +could worship! So often in the past it had seemed to her that she missed +it by the turn of a corner, the stop on the roadside, by the choice of a +path that led down into the valley instead of up into the hills. So +often her god had revealed the feet of clay just as she was preparing to +scatter marigolds on his altar. It appeared to her as she looked back on +the past, that life had been merely a succession of great opportunities +that one did not grasp, of high adventures that one never followed.</p> + +<p>The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a +big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to +stop at her door. An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she +saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling. Even a glimpse of that +flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid +current of Corinna's thoughts. Could she never forget? Must she, who +had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment +against the woman?</p> + +<p>With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed +the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old +print shop. In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small +straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, +more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in +her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a +dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her +appearance. If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, +Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on +perfection.</p> + +<p>"I've just got back," began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her +metallic voice could produce. "It's been an age since I've seen you—not +since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys', and I'm so much +interested in the news I have heard."</p> + +<p>For a minute Corinna stared at her. "Yes, my shop has been very +successful," she answered, after a pause in which she tried and failed +to think of a reply that would sound more disdainful. "If you are +looking for prints, I can show you some very good ones."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean that." Mrs. Stribling appeared genuinely amused by the +mistake. "I am not looking for prints—to tell the truth I shouldn't +know one if I saw it. I mean your engagement, of course. There isn't +anybody in the world who admires John Benham more than I do. I always +say of him that he is the only man I know who will sacrifice himself +for a principle. All his splendid record in the army—when he was over +age too—and then the way he behaved about that corporation! I never +understood just why he did it—I'm sure I could never bring myself to +refuse so much money,—but that doesn't keep me from admiring him." For +a minute she looked at Corinna with a smile which seemed as permanent as +the rest of her surface, while she discreetly sharpened her wits for the +stab which was about to be dealt. "I can't tell you how surprised I was +to hear you had announced your engagement. You know we were so sure that +he was going to marry Alice Rokeby after she got her divorce. Of course +nobody knew. It was just gossip, and you and I both know how absurd +gossip can be."</p> + +<p>So this was why she had stopped! Corinna flinched from the thrust even +while she told herself that there was no shadow of truth in the old +rumour, that malice alone had prompted Rose Stribling to repeat it. In a +woman like that, an incorrigible coquette, every relation with her own +sex would be edged with malice.</p> + +<p>"Well, I just stopped to wish you happiness. I must go now, but I'll +come again, when I have time, and look at your shop. Such a funny +idea—a shop, with all the money you've got! But no idea seems too funny +for people to-day. And that reminds me of the Governor. Have you seen +the Governor again since the evening we dined with him?"</p> + +<p>Her turn had come, and Corinna, for she was very human, planted the +sting without mercy. "Oh, very often. He was here a few minutes ago."</p> + +<p>"Then it's true? Somebody told me he admired you so much."</p> + +<p>Corinna smiled blandly. "I hope he does. We are great friends." Would +there always be women like that in the world, she asked herself—women +whose horizon ended with the beginning of sex? It was a feminine type +that seemed to her as archaic as some reptilian bird of the primeval +forests. How long would it be, she wondered, before it would survive +only in the dry bones of genealogical scandals? As she looked after Rose +Stribling's bright green car, darting like some gigantic dragon-fly up +the street, her lips quivered with scorn and disgust. "I wonder if she +thought I believed her?" she said to herself in a whisper. "I wonder if +she thought she could hurt me?"</p> + +<p>The sunshine was in her eyes, and she was about to turn and go back into +the shop, when she saw that Alice Rokeby was coming toward her with a +slow dragging step, as if she were mentally and bodily tired. The +lace-work of shadows fell over her like a veil; and high above her head +the early buds of a tulip tree made a mosaic of green and yellow lotus +cups against the Egyptian blue of the sky. Framed in the vivid colours +of spring she had the look of a flower that has been blighted by frost.</p> + +<p>"How ill, how very ill she looks," thought Corinna, with an impulse of +sympathy. "I wish she would come in and rest. I wish she would let me +help her."</p> + +<p>For an instant the violet eyes, with their vague wistfulness, their mute +appeal, looked straight into Corinna's; and in that instant an +inscrutable expression quivered in Alice Rokeby's face, as if a wan +light had flickered up and died down in an empty room.</p> + +<p>"The heat is too much for you," said Corinna gently. "It is like +summer."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have never known so early a spring. It has come and gone in a +week."</p> + +<p>"You look tired, and your furs are too heavy. Won't you come in and rest +until my car comes?"</p> + +<p>The other woman shook her head. She was still pretty, for hers was a +face to which pallor lent the delicate sweetness of a white rose-leaf.</p> + +<p>"It is only a block or two farther. I am going home," she answered in a +low voice.</p> + +<p>"Won't you come to my shop sometimes? I have missed seeing you this +winter." The words were spoken sincerely, for Corinna's heart was open +to all the world but Rose Stribling.</p> + +<p>"Thank you. How lovely your cedars are!" The wan light shone again in +Alice Rokeby's face. Then she threw her fur stole from her shoulders as +if she were fainting under the weight of it, and passed on, with her +dragging step, through the lengthening shadows on the pavement.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>CORINNA OBSERVES</h3> + + +<p>Yes, Patty was in love, this Corinna decided after a single glance. The +girl appeared to have changed miraculously over-night, for her hard +brightness had melted in the warmth of some glowing flame that burned at +her heart. Never had she looked so Ariel-like and elusive; never had she +brought so hauntingly to Corinna's memory the loveliness of youth and +spring that is vivid and fleeting.</p> + +<p>"Can it be that Stephen is really in earnest?" asked the older woman of +her disturbed heart; and the next instant, shaking her wise head, she +added, "Poor little redbird! What does she know of life outside of a +cedar tree?"</p> + +<p>At luncheon the Governor, in an effort to hide some perfectly evident +anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected. It was his way, +she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity. +There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of +coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical +style. With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of +dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent +with her gaze on her plate. Only Corinna laughed, as she laughed at any +honest jest however out of place. After all, if you began to judge men +by the quality of their jokes where would it lead you?</p> + +<p>Patty, with her eyes drooping beneath her black lashes, sat lost in a +day dream. She dressed now, by Corinna's advice, in straight slim gowns +of serge or velvet; and to-day she was wearing a scant little frock of +blue serge, with a wide white collar that gave her the look of a +delicate boy. There were wonderful possibilities in the girl, Corinna +mused, looking her over. She had not a single beautiful feature, except +her remarkable eyes; and yet the softness and vagueness of her face lent +a poetic and impressionistic charm to her appearance. "In that dress she +looks as if she had stepped out of the Middle Ages, and might step back +again at any minute," thought Corinna. "I wonder if I can be mistaken in +Stephen, and if he is seriously in love with her?"</p> + +<p>"Patty is grooming me for the White House," remarked Vetch, with his +hearty laugh which sounded a trifle strained and affected to-day. "She +thinks it probable that I shall be President."</p> + +<p>"Why not, Father?" asked Patty loyally. "They couldn't find a better +one."</p> + +<p>"Do you hear that?" demanded the Governor in delight. "That is what one +coming voter thinks of me."</p> + +<p>"And a good many others, I haven't a doubt," replied Corinna, with her +cheerful friendliness. Through the windows of the dining-room she could +see the long grape arbour and the gray boughs of the crepe myrtle trees +in the garden.</p> + +<p>She had dressed herself carefully for the occasion in a black gown that +followed closely the lines of her figure. Her beauty, which a painter in +Europe had once compared to a lamp, was still so radiant that it seemed +to drain the colour and light from her surroundings. Even Patty, with +her fresh youth, lost a little of her vividness beside the glowing +maturity of the other woman. When Corinna had accepted the girl's +invitation, she had resolved that she would do her best; that, however +tiresome it was, she would "carry it off." Always a match for any +situation that did not include Kent Page or a dangerous emotion, she +felt entirely competent to "manage," as Mrs. Culpeper would have said, +the most radical of Governors. She liked the man in spite of his errors; +she was sincerely attached to Patty; and their artless respect for her +opinion gave her a sense of power which she told herself merrily was +"almost political." Though the Governor might be without the rectitude +which both Benham and Stephen regarded as fundamental, she perceived +clearly that, even if Vetch were lacking in the particular principle +involved, he was not devoid of some moral excellence which filled not +ignobly the place where principle should have been. She was prepared to +concede that the Governor was a man of many defects and a single virtue; +but this single virtue impressed her as more tremendous than any +combination of qualities that she had ever encountered. She admitted +that, from Benham's point of view, Vetch was probably not to be trusted; +yet she felt instinctively that she could trust him. The two men, she +told herself tolerantly, were as far apart as the poles. That the +cardinal virtue Vetch possessed in abundance was the one in which Benham +was inadequate had not occurred to her; for, at the moment, she could +not bring herself to acknowledge that any admirable trait was absent +from the man whom she intended to marry.</p> + +<p>"You would make a splendid president, Father," Patty was insisting.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm inclined to think that you're right," Vetch responded +whimsically, "but you'll have to convince a few others of that, I +reckon, before we begin to plan for the White House. First of all, +you'll have to convince the folks that started the boom to make me +Governor. It looks as if some of them were already thinking that they'd +made a mistake."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that horrid Julius," said Patty lightly. "He doesn't matter a bit, +does he, Mrs. Page?"</p> + +<p>"Not to me," laughed Corinna, "but I'm not a politician. Politicians +have queer preferences."</p> + +<p>"Or queer needs," suggested Vetch. "You don't like Gershom, I infer; but +when you are ready to sweep, remember you mustn't be over-squeamish +about your broom."</p> + +<p>"I have heard," rejoined Corinna, still laughing, "that a new broom +sweeps clean. Why not try a new one next time?"</p> + +<p>"You mean when I run for the Presidency?" Was he joking, or was there an +undercurrent of seriousness in his words?</p> + +<p>They had risen from the table; and as they passed through the long +reception-room, which stretched between the dining-room and the wide +front hall, Abijah brought the information that Mr. Gershom awaited the +Governor in the library.</p> + +<p>"I shall probably be kept there most of the afternoon," said Vetch, and +she could see that his regret was not assumed. "The next time you come I +hope I shall have better luck." Then he hurried off to his appointment, +while Corinna stopped at the foot of the staircase and followed with +her gaze the slender balustrade of mahogany. "If they had only left +everything as it was!" she thought; and then she said aloud: "It is so +lovely out of doors. Get your hat and we'll walk awhile in the Square. I +can talk to you better there, and I want to talk to you seriously."</p> + +<p>After the girl had disappeared up the quaint flight of stairs, Corinna +stood gazing meditatively at the bar of sunlight over the front door. +She was thinking of what she should say to Patty—how could she possibly +warn the girl without wounding her?—and it was very gradually that she +became aware of raised voices in the library and the hard, short sound +of words that beat like hail into her consciousness.</p> + +<p>"I tell you we can put it over all right if you will only have the sense +to keep your hands off!" stormed Gershom in a tone that he was trying in +vain to subdue.</p> + +<p>"Are you sure they will strike?"</p> + +<p>"Dead sure. You may bet your bottom dollar on that. We can tie up every +road in this state within twenty-four hours after the order goes out—"</p> + +<p>Arousing herself with a start, Corinna opened the door and went out. She +could not have helped hearing what Gershom had said; and after all this +was nothing more than a repetition of the plain facts that Vetch had +already confided to her. But why, she wondered, did they persist in +holding their conferences at the top of their voices?</p> + +<p>In a few minutes Patty came down, wearing a sailor hat which made her +look more than ever like an attractive boy; and they descended the steps +together, and strolled past the fountain of the white heron to the gate +in front of the house. Turning to the left as they entered the Square, +they walked slowly down the wide brick pavement, which trailed by the +library and a larger fountain, to the dingy business street beyond the +iron fence at the foot of the hill. As they went by, a woman, who was +feeding the squirrels from one of the benches, lifted her face to stare +at them curiously, and something vaguely familiar in her features caused +Corinna to pause and glance back. Where had she seen her before? And how +ill, how hopelessly stricken, the haggard face looked under the thick +mass of badly dyed hair. The next minute she remembered that the woman +had lodged for a week or two above the old print shop, and that only +yesterday Stephen had asked about her. Poor creature, what a life she +must have had to have wrecked her so utterly.</p> + +<p>In the golden-green light of afternoon the Square was looking peaceful +and lovely. For the hour a magic veil had dropped over the nakedness of +its outlines, and the bare buildings and bare walks were touched with +the glamour of spring. Soft, pale shadows of waving branches moved back +and forth, like the ghosts of dreams, over the grassy hill and the brick +pavements.</p> + +<p>Turning to the girl beside her, Corinna looked thoughtfully at the fresh +young face above the white collar which framed the lovely line of the +throat. Under the brim of the sailor hat Patty's eyes were dewy with +happiness.</p> + +<p>"Are you happy, Patty?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," rejoined Patty fervently, "so much happier than I ever was in +my life!"</p> + +<p>"I am glad," said the older woman tenderly. Then taking the girl's hand +in hers she added earnestly: "But, my dear, we must be careful, you and +I, not to let our happiness depend too much upon one thing. We must +scatter it as much as we can."</p> + +<p>"I can't do that," answered Patty simply. "I am not made that way. I +pour everything into one thought."</p> + +<p>"I know," responded Corinna sadly, and she did. She had lived through it +all long ago in what seemed to her now another life.</p> + +<p>For a moment she was silent; and when she spoke again there was an +anxious sound in her voice and an anxious look in the eyes she lifted to +the arching boughs of the sycamore. "Do you like Stephen very much, +Patty?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn +broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as +if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low +voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!"</p> + +<p>"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him +often?" Now, since she felt she had won the girl's confidence, her +purpose appeared more difficult than ever.</p> + +<p>"Very often," replied Patty in a thrilling tone. "He comes every day." +The luminous candour, the fearless sincerity of Gideon Vetch, seemed to +envelop her as she answered.</p> + +<p>"Do you think he cares for you, dear?" asked Corinna softly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes." The response was unhesitating. "I know it."</p> + +<p>How naive, how touchingly ingenuous, the girl was in spite of her +experience of life and of the uglier side of politicians. No girl in +Corinna's circle would ever have appeared so confiding, so innocent, so +completely beneath the spell of a sentimental illusion. The girls that +Corinna knew might be unguarded about everything else on earth; but even +the most artless one of them, even Margaret Blair, would have learned by +instinct to guard the secret of her emotions.</p> + +<p>"Has he asked you to marry him?" Corinna's voice wavered over the +question, which seemed to her cruel; but Patty met it with transparent +simplicity.</p> + +<p>"Not yet," she answered, lifting her shining eyes to the sky, "but he +will. How can he help it when he cares for me so much?"</p> + +<p>"If he hasn't yet, my dear"—while the words dropped from her reluctant +lips, Corinna felt as if she were inflicting a physical stab,—"how can +you tell that he cares so much for you?"</p> + +<p>"I wasn't sure until yesterday," replied Patty, with beaming lucidity, +"but I knew yesterday because—because he showed it so plainly."</p> + +<p>With a lovely protective movement the older woman put her arm about the +girl's shoulders. "You may be right—but, oh, don't trust too much, +Patty," she pleaded, with the wisdom that the years bring and take away. +"Life is so uncertain—fine impulses—even love—yes, love most of +all—is so uncertain—"</p> + +<p>"Of course you feel that way," responded the girl, sympathetic but +incredulous. "How could you help it?"</p> + +<p>After this what could Corinna answer? She knew Stephen, she told +herself, and she knew that she could trust him. She believed that lie +was capable of generous impulses; but she doubted if an impulse, however +generous, could sweep away the inherited sentiments which encrusted his +outlook on life. In spite of his youth, he was in reality so old. He was +as old as that indestructible entity, the spirit of race—as that +impalpable strain which had existed in every Culpeper, and in all the +Culpepers together, from the beginning. It was not, she realized +plainly, such an anachronism as a survival of the aristocratic +tradition. Deeper than this, it had its roots not in belief but in +instinct—in the bone and fibre of Stephen's character. It was a part of +that motive power which impelled him in the direction of the beaten +road, of the established custom, of things as they have always been in +the past.</p> + +<p>Her kind heart was troubled; yet before the happiness in the girl's face +what could she say except that she hoped Stephen was as fine as Patty +believed him to be? "You may be right. I hope so with all my heart; but, +oh, my dear, try not to care too much. It never does any good to care +too much." She stooped and kissed the girl's cheek. "There, my car is at +the door, and I must hurry back to the shop. I'll do anything in the +world that I can for you, Patty, anything in the world."</p> + +<p>As the car rolled through the gate and down the wide drive to the +Washington monument, Patty stood gazing after it, with a burning +moisture in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Terror had seized her in +an instant, terror of unhappiness, of missing the one thing in life on +which she had passionately set her heart. What had Mrs. Page meant by +her questions? Had she intended them as a warning? And why should she +have thought it necessary to warn her against caring too much for +Stephen?</p> + +<p>The girl had started to enter the house when, remembering suddenly that +Gershom was still there, she turned hurriedly away from the door, and +walked back down the brick pavement to the fountain beyond the library. +The squirrels still scampered over the walk; the thirsty sparrows were +still drinking; the few loungers on the benches still stared at her with +dull and incurious eyes. Not a cloud stained the intense blue of the +sky; and over the bright grass on the hillside the sunshine quivered +like an immense swarm of bees.</p> + +<p>As she approached the fountain where she had first met Stephen, it +seemed to her that a romantic light, a visionary enchantment, fell over +this one spot of ground, and divided it by some magic circle from every +other place in the world. The crude iron railing, the bare gravel, the +ugly spouting fountain which was stripped of every leaf or blade of +grass—these things appeared to her through an indescribable glamour, as +if they stood there as the visible gateway to some invisible garden of +dreams. Whenever she looked at this ordinary spot of earth a breathless +realization of the wonder and delight of life rushed over her. She knew +nothing of the mental processes by which these external objects were +associated with the deepest emotions of the heart. Only when she visited +this place that wave of happiness swept over her; and she lived again as +vividly as she lived in the moments when Stephen was with her and she +was looking into his eyes.</p> + +<p>His voice called her while she stood there; and turning quickly, she saw +that he was coming toward her down the walk. Immediately the loungers on +the benches vanished by magic; the murmur of the fountain became like +the music of harps; and the sunshine on the grassy hill was alive with +the quiver of wings. As she went toward him she was aware of the blue +sky, of the golden green of the trees, of the happy sounds of the birds, +and over all, as if it were outside of herself, of the rapturous beating +of her own heart.</p> + +<p>"I was looking for you," he said when he reached her.</p> + +<p>"And you found me at last." Her eyes were like wells of joy.</p> + +<p>"I'd never have given up until I found you." The words were trivial; but +it was the things he said without words that really mattered. Already +they had established a communion that was independent of speech. He had +never told her that he loved her; yet she saw it in every glance of his +eyes and heard it in every tone of his voice.</p> + +<p>While they walked slowly up the hill she wondered trustingly why, when +he had told her so plainly in every other way that he loved her, he +should never have put it into words. There could not be any doubt of it; +perhaps this was the reason he hesitated. The present was so perfect +that it was like the most exquisite hour of a spring afternoon. One +longed to hold it back even though one knew that it led to something +more lovely still.</p> + +<p>"Are you happy?" she asked, and wondered if he would kiss her again when +they parted as he had kissed her yesterday in the dusk of the hall?</p> + +<p>"Yes, and no." He drew nearer to her. "I am happy now like this—here +with you—but at other times I am troubled. I can't see my way clearly."</p> + +<p>"But why should you? Why should any one be troubled when it is so easy +to be happy?"</p> + +<p>"Easy?" He laughed. "If life were only as simple as that!"</p> + +<p>"It is if one knows what one wants."</p> + +<p>"Well, one may know what one wants, and yet not know if one is wise in +wanting it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, wise!" She shook her head with an impatient movement. "Isn't the +only wisdom to be happy and kind?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her thoughtfully, while a frown drew his straight dark +eyebrows together. "If you wanted a thing with all your heart, and yet +were not sure—"</p> + +<p>Her impatience answered him. "I couldn't want it with all my heart +without being sure."</p> + +<p>"Sure I mean that it is best—best for every one—not just for +oneself—"</p> + +<p>Her laugh was like a song. "Do you suppose there has ever been anything +since the world began that was best for every one? If I knew what I +wanted I shouldn't ask anything more. I would spread my wings and fly to +it."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "You are so much like your father at times—even in the +things that you say. Yes, I suppose you would fly to it because you have +been trained that way—to be direct and daring. But I am made +differently. Life has taught me; it is in my blood and bone to stop and +question, to look so long that at last I lose the will to choose, or to +leap. There are some of us like that, you know."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps," she smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to +be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable +fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always +through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight +onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for +what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before it eluded her. +Yet she knew that fighting would not do any good. She could do nothing +while her happiness hung on a thread. She could do nothing but fold her +hands and wait, though her heart burned hot with the injustice of it, +and she longed to speak aloud all the words that were rising to her +tightly closed lips.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't you see—can't you see?" she asked brokenly, baring her heart +with a desperate impulse. Her eyes were drawing him toward the future; +and, in the deep stillness of her look, it seemed to him that she was +putting forth all her power to charm; that her youth and bloom shed a +sweetness that was like the fragrance of a flower.</p> + +<p>For an instant every thought, every feeling, surrendered to her appeal. +Then his face changed as abruptly as if he had put a mask over his +features; and glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that his mother +and Margaret Blair were walking along the concrete pavement under the +few old linden trees. As they approached it seemed to the girl that +Stephen turned slowly from a man of flesh and blood into a figure of +granite. In one instant he was petrified by the force of tradition.</p> + +<p>"It is my mother," he said in a low voice. "She has not been in the +Square for years. I was telling her yesterday how pretty it looks in the +spring." He went forward with an embarrassed air, and Mrs. Culpeper laid +a firm, possessive touch on his arm.</p> + +<p>"I thought a little stroll might do me good," she explained. "The car is +waiting across the street at Doctor Bradley's." Then she held out her +free hand to Patty, with a smile which, the girl said afterward to +Corinna, looked as if it had frozen on her lips. "Stephen speaks of you +very often, Miss Vetch," she said. "He talks a great deal about his +friends, doesn't he, Margaret?"</p> + +<p>Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood +looking guardedly into each other's eyes. "She is attractive," thought +Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, "but I can't +understand just what he sees in her." And at the same moment Patty was +saying to herself, "Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing +that he enjoys."</p> + +<p>Aloud the elder girl said casually, "It is so quaint living down here in +the Square, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"But it is too far away from everything," replied Stephen hurriedly. "It +must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here, +Mother."</p> + +<p>"Very," answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was +still on her lips.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a +spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her +heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale +face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed +in the turn of her head, in her fragile hands, in the lovely liquid +sound of her voice.</p> + +<p>"Cousin Corinna has promised to bring me to see you," said Margaret in +her kind and gentle way.</p> + +<p>"I hope you'll come," replied Patty politely; but in her thoughts she +added, "I hope you won't. I hope I'll never see you again." She couldn't +be natural; she couldn't be anything but stiff and awkward; and she was +aware all the time that Stephen was as embarrassed as she was. All the +things that she must fight against, that she must triumph over, were +embodied in that small black figure with the ivory face, so inelastic, +so unbending, so secure in its inherited authority. There was war +between her and Stephen's mother; and she stood alone, with only her +undaunted spirit to support her, while on the opposite side were +entrenched all the immovable dead ranks of the generations. "I shall +fight it out," thought the girl bitterly. "I don't care what she thinks +of me. I shall fight it out to the end."</p> + +<p>With her hand on Stephen's arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away. "I +feel a little tired," she explained politely to Patty, "so I am sure +that you won't mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son +help me back to the car."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mind," replied Patty, with gay indifference.</p> + +<p>"I'll see you very soon," said Stephen; and it seemed to the girl as she +watched him walking toward the Washington monument that he looked as old +and as tired as his mother.</p> + +<p>Of course he was obliged to go. There wasn't anything else that he could +do, and yet—and yet—as Patty gazed after the three slowly moving +figures, she felt that a cold hand had reached out of the sunshine and +clutched her heart.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE FEAR OF LIFE</h3> + + +<p>Stephen had intended to go back as soon as he had put his mother into +the car; but she clung so tightly to his arm, and there was something so +appealing in her fragile dependence, that, almost without realizing it, +he found that he was sitting in front of her, and that she was taking +him down to his office.</p> + +<p>"We will leave you and go back, Stephen," she said, while a look of +faintness spread over her features. "I feel as if one of my heart +attacks might be coming on."</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't you rather I went home with you?" he inquired solicitously.</p> + +<p>His mother shook her head and reached feebly for Margaret's hand. +"Margaret will take care of me," she replied in the weak voice before +which her husband and her children had learned to tremble.</p> + +<p>As he sat there uneasily in the stuffy car, which smelt of camphor and +reminded him of a hearse, he was threatened by that familiar sensation +of oppression, of closing walls. Would he ever again be free from this +impalpable terror, from this dread of being shut within a space so small +that he must smother if he did not escape? And not only places but +persons, as he had found long ago, persons with closed souls, with +narrow minds, produced in him this feeling of physical suffocation. +Margaret, with her serenity, her changeless sweetness, affected him +precisely as he was affected by the stained glass windows of a church. +He felt that he should stifle unless he could break away into a place +where there were winds and blown shadows and pure sunshine. He admired +her; he might have loved her; but she smothered him like that rich and +heavy wave of the past from which he was still struggling to free +himself. For he knew now that it was not the past he wanted; it was the +future. Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and +yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was +not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the +master, of tradition. He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel +and to live. Only through emotion, only through some courageous +adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach +liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he +could not lose his life in order that he might find it. Corinna was +right, he felt, when she called him a prig. She was right though he +hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let +himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He +longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and +yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional, +and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his +buttonhole. The thought of Patty rushed over him like the wind at dawn +or the light of the sunrise. There was deliverance; there was freedom of +spirit! She was the impulse he dared not follow, the risk he dared not +take, the red flower he dared not wear.</p> + +<p>"What lovely eyes Miss Vetch has," Margaret was saying. "Don't you think +so, Cousin Harriet?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper sniffed at her bottle of smelling-salts. "She seemed to +me very ordinary," she answered stiffly. "How could Gideon Vetch's +daughter be anything else?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it's a pity about her father," admitted Margaret placidly. "If +what Mr. Benham thinks is true, I suppose the Governor has agreed not to +interfere in this dreadful strike."</p> + +<p>Again Mrs. Culpeper sniffed. "Every one knows he is merely a tool in the +hands of those people," she said.</p> + +<p>In the weeks that followed Stephen heard his mother's opinion repeated +wherever he went. Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere, +in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated. +It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the +Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by +the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who +thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders. +There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints +that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the +faction whose tool he had become. "Don't tell me, sir, that they didn't +put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old +Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years. +Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed +facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing +for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still +possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching +morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair of virtue."</p> + +<p>For the people who condemned Vetch were quite as emphatic in praise of +John Benham; and in these weeks of unrest and anxiety, Corinna's face +was glowing with pride and pleasure. That Benham, in his unselfish +service, was leading the way, no one doubted. Tireless, unrewarded,—for +it was admitted by those who esteemed him most that he was never really +in touch with the crowd, that his zeal awakened no human response,—he +had sacrificed his private practice in order to devote himself day and +night to averting the strike. Stephen, inspired to hero worship, asked +himself again what the difference was, beyond simple personal rectitude, +between Vetch and Benham? Vetch, lacking, so far as the young man knew, +every public virtue except the human touch which enkindles either the +souls or the imaginations of men, could overturn Benham's argument with +a dramatic gesture, an emotional phrase. Why was it that Benham, +possessing both the character of the patriot and the graces of the +orator, should fall short in the one indefinable attribute which makes a +man the natural leader of men?</p> + +<p>"People admire him, but they won't follow him," Stephen thought in +perplexity. "Vetch has something that Benham lacks; and it is this +something that makes people believe in him in spite of themselves."</p> + +<p>This idea was in his mind when he met Benham one day on the steps of his +club, and stopped to congratulate him on the great speech he had made +the evening before.</p> + +<p>"By Jove, it makes me want to throw my hat into the ring!" he exclaimed, +half in jest, half in earnest.</p> + +<p>"I wish you would," replied the other gravely. "We need young men. It is +youth that turns the world."</p> + +<p>Never, Stephen thought, had Benham, appeared more impressive, more +perfectly finished and turned out; never had he appeared so near to his +tailor and so far from his audience. He was a handsome man in his rather +colourless fashion, a man who would look any part with distinction from +policeman to President. His sleek iron-gray hair had as usual the rich +sheen of velvet; his thin, sharp profile was like the face on a Roman +coin. A man of power, of intellect, of character; and yet a man who had +missed, in some inexplicable way, greatness, achievement. On the whole +Stephen was glad that Corinna had announced her engagement. She and +Benham seemed so perfectly suited to each other—and, of course, there +was nothing in that old story about Alice Rokeby. A friendship, nothing +more! Only the other day Benham had spoken casually of his "friendship" +for Mrs. Rokeby; he always called her "Mrs. Rokeby"; and Stephen had +accepted the phrase as a satisfactory explanation of their past +association.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to go into some public work," said the young man. "To tell the +truth I can't settle down."</p> + +<p>"I know," Benham responded sympathetically. "I went through it all +myself; but there is nothing like throwing oneself into some outside +work. I wish you would come into this fight. If we can avert this strike +it will be worth any sacrifice."</p> + +<p>That Benham was making tremendous personal sacrifices, Stephen knew, and +the young man's voice was tinged with emotion as he answered, "I'm +afraid I'm not much of a speaker."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you would be, if you would only let yourself go." There it was +again! Even Benham recognized his weakness; even Benham knew that he was +afraid of life.</p> + +<p>"Besides we need men of every type," Benham was saying smoothly. "We +need especially good organizers. The fight won't be over to-morrow. Even +if we win this time, we must organize against Vetch and defeat him once +and for all in the next elections."</p> + +<p>"Then you think he is really as dangerous as the papers are trying to +make him appear?"</p> + +<p>"I think," Benham replied shortly, "that he is in it for what he can get +out of it."</p> + +<p>"Well, call on me when I can help you," said Stephen, as they parted; +and a minute later when he reached the pavement, he found occasion to +repeat his impulsive offer to Judge Horatio Lancaster Page.</p> + +<p>"I've promised Benham that I'll do all I can to help him defeat Vetch."</p> + +<p>"You're right," returned the Judge, with his smile of discerning irony. +"I suppose we're obliged to fight him."</p> + +<p>"If we don't what will happen?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I'd like to see, my boy. I'd give ten years full measure +and running over to see exactly what would happen."</p> + +<p>"Benham is afraid his crowd may send him to the Senate."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps, but there is always a chance of their sending him to Jericho +instead."</p> + +<p>Stephen nodded. "Yes, there's trouble already, I believe, over this +strike."</p> + +<p>The Judge laughed with a note of cynical humour. "I can understand why +he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human +nature."</p> + +<p>"He's dead right, too. It is so easy to be a philosopher—or a +philanthropist—in a desert. I've felt like that ever since I came +home."</p> + +<p>But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice +when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind +hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief +deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is +going to count. I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling, +merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it +better. Of course it is all crude and raw. It needs cultivation and +direction; but it's there—the vital principle, even if we don't +recognize it when we see it. All the same," he concluded in a lighter +tone, "I'm glad you are going into the fight. We can't hurt a principle +by fighting it, you know."</p> + +<p>Then he passed on his way; and the transient enthusiasm which had +illuminated Stephen's mind drifted away like clouds of blown smoke. How +could he fight with any heart when there seemed to him nothing on either +side that was worth fighting for—nothing except the unselfish +patriotism of John Benham? He remembered the fervour, the exaltation +with which he had gone to France that first year of the war. The belief +in a righteous cause which would bring peace on earth and good will +toward men; the belief in a human fellowship which would grow out of +sacrifice; the belief in a fairer social order which would flower from +the bloodstained memories of the battlefields,—what was there left of +these romantic illusions to-day? Was it true, as Vetch had once said, +that organized killing, even in a just cause, must bring its spiritual +punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the +love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and +I won from it—what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again +the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he +had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth +fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, or +desire passionately—anything!"</p> + +<p>Just as Corinna had longed for perfection, for something to worship, he +found himself longing now for a cause, for any cause, even a lost one, +to which he could give himself. He wanted facts, deeds, certainties. He +was suffocated by shams and insincerities—and phrases.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly, this was one of the symptoms of his nervous malady, the +reaction swept over him in a wave of energy which receded almost +immediately. If he could only find deliverance from himself and his own +subjective processes! If he could only be borne away by the passion he +felt and yet could not feel completely! He wanted Patty, he knew, but +did he want her enough to justify the effort that he must make to win +her? Would she be worth to him the break with his mother, with his +traditions, with his inherited ideals? He saw her small, slight figure +in the dappled sunlight under the budding trees. He saw her vivid +flower-like face, her romantic eyes, and the arch and charming smile +with which she watched his approach. Yes, he wanted her, he wanted her, +and she was the only thing on God's earth, he told himself rhetorically, +that he did want with the whole of his nature!</p> + +<p>Quickening his steps, he turned in the direction of the Capitol Square, +which stretched, like the painted curtain of a theatre, across the end +of the street. A singular intuition, a presentiment, had come to him +that if he could sustain this impulse, this tide of energy until he saw +Patty, he should be cured—he should find freedom of spirit. Only +through love, he had discovered, could there be resurrection from this +spiritual death of the last two or three years. Only through some +tremendous rush of desire could he overcome the partial paralysis of his +will. His instinct, he knew, was right, but would his resolution last +until he had found Patty?</p> + +<p>It was early afternoon, and the faintly tinted shadows, as smooth as +silk, were falling straight across the bright green grass on the +hillside. The Square was almost deserted at this hour, except for the +old men on the benches and the squirrels that were preparing to return +to their nests in the trees. The breath of spring was over all, roving, +fragrant, provocative.</p> + +<p>He shrank from going straight to the house; but Patty was not in the +walks, and he realized that if he found her at all it would be within +doors. Perhaps it was better so. After all, he must become accustomed to +the mansion and all that it contained, including Gideon Vetch, if he +really loved Patty! And did he really love her? Oh, was it all to begin +over again after the days and nights when he had threshed it out alone +in desperation of mind? Had he lost not only all that was vital, but all +that was stable, that was positive and affirmative in his life?</p> + +<p>He stood for a moment with his eyes on the fresh young leaves which +stirred softly. Then, as if hope and courage had passed into him with +the air of spring, he turned away and walked rapidly to the gate of the +Governor's house. His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to +enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch +with Julius Gershom. Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen +watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly +out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square. She was talking +eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked +the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked. Her face was like a +pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, +beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming +archness that he had imagined so vividly. If she saw him, she made no +sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering +if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his +neglect of the past two or three weeks? But even then, accepting that +charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of +Gershom? Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of +Gershom?</p> + +<p>The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not +only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green +hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches +overhead.</p> + +<p>In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the +gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight +street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>MRS. GREEN</h3> + + +<p>As Patty went by so quickly, she saw Stephen without appearing to glance +in his direction. For the last few weeks a flame had run over her +whenever she remembered, and there was scarcely a moment when it was out +of her mind, that she had shown her heart so openly and that, as she +expressed it bitterly, "he had hidden behind his mother." "If he comes +back again," she told herself recklessly, and she felt scorched when she +thought that he might never come back, "I'll let him see that I can +trifle as well as, or better, than he can. I'll let him see that two can +play at that kind of game." A hundred times Corinna's warning returned +to her. The words, which had made so slight an impression when she heard +them, were burned now into her memory. Oh, Mrs. Page had known all along +what it meant! She had understood from the beginning; and she had tried, +without hurting her, to make her see the blind folly of such an +infatuation. As she thought of this to-day, Patty's heart ached with +injured pride and resentment, not only against Stephen, but against the +unfairness of life. Why was it that men and circumstances would never +let one be natural and generous? Was there a conspiracy of events, as +Mrs. Page had once said, to prevent the finest impulses from coming to +flower? "I'd have done anything on earth for him," thought the girl with +passionate indignation. "I'd have made any sacrifice. I could have been +anything that he wanted." And she felt bitterly that the best in her +soul, the sacred places of her life had been invaded and destroyed. The +blighted sensation which accompanies the recoil of an emotion seemed to +suspend not only the energy of her spirit, but the very breath in her +body. A change had passed over her heart and the world around her and +the persons and events which had so recently composed her universe. She +felt now that she cared for none of them, that, one and all, they had +ceased to interest her; and that the things which filled their lives +were all vacant and meaningless forms. It was as if the vitality of +existence had been drained away, leaving an empty shell. Nothing was +real, nothing was alive but the aching core of her own wounded heart.</p> + +<p>"I don't care. I won't let it spoil my life," she resolved while she bit +back a sob. "Whatever happens, I am not going to let my life be ruined." +She had repeated this so often that it had begun to drone in her mind +like a line out of a hymn-book; and she was still repeating it when she +swept by Stephen without so much as a word or a look. A dangerous mood +was upon her. Nothing mattered, she felt, if she could only prove to him +that she also had been trifling; that his kiss had meant as little to +her as to him; that from the beginning to the end she had been as +indifferent as he was.</p> + +<p>Her step quickened into a run; and Gershom, striding, in order to keep +up with her, looked at her with the jovial laugh that she hated. "You're +in a powerful hurry to-day, ain't you?" he remarked.</p> + +<p>"I'm always in a hurry. You have to hurry to get anything out of life." +As she glanced up into his admiring eyes, she found herself wondering +what Stephen had thought while he watched her? She wished that it had +been anybody but Gershom. He seemed an unworthy instrument of revenge, +though, she reflected, with a touch of her father's sagacity, one +couldn't always choose the tools one would like best. Most people would +admit that he was good-looking in a common way, she supposed; and it was +only of late that she had realized how essentially vulgar he was.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry you haven't time to listen," he said. "I have news for you." +Then, as she fell into a slower step, he added, with an abrupt change to +a slightly hectoring tone: "We passed that young Culpeper just now. Did +you see him?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head disdainfully. "I wasn't looking at him."</p> + +<p>"He may have been on his way to the mansion." There was a taunting note +in his voice, as if he were trying deliberately to work her into a +temper.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter." She spoke flippantly. "I don't care whether he was +or not."</p> + +<p>Gershom laughed. "That sounds good to me even if I take it with a grain +of salt. I was beginning to be afraid that you liked him."</p> + +<p>She turned on him angrily. "What business is that of yours?"</p> + +<p>His amiability, as soon as he had struck fire, became imperturbable. +"Well, I've known you a long time, Patty, and I take an interest in you, +you see. Now, I don't fancy this young Culpeper. He is a conceited sort +of ass like his father before him, the sort that thinks all clover is +his fodder."</p> + +<p>Though Gershom would have scorned philosophy had he ever heard of it, +he was well grounded in that practical knowledge of human perversity +from which all philosophers and most philosophic systems have sprung. +Had his next words been barbed with steel they could not have pierced +Patty's girlish pride more sharply. "I reckon he imagines all he's got +to do is to look sweet at a girl, and she'll fall at his feet."</p> + +<p>Patty's eyes flashed with anger. "He is not unusual in that, is he?" she +asked mockingly.</p> + +<p>"Well, you can't accuse me of that, Patty," said Gershom, with a +sincerity which made him appear less offensively oily. "I never looked +long at but one girl in my life, not since I first saw you, anyway—and +I don't seem ever to have had an idea that she would fall at my feet. +But I didn't bring you out here to begin kidding. I want to talk to you +about the Governor, and I was afraid he would catch on to something if +we stayed indoors."</p> + +<p>"About Father?" She looked at him in alarm. "Is there anything the +matter with Father?"</p> + +<p>Without turning his head, he glanced at her keenly out of the corner of +his eye. It was a trick of his which always irritated her because it +reminded her of the sly and furtive side of his character.</p> + +<p>"You've a pretty good opinion of the old man, haven't you, Patty?"</p> + +<p>"I think he is the greatest man in the world."</p> + +<p>"And you wouldn't like him to run against a snag, would you?"</p> + +<p>"What do you mean? Has anything happened to worry him?"</p> + +<p>He had stopped just beyond the nearest side entrance to the Square, and +he stood now, with his eyes on the automobiles before the City Hall, +while he fingered thoughtfully the ornamental scarf-pin in his green and +purple tie. "There's always more or less to worry him, ain't there?"</p> + +<p>She frowned impatiently. "Not Father. He is hardly ever anything but +cheerful. Please tell me what you are hinting."</p> + +<p>"I wasn't hinting. But, if you don't mind talking to me a minute, +suppose we get away from these confounded cars."</p> + +<p>He turned east, following the iron fence of the Square until they +reached the high grass bank and the old box hedge which surrounded the +garden at the back of the Governor's house. At the corner of the street, +which sank far below the garden terrace, he stopped again and laid a +restraining hand on her arm.</p> + +<p>"He thinks a great deal of you too."</p> + +<p>She shook his hand from her sleeve. "Why shouldn't he? I am his only +child." Then her voice hardened, and she glanced at him suspiciously. "I +wish for once you would try to be honest."</p> + +<p>"Honest?" His amusement was perfectly sincere. "I am as honest as the +day, and I've always been. That's why I'm in politics."</p> + +<p>"Then tell me what you are trying to say about Father. If there's +anything wrong, I'd rather be told at once."</p> + +<p>They were still standing on the deserted corner below the garden, and +while she waited for his answer, she glanced away from him up the side +street, which rose in a steep ascent from the business quarter of the +town. The sun was still high over the distant housetops and the light +turned the brick pavement to a rich red and shot the clouds of gray dust +with silver. The neighbourhood was one which had seen better days, and +some well-built old houses, with red walls and white porches, lent an +air of hospitality and comfortable living to the numerous cheap boarding +places that filled the street. Crowds of children were playing games or +skating on roller skates over the sidewalk; and on the porches a few +listless women gossiped idly; or gazed out over newspapers which they +did not read.</p> + +<p>"Well, there ain't anything wrong exactly—yet," replied Gershom.</p> + +<p>"But there may be, you think?"</p> + +<p>"That depends upon him. If he keeps headed the way he's going, and he's +as stubborn as a mule, there'll be trouble as sure as my name is +Julius."</p> + +<p>"Is that what you've quarrelled about of late—the way he's going?"</p> + +<p>"Bless your heart, honey, we ain't quarrelled! Has it sounded like that +to you? I've just been trying to make him see reason, that's all. He +ain't got a right, you know, to turn against his best friends the way +he's doing. Friends are friends whether you are in office or out, and +there's a lot that a man owes to the folks that have stood by him. I +tell you I know politics from the bottom up, and there ain't no room in +'em for the man—I don't give a darn who he is—that don't stand by his +friends. If he's the President of the United States, he'll find that he +can't afford not to stand by the people who put him there!"</p> + +<p>So this was the trouble! He had let out his grievance at last, and from +the smouldering resentment in his eyes, she understood that some real +or imaginary injustice had put him, for the moment at least, in an ugly +temper. If he had not met her when he left the house, if he had waited +to grow cool, to reflect, he would probably never have taken her into +his confidence. Chance again, she thought, not without bitterness. How +much of the happiness or unhappiness of life depended upon chance!</p> + +<p>"I don't believe it," she returned emphatically. "He always stands by +people."</p> + +<p>"He used to," he replied sullenly, "but that was in the old days when he +needed 'em. The truth is he's got his head turned by his election. He +thinks he's so strong that he can go on alone and keep the crowd at his +back; but he'll find he's mistaken, and that the crowd, when it ain't +worked right from the inside, is a poor thing to depend on. The crowd +does the shouting, but it's a man's friends that start the tune."</p> + +<p>"Are you talking about the strike?" she asked. "I thought he was in +sympathy with the strikers."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he says he is, but he won't prove it."</p> + +<p>She faced him squarely, with her head held high and her eyes cold and +determined. "What do you want me to do? Please don't beat about the bush +any longer."</p> + +<p>He hesitated a moment, and she inferred that he was trying to decide how +far he might venture with safety. "Well, I thought you might speak a +word to him," he said. "He sets such store by what you would like. I +thought you might drop a hint that he ought to stand by his friends."</p> + +<p>"To stand by his friends—that means you," she rejoined.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he'll know quick enough what it means! You must be smart about it, +of course, but I don't mind his knowing that I've been speaking to you. +It's for his own good that I'm talking—for the very minute that the +fellows find out he ain't been on the square with 'em, it will be +'nothing doing' for the Governor."</p> + +<p>"It is a threat, then?" she asked sharply.</p> + +<p>"I'd call it something else if I were you. Look here," he continued +briskly. "You'd like to see the old man go to the Senate, and maybe +higher up, wouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course. What has that to do with it?"</p> + +<p>He winked and laughed knowingly. "Well, you just take my advice and drop +a hint to him about this business. Then, perhaps, you'll see."</p> + +<p>"If he doesn't take the hint, what will you do?"</p> + +<p>"Ask me that in the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become +offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last +word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever +met in his life."</p> + +<p>She had drawn disdainfully away from him; but at his last words she came +a step nearer. "I'll tell him exactly what you say," she answered; and +then she asked suddenly in a firmer tone: "Have you heard anything more +of my aunt?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her intently. "Why, yes. You hadn't mentioned her again, so +I thought you'd ceased to be interested. Would you like to see her?" he +demanded abruptly after a pause.</p> + +<p>"How can I? I don't know where she is."</p> + +<p>For a minute or two before replying he studied her closely. "I wish you +would let your hair grow out, Patty," he remarked at the end of his +examination, and there was a note of genuine feeling in his bantering. +"I remember how pretty you used to look as a little girl, with your hair +flying behind you like the mane of a pony."</p> + +<p>"Let my hair alone. Do you know where my aunt is?"</p> + +<p>He appeared to yield reluctantly to her insistence. "If you're so bent +on knowing—and, mind you, I tell you only because you make me—she +ain't so very far from where we are standing. I could take you to her in +ten minutes."</p> + +<p>She looked at him as if she scarcely believed his words. "You mean that +she is in town?"</p> + +<p>"Haven't you known me long enough to find out that I always mean what I +say?"</p> + +<p>"Then you can take me to her now?"</p> + +<p>He laughed shortly, and dug the end of his walking stick between the +pavement and the edge of the curbstone. "What do you reckon the Governor +would say to it?"</p> + +<p>"I needn't tell him—not just yet, anyhow. But are you really and truly +sure that she is my mother's sister?"</p> + +<p>"Well, they had the same parents, and I reckon that makes 'em sisters if +anything does. I knew 'em both out yonder in California, and I never +heard anybody suggest they weren't related."</p> + +<p>"Why did she come here? Was it to see me?"</p> + +<p>"Partly that, and partly—well, she's been pretty sick. I reckon she's +likely to go off at any time, and she wanted to be back where she was +born. She had pneumonia two years ago, and then again last winter. Her +lungs are about used up."</p> + +<p>"Then, if I went to see her, I'd better go now, hadn't I?"</p> + +<p>"It would be surer. Something may happen almost any day. That's why I +spoke to you."</p> + +<p>"I am glad you did. If it isn't far, will you take me now?"</p> + +<p>But instead of walking on with her, he dug the end of his stick more +firmly between the pavement and the curbstone. "I don't want to do you +any harm, Patty," he said gently at last. "It may give you a shock to +see her, you know. She's been through some hard times, and she's about +come to the end of her rope. Good Lord, the way life is! When I first +saw her out in California she was one of the prettiest pieces of flesh I +ever laid eyes on. She had something of your look, too, though you +wouldn't believe it now."</p> + +<p>But the girl had already started to cross the street. "Don't let's waste +any time talking. Which way do we go?"</p> + +<p>At her decision his hesitation vanished, and he joined her with a laugh +and a flourish of the diamond ring on the little finger of his left +hand. "Well, you are a sport, Patty! You always were, even when you +weren't much more than knee high to a duck. If you've made up your mind +to go, you won't be blaming me afterward?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shan't blame you, of course. Do we turn up this street?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, go ahead. It ain't far—just a little way up Leigh Street."</p> + +<p>They walked on rapidly, and presently, so swift and determined was +Patty's step, Gershom ceased to speak, and only glanced at her now and +then in a furtive and anxious way. There was a look of tragic resolution +on her small face—oh, she was meeting life in earnest, she +reflected—and even to the coarse mind and the dull imagination of the +man beside her, she assumed gradually the appearance of some ethereal +messenger. At the moment she was thinking of Stephen, but this he did +not suspect. He saw only that there was something almost unearthly in +her expression; and he felt the kind of awe that came over him on Sunday +when he entered a church. He wouldn't hurt the girl, he told himself, +with a twinge, for a pocketful of money.</p> + +<p>They had turned into Leigh Street, and had walked some distance in +silence, when Patty asked suddenly without looking round, "Then she +doesn't know I am coming?"</p> + +<p>"I told her I'd bring you whenever I could; but she ain't looking for +you this evening. There, that's the house—the one in the middle, with +that wooden swing and all those kids in the yard."</p> + +<p>He pointed to what had once been a fine old house of stuccoed brick, +with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on +loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red +brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been +white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with +its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of +mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and +well-preserved houses stood on the block, for of the whole +neighbourhood, it appeared to the girl, they had chosen the most +dilapidated dwelling and the one which was most crowded with children.</p> + +<p>"We're here all right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they +ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down +he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? +Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it +again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I +reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly to Patty: "I +always had a soft spot for the kids. Never could pass one in the street +without stopping."</p> + +<p>On the porch, beside a broken perambulator, which contained a black-eyed +baby with a bottle of milk, a stout man sat reading the afternoon paper, +while with one hand he patiently pushed the rickety carriage back and +forth. As they reached the porch, he laid aside his paper, and rose with +his hand still on the perambulator.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's you," he said, "Mr. Gershom."</p> + +<p>"I've brought this lady to see Mrs. Green," returned Gershom. "How is +she?"</p> + +<p>The stout man shook his head and surveyed Patty curiously but not +discourteously. He had a kindly, humorous look, and she felt at once +that she preferred his blunt frankness to Gershom's facetious +insincerity. There was something in his face that suggested the +black-eyed baby sucking placidly at the rubber nipple on the bottle of +milk.</p> + +<p>"She's worse if anything. The doctor came this morning." The baby, +having dropped the bottle, lifted a despairing wail, and the father bent +over and replaced the nipple gently between the quivering lips. "The +rent was due yesterday," he added, "I understood that there was to be no +trouble about it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, there's no trouble about that. I'm responsible," replied Gershom +quickly. He was about to pass on; but changing his mind, he stopped and +drew out his pocket book. "I'll settle it now. Are there any extras?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, she's had to have eggs and milk, and there have been medicines. It +comes to twelve dollars in all. I'll show you the account."</p> + +<p>"Very well. Get anything that she needs." Then, as Gershom followed +Patty into the hall, he pointed to the fine old staircase. "It's the +back room. Go straight up. You ain't timid, are you?"</p> + +<p>"Timid? Oh, no." Running lightly up the stairs, the girl hesitated a +moment before the half-open door of the room at the back of the house. +Then, in obedience to a gesture from Gershom as he pushed the door +wider, she crossed the threshold, and went rapidly toward a couch in +front of the window. As she went forward there floated to her a heavy, +sweetish scent which seemed to her to be the very breath of despair. Her +first thought was that the sun had gone under a cloud; the next instant +she perceived that the window was shaded by a ragged ailantus tree and +that beyond the tree there was a high brick wall which shut out the +daylight. Then she looked at the woman lying under a ragged blanket on +the couch; and she felt vaguely that the haggard features framed in +coarse black hair awakened a troubled sense of familiarity or +recognition. The next instant there returned to her the memory of her +walk in the Square with Corinna a few weeks before, and of the strange +woman who had looked at them so curiously.</p> + +<p>"I have come to see you," she began gently, "Mr. Gershom brought me."</p> + +<p>Raising her head, the woman stared at her without replying. Her eyes +were dull and heavy, with drooping lids beneath which a sombre glow +flickered and died down. There was a wan yellow tinge over her face; and +yet now that the approach of death had refined and purified her +features, she was not without a gravity of expression which made her +strangely impressive, like some wax mask of an avenging Fate. With a +sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a +calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a +single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which +seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla +lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the +close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the +sickening sweetish odour with which she was unfamiliar, the waxen mask +and the blank, drooping eyes of the woman; all these things seemed to +exist not in her actual surroundings, but in some hideous dream from +which she was struggling to awake. Somewhere long ago, in a dreadful +nightmare, she had smelled that cloying scent and seen those half-shut +eyes looking back at her. Somewhere—and yet it was impossible. She +could only have imagined it all.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's +daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over +her expressionless eyes. "Oh, you mean Julius. Yes, I told him I wanted +to see you." A quiver of animation passed like a spasm over her +features, and she inquired eagerly, "Where is he? Did he come?"</p> + +<p>"I'm here all right," said Gershom, stepping briskly into the range of +her vision.</p> + +<p>She gazed up at him as he approached her with the look of a famished +animal, a look so little human and so full of physical hunger that Patty +turned her eyes again to the calla lily on the window-sill, and then to +the young green on the ailantus tree and the brick wall beyond. To the +girl it seemed that minutes must have gone by before the next words +came. "You brought the medicine?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I brought it. The doctor gave it to me; but it is hard to get, and +he said you were to have it only on condition that you do everything +that we tell you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I will, I will." She reached out her hand eagerly for the package +he had taken from his coat pocket; and when Patty looked at her again a +curious change had passed over her face, revivifying it with the colour +of happiness. "I have been in such pain—such pain," she whispered. "I +was afraid it would come back before you came. Oh, I was so afraid." +Then she added hurriedly: "Is that all? Did you bring nothing else?"</p> + +<p>Though a look of embarrassment crossed his face, he carried off the +difficult situation with his characteristic assurance. "The doctor sent +you a little stimulant. Perhaps I'd better give you a dose now. It +might pick you up." Taking a bottle from his pocket, he poured some +whiskey into a glass and added a little water from a pitcher on the +table. "There, now," he remarked, with genuine sympathy as he held the +glass to her lips. "You'll begin to feel better in a minute. This young +lady can't stay but a little while, so you'd better try to buck up."</p> + +<p>"I'll try," answered the woman obediently. "I'll try—but it isn't easy +to come back out of hell." Lifting her head from the pillow, as if it +were a dead weight that did not belong to her, she stared at Patty while +her tormented mind made an effort to remember. In a minute her mouth +worked pathetically, and she burst into tears. "I can't come back now, I +can't come back now," she repeated in a whimpering tone. "But I'll be +better before long, and then I want to see you. There are things I want +to tell you when I get the strength. I can't think of them now, but they +are things about Gideon Vetch."</p> + +<p>"About Father?" asked the girl, and her voice trembled.</p> + +<p>The woman stopped crying, and looked up appealingly, while she wiped her +eyes on the ragged edge of the blanket. "Yes, about Gideon Vetch. That's +his name, ain't it?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't talk any more now, if I were you," said Gershom, putting his +hand gently on her pillow. "We'll come again when you're feeling +spryer."</p> + +<p>The woman nodded. "Yes, come again. Bring her again."</p> + +<p>"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty reassuringly; but +instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla +lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I +want you to tell me about my mother—everything. I remember her just +once, the night before they took her to the asylum. She was in spangled +skirts that stood out like a ballet dancer's, and there was a crown of +stars on her hair and a star on the end of the wand she carried. I +remember it all just as plainly as if it were yesterday—though they +tell me I was too little—"</p> + +<p>She broke off because the woman was gazing at her so strangely. "You +were too little," she cried, and burst into hysterical weeping. "I can't +stand it," she said wildly. "I never had a chance, and I can't stand +it."</p> + +<p>"I think we'd better go," said Gershom. It amazed Patty to find how +gentle he could be when his sympathy was touched. "I oughtn't to have +brought you to-day." Turning away, he left the room hurriedly, as if the +scene were too much for him.</p> + +<p>At this the woman controlled herself with a convulsive effort. "No, I +wanted to see you," she said. "You are pretty, but you aren't prettier +than your mother was at your age."</p> + +<p>For a moment the girl looked pityingly down on her. "I hope you will +soon be better," she responded in a tone which she tried to make +sympathetic in spite of the physical shrinking she felt. "Let me know +when you wish to see me, and I will come back."</p> + +<p>The woman shivered. "Do you mean that?" she asked. "Will you come when I +send for you? I want to see you again—once—before I die."</p> + +<p>"I promise you that I will come. I'll send you something, too, and so +will Father."</p> + +<p>"Gideon Vetch," said the woman very slowly, as if she were trying to +hold the name in her consciousness before it slipped away from her. +"Gideon Vetch."</p> + +<p>As the girl broke away and ran out of the room that expressionless +repetition followed her into the hall and down the staircase, growing +fainter and fainter like the voice of one who is falling asleep: +"<i>Gideon Vetch. Gideon Vetch.</i>"</p> + +<p>On the porch, where the stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty +found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby +in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his +face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the +clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When +Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully +tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind of thought +the little one might like a chance to get out of that buggy," he +observed, while he straightened himself briskly, and adjusted his tie.</p> + +<p>"She must be very ill," said the girl, as they went out of the gate and +turned down the street.</p> + +<p>"A sure thing," replied Gershom concisely. Then he whistled sharply, and +added, "Rotten, that's what I call it."</p> + +<p>"She said she'd never had a chance," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "I +wonder what she meant."</p> + +<p>The funereal expression spread like a pall over Gershom's features, but +his intermittent whistle sounded as sprightly as ever. "Well, how many +folks in this world have ever had what you might call a decent chance?" +he asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I hadn't thought." The girl looked depressed and +puzzled. "It's a dreadful thing to think that nobody cares when you're +dying." Then her tone grew more hopeful. "Do you suppose anybody thinks +that Father never had a chance?" she asked.</p> + +<p>Gershom broke into a laugh. "Well, if he had it, you may be pretty sure +that he made it himself," he retorted.</p> + +<p>"Then I wish he could make some for other people."</p> + +<p>"He says he's trying to, doesn't he? But between us, Patty, my child, +you won't forget what you have to say to the old man, will you?"</p> + +<p>"What have I to say? Oh, you mean about standing by his friends?"</p> + +<p>"That's just it. You tell him from yours truly that the best thing he +can do all round is to stick fast to his friends."</p> + +<p>"And that means the strikers?"</p> + +<p>"It means what I tell you."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll repeat exactly what you say; it won't make any difference if +his mind is made up."</p> + +<p>"Maybe so. Are you going to tell him where you've been?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. I hate to worry him; but that poor woman must need help."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she needs it. We all need it," remarked Gershom flippantly. Then, +as they reached the entrance to the Square, he held out his hand. "Well, +I'm off now, and I hope you aren't feeling any worse because of your +visit. The world ain't made of honeycomb, you know, and there's no use +pretending it is. But you're a darn good sport, Patty. You're as good a +sport as I ever struck up with in this little affair of life."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>MYSTIFICATION</h3> + + +<p>Walking slowly home across the Square, Patty told herself that the +future had been taken out of her hands. She seemed to have been moved +mentally, if not bodily, into another world, into a world where the +sleepy old Square, wrapped in a soft afternoon haze, still existed, but +from which Stephen Culpeper had vanished in a rosy cloud. She did not +know why she had relinquished the thought of Stephen since her visit to +the house in East Leigh Street; but some deep instinct warned her that +she had widened the gulf between them by her excursion with Gershom. "I +can't help it," she thought sensibly enough. "There wasn't anything in +it before that, and I might as well go ahead and stop thinking about +it." Her anger at Stephen's neglect had melted into a vague and +impersonal resentment, a resentment, rather for the dying woman than for +herself, against all the needless cruelties of life. Even Gershom, even +the unspeakable Gershom, had had discernment enough to see that +something good in that poor woman had been blighted and crushed. Was it +true that no one was ever given the chance to be one's best? Was this +true, not only of that dying woman, but of her father and Stephen and +Corinna and herself and all human beings everywhere?</p> + +<p>Lingering a moment near the Washington monument, she stood watching the +straggling groups that were crossing the Square. Bit by bit, snatches +of conversation drifted into her mind and then blew out again, leaving +scarcely the shadow of an impression. "They tell me it's going up. I +don't know, but I'll find out to-morrow." "I wouldn't wear one of those +things for a million dollars, and he says—" "Yes, I've arranged to go +unless the strike should be called next week."</p> + +<p>The strike? Oh, she had almost forgotten it! She had almost forgotten +the message she had promised to deliver to her father. With a gesture +that appeared to sweep her last remaining illusion behind her, she +started resolutely up the drive to the house. After all, whatever came, +she would not let them think that she was either afraid of life or +disappointed in love. She would not mope, and she would not show the +white feather. On one point she was passionately determined—no man, by +any method known to the drama of sex, was going to break her heart!</p> + +<p>She had quickened her steps while she made her resolve; and, a minute +later, she broke into a run when she saw that Corinna's car stood at the +door and that Corinna waited for her in the hall. Had the girl only +realized it, Corinna's heart also was troubled; and the visit was one +result of the discouraging talk she had had recently with Stephen.</p> + +<p>"I had to go down town, so I stopped on the way back to speak to you." +Though she said no word of her anxiety, Patty could hear it in every +note of her expressive voice and feel it in the protective pressure of +her arm. "I want you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance Wednesday +night, and I want you to look your very prettiest."</p> + +<p>"But I'm not even asked."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are. Mrs. Harrison has just told me she was sending your +invitation with a number that had not gone out." How like Corinna it was +to put it that way! "They are giving it for that English girl who is +staying with them. She is pretty, but you must look ever so much +prettier. I want you to wear that green and silver dress that makes you +look like a mermaid." The kind voice, so full of sympathy, so forgetful +of self, flooded Patty's heart like sunshine after darkness.</p> + +<p>"I will go, if you wish me to," she answered, raising Corinna's hand to +her cheek. And the thought flashed through her mind, "Stephen will be +there. Even if everything is over, I'd like him to see me."</p> + +<p>"I'll come for you a little before ten," said Corinna; and then, as the +door of the library opened and Vetch came out, she added hurriedly: "I +must go now. Remember to look your prettiest."</p> + +<p>"No, don't go," begged Patty. "Father will be so disappointed." She had +remembered the message, and she felt that Corinna, whose wisdom was +infallible, might help her to understand it. Though it had sounded so +casual on the surface, her natural sagacity detected both a warning and +a menace; and the very touch of Corinna's hand, in her long white glove, +was reassuring and helpful.</p> + +<p>Whatever may have threatened Vetch, he seemed oblivious of it as he came +forward with his hearty greeting. "It's queer," he said, "but something +told me you were here. I looked out to make sure." His simple pleasure +touched Corinna like the artless joy of a child. It was impossible to +resist his magnetism, she thought, as she looked up into his sanguine +face, for what was it, after all, except an unaffected enjoyment of +little things, an unconquerable belief in life?</p> + +<p>"I stopped to ask Patty about a dance," she explained. "I must go on +immediately."</p> + +<p>He glanced at the girl a little anxiously. "Is she going to a party with +you? I am glad."</p> + +<p>In spite of his buoyant manner, there was an abstracted look in his +eyes, as if his mind were working at a distance while he talked. After +the first minute or two Patty observed this and it helped her to make +her decision. "Are you busy, Father?" she asked. "I promised Mr. Gershom +that I would give you a message—such a silly message it is too."</p> + +<p>"Gershom?" He repeated, and his face darkened. "What did he say to you? +No, don't go, Mrs. Page. Come into the library, and let us have the +message."</p> + +<p>Corinna glanced uncertainly over her shoulder. "I really must be going," +she murmured, and then yielding suddenly either to inclination or to the +pressure of Patty's hand, she crossed the threshold of the library and +walked over to the front window. Outside, beyond the yard and the +grotesque fountain, she saw the splendid outline of Washington, and +beyond this the faint afternoon haze above the spires and chimneys of +the city. "The sun will go down soon. I must hurry," she thought; yet +she stood there, without moving, looking out on the monument and the +sky. For a moment she gazed in silence; then turning quickly, she +glanced with smiling eyes about the small, stiffly furnished room, with +the leather chairs and couch and the business looking writing-table in +the centre of the floor.</p> + +<p>"How comfortable you look here," she observed lightly, "and how +business-like."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I work here a good deal in the evenings." He turned a chair toward +the window, and when she sat down, he remained for a minute still +standing, with his hand on the back of the chair, smiling thoughtfully +not at her, but at the disarray on his desk. The glow of pleasure which +the sight of her had brought was still in his face; and she thought that +she had never seen him so nearly good-looking. It occurred to her now, +as it had done so often before, that in the hour of trouble he would be +like a rock to lean on. However else he might fail, she surmised that in +human relations he would be for ever dependable. And what was life, +after all, except a complex and intricate blend of human relations? She +decided suddenly and positively that she had always liked Gideon Vetch. +She liked the way his broad bulging forehead swept back into his sandy +hair, which was quite gray on the temples; she liked the contrast +between the quizzical humour in his eyes and the earnest expression of +his generous mouth with its deep corners. He stood in her mind for the +straight and simple things of life, and she had lost her way so often +among the bewildering ramification of human motives. He had no trivial +words, she knew. He was incapable of "making conversation"; and she, who +had been bred in a community of ceaseless chatter, was mentally +refreshed by the sincerity of his interest. It was as restful, she said +to herself now, as a visit to the country.</p> + +<p>"So Gershom asked you to give me a message?" remarked Vetch abruptly to +Patty. "Where did you see him?"</p> + +<p>"He joined me when I went out," replied Patty, speaking slowly and +carefully with her eyes on Corinna. "I tried to slip away, but he +wouldn't let me. He asked me to speak to you about something that was +worrying him, and a great many others, he said. He didn't put it into +words, but I think he meant the strike—"</p> + +<p>Vetch looked up quickly. "Oh, that is worrying him, is it?"</p> + +<p>"What is it all about, Father? Why are they going to strike?"</p> + +<p>"Can you answer that, Mrs. Page?" The Governor turned to Corinna with a +sportive gesture, as if he were casting upon her the burden of a reply. +His smile was sketched so faintly about his mouth that it seemed merely +to emphasize the gravity of his expression.</p> + +<p>"I?" Corinna looked round with a start of surprise. "Why, what should I +know of it?"</p> + +<p>"Then they don't talk about it where you are?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, they talk about it a great deal." She appeared to hesitate, +and then added with deliberate audacity, "but they think that you know +more about it than any one else."</p> + +<p>He did not smile as he answered her. "Do they expect the men to strike?"</p> + +<p>Though she made a graceful gesture of evasion, she met his question +frankly. "They expect them to, I gather—unless you prevent it."</p> + +<p>A shade of irritation crossed his features. "How can I prevent it? They +have a right to stop work."</p> + +<p>"They seem to think, the people I know, that it depends upon how safe +the leaders think it will be."</p> + +<p>"How safe? I can't tie their hands, can I?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I am only repeating what I hear." She gazed at him with +friendly eyes. "No one could know less about it than I do."</p> + +<p>"People are saying, I suppose," he continued in a tone of exasperation, +"that these men had an understanding with me before I came into office. +They seem to think that I can make the strike a success by standing +aside and holding my hands. That, of course, is pure nonsense. If the +men want to stop work, nobody has a right to interfere with them. +Certainly I haven't. But have they the right—the question hangs on this +point—to interfere with the farmers who want to get their crops to +market as badly as the strikers want to quit work? The kind of general +strike these people have in mind bears less relation to industry than it +does to war; and you know what I think about war and the rights of +non-combatants. They want to tie up the whole system of transportation +until they starve their opponents into submission. The old damnable +Prussian theory again, you see, that crops up wherever men take the +stand, which they do everywhere they have the power, that might is a law +unto itself. Now, I am with these men exactly half way, and no further. +As long as their method of striking doesn't interfere with the rights of +the public, they seem to me fair enough. But when it comes to raising +the price of food still higher and cutting off the city milk +supply—well, when they talk of that, then I begin to think of the human +side of it." He broke off abruptly, and concluded in a less serious +tone, "that's the only thing in the whole business I care about—the +human side of it all—"</p> + +<p>A phrase of Benham's floated suddenly into her mind, and she found +herself repeating it aloud: "There are no human rights where a principle +is involved."</p> + +<p>Vetch laughed. "That's not you; it's Benham. I recognize it. He's the +sort that would believe that, I suppose—the sort that would write a +political document in blood if he didn't have ink."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't!" she protested. There was a grain of truth in the epigram, +but she resented it the more keenly for this.</p> + +<p>"Well, I may have intended it as a compliment," rejoined Vetch gaily. +"He would take it that way, I reckon. And, anyhow, you have heard him +make worse flings at me."</p> + +<p>She coloured, admitting and denying at the same time, the truth of his +words. "You could never understand each other. You are so different."</p> + +<p>He looked at her gravely; but even gravity could not wholly drive the +gleam of humour from his eyes. "At any rate I admire Benham. I have the +advantage of him there." The quickness of his wit made her smile. "But, +as you say, we are different," he added after a moment. "I reckon I've +turned my hand at times to jobs of which Benham would disapprove; but +I'd be hanged before I'd write the greatest document ever penned +in—well, in the blood of one of those squirrels out yonder in the +Square!"</p> + +<p>As he finished he turned his face toward the window, and following his +gaze, she saw the sunlight sparkling like amber wine on the rich grass +and the delicate green of the trees. As she looked back at him, she +wondered what his past could have been—how deep, how complex, how +varied was his experience of life? She was aware again of that curiously +primitive attraction which she had felt the other afternoon in the +shop. It was as if he appealed, not to the beliefs and sentiments with +which life had obscured and muffled her nature, but to some buried self +beneath the self that she and the world knew, to some ancient instinct +which was as deep as the oldest forests of earth. After all, was there a +hidden self, a buried forest within her soul which she had never +discovered?</p> + +<p>"But Patty has not given you her message!" she exclaimed, startled and +confused by the strangeness of the sensation.</p> + +<p>"Oh, there isn't much to tell," answered Patty, wondering if she could +ever learn, even if she practised every day, to speak and move like +Corinna. "It was only that you ought to stand by your friends."</p> + +<p>"To stand by my friends," repeated Vetch; then he drew in his breath +with a whistling sound. "Well, I like his impudence!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>Corinna rose with a laugh. "So do I," she observed, "and he seems to +possess it in abundance." Then she folded Patty in a light and fragrant +embrace. "You must be the belle of the ball," she said. "I have a genius +for being a chaperon."</p> + +<p>When she had gone, and they watched her car pass the monument, the girl +turned back into the hall, with her hand clinging tightly to Vetch's +arm.</p> + +<p>"Father, what do you suppose that message meant?"</p> + +<p>"Is it obliged to mean anything?"</p> + +<p>"Things generally do, don't they?"</p> + +<p>Vetch smiled as he looked down at her; but his smile conveyed anxiety +rather than amusement to her observant eyes. "Oh, if things are said by +Gershom, they generally mean hell," he responded. "Perhaps I'll find +out Thursday night; there's to be a meeting then, and it looks as if +somebody might make trouble." Then he patted her shoulder. "Don't worry +about Gershom, honey," he added in the way he used to speak when she +fell and hurt herself as a child. "Don't worry your mind about Gershom. +I'll take care of him."</p> + +<p>It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was not worrying +about Gershom, but about the woman dying all alone in that dark room in +Leigh Street. If he had only looked less disturbed she might have done +so; and when she thought of it afterward, she understood that frankness +would have been by far the wiser course. However, while she wondered +what she ought to say, the opportunity slipped by, and the ringing of +the telephone on his desk called him away from her.</p> + +<p>Corinna, meanwhile, was rolling down the drive over the slanting shadows +of the linden trees. She looked thoughtful, for she was trying to decide +what it was about Vetch that made her believe in him so profoundly when +she was with him and yet begin to distrust him as soon as she got far +enough away to gain a perspective? Gossip probably, she reflected. When +she was with him her confidence was the natural response of her own +unbiassed perceptions; when she left him she passed immediately into an +atmosphere that was charged with the suspicions of other people. She +remembered the stories, true or false, which had been hinted and +whispered before the last election. Malicious gossip that, and as +unfounded no doubt as the rest. She recalled the muttered insinuations +of fraudulent political stratagems, of what Benham had called the +Governor's weathercock principles. In Vetch's presence, she realized +that she invariably lost sight of these structural or surface blemishes, +and judged him by some standard which was different from the one she had +inherited with the shape of her nose and the colour of her eyes. What +troubled her was not so much the riddle of Vetch's personality as the +fact that there was another mental world beyond the one she had always +inhabited, and that this other world was filled, like her own, with +obscure moral and spiritual images.</p> + +<p>As she approached the club at the corner she saw Benham come out of the +door; and stopping the car she waited, smiling, until he joined her. +While she watched him cross the pavement, she rejoiced in the +thoroughbred fineness and thinness of his appearance—in his clear-cut +Roman features and in the impenetrable reticence of his expression. Yes, +she loved him as well as she could love any man; and that, she told +herself, with a touch of cynical amusement, was just so much and no +more, just enough to bring happiness, but not enough to bring pain.</p> + +<p>"I'll take you home," she said, as he reached her, and there seemed to +her something delightful and romantic in this accidental meeting.</p> + +<p>"What luck!" The severity melted from his features while he took his +place beside her. "I was thinking only this morning that I owe a +sacrifice to the god of chance. May I tell the man to drop me at my +rooms?"</p> + +<p>She nodded, watching him contentedly while he spoke to the chauffeur and +then turned to look at her with his level impersonal gaze. Happiness had +brought the youth back to her face. Her hair swept like burnished wings +under her small close hat, and the eyes that she raised to his were dark +and splendid. There was about her always in moments of happiness the +look of a beauty too bright to last or to grow old; and now, in this +last romance of her life, she appeared to be drenched in autumn +sunshine.</p> + +<p>"One does want to make sacrifices," she answered. "That is the penalty +of joy. One can scarcely believe in it before it goes."</p> + +<p>"Well, I believe in this. You are very lovely. Where have you been?"</p> + +<p>"To the Governor's. I wanted to speak to Patty. I feel sorry for Patty +to-day. I feel sorry for almost every one," she added, with an +enchanting smile, "except myself."</p> + +<p>"And me. Surely you don't waste your pity on me? But what of Miss Vetch? +Hasn't she her own particular happiness?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder—" Then, without finishing her sentence, she left the subject +of Patty because she surmised from Benham's tone that he would not be +sympathetic. "I had a long talk with the Governor. John, what do you +think will come of the strike?"</p> + +<p>He answered her question with another. "What did he tell you?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing except that the men have a right to strike if they wish to."</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Well, that's safe enough. But don't talk of Vetch. I +dislike him so heartily that I have a sneaking feeling I may be unjust +to him."</p> + +<p>It was so like him, that fine impersonal sense of fairness, that her +eyes warmed with admiration. "That is splendid," she responded. "It is +just the kind of thing that Vetch could never feel." Suddenly she knew +that she was ashamed of having believed in Vetch when she contrasted him +with John Benham. How could she have imagined for an instant that the +Governor could stand a comparison like this?</p> + +<p>He pressed her hand as the car stopped before the apartment house where +he lived. "In a few hours I shall see you again," he said; and his +voice, in its eagerness, reminded her of the voice of Kent Page when he +had made love to her in her girlhood. Ah, she had learned wisdom since +then! Just so much and no more, that was the secret of happiness. Give +with the mind and the heart; but keep always one inviolable sanctity of +the spirit—of the buried self beneath the self.</p> + +<p>The streets were almost deserted; and as the car went on, Corinna +thought that she had never seen the city look so fresh and charming. +Through the long green vista of the trees, there was a shimmer of silver +air, and wrapped in this sparkling veil, she saw the bronze statues and +the ardent glow of the sunset. Everything at which she looked was +steeped in a wonderful golden light; and this light seemed to come, not +from the burning horizon, but from the happiness that flooded her +thoughts. She saw the world again as she had seen it in her first youth, +suffused with joy that was like the vivid freshness of dawn. The long +white road, the arching trees, the glittering dust, the spring flowers +blooming in gardens along the roadside, the very faces of the people who +passed her; all these things at which she looked were illuminated by +this radiance which seemed, in some strange way, to shine not without +but within her heart. "It is too beautiful to last," she said to +herself in a whisper. "It is youth, more beautiful even than the +reality, come back again for an hour—for one little hour before it goes +out for ever."</p> + +<p>Then, because it seemed safer as well as wiser to be practical, to +discourage wild dreaming, she tried to direct her thoughts to +insignificant details. Yet even here that rare golden light penetrated +to the innermost recesses of her mind; and each drab uninteresting fact +glittered with a fresh interest and charm. "I forgot to order that +cretonne for the porch," she thought disconnectedly, in an endeavour to +conciliate the Fates by pretending that life was as commonplace as it +had always been. "That black background with the blue larkspur is +pretty—and I must have the porch furniture repainted the blue-green +that they do so well in Italy. That reminds me that Patty must be the +belle of the dance in her green dress. I shall see that she has no lack +of partners—at least I can manage that;—if I cannot make her happy. I +am sorry for the child—if only Stephen—but, no—I left the book I was +reading in the shop. What was the name of it? Silly and sentimental! Why +will people always write things they don't mean and know are not true +about love? Yes, the black background with the blue larkspur was the +best that I saw. I wonder what I did with the sample. Oh, why can't +everybody be happy?"</p> + +<p>The car turned out of the road into the avenue of elms, which led to the +Georgian house of red brick, with its quaint hooded doorway. In front of +the door there was a flagged walk edged with box; and after the car had +gone, Corinna followed this walk to the back of the house, where rows of +white and purple iris were blooming on the garden terrace. For a moment +she looked on the garden as one who loved it; then turning reluctantly, +she ascended the steps, and entered the door which a coloured servant +held open.</p> + +<p>"A lady's in there waiting for you," said the man, who having lost the +dialect, still retained the dramatic gestures of his race. "She would +wait, and she says she can't go without seeing you."</p> + +<p>With a faintness of the heart rather than the mind, Corinna looked +through the doorway, and saw the face of Alice Rokeby glimmering +narcissus white in the dusk of the drawing-room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<h3>THE SIXTH SENSE</h3> + + +<p>As Corinna went forward, with that strange premonitory chill at her +heart, it seemed to her that all the fragrance of the garden floated +toward her with a piercing sweetness that was the very essence of youth +and spring. Through the wide-open French windows she could see the +garden terrace, the pale rows of iris, and the straight black cedars +rising against the pomegranate-coloured light of the afterglow. A few +tall white candles were shining in old silver candlesticks; but it was +by the vivid tint in the sky that she saw the large, frightened eyes of +the woman who was waiting for her.</p> + +<p>"If I had only known you were here, I should have hurried home," began +Corinna cordially. Drawing a chair close to her visitor, she sat down +with a movement that was protecting and reassuring. Her quick sympathies +were already aroused. She surmised that Alice Rokeby had come to her +because she was in trouble; and it was not in Corinna's nature to refuse +to hear or to help any one who appealed to her.</p> + +<p>Alice threw back her lace veil as if she were stifled by the transparent +mesh. "In the shop there are so many interruptions," she answered. "I +wanted to see you—" Breaking off hurriedly, she hesitated an instant, +and then repeated nervously, "I wanted to see you—"</p> + +<p>Corinna smiled at her. "Would you like to go out into the garden? May +is so lovely there."</p> + +<p>"No, it is very pleasant here." Alice made a vague, helpless gesture +with her small hands, and said for the third time, "I wanted to see +you—"</p> + +<p>"I am afraid you are not well." Corinna spoke very gently. "Perhaps it +is not too late for tea, or may I get you a glass of wine? All winter +I've intended to go and inquire because I heard you'd been ill. It has +been so long since we really saw anything of each other; but I remember +you quite well as a little girl—such a pretty little girl you were too. +You are ever so much younger, at least ten years younger, than I am."</p> + +<p>As she rippled on, trying to give the other time to recover herself, she +thought how lovely Alice had once been, and how terribly she had broken +since her divorce and her illness. She would always be appealing—the +kind of woman with whom men easily fell in love—but one so soon reached +the end of mere softness and prettiness.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you were one of the older girls," answered Alice, "and I admired +you so much. I used to sit on the front porch for hours to watch you go +by."</p> + +<p>"And then I went abroad, and we lost sight of each other."</p> + +<p>"We both married, and I got a divorce last year."</p> + +<p>"I heard that you did." It seemed futile to offer sympathy.</p> + +<p>"My marriage was a mistake. I was very unhappy. I have had a hard life," +said Alice, and her lower lip, as soft as a baby's, trembled nervously. +How little character there was in her face, how little of anything +except that indefinable allurement of sex!</p> + +<p>"I know," responded Corinna consolingly. She felt so strong beside this +helpless, frightened woman that the old ache to comfort, to heal pain, +was like a pang in her heart.</p> + +<p>"Everything has failed me," murmured Alice, with the restless volubility +of a weak nature. "I thought there was something that would make up for +what I had missed—something that would help me to live—but that has +failed me like everything else—"</p> + +<p>"Things will fail," assented Corinna, with sympathy, "if we lean too +hard on them."</p> + +<p>A delicate flush had come into Alice's face, bringing back for a moment +her old flower-like loveliness. Her fine brown hair drooped in a wave on +her forehead, and beneath it her violet eyes were deep and wistful.</p> + +<p>"What a beautiful room!" she said in a quivering voice. "And the garden +is like one in an old English song."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I hardly know which I love best—my garden or my shop."</p> + +<p>The words were so far from Corinna's thoughts that they seemed to drift +to her from some distant point in space, out of the world beyond the +garden and the black brows of the cedars. They were as meaningless as +the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the +window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were +like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a +profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby +and herself; and on this current there was borne all the inarticulate +burden of womanhood. "Poor thing, she wants me to help her," she +thought; but aloud she said only: "The roses are doing so well this +year. They will be the finest I have ever had."</p> + +<p>Suddenly Alice lowered her veil and rose. "I must go. It is late," she +said, and held out her hand. Then, while she stood there, with her hand +still outstretched, all that she had left unspoken appeared to rush over +her in a torrent, and she asked rapidly, while her lips jerked like the +lips of a hurt child, "Is it true, Corinna, that you are going to marry +John Benham?"</p> + +<p>For an instant Corinna looked at her without speaking. The sympathy in +her heart ceased as quickly as a fountain that is stopped; and she was +conscious only of that lifeless chill with which she had entered the +room. Now that the question had come, she knew that she had dreaded it +from the first moment her eyes had rested on the face of her visitor, +that she had expected it from the instant when she had heard that a +woman awaited her in the house. It was something of which she had been +aware, and yet of which she had been scarcely conscious—as if the +knowledge had never penetrated below the surface of her perceptions. And +it would be so easy, she knew, to evade it now as she had evaded it from +the beginning, to push to-day into to-morrow for the rest of her life. +Nothing stood in her way; nothing but that deep instinct for truth on +which, it seemed to her now, most of her associations with men had been +wrecked. Then, because she was obliged to obey the law of her nature, +she answered simply, "Yes, we expect to be married."</p> + +<p>A strangled sound broke from Alice's lips, but she bit it back before it +had formed into a word. The hand that she had thrown out blindly fell on +the fringe of her gown, and she began knitting it together with +trembling fingers. "Has he—does he care for you?" she asked presently +in that hurried voice.</p> + +<p>For the second time Corinna hesitated; and in that instant of +hesitation, she broke irrevocably with the past and with the iron rule +of tradition. She knew how her mother, how her grandmother, how all the +strong and quiet women of her race would have borne themselves in a +crisis like this—the implications and evasions which would have walled +them within the garden that was their world. Her mother, she realized, +would have been as incapable of facing the situation as she would have +been of creating it.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he cares for me," she answered frankly; and then, before the +terror that leaped into the eyes of the other woman, as if she longed to +turn and run out of the house, Corinna touched her gently on the +shoulder. "Don't look like that!" It was unendurable to her +compassionate heart that she should have brought that look into the eyes +of any living creature.</p> + +<p>She led Alice back to the chairs they had left; and when the servant +came in to turn on the softly shaded lamps, they sat there, facing each +other, in a silence which seemed to Corinna to be louder than any sound. +There was the noise of wonder in it, and tragedy, and something vaguely +menacing to which she could not give a name. It was fear, and yet it was +not fear because it was so much worse. Only the blank terror in Alice's +face, the terror of the woman who has lost hope, could express what it +meant. And this terror translated into sound asked presently:</p> + +<p>"Are—are you sure?"</p> + +<p>A wave of pity surged through Corinna's heart. Her strength became to +her something on which she could rest—which would not fail her; and +she understood why she had had to meet so many disappointments in life, +why she had had to bear so much that was almost unbearable. It was +because, however strong emotion was in her nature, there was always +something deep down in her that was stronger than any emotion. She had +been ruled not by passion but by law, by some clear moral discernment of +things as they ought to be; and this was why weak persons, or those who +were the prey to their own natures, leaned on her with all their weight. +In that instant of self-realization she knew that the refuge of the weak +would be for ever denied her, that she should always be alone because +she was strong enough to rely on her own spirit.</p> + +<p>"Before I answer your question," she said, "I must know if you have the +right to ask it."</p> + +<p>The wistful eyes grew bright again. How graceful she was, thought +Corinna as she watched her; and she knew that this woman, with her +clinging sweetness, like the sweetness of honeysuckle, and her shallow +violence of mood, could win the kind of love that had been denied to her +own royal beauty. This other woman was the ephemeral incarnate, the +thing for which men gave their lives. She was nothing; and therefore +every man would see in her the reflection of what he desired.</p> + +<p>"I have the right," she answered desperately, without pride and without +shame. "I had the right before I got my divorce—"</p> + +<p>"I understand," said Corinna, and her voice was scarcely more than a +breath. Though she did not withdraw the hand that the other had taken, +she looked away from her through the French window, into the garden +where the twilight was like the bloom on a grape. The fragrance became +suddenly intolerable. It seemed to her to be the scent not only of +spring, but of death also, the ghost of all the sweetness that she had +missed. "I shall never be able to bear the smell of spring again in my +life," she thought. She had made no movement of surprise or resentment, +for there was neither surprise nor resentment in her heart. There was +pain, which was less pain than a great sadness; and there was the +thought that she was very lonely; that she must always be lonely. Many +thoughts passed through her mind; but beyond them, stretching far away +into the future, she saw her own life like a deserted road filled with +dead leaves and the sound of distant voices that went by. She could +never find rest, she knew. Rest was the one thing that had been denied +her—rest and love. Her destiny was the destiny of the strong who must +give until they have nothing left, until their souls are stripped bare. +"He must have cared for you," she said at last. Oh, how empty words +were! How empty and futile!</p> + +<p>"He could never care again like that for any one else," replied Alice, +reaching out her hand as if she were pushing away an object she feared. +"Whatever he thinks now, he could never care that much again."</p> + +<p>Whatever he thinks now! A smile tinged with bitter knowledge flickered +on Corinna's lips for an instant. After all, how little, how very little +she knew of John Benham. She had seen the face he turned to the world; +she had seen the crude outside armour of his public conscience. A laugh +broke from her at the phrase because she remembered that Vetch had first +used it. This other woman had entered into the secret chamber, the +hidden places, of John Benham's life; she had been a part of the light +and darkness of his soul. To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his +dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the +discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, +had been overthrown. Certainly in their serene and sentimental +association she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of +that earlier passion. Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even +in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths +of his nature. It was Alice Rokeby—frightened, shallow, desperate, +deserted, whom he had loved.</p> + +<p>"What do you want?" she asked quietly. "What do you wish me to do?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know!" replied Alice. "I don't know. I haven't thought—but +there ought to be something. There ought to be something more permanent +than love for one to live by."</p> + +<p>In her anguish she had wrung a profound truth from experience; and as +soon as she had uttered it, she lifted her pale face and stared with +that mournful interrogation into the twilight. Something permanent to +live by! In the mute desperation of her look she appeared to be +searching the garden, the world, and the immense darkness of the sky, +for an answer. The afterglow had faded slowly into the blue dusk of +night; only a faint thread of gold still lingered beyond the cedars on +the western horizon. Something permanent and indestructible! Was this +what humanity had struggled for—had lived and fought and died +for—since man first came up out of the primeval jungle? Where could one +find unalterable peace if it were not high above the ebb and flow of +desire? She herself might break away from codes and customs; but she +could not break away from the strain of honour, of simple rectitude, +which was in her blood and had made her what she was.</p> + +<p>"Yes, there ought to be something. There is something," she said slowly. +Though her hand still clasped Alice Rokeby's, she was gazing beyond her +across the terrace into the garden. She thought of many things while she +sat there, with that look of clairvoyance, of radiant vision, in her +eyes. Of Alice Rokeby as a little girl in a white dress, with a blue +hair ribbon that would never stay tied; of John Benham when she had +played ball with him in her childhood; of Kent Page and that young love, +so poignant while it lasted, so utterly dead when it was over; of her +long, long search for perfection, for something that would not pass +away; of the brief pleasures and the vain expectations of life; of the +gray deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of voices far +off—Nothing but dead leaves and distant voices that went by! In spite +of her beauty, her brilliance, her gallant heart, this was what life had +brought to her at the end. Only loneliness and the courage of those who +have given always and never received.</p> + +<p>"There is something else," she said again. "There is courage." Then, as +the other woman made no reply, she went on more rapidly: "I will do what +I can. It is very little. I cannot change him. I cannot make him feel +again. But you can trust me. You are safe with me."</p> + +<p>"I know that," answered Alice in a voice that sounded muffled and husky. +"I have always known that." She rose and readjusted her veil. "That +means a great deal," she added. "Oh, I think it means that the world +has grown better!"</p> + +<p>Corinna stooped and kissed her. "No, it only means that some of us have +learned to live without happiness."</p> + +<p>She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the +steps and enter the small closed car in the drive. There was a touching +grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single +image all the women in the world who had lost hope. "Yet it is the weak, +the passive, who get what they want in the end," thought Corinna, as +dispassionately as if she were merely a spectator. "I suppose it is +because they need it more. They have never learned to do without. They +do not know how to carry a broken heart." Then she smiled as she turned +back into the house. "It is very late, and the only certain rules are +that one must dine and one must dress for dinner."</p> + +<p>A little later, when John Benham was announced and she came down to the +drawing-room, her first glance at his face told her that she must be +looking her best. She was wearing black, and beneath the white lock in +her dark hair, her face was flushed with the colour of happiness. Only +her eyes, velvet soft and as deep as a forest pool, had a haunted look.</p> + +<p>"I have never," he said, "seen you look better."</p> + +<p>She laughed. After all, one might permit a touch of coquetry in the +final renouncement! "Perhaps you have never really seen me before."</p> + +<p>Though he looked puzzled, he responded gaily: "On the contrary, I have +seen little else for the last two or three months."</p> + +<p>There was an edge of irony to her smile. "Were you looking at me or my +shadow?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head. "Are shadows ever as brilliant as that?"</p> + +<p>Then before she could answer the Judge came in with his cordial +outstretched hand and his air of humorous urbanity, as if he were too +much interested in the world to censure it, and yet too little +interested to take it seriously. His face, with its thin austere +features and its kindly expression, showed the dryness that comes less +from age than from quality. Benham, looking at him closely, thought, "He +must be well over eighty, but he hasn't changed so much as a hair of his +head in the last twenty years."</p> + +<p>At dinner Corinna was very gay; and her father, whose habit it was not +to inquire too deeply, observed only that she was looking remarkably +well. The dining-room was lighted by candles which flickered gently in +the breeze that rose and fell on the terrace. In this wavering +illumination innumerable little shadows, like ghosts of butterflies, +played over the faces of the two men, whose features were so much alike +and whose expressions differed so perversely. In both Nature had bred a +type; custom and tradition had moulded the plastic substance and refined +the edges; but, stronger than either custom or tradition, the individual +temperament, the inner spirit of each man, had cast the transforming +flame and shadow over the outward form. And now they were alike only in +their long, graceful figures, in their thin Roman features, in their +general air of urbane distinction.</p> + +<p>"We were talking at the club of the strike," said the Judge, who had +finished his soup with a manner of detachment, and sat now gazing +thoughtfully at his glass of sherry. "The opinion seems to be that it +depends upon Vetch."</p> + +<p>Benham's voice sounded slightly sardonical. "How can anything depend +upon a weathercock?"</p> + +<p>"Well, there's a chance, isn't there, that the weather may decide it?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. In the way that the Governor will find to his advantage." +Benham had leaned slightly forward, and his face looked very attractive +by the shimmering flame of the candles.</p> + +<p>"Isn't that the way most of us decide things," asked Corinna, "if we +know what is really to our advantage?"</p> + +<p>As Benham looked up he met her eyes. "In this case," he answered, with a +note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, "the +advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth +considering."</p> + +<p>For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, passed through +Corinna's mind. She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom, +"Oh, damn the public!"—but instead she remarked in the formal accents +her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkward impulses, "Isn't it +ridiculous that we can never get away from Gideon Vetch?"</p> + +<p>The Judge laughed softly. "He has a pushing manner," he returned; and +then, still curiously pursuing the subject: "Perhaps, he may get his +revenge at the meeting Thursday night."</p> + +<p>"Is there to be a meeting?" retorted Corinna indifferently. She was +thinking, "When John is eighty he will look like Father. I shall be +seventy-eight when he is eighty. All those years to live, and nothing +in them but little pleasures, little kindnesses, little plans and +ambitions. Charity boards and committee meetings and bridge. That is +what life is—just pretending that little things are important."</p> + +<p>"That's the strikers' meeting," the Judge was saying over his glass of +sherry. "The next one is John's idea. We hope to arbitrate. If we can +get Vetch interested there may be a settlement of some sort."</p> + +<p>"So it's Vetch again! Oh, I am getting so tired of the name of Gideon +Vetch!" laughed Corinna. And she thought, "If only I didn't have to play +on the flute all my life. If I could only stop playing dance music for a +little while, and break out into a funeral march!"</p> + +<p>"He has already agreed to come," said Benham, "but I expect nothing from +him. I have formed the habit of expecting nothing from Vetch."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," replied the Judge. "We may persuade him to stand +firm, if there hasn't been an understanding between him and those +people." The old gentleman always used the expression "those people" for +persons of whose opinions he disapproved.</p> + +<p>"You know what I think of Vetch," rejoined Benham, with a shrug.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Corinna, watching Benham with her thoughtful gaze, +that the subject would never change, that they would argue all +night over their foolish strike and their tiresome meeting, and +over what this Gideon Vetch might or might not do in some problematic +situation. What sentimentalists men were! They couldn't understand, +after the experience of a million years, that the only things +that really counted in life were human relations. They were obliged +to go on playing a game of bluff with their consecrated +superstitions—playing—playing—playing—and yet hiding behind some +graven image of authority which they had built out of stone. +Sentimental, yes, and pathetic too, when one thought of it with +patience.</p> + +<p>When dinner was over, and the Judge had gone to a concert in town, +Corinna's mockery fell from her, and she sat in a long silence watching +Benham's enjoyment of his cigar. It occurred to her that if he were +stripped of everything else, of love, of power, of ambition, he could +still find satisfaction in the masculine habit of living—in the simple +pleasures of which nothing except physical infirmity or extreme poverty +can ever deprive one. Moderate in all things, he was capable of taking a +serious pleasure in his meals, in his cigar, in a dip in a swimming +pool, or a game of cards at the club. Whatever happened, he would have +these things to fall back upon; and they would mean to him, she knew, +far more than they could ever, even in direst necessity, mean to a +woman.</p> + +<p>The long drawing-room, lighted with an amber glow and drenched with the +sweetness of honeysuckle, had grown very still. Outside in the garden +the twilight was powdered with silver, and above the tops of the cedars +a few stars were shining. A breeze came in softly, touching her cheek +like the wing of a moth and stirring the iris in a bowl by the window. +The flowers in the room were all white and purple, she observed with a +tremulous smile, as if the vivid colours had been drained from both her +life and her surroundings. "What a foolish fancy," she added, with a +nervous force that sent a current of energy through her veins. "My +heart isn't broken, and it will never be until I am dead!"</p> + +<p>And then, with that natural aptitude for facing facts, for looking at +life steadily and fearlessly, which had been born in a recoil from the +sentimental habit of mind, she said quietly, "John, Alice Rokeby came to +see me this afternoon."</p> + +<p>He started, and the ashes dropped from his cigar; but there was no +embarrassment in the level glance he raised to her eyes. Surprise there +was, and a puzzled interrogation, but of confusion or disquietude she +could find no trace.</p> + +<p>"Well?" he responded inquiringly, and that was all.</p> + +<p>"You used to care for her a great deal—once?"</p> + +<p>He appeared to ponder the question. "We were great friends," he +answered.</p> + +<p>Friends! The single word seemed to her to express not only his attitude +to Alice Rokeby, but his temperamental inability to call things by their +right names, to face facts, to follow a straight line of thought. Here +was the epitome of that evasive idealism which preferred shams to +realities.</p> + +<p>"Are you still friends?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head. "No, we've drifted apart in the last year or so. I +used," he said slowly, "to go there a great deal; but I've had so many +responsibilities of late that I've fallen into the habit of letting +other interests go in a measure."</p> + +<p>It was harder even than she had imagined it would be—harder because she +realized now that they did not speak the same language. She felt that +she had struck against something as dry and cold and impersonal as an +abstract principle. A ludicrous premonition assailed her that in a +little while he would begin to talk about his public duty. This lack of +genuine emotion, which had at first appeared to contradict his +sentimental point of view, was revealed to her suddenly as its supreme +justification. Because he felt nothing deeply he could afford to play +brilliantly with the names of emotions; because he had never suffered +his duty would always lie, as Gideon Vetch had once said of him, "in the +direction of things he could not hurt."</p> + +<p>"It is a pity," she said gently, "for she still cares for you."</p> + +<p>The hand that held his cigar trembled. She had penetrated his reserve at +last, and she saw a shadow which was not the shadow of the wind-blown +flowers, cross his features.</p> + +<p>"Did she tell you that?" he asked as gently as she had spoken.</p> + +<p>"There was no need to tell me. I saw it as soon as I looked at her."</p> + +<p>For a moment he was silent; then he said very quietly, as one whose +controlling motive was a hatred of excess, of unnecessary fussiness or +frankness: "I am sorry."</p> + +<p>"Have you stopped caring for her?"</p> + +<p>The shadow on his face changed into a look of perplexity. When he spoke, +she realized that he had mistaken her meaning; and for an instant her +heart beat wildly with resentment or apprehension.</p> + +<p>"I am fond of her. I shall always be fond of her," he said. "Does it +make any difference to you, my dear?"</p> + +<p>Yes, he had mistaken her meaning. He was judging her in the dim light of +an immemorial tradition; and he had seen in her anxious probing for +truth merely a personal jealousy. Women were like that, he would have +said, applying, in accordance with his mental custom, the general law to +the particular instance. After all, where could they meet? They were as +far divided in their outlook on life as if they had inhabited different +spiritual hemispheres. A curiosity seized her to know what was in his +mind, to sound the depths of that unfathomable reserve.</p> + +<p>"That is over so completely that I thought it would make no difference +to you," he added almost reproachfully, as if she, not he, were to be +blamed for dragging a disagreeable subject into the light.</p> + +<p>Fear stabbed Corinna's heart like a knife. "But she still loves you!" +she cried sharply.</p> + +<p>He flinched from the sharpness of her tone. "I am sorry," he said again; +but the words glided, with a perfunctory grace, on the surface of +emotion. Suppose that what he said was true, she told herself; suppose +that it was really "over"; suppose that she also recognized only the +egoist's view of duty—of the paramount duty to one's own inclinations; +suppose—"Oh, am I so different from him?" she thought, "why cannot I +also mistake the urging of desire for the command of conscience—or at +least call it that in my mind?" For a minute she struggled desperately +with the temptation; and in that minute it seemed to her that the face +of Alice Rokeby, with its look of wistful expectancy, of hungry +yearning, drifted past her in the twilight.</p> + +<p>"But is it obliged to be over?" she asked aloud. "I could never care as +she does. I have always been like that, and I can't change. I have +always been able to feel just so much and no more—to give just so much +and no more."</p> + +<p>He looked at her attentively, a little troubled, she could see, but not +deeply hurt, not hurt enough to break down the wall which protected the +secret—or was it the emptiness?—of his nature.</p> + +<p>"Has the knowledge of my—my old friendship for Mrs. Rokeby come between +us?" he asked slowly and earnestly.</p> + +<p>While he spoke it seemed to her that all that had been obscure in her +view of him rolled away like the mist in the garden, leaving the +structure of his being bare and stark to her critical gaze. Nothing +confused her now; nothing perplexed her in her knowledge of him. The old +sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy, returned; but she understood the +cause of it now; she saw with perfect clearness the defect from which it +had arisen. He had missed the best because, with every virtue of the +mind, he lacked the single one of the heart. Possessing every grace of +character except humanity, he had failed in life because this one gift +was absent.</p> + +<p>"All my life," she said brokenly, "I have tried to find something that I +could believe in—that I could keep faith with to the end. But what can +one build a world on except human relations—except relations between +men and women?"</p> + +<p>"You mean," he responded gravely, "that you think I have not kept faith +with Mrs. Rokeby?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, can't you see? If you would only try, you must surely see!" she +pleaded, with outstretched hands.</p> + +<p>He shook his head not in denial, but in bewilderment. "I realized that I +had made a mistake," he said slowly, "but I believed that I had put it +out of my life—that we had both put it out of our lives. There were so +many more important things—the war and coming face to face with death +in so many forms. Oh, I confess that what is important to you, appears +to me to be merely on the surface of life. I have been trying to fulfil +other responsibilities—to live up to the demands on me—I had got down +to realities—"</p> + +<p>A laugh broke from her lips, which had grown so stiff that they hurt her +when she tried to smile. "Realities!" she exclaimed, "and yet you must +have seen her face as I saw it to-day."</p> + +<p>For the third time, in that expressionless tone which covered a nervous +irritation, he repeated gravely, "I am sorry."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing more real," she went on presently, "there is nothing +more real than that look in the face of a living thing."</p> + +<p>For the first time her words seemed to reach him. He was trying with all +his might, she perceived, he was spiritually fumbling over the effort to +feel and to think what she expected of him. With his natural fairness he +was honestly struggling to see her point of view.</p> + +<p>"If it is really like that," he said, "What can I do?"</p> + +<p>All her life, it seemed to Corinna, she had been adjusting the +difficulties and smoothing out the destinies of other persons. All her +life she had been arranging some happiness that was not hers. To-night +it was the happiness of Alice Rokeby, an acquaintance merely, a woman to +whom she was profoundly indifferent, which lay in her hands.</p> + +<p>"There is something that you can do," she said lightly, obeying now that +instinct for things as they ought to be, for surface pleasantness, which +warred in her mind with her passion for truth. "You can go to see her +again."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<h3>CORINNA FACES LIFE</h3> + + +<p>AT nine o'clock the next morning Corinna came through the sunshine on +the flagged walk and got into her car. She was wearing her smartest +dress of blue serge and her gayest hat of a deep old red. Never had she +looked more radiant; never had she carried her glorious head with a more +triumphant air.</p> + +<p>"Stop first at Mrs. Rokeby's, William," she said to the chauffeur, "and +while I am there you may take this list to market."</p> + +<p>As the car rolled off, her eyes turned back lovingly to the serene +brightness of the garden into which she had infused her passion for +beauty and order and gracious living. Rain had fallen in the night, and +the glowing borders beyond the house shone like jewels in a casket. +Beneath the silvery blue of the sky each separate blade of grass +glistened as if an enchanter's wand had turned it to crystal. The birds +were busily searching for worms on the lawn; as the car passed a flash +of scarlet darted across the road; and above a clear shining puddle +clouds of yellow butterflies drifted like blown rose-leaves.</p> + +<p>"How beautiful everything is," thought Corinna. "Why isn't beauty +enough? Why does beauty without love turn to sadness?" Her head, which +had drooped for a moment, was lifted gallantly. "It ought to be enough +just to be alive and not hungry on a morning like this."</p> + +<p>The house in which Mrs. Rokeby lived appeared to Corinna, as she +entered it presently, to have given up hope as utterly as its mistress +had done. Though it was nearly ten o'clock, the front pavement had not +been swept, the hall was still dark, and a surprised coloured maid, in a +soiled apron, answered the doorbell.</p> + +<p>"Poor thing," thought, Corinna. "I always heard that she was a good +housekeeper. It is queer how soon one's state of mind passes into one's +surroundings. I wonder if unhappiness could ever make me so indifferent +to appearances?" To the maid, who knew her, she said, "I think Mrs. +Rokeby will see me if she is awake. It is only for a minute or two."</p> + +<p>Then she went into the drawing-room, where the shades were still down, +and stood looking at the furniture and the curtains which were powdered +with dust. On the table, where the books and photographs were +disarranged and a fancy box of chocolates lay with the top off, there +was a crystal vase of flowers; but the flowers were withered, and the +water smelt as if it had not been changed for a week. Over the +mantelpiece the long gilt-framed mirror reflected, through a gray film, +the darkened room with its forlorn disarrangement. The whole place had +the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very +odour of unhappiness.</p> + +<p>"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power +to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless +endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the +dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of +confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into +harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be. She +longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the +dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones. +She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, "to get her hands on +the room." If she could only change all this hopelessness into +happiness! If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the +semblance of peace! "It is just as well that all of us can't feel things +this much," she reflected.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Rokeby ain't dressed, but she says would you mind coming up?" The +maid, having attired herself in a clean apron and a crooked cap, stood +in the doorway. As Corinna followed her, she led the way up the narrow +stairs into the bedroom where Alice was waiting.</p> + +<p>"I thought you wouldn't be dressed," began Corinna cheerfully, "but it's +the only time I have free, and I wanted to see you this morning."</p> + +<p>"It is so good of you," responded Alice, putting out her hand. +"Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven't been well, and one of +the servants has gone to a funeral in the country."</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter," Corinna hesitated an instant, "only I wish you +would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs."</p> + +<p>"I haven't been in the room for a week," replied Alice, dropping back on +the couch as if her strength had failed her. "I don't seem to care about +the house or anything else."</p> + +<p>As soon as her surprise at Corinna's visit had faded, she sank again +into a listless attitude. Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation +died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of passive +tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never passive, feel that she should +like to shake her. Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked +under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy +features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint. Over her nightgown, she +had thrown on a Japanese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum +blossoms which looked wilted. Everything about her, Corinna thought, +looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been +stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit. To Corinna's energetic +temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid +resignation. "Un-happiness like this is contagious," she thought. "And +all because one man has ceased to love her! What utter folly!" Aloud she +said only, "I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance."</p> + +<p>"To-morrow? Oh, Corinna, I couldn't!"</p> + +<p>"Do you remember that blue dress—the one that is the colour of wild +hyacinths?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but I couldn't wear it again, and I haven't anything else."</p> + +<p>"Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is +becoming. You must look ethereal, and you must look happy. Men hate a +sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder +you, they resent your reproaching them."</p> + +<p>There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which +she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to +treat refractory circumstances is to bully them into submission. "If you +once let life get the better of you, you are lost," she said to herself.</p> + +<p>"You can't understand," Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes. +"You have always had what you wanted."</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed. "I am glad you see it that way," she rejoined, "but you +would be nearer the truth if you had said I'd always wanted what I had."</p> + +<p>"It seems to me that you've had everything."</p> + +<p>"Very likely. The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which +distance lends enchantment."</p> + +<p>"You mean that you haven't been happy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I've been happy. If I hadn't been, with all I've had, I should +be ashamed to admit it."</p> + +<p>But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence. She had pitied herself +so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the +lives of others. It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and +when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and +regret.</p> + +<p>"Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you," she said, "but +you were so brave, poor dear, that nobody suspected it until you were +separated."</p> + +<p>"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many +things in life for me besides marriage."</p> + +<p>"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a +submissive manner but a stubborn mind.</p> + +<p>Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation +there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite +of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your +place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by +mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it."</p> + +<p>"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of +despair.</p> + +<p>A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, +she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside +down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which +was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have +gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only +background that is appropriate to you."</p> + +<p>Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna +felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna," +she returned, "but you have so little sentiment."</p> + +<p>"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very +well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly +about the room, because the sight of that passive figure, wrapped in +wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You +can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you +are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be +a pretty one, or it is all over with you."</p> + +<p>The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility +over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've +lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important +point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't +cared so much, things might have been different."</p> + +<p>Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I +didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool +she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a +stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her +head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have +never been loved to desperation and then deserted."</p> + +<p>"No," responded Corinna, with the ripe judgment that is the fruit of +bitter experience, "but, if I were ever loved to desperation, I should +expect to be. Desperation does things like that."</p> + +<p>"You couldn't bear it any better than I can. No woman could."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not." Though Corinna's voice was flippant, there was a stern +expression on her beautiful face—the expression that Artemis might have +worn when she surveyed Aphrodite. "But I should never have been +deserted. I should have taken good care to prevent it."</p> + +<p>"I took care too," retorted Alice, with passion, "but I couldn't prevent +it."</p> + +<p>"Your measures were wrong. It is always safer to be on the side of the +active rather than the passive verb."</p> + +<p>With a careless movement, Corinna picked up her beaded bag, which she +had laid on the table, and turned to adjust her veil before the mirror. +"If you will let me manage your life for a little while," she observed, +with an appreciative glance at the daring angle of the red hat, "I may +be able to do something with it, for I am a practical person as well as +a capable manager. Father calls me, you know, the repairer of +destinies."</p> + +<p>"If I thought it would do any good, I'd go to the ball with you," said +Alice eagerly, while a delicate colour stained the wan pallor of her +face.</p> + +<p>"Do you really think," asked Corinna brightly, "that John, able +politician though he is, is worth all that trouble?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, it isn't just John," moaned Alice; "it is everything."</p> + +<p>"Well, if I am going to repair your destiny, I must do it in my own +practical way. For a time at least we will let sentiment go and get down +to facts. As long as you haven't much sense, it is necessary for you to +make yourself as pretty as possible, for only intelligent women can +afford to take liberties with their appearances. The first step must be +to buy a hat that is full of hope as soon as you can. Oh, I don't mean +anything jaunty or frivolous; but it must be a hat that can look the +world in the face."</p> + +<p>A keen interest awoke in Alice's eyes, and she looked immediately +younger. "If I can find one, I'll buy it," she answered. "I'll get +dressed in a little while and go out."</p> + +<p>"And remember the hyacinth-blue dress. Have it made fresh for +to-morrow." Turning in the doorway, Corinna continued with humorous +vivacity, "There is only one little thing we must forget, and that is +love. The less said about it the better; but you may take it on my +authority that love can always be revived by heroic treatment. If John +ever really loved you, and you follow my advice, he will love you +again."</p> + +<p>With a little song on her lips, and her gallant head in the red hat +raised to the sunlight, she went out of the house and down the steps +into her car. "Fools are very exhausting," she thought, as she bowed to +a passing acquaintance, "but I think that she will be cured." Then, at +the sight of Stephen leaving the Culpeper house, she leaned out and +waved to him to join her.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy, how late you are!" she exclaimed, when the car had stopped +and he got in beside her.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I am late." He looked tired and thoughtful. "I stopped to have a +talk with Mother, and she kept me longer than I realized."</p> + +<p>"Is anything wrong?"</p> + +<p>He set his lips tightly. "No, nothing more than usual."</p> + +<p>Corinna gazed up at the blue sky and the sunlight. Why wouldn't people +be happy? Why were they obliged to cause so much unnecessary discomfort? +Why did they persist in creating confusion?</p> + +<p>"Well, I hope you are coming to the dance to-morrow night," she said +cheerfully.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Mother has asked me to take Margaret Blair."</p> + +<p>"I am glad. Margaret is a nice girl. I am going to take Patty Vetch."</p> + +<p>He started, and though she was not looking at him, she knew that his +face grew pale. "Don't you think she will look lovely, just like a +mermaid, in green and silver?" she asked lightly.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he answered stiffly. "I am trying not to think about +her."</p> + +<p>Corinna laughed. "Oh, my dear, just wait until you see her in that +sea-green gown!"</p> + +<p>That he was caught fast in the web of the tribal instinct, Corinna +realized as perfectly as if she had seen the net closing visibly round +him. Though she was unaware of the blow Patty had dealt him, she felt +his inner struggle through that magical sixth sense which is the gift +of the understanding heart, of the heart that has outgrown the shell of +the personal point of view. If he would only for once break free from +artificial restraints! If he would only let himself be swept into +something that was larger than his own limitations!</p> + +<p>"I am very fond of Patty," she said. "The more I see of her, the finer I +think she is."</p> + +<p>His lips did not relax. "There is a great deal of talk at the club about +the Governor."</p> + +<p>"Oh, this strike of course! What do they say?"</p> + +<p>"A dozen different things. Nobody knows exactly how to take him."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if we have ever understood him," said Corinna, a little sadly. +"I sometimes think—" Then she broke off hurriedly. "No, don't get out, +I'll take you down to your office. I sometimes think," she resumed, +"that none of us see him as he really is because we see him through a +veil of prejudice, or if you like it better, of sentiment—"</p> + +<p>Stephen laughed without mirth. "I don't like it better. I'd like to get +into a world—or at least I feel this morning that I'd like to get into +a world where one was obliged to face nothing softer than a fact—"</p> + +<p>Corinna looked at him tenderly. She had a sincere, though not a very +deep affection, for Stephen, and she felt that she should like to help +him, as long as helping him did not necessitate any emotional effort. +"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked gently, "that the trouble with +you, after all, is simply lack of courage?" At the start he gave, she +continued hastily, "Oh, I don't mean physical courage of course. I do +not doubt that you were as brave as a lion when it came to meeting the +Germans. But there are times when life is more terrible than the +Germans! And yet the only courage we have ever glorified is brute +courage—the courage of the lion. I know that you could face machine +guns and bayonets and all the horrors of war; but it seems to me that +you have never had really the courage of living—that you have always +been a little afraid of life."</p> + +<p>For a long while he did not answer. His eyes were on the sky; and she +watched the expression of irritation, amazement, dread, perplexity, and +shocked comprehension, pass slowly over his features. "By Jove, I've got +a feeling that you may be right," he said at last. "You probed the +wound, and it hurt for a minute; but it may heal all the quicker for +that. You've put the whole rotten business into a nutshell. I'm a coward +at bottom, that's the trouble with me. Oh, like you, of course, I'm not +talking about actual dangers. They are easy enough, for one can see them +coming. It's not fear of the Germans. It's fear of something that one +can't touch or feel—that doesn't even exist—the fear of one's +imagination. But the truth is that I've funked things for the last year +or so. I've been in a chronic blue funk about living."</p> + +<p>She smiled at him brightly. "It is like a bit of thistle-down. Bring it +out into the air and sunlight, and it will blow away."</p> + +<p>"I wonder if you're right. Already I feel better because I've told you; +and yet I've gone in terror lest my mother should discover it."</p> + +<p>When she spoke again she changed the subject as lightly as if they had +been discussing the weather. "You used to be interested in public +matters. Do you remember how you talked to me in your college days +about outstripping John in the race? You were full of ideas then, and +full of ambition too." She was touching a string that had never failed +her yet, and she waited, with an inscrutable smile, for the response.</p> + +<p>"I know," he answered, "but that was in another life—that was before +the war."</p> + +<p>"Do those ideas never come back to you? Have you lost your ambition?"</p> + +<p>"I can't tell. I sometimes think that it died in France. I got to feel +over there that these political issues were merely local and temporary. +Often, the greater part of the time, I suppose, I feel like that now. +Then suddenly all my old ambition comes back in a spurt, and for a +little while I think I am cured. While that lasts I am as eager, as full +of interest, as I used to be. But it dies down as suddenly as it sprang +up, and the reaction is only indifference and lassitude. I seem to have +lost the power to keep a single state of mind, or even an interest."</p> + +<p>"But do you ever think seriously of the part you might take in this +town?"</p> + +<p>The look of immobility passed from his face; his eyes grew warmer, and +it seemed to her that he became more alive and more human. "Oh, I think +a great deal. My ideas have changed too." He was talking rapidly and +without connection. "I am not the same man that I was a few years ago. I +may be wrong, but I feel that I've got down to a firmer basis—a basis +of facts." Then he turned to her impulsively, "I wouldn't say this to +any one else, Corinna, because no one else would understand what I +mean—but I've learned a good deal from Gideon Vetch."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" Her eyes were smiling. "I think I know what you mean."</p> + +<p>"Of course you know. But imagine Father! He would think, if I told him, +that it was a symptom of mental derangement—that some German shell had +left a permanent dent in my brain."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. Yet I am not sure that you understand your father. I think he +is more like you than you fancy; that if you once pierced his reserve, +you would find him a sentimentalist at heart. There is your office," she +added, "but you must not get out now. We will turn back for a quarter of +an hour." She spoke to the chauffeur, and then said to Stephen, with a +sensation of unutterable relief, "a quarter of an hour won't make any +difference at the office to-day."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps not when I've lost three hours already. I sometimes think they +would never notice it if I stayed away all the time. But what I mean +about Vetch is simply that he has set me thinking. He does that, you +know. Oh, I admit that he is mistaken—or downright wrong—in a number +of ways! He is too sensational for our taste—too flamboyant; but one +can't get away from him. He has shaken the dust from us; he has jolted +us into movement. I have a feeling somehow that his personality is +spread all over the place—that we are smeared with Gideon Vetch, as the +darkeys would say."</p> + +<p>He was already a different Stephen from the one who had got into her car +an hour ago, and she breathed a secret prayer of thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>"I think even John feels that now and then," she said, and a moment +afterward, "Is it possible, do you suppose, that we shall find when it +is too late that this Gideon Vetch is the stone that the builders +rejected? A ridiculous fancy, and yet who knows, it might turn out to be +true. Stranger things have happened than that!"</p> + +<p>"It may be. One never can tell." Then he laughed with tolerant +affection. "I've found out the trouble with John."</p> + +<p>"The trouble with John?" Her voice trembled.</p> + +<p>"Yes, the trouble with John is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is +trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton—to build the world +over on a skull and cross-bones—and it can't be done. I admire John as +much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch +is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John +needs to make him complete."</p> + +<p>She nodded. "I know. You mean feeling?"</p> + +<p>"Human sympathy—the sympathy that means imagination and insight. That +is the only power that Vetch has, but, by Jove, it is the greatest of +all! It is the spirit that comprehends, that reconciles, and recreates. +Both Vetch and John have failed, I think; Vetch for want of education, +system, method, and John because, having all this essential framework, +he still lacked the blood and fibre of humanity. In its essence, I +suppose it is a difference of principle, the old familiar struggle +between the romantic and the realistic temperament, which divides in +politics into the progressive and the conservative forces. There is +nothing in history, I learned that at college, except the war between +these two irreconcilable spirits. Irreconcilable, they call them, and +yet I wonder, I wonder more and more, if this is not a misinterpretation +of history? It seems to me that the leader of the future, even in so +small a community as this one, must be big enough to combine opposite +elements; that he must take the good where he finds it; that he must +vitalize tradition and discipline progress—"</p> + +<p>"You mean that he must accept both the past and the future?" While her +heart craved the substance of truth, she dispensed platitudes with a +benevolent air.</p> + +<p>"How can it be otherwise? That, it seems to me, is the only logical way +out of the muddle. The difficulty, of course, is to remain +practical—not to let the vision run away with one. It will require +moderation, which Vetch has not, and adaptability, which John has never +learned."</p> + +<p>"And never will learn," rejoined Corinna. "He is made of the mettle that +breaks but does not bend."</p> + +<p>"Like my father; like all those who have petrified in the shape of a +convention. And yet the new stuff—the ideas that haven't turned to +stone—are full of froth—they splash over. Take Vetch and this strike, +for instance. I myself believe that he wants to do the right thing, to +protect the public at any cost; but he has gone too far; he has splashed +over the dividing line between principle and expediency. Will he be able +to stand firm at the last?"</p> + +<p>"Father says there is to be a meeting Thursday night."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and he'll be obliged to come to some decision then, or at least to +drop a hint as to the line he intends to pursue. I am afraid there will +be trouble either way."</p> + +<p>"The Governor shows the strain," said Corinna. "I saw him yesterday."</p> + +<p>"How can he help it? He has got himself into a tight place. Oh, there +are times when temporizing is more dangerous than action! It's hard to +see how he'll get out of it unless he cuts a way, and if he does that, +he'll probably lose the strongest support he has ever had."</p> + +<p>Stephen's face was transfigured now. It had lost the look of dryness, of +apathy; and she watched the glow of health shine again in his eyes as it +used to shine when he was at college. So it was not emotion that was to +restore him! It was the ancient masculine delusion, as invulnerable as +truth, that the impersonal interests are the significant ones. Well, she +was not quarrelling with delusions as long as they were beneficent! And +since it was impossible for her fervent soul to care greatly for general +principles, or to dwell long among impersonal forms of thought, she +found herself regarding this public crisis, less as a warfare of +political theories, than as a possible cure for Stephen's condition. For +the rest, except for their results, beneficial or otherwise, to the +individual citizen, problems of government interested her not at all. +The whole trouble with life seemed to her to rise, not from mistaken +theory, but from the lack of consideration with which human beings +treated one another. Happiness, after all, depended so little upon +opinions and so much upon manners.</p> + +<p>"Throw yourself into this work, Stephen," she urged. "It is a splendid +opportunity."</p> + +<p>He smiled at her in the old boyish way. "An opportunity for what?"</p> + +<p>"For—" It was on the tip of her tongue to say "for health"; but she +checked herself, remembering the incurable distaste men have for +calling things by their right names, and replied instead, "an +opportunity for usefulness."</p> + +<p>His smile faded, and he turned on her eyes that were almost melancholy, +though the fire of animation still warmed them. "I am interested now. I +care a great deal—but will it last? Haven't I felt this way a hundred +times in the last six months, only to grow indifferent and even bored +within the next few hours?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him closely. "Isn't there any feeling—any interest that +lasts with you?"</p> + +<p>He hesitated, while a burning colour, like the flush of fever, swept up +to his forehead. "Only one, and I am trying to get over that," he +answered after a moment.</p> + +<p>"If it is a genuine feeling, are you wise to get over it?" she asked. +"Genuine feeling is so rare. I think if I could feel an overwhelming +emotion, I should hug it to my heart as the most precious of gifts."</p> + +<p>"Even if everything were against it?"</p> + +<p>Her head went up with a dauntless gesture. "Oh, my dear, what is +everything?" It was a changed voice from the one in which she had +lectured Alice Rokeby an hour ago. "Feeling is everything."</p> + +<p>"It is real," he replied, looking away from her eyes. "I am sure of that +because I have struggled against it. I can't explain what it is; I don't +know what it was that made me care in the beginning. All I know about it +is that it seems to give me back myself. It is only when I let myself go +in the thought of it that I become really free. Can you understand what +I mean?"</p> + +<p>"I can," assented Corinna softly; and though she smiled there was a mist +over her eyes which made the world appear iridescent. "Oh, my dear, it +is the only way. Throw away everything else—every cause, every +conviction, every interest—but keep that one open door into reality."</p> + +<p>The car stopped before his office, and she held out her hand. "I shall +see you to-morrow night?"</p> + +<p>He glanced back merrily from the pavement. "Do you think I shall let you +escape me?" Then he turned away and went, with a firm and energetic +step, into the building, while Corinna took out her shopping list and +studied it thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"Back to the shop," she said at last. "I have had enough for one +morning." As the car started up the street, a smile stirred her lips, "I +shall have three unhappy lovers on my hands for the dance to-morrow." +Then she laughed softly, with a very real sense of humour, "If I am +going to sacrifice myself, I may as well do it in the grand manner," she +thought, for Corinna had a royal soul.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<h3>DANCE MUSIC</h3> + + +<p>At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Culpeper observed, with maternal +solicitude, that Stephen was looking more cheerful. While she poured his +coffee, with one eye on the fine old coffee pot and one on the animated +face of her son, she reflected that he appeared to have come at last to +his senses. "If he would only stop all this folly and settle down," she +thought. "Surely it is quite time now for him to become normal again." +As she looked at him her expression softened, in spite of her general +attitude of disapprobation, and the sharp brightness of her eyes gave +place to humid tenderness. Of all her children he had long been her +favourite, for the reason, perhaps, that he was the only one who had +ever caused her any anxiety; and though she would have gone to the stake +cheerfully for all and each of them, there would have been a keener edge +to the martyrdom she suffered in Stephen's behalf.</p> + +<p>"Be sure and make a good breakfast, Mr. Culpeper," she urged, glancing +down the table to where her husband was dividing his attention between +the morning paper and his oatmeal. "My poor father used to say that if +he didn't make a good breakfast he felt it all day long."</p> + +<p>"He was right, my dear. I have no doubt that he was right," replied Mr. +Culpeper, in the tone of solemn sentiment which he reserved for +deceased parents. Though he was dyspeptic by constitution, and inclined +to gout and other bodily infirmities, he applied himself philosophically +to a heavy breakfast such as his wife's father had enjoyed.</p> + +<p>"Stephen is looking so well this morning," remarked Mrs. Culpeper in a +sprightly voice. "He has quite a colour."</p> + +<p>Mr. Culpeper rolled his large brown eyes, as handsome and as opaque as +chestnuts, in the direction of his son. Though he would never have +observed the improvement unless his wife had called his attention to it, +his kind heart was honestly relieved to discover that Stephen looked +better. He had worried a good deal in his sluggish way over what he +thought of as "the effect of the war" on his son. With the strong +paternal instinct which beheld every child as a branch on a genealogical +tree, he had been as much disturbed as his wife by the gossip which had +reached him about the daughter of Gideon Vetch.</p> + +<p>"Feeling all right, my boy?" he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent +anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasperated Stephen +so profoundly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, first rate," responded the young man lightly. "Is there anything +you would like me to help you about?"</p> + +<p>"No, there's nothing I can't attend to myself—" Mr. Culpeper had begun +to reply, when catching sight of his wife's frowning face, he continued +hurriedly: "Unless you would care to glance over that deed about those +lots of your mother's?"</p> + +<p>Stephen smiled, for he had seen the warning change in his mother's +expression, and he was thinking that she was still a remarkably pretty +woman. "With pleasure," he returned. "I shall be busy all day, but I'll +look it over to-morrow. To-night I am going to the Harrisons' dance."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're going!" exclaimed Mary Byrd, who had come in late and was +just taking her seat. "I suppose Mother is making you take Margaret +Blair?"</p> + +<p>Again Mrs. Culpeper made a vague frowning movement of her eyebrows and +gently shook her head; but the gesture of disapproval to which her +husband had responded obediently was entirely wasted upon her youngest +daughter. "You needn't shake your head at me, Mother," she remarked +lightly. "Of course I know you are making him take her when he would +rather a hundred times go with Patty Vetch."</p> + +<p>The frown on Mrs. Culpeper's face turned to a look of panic. "Mary Byrd, +you are impossible," she said sternly.</p> + +<p>"I saw Cousin Corinna yesterday," observed Victoria indiscreetly. "She +is going to take Patty Vetch."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Culpeper said nothing, but her fine black brows drew ominously +together. She had worked so busily over the coffee urn and the sugar +bowl that she had not had time to eat her breakfast, and the oatmeal in +the plate before her had grown stiff and cold before she tasted it. When +Stephen stooped to kiss her cheek before going out, she looked up at him +with a proud and admiring glance. "I hope you remembered to order +flowers for Margaret?"</p> + +<p>He laughed. It was so characteristic of her to feel that even his love +affairs must be managed! "Yes, I ordered gardenias. Is that right?"</p> + +<p>When she nodded amiably, he turned away and went out into the hall, +where he found his father waiting. "I wanted to see you a minute without +your mother," explained Mr. Culpeper, in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to subdue it to a whisper. "It's just as well, I think, +that your mother shouldn't know that I'm having those houses you looked +at attended to."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are!" returned Stephen, with a curious mixture of thankfulness +and humility. So the old chap was the best sport of them all! In his +slow way he had accomplished what Stephen had merely talked about. For +the first time it occurred to the young man that his father was not by +any means so obvious or so simple as he had believed him to be. Had +Corinna spoken the truth when she called him a sentimentalist at heart?</p> + +<p>"It's better not to mention it before your mother," Mr. Culpeper was +saying huskily, while Stephen wondered. "She's the kindest heart in the +world. There isn't a better woman on earth; but she'd always think the +money ought to go to one of the married children. She couldn't +understand that it's good business to keep up the property. Women have +queer ideas about business."</p> + +<p>"Well, you're a brick, Father!" exclaimed the young man, and he meant it +from his heart. His voice trembled, and he put his hand on his father's +arm for a minute as he used to do when he was a child. Words wouldn't +come to him; but he was deeply touched, and it seemed to him that the +barrier which had divided him from his family had suddenly fallen. Never +since his return from France had he felt so near to his father as he +felt at that moment.</p> + +<p>"Well, well, I thought you'd like to know," rejoined Mr. Culpeper, and +his voice also shook a little. "I must be getting down town now. May I +take you in my car?"</p> + +<p>"No, I rather like the walk, sir. It does me good." Then, without a word +more, but with a smile of sympathy and understanding, they parted, and +Stephen went out of the house and descended the steps to the street.</p> + +<p>It was true, as his mother had observed, that he was happier to-day than +he had been for weeks; but this happiness was founded upon what Mrs. +Culpeper would have regarded as the most reprehensible of deceptions. He +was happier simply because, in spite of everything he had done to +prevent it, Fate had decreed that he was soon to see Patty again. The +longing of the past few weeks was to be appeased, if only for an hour, +and he was to see her again! He did not look beyond the coming night. He +did not attempt to analyse either his motive or his emotions. The future +was still obscure; life was still evolving its inscrutable problem; but +it was enough for him, at the moment, to know that he should see her +again. And this certainty, coming after the hungry pain of the last +three weeks, brought a glow to his eyes and that haunting smile, like +the smile of memory, to his lips.</p> + +<p>The light that Corinna had kindled illumined not a political career, but +the small vivid image of Patty. Wherever he looked he saw her flitting +ahead of him, a figure painted on sunlight. He had never found her so +desirable as in those few days since he had irrevocably given her up. +His self-denial, his vain endeavours to avoid her and forget her, seemed +merely to have poured themselves into the deep rebellious longing of his +heart. He lived always now in that hidden country of the mind, where +the winds blew free and strong and the sun never set on the endless +roads and the far horizon.</p> + +<p>And yet, so inexplicable are the laws of the mind, this escape from the +tyranny of convention, from the irksome round of practical details, +recoiled perversely into an increased joy of living. Because he could +escape at will from the routine, he no longer dreaded to return to it. +The light which irradiated the image of Patty transfigured the events +and circumstances amid which he moved. It shed its glory over external +incidents as well as into the loneliest vacancy, the deserted places, of +his being. Everything around and within him, the very youth in his soul, +became more intense in the hours when he allowed this emotion to assume +control of his thoughts. Just to be alive, that was enough! Just to be +free again from the sensation of stifling in trivial things, of +suffocating in the monotony which rushed over one like a torrent of +ashes. Just to escape with Patty into that wild kingdom of the mind +where the sun never set!</p> + +<p>When he returned home that evening, his mother met him as he entered the +hall, and followed him upstairs.</p> + +<p>"It is a beautiful evening for the dance, dear. They are having the +garden illuminated."</p> + +<p>Though he smiled back at her, his smile had that dreamy remoteness, that +look of meaning more than it revealed, which was bewildering to an acute +and practical intelligence. From long and intimate association with her +husband, Mrs. Culpeper was accustomed to dealing with ponderous barriers +to knowledge; but this plastic and variable substance of Stephen's +resistance, gave her an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. Even when +her son acquiesced, as he did usually in her demands, she suspected that +his acquiescence was merely on the surface, that in the depths of his +mind he was, as she said to herself resentfully, "holding something +back."</p> + +<p>"Margaret is looking so sweet," she began in her smoothest tone. "Of +course she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is, but, in her quiet way, +she is very handsome."</p> + +<p>"No, she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is," conceded Stephen, so +pleasantly that she realized he was repeating parrot-like the phrase she +had uttered. His thoughts were somewhere else, she observed bitterly; it +was perfectly evident that he was not paying the slightest attention to +anything that she said.</p> + +<p>"You must use your father's car," she remarked, as amiably as before. +"It is better to have a chauffeur, and Mary Byrd is going with Willy +Tarleton."</p> + +<p>"And the other girls?" he asked, for her words appeared at last to have +penetrated the haze that enveloped his mind.</p> + +<p>"Harriet is spending the night with Lily Whittle, and she will go from +there. Of course Victoria has given up dancing since she came home from +France, and poor Janet stopped going to parties the year she came out."</p> + +<p>This pitiless maternal classification of Janet aroused his amusement. +"Well, I'd be glad to take Janet anywhere, even if her nose is a little +longer than Mary Byrd's," he retorted. "She's the jolliest of the lot, +and she seems to me very well contented as she is."</p> + +<p>"Oh, she is," assented his mother eagerly. "I always tell her that her +disposition is worth a fortune; and she has a very good figure too. But, +of course, a pretty face is the most important thing before marriage and +the least important thing afterward," she added shrewdly, as she left +him at his door.</p> + +<p>In a dream he dressed himself and went down to the dining-room; in a +dream he sat through the slow ceremonious supper; in a dream he got into +his father's car; and in a dream he stopped for Margaret and drove on +again with her fragrant presence beside him. When he entered the +glaring, profusely decorated house of the Harrisons, he felt that he was +still only half awake to the actuality.</p> + +<p>The May night was as warm as summer, and swinging garlands of ferns and +peonies concealed electric fans which were suspended from the ceiling. +In the midst of the strong wind of the whirring fans, the dancers in the +two long drawing-rooms appeared to be blown violently in circles and +eddies, like coloured leaves in a high wind. For a few minutes after +Stephen had entered, the rooms seemed to him merely a brilliant haze, +where the revolving figures appeared and vanished like the colours of a +kaleidoscope. Near the door he became aware of the resplendent form of +his hostess, stationed appropriately against a background of peonies; +and after she had greeted him with absent-minded cordiality, he passed +with Margaret in the direction of the thundering sounds which came from +the bank of ferns behind which the musicians were hidden.</p> + +<p>"Shall we try this?" he shouted into Margaret's ear.</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "It's one of those horrid new things." Her high, +clear tones pierced the din like the music of a flute. "Let's wait until +they play something nice. I hate jazz."</p> + +<p>She was looking very pretty in a dress like a white cloud, with garlands +of tiny rosebuds on the skirt; and he thought, as he looked at her, that +if she had only been a trifle less fastidious and refined, she might +easily have won the reputation of a beauty. Nothing but a delicate +superiority to the age in which she had been born, stood in the way of +her success. Sixty years ago, in modest crinolines, she might have made +history; and duels would probably have been fought for her favour. But +other times, other tastes, he reflected.</p> + +<p>For the rest of the dance, they sat sedately between two bay-trees in +green tubs that occupied a corner of the room. Then "something nicer" +started,—a concession to Mrs. Harrison's mother, who shared Margaret's +disapproval of jazz,—and Stephen and Margaret drifted slowly out among +the revolving couples. After the third dance, relief appeared in the +person of the young clergyman, who had come to look on; and leaving +Margaret with him between the bay-trees, Stephen started eagerly to +search for Patty where the dancers were thickest.</p> + +<p>Across the room, he had already caught a glimpse of Corinna, in a +queenly gown of white and silver brocade. She had stopped dancing now; +and standing between Alice Rokeby and John Benham, she was glancing +brightly about her, while she waved slowly a fan of white ostrich +plumes. Among all these fresh young girls, she could easily hold her +own, not because of her beauty, but because of that deeper fascination +which she shed like a light or a perfume. She had the something more +than beauty which these girls lacked and could never acquire—a +legendary enchantment, the air of romance. Was this the result, he +wondered now, of what she had missed in life rather than of what she had +attained? Was it because she had never lived completely, because she had +preferred the dream to the event, because she had desired and refrained, +because she had missed both enchantment and disenchantment—was it +because of the profound inadequacy of experience, that she had been able +to keep undimmed the glow of her loveliness? It was not that she looked +young, he realized while he watched her, but that she looked ageless and +immortal, a creature of the spirit. While he gazed at her across the +violent whirl of colours in the ballroom, he remembered the evening star +shining silver white in the afterglow. Perhaps, who could tell, she may +have had the best that life had to give?</p> + +<p>Making his way, with difficulty, through the throng, he followed +Corinna's protecting gaze, until he saw that it rested on Alice Rokeby, +who was wearing a dress that reminded him of wild hyacinths. For a +moment, the sight of this other woman's face, with its soft, hungry +eyes, and its expression of passive and unresisting sweetness, gave him +a start of surprise; and he found himself knocking awkwardly against one +of the dancers. Something had happened to her! Something had restored, +if only for an evening, the peculiar grace, the appealing prettiness, +too trivial and indefinite for beauty, which he recalled vividly now, +though for the last year or two he had almost forgotten that she ever +possessed it. Yes, something had changed her. She looked to-night as she +used to look before he went away, with a faint flush over her whole +face and those soft flower-like eyes, lifted admiringly to some man, to +any man except Herbert Rokeby. Then, as he disentangled himself from the +whirl, and went toward Corinna, she came a step or two forward, and left +John Benham and Alice Rokeby together.</p> + +<p>"Everything is going well," she said; and he noticed, for the first +time, that her charming smile was tinged with irony, as if the humour of +the show, not the drama, were holding her attention. "I am having a +beautiful time."</p> + +<p>He glanced over her shoulder. "What have you done to Mrs. Rokeby?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head, with a laugh which, he surmised sympathetically, was +less merry than it sounded. "That is my secret. I have a magic you +know—but she looks well, doesn't she? I did her hair myself. If you +could have seen the way she had it arranged! That dress is very +becoming, I think, it makes her eyes look like frosted violets. Her +appearance is a success—but 'More brain, O Lord, more brain'!"</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose that type will ever pass?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She met his inquiring look with eyes that were golden in the coloured +light. "Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs +on which to hang their sentiments? Alice and her kind will always be +convenient substitutes for a man's admiration of himself."</p> + +<p>"Which he calls love, you think?"</p> + +<p>"Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him. +Have you seen Patty?"</p> + +<p>Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was +approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile +at Stephen, she floated off in the dance. Was she really as happy as she +looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more?</p> + +<p>He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes +eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular +visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was +eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had +brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience. Once or twice +in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood +when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France +after he had come out of the trenches. Now it was so vivid that it +brought with it a sensation of fear, as if happiness itself were +escaping his pursuit. He felt that his heart was burning with +impatience, and there was a persistent hammering in his ears as if he +had been running. What finding her would mean, what the future would +bring, he did not know, he did not even seek to discover. All he +understood was that the old indifference, the old apathy, the old +subjective, tormenting egoism, had given place to a consuming interest, +an impassioned delight. He felt only that he was thirsty for life, and +that he must drink deep to be satisfied.</p> + +<p>Then, suddenly, it seemed to him that the music grew softer and slower, +and the wind-blown throng faded from him into a rosy haze. From the +centre of the room, borne round and round like a flower on a stream, he +saw her face and her romantic eyes looking at him with a deep expectancy +that brought a pang to his heart. Her head was thrown back; the short +black hair blew about her like mist; and her cheeks and lips were +glowing with geranium red. At that instant she was not only the girl he +loved—she was youth and spring and adventure.</p> + +<p>The impatience had died now; the burning of his heart was cooled; and +life had grown miraculously simple and easy. He knew at last what he +wanted. His strength of purpose, his will to live had returned to him; +and he felt that he was cured; that he was completely himself for the +first time since his return. The dark depression, the shadows of the +prison, were behind him now. Straight ahead were the roads of that +hidden country, and for the first time he saw them flushed with an April +bloom.</p> + +<p>Then the music stopped; the throng scattered; and she came toward him +with a tall young man, very slim and nimble, whose name was Willy +Tarleton. In her dress of green and silver, with a wreath of leaves in +her hair, she reminded him again of a flower, but of a flower of foam. +As he held out his hand the dance began again; Willy Tarleton vanished +into air; and Patty stood looking at him in silence. After the tumult of +his impatience, it seemed to him that when they met, they must speak +words of profound significance; but all he said was,</p> + +<p>"It is so warm in here. Will you come out on the porch?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "I thought you were with Miss Blair?"</p> + +<p>"I am—I was—but I must speak to you before I go back. Come on the +porch where it is so much quieter."</p> + +<p>The deep expectancy was still in her eyes. "I have promised every dance. +Mrs. Page saw that my card was filled in the beginning. Why don't you +ask some of the girls who haven't any partners? It is so dreadful for +them. If men only knew!"</p> + +<p>"I don't know, and I don't care. I want you. If you will come on the +porch for just three minutes—"</p> + +<p>"Yes, it is quieter," she assented, and passed, with a dancing step, +through the French window out on the long porch which was hung with +Chinese lanterns. Beyond was the wide lawn, suffused with a light that +was the colour of amethyst, and beyond the lawn there was a narrow view +of Franklin Street, where the flashing lamps of motor cars went by, or +shadowy figures moved for a little space in obscurity. From this other +world, now and then, the sharp sound of a motor horn punctuated the +monotonous rhythm of the music within the house; while under the Chinese +lanterns, where the shadows of the poplar leaves trembled like flowers, +the struggle in Stephen's heart came to an end—the struggle between +tradition and life, between the knowledge of things as they are and the +vision of things as they ought to be, between the conservative and the +progressive principle in nature. After the long insensibility, spring +was having her way with him, as she was having it with the grass and the +flowers and the bloom on the trees. It was one of those moments of +awakening, of ecstatic vision, which come only to introspective and +imaginative minds—to minds that have known darkness as well as light. +In that instant of realization, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he stood +not for the past, but for the future, that he stood not for philosophy, +but for adventure—for the will to be and to dare. He would choose, once +for all, to take the risk of happiness; to conquer inch by inch a little +more of the romantic wilderness of wonder and delight. While he stood +there, looking down into her eyes, these impressions came to him less +in words than in a glorious sense of youth, of power, of security of +spirit.</p> + +<p>"I looked for you so long," he said, and then breathlessly, as if he +feared lest she might escape him, "Oh, Patty, I love you!"</p> + +<p>Before she could reply, before he could repeat the words that drummed in +his brain, the door into the present swung open, and the dream world, +with its flower-like shadows and its violet dusk, vanished.</p> + +<p>"Patty!" called Corinna's voice. "Patty, dear, I am looking for you." +Corinna, in her rustling white and silver brocade, stepped from the +French window out on the porch. "Some one has sent for you—your aunt, I +think they said, who is dying—"</p> + +<p>The girl started and drew back. Her face changed, while the light faded +from her eyes until they became wells of darkness. "I know," she +answered. "I must go. I promised that I would go."</p> + +<p>"My car is waiting. I will take you," said Corinna.</p> + +<p>She turned to enter the house, and Patty, without so much as a look at +Stephen's face, went slowly after her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> + +<h3>THE NIGHT</h3> + + +<p>As the car passed through the deserted streets, Corinna placed her hand +on Patty's with a reassuring pressure. Without appearing to do so, she +was studying the girl's soft profile, now flashing out in a sudden sharp +light, now melting back again into the vagueness of the shadows. What +was there about this girl, Corinna asked herself, which appealed so +strongly to the protective impulse in her heart? Was it because this +undisciplined child, with that curious sporting instinct which supplied +the place of Victorian morality, represented for her, as well as for +Stephen, some inarticulate longing for the unknown, for the adventurous? +Did Patty's charm for them both lie in her unlikeness to everything they +had known in the past? In Corinna, as in Stephen, two opposing spirits +had battled unceasingly, the realistic spirit which accepted life as it +was, and the romantic spirit which struggled toward some unattainable +perfection, which endeavoured to change and decorate the actuality. More +than Stephen, perhaps, she had faced life; but she had not accepted it +without rebellion. She had learned from disappointment to see things as +they are; but deep in her heart some unspent fire of romance, some +imprisoned esthetic impulse, sought continually to gild and enrich the +experience of the moment. And this girl, so young, so ingenuous, so +gallant and so appealing, stood in Corinna's mind for the poetic +wildness of her spirit, for all that she had seen in a vision and had +missed in reality.</p> + +<p>When the car reached the Square, it turned sharply north. Sometimes it +passed through lighted spaces and sometimes through pools of darkness; +and as it went on rapidly, it seemed to Corinna that it was the one +solid fact in a night that she imagined. Patty was very still; but +Corinna felt the warm clasp of her hand, and heard her soft breathing, +which became a part of the muffled undercurrent of the sleeping city. In +all those closely packed houses, where the obscurity was broken here and +there by a lighted window, other human beings were breathing, sleeping, +dreaming, like Patty and herself, of some impractical and visionary +to-morrow. Of something which had never been, but still might be! Of +something which they had just missed, but might find when the sun rose +again! Of a miracle that might occur at any moment and make everything +different! It was after midnight; and to Corinna it seemed that the +darkness had released the collective spirit of the city, which would +retreat again into itself with the breaking of dawn. Once a cry sounded +far off and was hushed almost immediately; once a light flashed and went +out in the window beneath a roof; but as the car sped on by rows of +darkened tenements, the mysterious penumbra of the night appeared to +draw closer and closer, as if that also were a phantom of the +encompassing obscurity.</p> + +<p>"Is this the aunt you told me of, Patty?" asked Corinna abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I went to see her once—not long ago. I promised her that I'd come +back when she sent for me. She wanted to tell me something, but she was +so ill that she couldn't remember what it was. It was about Father, she +said."</p> + +<p>"Stephen will come for us after he has taken Margaret home. I gave him +the number."</p> + +<p>Patty turned and gave her a long look. They were passing under an +electric light at the time, and Corinna thought, as she looked into the +girl's face, that all the wistful yearning of the night was reflected in +her eyes. What had happened, she wondered, to change their sparkling +brightness into this brooding expectancy.</p> + +<p>The car stopped before the house to which Patty had come with Gershom; +and as they got out, they saw that it was entirely dark except for the +dim flicker of a jet of gas in the hall. By the pavement a car was +standing, and from somewhere at the back there came the sound of a baby +crying inconsolably in the darkness. While they entered the hall, and +went up the broad old-fashioned flight of stairs, that plaintive wail +followed them, growing gradually fainter as they ascended, but never +fading utterly into silence. When they reached the second storey, and +turned toward the back of the house, a door at the end of the passage +opened, and an old woman, with a hunch back, and a piece of knitting in +her gnarled hands, came slowly to meet them. Standing there under the +jet of gas, which flickered with a hissing noise, she looked at them +with glassy impersonal eyes and a face that was as austere as Destiny. +Afterward, when Corinna thought over the impressions of that tragic +night, she felt that they were condensed into the symbol of the old +woman with the crooked back, and the thin crying of the baby which +floated up from the darkness below.</p> + +<p>"We came to see Mrs. Green," explained Corinna.</p> + +<p>The old woman nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her +ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until +Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence +they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the +hall, and they entered the room, with the sickening sweetish smell and +the window which gave on the black hulk of the ailantus tree. From +behind a screen, which was covered with faded wall paper, the figure of +the doctor emerged while they waited, an ample middle-aged man, with the +air of having got into his clothes in a hurry and the face of a +pragmatic philosopher. He motioned commandingly for them to approach; +and going to the other side of the screen, they found the dying woman +gazing at them with eager eyes.</p> + +<p>"She is doing nicely," remarked the doctor, with the cheerful alacrity +of one in whom familiarity has bred contempt of death. "Keep her quiet. +One can never tell about these cases."</p> + +<p>He made an explanatory gesture in the direction of his pocket. "I'll go +down on the porch and smoke a cigar, and then if she hasn't had a +relapse, I think it will be safe for me to go home. You can telephone if +you need me. I am only a few blocks away." He went out with a brisk, +elastic step, while his hand began to feel for the end of the cigar in +his pocket.</p> + +<p>"She's bad now," said the old woman. "It's the medicine, but she'll come +to in a minute." She brought two wooden chairs with broken legs to the +foot of the bed. "You'd better sit down. It may be a long waiting."</p> + +<p>"I hope she'll know me," returned Patty. "She must have wanted to see +me, or she wouldn't have sent." Her eyes left the stricken face and +clung to the calla lily on the window-sill, as they had done that +afternoon when she came here with Gershom. The single blossom on the +lily had not faded; it was still as perfect as it had been then—only +two days ago!—and not one of the closed buds had begun to open beside +it.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she wanted to see you," answered the old woman, in a croaking voice +which seemed to Corinna to contain a sinister note. "As long as she was +able to keep on her feet she used to go and sit in the Square just to +watch you come out—"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that she cared for me like that?" asked the girl, in a +hushed incredulous tone. "Was she really fond of me?"</p> + +<p>The cripple turned her glassy eyes on the fresh young face. "Well, I +don't know that she was fond," she responded bleakly, "but when you're +as bad off as that, there ain't many things that you can think of."</p> + +<p>A murmur fell from the lips of the dying woman, while she rolled her +head slowly from side to side, as if she were seeking ease less from +physical pain than from the thought in her mind. Her thick black hair, +matted and damp where it had been brushed back from her forehead, spread +like a veil over the pillow; and this sombre background lent a graven +majesty to her features. At the moment her head appeared as +expressionless as a mask; but in a few minutes, while they waited for +returning consciousness, a change passed slowly over the waxen face, and +the full colourless lips began to move rapidly and to form broken and +disconnected sentences. For a time they could not understand; then the +words came in a long sobbing breath. "It has been too long. It has been +too long."</p> + +<p>"That goes on all the time," said the old woman. "I've been up with her +for three nights, and she rambles almost every minute. But sick folks +are like that," she concluded philosophically. She had not laid down her +knitting for an instant; and standing now beside the bed, she jerked the +gray yarn automatically through her twisted fingers. The clicking of the +long wooden needles formed an accompaniment to the dry, hard sound of +her words.</p> + +<p>"Why doesn't some one hush that child?" asked Corinna impatiently. +Through the open window a breeze entered, bringing the thin restless +wail of the baby.</p> + +<p>"The mother tries, but she can't do anything. She thinks the milk went +wrong and gave it colic."</p> + +<p>The woman on the bed spoke suddenly in a clear voice. "Why doesn't he +come?" she demanded. Raising her heavy lids she looked straight into +Corinna's eyes, with a lucid and comprehending expression, as if she had +just awakened from sleep.</p> + +<p>Holding her knitting away from the bed with one hand, and bending over, +until her deformed shape made a hill against the bedpost, the old woman +screamed into the ear on the pillow, as if the hearer were either deaf +or at a great distance. Though her manner was not heartless, it was as +impassive as philosophy.</p> + +<p>"He is coming," she shrieked.</p> + +<p>"Is he bringing the child?"</p> + +<p>"She is already here. Can't you see her there at the foot of the bed?"</p> + +<p>The large black eyes, drained of any human expression, turned slowly +toward the figure of Patty.</p> + +<p>"But she is a little thing," said the woman doubtfully. "She is not +three years old yet. What has he done with her? He told me that he would +take care of her as if she belonged to him."</p> + +<p>The old hunchback, bending her inscrutable face, screamed again into the +ear on the pillow.</p> + +<p>"That was near sixteen years ago, Maggie," she said. "Have you +forgotten?"</p> + +<p>The woman closed her eyes wearily. "Yes, I had forgotten," she answered. +"Time goes so."</p> + +<p>But it appeared to Corinna, sitting there, with her eyes on the strip of +sky which was visible through the window, that time would never go on. A +pitiless fact was breaking into her understanding, shattering wall after +wall of incredulity, of conviction that such a thing was too terrible to +be true. She longed to get Patty away; but when she urged her in a +whisper to go downstairs, the girl only shook her head, without moving +her eyes from the haggard face on the pillow. The minutes dragged by +like hours while they waited there, in hushed suspense, for they +scarcely knew what. Outside in the backyard, the flowering ailantus tree +shed a disagreeable odour; downstairs the feeble crying, which had +stopped for a little while, was beginning again. While she remained +motionless at the foot of the bed, wild and rebellious thoughts flocked +through Corinna's mind. If she had only held back that message! If she +had only kept Patty away until it was too late! She thought of the girl +a few hours ago, flushed with happiness, dancing under the swinging +garlands of flowers, to the sound of that thunderous music. Dancing +there, with the restless pleasure of youth, while in another street, so +far away that it might have been in a distant city, in a different +world even, this woman, with the face of tragedy, lay dying with that +fretful wail in her ears. A different world it might have been, and yet +what divided her from this other woman except the blind decision of +chance, the difference between beauty and ugliness, nothing more. In +this dingy room, smelling of dust and drugs and the heavy odour of the +ailantus tree, she felt a presence more profoundly real, more poignantly +significant, than any material forms—the presence of those elemental +forces which connect time with eternity. This little room, within its +partial shadow, like the shadow of time itself, was touched with the +solemnity of a cathedral. It seemed to Corinna, with her imaginative +love of life, that a window into experience had opened sharply, a wall +had crumbled. For the first time she understood that the innumerable and +intricate divisions of human fate are woven into a single tremendous +design.</p> + +<p>While they waited there in silence the hours dragged on like years. At +last the woman appeared to sleep, and when she opened her eyes again, +her gaze had become clear and lucid.</p> + +<p>"Have you sent for them?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I sent for them," answered the old woman, lowering her voice to a +natural pitch. "The girl is here."</p> + +<p>"Patty? Where is she?"</p> + +<p>Drawing her hand from Corinna's clasp, Patty moved slowly to the head of +the bed, and standing there beside the deformed old woman, she looked +down on the upturned face.</p> + +<p>"I came as I promised. Can I help you?" she asked; and her voice was so +quiet, so repressed, that Corinna looked at her anxiously. How much had +the girl understood? And, if she understood, what difference would it +make in her life—and in Stephen's life?</p> + +<p>"I couldn't tell you the other day because of Julius," said the woman, +in a strangled tone. "I couldn't say things before Julius." Then, +glancing toward the door, she asked breathlessly, "Didn't Gideon Vetch +come with you?"</p> + +<p>"Father?" responded Patty, wonderingly. "Do you want Father to come?"</p> + +<p>A smile crossed the woman's face, and she made a movement as if she +wanted to raise her head. "Do you call him Father?" she returned in a +pleased voice.</p> + +<p>At the question, Corinna sprang up and made an impulsive step forward. +"Oh, don't!" she cried out pleadingly. "Don't tell her!"</p> + +<p>"But he is my father," Patty's tone was stern and accusing. "He is my +father."</p> + +<p>The smile was still on the woman's face; but while Corinna watched it, +she realized that it was unlike any smile she had ever seen before in +her life—a smile of satisfaction that was at the same time one of +relinquishment.</p> + +<p>"They thought I was married to him," she said slowly. "Julius thought, +or pretended to think, that he could harm him by making me swear that I +was married to him. They gave me drugs. I would have done anything for +drugs—and I did that! But the old woman there knows better. She's got a +paper. I made her keep it—about Patty—"</p> + +<p>"Don't!" cried Corinna again in a sharper tone. "Oh, can't you see that +you must not tell her!"</p> + +<p>For the first time the woman turned her eyes away from the girl. "It is +because of Gideon Vetch," she answered slowly. "I may get well again, +and then I'll be sorry."</p> + +<p>"But he would rather you wouldn't." Corinna's voice was full of pain. +"You know—you must know, if you know him at all, that he would rather +you spared her—"</p> + +<p>"Know him?" repeated the woman, and she laughed with a dry, rattling +sound. "I don't know him. I never saw him but once in my life."</p> + +<p>"You never saw him but once." The words came so slowly from Patty's lips +that she seemed to choke over them. "But you said that you knew my +mother?"</p> + +<p>Again the woman made that dry, rattling sound in her chest. "Your mother +never saw him but once," she answered grimly. "She never saw him but +once, and that was for a quarter of an hour on the night they were +taking her to prison. I would never have told but for Julius," she +added. "I would never have told if they hadn't tried to make out that I +knew him, and that he was really your father. It would ruin him, they +said, and that was what they wanted. But when they bring it out, with +the paper they got me to sign, I want you to know that it is a lie—that +I did it because I'd have died if I hadn't got hold of the drugs—"</p> + +<p>"But he is my father," repeated Patty quite steadily—so steadily that +her voice was without colour or feeling.</p> + +<p>The only reply that came was a gasping sound, which grew louder and +louder, with the woman's struggle for breath, until it seemed to fill +the room and the night outside and even the desolate sky. As she lay +back, with the arm of the old cripple under her head and her streaming +hair, the spasm passed like a stain over her face, changing its waxen +pallor to the colour of ashes, while a dull purplish shadow encircled +her mouth. For a few minutes, so violent was the struggle for air, it +appeared to Corinna that nothing except death could ever quiet that +agonized gasping; but while she waited for the end, the sound became +gradually fainter, and the woman spoke quite plainly, though with an +effort that racked not only her strangled chest, but her entire body. +Each syllable came so slowly, and now and then so faintly, that there +were moments when it seemed that the breath in that tormented body would +not last until the words had been spoken.</p> + +<p>"You were going on three years old when he first saw you. They were +taking me away to prison—that's over now, and it don't matter—but I +hadn't any chance—" The panting began again; but by force of will, the +woman controlled it after a minute, and went on, as if she were +measuring her breath inch by inch, almost as if it were a material +substance which she was holding in reserve for the end. "Your father +died the first year I married him, and things went from bad to +worse—there's no use going over that, no use—They were taking me to +prison from the circus, and I had you in my arms, when Gideon Vetch came +by and saw me—" Again there was a pause and a desperate battle for air; +and again, after it was over, she went on in that strangled whisper, +while her eyes, like the eyes of a drowning animal, clung neither to +Patty nor Corinna, but to the austere face of the old hunchback. "'What +am I to do with the child?' I asked, and he stepped right out of the +circus crowd, and answered 'Give me the child. I like children'—" An +inarticulate moan followed, and then she repeated clearly and slowly. +"Just like that—nothing more—'Give me the child. I like children.' +That was the first time I ever saw him. He had come to see some of the +people in the circus, and I've never seen him since then except in the +Square. The trial went against me, but that's all over. Oh, I'm tired +now. It hurts me. I can't talk—"</p> + +<p>She broke into terrible coughing; and the old woman, dropping her +knitting for the first time since they had entered the room, seized a +towel from a chair by the bed. "Talking was too much for her," she said. +"I thought she'd pull through. She was so much better—but talking was +too much."</p> + +<p>"She is so ill that she doesn't know what she is saying," murmured +Corinna in the girl's ear. "She is out of her mind."</p> + +<p>"No, she isn't out of her mind," replied Patty quietly. "She isn't out +of her mind." In her ball gown of green and silver, like the colours of +sunlit foam, with a wreath of artificial leaves in her hair, her +loveliness was unearthly. "It is every bit true. I know it," she +reiterated.</p> + +<p>"She's bleeding again," muttered the old woman. "You'd better find the +doctor. I ain't used to stopping hemorrhages." Then, as Corinna went out +of the room, she added querulously to Patty: "She didn't have no +business trying to talk; but she would do it. She said she'd do it if it +killed her—and I reckon she don't mind much if it does—She'd have +killed herself sooner than this if I'd let her alone." From the street +below there came the sound of a motor horn; then the noise of a car +running against the curbstone; and then the opening and shutting of a +door, followed by rapid footsteps on the stairs.</p> + +<p>"That's the doctor now, I reckon," remarked the old woman; but the words +had scarcely left her lips when the door opened, and Corinna came back +into the room with Gideon Vetch.</p> + +<p>"Where is Patty?" he asked anxiously. "She oughtn't to be here."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I ought to be here," answered Patty. As she turned toward Gideon +Vetch, she swayed as if she were going to fall, and he caught her in his +arms. "Go home, daughter," he said almost sternly. "You oughtn't to be +here. Mrs. Page, can't you make her go home?"</p> + +<p>"I have tried," responded Corinna; then a moan from the bed reached her, +and she turned toward the woman who lay there. To die like that with +nobody caring, with nobody even observing it! Exhausted by the loss of +blood, the woman had fallen back into unconsciousness, and the towel the +old cripple held to her lips was stained scarlet.</p> + +<p>"The doctor had gone to bed. He will come as soon as he gets dressed," +said Corinna. "He warned us to keep her quiet."</p> + +<p>"If he don't hurry, she'll be gone before he gets here," replied the old +woman, looking round over her twisted shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Father, Father!" cried Patty, flinging her arms about his neck; and +then over again like a frightened child, "Father, Father!"</p> + +<p>He patted her head with a large consoling hand. "There, there, +daughter," he returned gently. "A little thing like that won't come +between you and me."</p> + +<p>With his arm still about her, he drew her slowly to the bedside, and +stood looking down on the dying woman and the old cripple, who hovered +over her with the stained towel in her hand.</p> + +<p>"I don't even know her name," he said, and immediately afterward, "She +must have had a hell of a life!" Though there was a wholesome pity in +his voice, it was without the weakness of sentimentality. He had done +what he could, and he was not the kind to worry over events which he +could not change. For a few minutes he stood there in silence; then, +because it was impossible for his energetic nature to remain inactive in +an emergency, he exclaimed suddenly, "The doctor ought to be here!" and +turning away from the bed, went rapidly across the room and through the +half open door into the hall.</p> + +<p>Outside the darkness was dissolving in a drab light which crept slowly +up above the roofs of the houses; and while they waited this light +filled the yard and the room and the passage beyond the door which +Gideon Vetch had not closed. Far away, through the heavy boughs of the +ailantus tree, day was breaking in a glimmer of purple-few birds were +twittering among the leaves. Along the high brick wall a starved gray +cat was stealing like a shadow. Drawing her evening wrap closer about +her bare shoulders, Corinna realized that it was already day in the +street.</p> + +<p>"She's gone," said the old hunchback, in a crooning whisper. Her twisted +hand was on the arm of the dead woman, which stretched as pallid and +motionless as an arm of wax over the figured quilt. "She's gone, and she +never knew that he had come." With a gesture that appeared as natural as +the dropping of a leaf, she pressed down the eyelids over the +expressionless eyes. "Well, that's the way life is, I reckon," she +remarked, as an epitaph over the obscure destiny of Mrs. Green.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's the way life is," repeated Corinna under her breath. +Already the old cripple had started about her inevitable ministrations: +but when Corinna tried to make Patty move away from the bedside, the +girl shook her head in a stubborn refusal.</p> + +<p>"I am trying to believe it," she said. "I am trying to believe it, and I +can't." Then she looked at them calmly and steadily. "I want to think it +out by myself," she added. "Would you mind leaving me alone in here for +just a few minutes?"</p> + +<p>Though there was no grief in her voice—how could there be any grief, +Corinna asked herself?—there was an accent of profound surprise and +incredulity, as of one who has looked for the first time on death. +Standing there in her spring-like dress beside the dead woman who had +been her mother, Corinna felt intuitively that Patty had left her +girlhood behind her. The child had lived in one night through an inner +crisis, through a period of spiritual growth, which could not be +measured by years. Whatever she became in the future, she would never be +again the Patty Vetch that Corinna and Stephen had known.</p> + +<p>Yes, she had a right to be alone. Beckoning to the old woman to follow +her, Corinna went out softly, closing the door after her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> + +<h3>THE DAWN</h3> + + +<p>Outside in the narrow passage, smelling of dust and yesterday's cooking, +the pallid light filtered in through the closed window; and it seemed to +Corinna that this light pervaded her own thoughts until the images in +her mind moved in a procession of stark outlines against a colourless +horizon. In this unreal world, which she knew was merely a distorted +impression of the external world about her, she saw the figure of the +dead woman, still and straight as the effigy of a saint, the twisted +shape of the old hunchback, and after these the shadow of the starved +cat stealing along the top of the high brick wall. What was the meaning +in these things? Where was the beauty? What inscrutable purpose, what +sardonic humour, joined together beauty and ugliness, harmony and +discord, her own golden heritage with the drab destinies of that dead +woman and this work-worn cripple?</p> + +<p>"I can't stand it any longer," she thought. "I must breathe the open +air, or I shall die."</p> + +<p>Then, just as she was about to hurry toward the stairs, she checked +herself and stood still because she realized that the old woman had +followed her and was droning into her ear.</p> + +<p>"Yes, ma'am, that's the way life is," the impersonal voice was +muttering, "but it ain't the only way that it is, I reckon. I sees so +many sick and dying folks that you'd think I was obliged to look at +things unnatural-like. But I don't, not me, ma'am. It ain't all that +way, with nothing but waiting and wanting, and then disappointment. Even +Maggie had her good times somewhere in the past. You can't expect to be +always dressed in spangles and riding bareback, that's what I used to +say to her. You've got to take your share of bad times, same as the rest +of us. And look at me now. I've done sick nursing for more'n fifty +years—as far back as I like to look—but it ain't all been sick +nursing. There's been a deal in it besides.</p> + +<p>"Naw'm, I've got a lot to be thankful for when I begin to take stock." +Her wrinkled face caught the first gleam of sunlight that fell through +the unwashed window panes. "I've done sick nursing ever since I was a +child almost; but I've managed mighty well all things considering, and +I've saved up enough to keep me out of the poor house when I get too old +to go on. When I give up I won't have to depend on charity, and the city +won't have to bury me either when I'm dead. And I've got a heap of +satisfaction out of my red geraniums too. I don't reckon you ever saw +finer blooms—not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the +complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know it."</p> + +<p>Her old eyes shone; her sunken mouth was trembling, not with self-pity, +Corinna realized, with a pang that was strangely like terror, but with +the courage of living. The pathos of it appeared intolerable for a +moment; and gathering her cloak about her, Corinna felt that she must +cover her eyes and fly before she broke out into hysterical screaming. +Then the terror passed; and she saw, in a single piercing flash of +insight, that what she had mistaken for ugliness was simply an +impalpable manifestation of beauty. Beauty! Why it was everywhere! It +was with her now in this squalid house, in the presence of this crippled +old woman, unmoved by death, inured to poverty, screwing, grinding, +pinching, like flint to the crying baby, and yet cherishing the blooms +of her red geranium, her passionate horror of the poor house, and her +dream of six feet of free earth not paid for by charity at the end. Yes, +that was the way of life. Blind as a mole to the universe, and yet +visited by flashes of unearthly light.</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Corinna hurriedly. "I must go down. I must get a +breath of air, but I will come back in a little while." Then she started +at a run down the stairs, while the old woman gazed after her, as if the +flying figure, in the cloak of peacock-blue satin and white fur, was +that of a demented creature. "Air!" she repeated, with scornful +independence. "Air!", and turning away in disgust, she limped painfully +back to wait outside of the closed door. Here, when she had seated +herself in a sagging chair, she lifted her bleak eyes to the +smoke-stained ceiling, and repeated for the third time in a tone of +profound contempt: "Air!"</p> + +<p>At the foot of the stairs, Corinna ran against Gideon Vetch. "She died +soon after you went out," she said, "but Patty is still there."</p> + +<p>"I'll go up to her," he answered; and then as he placed his foot on the +bottom step, he looked back at her, and added, "I tried to spare her +this."</p> + +<p>She assented almost mechanically. Fatigue had swept over her from head +to foot like some sinister drug and she felt incapable of giving out +anything, even sympathy, even the appearance of compassion. "Then it is +all true?" she asked. "Patty is not your child?"</p> + +<p>A shadow crossed his face, but he did not hesitate in his reply. "I +never had a child. I was never married."</p> + +<p>"You took her like that—because the mother was going to prison?"</p> + +<p>He nodded. "She was a child. What difference did it make whether she was +mine or not? She was the nicest little thing you ever saw. She is +still."</p> + +<p>"Yes, she is still. But you never knew what became of the mother?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know her real name. I didn't want to. The circus people called +her Queenie, that was all I knew. She'd stuck a knife into a man in a +jealous rage, and he happened to die. They said the trial would be +obliged to go against her. I was leaving California that night, and I +brought the child with me. I have never been back—" He spread out his +broad hand with a gesture that was strangely human. "You would have done +it in my place?"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No, I should have wanted to, but I couldn't. I am +not big enough for that."</p> + +<p>He was already ascending the stairs, but at her words, he turned and +smiled down on her. "It was nothing to make a fuss about," he said. +"Anybody would have done it."</p> + +<p>Then he mounted the stairs lightly for his great height, taking two +steps at a time, while she passed out on the porch where Stephen was +waiting for her. As he rose wearily from the wicker rocking chair beside +the empty perambulator, she felt as if he were a stranger. In that one +night she seemed to have put the whole universe between her and the old +order that he represented.</p> + +<p>"I kept my car waiting for you," he began. "It was better to let your +man go home."</p> + +<p>She smiled at him in the pale light, and he broke out nervously: "You +look as if you would drop. What have they done to you?" Though she wore +the cloak of peacock-blue over her evening gown, the pointed train wound +on the floor behind her, and the fan of white ostrich plumes, which she +had forgotten to leave in the car, was still in her hand. Her face was +wan and drawn; there were violet circles under her eyes; and she looked +as if she had grown ten years older since the evening before. It was the +outward impression of the night, he knew. In this house one passed back +again into the power of time; youth could not be prolonged here for a +single night.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what it means," he said, with a mixture of exasperation +and curiosity. "I wish you would tell me what it means."</p> + +<p>"I feel," she answered, in an expressionless tone, as if the +insensibility of her nerves had passed into her voice, "that I have +faced life for the first time."</p> + +<p>"Tell me what it means," he reiterated impatiently.</p> + +<p>Dropping into the chair from which he had risen, she drew her train +aside while the doctor passed them hurriedly, with a muttered apology, +and went into the house. Then, leaning forward, with the fan clasped in +her hands, and her eyes on the straight deserted street, which ended +abruptly on the brow of a hill, she repeated word for word all that the +dying woman had said. The sun had not yet risen, but a faint opalescent +glow suffused the sky in the east, and flushed with a delicate colour +the round cobblestones in the street and the herring-bone pattern of the +pavement, where blades of grass sprouted among the bricks. Though she +did not look up at Stephen's face, she was aware while she talked of +some subtle emanation of thought outside of herself, as if the struggle +in his mind had overflowed mechanical processes and physical boundaries, +and was escaping into the empty street and the city beyond. And this +silent struggle, so charged with intensity that it produced the effect +of a cry, became for her merely a part, a single voice, in that greater +struggle for victory over circumstances which went on ceaselessly day +and night in the surrounding houses. Everywhere about her there was the +vague groping toward some idea of freedom, toward independence of +spirit; everywhere there was this perpetual striving toward a universe +that was larger. The dwellers in this crowded house, with their vision +of space and sunlight; the village with its vision of a city; the city +with its vision of a country; the country with its vision of a republic +of the world—all these universal struggles were condensed now into the +little space of a man's consciousness. To Corinna, in whose veins flowed +the blood of Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor, it seemed that the greater +victory must lie with those who charged from out the cover of philosophy +into the mystery of the unknown. If she had been in Stephen's place, she +knew that she should have taken the risk, that she should have flung +herself into the enterprise of life as into a voyage of discovery. Yet, +at the moment, appreciating all that it meant to him, she asked herself +if she had been wise to let him see the thought in her mind. For an +instant, after telling him, she hesitated, and in this instant Stephen +spoke.</p> + +<p>"So he isn't her father?"</p> + +<p>"No, he isn't her father. He had never seen her mother; he did not even +know her name, for he met the woman by accident when she was arrested in +the circus. Patty was over two years old then—about two and a half, I +think. Gideon Vetch took the child because of an impulse—a very human +impulse of pity—but he knew nothing of her parentage. He knows nothing +now, not even her real name. It is much worse than we ever imagined. Try +to understand it. Try to take it in clearly before you act rashly. There +is still time to weigh things—to stop and reflect. Nothing whatever is +known of Patty's birth, except that her father, so the woman said, died +in the first year of their marriage, before the child was born, and less +than two years later the mother was sent to prison for killing another +man—"</p> + +<p>She broke off hurriedly, wiping her lips as if the mere recital of the +sordid facts had stained them with blood. It all sounded so horrible as +she repeated it—so incredibly evil!</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear boy, try to take it in however much it may hurt you," she +pleaded, turning a coward not on her own account, not even on his, but +for the sake of something deeper and more sacred which belonged to them +both and to the tradition for which they stood. A passionate longing +seized her now to protect Stephen from the risk that she had urged him +to take.</p> + +<p>"I understand. It is terrible for her," he answered.</p> + +<p>"I hate you to see Patty. Poor child, she looks seared." Then a possible +way occurred to her, even though she hated herself while she suggested +it. "I am not sure that it is wise for you to wait. There are so many +things you must think of. There is first of all your family—"</p> + +<p>He laughed shortly. "It is late in the day to remember that."</p> + +<p>"I know." A look of compunction crossed her face. "Forgive me."</p> + +<p>"Of course I think of them," he said presently. "Poor Dad. He is the +best of us all, I believe." Though there was an expression of pain in +his eyes, she noticed that the unnatural lethargy, the nervous +irritation, had disappeared. He looked as if a load had dropped from his +shoulders.</p> + +<p>As with many women who have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a +man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was +almost a shock to her. She had believed that her knowledge of him was +perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her +analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental +misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative +and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic +in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk +while he accepts the extraordinary one. She had forgotten that men of +Stephen's nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same +time capable of large ones; that, though they may not endure petty +discomforts with fortitude, they are able, in moments of vivid +experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid nobility. For +the old order was not merely the outward form of the conservative +principle, it was also the fruit of heroic tradition.</p> + +<p>"You must think it over, Stephen," she pleaded. "Go away now, and try +to realize all that it will mean to you."</p> + +<p>"Thinking doesn't get me anywhere," he replied. His face was pale and +thoughtful; and Corinna knew, while she watched him, that he had found +freedom at last; that he had come into his manhood. "I've made my +choice, and I'll stand by it to-day even if I regret it to-morrow. +You've got to take chances; to leave the safe road and strike out into +open country. That's living. Otherwise you might as well be dead. I +can't just cling like moss to institutions that other people have made; +to the things that have always been. I've got to take chances—and I'm +enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me—"</p> + +<p>The part of Corinna's nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the +part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in +sympathy with his resolve. Though she gazed down the straight deserted +street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the +cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible +world.</p> + +<p>"I understand, dear," she answered softly. "I can't tell whether or not +it is the safe way; but I know it is the gallant way."</p> + +<p>"It is the only way," he responded steadily. "If I am ever to make +anything of my life, this is the test. I see that I've got to meet it. I +shall probably have to meet it every day of my life—but, by Jove, I'll +meet it! Patty isn't just Patty to me. She is strength and courage. She +is the risk of the future. I suppose she is the pioneer in my blood, or +my mind. I can't help what she came from, nor can she. I've got to take +that as I take everything else, with the belief that it is worth all the +cost. The thing I feel now is that she has given me back myself. She has +given me a free outlook on life—"</p> + +<p>He stopped abruptly, for there was the sound of footsteps in the house, +and after a minute or two, Patty and Gideon Vetch came out on the porch. +The girl looked, except for the red of her mouth, as if the blood had +been drawn from her veins, and her eyes were like dark pansies. All the +light had faded from them, changing even their colour.</p> + +<p>"Patty," said Stephen; and he made a step toward her, with his hands +outstretched as if he would gather her to him. Then he stopped and fell +back, for the girl was shrinking away from him with a look of fear.</p> + +<p>"I can't talk now," she answered, smiling with hard lips. "I am tired. I +can't talk now." Running ahead she went down the steps, through the +gate, and into Vetch's car which was standing beside the curbstone.</p> + +<p>"She's worn out," explained Vetch. "I'll take her home, and you'd better +try to get some sleep, Mrs. Page. You look as tired as Patty."</p> + +<p>"Let me go with you," returned Corinna. "Your car is closed, and Patty +and I are both bareheaded." For a moment she turned back to put her hand +on Stephen's arm. "I must sleep," she said. "I shan't go to the shop +to-day."</p> + +<p>Vetch was waiting at the door of the car, and when she stumbled over her +train, she fell slightly against him. "How exhausted you are," he +observed gently, "and what a rock you are to lean on!"</p> + +<p>She looked at him with a smile. "Those are the very words I've used +about you."</p> + +<p>He laughed and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his +unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on +them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps +you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference +between her and me. Won't you try to see that, daughter?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Father!" exclaimed Patty with a sob, "it makes all the difference +in the world!"</p> + +<p>"There it is," said Vetch with anxious weariness. "That is all I can get +out of her."</p> + +<p>"She is so tired," replied Corinna. "Let her rest." Though her gaze was +on the street, she saw still the dusk beyond the ailantus tree and the +old woman, with the crooked back, pressing down the eyelids over those +staring eyes.</p> + +<p>They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached +the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to +Corinna. "I can never tell you," she began, "I can never tell +you—" Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the +staircase beyond the library.</p> + +<p>"Let her rest," said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch. +"Leave her to herself. She needs sleep, but she is very young—and for +youth there is no despair that does not pass."</p> + +<p>"You are as tired as she is," he returned.</p> + +<p>She nodded. "I am going home to sleep, but the look of that child +worries me."</p> + +<p>"I kept it from her for sixteen years," he said slowly, "and she found +out by an accident."</p> + +<p>"I never suspected, or I might have prevented it."</p> + +<p>"No, I trusted too much to chance. I have always trusted to chance."</p> + +<p>"I think," she said, "that you have trusted most to your good +instincts."</p> + +<p>He smiled, and she saw that he was deeply touched. "Well, I'm trusting +to them now," he responded. "They have led me between two extremes, and +it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets. I've got them all +against me, but it isn't over yet, by Jove! It is a long road that has +no turning—"</p> + +<p>They had descended the steps together, and walking a little way beyond +the drive, they stood in the bright green grass looking up at the clear +gold of the sunrise.</p> + +<p>"There is a meeting to-night," she said.</p> + +<p>"Of the strikers—yes, I may win them. I can generally win people if +they let me talk—but the trouble goes deeper than that. It isn't that I +can't carry them with me for an hour. It is simply that I can't make any +of them see where we are going. It is a question not of loyalty, but of +understanding. They can't understand anything except what they want."</p> + +<p>"Whether you win or not," she answered, "I am glad that at last I am on +your side."</p> + +<p>His face lighted. "On my side? Even if it means failure?"</p> + +<p>As she looked up at him the sunrise was in her face. The sky was turning +slowly to flame-colour, and each dark pointed leaf of the magnolia tree +stood out illuminated against a background of fire. "It may be failure, +but it is magnificent," she said.</p> + +<p>He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood +there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice +before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal +life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being, +something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was +responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. All that +she had missed in life—completeness, perfection—seemed to shine about +her for an instant before it passed on into the sunlight. A fancy, +nothing more! A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth! For if she +had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have +said, "Give me what I have never had. Make me what I have never been." +But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not +alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in +flight.</p> + +<p>"I thank you," he answered in a low voice. "I shall remember that."</p> + +<p>The moment had passed, and she held out her hand with a smile. "I shall +come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night," she +said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in +silence.</p> + +<p>A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing +in the bright grass with the sunrise above his head.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> + +<h3>THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH</h3> + + +<p>That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor's +house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps.</p> + +<p>"I waited for you," he said; and then as the car moved away, he took her +hand and turned back to the porch.</p> + +<p>"I couldn't come before," explained Corinna. "I had a headache all day, +and it kept me in bed. Have you seen Patty?"</p> + +<p>"I have seen her, but that is all. I can do nothing with her."</p> + +<p>"But she cares for you."</p> + +<p>"She doesn't deny it. That's not the trouble. Something about Vetch +stands in the way. I can't make out what she means."</p> + +<p>"Let me talk to her," responded Corinna reassuringly. "Is the Governor +here?"</p> + +<p>"No, he has gone to the strikers' meeting. They must reach some decision +to-night it appears. I have talked with him, and I believe he will stand +firm whatever happens. It means, I think, that his career is over."</p> + +<p>"It is too late for him to win over the conservative forces?"</p> + +<p>"It was always too late. In a battle of extremes the most dangerous +position is in the centre."</p> + +<p>"He told me something like that once. The trouble with him is that he +hasn't a point of view, but a vision. He sees the whole, and politics is +only a little part of it."</p> + +<p>"Yes, he sees a human fight, while they are trying to make a political +squabble. He may win them over to-night, but this is only the beginning. +The real fight is against individual self-interest." He laughed in an +undertone. "I remember he told me once that the only trouble with +Christianity was the Christians. 'You can't have Christianity', he said, +'until Christians are different'. That's just as true, of course, of +politics. The only trouble with politics is the politicians."</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a muddle," she responded impatiently. "However you look at +it. Come back in an hour or two, and I may be able to help you." Her +cheerful smile shone on him for an instant; then she entered the house +and closed the door after her.</p> + +<p>In one of the worn leather chairs in the library, Patty was sitting +perfectly still, with her eyes fixed on the orderly row of papers on the +Governor's desk. She wore a white dress with a black ribbon at her +waist, and in the dim light, with her pale face and her cloudy hair, she +had a ghostly look as if she would turn to mist at a touch. When Corinna +entered, she rose and held out her hands. "You are so good," she said. +"I never dreamed that any body could be so good and so beautiful too!"</p> + +<p>"My dear," began Corinna brightly, and while she spoke she drew the girl +to the leather-covered couch by the window, and sat down still holding +the cold hands in her warm ones. "So you are going to marry Stephen."</p> + +<p>"I can't," replied Patty, and she turned her face slightly away as if +she shrank from meeting Corinna's eyes. "I can't after what I know. I +can't do it because of Father."</p> + +<p>"Because of your father?" repeated Corinna. "But surely your father +wishes you to be happy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know he does. It isn't that. But this will all come out. That is +what Julius Gershom meant when he threatened. They are trying to do him +some harm—Father, I mean—"</p> + +<p>"I understand that, but still how in the world—"</p> + +<p>Before she could finish her sentence Patty interrupted in an hysterical +voice—the voice of youth that is always dramatic: "Nobody will ever +mean as much to me as Father does," she cried. "I know that now. I've +known it ever since I found out that he began it just out of +kindness—that I had no claim on him of any kind—"</p> + +<p>"That is natural, dear, but still I don't understand."</p> + +<p>Rising from the couch, Patty moved to a chair in front of Corinna, and +sinking into it, began nervously plaiting and unplaiting a fold of her +white dress. "I can do anything with Julius Gershom if I am nice to +him," she murmured. "If he stands by Father most of the others will +also."</p> + +<p>With a gasp Corinna sat up very straight and tried to see Patty's eyes +in the obscurity. What sordid horror was the child facing now? What +unspeakable degradation? "You can't think of marrying Gershom, Patty!" +she exclaimed, with a gesture of loathing. "You must be out of your mind +even to dream of it!"</p> + +<p>"I can make him do anything I want if I will promise to marry him," she +answered in a steady voice, though a shiver of aversion passed over her.</p> + +<p>Corinna drew her breath sharply, restraining at the same time an impulse +to laugh. Oh, the mock heroics of youth! Of youth with its fantastic +heroism and its dauntless inexperience! "If you only knew," she breathed +indignantly, "if you only knew what marriage means!"</p> + +<p>Patty turned and gave her a long look. "I could do more than that for +Father," she answered.</p> + +<p>So this was the other side of Gideon Vetch—of that man of ignoble +circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand +him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his +power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was +inspired by an exalted illusion—the illusion of human perfectibility. +In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the +dissolution and readjustment of ideals; in the modern conflict between +the spirit that accepts and the spirit that rejects; in this age of +destiny—was not an unconquerable optimism, an invincible belief in +life, the one secure hope for the future? It is the human touch that +creates hope, she thought; and the power of Gideon Vetch was revealed to +her as simply the human touch magnified into a force.</p> + +<p>She became aware after a minute that Patty was speaking. "I can never +tell you—I can never tell any one what he used to be to me when I was a +little girl, and he was very poor. Sometimes—for a long time—I +couldn't have a nurse, and he would dress and undress me, and leave me +with the neighbours when he went away to work. I can see him now heating +milk for me over an old oil lamp. Once when I was ill he sat up night +after night with me. Oh, I don't mean that he was perfect, but that he +was kind—always. I know the quarrels he had—that he has still with the +people who won't go his way. The one thing he can't forgive in people is +that they never forget themselves, that they never think of anything +except what they want. That angers him, and he flies out. I know that. +But there's no use trying I can't make anybody, I can't make even you, +know all that he did for me—" The words ended in tears; and she sat +there, lost in memory, while the dim light seemed to absorb her white +dress and her pale features and the small hand that lay on the fringe of +her black sash.</p> + +<p>"My dear, my dear," murmured Corinna because she could think of no words +that sounded less ineffectual.</p> + +<p>There was a ring at the doorbell while she spoke and after a pause +which appeared to her interminable, she heard the shuffling tread of old +Abijah, and then the clear tone of Stephen's voice, followed immediately +by another speaker who sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not +recall now where she had listened to him before. It was not Julius +Gershom, she knew, though it might be some man that she had heard at a +meeting.</p> + +<p>"Let me speak to Mrs. Page first," said Stephen. "Ask her if she will +come into the drawing-room."</p> + +<p>For an instant Corinna hung back, with the chill of dread at her heart; +and in that instant Patty flew past her like a startled spirit, while +the ends of her black sash streamed behind her. With the penetrating +insight of love the girl had surmised, had seen, had understood, before +a word of explanation had reached her, before even the door had swung +open, and she had met the blanched faces of the men in the hall. "It is +Father," she said quietly. "They have hurt him. Oh, I knew all the time +that they were going to hurt him!"</p> + +<p>Corinna, standing close at her side without touching her, for some +intuition told her that the girl did not wish any support, was aware of +the faces of these men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights, +out of the shadows in the hall—first Stephen's face, with its shocked +compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless; +then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of +its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to +her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an +expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but of the +stony fortitude of the ages. Beyond this there was the open door and the +glamour of the spring night, and in the night another group with its +dark burden.</p> + +<p>"I met them just outside, and they told me," said Stephen. "Gershom +thinks it was an accident, but we shall never know probably. Two +opposing sides were fighting it out. A question had come up—nobody can +remember what it was—nothing important, I think—but two men came to +blows and he got in between them—he stood in the way—and somebody shot +him—"</p> + +<p>He was talking, Corinna realized, in an effort to hold Patty's gaze, to +divert her eyes by the force of his look from the burden which the men +were bringing slowly up the steps outside and into the hall.</p> + +<p>"Nobody meant to harm him," said Gershom suddenly, speaking from the +edge of the group. "The pistol went off by mistake. He got in the way +before any one saw him—" But from his look, Corinna knew that it was +not an accident, that they had shot him because he came between them and +the thing that they wanted.</p> + +<p>The slow steps crossed the hall into the library, and above the measured +beat and pause of the sound, Corinna heard the voice of Vetch as +distinctly as if he were standing there before her in the centre of the +group. "The loneliest man on earth is the one who stands between two +extremes." Yes, at the end as well as at the beginning, he had stood +between two extremes! Then Patty's cry of anguish floated to her from +the room across the hall into which they had taken him. "Father! +Father!" Only that one word over and over again. "Father! Father!" Only +that one word uttered steadily and softly in a tone of imploring +helplessness like the wail of a frightened child. It never ceased, this +piteous sobbing, until at last the doctor went out, and left Corinna +alone with the girl and Gideon Vetch. Then Patty fell on her knees +beside the couch where he lay, and a silence that was almost suffocating +closed over the room.</p> + +<p>The house had become very still. While Corinna waited there at Patty's +side, the only noise came from the restless movement of the city, which +sounded far off and vaguely ominous, like the disturbance in a nightmare +from which one has just awakened. She had turned off the unshaded +electric light; and for a few minutes Patty knelt alone in a merciful +dimness, which left her white dress and the composed features of the +dead man the only luminous spots in the room. It was as if these two +pallid spaces were living things in the midst of inanimate darkness. For +a moment only this impression lasted, for overcome by the pathos of it, +Corinna crossed the room with noiseless footsteps and lighted the wax +candles on the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>Death had come so suddenly that, lying there in the trembling light of +the candles, Vetch appeared to be merely resting a moment in his +energetic career. His rugged features still wore their look of exuberant +vitality, of triumphant faith. There was about him even in death the +radiance of his indestructible illusion. As Corinna looked down on him, +it seemed incredible to her that he should not stretch himself in a +moment, and rise and go out again into the struggle of living. It seemed +incredible that his work should be finished for ever when he was still +so unspent, so full of tireless activity. Was death always like this—a +victory of material and mechanical forces? An accident, an automatic +gesture, and the complex power which stood for the soul of Gideon Vetch +was dissolved—or released. The crumbling of a rock, the falling of a +leaf! Her eyes left the face of the dead man, left Patty's bowed head at +her side, and travelled beyond the open window into the glamour and +mystery of the night, and beyond the night into the sky—</p> + +<p>There was a knock at the door, and she turned away and went out to join +the men in the hall. What had it meant to them, she wondered. How much +had they understood? How much had they ever understood of that symbol of +a changing world which they had loved and hated under the name of Gideon +Vetch?</p> + +<p>"Give her a few minutes more," she said. "Leave her alone with him."</p> + +<p>There were four men waiting—her father, Stephen, old Darrow, and +Julius Gershom—and these four, she felt, were the men who had known +Vetch best, and who, with the exception of Darrow, had perhaps +understood least what he meant. No one had understood him, least of all, +she saw now, had she herself understood him—</p> + +<p>Gershom spoke first. "He was the biggest man we've ever had," he said, +"and we never doubted it—" Yet he had never for an instant, Corinna +knew, seen Vetch as he really was, or recognized the end for which he +was fighting.</p> + +<p>"He was the only one who could have held us together," sighed old +Darrow, and his face looked as if a searing iron had passed over it. +"This will put us back at least fifty years—"</p> + +<p>The Judge was gazing through the open door out into the night, where +lamps shone in the Square and a luminous cloud hung over the city, that +city which was outgrowing its youth, outgrowing the barriers of +tradition, outgrowing alike the forces of reaction and the forces of +progress.</p> + +<p>"A few months," he said slowly, "and nothing accomplished that one can +point out and say that we owe directly to him. Yet I doubt if a single +one of us will ever forget him. I doubt if a single one of us will ever +be exactly, in every little way, just what we should have been if we had +never known Vetch, or spoken to him. The merest ripple of change, +perhaps, but it counts—it counts because in touching him we touched a +humanity that is as rare as genius itself." Yet they had killed him, +Corinna knew, because they could not understand him!</p> + +<p>For a moment there was silence, and then Stephen spoke in a whisper: +"There are some things that you can't see until you stand far enough +away from them. I doubt if any of us really saw him until to-night. +To-morrow he will begin to live." As he lifted his eyes to Corinna's +face, she saw in them a fidelity that pledged itself to the future.</p> + +<p>"Go to Patty," she whispered. "Go to her and repeat what you have said +to us." Putting her hand on his arm, she led him into the room where the +girl was kneeling, and then drew back while he went quickly forward. +Watching from the threshold, she saw Patty look up uncertainly, and rise +slowly from the floor where she had been kneeling; she saw Stephen put +out his arms with a movement of love and pity; and she saw the girl +hesitate for an instant, and then turn to his clasp as a hurt child +turns for comfort. That was youth, that was the future, thought Corinna, +and closing the door softly, she left them together. Yes, youth was for +the future, and for herself, <i>she</i> realized with a pang, were the things +that she had never had in the past. Only the things that she had never +had were really hers! Only the unfulfilled, she saw in that moment of +illuminating insight, is the permanent.</p> + +<p>Passing the group in the hall, she went out on the porch, and looked +with swimming eyes over the fountain into the Square. Beyond the white +streams of electricity and the black patterns of the shadows, she saw +the sharp outlines of the city, and beyond that the immense blue field +of the sky sown thickly with stars. Life was there—life that embraced +success and failure, illusion and disillusion, birth and death. In the +morning she would go back to it—she would begin again—in the morning +she would will herself to pick up the threads of middle age as lightly +as Stephen and Patty would pick up the threads of youth. To-morrow she +would start living again—but to-night for a few hours she would rest +from life; she would look back now, as she had looked back that morning, +to where a man was standing in the bright grass with the sunrise above +his head.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="BOOKS_BY_ELLEN_GLASGOW" id="BOOKS_BY_ELLEN_GLASGOW"></a>BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW</h3> + +<p>LIFE AND GABRIELLA</p> + +<p>ONE MAN IN HIS TIME</p> + +<p>PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET</p> + +<p>THE ANCIENT LAW</p> + +<p>THE BATTLE-GROUND</p> + +<p>THE BUILDERS</p> + +<p>THE DELIVERANCE</p> + +<p>THE DESCENDANT</p> + +<p>THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS</p> + +<p>THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH</p> + +<p>THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN</p> + +<p>THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE</p> + +<p>THE WHEEL OF LIFE</p> + +<p>VIRGINIA</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 15603-h.txt or 15603-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/6/0/15603">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/6/0/15603</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: One Man in His Time + + +Author: Ellen Glasgow + +Release Date: April 11, 2005 [eBook #15603] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME*** + + +E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +ONE MAN IN HIS TIME + +by + +ELLEN GLASGOW + +1922 + + + + + + + +"One man in his time plays many parts." + + + + +NOTE + +No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past or +present. + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER + + I. THE SHADOW + + II. GIDEON VETCH + + III. CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP + + IV. THE TRIBAL INSTINCT + + V. MARGARET + + VI. MAGIC + + VII. CORINNA GOES TO WAR + + VIII. THE WORLD AND PATTY + + IX. SEPTEMBER ROSES + + X. PATTY AND CORINNA + + XI. THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE + + XII. A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS + + XIII. CORINNA WONDERS + + XIV. A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE + + XV. CORINNA OBSERVES + + XVI. THE FEAR OF LIFE + + XVII. MRS. GREEN + + XVIII. MYSTIFICATION + + XIX. THE SIXTH SENSE + + XX. CORINNA FACES LIFE + + XXI. DANCE MUSIC + + XXII. THE NIGHT + + XXIII. THE DAWN + + XXIV. THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SHADOW + + +The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through the +Capitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountains +were in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees the +sky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over the +head of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shot +suddenly before it vanished amid the spires and chimneys of the city, +which looked as visionary and insubstantial as the glowing horizon. + +Stopping midway of the road, Stephen Culpeper glanced back over the +vague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spun +mauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a new +and inscrutable force--the force of an idea--had risen within the last +few months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meant +in his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watched +the decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the past +remained untouched. Not the old buildings, not the old trees, not even +the old memories. Clustering traditions had fled in the white blaze of +electricity; the quaint brick walks, with their rich colour in the +sunlight, were beginning to disappear beneath the expressionless mask of +concrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather's +day; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and naked +and undistinguished--yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising. +Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finer +things, had overwhelmed the world of established customs in which he +lived. + +As he lifted his face to the sky, his grave young features revealed a +subtle kinship to the statues beneath the mounted Washington in the +drive, as if both flesh and bronze had been moulded by the dominant +spirit of race. Like the heroes of the Revolution, he appeared a +stranger in an age which had degraded manners and enthroned commerce; +and like them also he seemed to survey the present from some +inaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and a +certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his +well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal. +Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he +was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him." +His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the +faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member +of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Only +the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an +uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling +buried beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished an +inarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds. The war had left +him with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and this +increased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and his +inability to make a sustained effort to change it. + +The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appeared +to swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred the +white slopes with violet shadows. In the topmost branches of an old +sycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like a +luminous thread. The twilight was intensely still, and the noises of the +city fell with a metallic sound on his ears, as if a multitude of bells +were ringing about him. While he walked on past the bald outline of the +restored and enlarged Capitol, this imaginary concert grew gradually +fainter, until he heard above it presently the sudden closing of a +window in the Governor's mansion--as the old gray house was called. + +Pausing abruptly, the young man frowned as his eyes fell on the charming +Georgian front, which presided like a serene and spacious memory over +the modern utilitarian purpose that was devastating the Square. Alone in +its separate plot, broad, low, and hospitable, the house stood there +divided and withdrawn from the restless progress and the age of +concrete--a modest reminder of the centuries when men had built well +because they had time, before they built, to stop and think and +remember. The arrested dignity of the past seemed to the young man to +hover above the old mansion within its setting of box hedges and +leafless lilac shrubs and snow-laden magnolia trees. He saw the house +contrasted against the crude surroundings of the improved and disfigured +Square, and against the house, attended by all its stately traditions, +he saw the threatening figure of Gideon Vetch. "So it has come to this," +he thought resentfully, with his gaze on the doorway where a round +yellow globe was shining. Ragged frost-coated branches framed the +sloping roof, and the white columns of the square side porches emerged +from the black crags of magnolia trees. In the centre of the circular +drive, invaded by concrete, a white heron poured a stream of melting ice +from a distorted throat. + +The shutters were not closed at the lower windows, and the firelight +flickered between the short curtains of some brownish muslin. As Stephen +passed the gate on his way down the hill, a figure crossed one of the +windows, and his frown deepened as he recognized, or imagined that he +recognized, the shadow of Gideon Vetch. + +"Gideon Vetch!" At the sound of the name the young man threw back his +head and laughed softly. A Gideon Vetch was Governor of Virginia! Here +also, he told himself, half humorously, half bitterly, democracy had +won. Here also the destroying idea had triumphed. In sight of the bronze +Washington, this Gideon Vetch, one of "the poor white trash," born in a +circus tent, so people said, the demagogue of demagogues in Stephen's +opinion--this Gideon Vetch had become Governor of Virginia! Yet the +placid course of Stephen's life flowed on precisely as it had flowed +ever since he could remember, and the dramatic hand of Washington had +not fallen. It was still so recent; it had come about so unexpectedly, +that people--at least the people the young man knew and esteemed--were +still trying to explain how it had happened. The old party had been +sleeping, of course; it had grown too confident, some said too +corpulent; and it had slept on peacefully, in spite of the stirring +strength of the labour leaders, in spite of the threatening coalition of +the new factions, in spite even of the swift revolt against the stubborn +forces of habit, of tradition, of overweening authority. His mother, he +knew, held the world war responsible; but then his mother was so +constituted that she was obliged to blame somebody or something for +whatever happened. Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, held +the war responsible for Gideon Vetch--as if the great struggle had cast +him out in some gigantic cataclysm, as if it had broken through the once +solid ground of established order, and had released into the world all +the explosive gases of disintegration, of destruction. + +For himself, the young man reflected now, he had always thought +otherwise. It was a period, he felt, of humbug radicalism, of windbag +eloquence; yet he possessed both wit and discernment enough to see that, +though ideas might explode in empty talk, still it took ideas to make +the sort of explosion that was deafening one's ears. All the flat +formula of the centuries could not produce a single Gideon Vetch. Such +men were part of the changing world; they answered not to reasoned +argument, but to the loud crash of breaking idols. Stephen hated Vetch +with all his heart, but he acknowledged him. He did not try to evade the +man's tremendous veracity, his integrity of being, his inevitableness. +An inherent intellectual honesty compelled Stephen to admit that, "the +demagogue", as he called him, had his appropriate place in the age that +produced him--that he existed rather as an outlet for political +tendencies than as the product of international violence. He was more +than a theatrical attitude--a torrent of words. Even a free country--and +Stephen thought sentimentally of America as "a free country"--must have +its tyrannies of opinion, and consequently its rebels against current +convictions. In the older countries he had imagined that it might be +possible to hold with the hare and run with the hounds; but in the land +of opportunity for all there was less reason to be astonished when the +hunted turned at last into the hunter. Where every boy was taught that +he might some day be President, why should one stand amazed when the +ambitious son of a circus rider became Governor of Virginia? After all, +a fair field and no favours was the best that the most conservative of +politicians--the best that even John Benham could ask. + +Yes, there was a cause, there was a reason for the miracle of disorder, +or it would not have happened. The hour had called forth the man; but +the man had been there awaiting the strokes, listening, listening, with +his ear to the wind. It had been a triumph of personality, one of those +rare dramatic occasions when the right man and the appointed time come +together. This the young man admitted candidly in the very moment when +he told himself that he detested the demagogue and all his works. A man +who consistently made his bid for the support of the radical element! +Who stirred up the forces of discontent because he could harness them +to his chariot! A man who was born in a circus tent, and who still +performed in public the tricks of a mountebank! That this man had power, +Stephen granted ungrudgingly; but it was power over the undisciplined, +the half-educated, the mentally untrained. It was power, as John Benham +had once remarked with a touch of hyperbole, over empty stomachs. + +There were persons in Stephen's intimate circle (there are such persons +even in the most conservative communities) who contended that Vetch was +in his way a rude genius. Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, for instance, +insisted that the Governor had a charm of his own, that, "he wasn't half +bad to look at if you caught him smiling," that he could even reason +"like one of us," if you granted him his premise. After the open debate +between Vetch and Benham--the great John Benham, hero of war and peace, +and tireless labourer in the vineyard of public service--after this +memorable discussion, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page had remarked, in his +mild, unpolemical tone, that "though John had undoubtedly carried off +the flowers of rhetoric, there was a good deal of wholesome green stuff +about that fellow Vetch." But everybody knew that a man with a comical +habit of mind could not be right. + +Again the figure crossed the firelight between the muslin curtains, and +to Stephen Culpeper, standing alone in the snow outside, that large +impending presence embodied all that he and his kind had hated and +feared for generations. It embodied among other disturbances the law of +change; and to Stephen and his race of pleasant livers the two sinister +forces in the universe were change and death. After all, they had made +the world, these pleasant livers; and what were those other people--the +people represented by that ominous shadow--except the ragged prophets of +disorder and destruction? + +Turning away, Stephen descended the wide brick walk which fell +gradually, past the steps of the library and the gaunt railing round a +motionless fountain, to the broad white slope of the Square with its +smoky veil of twilight. Farther away he saw the high iron fence and +heard the clanging of passing street cars. On his left the ugly shape +of the library resembled some crude architectural design sketched on +parchment. + +As he approached the fountain, a small figure in a red cape detached +itself suddenly from the mesh of shadows, and he recognized Patty Vetch, +the irrepressible young daughter of the Governor. He had seen her the +evening before at a charity ball, where she had been politely snubbed by +what he thought of complacently as "our set." From the moment when he +had first looked at her across the whirling tulle and satin skirts in +the ballroom, he had decided that she embodied as obviously as her +father, though in a different fashion, the qualities which were most +offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards +of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair +curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt +nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows +over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on +the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, +but he couldn't help looking at her. If she had been on the cover of a +magazine, he had told himself sternly, he should never have bought it. +He had correct ideas of what a lady should be (they were inherited from +the early eighties and his mother had implanted them), and he would +have known anywhere that Patty Vetch was not exactly a lady. Though he +was broad enough in his views to realize that types repeat themselves +only in variations, and that girls of to-day are not all that they were +in the happy eighties--that one might make up flashily like Geraldine +St. John, or dance outrageously like Bertha Underwood, and yet remain +in all essential social values "a lady"--still he was aware that the +external decorations of a chorus girl could not turn the shining +daughter of the St. Johns for an imitation of paste, and, though the +nimble Bertha could perform every Jazz motion ever invented, one would +never dream of associating her with a circus ring. It was not the things +one did that made one appear unrefined, he had concluded at last, but +the way that one did them; and Patty Vetch's way was not the prescribed +way of his world. Small as she was there was too much of her. She +contrived always to be where one was looking. She was too loud, too +vivid, too highly charged with vitality; she was too obviously +different. If a redbird had flown into the heated glare of the ballroom +Stephen's gaze would have followed it with the same startled and +fascinated attention. + +As the girl approached him now on the snow-covered slope, he was +conscious again of that swift recoil from chill disapproval to reluctant +attraction. Though she was not beautiful, though she was not even pretty +according to the standards with which he was familiar, she possessed +what he felt to be a dangerous allurement. He had never imagined that +anything so small could be so much alive. The electric light under which +she passed revealed the few golden freckles over her childish nose, the +gray-green colour of her eyes beneath the black eyelashes, and the +sensitive red mouth which looked as soft and sweet as a carnation. It +revealed also the absurd shoes of gray suede, with French toes and high +and narrow heels, in which she flitted, regardless alike of danger and +of common sense, over the slippery ground. The son of a strong-minded +though purely feminine mother, he had been trained to esteem discretion +in dress almost as highly as rectitude of character in a woman; and by +no charitable stretch of the imagination could he endow his first +impression of Patty Vetch with either of these attributes. + +"It would serve her right if she fell and broke her leg," he thought +severely; and the idea of such merited punishment was still in his mind +when he heard a sharp gasp of surprise, and saw the girl slip, with a +frantic clutch at the air, and fall at full length on the shining +ground. When he sprang forward and bent over her, she rose quickly to +her knees and held out what he thought at first was some queer small +muff of feathers. + +"Please hold this pigeon," she said, "I saw it this afternoon, and I +came out to look for it. Somebody has broken its wings." + +"If you came out to walk on ice," he replied with a smile, "why, in +Heaven's name, didn't you wear skates or rubbers?" + +She gave a short little laugh which was entirely without merriment. "I +don't skate, and I never wear rubbers." + +He glanced down at her feet in candid disapproval. "Then you mustn't be +surprised if you get a sprained ankle." + +"I am not surprised," she retorted calmly. "Nothing surprises me. Only +my ankle isn't sprained. I am just getting my breath." + +She had rested her knee on a bench, and she looked up at him now with +bright, enigmatical eyes. "You don't mind waiting a moment, do you?" +she asked. To his secret resentment she appeared to be deliberately +appraising either his abilities or his attractions--he wasn't sure which +engaged her bold and perfectly unembarrassed regard. + +"No, I don't mind in the least," he replied, "but I'd like to get you +home if you have really hurt yourself. Of course it was your own fault +that you fell," he added truthfully but indiscreetly. + +For an instant she seemed to be holding her breath, while he stood there +in what he felt to be a foolish attitude, with the pigeon (for all +symbolical purposes it might as well have been a dove) clasped to his +breast. + +"Oh, I know," she responded presently in a voice which was full of +suppressed anger. "Everything is my fault--even the fact that I was +born!" + +Shocked out of his conventional manner, he stared at her in silence, and +the pigeon, feeling the strain of his grasp, fluttered softly against +his overcoat. What was there indeed for him to do except stare at a lack +of reticence, of good-breeding, which he felt to be deplorable? His fine +young face, with its characteristic note of reserve, hardened into +sternness as he remembered having heard somewhere that the girl's mother +had been killed or injured when she was performing some dangerous act at +a country fair. Well, one might expect anything, he supposed, from such +an inheritance. + +"May I help you?" he asked with distant and chilly politeness. + +"Oh, can't you wait a minute?" She impatiently thrust aside his offer. +"I _must_ get my breath again." + +It was plain that she was very angry, that she was in the clutch of a +smothered yet violent resentment, which, he inferred with reason, was +directed less against himself than against some abstract and impersonal +law of life. Her rage was not merely temper against a single human +being; it was, he realized, a passionate rebellion against Fate or +Nature, or whatever she personified as the instrument of the injustice +from which she suffered. Her eyes were gleaming through the web of light +and shadow; her mouth was trembling; and there was the moisture of +tears--or was it only the glitter of ice?--on her round young cheek. And +while he looked, chilled, disapproving, unsympathetic, at the vivid +flower-like bloom of her face, there seemed to flow from her and envelop +him the spirit of youth itself--of youth adventurous, intrepid, and +defiant; of youth rejecting the expedient and demanding the impossible; +of youth eternally desirable, enchanting, and elusive. It was as if his +orderly, complacent, and tranquil soul had plunged suddenly into a bath +of golden air. Vaguely disturbed, he drew back and tried to appear +dignified in spite of the fluttering pigeon. He had no inclination for +a flirtation with the Governor's daughter--intuitively he felt that such +an adventure would not be a safe one; but if a flirtation were what she +wanted, he told himself, with a sense of impending doom, "there might be +trouble." He didn't know what she meant, but whatever it was, she +evidently meant it with determination. Already she had impressed him +with the quality which, for want of a better word, he thought of as +"wildness." It was a quality which he had found strangely, if secretly, +alluring, and he acknowledged now that this note of "wildness," of +unexpectedness, of "something different" in her personality, had held +his gaze chained to the airy flutter of her scarlet skirt. He felt +vaguely troubled. Something as intricate and bewildering as impulse was +winding through the smoothly beaten road of his habit of thought. The +noises of the city came to him as if they floated over an immeasurable +distance of empty space. Through the spectral boughs of the sycamores +the golden sky had faded to the colour of ashes. And both the empty +space and the ashen sky seemed to be not outside of himself, but a part +of the hidden country within his mind. + +"You were at the ball," she burst out suddenly, as if she had been +holding back the charge from the beginning. + +"At the ball?" he repeated, and the words were spoken with his lips +merely in that objective world of routine and habit. "Yes, I was there. +It was a dull business." + +She laughed again with the lack of merriment he had noticed before. +Though her face was made for laughter, there was an oddly conflicting +note of tragedy in her voice. "Was it dull? I didn't notice." + +"Then you must have enjoyed it?" + +"But you were there. You saw what happened. Every one must have seen." +Her savage candour brushed away the flimsy amenities. He knew now that +she would say whatever she pleased, and, with the pigeon clasped tightly +in his arms, he waited for anything that might come. + +"You pretend that you don't know, that you didn't see!" she asked +indignantly. + +As she looked at him he thought--or it may have been the effect of the +shifting light--that her eyes diffused soft green rays beneath her black +eyelashes. Was there really the mist of tears in her sparkling glance? + +"I am sorry," he said simply, being a young man of few words when the +need of speech was obvious. The last thing he wanted, he told himself, +was to receive the confidences of the Governor's daughter. + +At this declaration, so characteristic of his amiable temperament, her +anger flashed over him. "You were not sorry. You know you were not, or +you would have made them kinder!" + +"Kinder? But how could I?" He felt that her rage was making her +unreasonable. "I didn't know you. I hadn't even been introduced to you." +It was on the tip of his tongue to add, "and I haven't been yet--" but +he checked himself in fear of unchaining the lightning. It was all +perfectly true. He had not even been introduced to the girl, and here +she was, as crude as life and as intemperate, accusing him of +indifference and falsehood. And after all, what had they done to her? No +one had been openly rude. Nothing had been said, he was sure, absolutely +nothing. It had been a "charity entertainment," and the young people of +his set had merely left her alone, that was all. The affair had been far +from exclusive--for the enterprising ladies of the Beech Tree Day +Nursery had prudently preferred a long subscription list to a limited +social circle--and in a gathering so obscurely "mixed" there were, +without doubt, a number of Gideon Vetch's admirers. Was it maliciously +arranged by Fate that Patty Vetch's social success should depend upon +the people who had elected her father to office? + +"As if that mattered!" + +Her scorn of his subterfuge, her mocking defiance of the sacred formula +to which he deferred, awoke in him an unfamiliar and pleasantly piquant +sensation. Through it all he was conscious of the inner prick and sting +of his disapprobation, as if the swift attraction had passed into a +mental aversion. + +"As if that mattered!" he echoed gaily, "as if that mattered at all!" + +Her face changed in the twilight, and it seemed to him that he saw her +for the first time with the peculiar vividness that came only in dreams +or in the hidden country within his mind. The sombre arch of the sky, +the glimmer of lights far away, the clustering shadows against the white +field of snow, the vague ghostly shapes of the sycamores--all these +things endowed her with the potency of romantic adventure. In the winter +night she seemed to him to exhale the roving sweetness of spring. Then +she spoke, and the sharp brightness of his vision was clouded by the old +sense of unreality. + +"They treated me as if I were a piece of bunting or a flower in a pot," +she said. "They left me alone in the dressing-room. No one spoke to me, +though they must have known who I was. They know, all of them, that I am +the Governor's daughter." + +With a start he brought himself back from the secret places. "But I +thought you carried your head very high," he answered, "and you did not +appear to lack partners." Some small ironic demon that seemed to dwell +in his brain and yet to have no part in his real thought, moved him to +add indiscreetly: "I thought you danced every dance with Julius Gershom. +That's the name of that dark fellow who's a politician of doubtful cast, +isn't it?" + +She made a petulant gesture, and the red wings in her hat vibrated like +the wings of a bird in flight. There flashed though his mind while he +watched her the memory of a cardinal he had seen in a cedar tree against +the snow-covered landscape. Strange that he could never get away from +the thought of a bird when he looked at her. + +"Oh, Julius Gershom! I despise him!" + +She shivered, and he asked with a sympathy he had not displayed for +mental discomforts: "Aren't you dreadfully chilled? This kind of thing +is a risk, you know. You might catch influenza--or anything." + +"Yes, I might, if there is any about," she replied tartly, and he saw +with relief that her petulance had faded to dull indifference. "I was +obliged to dance with somebody," she resumed after a minute, "I couldn't +sit against the wall the whole evening, could I? And nobody else asked +me,--but I don't like him any the better for that." + +"And your father? Does he dislike him also?" he asked. + +"How can one tell? He says he is useful." There was a playful tenderness +in her voice. + +"Useful? You mean in politics?" + +She laughed. "How else in the world can any one be useful to Father? It +must be freezing." + +"No, it is melting; but it is too cold to play about out of doors." + +"Your teeth are chattering!" she rejoined with scornful merriment. + +"They are not," he retorted indignantly. "I am as comfortable as you +are." + +"Well, I'm not comfortable at all. Something--I don't know what it +was--happened to my ankle. I think I twisted it when I fell." + +"And all this time you haven't said a word. We've talked about nothing +while you must have been in pain." + +She shook her head as if his new solicitude irritated her, and a quiver +of pain--or was it amusement?--crossed her lips. "It isn't the first +time I've had to grit my teeth and bear things--but it's getting worse +instead of better all the time, and I'm afraid I shall have to ask you +to help me up the hill. I was waiting until I thought I could manage it +by myself." + +So that was why she had kept him! She had hoped all the time that she +could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was +impossible. Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic +imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her. By Jove, what pluck +she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the +realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so +lightly, it could mean only that her short life had been full of +misadventures beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial. She could +"play the game" so perfectly, he grasped, because she had been obliged +either to play it or go under ever since she had been big enough to read +the cards in her hand. To be "a good sport" was perhaps the best lesson +that the world had yet taught her. Though she could not be, he decided, +more than eighteen, she had acquired already the gay bravado of the +experienced gambler with life. + +"Let me help you," he said eagerly, "I am sure that I can carry you, you +are so small. If you will only let me throw away this confounded bird, I +can manage it easily." + +"No, give it to me. It would die of cold if we left it." She stretched +out her hand, and in silence he gave her the wounded pigeon. Her +tenderness for the bird, conflicting as it did with his earlier +impression of her, both amused and perplexed him. He couldn't reconcile +her quick compassion with her resentful and mocking attitude toward +himself. + +At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and +stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite unnecessary +to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't need to be +carried," she said. "That sort of thing went out of fashion ages ago. If +you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill." + +She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the +hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most +embarrassing one through which he had ever lived. The fugitive gleam, +the romantic glamour, had vanished now. He wondered what it was about +her that he had at first found attractive. It was the spirit of the +place, he decided, nothing more. With every step of the way there closed +over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence, his +instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour. Conventions were the +breath of his young nostrils, and yet he was passing through an +atmosphere, without, thank Heaven, his connivance or inclination, where +it seemed to him the hardiest convention could not possibly survive. +When the lights of the mansion shone nearer through the bared boughs, he +heaved a sigh of relief. + +"Have I tired you?" asked the girl in response, and the curious lilting +note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden +suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging some +hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that she +would be capable of such a performance, or of anything else that invited +her amazing vivacity. His one hope was that he might leave her in some +obscure corner of the house, and slip away before anybody capable of +making a club joke had discovered his presence. The hidden country was +lost now, and with it the perilous thrill of enchantment. + +He rang the bell, and the door was opened by an old coloured butler who +had been one of the family servants of the Culpepers. How on earth, +Stephen wondered, could the Governor tolerate the venerable Abijah, the +chosen companion of Culpeper children for two generations? While he +wondered he recalled something his mother had said a few weeks ago about +Abijah's having been lured away by the offer of absurd wages. "You +needn't worry," she had added shrewdly, "he will return as soon as he +gets tired of working." + +"I hurt my ankle, Abijah," said the girl. + +"You ain't, is you, Miss Patty?" replied Abijah, in an indulgent tone +which conveyed to Stephen's delicate ears every shade of difference +between the Vetchs' and the Culpepers' social standing. + +"How are you, Abijah?" remarked the young man with the air of lordly +pleasantry he used to all servants who were not white. Beyond the fine +old hall he saw the formal drawing-room and the modern octagonal +dining-room at the back of the house. + +"Howdy, Marse Stephen," responded the negro, "I seed yo' ma yestiddy en +she sutney wuz lookin well an' peart." + +He opened the door of the library, and while Stephen entered the room +with the girl's hand on his arm, a man rose from a chair by the fire and +came forward. + +"Father, this is Mr. Culpeper," remarked Patty calmly, as she sank on a +sofa and stretched out her frivolous shoes. + +In the midst of his embarrassment Stephen wondered resentfully how she +had discovered his name. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +GIDEON VETCH + + +"Your daughter slipped on the ice," explained the young man, while the +thought flashed through his mind that Patty's father was accepting it +all, with ironical humour, as some queer masquerade. + +It was the first time that Stephen had come within range of the +Governor's personal influence, and he found himself waiting curiously +for the response of his sympathies or his nerves. Once or twice he had +heard Vetch speak--a storm of words which had played freely from the +lightning flash of humorous invective to the rolling thunder of +passionate denunciation. Such sound and fury had left Stephen the one +unmoved man in the audience. He had been brought up on the sonorous +rhetoric and the gorgeous purple periods of the classic orations; and +the mere undraped sincerity--the raw head and bloody bones eloquence, as +he put it, of Vetch's speech had been as offensive to his taste as it +had been unconvincing to his intelligence. The man was a mountebank, +nothing more, Stephen had decided, and his strange power was simply the +reaction of mob hysteria to the stage tricks of the political clown. + +Yes, the man was a mountebank--but was he nothing more than a +mountebank? Like most men of his age, Stephen Culpeper was inclined to +swift impressions rather than hasty judgments of people; and he was +conscious, while he listened in silence to the murmuring explanations +of the girl, that the immediate effect was a sensation, not an idea. At +first sight, the Governor appeared merely ordinary--a tall, rugged +figure, built of good bone and muscle and sound to the core, with the +look of arrested energy which was doubtless an inheritance from the +circus ring. There was nothing impressive about him; nothing that would +cause one to turn and look back in a crowd. What struck one most was his +air of extraordinary freshness and health, of sanguine vitality. His +face was well-coloured and irregular in outline, with a high bulging +forehead and thick sandy hair which was already gray on the temples. In +the shadow his eyes did not appear remarkably fine; they seemed at the +first glance to be of an indeterminate colour--was it blue or gray?--and +there was nothing striking in their deep setting under the beetling +sandy eyebrows. All this was true; and yet while Stephen looked into +them over the Governor's outstretched hand, he told himself that they +were the most human eyes he had ever seen. Afterward, when he groped +through his vocabulary for a more accurate description, he could not +find one. There was shrewdness in Gideon Vetch's eyes; there was +friendliness; there was the blue sparkle of contagious humour--a ripple +of light that was like visible laughter--but above all there was +humanity. Though Stephen did not try to grasp the vivid impressions that +passed through his mind, he felt intuitively that he had learned to know +Gideon Vetch through his look and manner as well as he should have known +another man after weeks or months of daily intercourse. Whatever the +man's private life, whatever his political faults may have been, there +was magic in the clasp of his hand and the cordial glow of his smile. +He was always responsive; he stood always on the same level, high or +low, with his companion of the moment: he was as incapable of looking up +as he was of looking down; he was equally without reverence and without +condescension. It was the law of his nature that he should give himself +emphatically to the just and the unjust alike. + +"He came home with me because I hurt my foot," Patty was saying. + +Had she forgotten already, Stephen asked himself cynically, that it was +not her foot but her ankle? His suspicions returned while he looked at +her blooming face, and he hoped earnestly that she would not feel +impelled to relate any irrelevant details of the adventure. Like Gideon +Vetch on the platform she seemed incapable of withholding the smallest +fragment of a fact; and the young man wondered if it were characteristic +either of "the plain people," as he called them, or of circus riders as +a class, that their minds should go habitually unclothed yet unashamed. + +"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked: "Did +you hurt yourself, Patty?" while he bent over and laid his hand on her +ankle. + +A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and +when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of +affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him. + +"Not much," she replied carelessly. Then she held out the drooping +pigeon. "I found this bird. Is there anything we can do for it?" + +The Governor took the bird from her, and examined it under the light +with the manner of brisk confidence which directed his slightest action. +The man, for all his restless activity, appeared to be without excess or +exaggeration when it was a matter of practical detail. He apparently +employed his whole efficient and enterprising mind on the incident of +the bird. + +"The wings aren't broken," he said presently, lifting his head, "but it +is weak from hunger and exhaustion," and he rang the bell for Abijah. +"Rice and water and a warm basket," he ordered when the old negro +appeared. "You had better keep it in the house until it recovers." Then +dismissing the subject, he turned back to Stephen. + +"Well, I am glad to see you, Mr. Culpeper," he said. "You had a hard +beginning, but, as they used to tell me when I was a kid, a hard +beginning makes a good ending." + +For the first time a smile softened his face, and the roving blue gleam +danced blithely in his eyes. A moment before the young man had thought +the Governor's face harsh and ugly. Now he remembered that the Judge had +said "the man was not half bad to look at if you caught him smiling." +Yes, he had a charm of his own, and that charm had swept him forward +over every obstacle to the place he had reached. A single gift, +indefinable yet unerring--the ability to make men believe absurdities, +as John Benham had once said--and the material disadvantages of poverty +and ignorance were brushed aside like trivial impediments. A strange +power, and a dangerous one in unscrupulous hands, the young man +reflected. + +"I remember your face," pursued the Governor, while his smile faded--was +brevity, after all, the secret of its magic? "You were at one of my +speeches last autumn, and you sat in the front row, I think. I recall +you because you were the only person in the audience who looked bored." + +"I was." Frankness called for frankness. "I am not keen about speeches." + +"Not even when Benham speaks?" The voice was gay, but through it all +there rang the unmistakable tone of authority, of conscious power. There +was one person, Stephen inferred, who had never from the beginning +disparaged or ridiculed Gideon Vetch, and that person was Gideon Vetch +himself. John Benham had once said that the man was a mere posturer--but +John Benham was wrong. + +"Oh, well, you see, Benham is different," replied the young man as +delicately as he could. "He is apt to say only what I think, you know." + +So far there had been no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner, +no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and +presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had +looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have done, +facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When the +break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man +because he had been so imperfectly prepared for it. + +"And because he is different, of course you think he'd make a better +Governor than I shall," said Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way +with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You +never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it +knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've been +on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so much +as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too much +electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; but you haven't +even looked back to find out whether you are right or wrong. Talk about +public spirit! Why, there isn't an ounce of live public spirit left +among you, in spite of all the moonshine your man Benham talks about the +healing virtues of tradition and the sacred taboo of your political +Pharisees. There wasn't one of you that didn't hate like the devil to +see me Governor of Virginia--and yet how many of you took the trouble to +find out what I am made of, or to understand what I mean? Did you even +take the trouble to go to the polls and vote against me?" + +Though Stephen flushed scarlet, he held his ground bravely. It was true +that he had not voted--he hated the whole sordid business of +politics--but then, who had ever suspected for a minute that Gideon +Vetch would be elected? His brief liking for the man had changed +suddenly to exasperation. It seemed incredible to him that any Governor +of Virginia should display so open a disregard of the ordinary rules of +courtesy and hospitality. To drag in their political differences at such +a time, when he had come beneath the other's roof merely to render him +an unavoidable service! To stoop to the pettifogging sophistry of the +agitator simply because his opponent had reluctantly yielded him an +opportunity! + +"Well, I heard you speak, but that didn't change me!" he retorted with a +smile. + +The Governor laughed, and the sincerity of his amusement was evident +even to Stephen. "Could anything short of a blasting operation change +you traditional Virginians?" he inquired. + +His face was turned to the fire, and the young man felt while he +watched him that a piercing light was shed on his character. It was as +if Stephen saw his opponent from an entirely fresh point of view, as if +he beheld him for the first time with the sharp clearness which the +flash of his anger produced. The very absence of all sense of dignity +impressed him suddenly as the most tremendous dignity a human being +could attain--the unconscious dignity of natural forces--of storms and +fire and war and pestilence. Because the man never thought of how he +appeared, he appeared always impregnable. + +"I shall not argue," said the young man, with a smile which he +endeavoured to make easy and natural. "The time for argument is over. +You played trumps." + +Vetch laughed. "And it wasn't my last card," he answered bluntly. + +"The game isn't finished." Though Stephen's voice was light it held a +quiver of irritation. "He laughs best who laughs last." The other had +started the row, and, by Jove, he would give him as much as he wanted! +He recalled suddenly the charges that there was more than the customary +political log-rolling--that there were mysterious "discreditable +dealings" in the Governor's election to office. + +But it appeared in a minute that Gideon Vetch was adequate to any demand +which the occasion might develop. Already Stephen was beginning to +regard him less as a man than as an energetic idea, as activity +incarnate. + +"If you mean to imply that the laugh may be on me at the last," he +returned, while the points of blue light seemed to pierce Stephen like +arrows--no, like gimlets, "well, you're wrong about one part of it--for +if that ever happens, I'll laugh with you because of the sheer rotten +irony." + +For the first time the other noticed how the Governor was dressed--in a +suit of some heavy brown stuff which looked as if it had been sprinkled +and needed pressing. He wore a green tie and a striped shirt of the +conspicuous kind that Stephen hated. Though the younger man was keenly +critical of clothes, and perseveringly informed himself regarding the +smallest details of fashion, he acknowledged now that he had at last met +a man who appeared to wear his errors of dress as naturally as he wore +his errors of opinion. The fuzzy brown stuff, the green tie with red +spots, the striped shirt--was it blue or purple?--all became as much a +part of Gideon Vetch as the storm-ruffled plumage was part of an eagle. +If the misguided man had attired himself in a toga, he would have +carried the Mantle without dignity perhaps, but certainly with +picturesqueness. + +"I'll hold you to your promise--or threat," said Stephen lightly, as he +turned from the Governor to his daughter. Why, in thunder, he asked +himself, had he stayed so long? What was there about the fellow that +held one in spite of oneself? "I hope you will be all right again in a +few days," he said formally as his eyes met Patty's upraised glance. In +the warm room all the glamour of the twilight--and of that hidden +country within his mind--had faded from her. She looked fresh and +blooming and merely commonplace, he thought. A brief half hour ago he +had felt that he was in danger of losing his head; now his rational part +was in the ascendant, and his future appeared pleasantly tranquil. Then +the girl smiled that faint inscrutable smile of hers, and the +disturbing green rays shot from her eyes. A thrill of interest stirred +his pulses while something held him there against his will and his +better judgment, as if he were caught fast in the steel spring of a +trap. + +"Oh, that's nothing," replied Patty, with her air of mockery. "If there +were no worse things than that!" + +He did not hold out his hand, though there was a flutter toward him of +her fingers--pretty fingers they were for a girl with no blood that one +could mention in public. There was a faint hope in his mind that he +might still vanish unthanked and undetained. The one quality in father +and daughter which had arrested his favourable attention--the quality of +"a good sport"--would probably aid in his escape. + +"Drop in some evening, and we'll have a talk," said the Governor in his +slightly theatrical but extremely confident manner, "there are things +I'd like to say to you. You are a lawyer, if I remember, in Judge +Horatio Page's firm, and you were in the war from the beginning." + +Stephen smiled. "Not quite." They were at the front door, and all hope +of escaping into the desirable obscurity from which he had sprung fled +from his mind. + +"He is a great old boy, the Judge," resumed Gideon Vetch blandly, "I had +a talk with him one day before the elections, when you other fellows +were sitting back like a lot of lunatics and waiting for the Democratic +primaries to put things over. He is the only one in the whole bunch of +you who stopped shouting long enough to hear what I had to say. I like +him, sir, and if there is one thing you will never find me doing it is +liking the wrong man. I may not know Greek, but I can read men." + +The front door was open, and the blast of cold air dispersed all the +foolish fancies that had gathered in Stephen's brain. Beyond the +fountain and the gate he could see the broad road through the Square and +the dark majestic figure of Washington on horseback. The electric signs +were blazing on the roofs of the shops and hotels which had driven the +original dwelling houses out of the neighbouring streets. + +Turning as he was descending the steps, the young man looked into the +Governor's face. "Are you sure that you read Julius Gershom correctly?" +he inquired. + +For a minute--it could not have been longer--the Governor did not reply. +Was he surprised for once into open discomfiture, or was his nimble wit +engaged in framing a plausible answer? Within the house, where so much +was disappointing and incongruous, Stephen had not felt the lack of +harmony between Gideon Vetch and his surroundings; but against the fine +proportions and the serene stateliness of the exterior, the Governor's +figure appeared aggressively modern. + +"Julius Gershom!" repeated Vetch. "Well, yes, I think I know my Julius. +May I ask if you do?" The ironical humour which flashed like a sharp +light over his countenance played with the idea. + +"Not by choice." Stephen looked back laughing. There was one thing to be +said in the Governor's favour--he invited honesty and he knew how to +receive it. "But I read of him in the newspapers when I cannot avoid it. +He does some dirty work, doesn't he?" + +Again the Governor paused before replying. There was a curious gravity +about his consideration of Gershom in spite of the satirical tone of his +responses. Was it possible that he was the one man in town who did not +treat the fellow as a ridiculous farce? + +"If by dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles--well, +somebody has to do it, hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a +clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the +slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush--and you +complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle +too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was +necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn't +he? There are people," he added, "who believe that the wind he raised +swept me into office." + +"I object to his methods," insisted Stephen, "because they seem to me +dishonest." + +"Perhaps." The blue eyes--how could he have thought them gray?--had +grown quizzical. "But he wasn't moving in the best company, you know. He +who sups with the Devil must fish with a long spoon." + +"You mean that you defend that sort of thing--that you openly stand for +it?" + +"I stand for nothing, sir," replied Gideon Vetch sharply, "except +justice. I stand for a square deal all round, and I stand against the +exploitation or oppression of any class. This is what I stand for, and I +have stood for it ever since I was a small, gray, scared rabbit of a +creature dodging under hedgerows." + +It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met +it without subterfuge or evasion. "And you believe that such people as +Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?" he +demanded. + +"I'll answer that some day; but it's a long answer, and I can't speak it +out here in the cold," responded the Governor, while his blustering +manner grew sober. "Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not. You +may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth. I am a reformer, and all I care +about is pushing on the idea. I use any tools that I find; and one of +the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use +bad ones. If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad--well, it is +all in the day's job. But the cause is what matters--the thing you are +making, not the implements with which it is made. You dislike my methods +of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test +of achievement, they have proved to be sound. I have got somewhere; not +all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, without +patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the +market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or +did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the +simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like +nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be +traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am +an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as +old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half a loaf +is to ask for a whole one. Come again, and I'll talk to you." + +"Yes, I'll come again," Stephen answered, and he knew that he should. +Whether he willed it or not he would be drawn back by the Governor's +irresistible influence. The man had aroused in him an intense, a +devouring curiosity. He wanted to know his thoughts and his life, the +mystery of his birth, of his upbringing, of his privations and denials. +Above all he wanted to know why he had succeeded, what peculiar gift had +brought him out of obscurity, and had given him the ability to use men +and circumstances as if they were tools in his hands. + +When the young man ran down the steps there was a pleasant excitement +tingling in his veins, as if he were feeling the glow of forbidden wine. +Turning beside the fountain, he glanced back as the Governor was closing +the door, and in his vision of the lighted interior he saw Patty Vetch +darting airily across the hall. So it was nothing more than a hoax! She +hadn't hurt herself in the least. She had merely made a laughing-stock +of him for the amusement doubtless of her obscure acquaintances! For an +instant anger held him motionless; then turning quickly he walked +rapidly past the fountain to the open gate. + +The snow was dimly lighted on the long slope to the library; and +straight ahead, in the circle beneath the statue of Washington, the +bronze silhouette of a great Virginian stood sharply cut against the +luminous haze of the street. From the chimney-stack of a factory near +the river a wreath of gray smoke was flung over the tree-tops, where it +broke and drifted in feathery garlands. Across the road a group of three +trees was delicately etched, with each separate branch and twig, on the +slate-coloured evening sky. + +He had passed through the gate when a voice speaking suddenly at his +side caused him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he +had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place +from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There +was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it +produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child +when his hand was unexpectedly touched in the dark. + +"I beg your pardon," he said to the vague shape at the foot of a tree. +"Did you speak to me?" + +The shadows divided, and what seemed to him the edge of darkness moved +forward into the dimly lighted space at his side. He saw now that it was +the figure of a woman in a long black cloak, with the dilapidated +remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came +toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately +afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the +tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her +eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget. They were eyes that +would haunt his sleep that night like the face of the drowned man in the +nursery rhyme. + +"Will you tell me," asked the woman hurriedly, "who lives in this +house?" + +It was a queer question, he thought, for any one to ask in the Square; +but she was probably a stranger. + +"This is the Governor's house," he answered courteously. "I suppose you +are a stranger in town." + +"I got here a few hours ago, and I came out for a breath of air. I was +four days and nights on the way." + +To this he made no reply, and he was about to pass on again, when her +voice arrested him. + +"You wouldn't mind telling me, would you, the Governor's name?" + +"Not in the least. His name is Gideon Vetch." + +"Gideon Vetch?" She repeated the name slowly, as if she were impressing +it on her memory. "That's a queer name for a Governor. Was he born in +this town?" + +"I think not." + +"And who lives with him? I saw a girl come out awhile ago. Is she his +daughter, perhaps--or his wife--though she looked young for that." + +"It must have been his daughter. His wife is not living." + +"Is she his only child? Or has he others?" There was a quiver of +suspense in her voice, and turning he looked at her more closely. Was it +possible that she had known Gideon Vetch in his obscure past? + +"She is his only child," he replied. + +"Well, that's nice for her. Is she pretty?" An odd question if it had +been put by a man; but he had been trained to accept the fact that women +are different. + +"Yes, you would call her pretty." As he spoke the words there flashed +through his mind the picture of Patty Vetch as he had seen her that +afternoon, in her red cape and her small hat with the red wings, against +the snowy hill under the overhanging bough of the sycamore. Was she +really pretty, or was it only the witchery of her surroundings? Now that +he was out of her presence the attraction had faded. He was still +smarting from the memory of that dancing figure. + +"Well, it's a fine house," said the woman, "and it looks large for just +two people. I thank you for telling me." + +The pathos of her words appealed to the generous chivalry of his nature. +He felt sorry for her and wondered if he might offer her money. + +"I hope you found lodgings," he said. + +"Yes, I've found a room near here--on Governor Street, I think they call +it." + +"And you are not in want? You do not need any help?" + +She shook her head while the rusty mourning veil shrouded her features. +"Not yet," she answered. "I'm not a beggar yet." Though her tone was not +well-bred, he realized that she was neither as uneducated nor as +degraded as he had at first believed. + +"I am glad of that," he responded; and then lifting his hat again, he +hurried quickly away from her up the road beneath the few old linden +trees that were left of an avenue. Glancing back as he reached the +Capitol building, he saw her black figure moving cautiously over the +snow toward one of the gates of the Square. + +"That was a nightmare," he thought, "and now for the pleasant dream. +I'll go to the old print shop and see my Cousin Corinna." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP + + +As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old +print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at +forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid +the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate +early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she +had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously +with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her +father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Ambassador to +Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had +settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had +opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an +engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the +upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside +the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and +a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where +you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she +had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did +it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At +forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be +lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a +girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm, +the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing +heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to +remember, trite as it was--the singing heart--that was Corinna. She had +had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she +had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and +adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and +common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty +if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of +Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that +she liked almost every one--every one, that is, except Rose Stribling, +whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose +Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red +Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of +the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he +ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose Stribling, all blue eyes +and white linen, had nursed him at the last. At that time Corinna was in +America, and she hadn't so much as looked at Kent for years; but a woman +has a long memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss +of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet +the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose +Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black +patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to +Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it +intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could +have been half so lovely when she was a girl, before the faint shadows +and the tender little lines lent depth and mystery to her eyes, and the +single white lock swept back amid the powdered dusk of her hair. + +While the young man walked rapidly up Franklin Street, he saw before him +the long delightful room beyond the pyramidal cedars and the hedge of +box. He saw the ruddy glow of the fire mingling with the paler light of +amber lamps, and this mingled radiance shining on the rich rugs, the few +old brocades, and the rare English prints which covered the walls. He +saw wide-open creamy roses in alabaster bowls which were scattered +everywhere, on tables, on stools, on window-seats, and on the rich +carving of the Spanish desk in one corner. Against the curtains of gold +silk there was the bough of twisted pine he had broken, and against the +pine branch stood the figure of Corinna in her gown of soft red, which +melted like a spray of autumn foliage into the colours of the room. She +was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of +a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that +she looked like an October morning? + +As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull +gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the +thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a Japanese print. When +he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was +holding a basket of marigolds. + +"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in +water." + +She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she +was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two +old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the +hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he +inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was +as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had passed out of +the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance +and pleasant magic. The other was real life--life for all but the happy +few, he found himself thinking--this was merely the enchanted fairy-ring +where children played at making believe. + +"I hoped I'd catch you," he said, stretching out his hands to the log +fire. "I felt somehow that you hadn't gone, late as it is." While he +spoke he was thinking, not of Corinna, but of the strange woman he had +left in the Square. Queer how that incident had bitten into his mind. +Try as he might he couldn't shake himself free from it. + +"Father is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I +stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't +matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight. +Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I +haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell +me." + +"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who +were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as +the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that +it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the +feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings +were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of +the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities. + +"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge +Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any +world or any fireside--imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir +Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the shining dark eyes +of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment, +like an ambassador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your +fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get +is the conversation of an old fogy like me." + +"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt +powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the +shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular, +tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who +was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when +Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The +men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For +the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite +of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted +fairy-ring where no fact ever entered. + +With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the +tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing +over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness, +though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the +red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers. + +"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said. +"Wasn't it nice of him?" + +"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered. + +Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she +inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?" + +"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone. +"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older. +There isn't a man living whom I admire more." + +"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in +malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?" + +For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she +had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to +mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper +purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual +question? + +"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since +her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her." + +Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than +revealed her obscure motives. + +"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further +entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that +she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham." + +Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she +saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had +developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it +seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most +loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest. + +"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows." + +There was really nothing else that he could answer. Though he could +discuss Alice Rokeby, one of those vague, sweet women who seem designed +by Nature to develop the sentiment of chivalry in the breast of man, he +felt that it would be disloyal to speak lightly of his hero, John +Benham. "You could never guess where I've been," he said with relief +because he had got rid of the subject. "I might as well tell you in the +beginning that I have just left the Governor." + +"Gideon Vetch!" exclaimed Corinna, as she dropped into a chair at his +side. "Why, I thought you were as far apart as the poles!" + +"So we were until ten minutes--no, until exactly an hour ago." + +"It makes my blood boil when I think of that circus rider in the +Governor's mansion," said the General indignantly. "Do you know what my +father would have called that fellow? He would have called him a common +scalawag--a common scalawag, sir!" + +The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed, +that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy. +"Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The +trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village +stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians +were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may +have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out +with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the +archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept--. We +must let in new blood." + +"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got +to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?" + +"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be +only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made +up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say +that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view, +it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him +the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of +things." + +"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he +spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the +fellow ain't even in your class, sir!" + +"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the +Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make +a friendship." + +"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted +to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the +way." + +The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of +Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me +more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows +human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles +of the Confederacy." + +"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's +something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one +in spite of oneself." + +The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed +presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent +candour. Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours +it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his +Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment--straight +and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard +simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't--and +I'll say as much for our friend Gideon." + +"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is +honestly dishonest?" + +The Judge's suavity clothed him like velvet. "I know nothing about his +honesty. I doubt if any one does. He may be a liar and yet speak the +truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives. But I am not maintaining +that he is entirely right, you understand--merely that like the rest of +us he is not entirely wrong. I am not taking sides, you know. I am too +old to fight anybody's battles--even distressed Virtue's." + +"Then you think--you really think that he is sincere?" asked Stephen. + +"Sincere? Well, yes, in a measure. Nothing advertises one so widely as a +reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for +self-advertisement. He has found that it pays in politics to speak the +truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice. It takes courage, of +course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous +than the rest of us. To that extent, I should say that he has the +advantage of us." + +"Do you mean to imply," demanded the General wrathfully, "that a common +circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is +better than this lady and myself, sir?" + +"Well, hardly better than Corinna," replied the Judge. "Indeed, I was +about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and +Vetch. There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of +Corinna." + +"Father!" gasped Corinna. "Stephen, do you think he has gone out of his +mind?" + +"That is the first sign that wisdom has broken its cage," commented her +father. "No, my dear, I did not mean that you look like him; you are far +handsomer. I meant simply that you both habitually speak the truth, and +because you speak the truth the world mistakes you for a successful +comedian and Vetch for a kind of political Robin Hood." + +"Well, he is trying to hold us up in highwayman fashion, isn't he?" +asked Corinna. + +"Does it look that way?" inquired the Judge, with his beaming smile +which cast an edge of genial irony on everything that he said. "On the +contrary, it seems to me that Vetch is telling us the things we have +known about ourselves for a very long time. He says the world might be a +better place if we would only take the trouble to make it so; if we +would only try to live up to our epitaphs, I believe he once remarked. +He says also, I understand, that he is trying to climb to the top over +somebody else; and when I say 'he' I mean, of course, his order or his +class, whatever the fashionable phrase is. Now, unfortunately, there +appears to be but one way of reaching the top of the world, doesn't +there?--and that is by climbing up on something or somebody. Even you, +my dear Stephen, who occupy that high place, merely inherited the seat +from somebody who scrambled up there a few centuries ago. Somebody else +probably got broken shoulders before your nimble progenitor took +possession. Of course I am willing to admit that time does create in us +the sense of a divine right in anything that we have owned for a number +of years, as if our inheritance were the crown of some archaic king. I +myself feel that strongly. If it came to the point, though I have said +that I am too old to fight for distressed Virtue, I should very likely +die in the last ditch for every inch of land and every worthless object +I ever owned. When Vetch talks about taxing property more heavily I am +utterly and openly against him because it is my instinct to be. I refuse +to give up my superfluous luxuries in the cause of equal justice for +all, and I shall fight against it as long as there is a particle of +fight left in my bones. But because I am against him there is no reason, +I take it, why I shouldn't enjoy the pleasure of perceiving his point of +view. It is an interesting point of view, perhaps the more interesting +because we think it is a dangerous one. To approach it is like rounding +a sharp curve at high speed." + +As he rose to his feet and reached for his walking stick, Stephen +remembered that in England the Judge was supposed to have the fine +presence and the flashing eagle eyes of Gladstone. Were they alike also, +he wondered, in their fantastic mental processes? + +"It's time for me to go, Corinna," said the old man, stooping to kiss +his daughter, "so I shan't see you until to-morrow." Then turning to +Stephen, he added with a whimsical smile, "If you are so much afraid of +Vetch, why don't you fight him with his own weapons? What were you +doing, you and John, when the people voted for him?" + +"To tell the truth nobody ever dreamed that he would be elected," +replied Stephen, flushing. "Who would have thought that an independent +candidate could win over both parties?" + +The Judge had moved to the door, and he looked back, as Stephen +finished, with a dramatic flourish of his long white hand. "Well, +remember next time, my dear young sir," he answered, "that in politics +it is always the impossible that happens." The long white hand fell +caressingly on the shoulders of old Powhatan Plummer, and the two men +passed out of the door together. + +When Stephen turned to Corinna, she was resting languidly against the +tapestry-covered back of her chair, while the firelight flickering in +her eyes changed them to the deep bronze of the marigolds on the table. +With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to +him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall. + +"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked, +pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of +Bedford. + +She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my +reasons." + +As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly +over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich +mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the +bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints +of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer. Was not Corinna's place +among those vanished beauties of a richer age, rather than among the +sour-faced reformers and the Gideon Vetches of to-day? The wonderful +tone of the old prints, the silvery dusk, or the softly glowing colours +that were like the sunset of another century; the warmth and splendour +of the few brocades she had picked up in Italy; the suave religious +feeling of the worn red velvet from some church in Florence; the candles +in wrought-iron sconces, the shimmering firelight and the dreamy +fragrance of tea roses--all these things together made him think +suddenly of sunshine over the Campagna and English gardens in the month +of May and the burning reds and blues and golden greens of the Middle +Ages. Corinna with her unfading youth became a part of all the +loveliness that he had ever seen--of all beauty everywhere. + +"I haven't had a chance to tell you," she said, "that I am going to meet +the Governor." + +"Where? At the Berkeleys'?" + +"Yes, at the Berkeleys' dinner on Thursday. Are you going?" + +He laughed. "Mrs. Berkeley called me up this morning and asked me if I +would take somebody's place. She didn't say whose place it was, but she +did divulge the fact that the dinner is given to Vetch. I told her I'd +come--that I was so used to taking other people's places I could fill +six at the same time. But a dinner to Vetch! I wonder why she is doing +it?" + +"That's easy. Mr. Berkeley wants something from the Governor. I don't +know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very +badly." + +"And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me +an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of +man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the +opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he +is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs. +Stribling?" + +"Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should +that interest you?" + +"Oh, they say--at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any +misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it--that Mrs. Stribling's +latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself." + +He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not +mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and +unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war +had cured her." + +"The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity," +he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as +a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more +obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard +enough to get rid of that." + +"I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make +you human--and you've never been really human all through, you know--was +not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they +made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France--he had +gone into the war before his country--and to the nervous malady, the +disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more +esteem, but to lose some that you've got. Your salvation lies in the +opposite direction from where flags are waving. If you could only +deliberately arrange to do something that would lower your reputation in +the eyes of gouty old gentlemen or mothers with marriageable daughters! +If you could manage to get your nose broken, or elope with a chorus +girl, or commit an unromantic murder, I should begin to have hopes of +you." + +"I may do something as bad some day and surprise you." + +"It would surprise me. But I'm not sure, after all, that I don't like +you better as you are, with your fine air of superiority. It makes one +believe, somehow, in human perfectibility. Now, I can never believe in +that when I realize how I feel about Rose Stribling. There is nothing +perfectible in such emotions." + +"Rose Stribling! Beside you she is like a pumpkin in the basket with a +pomegranate!" + +Corinna laughed with frank pleasure. "There are a million who would +prefer the pumpkin to the pomegranate," she answered. "Rose Stribling, +you must admit, is the type that has been the desire of the world since +Venus first rose from the foam." + +"Can you imagine Mrs. Stribling rising from foam?" Stephen retorted +impertinently. + +"No, Venus has grown fatter through the ages," assented Corinna, "but +the type is unchanged. Now, among all the compliments that have been +paid me in my life, no one has ever compared me to the Goddess of Love. +I have been painted with the bow of Diana, but never with the doves of +Venus." + +Because he felt that her gaiety rippled over an undercurrent of pain, +Stephen bent forward and touched her hand with an impulse of tenderness. + +"You are more beautiful than you ever were in your life," he said. +"There isn't a woman in the world who can compare with you." Then he +laughed merrily. "I shall watch you two to-morrow evening, you and Rose +Stribling." + +"I am sorry," replied Corinna in a troubled voice. "I may tell you the +truth since Father says it is the last thing any one ever believes--and +the truth is that she makes me savage--yes, I mean it--she makes me +savage." + +"I know what the Judge means when he says you are like Vetch," returned +Stephen abruptly. Then, without waiting for her reply, he added in an +impulsive tone: "Triumph over her to-morrow night, Corinna. Go out to +fight with all your weapons and seize the trophies from Mrs. Stribling." + +"You funny boy!" exclaimed Corinna, but the sadness had left her voice +and her eyes were shining. "Why, I am twelve years older than Rose +Stribling, and those twelve years are everything." + +"Those twelve years are nothing unless you imagine that you are in a +novel. It is only in books that there is a chronology of the emotions." + +"She is a fat blonde without a heart," insisted Corinna, "and they are +invulnerable." + +"Well, snatch Vetch away from her. He deserves something better than +that combination." + +"Oh, she can't hurt him very much, even though she no longer has a +husband to get in her way. Have you ever wondered how George Stribling +stood her? It must have been a relief to find himself safely dead." + +"He stood her as one stands sultry weather probably, but with less hope +of a change. He had that slow and heavy philosophy that wears well. I +think it even dawned upon him now and then that there was something +funny about it." + +"Of course he knew that she married him for his money," said Corinna, +"but that is the last thing the natural man appears to resent." + +Stephen rose and bent over her. "Promise me that you will save Vetch," +he implored mockingly. + +"Why this sudden interest in Vetch?" Corinna rose also and reached for +her fur coat. "It makes me curious to meet him. Yes, I promise you that +I will go to-morrow night attired as for a carnival in all the mystery +of a velvet mask. I may not save Vetch, but I think at least that I can +eclipse Rose Stribling. My motive may not be admirable, but it is as +feminine as a string of beads." + +He kissed her hand. "Bless your heart because you are both human and my +cousin." For an instant he hesitated, and then as they reached the door +together, he turned with his hand on the knob, and looked into her eyes. +"The Governor has a daughter. Did you know it?" he asked. + +"Why, of course I know it. Isn't Patty Vetch as well advertised as the +newest illustrated weekly?" + +"I was wondering," again he hesitated over the words, "if you had seen +her and what you think of her?" + +"I have seen her twice. She was in here the other day to look at my +prints, and," her brilliant eyes grew soft, "well, I feel sorry for +her." + +"Sorry? But do you like her?" + +"Haven't you always told me that I like everybody?" + +He laughed. "With one exception!" + +"With one particular exception!" + +"But honestly, Corinna." His tone was insistent. "Do you like Patty +Vetch?" + +"Honestly, my dear Stephen, I do. There is something--well, something +almost pathetic about the girl; and I think she is genuine. One day last +week she came here and made me tell her everything I could about my +prints. I don't mean really that she made me, you know. There wasn't +anything forward about her then, though I hear there is sometimes. She +seemed to me a restless, lonely, misdirected intelligence hungry to know +things. That is the only way I can describe her, but you will +understand. She has had absolutely no advantages; she doesn't even know +what culture means, or social instinct, or any of the qualities you were +born with, my dear boy; but she feels vaguely that she has missed +something, and she is reaching out gropingly and trying to find it. I +like the spirit. It strikes me as American in the best sense--that young +longing to make up in some way for her deficiencies and lack of +opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her +upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know. +I like the courage that is in the girl--I am sure it is courage--and her +straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things +she was never taught, to make herself over if need be." + +"Is this Patty Vetch, Corinna, or your own dramatic instinct?" + +"Oh, it's Patty Vetch! I had no interest in her whatever. Why should I +have had? But I liked the way she went straight as a dart at the thing +she wanted. There was no affectation about her, no pretence of being +what she was not. She asked about prints because she saw the name and +she didn't know what it meant. She would have asked about Browning, or +Swinburne, or Meredith in exactly the same way if this had been a +book-shop. She wanted to know the difference between a mezzotint and a +stipple print. She wanted to know all about the portraits too, and the +names of the painters and who Lady Hamilton was and the Duchess of +Bedford and the Ladies Waldegrave and 'Serena,' and if Morland's +Cottagers were really as happy as they were painted? She asked as many +questions as Socrates, and I fear got as inadequately answered." + +"Well, she didn't strike me as in the least like that; but you can be a +great help to her if she is really in earnest." + +"She didn't strike you like that, my dear, simply because you are a man, +and some girls are never really themselves with men; they are for ever +acting a part; a vulgar part, I admit, but one they have learned before +they were born, the instinctive quarry eluding the instinctive hunter. +The girl is naturally shy; I could tell that, and she covers it with a +kind of boldness that isn't--well, particularly attractive to one of +your fastidious mind. Yet there is something rather taking about her. +She reminds me of a small, bright tropical bird." + +"Of a Virginia redbird, you mean." + +"A redbird? Then you have seen her?" + +"Yes, I've seen her--only twice--but the last time she indulged her +sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle." + +"I suppose she would joke like that. Even the modern girl that we know +isn't in the best possible taste. And you must remember that Patty Vetch +is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope +she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't +come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like +that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one +can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the +window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let me take you home?" + +They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her +smile of whimsical gaiety. + +"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown +you will wear for your triumph." + +It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her +laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn +hope!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TRIBAL INSTINCT + + +The spirit of the age, the worship of the many-headed god of magnitude, +was holding carnival in the town. Faster and faster buildings were +rising; the higher and more flimsily built, the better it seemed, for it +is easier to demolish walls that have been lightly erected. Everywhere +people were pushing one another into the slums or the country. +Everywhere the past was going out with the times and the future was +coming on in a torrent. Two opposing principles, the conservative and +the progressive, had struggled for victory, and the progressive +principle had won. To add more and more numbers; to build higher and +higher; to push harder and harder; and particularly to improve what had +been already added or built or pushed--these impulses had united at last +into a frenzied activity. And while the building and the pushing and the +improving went on, the village grew into the town, the town grew into +the city, and the city grew out into the country. Beneath it all, +informing the apparent confusion, there was some crude belief that the +symbol of material success is size, and that size in itself, regardless +of quality or condition, is civilization. For the many-headed god is a +god of sacrifice. He makes a wilderness of beauty and calls it progress. + +Long ago the village had disappeared. Long ago the spacious southern +homes, with their walled gardens of box and roses and aromatic shrubs in +spring, had receded into the shadowy memories of those whom the modern +city pointed out, with playful solicitude, as "the oldest inhabitants." +None except the very oldest inhabitants could remember those friendly +and picturesque streets, deeply shaded by elms and sycamores; those +hospitable houses of gray stucco or red brick which time had subdued to +a delicate rust-colour; those imposing Doric columns, or quaint Georgian +doorways; those grass-grown brick pavements, where old ladies in +perpetual mourning gathered for leisurely gossip; those wrought-iron +gates that never closed; those unshuttered windows, with small gleaming +panes, which welcomed the passer-by in winter; or those gardens, steeped +in the fragrance of mint and old-fashioned flowers, which allured the +thirsty visitor in summer. These things had vanished years ago; yet +beneath the noisy commercial city the friendly village remained. There +were hours in the lavender-tinted twilights of spring, or on autumn +afternoons, while the shadows quivered beneath the burnished leaves and +the sunset glowed with the colour of apricots, when the watcher might +catch a fleeting glimpse of the past. It may have been the drop of dusk +in the arched recess of a Colonial doorway; it may have been the faint +sunshine on the ivy-grown corner of an old brick wall; it may have been +the plaintive melody of a negro market-man in the street; or it may have +been the first view of the Culpeper's gray and white mansion; but, in +one or all of these things, there were moments when the ghost of the +buried village stirred and looked out, and a fragrance that was like the +memory of box and mint and blush roses stole into the senses. It was +then that one turned to the Doric columns of the Culpeper house, +standing firmly established in its grassy lawn above the street and the +age, and reflected that the defeated spirit of tradition had entrenched +itself well at the last. Time had been powerless against that fortress +of prejudice; against that cheerful and inaccessible prison of the +tribal instinct. Poverty, the one indiscriminate leveller of men and +principles, had never attacked it, for in the lean years of +Reconstruction, when to look well fed was little short of a disgrace in +Virginia, an English cousin, remote but clannish, had died at an +opportune moment and left Mr. Randolph Byrd Culpeper a moderate fortune. +Thanks to this event, which Mrs. Culpeper gratefully classified as the +"intervention of Providence," the family had scarcely altered its manner +of living in the last two hundred years. To be sure there were modern +discomforts which related to the abolition of slavery and the +prohibition of whiskey; but since the Culpepers had been indulgent +masters and light drinkers, they had come to regard these deprivations +as in the nature of blessings. Solid, imposing, and as richly endowed as +an institution of learning, the Culpeper generations had weathered both +the restraints and the assaults of the centuries. The need to make a +living, that grim necessity which is the mother of democracy, had +brushed them as lightly as the theory of evolution. Saturated with +tradition as with an odour, and fortified by the ponderous moral purpose +of the Victorian age, they had never doubted anything that was old and +never discovered anything that was new. About them as about the hidden +village, there was the charm of mellowness, of unruffled serenity. Some +ineradicable belief in things as they have always been had preserved +them from the aesthetic derangement of the Mid-Victorian taste; and in +standing for what was old, they had stood, inadvertently but +courageously, for what was excellent. Security, permanence, +possession--all the instincts which blend to make the tribe and the +community, all the agencies which work for organized society and against +the wayward experiment in human destiny--these were the stubborn forces +embodied in the Culpeper stock. + +The present head of the family, that Randolph Byrd Culpeper who had been +only ten years old when Providence intervened, was now a fine-looking, +heavily built man of sixty-five, with prominent dark eyes under sleepy +lids, abundant iron-gray hair which was brushed until it shone, and a +drooping moustache that was still as brown as it had been in his youth. +He had an impressive though stolid bearing, an amiable expression, an +engaging smile, and the manner of a weary monarch. It was his boast that +he had never done anything for the first time without ascertaining +precisely how it had been done by the highest authority before him. +Devoid of even the rudiments of an imagination, he had never been +visited in a nightmare by the suspicion that the name of Culpeper was +not the best result of the best of all possible worlds. As long as his +prejudices were not offended his generosity was inexhaustible. For the +rest, he bore his social position as reverently as if it were a plate in +church, had never spoken a profane word or recognized a joke in his +life, and still dined at two o'clock in the afternoon because his +grandfather, who was dyspeptic by constitution, had been unable to +digest a late dinner. At the time of his marriage, an unusually happy +one, he was regarded as "the handsomest man of his day"; and he was +still yearned over from a distance by elderly ladies of suppressed +romantic temperaments. + +Mrs. Culpeper, a small imperious woman of distinguished lineage and +uncertain temper, had gone through an entire life seeing only one thing +at a time, and never seeing that one thing as it really was. If her +husband embodied the moral purpose, she herself was an incarnation of +the evasive idealism of the nineteenth century. Her universe was +comprised in her family circle; her horizon ended with the old brick +wall between the alley and the Culpepers' garden. All that related to +her husband, her eight children and her six grandchildren, was not only +of supreme importance and intense interest to her, but of unsurpassed +beauty and excellence. It was intolerable to her exclusive maternal +instinct that either virtue or happiness should exist in any degree, +except a lesser measure, outside of her own household; and praise of +another woman's children conveyed to her a secret disparagement of her +own. Having naturally a kind heart she could forgive any sin in her +neighbours except prosperity--though as Corinna had once observed, with +characteristic flippancy, "Continual affliction was a high price to pay +for Aunt Harriet's favour." In her girlhood she had been a famous +beauty; and she was still as fine and delicately tinted as a carving in +old ivory, with a skin like a faded microphylla rose-leaf, and stiff +yellowish white hair, worn a la Pompadour. Her mind was thin but firm, +and having received a backward twist in its youth, it had remained +inflexibly bent for more than sixty years. Unlike her husband she was +gifted with an active, though perfectly concrete imagination--a kind of +superior magic lantern that shot out images in black and white on a +sheet--and a sense of humour which, in spite of the fact that it lost +its edge when it was pointed at the family, was not without practical +value in a crisis. + +On the evening of Stephen's adventure in the Square, the Culpeper family +had gathered in the front drawing-room, to await the arrival of a young +cousin, whom, they devoutly hoped, Stephen would one day perceive the +wisdom of marrying. The four daughters--Victoria, the eldest, who had +nursed in France during the war; Hatty, who ought to have been pretty, +and was not; Janet, who was candidly plain; and Mary Byrd, who would +have been a beauty in any circle--were talking eagerly, with the +innumerable little gestures which they had inherited from Mrs. +Culpeper's side of the house. They adored one another; they adored their +father and mother; they adored their three brothers and their married +sister, whose name was Julia; and they adored every nephew and niece in +the connection. Though they often quarrelled, being young and human, +these quarrels rippled as lightly as summer storms over profound depths +of devotion. + +"Oh, I do wish," said Mary Byrd, who had "come out" triumphantly the +winter before, "that Stephen would marry Margaret." She was a slender +graceful girl, with red-gold hair, which had a lustrous sheen and a +natural wave in it, and the brown ox-like eyes of her father. There was +a great deal of what Peyton, the second son, who lived at home, and was +the most modern of the family, called "dash" about her. + +"It was the war that spoiled it," said Janet, the plain one, who +possessed what her mother fondly described as "a charm that was all her +own." "I sometimes think the war spoiled everything." + +At this Victoria, the eldest, demurred mildly. Ever since she had nursed +in France, she had assumed a slightly possessive manner toward the war, +as if she had in some mysterious way brought it into the world and was +responsible for its reputation. She was tall and very thin, with a +perfect complexion, a long nose, and a short upper lip which showed her +teeth too much when she laughed. Her hair was fair and fluffy; and Mrs. +Culpeper, who could not praise her beauty, was very proud of her +"aristocratic appearance." + +"Why, he never even mentions the war," she protested. + +"I don't care. I believe he thinks about it," insisted Janet, who would +never surrender a point after she had once made it. + +"He's different, anyhow," said Hatty, the one who had everything, as her +mother asserted, to make her pretty, and yet wasn't. "He isn't nearly so +normal. Is he, Mother?" + +Mrs. Culpeper raised troubled eyes from the skirt of her pale gray silk +gown which she was scrutinizing dejectedly. "How on earth could I have +got that spot there?" she remarked in her brisk yet soft voice. "I am +afraid you are right, dear, about Stephen. He certainly hasn't been like +himself for some time. I have felt really anxious, I suppose it was the +war." + +While the war had lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of +vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but +from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an +international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course +of her family affairs. For the past two years she had refused to think +of it except under pressure; and then she recalled it only as the +occasion when Victoria and Stephen had been in France, and poor Peyton +in a training camp. Her feeling had been violent, but entirely personal, +while Mr. Culpeper, who possessed the martial patriotism characteristic +of Virginians of his class and generation, had been animated by the +sacrificial spirit of a hero. + +"Oh, Stephen is all right," declared Peyton, who felt impelled to take +the side of his brother in a family discussion. He was an incurious and +gay young man, of active sporting interests and immaculate appearance, +with so few of the moral attributes of the Culpepers that his mother +sometimes wondered how he could possibly be the son of his father. +Indeed there were times when this wonder extended to Mary Byrd, for it +seemed incredible that anything so "advanced" as the outlook of these +two should have been a legitimate offspring of either the Culpeper or +the Warwick point of view. + +"He would be all right," maintained Janet, "if he would only marry +Margaret. I am sure she likes him." + +"Oh, I don't know. There's that young clergyman," rejoined Hatty, "and +Margaret is so pious. I suppose that's why she has never been popular +with men." + +"My dear child," breathed Mrs. Culpeper in remonstrance, and she added +emphatically, as if the doubt were a disparagement of Stephen's +attractions, "Of course she likes him. Why, it would be a perfectly +splendid marriage for Margaret Blair." + +"It isn't possible," asked Mary Byrd, for if her manners were modern, +her prejudices were old-fashioned, "that Stephen could have met any one +else over there?" She was wearing an elaborate, very short and very low +gown of pink velvet, not one of the simple blue or gray silk dresses, +with modest round necks, in which her sisters attired themselves in the +evening. A little later she and Peyton would go on to a dance; for her +mother's consternation when the frock had been unpacked from its Paris +wrappings had been temporarily mitigated by the assertion that unless +one danced in gowns like that, one simply couldn't be expected to dance +at all. "Of course, if you wish me to be a wall-flower like Margaret +Blair," Mary Byrd had protested with wounded dignity; and since Mrs. +Culpeper wished nothing on earth so little as that, her only response +had been, "Well, I hope to heaven that you won't let your father see +it!" + +Now, as her husband was heard descending the stairs, she said hurriedly: +"Mary Byrd, if you won't put a scarf over your knees, I wish you would +wear one around your neck." + +"Oh, Father won't mind," retorted Mary Byrd flippantly. "He is a real +sport, and he knows that you have to play the game well if you play it +at all." Then turning with her liveliest air, she remarked as Mr. +Culpeper entered: "Father, darling, I've just said that you were a +sport." + +Mr. Culpeper surveyed her with portentous disapproval. He adored her, +and she knew it, but because it was impossible for his features to wear +any expression lightly, the natural gravity of his look deepened to a +thundercloud. + +"Is Mary Byrd going in swimming?" he demanded not of his daughter, but +of the family. + +"No, you precious, only in dancing," replied Mary Byrd, as she rose +airily and placed a kiss above the thundercloud on his forehead. + +"Will you go looking like this?" + +"Not if I can possibly look any worse." She swayed like a golden lily +before his astonished gaze. "Can you suggest any way that I might?" + +"I cannot." His face cleared under the kiss, and he held her at arm's +length while paternal pride softened his look. "Do you really mean that +you won't shock the young men away from you?" It was as near a jest as +he had ever come, and a ripple of amusement passed over the room. + +"I may shock them, but not away." The girl was really a wonder. How in +the world, he asked himself, did she happen to be his daughter? + +"Do you mean that all the other girls dress like this?" It was his final +appeal to an arbitrary but acknowledged authority. + +"All the popular ones. You can't wish me to dress like the unpopular +ones, can you?" + +His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his +father had displayed in a greater surrender. + +"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded; +and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this +convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct. + +As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble +mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less +resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and +haughty--the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and +knows that his blood is blue. + +"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I +heard him upstairs." + +She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming. +That is her ring now." + +Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe +herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was +the fashion to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I +should call Margaret our last violet--" + +A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It +sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's +just as certain to be left on the stem--" Then she broke off, still +pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet +entered the room. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MARGARET + + +As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fashioned lock, Stephen +remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because +Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening. "It takes you so long to +change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your +room," she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up +the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the +girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some +day--some remote day probably--become his wife. He was not in love with +Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was +not in love with him--that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be +called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who +read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also +that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of +four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past +experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less +intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this +carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her +usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have +married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would +have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of +tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous +ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the +compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of +the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for +romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would +have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James +River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had +sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness +could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something +wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived. +In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated +traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he +had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing +together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of +smothering for lack of space in which to breathe, had driven him like a +hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he +discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more +quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents +stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been +suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific +terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in +on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy +and afterward to analyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other +lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations +or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to +turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could +understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of +depression was psychoanalysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to +be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound +revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved--an apathy +of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark +unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this +morass of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only +hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete +plunge into the future. His reason told him this, and yet, though he +longed passionately to let himself go--to make the wild dash for +freedom--his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he +suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were +hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fortitude +to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as +in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic +spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw +things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by +circumstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between +tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age +and youth. + +Yes, it was "something different" that he craved. He had known Margaret +too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in +any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs +to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the +unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and +preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read. +As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was +gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions, +never exacted more of one's time than one cared to give, never +interfered with more important, if not more admirable, pursuits. That +was the rarest of combinations, he knew--the delightful mingling of +every virtue he held desirable in woman--and yet, rare and delightful as +he acknowledged it to be, he was obliged to confess that it awakened not +the faintest quiver of his pulses. Margaret aroused in him every +sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that +at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him +to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their +association had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in +accordance with the system under which he lived, he had assumed that +woman's part in love was as heroically passive as it had been in +religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she +was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love +with her? Until this evening he had always told himself that it would +come right in the end, that he was in his own phrase simply "playing for +time." Margaret was handsomer, if less piquant, than Patty Vetch. She +possessed every quality he had found lacking in poor Patty; yet he +admitted ruefully that he felt the vague sense of disappointment which +follows when one is offered a dish of one's choice and finds that the +expected flavour is missing. + +There was a peremptory knock at his door, and his mother looked in +reproachfully. "You must hurry, Stephen, or everything will be burned to +a cinder." + +"I am sorry," he replied with compunction, "I didn't realize that I was +late." + +Her expression was stern but kind. "If you could only learn to be +punctual, dear. Of course while we felt that you were not quite +yourself, we tried not to worry about it. But you have been home so long +now that you ought to be able to drop back into your old habits." + +She was right, he knew; the exasperating thing about her was that she +was always right. It was reasonable, it was logical, that after two +years he should be able to drop back into his old habits of life; and +yet he realized, with the intensity of revolt, that these habits +represented for him the form of bondage from which he desired +passionately to escape. He could not oppose his mother, and the +knowledge that he could not oppose her increased his annoyance. As far +back as he could remember she had governed her household as a benevolent +despot; and the fact that she lived entirely for others appeared to him +to have endowed her with some unfair advantage. Her very unselfishness +had developed into an unscrupulous power to ruin their lives. How was it +possible to weigh one's personal preferences against an irresistible +force which was actuated simply and solely by the desire for one's good? +Who could withstand a virtue which had encased itself in the first +principle of religion--which gave all things and demanded nothing except +the sacrifice of one's immortal soul? + +"I am ready now," he said; and then as they went downstairs together, he +added contritely: "After this I'll try to remember." + +"I hope you will, my dear. It vexes your father." Even in his childhood +Stephen had understood that his father's "vexation" existed only as an +instrument of correction in the hands of his mother. Though he had +discovered by the time he was three years old that the image was nothing +more than a nursery bugaboo, there were occasions still when the figure +was solemnly dressed up and paraded before his eyes. + +"So it's the Dad, bless him!" he exclaimed, for if he loved his mother +in spite of her virtues, he joined heartily in the family worship of the +head of the house. "Well, he has had a word with Margaret anyway, and he +ought to thank me for that." + +"Dear Margaret," murmured Mrs. Culpeper, "she is looking so sweet +to-night." + +That Margaret was looking very sweet indeed, Stephen acknowledged as +soon as he entered the room, where the firelight suffused the Persian +rugs (which had replaced the earlier Brussels carpet woven in a mammoth +floral design), the elaborately carved and twisted rosewood chairs and +sofas, upholstered in ruby-coloured brocade, the few fine old pieces of +Chippendale or Heppelwhite, the massive crystal chandelier, and the +precise copies of Italian paintings in gorgeous Florentine frames. Here +and there hung a family portrait, one of Amanda Culpeper, a famous +English beauty, with a long nose and a short upper lip, not unlike +Victoria's. This painting, which was supposed to be by Sir Joshua +Reynolds, was a source of unfailing consolation to Victoria, though +Stephen preferred the Sully painting of his grandmother, Judith +Randolph, who reminded him in some subtle way of Margaret Blair. In his +childhood he had believed this drawing-room to be the most beautiful +place on earth, and he never entered it now without a feeling of regret +for a shattered illusion. + +As he took Margaret's hand her expression of intelligent sympathy went +straight to his heart; and he told himself emphatically that after all +the familiar graces in women were the most lovable. She was a small +fragile girl, with a lovely oval face, nut-brown hair that grew in a +"widow's peak" on her forehead, and the prettiest dark blue eyes in the +world. Her figure drooped slightly in the shoulders, and was, as Mary +Byrd pointed out in her dashing way, "without the faintest pretence to +style." But if Margaret lacked "style," she possessed an unconscious +grace which seemed to Stephen far more attractive. It was delightful to +watch the flowing lines of her clothes, as if, he used to imagine in a +fanciful strain, she were poured out of some slender porcelain vase. Her +dress to-night, of delicate blue crepe, began slightly below the throat +and reached almost to her ankles. It was a fashion which he had always +admired; but he realized that it gave Margaret, who was only twenty-two, +a quaint air of maturity. + +"I am so sorry I am late," he said, "but I had to go back to the office +for a paper I'd forgotten." It was the truth as far as it went; and yet +because it was not the whole truth, because his delay was due, not to +his return for the paper, but to his meeting with Patty Vetch in the +Square, his conscience pricked him uncomfortably. When deceit was so +easy it ceased to be a temptation. + +She looked at him with an expression of guileless sympathy. "After +working all day I should think you would be tired," she murmured. That +was the way she would always cover up his errors, large or small, he +knew, with a trusting sweetness which made him feel there was dishonour +in the merest tinge of dissimulation. + +Mary Byrd was talking as usual in high fluting notes which drowned the +gentle ripple of Margaret's voice. + +"I was just telling Margaret about the charity ball," she said, "and the +way the girls snubbed Patty Vetch in the dressing-room." + +"And it was a very good account of young barbarians at play," commented +Mr. Culpeper, who was a romantic soul and still read his Byron. + +"Patty Vetch? Why, isn't that the daughter of the Governor?" asked Mrs. +Culpeper, without a trace of her husband's sympathy for the victim of +the "snubbing." A moment later, in accordance with her mental attitude +of evasive idealism, she added briskly: "I try not to think of that man +as Governor of Virginia." + +Of course the subject had come up. Wherever Stephen had been in the past +few weeks he had found that the conversation turned to the Governor; and +it struck him, while he followed the line of girls headed by his +mother's erect figure into the dining-room, that, for good or bad, the +influence of Gideon Vetch was as prevalent as an epidemic. All through +the long and elaborate meal, in which the viands that his ancestors had +preferred were served ceremoniously by slow-moving coloured servants, he +listened again to the familiar discussion and analysis of the demagogue, +as he still called him. How little, after all, did any one know of +Gideon Vetch? Since he had been in office what had they learned except +that he was approachable in human relations and unapproachable in +political ones? + +"I wonder if Stephen noticed the girl at the ball?" said Mrs. Culpeper +suddenly, looking tenderly at her son across the lovely George II +candlesticks and the dish of expensive fruit, for she could never +reconcile with her ideas of economy the spending of a penny on +decorations so ephemeral as flowers. + +"Oh, he couldn't have helped it," responded Mary Byrd. "Every one saw +her. She was dressed very conspicuously." + +"Do you imply that you were not?" inquired her father, without facetious +intention. + +Mary Byrd beamed indulgently in his direction. "Oh, you don't know what +it is to be conspicuous, dear," she answered. "What did you think of her +dress, Stephen?" + +He met her question with a blush. Was he really so modest after the war +and France and everything?--Victoria wondered in silence. + +"It was something red, wasn't it?" he rejoined vaguely. + +"It was scarlet tulle." Mary Byrd, as her mother had once observed, +"hadn't an indefinite bone in her body." Then she imparted an additional +incident. "She got it badly torn. I saw her pinning it up in the +dressing-room." + +"I should have been sorry for her," said Margaret simply; and he felt +that he had never in his life been so nearly in love with her. + +"Is she pretty?" asked Mrs. Culpeper, appealing directly to Stephen as +a man and an authority. It was the question the strange woman had put to +him in the Square, and ironical mirth seized the young man as he +remembered. + +"Do you think her pretty, Stephen?" repeated Margaret, and waited, with +an expression of impartial interest, for his reply. + +For an instant he hesitated. Did he think Patty Vetch pretty or not? "I +hardly know," he answered. "I suppose it depends upon whether you like +that kind of thing or not. Why don't you ask Peyton?" At the time he +couldn't have told himself whether he admired Patty or not. She +surprised him, she struck a new note, the note of the unexpected, but +whether he liked or disliked it, he could not tell. "There is something +unusual about her," he concluded hurriedly, feeling that he had not been +quite fair. + +"Well, I think she's good looking enough," Peyton, the incurious young +man of "advanced" tastes, was replying. "She seems to have a kind of +fascination. I don't know what it is, but I dare say she inherited it +from her father. The Governor may be unsound in his views and uncertain +in his methods, but I've yet to see any one who could resist his smile." + +"The Judge admires him," remarked Stephen, with the air of a man who +tosses a bomb into a legislative assembly. + +"Oh, Stephen," protested Victoria on a high note of interrogation, "how +can he?" + +"The Judge likes to keep up well with the times," observed Mr. Culpeper, +whose final argument against any innovation was the inquiry, "What do +you suppose General Lee would have thought of it?" Pausing an instant +while the family hung breathlessly on his words, he continued +heroically: "Now, it doesn't bother me to be called an old fogy." + +"There's no use trying to hide the fact that the Judge isn't quite what +he used to be," said Mrs. Culpeper in an unusually tolerant tone. "He +has let his habit of joking grow on him until you never know whether he +is serious or simply poking fun at you." + +"The next thing we hear," suggested Peyton, who was quite dreadful at +times, "will be that the old gentleman admires the daughter also." + +"He doesn't like conspicuous women," rejoined Victoria. "He told me so +only the other day when Mrs. Bradford announced that she was going to +run for the legislature." + +"That's the kind of conspicuousness we all object to," commented Peyton; +"Patty Vetch isn't that sort." + +Janet was more merciful. "Well, you are obliged to be conspicuous to-day +if you want anybody to notice you," she said. "Look at Mary Byrd." + +Mary Byrd tossed her bright head as gaily as if a compliment had been +intended. "Oh, you needn't think I like to dress this way," she +retorted, "or that I don't sometimes get tired of keeping up with +things. Why, there are hours and hours when I simply feel as if I should +drop." + +"Well, as long as you look like that you needn't hope for a change," +remarked Stephen admiringly. Then, turning his gaze away from her too +obvious brightness, he looked into the tranquil depths of Margaret's +blue eyes, and thought how much more restful the old-fashioned type of +woman must have been. Men didn't need to bestir themselves and sharpen +their wits with women like that; they were accepted, with their +inherent virtues or vices, as philosophically as one accepted the +seasons. + +It was a dull supper, he thought, because his mind was distracted; but a +little later, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and the family +had drifted away in separate directions--Mary Byrd and Peyton to a +dance, his father to his library, and his mother and the three other +girls to a game of bridge in the next room, he received an amazing +revelation of Margaret's point of view. His sentiment for the girl had +always suffered, he was aware, from too many opportunities. He had +sometimes wished that an obstacle might arise, that the formidable +parents would try for once to tear them apart instead of thrust them +together, but, in spite of the changeless familiarity of their +association, he was presently to discover how little he had known of the +real Margaret beneath the flowing grace and the nut-brown hair and the +eyes like blue larkspur. Though the tribal customs had shaped her body +and formed her manners, a rare essence of personality escaped like a +perfume from the hereditary mould of the race. + +As he looked at her now, sitting gracefully on the ruby brocade of one +of the rosewood chairs, with her lovely head framed by the band of +intricate carving, he was aware that the delicate subtleties and +shadings of her feminine charm made an entirely fresh appeal to his +perceptions, if not to his senses. He had never admired her appearance +more than he did at that instant; and yet his gaze was as dispassionate +as the one he bestowed on the Sully portrait of which she reminded him. +Her eyes were very soft; there was a faint smile on her thin pink lips +which gave the look of coldness, of reticence to her face. With her head +bent and her hands folded in her lap, she sat there waiting +pensively--for what? It occurred to him suddenly with a shock that she +was deeper, far deeper than he had ever suspected. + +"You are so different from the other girls, Margaret," he said at last, +oppressed by the old difficulty of making conversation. "You don't +belong to the same world with Mary Byrd and--" He was going to add +"Patty Vetch," but he checked himself before the name escaped him. + +She seemed to melt rather than break from her attitude of waiting, so +gently did her movements sink into the shadowy glow of the firelight. + +"No, I don't," she replied, with a touch of sadness. "I sometimes wish +that I did." + +"You wish that you did!" Here was surprise at last. "But, why, in +Heaven's name, should you wish that when you are everything that they +ought to be?" + +"As if that mattered!" There was a tone in her voice that was new to +him. "It's gone out of fashion to be superior. Nobody even cares any +longer about your being what you ought to be. I've been trained to be +the kind of girl that doesn't get on to-day, full of all sorts of +forgotten virtues and refinements. Nobody looks at me because everybody +is staring so hard at the girls who are improperly dressed. There is +only one place where I can be sure of having attention, and that is in +an Old Ladies' Home. Old ladies admire me." + +For the second time that day he found himself startled by the +eccentricities of the feminine mind; but in Margaret's passive +resignation there was none of Patty's rebellion against the cruelty and +injustice of life. Generations of acquiescence were in the slender +figure before him; and he realized that the completeness of her +surrender to Fate must have softened her destiny. Both girls were +victims of the changing fashion in women, of an age that moved not in a +stream, but in a whirlpool. + +"I admire you," he said in a caressing voice, "more than I admire any +one else in the world." + +She had been gazing into the fire, and as she turned slowly in answer to +his words, it seemed to him that the blue of a summer sky shone on him +from beneath the tremulous shadow of her eyelashes. + +"The trouble," she replied, with an appealing glance, "is that I don't +know how to be common. There isn't any hope of a girl's being popular if +she doesn't know how to be common. I would be if I could," she confessed +plaintively, "but I haven't the faintest idea how to begin." + +"I hope you'll never learn," he insisted. In awakening his sympathy she +had awakened also a deep-rooted protective instinct. He felt that he +longed to guard and defend her, as a brother of course, and if this +newer and tenderer sentiment was the result of feminine calculation, he +was too chivalrous or too inexperienced to perceive it. What he +perceived was simply that this lovely girl, whom he had known from +infancy, had opened her heart and taken him into her confidence. To +admit that she was not a success in her small social world, proved her, +he felt, to be both frank and courageous. + +"Of course they don't call their way common," she pursued, with what +seemed to him the most touching candour. "Their word for it is 'pep'." +She pronounced the vulgar syllable as if she abhorred it. "That is what +I haven't got, and that's why I have never been a real success in +anything except church work. Even in the Red Cross it was 'pep' that +counted most, and that was the reason they never sent me to Europe. +Mother tried to make me into the kind of girl that men admired when she +was young; but the type has gone out of fashion to-day just as much as +crinolines or a small waist. If I were clever I suppose I could make +myself over and begin to jump about and imitate the sort of animation I +never had; but I'm not really clever, for I've tried and I can't do it. +It only makes me feel silly to pretend to be what I am not." + +Her confession struck him, while he listened to it, as the sweetest and +most womanly one he had ever heard. + +"I cannot imagine your pretending," he answered, and felt that the +remark was as inane as if he had quoted it from a play. After a moment, +as she seemed to be waiting for something, he continued with greater +assurance, "I dare say they have a quality that the older generation +missed. It isn't just commonness. The modern spirit means, I suppose, a +breathless vitality. We are more intensely alive than our ancestors, +perhaps, more restless, more inclined to take risks." + +The phrases he had used made him think suddenly of Gideon Vetch. Was +that the secret of the Governor's irresistible magnetism, of his +meteoric rise into power? He embodied the modern fetish--success; he +was, in the lively idiom of the younger set,--personified "pep." After +all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? +Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, +of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps +it could build as well. There might be more in it, he was beginning to +discern, than mere lack of control, than vulgar hysteria and +undisciplined violence. The quality expressed by that dreadful word was +the sparkle on the edge of the tempest, the lightning flash that +revealed the presence of electricity in the air. After all, the god of +the future was riding the whirlwind. + +"I wonder if we can be wrong, you and I?" he went on presently, +forgetting the intensely personal nature of Margaret's disclosures, +while he followed the abstract trend of his reflections. "Isn't it +conceivable that we are standing, not for what is necessarily better, +but simply for what is old? Isn't the conservative merely the creature +of habit? I suppose the older generation always looks disapprovingly at +the younger, and, in spite of our youth, we really belong to the past +generation. We see things through the eyes of our parents. We are +mentally middle-aged--for middle age is a state of mind, after all. You +and I were broken in by tradition--at least I know I was, and even the +war couldn't free me. It only made me restless and dissatisfied. It +destroyed my belief in the past without giving me faith in the future. +It left me eager to go somewhere; but it failed to offer me any +direction. It put me to sea without a compass." + +Clasping his hands behind his head, he leaned back against the carving +of his chair, and fixed his gaze on the portrait of the English +ancestress over the mantelpiece. The firelight flickered over his firm, +clear-cut features, over the sleek dark hair, which was brushed +straight back from his forehead, and over his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes in which a dusky glow came and went. Margaret, watching him with +her pensive smile, thought that she had never seen him look so +"interesting." + +"We used to talk in those first days about the 'spiritual effect' of the +war," he resumed dreamily, speaking more to himself than to his +companion. "As if organized violence could have a steadying +effect--could have any results that are not the offspring of violence. +It is hard for me to talk about it. I've never even tried before to put +it into words; but we are both suffering from the same cause, I think. I +know it has played the very deuce with my life. It has made me +discontented with what I have; but it hasn't shown me anything else that +was worth striving for. I seem to have lost the power of wanting because +I've discovered that nothing is worth having after you get it. Every +apple has turned into Dead Sea fruit." + +He had never before spoken so freely, and when he had finished he felt +awkward and half resentful. Margaret's extraordinary frankness had +started him, he supposed, on a similar strain; but he wished that he had +kept back all that sentimental nonsense about what his mother called +disapprovingly, his "frame of mind." Any frame of mind except the +permanently settled appeared unsafe to Mrs. Culpeper; and her son felt +at the moment that her opinion was justified. Somehow the whole thing +seemed to have resulted from his meeting with Gideon Vetch. It was Vetch +who had "unsettled" him, who had taken the wind out of the stiff sails +of his prejudices. Had the war awakened in him, he wondered, the need of +crude emotional stimulants, the dangerous allurement of the unfamiliar, +the exotic? Would it ever pass, and would life become again normal and +placid without losing its zest and its interest? For it was the zest of +life, he realized, that he had encountered in Gideon Vetch. + +"But you are a man," Margaret was saying plaintively. "Everything is +easier for a man. You can go out and do things." + +"So can women now. You can even go into politics." + +She made a pretty gesture of aversion. "Oh, I've been too well brought +up! There isn't any hope for a girl who is well brought up except the +church, and even there she can't do anything but sit and listen to +sermons. Mother's consolation," she added with a soft little laugh, "is +that I should have been a belle and beauty in the days when Madison was +President." + +Then putting the subject aside as if she had finished with it for ever, +she began talking to him about the books she was reading. Of all the +girls he knew she was the only one who ever opened a book except one +that had been forbidden. + +An hour later, when Margaret went home with her father, Stephen turned +back, after putting her into the car, with a warmer emotion in his heart +than he had ever felt for her before. She was not only lovely and +gentle; she had revealed unexpected qualities of mind which might +develop later into an attraction that he had never dreamed she could +possess. Never, he felt, had the outlook appeared so desirable. He was +in that particular dreaminess of mood when one is easily borne off on +waves of sentiment or imagination; and it is possible that, if his +mother had been able to refrain from improving perfection, he might +have found himself sufficiently in love with Margaret for all practical +purposes. But Mrs. Culpeper, who had no need of dissimulation since she +had always got things by showing that she wanted them entirely for the +good of others, was incapable of leaving her son to work out his own +future. When he entered the house again he found her awaiting him at the +foot of the staircase. + +"I hope you had a pleasant evening, Stephen." + +"Yes, Mother, very pleasant." + +"Margaret is a dear girl, and so well brought up. Her mother has a great +deal for which to be thankful." + +"A great deal, I am sure." A sharp sense of irritation had dispelled the +dreamy sentiment with which he had parted from Margaret. To his mother, +he knew, the evening appeared only as one more carefully planned and +carelessly neglected opportunity; and the knowledge of this exasperated +him in a measure that was absurdly disproportionate to the cause. + +"She is so refreshing after the things you hear about other girls," +pursued Mrs. Culpeper. "Poor Mrs. St. John was obliged to go to a rest +cure, they say, because of the worry she has had over Geraldine; and the +other girls are almost as troublesome, I suppose. That is why I am so +thankful that you should have taken a fancy to Margaret. She is just the +kind of girl I should like to have for a daughter-in-law." + +"You'll have a long time to wait, Mother. I don't want to marry anybody +until I need a nurse in my old age." + +He spoke jestingly, but his mother, with her usual tenacity, held fast +to the subject. Under the flickering gas light in the hall (they were +still suspicious of the effect of electricity on Mr. Culpeper's eyes) +her face looked grimly determined, as if an indomitable purpose had +moulded every feature and traced every line in some thin plastic +substance. + +"I have set my heart on this, Stephen." + +At this he laughed aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her +instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly +without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the +unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost +her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know +whether the dread of being nagged or the fear of hurting her had +influenced him most; and when he looked back he could recall only a +series of ineffectual efforts at evasion or denial. It is true that he +had once adored her--that he still loved her--but it was a love, like +his father's, which was forbearing but never free, which was always +furtive and a little ashamed of its own weakness. Ever since he could +remember she had triumphed over their inclinations, their convictions, +and even their appetites, for they had eaten only what she thought good +for them. She had invariably gained her point; and she had gained it +with few words, without temper or agitation, by sheer force of +character. If she had been a moral principle she could not have moved +more relentlessly. + +"Mrs. Blair and I used to talk it over when you and Margaret were +children," she continued, in the inflexible tone with which she was +accustomed to carry her point. "Even then you were fond of her." + +He looked at her with a gleam of the tolerant amusement he had caught +from his father's expression. "Can you imagine anything more certain to +turn a man against a marriage than the thought that it was arranged for +him in his infancy?" he objected. + +"Not if he knew that his mother had set her heart on it?" She looked +hurt but resolute. + +"Don't set your heart on it, Mother. Let me dree my own weird." + +"My dear boy, it is for your own good. I am sure that you know I am not +thinking of myself. I may say with truth that I never think of myself." + +It was true. She never thought of herself; but he had sometimes wondered +what worse things could have happened if she had occasionally done so. + +"I know that, Mother," he answered simply. + +"I have but one wish in life and that is to see my children happy," she +said, with an air of injured dignity which made him feel curiously +guilty. + +It was the old infallible method, he knew. She would never yield her +point; she would never relax her pressure; she would never admit defeat +until he married another woman. + +"I want nobody else in your place, Mother. Goodnight, and try to set +your heart on something else." + +As he undressed a little later he was thinking of Margaret--of her low +white brow under the "widow's peak," of her soft blue eyes, of her +goodness and gentleness, and of the thrill in her voice when she had +made that touching confession. Margaret's voice was the last thing he +thought of before falling asleep; but hours afterward, when the dawn was +beginning to break, he dreamed of Patty Vetch in her red cape and of +that hidden country of the endless roads and the far horizons. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MAGIC + + +The next day after luncheon, as Stephen walked from his club to his +office, he lived over again his evening with Margaret. "If she cared for +me it might be different," he mused; and then, through some perversity +of memory, Margaret's pensive smile became suddenly charged with +emotion, and he asked himself if he had not misinterpreted her innocent +frankness? Even if she cared, he knew that she would die rather than +betray her preference by a word or a look. "Whether she cares or not, +and it is just possible that she does care in her heart, she will marry +me if I ask her," he thought; and decided immediately that there was no +necessity to act impulsively in the matter. "If I ask her she will +persuade herself that she loves me. She will marry me just as hundreds +of women have married men in the past; and we should probably live as +long and as happily as all the others." That was the way his father and +mother had married; and why were he and Margaret different from the +generations before them? What variable strain in their natures impelled +them to lead their own separate lives instead of the collective life of +the family? "I suppose Mother is right as far as she sees," he admitted. +"To marry Margaret and settle down would be the best thing that could +happen to me." Yet he had no sooner put the thought into words than the +old feeling of suffocation rushed over him as if his hopes were +smothered in ashes. + +Yes, he would settle down, of course, but not now. Next year perhaps, or +the year after, he would sincerely fall in love with Margaret, and then +everything would be different. + +He was passing through the Square at the moment; and while he played +with the idea of his marriage with Margaret, he found himself glancing +expectantly at the car which was waiting in front of the Governor's +door. "I wonder if she is going out," he thought, while a superficial +interest brightened the dull hours before him. "It would be no more than +she deserved if I were to go in and ask after her ankle." In obedience +to the mocking impulse, he entered the gate and reached the steps just +as Patty came out on the porch. She was walking with ease, he noticed at +once, and she wore again the red cape and the little hat with red wings. + +"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you!" + +"I stopped to ask after your ankle," he retorted with ironic gaiety. "I +am glad it doesn't keep you from walking." + +"That's the new way of treating a sprain," she replied calmly. "Haven't +you heard of it?" + +"Yes, I've heard of it." He glanced down at her stocking of thin gray +silk. "But I thought even then there were bandages." + +She smiled archly--he felt that he wanted to slap her--and glanced up at +him with playful concern. The gray-green rays were brighter in the +daylight than he had remembered them and her mocking lips were the +colour of cherries. He thought of the thin pink curve of Margaret's +mouth and wondered if the war had corrupted his taste. + +Yes, Margaret was womanly; she was well bred; she possessed every +attribute that in theory he admired; yet she had never awakened this +sparkling interest, this attraction which was pungently flavoured with +surprise that he could be so strangely attracted. He could gaze unmoved +by the hour on Margaret's smooth loveliness; but the tantalizing vision +of this other girl's face, of her cloudy black hair and her clear skin +and her changeable eyes, with their misty gleam like a firefly lost in a +spring marsh--all these things were a part not of the tedious actuality, +but of that hidden country of romance and adventure. For the first time +since his return from France, he was carried far outside of himself on +the wave of an impulse; he was interested and excited. Not for an +instant did he imagine that he was falling in love. His thoughts did not +leave the immediate present when he was with her; and a part of the +adventure was the feeling that each vivid moment he spent with her might +be the last. It was, he would have said had he undertaken to analyse the +situation, merely an incident; but it was an incident that delighted +him. He knew nothing of Patty Vetch except that she charmed him against +his will; and, for the moment at least, this was sufficient. + +"Oh, there are sprains and sprains," she answered, with the quiver of +her lip he remembered so disturbingly. "Didn't you learn that in the +trenches?" Was she really pretty, or was it only the provocative appeal +to his imagination, the dangerous sense that you never knew what she +would dare to say next? + +"I didn't go there to learn about sprains," he responded gravely. + +"Nor about maneuvers apparently?" She hesitated over the word as if it +were unfamiliar. + +At her charge the light of battle leaped to his eyes. "Then it was a +maneuver? I suspected as much." + +The audacity of her! The unparalleled audacity! "But I am not so much +interested in maneuvers," he added merrily, "as I am in the strategy +behind them." + +She looked puzzled, though her manner was still mocking. "Is there +always strategy," she pronounced the word with care, "behind them?" + +"Always in the art of warfare." + +"But can't there be a maneuver without warfare?" He could see that she +was venturing beyond her depths; but he realized that a confession of +ignorance was the last thing he must ever expect from her. Whatever the +challenge she would meet it with her natural wit and her bright +derision. + +"Never," he rejoined emphatically. "A campaign goes either before or +afterward." + +A thoughtful frown knit her forehead. "Well, one didn't go before, did +it?" she inquired with an innocent air. "So I suppose--" + +He ended her sentence on a note of merriment. "Then I must be prepared +for the one that will follow!" + +She threw out her hand with a gesture of mock despair. "Oh, you may have +been mistaken, you know!" + +"Mistaken? About the campaign?" + +"No, about the maneuver. Perhaps there wasn't any such thing, after +all." + +"Perhaps." Though his voice was stern, his eyes were laughing. "I am not +so easily fooled as that." + +"I doubt if you could be fooled at all." It was the first bit of +flattery she had tossed him, and he found it strangely agreeable. + +"I am not sure of that," he answered, "but the thing that perplexes +me--the only thing--is why you should have thought it worth while." + +Her eyes grew luminous with laughter, and the little red wings quivered +as if they were about to take flight over her arching brows. "How do you +know that I thought about it at all? Sometimes things just happen." + +"But not in this case. You had arranged the whole incident for the +stage." + +"Do you mean that I fell down on purpose?" + +"I mean that you were laughing up your sleeve all the time. You weren't +hurt and you knew it." + +Her expression was enigmatical. "You think then that I arranged to fall +down and risk breaking my bones for the sake of having you pick me up?" +she asked demurely. + +Put so plainly the fact sounded embarrassing, if not incredible. "I +think you fell for the fun of it. I think also that you didn't for a +second risk breaking your bones. You are too nimble for that." + +"I ought to be," she retorted daringly, "since I was born in a circus." + +Surprised into silence, he studied her with a regard in which admiration +for her courage was mingled with blank wonder at her recklessness. If +she had inherited her father's gift of expression, she appeared to +possess also his dauntless humour. For an instant Stephen felt that her +gaiety had entered into his spirit; and while his impression of her +danced like wine in his head, he answered her in her own tone of mocking +defiance. + +"Well, everything that is born in a circus isn't a clown." + +Her eyes widened. "Is that meant for a compliment?" + +"No, merely for a reminder. But if you were born in a circus, I assume +that you didn't perform in one." + +She shook her head. "No, they took me away when I was a baby--just after +Mother died. I never lived with the circus people, and Father didn't +either except when he was a child. Not that I should have been ashamed +of it," she hastened to explain. "They are very interesting people." + +"I am sure of it," he answered gravely, and he was very sure of it now. + +"When I was a child," she went on in a matter-of-fact tone, "I used to +make Father tell me all he could remember about the 'freaks,' as they +called them. The fat woman--her name was really Mrs. Coventry--was very +kind to him when he was little, and he never forgot it. He never forgets +anybody who has ever been kind to him," she concluded with simple +dignity. + +An emotion which he could not define held Stephen speechless; and before +he could command his words, she began again in the same cool and quiet +voice. "His mother ran away to marry his father. She came of a very good +family in Fredericksburg, and her people never forgave her or spoke to +her afterward. But she was happy, and she never regretted it as long as +she lived. It was love at first sight. Grandfather was Irish and he +was--was--" she hesitated for a word, and at last with evident care +selected, "magnificent." "He was magnificent," she repeated +emphatically, "and she saw him first on horseback when she was out +riding. Her horse became frightened by one of the animals in the circus, +and he caught it and stopped it. It began that way, and then one night +she stole out of the house after her family had gone to bed, and they +ran away and were married. I think she was right," she added +thoughtfully, "but then I reckon--I mean I suppose it is in my blood to +take risks." + +She looked up at him and he responded. "But where did you learn to see +things like this, and to put them into words? Not in a circus?" + +"I told you I couldn't remember the circus. Mother was in one, and +though Father never told me how he fell in love with her--he never talks +of her--I think it must have been when he went back to see the people. +He always took an interest in them and tried to help them. He does +still. Even now, if anybody belonging to a circus asks him for +something, he never refuses him. When he was twelve years old somebody +took him away and sent him to school, but he always says he never +learned anything at school except misinformation about life. No books, +he says, ever taught him the truth except the Bible and 'Robinson +Crusoe.' He used to read me chapters of those every day--and he does +still when he has the time." + +What a strange world it was! How full of colour and incident, how +drenched with the quality of the unusual! + +"And what did you learn?" he asked. + +"I?" She was speaking earnestly. "Oh, I learned a great many--no, a +multitude of things about life." + +At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight. "With a special course of +instruction in maneuvers," he rejoined. + +Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with +defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have learned +about--strategy." + +How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack! It was easy +to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle +in her wit. + +"Oh, then you will out-general me entirely! Isn't it enough to force me +to acknowledge your superior tactics?" + +She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter. "Tactics? Have I been +using superior tactics without knowing it?" + +"That I can't answer. Is there anything that has escaped your +instinctive understanding?" + +She laughed softly. "Well, there's one thing you may be sure of. I'll +know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again." +Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the +steps and into the car. "I wish Father were here," she said, looking out +at him. "He wants to talk to you." + +"I should like to talk to him. I shall come again, if I may." + +"Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home." As the car +started she called out teasingly. "My next maneuver may be more +successful, you know!" + +How provoking she was, and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as +sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked +himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display +of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time--not, like +Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the +general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he +felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or +pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition--a perpetual +motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, he realized, was +where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in +the turmoil. He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to +become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was +simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to +meditate, never to reason upon one's course; but to sweep onward, +somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, +variability--were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern +mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to +convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the +triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; +martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading +mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that +democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? +Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some +justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for +ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to +believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the +disorder. If he could find that it contained a single redeeming +principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be +able to surrender his disbelief. + +He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the +house, spoke to him abruptly. + +"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?" + +With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare, +he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the +evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less +repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her +features gave a certain dignity to her expression--the look of one who +is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or +dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been +attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes +were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse +black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye. + +"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was +you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass +on; but he made a movement to detain her. + +"Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?" + +"Oh, no, I am a stranger here." Her accents were ordinary, yet there was +a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner. Whatever she was, +she was not commonplace. + +"But you were waiting to see him?" he said. + +Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion. "Oh, +yes, I thought I might see him. I've never seen a Governor." + +"You do not wish to speak to him?" + +"No; why should I wish to speak to him? I'm a stranger, that's all. I +like to see whatever is going on. Was that his daughter who went out +just now?" + +"Yes, that was his daughter." + +"Then she is pretty--almost as pretty as--Thank you, sir. I will go +along now. I'm staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the +chance to watch the squirrels in the Square." + +The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could +not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth. Again +he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past? It +was possible; it was not even improbable. Once, even ten or fifteen +years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and +he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a +fastidious taste. + +The woman had turned with furtive haste in the direction of the outer +gate; and when Stephen started on again toward the library, he crossed a +man who was rapidly ascending the brick walk from the fountain at the +foot of the hill. By his jaunty stride and his air of excessive +joviality--the mark of the successful local politician--Stephen +recognized Julius Gershom, the campaign-maker, as people called him, who +had stood behind Gideon Vetch from the beginning of his career. "What an +unconscionable bounder the fellow is," thought Stephen as he passed him. +What an abundance of self-assertiveness he had contrived to express in +his thin spruce figure, his tightly curling black hair, which grew too +low on his forehead, and his short black moustache with pointed ends +which curved up like polished metal from his full red lips. + +"I suppose he is on his way to the Governor," mused the young man idly. +"How on earth does Vetch stand him?" + +But to his surprise, when he glanced back again, he saw that Gershom had +passed the mansion, and was hurrying down the walk which the strange +woman had followed a moment before. Stephen could still see her figure +approaching a distant gate; and he observed presently that Gershom was +not far behind her, and that he appeared to be speaking her name. She +started and turned quickly with a movement of alarm; and then, as +Gershom joined her, she went on again in the direction she had first +taken. A few minutes later their rapidly moving figures left the Square +and passed down the street beyond the high iron fence. + +"I wonder what it means?" thought Stephen indifferently. "I wonder what +the deuce Gershom has got up his sleeve?" + +By the time he reached his office the wonder had vanished; but it +returned to him on his way home that afternoon when he dropped into the +old print shop for a word with Corinna. + +"I passed that fellow Gershom in the Square to-day," he said. "Do you +know him by sight?" + +She shook her head. "What is he like? Patty tells me that he has become +a nuisance." + +"Ah, then you have seen Patty?" + +A smile turned her eyes to the colour of November leaves. "She was here +for an hour this morning. I have great hopes of her. I think she is +going to supply me with an interest in life." + +"Then she still amuses you?" + +"Amuses me? My dear, she enchants me. She stands for the suppressed +audacities of my past." + +He looked at her thoughtfully. "I wonder how much of her is real?" + +"Probably half. She is real, I think, in her courage, but not in her +conventions." + +"Well, I confess that she puzzles me. I can't see just what she means." + +"I doubt if she means anything. She is a vital spirit; she chafes at +chains; and she is smarting from a sense of inferiority. There is a +thirst for power in her little body that may make her either an actress +or a politician." + +"Now, it seems to me that if she has any sense it is one of superiority. +She treated me like a brick under her feet." + +For a minute Corinna was silent. The smile on her lips had grown +tenderly humorous; and there was a softness in her eyes which made him +sorry that he had not known her when he was a child. "Do you know what +she told me to-day?" she said. "She studies a page of the dictionary +every morning, and she tries to remember and practise all day the new +words that she learns. She is now in the letter M." + +A peal of merriment interrupted her. "That explains it!" exclaimed +Stephen with unaffected delight, "maneuver--misinformation--multitude--" + +"So she has practised on you too?" + +"Oh, they all practise on me," he retorted. "It is what I was made for." + + +"Well, as long as it is only words, you are safe, I suppose." + +He denied this with a gesture. "It is everything you can possibly +practise with--from puddings to pigeons." + +"My poor dear, so you have been eating Margaret's puddings. Weren't they +good ones?" + +"Oh, perfection! But I wasn't thinking of Margaret." + +"I know you weren't. For your mother's sake I wish that you were." + +His face looked suddenly tired. "Margaret is perfection, I know; but I +feel sometimes that only perfect people can endure perfection." + +"Yes, I know." Her smile had faded now. "I admire Margaret tremendously, +but I feel closer to Patty." + +"Perhaps. I am not sure. Somehow I have been sure of nothing since I +came out of the trenches--least of all of myself. I am trying to find +out now what I am in reality." + +As he rose to go she held out her hand. "I think,--I am not certain, but +I think," she responded gaily, "that Patty's dictionary may give you the +definition." + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +CORINNA GOES TO WAR + + +"Yes, I've had a mean life," thought Corinna, while she stood before her +mirror carefully placing a patch on her cheek. In her narrow gown of +black velvet, with the silver heels of her slippers shining beneath the +transparent draperies, she had more than ever the look of festival, of +October splendour. If her beauty had lost in roundness and softness, it +had gained immeasurably in authority, in that air of having been a part +of great events, of historic moments which clung to her like a legend. +Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for +her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the +painted lily? Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry, +nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness. She had given +herself for what? For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a +damaged illusion. The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been +worse than tragic; it had been comic--since it had left her beggared. +Looking back upon it now she saw that it had lacked even the mournful +dignity of a broken heart. + +"I have had a mean life; but it isn't over yet, and I may make something +better of the rest of it," she thought. "At least I have fighting blood +in my veins, and I will never give up. After all, even if my life has +been mean, I haven't been--and that is what really counts in the end. +If I haven't been happy, I have tried to be gallant--and it takes +courage to be gallant with an aching heart--" + +As she fastened the long string of pearls--one of Kent Page's early +gifts--she drew back from the mirror, with the light of philosophy, if +not of happiness, overflowing her eyes. With her grace and her radiance +she stood for the flower of the Virginian aristocratic tradition; with +her sincerity and her fearlessness she embodied the American democratic +ideal. Her forefathers had brought representative government to the New +World. They had sat in the first General Assembly ever summoned in +America; and through the generations they had fought always on the side +of liberty tempered by discipline, of democracy exalted by patriotism. +They had stood from the beginning for dignity, for manners, for the +essence of social culture which places art at the service of life. +Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always +they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing +cult of the second best. From this source, from the inherited instinct +for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order +and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of +life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body. She had +been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an age when +beauty had been bartered for usefulness. Would the delicate +discriminations in which she had been trained, the lights and shadows of +her soul, become submerged in the modern effort to reduce all +distinctions to a level, all diversities to an average? + +Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room, +with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue +silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit +darkness. There had been luxury always. Money she had had in abundance; +yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not +have exchanged it all--everything that money could bring her--for the +dinner of herbs where love was. She had possessed everything except the +one thing she had wanted. She had served the tin gods in temples of gold +and jade. With the deep instinct for perfection in her blood, she had +spent her life in an endless compromise with the inferior. + +"Was there something lacking in me?" she asked now of her glowing +reflection. "Was there some vital spark left out when I was born? And +to-night? Why should I care how it goes? What is Rose Stribling to me or +I to her?" Why should she still cherish that dull resentment, that +smothered sense of injury in her heart? Was it the burden of her +inheritance, the weakness of the older races, that she could not +forget? She had loved a man who was unworthy; she had loved him for no +better reason, she understood now, than a superficial charm, a romantic +appeal. The fault was in the man, she knew, yet she had forgiven the +man long ago, while she still hated Rose Stribling. Perversity, +inconsistency--but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it. "If +she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but +she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day. It was +vanity then, and it is vanity now. You cannot hurt her heart--only her +pride--" + +Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her +image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue +velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on +that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she +had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost +much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and the +transparent gaze, but she had lost neither charm nor radiance. + +"So we are invited to meet Gideon Vetch," remarked the Judge as they +went down the steps; and from the whimsical sound of his voice, she knew +that there was a smile on his face. The house, with its picturesque +English front half hidden by Virginia creeper, stood at the end of a +long avenue, in the centre of a broad lawn planted in fine old elms. + +"Yes, there must be some reason for the dinner, but Sarah Berkeley did +not tell me." + +"Well, I'll be glad to see the Governor again," said the Judge, leaning +comfortably back as the car rolled down the avenue to the road, "but you +will have a dreary evening, I fear, unless John should be there." + +Corinna smiled in the darkness. So even her father, who so rarely +noticed anything, had observed her growing interest in John Benham. +After all, might this be--this sudden revival of an old sentiment in +John's heart--"the something different," the ultimate perfection for +which she had sought all her life? "He is beginning to mean more to me +than any one else," she thought. "If only I had never heard that old +gossip about Alice Rokeby." + +Leaning over, she patted the Judge's hand. "Don't have me on your mind, +Father darling. Go ahead and enjoy the Governor as much as you can. I am +easy to amuse, you know, and besides, I have my own particular iron in +the fire to-night." + +"You are never without expedients, my child, but I hope this one has no +bearing on Vetch." + +"Oh, but it has. Like Esther, the queen, I have put on royal apparel for +an ulterior object. Did you notice that I had made myself as terrible as +an army with banners?" + +"I thought you were looking unusually lovely," replied the Judge +gracefully. "But you are always so handsome that I suspected no guile." + +Corinna laughed merrily. "But I am full of guile, dear innocent! I go +forth to conquer." + +"Not the Governor, I hope?" + +"Oh, no, the Governor is nothing--a prize, nothing more. My antagonist +is Mrs. Stribling." + +"Rose Stribling?" The Judge was mildly astonished. "Why, I remember her +as a little girl in white dresses." + +Corinna's smile became scornful. "Well, she isn't a little girl any +longer, and she oughtn't to be in white dresses." + +"Dear me, dear me," rejoined the old gentleman. "I am aware that you +have a dramatic temperament, but it is scarcely possible that you are +jealous of little Rose. She is a good deal younger than you, if I am not +mistaken--but my memory is not all that it once was." + +"She is twelve years younger and at least twenty years more malicious," +retorted Corinna lightly. "But those twelve years aren't as long as they +were in your youth, my dear. A generation ago they would have spelt an +end of my conquests; to-day they mean only new worlds to conquer." + +The Judge looked perplexed. "Am I to infer from this that you have +designs on the Governor? And may I inquire what use you intend to make +of him after you have captured him from the enemy?" + +Corinna shrugged her shoulders. "I hadn't thought of that. Release him, +probably. But, whatever happens, I shall have saved him from a worse +fate. For that he ought to thank me, and he will if he is reasonable." + +"Few men are reasonable in captivity. Do you think, by the way, that +Mrs. Stribling would like another husband, and such a husband as our +friend the demagogue?" + +"I think she would like a political career, and of course her only way +of obtaining a career of any kind is to marry one. Though she isn't +discerning, she has sense enough to perceive that. They tell me that the +Governor is starting straight for the Senate, and the wife of a +senator--of any senator--might have a very good time in Washington. +Besides, there is always the chance of course that the winds of public +folly may blow him into the White House." + +"If what you say is true it would be a hard fate for an honest rogue," +admitted the Judge. "In your hands he would at least go unharmed." + +"Oh, unharmed certainly. Perhaps helped." + +"Then it is better so. But the thing that interests me in Vetch, is not +his value as a matrimonial or romantic prize; I am concerned solely and +simply with his opinions." + +"Well, you will have the advantage of Mrs. Stribling and me, for we +shall probably find the cigars an impediment to our attack. At any rate, +we ought to have a less tedious evening than you expect." + +A little later, when she entered the long drawing-room where the other +guests were already assembled, Corinna threw an inquiring glance in the +direction of Mrs. Stribling. Could the shallow pink and white loveliness +of that other woman, the historic type of the World's Desire, bear +comparison with her own starry beauty? It was a petty rivalry. She had +entered into it half in jest, half in irritation, yet some sportsmanlike +instinct prompted her to play the game to the end. She would prove to +Rose Stribling that those twelve years of knowledge and suffering had +taught her not to surrender, but to conquer. + +The Berkeleys were what was still known in their small social world as +"quiet people." They entertained little, and always with a definite +object which they were not afraid to disclose. Their house, an +incongruous example of Mid-Victorian architecture, was still suffused +for them with the sentimental glamour of their wedding day. The walls, +untouched for years, were covered with embossed paper and panelled in +yellow oak. The furniture, protected for five months of the year by +covers of striped linen, was stiffly upholstered in pea-green brocade; +and the pictures, hanging very high, were large but inferior oil +paintings in heavily gilded frames that represented preposterous sheaves +of wheat or garlands of roses. Forty years ago the house reproduced +within and without "the best taste" of the period, and was as bad as the +Berkeleys could afford to make it. Since then fashions had come and +gone; yet the hospitable home remained as unchanged as the politics of +the host or the figure of the hostess. The Berkeleys were still content +to be "old-fashioned people," with the fine feeling and the +indiscriminate taste of an era which had flowered not in architecture +but in character, when the standard of living was high and the style in +furniture correspondingly low. To-night the ten guests (the Berkeleys +never gave large dinners) had been carefully chosen, and the evening +would probably be distinguished by good talk and good wine. Though they +were law-abiding persons to the core, the bitterness of the Eighteenth +Amendment had not penetrated to the subterranean darkness where Mr. +Berkeley's treasures were stored. + +Mrs. Berkeley, a brisk, compact little woman, with a pretty florid face +and the prominent bosom and tapering waist of forty years ago, turned +from the Governor as Corinna and the Judge entered, and hurried forward +in her animated way, which reminded one of the manner of a child that is +trying to make a success of a dolls' party. Beyond Mr. Berkeley, a +short, neutral-tinted man without emphasis of personality, Corinna saw +Mrs. Stribling's tall, full figure draped in a gown of jade-coloured +velvet, with a daringly short skirt from which a narrow, sharply pointed +train wound like a serpent. Her heavy hair, of an unusual shade of pale +gold, had the smooth, polished look of metal which had been moulded in +waves close to her head. In spite of her active life and her disastrous +affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy +surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent +attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for +the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one, +except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair +between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had +thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But +time had dragged on; Corinna had come home again; and Alice Rokeby's +violet eyes had grown deeper and more wistful, with a haunted look in +them as if they were denying a hungry heart. She had never dressed well; +she had never, as Mrs. Stribling remarked, known how to bring out her +best points; and to-night she had been even less successful than usual. +Both Corinna and Mrs. Stribling could have told her that she should have +avoided violent shades; and yet she was wearing now a dress of vivid +purple which made her pale rose-leaf complexion look almost sallow. +Though she could exercise when she chose a strangely passive attraction, +her charm usually failed in the end for lack of intelligent guidance. + +A little beyond Alice Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures, +John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch, +who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted +from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over +a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large +beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to +cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a +moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash +of satirical amusement in his eyes. He was a tall thin man of middle +age, with a striking appearance and the straight composed features of an +early American portrait. His dark hair, brushed back from his forehead, +had the shining gloss that comes of good living and careful grooming, +and this gloss was reflected in his smiling gray eyes and in the healthy +red of his well-cut though not quite generous mouth. He was a charming +guest, an impressive speaker, a sympathetic listener; yet there had +always seemed to Corinna to be a subtle deficiency in his character. It +was only of late, since their friendship had turned into a warmer +feeling, that she had been able to overcome that sense of something +wanting which had troubled her when she was with him. She could define +no quality that was absent; but the impression he still gave her at +times was one of a man tremendously gifted and yet curiously inadequate. +A mental thinness perhaps? An emotional dryness? Or was it merely that +here also she felt, rather than perceived, the intrinsic weakness of the +old order? + +Beyond Benham, Gideon Vetch, rugged, sanguine, and wearing the wrong tie +with his evening clothes as valiantly as he had worn the rumpled brown +suit in which Stephen had last seen him, was talking in a loud voice to +Miss Maria Berkeley--one of those serene single women arrayed in +dove-colour who belong as appropriately as crewel work or antimacassars +to another century. If Patty was shy and self-conscious, it was evident +that her state of mind was not shared by her father. He was interested +because he was expressing a cherished opinion, and he was talking in an +emphatic tone because he hoped that he might be overheard. When Mrs. +Berkeley drew him away in order to introduce him to Corinna, he resumed +his theme immediately, as if he were addressing a public meeting and had +scarcely noticed that there had been a change in his audience. "Miss +Berkeley was asking me what I thought of the effects of prohibition," +he explained presently with his smile of unguarded friendliness. How +was it possible to arrest the attention of a man who insisted on talking +of prohibition? + +At the table a little later Corinna asked herself the question again, +while she made light conversation for the retired general who had taken +her in--an anecdotal, bewhiskered presence, with the husky voice and the +glazed eyes of successful pomposity. Glancing occasionally at Vetch who +sat on her left, she found that he was describing to Mrs. Berkeley the +best protection against forest fires. As far as Corinna was concerned, +she felt that she might as well have been a view from the window, or the +portrait of Mr. Berkeley's great aunt that hung over the mantelpiece. He +had probably, she reflected, classified her lightly as "another +gray-haired woman," and passed on to Rose Stribling, who bloomed +triumphantly between John Benham and Stephen Culpeper. Vetch was so +different from what Corinna had expected to find him that, in some vague +way, she felt disappointed and absurdly resentful. Had her imagination, +she wondered, prepared her to meet one of the picturesque radicals of +fiction? Had she looked for a middle-aged Felix Holt; and was this why +the Governor's prosaic figure, his fresh-coloured, undistinguished face +and his vehement, spectacular gestures, dispelled immediately the +interest she had felt in the meeting? There were no salient points in +his appearance, nothing that she could detach from the rest in her +mental image of him. There was no single characteristic of which she +could say: "He may be common; he may be vulgar; but he strikes the note +of greatness here--and here--and here." With such a man, she felt, the +direct and obvious appeal of Rose Stribling would be victorious. He +could discern pink and white and blue and gold; but the indeterminate +shades, the subtleties and mysteries of charm were enigmatical to him. +His emotions would be as literal as his convictions or his oratory. Yet +there must be some faculty in him which did not appear on the surface, +some primitive grasp of realities in his understanding of men. Why +should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, she asked +herself the next minute, be greater than the influence of John Benham, +who possessed every admirable trait except the ability to make people +follow him? What was this fundamental difference in material or +structure which divided them so completely? When she had traced it to +its source would she discover the secret of Vetch's conquering +personality? + +Looking away from the General, her eyes rested for a moment on Stephen +Culpeper, who was listening with his reserved impersonal attention to +the amusing prattle of Patty Vetch. Obeying an imperative rule, Mrs. +Berkeley had placed her youngest guests together; and yet, if Stephen +had been seventy-five instead of twenty-six, he could sparcely have had +less in common with the Governor's daughter. With her small glossy head, +and her scarlet cheeks and lips above the fan of ostrich feathers, the +girl reminded Corinna of a spray of Christmas holly, all dark and bright +and shining. Ever since Patty's first visit to the print shop Corinna +had felt a genuine liking for her. The girl had something deeper than +charm, reflected the older woman; she had determination and endurance, +the essentials of character. Of course she was crude, she was ignorant; +but these are never insurmountable obstacles except to the dull. With +intelligence and resourcefulness all things are possible--even the +metamorphosis of a circus rider's daughter into a woman of the world. + +Becoming suddenly aware that Vetch was silent, and that Mrs. Berkeley +had turned to Judge Page on her left, Corinna looked for the first time +into the frank blue eyes of the Governor. Strange eyes they were, she +thought, the one striking feature in a face that was ordinary. It was +like looking down into the very fountain of life--no, of humanity. + +"I have been watching your daughter," she began casually. "She is very +pretty." + +"Yes, she is pretty enough"--his tone was playful--"but I don't like +this craze for short hair." + +She looked him over calmly. Indirect methods would be wasted on such an +opponent. "You must admire Mrs. Stribling's." + +"I do. Don't you?" His glance roved to the ample beauty beside John +Benham. "It looks exactly like a rope of flax." + +"A rope suggests a hanging to me," she rejoined grimly. + +He laughed, and she noticed that his eyes were brimming over with +humour. Yes, they were extraordinary eyes, and they made one feel +sympathetic and friendly. The man had a quality, she couldn't deny it. + +"We don't hang any longer," he replied. + +"Oh, yes, we do sometimes--without the law." + +The blue sparkles in his eyes contracted to points of light. She had at +last, by arresting his wandering attention, succeeded in making him look +at her. + +"I wonder what you mean," he mused aloud, and added frankly, "I've never +seen you before, have I?" + +"Have I?" she mimicked gaily. "Wouldn't you remember me? Or are all +gray-haired women alike to you?" + +His gaze travelled to her hair. "I didn't mean it that way. Of course I +should have remembered." He spoiled this by adding: "I never forget a +face," and continued before she could answer, "I don't know whether your +hair is gray or only powdered a little; but you are as young as--as +summer." + +"Or as your political party." + +"That's good. I like a nimble wit." He was plainly amused. "But my party +isn't young, you know. It is as old as Esau and Jacob. Oh, yes, I've +read my Bible. I was brought up on it." + +"That is why your speech is so direct," she said when he paused, +concluding slowly after a minute, "and so sincere." + +"You feel that I am sincere?" + +She met his eyes gravely. "Doesn't every one?" + +He laughed shortly. "Ah, you know better than that!" + +"Well, my father does. He says that it is your sincerity that makes you +resemble me." + +To her surprise he did not laugh at this. "Do I resemble you?" he asked +simply. + +"Father thinks so. He says that people won't take us seriously because +we tell them the truth." + +An impression drifted like smoke across the blue of his eyes. Who was +it, she wondered, who had said that his eyes were gray? "Don't they take +you seriously?" he asked. + +"As a woman, yes. As a human being, no." + +He smiled. "You are too deep. I can't follow. I understand only the +plain bright ideas of the half educated, you know." + +Her brilliant glance shone on him steadily. "I shan't try to explain. +What one doesn't understand without an explanation isn't worth knowing. +But somebody must take you seriously, or you wouldn't be where you are." + +"Do you know where I am?" he demanded impulsively. + +"I know that you are Governor of Virginia." + +"Oh, that! I thought you meant something more than that," he returned +with a note of disappointment in his voice. + +"What could I mean more than that? Isn't it the first step upward in a +political career?" + +"Perhaps. But I was thinking of something else. The chief thing seems to +me to be to work a way out of the muddle. Anybody may be Governor or +even President if he tries hard enough--but it is a different matter to +bring some kind of order out of this confusion. I've got an idea that +I've been hammering at for the last twenty years. Not a great one, +perhaps, though I think it is; and I'd like to get a chance to put it +into practice before I die. I want to wake up people and tell them the +truth." + +Was he, for all his matter-of-fact appearance, simply another political +dreamer, another visionary without a definite vision? + +"And will they listen when you tell them?" she asked. + +He laughed. "Who knows what may happen? When I was a kid in the +circus--you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a +travelling circus"--how simply he brought this out!--"the fat woman, we +called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When +the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the +people will learn wisdom." + +"But you have caught your larks, haven't you?" + +"No, I used to set snares by the hundred, but I never caught anything +better than a sparrow." + +A wistful look crossed her face, and for an instant the youth seemed to +droop and fade in her eyes. "Isn't that life?--sparrows for larks +always?" + +His sanguine spirit rejected this as she had known that it would. "Life +is all right," he replied, "as long as there's a fighting chance left to +you. That is the only thing that makes it worth while, fighting to win." + +She gazed meditatively at the points of flame on the white candles. "I +suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a +part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of +us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang." + +"Yes, I am a part of it," he answered slowly. "I see it as it is, I +think. It is pure buncombe, of course, to say that it hasn't its ugly +side; but I believe, if I have a chance, that I can make something of +it." He paused a moment while he hesitated over the silver beside his +plate; but there was no uncertainty in his voice when he went on again, +after deliberately picking up the fork he preferred. It was a little +thing to remember a man by--the merest trifle--but she never forgot it. +Only a big man could be as natural as that, she reflected. "I reasoned +it all out before I went into politics," he was saying. "I didn't get it +out of books either--unless you count the Bible and 'Robinson Crusoe,' +which are the only two I ever read as a boy. But the way I worked it out +at last was that democracy, like life, isn't anything that's already +finished. It is raw stuff. We are making it every minute of the time; +and it depends on us whether we put it through as a straight job or a +failure. Democracy, as I see it, isn't a word or a phrase out of a book, +or a formula, or anything that has frozen into a fixed shape or pattern. +It is warm and fluid, and it is teeming with living forms. It is as much +alive as the earth or air or water, and it can be used to develop as +many varying energies. That is why it is all so amazingly interesting. +As long as you don't fall away from that thought you have your feet +planted on solid ground--you can face things squarely--" + +"You preach a kind of political pragmatism," she said as he paused. + +"Pragmatism? That's a muscular word, but I don't know it. I wonder if +Robinson Crusoe discovered it." + +"If Robinson Crusoe didn't discover it, he lived it," she rejoined +gaily; and then, as the voice of Mrs. Berkeley was heard purring softly +on Vetch's other side, Corinna turned to the bewhiskered General, whose +only sense, she had already ascertained, was the historic sense. + +While she leaned back, with her head bent in the direction of his husky +voice, she was visited by a piercing realization of the emptiness, the +artificiality of her life. Futility--weariness--disenchantment--a gray +lane without a turning that stretched on into nothingness! Many thoughts +were blown through her mind like leaves in a high wind. She saw herself +from the beginning--striving without rest--searching--searching--for +what? For happiness--for perfection--for the starry flower that she had +never found. All was tawdry, all was tarnished, all was unreal. In +looking back she saw that the festival of her life was an affair of +tinselled splendour and glittering dust. Was this only the impression of +Vetch on her mood? Did he possess some magic gift of personality which +caused the artificial, the counterfeit, to wither in his presence? + +Conversation was not animated; and while she listened with a smile to +dreary anecdotes of the War Between the States, she allowed her gaze to +wander slowly down the table to where Alice Rokeby sat, with her large +soft eyes, so vague and wistful, asking of life, "Why have you passed me +by?" Now and then these eyes, which reminded Corinna of the eyes in a +dream, would turn timidly to John Benham, and then there would steal +into them that strange look of hunger, of desperation. What did it mean? +Corinna wondered. Surely there was no truth in the old gossip that she +had heard long ago and forgotten? + +John Benham had put a question to the Governor across the table; and he +sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The +light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen +Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of +delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions +fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated +to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in +that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair +accentuated the height of his forehead, and produced at first sight an +impression of intellectual superiority. His nose was long and slightly +aquiline; his mouth firm and clear-cut, with thin lips that closed +tightly; his chin jutted a little forward, giving a hatchet-like +severity to his profile. It was the face of a fair fighter, of a man who +could be trusted absolutely beyond personal limitations, of a man who +would always keep the vision of the end through any enterprise, who +would always put the curb of expediency on emotional impulses, who would +invariably judge a theory not by its underlying principle, but by its +practical application. A charming face, too, complex and imaginative, a +face which made the rugged and open countenance of the Governor appear +primitive and undeveloped. Corinna admired Benham; she respected him; +she liked--was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him? +Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy, +of something wanting, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either +left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes +of his mind. + +Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs. +Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable +allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the +flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming +enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty +Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from +one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna, +for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the +admiration of Gideon Vetch. The lesson it taught, she repeated +cynically, was simply that it was futile to stray too far from one's +type. Vetch had talked to her as he might have talked to her father or +to the husky warrior on her right; but he had never once looked at her. +His attention would be arrested by large, sudden, bright things like the +rosy curve of Mrs. Stribling's shoulders or the shining ropes of her +hair. + +"How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!" thought +Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than +resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was +her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her +adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate +Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep +meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and +the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers. +Had he read the thought in her mind? Was the tenderness in his glance +only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days? + +She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the +eyes of Alice Rokeby--those eyes that asked perpetually of life, "Why +have you passed me by?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE WORLD AND PATTY + + +On the way home, leaning against her father who had not spoken since the +car started, Patty shut her eyes and went over, one by one, the +incidents of the dinner. What had she done that was right? What had she +done that was wrong? Was her dress just what it ought to have been? Had +she talked to Stephen Culpeper about the things people are supposed to +discuss at a dinner? Had he seen how embarrassed she was beneath her +pretence of gaiety? Would she be better looking if she were to let her +hair grow long again? What had Mrs. Page, who looked as if she had +stepped down from one of those old prints, thought of her? + +Beneath the hard brightness of her manner there was a passionate groping +toward some dimly seen but intensely felt ideal. She longed to learn if +she could only learn without confessing her ignorance. Her pride was the +obstinate, unreasonable pride of a child. + +"If I could only find out things without asking!" The image of Stephen +rose in her mind, which worked by flashes of insight rather than orderly +processes. She saw his earnest young face, with the sleek dark hair, +which swept in a point back from his forehead, his sombre smoke-coloured +eyes, and the firm, slightly priggish line of his mouth. He seemed miles +away from her, separated by some imponderable yet impassable barrier. +The first time her gaze had rested on him at the charity ball she had +thought impetuously, "Any girl could fall in love with a man like that!" +and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who +appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself. The next +day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had +obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the +gambler's instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity. After all, had not +experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that +nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next +turn of fortune? She had been startled out of her composure by the sight +of Stephen at the dinner; and yet she had not been conscious of any +particular wish to see him again, or to sit at his side through two +hours of embarrassment and uncertainty. Now, on the way home, she was +suffering acutely from the burden of failure, from the smarting +realization of her own ignorance and awkwardness. Her one bitter-sweet +consolation was the knowledge that she had been "a good loser," that she +had carried off her humiliation with a scornful pride which must have +blighted like frost any tenderly budding shoots of compassion. "I'll +show them that they mustn't pity me!" she thought, while her eyes blazed +in the darkness. "I'll prove to them that I think myself every bit as +good as they are!" She knew that her manner had been ungracious; but she +knew also that something stronger than her will, some instinct which was +rooted deep in the secret places of her nature, had made it impossible +for her to appear otherwise. Impassioned, undisciplined, and capable of +fierce imaginative loyalties and aversions, the strongest force in her +character was this bitter ineradicable pride. To accept no benefits that +she could not return; to fall under no obligation that would involve a +feeling of gratitude; to pay the piper to the utmost penny whenever she +called the tune--these were the only laws that she acknowledged. Though +she longed ardently for the admiration of Stephen Culpeper, she would +have died rather than relinquish the elfin mockery of her challenge. + +"Well, did you enjoy it, Patty?" Her father turned to her with sudden +tenderness, though the frown produced by some engrossing train of +thought still gathered his heavy brows. + +She caught his hand while her small face relaxed from its expression of +rigid disdain. "I had simply the time of my life," she responded with +convincing animation. "That Mrs. Page is the most beautiful woman I ever +saw--but she can't be very young. I wonder what she was like when she +was my age?" + +Vetch laughed. "Not like a short-haired imp with green eyes anyway," he +replied. "Mrs. Stribling looked very handsome, too, I thought." + +"Oh, she's handsome enough," admitted Patty. "But she hasn't any sense. +I listened to what she was saying, and she just asked questions all the +time. Mrs. Page is different. You can tell that she has been all over +the world. She knows things." + +"Yes, I suppose she does," said Vetch. "What did you think of Benham?" + +"He is good looking," answered the girl deliberately, "but I don't like +him. He is making fun of you." + +"Is he?" returned Vetch curiously. "Now, I wonder if you're right about +that. At any rate he asked me a question to-night that I should like a +chance to answer on the platform." + +"He was in the army," said Patty, "and every one says he was a hero. The +women were talking about him while you were smoking. They all admire him +so. It seems that he went into an officer's training camp as soon as war +was declared though he was over age; and then just recently he has done +something that every one thinks splendid. He refused a tremendous fee +from some corporation--what did they mean by a corporation?--because he +thought the money was made dishonestly. Mrs. Page says he has as many +public virtues as a civic forum. What is a forum, Father?" + +Vetch laughed without replying directly to her question. "Did she say +that?" he responded. "And what did she mean by it, I wonder?" + +"It sounded clever," said Patty, "but I didn't understand. What is a +forum, Father?" + +Vetch thought a moment. "Mrs. Page would probably tell you," he replied, +"that it is the temple of the improbable." + +Patty stirred impatiently. "Now you are trying to talk like Mrs. Page," +she rejoined. "I wish I knew what things meant." + +"When you find out what they mean, Patty, they will cease to interest +you." + +"Well, I'd rather be less interested and more comfortable," said Patty, +with a trace of exasperation in her voice. "To-night, for instance, I +hadn't the faintest idea how to behave. Look at all those books I've +read, too, when I might just as well have been enjoying myself. I've +found out to-night, Father, that books can't tell you everything--not +even books on etiquette." + +Vetch broke into a laugh of boisterous amusement. "So that is how you +have been spending your time!" he exclaimed. "You'd better trust to your +common sense, my dear; it will carry you straighter." + +"Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't carry me anywhere except into trouble. +When I think of all the pains I've taken to learn how to talk like the +dictionary! Why, nobody talks like the dictionary any longer! They all +talk slang, every one of them--only they don't talk the kind that Julius +Gershom and all these politicians do. If you could have seen Mrs. +Berkeley's face when I told her I'd had a 'grand' time to-night--she +looked exactly like a frozen fish--though just the moment before Mr. +Culpeper had called somebody a 'rotter'. I heard him." + +The Governor dismissed it all with a wave of his hand. "Trifles, +trifles," was his only comment. + +The car had entered the Square, and in a moment it was passing the +Washington statue and the Capitol building. Until it stopped before the +steps of the mansion, Patty did not reply; then springing up with a +flutter of her scarlet skirt, she exclaimed airily, "But I am a trifle, +too, Father!" + +As he held out his hand from the ground, Vetch looked at her with an +expression in which pride and pity were strangely mingled. "Then you are +one of the trifles that make life worth living," he replied. + +He had taken out his latch-key and was about to insert it in the lock, +when the door opened and Gershom stood before them. + +"I waited for you," he said to Vetch. "There's a matter I must see you +about to-night." His ruddy face was tinged with purple, and he had the +look of a man who has just been aroused from a nap. + +"Well, I'm sleepy, and I'm going to bed," retorted Patty in reply to his +glance rather than his words, and her tone was bitterly hostile. + +"Then I'll see you to-morrow." He had followed her into the wide hall +while the Governor closed the door and stopped to take off his overcoat. +"Did you have a good time?" + +She responded with a disdainful movement of her shoulders which might +have been a shrug if she had had French instead of Irish blood in her +veins. In her evening cloak of green velvet trimmed with gray fox she +had the look of a small wild creature of the forest. Beneath her thick +eyelashes her eyes shone through a greenish mist; and at the moment +there was something frightened and furtive in their brightness. + +"Of course," she replied defiantly, moving away from him in the +direction of the staircase. "I had a wonderful time--perfectly +wonderful. The people were all so interesting." Her pronunciation was as +deliberately correct as if she were reading from a dictionary. It was +the air of superiority that she always assumed with Gershom, for in no +other way, she had learned from experience, could she irritate him so +intensely. + +His jovial manner gave place to a crestfallen look. "Who was there? I +reckon I know the names anyway." + +He affected a true republican scorn of appearances; and standing there, +in his dishevelled business clothes beside Patty's ethereal youth, he +looked as hopelessly battered by reality as a political theory, or as +old General Powhatan Plummer of aristocratic descent. + +Patty had often wondered what it was about the man that aroused in her +so unconquerable an aversion. He was not ugly compared to many of the +men her father had brought to the house; and ten years ago, when she +first met him in the little country town where they were living, his +curling black hair and sharp black eyes had seemed to her rather +attractive than otherwise. If he had been merely untidy and unashamed in +dress, she might have tolerated the failing as the outward sign of a +distinguished social philosophy; but, even in those early days, his +Jeffersonian simplicity had yielded to an outbreak of vanity. Though his +clothes were unbrushed and his boots were unpolished, he wore a +sparkling pin in his tie and several sparkling rings on his fingers. +There was something else, too, some easy tone of patronage, some +familiar inflexion, which as a child she had hated. Now, after the +evening with Stephen Culpeper, she shrank from him with a disgust which +was made all the keener by contrast. A pitiless light had fallen over +Gershom while he stood there beside her, as if his bad taste and his +pathetic ambition to appear something that he was not, had become +exaggerated into positive vices. She was too young to perceive the +essential pathos of all wasted effort, of all misdirected attempts to +overcome the disadvantages of ignorance; and while she looked at him +now, she saw only the vulgarity. Like all those who have suffered from +insufficient opportunities and wounded pride, Patty Vetch was without +mercy for the very weaknesses that she had risen above. After the +evening at the Berkeleys' she felt that she should be less ashamed of a +drunkard than of a man who wore diamonds because he thought that it was +the correct thing to do. She remembered suddenly that on her fourteenth +birthday she had bought a pair of paste earrings with ten dollars her +father had given her; and for the sting of this reminder she knew that +she should never forgive Gershom. Oh, she had no patience with a man who +couldn't find out things and learn without asking questions! Hadn't she +tried and tried, and made mistakes and tried again, and still gone on +trying by hook or by crook; as her father would say, to find out the +thousand and one things she oughtn't to do? If she, even as a child, had +struggled so hard to improve herself and change in the right way, not +the wrong way--then why shouldn't he? Her father, of course, wasn't +polished, but he was as unlike Gershom as if they had been born as far +apart as the poles. Even to her untrained eyes it was evident that Vetch +possessed the authority of personality--a sanction that was not social +but moral. Some inherent dislike for anything that was not solid, that +was not genuine, had served Vetch as a kind of aesthetic discrimination. + +"I know Benham," Gershom was saying eagerly. "I've worked with him. +Smart chap, don't you think? Ever heard him speak?" + +"No, I hate speeches." + +"Did he and the Governor have any words?" + +"Of course they didn't--not at dinner," she replied with a crushing +manner. "Father is waiting for you." + +"Then you'll see me to-morrow? I've got a lot I want to say to you. And +I'll tell you this right now, Patty, my dear, you may run round with +these high-faluting chaps like Culpeper as much as you please; but how +many dinner parties do you think you'd be invited to if I hadn't put the +old man where he is?" + +At this she turned on him furiously, her eyes blazing through their +greenish mist. "I don't owe you anything, and you know it!" she retorted +defiantly. Then before he could detain her she broke away from him and +ran up the stairs. How dared he pretend that he had placed her under an +obligation! As if it made any difference to her whether her father were +Governor or not! + +As she fled upward she heard Gershom follow Vetch into the library, and +she knew that they would sit talking there until long after midnight. +These discussions had become frequent of late; and she surmised vaguely, +though Vetch never mentioned Gershom's name to her, that the two men +were no longer upon the friendly terms of the old days. Ever since +Vetch's election, it had seemed to her that the pack of hungry +politicians had closed in about him; and only the day before, when she +had gone over to the Governor's office in the Capitol building, she had +run away from what she merrily described as "the famished wolves" +waiting outside his door. It was clear even to her that the political +leaders who had supported Vetch were beginning already to distrust him. +They had sought, she realized, to use his popularity, his eloquence, his +earnestness, for their own ends; and they were making the historic +discovery that the man who possesses these affirmative qualities is +seldom without the will to preserve them. In their superficial ploughing +of the soil, Vetch's adherents had at last struck against the rock of +resistance. A man of ambition, or a man of prejudice, they might have +controlled; but, as Patty had learned long ago, Vetch was that most +difficult of political problems--the man of an idea. + +Sitting before her dressing-table she glanced over the room, which was +hung with the gaily decorated chintz she had bought after months of +secret longing for roses and hollyhocks in her bedroom. Now she felt +that it looked cheap and flimsy because she had sacrificed material to +colour. She wanted something different to-night; she wanted something +better. Turning to the mirror she gazed back at her vivid face, with the +large deep eyes, so full of poignant expectancy, and the soft dimpled +chin. From her expression she might have been dreaming of happiness; but +the thought in her mind was simply, "The powder I use is too white. +Those women to-night used powder that did not show. I must get some +to-morrow." She was pretty,--even Stephen thought she was pretty. She +could see it in his eyes when he looked at her; but her prettiness was +merely the bloom of youth, nothing more. It was not that changeless +beauty of structure--that beauty, as she recognized, of the very bone, +which made Mrs. Page perennially lovely. "In ten, fifteen, at the most +in twenty years, I shall have lost it all," she thought. "Then I shall +get fat and common looking; and everything will be over for me because a +little youthful colour and sparkle was all that I had. I have nothing to +hold on to--nothing that will last. I don't know anything--and yet how +could I be expected to know anything after the dull life I've had? In my +whole life I've never known a woman that could help me. I've had to find +out everything for myself--" + +With her gaze still on the mirror, she laid the brush on its back of +pink celluloid--how much she had admired it when she bought it!--and +leaned forward with her hands clasped on the cover of the +dressing-table. Her hair still flying out from the strokes of the brush +surrounded her small eager face like a cloud. From the open neck of her +kimono, embroidered in a pattern of cranes and wistaria, the thin +girlish lines of her throat rose with an appealing fragility, like the +stem of some delicate flower. + +"I wonder if Mother could have helped me if she had lived?" she asked +presently of her reflection. "I wonder if she was different from all the +other women I've known?" Through her mind there passed swiftly a hundred +memories of her childhood. First there came the one vivid recollection +of her mother, a flashing, graceful figure, as light as thistle-down, in +a skirt of spangled tulle that stood out from her knees. The face Patty +could not remember, but the spangles were indelibly impressed on her +mind, the spangles and a short silver wand, with a star on the end of +it, which that fairy-like figure had held over her cradle. Of her mother +this was all she had left, just this one unforgettable picture, and then +a long terrible night when she had not seen her, but had heard her +sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, somewhere in the darkness. The next day, when +she cried for her, they had said that she was gone, and the child had +never seen her again. In the place of her pretty mother there had been a +big, rugged man, whom she had never seen before, and when she cried this +man had taken her in his arms, and tried to quiet her. Afterward, when +she grew bigger and asked questions, one of the neighbours had told her +that her mother had lost her mind from a fall in the circus, that they +had taken her away to an asylum, and that now she was dead. + +"And wherever she is, she ought to go down on her knees and thank +Gideon Vetch for the way he's looked after you," said the woman. + +"But didn't he look after her too?" asked the child. + +At this the woman laughed shrilly, lifting the soaking clothes with her +capable red hands, and then plunging them down into the soapsuds." +Well, I reckon that's more than the Lord Almighty would expect of him!" +she replied emphatically but ambiguously. + +"I wonder why Father never took me to see her. I'm sure I'd have +remembered it." + +The woman looked at her darkly. "There are some places that children +don't go to." + +"How long ago did she die?" + +Patty waited patiently for an answer; but when at last the neighbour +raised her head again from the tub, it appeared that her reticence had +extended from her speech to her expression which looked as if it had +closed over something. "You'll have to ask your father that," she +returned in a phrase as cryptic as the preceding one. "I ain't here to +tell you things." + +After this the child set her lips firmly together, and asked no more +questions. Her father had become not one parent, but both to her; and it +seemed that whereever she looked he was always there, overshadowing like +a mountain everything else on her horizon. In the beginning they had +been very poor; but he had never let her suffer for things, although for +weeks at a time she knew that he had gone without his tobacco in order +to buy her toys. Until she went to the little village school, she had +always had an old woman to look after her, and later on, when their +circumstances appeared miraculously to improve, he employed the slim, +gray, uninteresting spinster who slept now a few doors away from her. +There were hours when it seemed to her that she had never learned the +meaning of tediousness until the plain but hopeful Miss Spencer came to +live with her. + +Rising from her chair, she moved away from the mirror, and wandered +restlessly to the pile of fashion magazines and festively decorated +"books on etiquette" that littered the table beside the chintz-covered +couch. "They don't know everything!" she thought contemptuously. How +hard she had tried to learn, and yet how confused, how hopeless, it all +seemed to her to-night! All the hours that she had spent in futile study +appeared to her wasted! At her first dinner she had felt as bewildered +and unhappy as if she had never opened one of those thick gaudy volumes +that had cost so much--as much as a box of chocolates every day for a +week. "I don't care," she said aloud, with sullen resolution. "I am +going to let them see that I don't want any favours." + +The next afternoon she went out early in order to escape Gershom; but +when she came in, after a restless wandering in shops and a short drive, +she met him just as he was turning away from the door. + +"Something told me I'd find you at this hour," he remarked with +unfailing good humour. "Come out and walk about in the Square. It will +do you good." + +She shook her head impatiently. "I'm tired. I don't like walking." + +"Well, I reckon it's easier to sit anyway. We'll go inside." + +"No, if I've got to talk to you I'd rather do it out of doors," she +replied, turning back toward the gate. + +"That's right. The air's fine. I shouldn't wonder if the bad weather +ain't all over." + +"I don't mind the bad weather," she retorted pettishly because it was +the only remark she could think of that sounded disagreeable. + +They passed through the gate, and walked rapidly in the direction of the +Washington monument, which lifted a splendid silhouette against a deep +blue background of sky. It was one of those soft, opal-tinted February +days which fall like a lyric interlude in the gray procession of winter. +The sunshine lay like flowing gold on the pavement; and the breeze that +stirred now and then in the leafless boughs of the trees was as roving +and provocative as the air of spring. In the winding brick walks of the +Square children were at play with the squirrels and pigeons; and old +men, with gnarled hands and patient hopeless faces, sat warming +themselves in the sunshine on the benches. "Life!" she thought. "That's +life. You can't get away from it." Then one of the old men broke into a +cackle of cheerful laughter, and she added: "After all nobody is ever +pathetic to himself." + +"I believe I'll go in," she said, turning to Gershom. "I want to take +off my hat." + +He laughed. "Your hat's all right, ain't it? It looks pretty good to +me." + +A shiver of aversion ran through her. If only he wouldn't try to be +funny! If only he had been born without that dreadful sense of humour, +she felt that she might have been able to tolerate him. + +"Please don't," she replied fretfully. + +"Well, I won't, if you'll walk a little slower. I told you I had +something to say to you." + +"I don't want to hear it. There's no use talking about it. I'll say the +same thing if you ask me for a hundred years." + +A chuckle broke from him while he stood jauntily fingering the diamond +in his tie, as if it were some talisman which imparted fresh confidence. +Oh, it was useless to try to put a man like that in his place--for his +place seemed to be everywhere! + +"Well, it won't do any harm," he said at last. "As long as I like to +listen to it." + +"I wish you would leave me alone." + +"But suppose I can't?" He was still chaffing. He would continue to +chaff, she was convinced, if he were dying. "Suppose I ain't made that +way?" + +"I don't care how you're made. You may talk to Father if you like; but +I'm going upstairs to take off my hat." + +His chuckle swelled into a roar of laughter. "Talk to Father! Haven't I +been talking to Father over at the Capitol for the last three hours?" + +They had reached the gate beyond the monument, and swinging suddenly +round, she started back toward the house. As she passed him he touched +the end of her fur stole with a gesture that was almost imperative. His +eyes had dropped their veil of pleasantry, and she was aware, with a +troubled mind, that he was holding back something as a last resource if +she continued to prove intractable. Again and again she had this feeling +when she was with him--an uneasy intuition that his good humour was not +entirely unassumed, that he was concealing a dangerous weapon beneath +his offensive familiarity. + +"After all I may be going to surprise you," he said lightly enough, yet +with this disturbing implication of some meaning that she could not +discern. "What if I tell you that I've no intention of making love to +you?" + +"You mean there is something else you want to see me about?" She +breathed a sigh of relief, and her light steps fell gradually into the +measure of his. Her conscience pricked her unpleasantly when she +remembered that there had been a time when she would have spoken less +curtly. Well, what of that? It was characteristic of her energetic mind +that past mistakes were dismissed as soon as they were discovered. When +one started out in life knowing nothing, one had to learn as best one +could, that was all! Every day was a new one, so why bother about +yesterday? There was trouble enough in the world as it was, without +dragging back what was over. + +"Please tell me what it is," she said impatiently. + +He looked at her with curious intentness. "It is about an aunt of +yours--Mrs. Green. I met her when I was in California." + +Her surprise was so complete that he must have been gratified. + +"An aunt of mine? I haven't any aunt." + +For a minute he hesitated. Now that he had come to practical matters his +careless jocularity had given place to a manner of serious deliberation. +"Then your father hasn't told you?" he asked. + +"Is she his sister?" Her distrust of Gershom was so strong that she +could not bring herself to a direct reply. + +"So he hasn't?" After all she might as well have answered his question. +"No, she isn't his sister." His smile was full of meaning. + +"Then she must be"--there was a change in her voice which he was quick +to detect--"she must be the sister of my mother." + +"Didn't you know that she had one?" he enquired. "Don't you remember +seeing her when you were a child?" + +She shook her head. "No, I don't remember her, and Father has never +spoken of her." + +At this he glanced at her sharply, and then looked away over the tops of +the trees to the political mausoleum of the City Hall. "We take that as +a sort of joke now," he remarked irrelevantly, "but the time was--and +not so long ago either--when we boasted of it more than of the Lee +monument. Cost a lot too, they say! Queer, ain't it, the way we spend a +million dollars or more on a thing one year, and the next want to kick +it out on the junk heap? I reckon it's the same way about behaviour too. +It ain't so much what you do as the time you do it in that seems to make +the difference." As she showed no inclination to follow this train of +moralizing, he asked suddenly, "Do you remember your mother?" + +"Only once. I remember seeing her once." He had not imagined that her +voice could become so gentle. + +"Did they ever tell you what became of her?" + +"Yes, I know that. She lost her mind. They told me that she died in the +asylum." + +He was still watching her closely, as if he were observing the effect on +her nerves of each word he uttered. "Did they tell you the cause of it?" + +She shook her head. "That was all they ever told me." + +"You mean your father never mentioned it to you? Are you sure he never +spoke of Mrs. Green?" + +"I shouldn't have forgotten. But, if she is my mother's sister, why has +she never written to me?" + +"Ah, that's just it! She was afraid your father wouldn't like it. There +was a difference of some kind. I don't know what it was about--but they +didn't get on--and--and--" + +"I am sure Father was right. He is always right," she said loyally. + +"Well, he may have been. I'm not denying that; but it's an old story +now, and I wouldn't bring it up again, if I were you. He has enough +things to carry without that." + +She hesitated a moment before replying. "Yes, I suppose it's better not +to speak of it. He has too many worries." + +"I knew you'd see it that way; you're a girl of sense. And if Mrs. Green +should ever come here, must I tell her that you would like to see her?" + +"Does she think of coming here? California is so far away." + +"Well, people do come, don't they? And I know she'd like to see you. She +was very fond of your mother. I used to know both of 'em in the old days +when I was a boy." + +"Of course I'd like to see her if she could tell me about my mother. I +want to ask questions about her--only it makes Father so unhappy when I +bring up the past." + +"It would, I reckon. Things like that are better forgotten." Then, +dismissing the subject abruptly, he remarked in the old tone of +facetious familiarity, "I never saw you looking better. What have you +done to yourself? You are always imitating some new person every time I +see you." + +"I am not!" Her temper flashed out. "I never imitate anybody." Yet, even +as she passionately denied the charge, she knew that it was true. For a +week, ever since her first visit to the old print shop, she had tried to +copy Corinna's voice, the carriage of her head, her smile, her gestures. + +"Well, you needn't," he assured her with admiring pleasantry. "As far as +looks go--and that's a long way--I haven't seen any one that was better +than you!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SEPTEMBER ROSES + + +The afternoon sunshine streamed through the dull gold curtains into the +old print shop where Corinna sat in her tapestry-covered chair between +the tea-table and the log fire. She was alone for the moment; and lying +back in the warmth and fragrance of the room, she let her gaze rest +lovingly on one of the English mezzotints over which a stray sunbeam +quivered. The flames made a pleasant whispering sound over the cedar +logs; her favourite wide-open creamy roses with golden hearts scented +the air; and the delicate China tea in her cup was drawn to perfection. +As she lay back in the big chair but one thing disturbed her +serenity--and that one thing was within. She had everything that she +wanted, and for the hour, at least, she was tired of it all. The mood +was transient, she knew. It would pass because it was alien to the clear +bracing air of her mind; but while it lasted she told herself that the +present had palled on her because she had looked beneath the vivid +surface of illusion to the bare structure of life. Men had ceased to +interest her because she knew them too well. She knew by heart the very +machinery of their existence, the secret mental springs which moved them +so mechanically; and she felt to-day that if they had been watches, she +could have taken them apart and put them together again without +suspending for a minute the monotonous regularity of their works. Even +Gideon Vetch, who might have held a surprise for her, had differed from +the rest in one thing only: he had not seen that she was beautiful! And +it wasn't that she was breaking. To-day because of her mood of +depression, she appeared drooping and faded; but that night, a week ago, +in her velvet gown and her pearls, she had looked as handsome as ever. +The truth was simply that Vetch had glanced at her without seeing her, +as he might have glanced at the gilded sheaves of wheat on a picture +frame. He had been so profoundly absorbed in his own ideas that she had +been nothing more individual than one of an audience. If he were to meet +her in the street he would probably not recognize her. And this was a +man who had never before seen a woman whose beauty had passed into +history, a man who had risen to his place through what the Judge had +described with charitable euphemism, as "unusual methods." "The odd part +about Vetch," the Judge had added meditatively on the drive home, "is +that he doesn't attempt to disguise the kind of thing that we of the old +school would call--well, to say the least--extraordinary. He is as +outspoken as Mirabeau. I can't make it out. It may be, of course, that +he has a better reading of human nature than we have, and that he knows +such gestures catch the eye, like long hair or a red necktie. It is very +much as if he said--'Yes, I'll steal if I'm driven to it, but--confound +it!--I won't lie!'" + +After all, the sting to her vanity had been too slight to leave an +impression. There must be another cause for the shadow that had fallen +over her spirits. Even a reigning beauty of thirty years could scarcely +expect to be invincible; and she had known too much homage in the past +to resent what was obviously a lack of discrimination. Her +disappointment went deeper than this, for it had its source in the +stories she had heard of Vetch that sounded original and dramatic. She +had imagined a personality that was striking, spectacular, or at least +interesting; and the actual Gideon Vetch had seemed to her merely +unimpressive and ordinary. Beside John Benham (as the thought of Benham +returned to her, her spirit rose on wings out of the shadow), beside +John Benham, in the drawing-room after dinner, Vetch had appeared at a +disadvantage that was almost ridiculous; and, as Stephen Culpeper had +hastened to point out, this was merely a striking illustration of the +damning contrast between the Governor's chequered political career and +Benham's stainless record of service. + +A smile curved her lips as she gazed at the quivering sunbeams. Was that +deep instinct for perfection, the romantic vision of things as they +ought to be, awaking again? Did the starry flower bloom not in the +dream, but in reality? The passion to create beauty, to bring happiness, +which had been extinguished for years, burned afresh in her heart. Yes, +as long as there was beauty, as long as there was nobility of spirit, +she could fight on as one who believed in the future. + +A shadow darkened the window, and a moment afterward there was a fall of +the old silver knocker on her door. She thought at first--the shadow had +seemed so young--that it was Stephen; but when she opened the door, she +saw, with a lovely flush, that it was John Benham. + +"You expected me?" he asked, raising her hand to his lips. + +"Yes, I knew that you would come," she answered, and the flush died +away slowly as she turned back to the fire. In the moment of recognition +all the despondency had vanished so utterly that it had not left even a +memory. He had brought not only peace, but youth and happiness back to +her eyes. + +He came in as impressively as he presented himself to an audience; and +with the glow of pleasure still in her heart, she found her keen and +observant mind watching him almost as if he were a stranger. This had +been her misfortune always, the ardent heart joined to the critical +judgment, the spectator chained eternally to the protagonist. She +received a swift impression that he had prepared his words and even his +gestures, the kiss on her fingers. Yet, in spite of this suggestion of +the actor, or because of it, he possessed, she felt, great distinction. +The straight backward sweep of his hair; the sharp clearness of his +profile; the steady serenity of his gray eyes; the ease and suppleness +and indolent strength of his tall thin figure--all these physical +details expressed the reserves and inhibitions of generations. The only +flaw that she could detect was that dryness of soul that she had noticed +before, as of soil that has been too heavily drained. She knew that he +excelled in all the virtues that are monumental and public, that he was +an honourable opponent, a scrupulous defender of established rules and +precedents. He would always reach the goal, but his race would never +carry him beyond the end of the course; he would always fulfil the law, +but he would never give more than the exact measure; he would always +fight for the risen Christ, but he would never have followed the humble +bearer of the Cross. His strength and weakness were the kind which had +profoundly influenced her life. He represented in her world the +conservative principle, the accepted standard, the acknowledged +authority, custom, stability, reason, and moderation. + +As he sat down in front of the fire, he looked at her with a gentle +possessive gaze. + +"Of course you have never sold a print," he remarked in a laughing tone, +and she responded as flippantly. + +"Of course!" + +"Why didn't you call it a collection?" + +"Because people wouldn't come." + +"Then why didn't you keep them at home where you have so much that is +fine?" + +She laughed. "Because people couldn't come. I mean the people I don't +know. I have a fancy for the people I have never met." + +"On the principle that the unknown is the desirable." + +She nodded. "And that the desirable is the unattainable." + +His gray eyes were warmed by a fugitive glow. "I shouldn't have put it +that way in your case. You appear to have everything." + +"Do I? Well, that twists the sentence backward. Shall we say that the +attainable is the undesirable?" + +"Surely not. Can you have ceased already to desire these lovely things? +Could that piece of tapestry lose its charm for you, or that Spanish +desk, or those English prints, or the old morocco of that binding? Do +you feel that the colours in that brocade at your back could ever become +meaningless?" + +"I am not sure. Wouldn't it be possible to look at it while you were +seeing something else, something so drab that it would take the colour +out of all beauty?" She was looking at him over the tea-table, and while +she asked the question she raised a lump of sugar in the quaint old +sugar tongs she had brought home from Florence. + +He shook his head. "I am denied sugar. Has it ever occurred to you that +middle age ought to be called the age of denial?" Then his tone changed. +"But I wonder if you begin to realize how fortunate you are? You have +the collector's instinct and the means to gratify it. To discover with +you is to possess--don't you understand the blessing of that? You love +beauty as a favoured daughter, not as one of the disinherited who can +only peer through the windows of her palace." + +"But you also--you love beauty as I do." + +"But I can't own it--not as you do." He was speaking frankly. "I haven't +the means. At least what I have I have made myself, and therefore I +guard it more carefully. It is only those who have once been poor who +are really under the curse of money, for that curse is the inability to +understand that money is less valuable than anything else on earth that +you happen to need or desire. Now to me the most terrible thing on earth +is not to be without beauty, but to be without money--" + +She smiled. "You are talking like Gideon Vetch." + +He caught at the name quickly. "Like Gideon Vetch? You mean that I sound +ignoble?" + +The laughter in his eyes made him look almost boyish, and she felt that +she had come suddenly close to him. After all he was very attractive. + +"Is he ignoble?" she asked. "I have seen him only once, and that was at +the dinner a week ago." + +He looked at her intently. "I should like to know what you think." + +"I hardly know--but--well, I must confess that I was disappointed." + +"You expected something better?" + +She hesitated over her answer. "I expected something different. I +suppose I looked for the dash of purple--or at least of red--in his +appearance." + +"And he seemed ordinary?" + +"In a way--yes. His features are not striking, and yet when he talks to +you and gets interested in his own ideas, he sheds a kind of warmth that +is like magnetism. I couldn't analyse it, but it is there." + +"That, I suppose, is the charm of which they talk. Warmth, or perhaps +heat, is a better word for it. Fortunately I'm proof against it because +of what you might call an asbestos temperament; but I've seen it catch +fire in a crowd, and it sweeps over an audience like a blaze over a +prairie. It is a cheap kind of oratory; yet it is a power in +unscrupulous hands--and Vetch is unscrupulous." + +"You believe that?" + +"I know it. It has been proved again and again that he will stoop to any +means in order to advance his ideas, which mean of course his ambition. +Oh, I'm not denying that in the main he is sincere, that he believes in +his phrases. As a matter of fact one has only to look at his +appointments, those that he is able to make by his own authority! There +isn't a doubt in the world that he deliberately sold his office in +exchange for his election--" + +So this was one honest man's view of Gideon Vetch! John Benham believed +this accusation, for some infallible intuition told her that Benham +would never have repeated it, even as a rumour, if he had not believed +it. Her father's genial defence of the Governor; his ironic +aristocratic sympathy with the radical point of view appeared +superficial and unconvincing beside Benham's moral repudiation. And yet +what after all was the simple truth about Gideon Vetch? What was the +true colour of that variable personality, which appeared to shift and +alter according to the temperament or the convictions of each observer? +She had never known two men who agreed about Vetch, except perhaps +Benham and his disciple, Stephen Culpeper. Each man saw Vetch +differently, and was this because each man saw in the great demagogue +only the particular virtue or vice for which he was looking, the +reflection of personal preferences or aversions? It seemed to her +suddenly that the Governor, whom she had thought commonplace, towered an +immense vague figure in a cloud of misinterpretation and +misunderstanding. His followers believed in him; his opponents +distrusted him; but was this not true of every political leader since +the beginning of politics? The power to inspire equally devotion and +hatred had been throughout history the authentic sign of the saviour and +of the destroyer. Her curiosity, which had waned, flared up more +strongly than ever. + +"I should like to know," she said aloud, "what he is truthfully?" + +Benham laughed as he rose to go. "Do you think he can be anything +truthfully?" + +"Oh, yes, even if it is only a demagogue." + +"Only a demagogue! My dear Corinna, the demagogue is the one everlasting +and unalterable American institution. He is the idol of the Senate +chamber; the power behind the Constitution." + +"But what does he really stand for--Vetch, I mean?" + +"Ask him. He would enjoy telling you." + +"Would he enjoy telling me the truth?" + +With the laughter still in his eyes Benham drew nearer and stood looking +down on her. "Oh, I don't mean that he is pure humbug. I haven't a +doubt, as I told you, that he believes, sufficiently at least for +election purposes, in the fallacies that he advocates, even in the old +age pension, the minimum, or more accurately, the maximum wage, and of +course in what doesn't sound so Utopian since we have experimented with +it, that favourite dogma of the near-Socialists, the Government +ownership of railroads. His main theory, however, appears to be some +far-fetched abstraction which he calls the humanizing of +industry--you've heard that before! Mere bombast, you see, but the kind +of thing that is dangerous in a crowd. It is the catchpenny politics +that has been the curse of our country." + +"And of course he is not a gentleman." Corinna's voice was regretful. "I +may be old-fashioned, but I can't help feeling that the Governor ought +to be a gentleman. That sounds like General Plummer, I know," she +concluded apologetically. + +"The archaic cult of the gentleman? Well, I like to think that in +Virginia it still has a few obscure followers. It is a prejudice that I +dare to admit only when I am not on the platform, for the belief in the +gentleman has become a kind of underground religion, like the worship in +the Catacombs." + +Her eyes had grown wistful when she answered: "It is the price we pay +for democracy." + +"The price we pay is the reign of social justice in theory, and in +practice the rule of the Gideon Vetches of history. Oh, I admit that it +may all work out in the end! That is my political creed, you know--that +everything and anything may work out in the end. If I stood simply for +tradition without progress, I should long ago have been driven to the +wall." + +"I feel as you do," she said after a moment, "and yet I am curious to +see what will become of our experimental Governor." + +"And I also. The man may have executive ability, and it is possible that +he may give us an efficient administration. But, of course, it is merely +a stepping-stone for his inordinate greed for power. His vanity has been +inflamed by success, and he sees the Senate, it may be even the +Presidency, ahead of him." + +Though she smiled there was a note of earnestness in her voice. "Well, +why not? There was once a rail splitter--" + +"Oh, I know. But the rail splitter was born a president; and it is a far +cry to a circus rider who was not born even a gentleman." + +"Perhaps. Yet, right or wrong, hasn't the war stretched a little the +safety net of our democracy? Isn't it just possible to-day that we might +find a circus rider who was born a president too?" Then before he could +toss back her questions she asked quickly, "After all, he didn't +actually ride, did he?" + +Benham shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had acquired in France. +"I've heard so, but I don't know. They tell queer tales of his early +years. That was before the golden age of the movies, you see; and I +suspect that the movies rather than the war introduced the mock heroic +into politics." + +He was still standing at her side, looking down into her upraised eyes, +which made him think of brown velvet. For a long pause after speaking he +remained silent, drinking in the fragrance of the room, the whispering +of the flames, and the dreamy loveliness of Corinna's expression. A +change had come over her face. In the flushed light she looked young and +elusive; and it seemed to him that, beneath the glowing tissue of flesh, +he gazed upon an indestructible beauty of spirit. + +"Do you know what I was thinking?" he asked presently. "I was thinking +that I'd known all this before--that I'd been waiting for it always--the +firelight on these splendid colours, the smell of the roses, the sound +of the flames, and the way you looked up at me with that memory in your +eyes. 'I have been here before'." + +A quiver as faint as the shadow of a flower crossed her face. "Yes, I +remember. It is an odd feeling. I suppose every one has felt it at +times--only each one of us likes to think that he is the particular +instance." + +"It is trite, I know," he said with a smile, "but feeling is never very +original, is it? Only thought is new." + +"But I would rather have feeling, wouldn't you?" she asked in a low +voice, and sat waiting in a lovely attitude, prepared without and +within, for the moment that was approaching. There was no excitement in +such things now, she had had too much experience; but there was an +unending interest. + +"Then it isn't too late?" he asked quickly; and again after a pause in +which she did not answer: "Corinna, is it too late?" + +For a minute longer she looked up at him in silence. The glow was still +in her eyes; the smile was still on her lips; and it seemed to him that +she was wrapped in some enchantment which wrought not in actual life but +in allegory--that the light in which she moved belonged less to earth +than to Botticelli's springtime. Was romance, after all, he thought +sharply, the only reality? Could one never escape it? + +While he looked down on her she had stirred, as if she were awaking from +a dream, or a memory, and stretched out her hand. + +"Is it ever too late," she responded, "as long as there is any happiness +left in the world?" + +She smiled as she answered him; but suddenly her smile faded and that +faint shadow passed again over her face. In the very moment when he had +bent toward her, there had drifted before her gaze the soft anxious eyes +of Alice Rokeby, and the look in them as they followed John Benham that +evening a week ago. + +"Oh, my dear," said Benham softly. Then his voice broke and he drew back +hurriedly, for a figure had darkened the low window, and a minute +afterward the door opened and Patty Vetch entered the room. + +"The latch was not fastened, so I came in," she began, and stopped as +her look fell on Benham. "I--I hope you don't mind," she added in +confusion. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +PATTY AND CORINNA + + +Patty had come straight to Corinna after a conversation with Stephen. +She needed sympathy, and she had meant to be frank and confiding; but +when Benham left them alone in the lovely room, which made her feel as +if she had stepped into one of the stained glass windows in the old +church she attended, her courage failed, and she forgot all the +impulsive words she had learned by heart in the street. + +"I am so glad," said Corinna sweetly. "I went to see you after luncheon +to-day, and I was very much disappointed not to find you at home." + +"That was why I came," answered Patty. "Your card was there when I got +in, and I couldn't bear missing you." + +"That was right, dear. It was what I hoped you would do." + +Turning back to the fire, Corinna stooped and flung a fresh log on the +Florentine andirons. Then, without glancing at the girl, she sat down in +one of the deep chairs by the hearth, and motioned invitingly to a place +at her side. She was determined to win Patty's heart, and she wanted to +be near enough to reach out her hand when the right moment came. That +moment had not come yet, and she knew it, for she was wise from +experience. There was time enough, and she felt no impulse to hasten +developments. She was strongly attracted, and since her sympathy was +easily stirred, she wished, without any great desire, to help the girl +if she could. The only way, she realized, was to watch and hope, to play +the waiting game as far as this was possible to her active nature. For, +above all things, Corinna hated to wait; and this potent energy of soul, +this vital flame, had given the look of winged radiance to her eyes. + +"You are always so happy," said Patty breathlessly, as she leaned +forward and held out her hands to Corinna as if she were the fire. +"Everything about you seems to give out joy every minute." + +"You dear!" murmured Corinna softly, for admiration was to her nature +what sunshine is to a flower. "I am happy to-day--happy as I thought I +should never be again. I am so happy that I should like to take the +whole world to my heart and heal its misery." Then she added hastily +before the girl could reply: "You came just at the right moment. I have +wanted a talk with you, and there couldn't be a better opportunity than +this. The other night I tried to join you after dinner; but Mrs. +Berkeley got all the women together, and I didn't have a chance to speak +a word to you alone. You looked charming in that scarlet dress. Your +head is shaped so prettily that I think you are wise to cut your hair. +It makes you look like a page of the Italian Renaissance." + +"Do you really like it?" asked Patty, and her voice trembled with +pleasure. "Father hates it, but men never know." + +Corinna laughed. "Not much more about fashions than they know about +women." + +"And that isn't anything, is it?" + +"Well, perhaps they'll learn some day--by the time I am dead and you are +old. You look so young, you can't be over eighteen." + +"I'll be nineteen next summer--at least I think I shall, for nobody +knows exactly when my birthday comes." + +"Not even your father?" + +"No, he guesses it's in June, but he isn't perfectly sure, and he hasn't +any idea what day of the month it is. He gives me a birthday gift +whenever he happens to think of it." + +For a minute Corinna gazed thoughtfully into the fire. "It is queer the +things men can't remember," she said at last. "Now, my father always +forgets, or pretends to, that I've ever been married." + +"Then I needn't be so surprised," rejoined Patty brightly, "when mine +forgets that I ever was born!" + +"Oh, he doesn't forget it really, my dear. He adores you." + +"He is an angel to me," answered the girl with passionate loyalty. "I've +never had any one else, you know, and he has been simply everything. +Only I do wish he wouldn't have that tiresome Miss Spencer to live with +us." + +"But you ought to have some one with you." + +"Not some one like that. She doesn't know as much as I do; but Father +thinks she is all right because she lets her hair turn gray and wears +long dresses." + +Corinna's laugh was like music. "It takes more than that to make a +virtuous mind!" she exclaimed, but she was not thinking of Miss Spencer. + +"Do you know," said Patty, leaning forward and speaking with the +earnestness of a child, "I doubt if Father ever looked at a well-dressed +woman until he met you." + +Was it natural ingenuousness, or did the girl have a deeper motive? For +an instant Corinna wondered; then she returned merrily: "Certainly he +wouldn't look at me when Mrs. Stribling is near." + +"Yes, he admires Mrs. Stribling very much," replied Patty gravely, "but +I don't. She isn't a bit real." + +Corinna's gaze softened until it swept the girl's face like a caress. "I +hope you won't mind my calling you Patty," she responded irrelevantly. +"It is so hard to say Miss Vetch, for I can see that we are going to be +friends." + +"Oh, if you will!" cried Patty breathlessly, and she added eagerly, "I +have never had a real friend, you know, and you are so beautiful. You +are more beautiful than anybody I ever saw on the stage." + +"Or in the movies?" Corinna's voice was mirthful, but there was a deep +tenderness in her eyes. Was the girl as shallow as she appeared, or was +there, beneath her vivid enamel-like surface, some rich plastic +substance of character? Was she worth helping, worth the generous +friendship that Corinna could give, or was she merely a bit of human +driftwood that would burn out presently in the thin flame of some +transient passion? "I'll take the risk," thought Corinna. "A risk is +worth taking," for there was sporting blood in her veins. While she sat +there in silence, listening to the artless unfolding of the girl's +thoughts, she appeared to be searching for the hidden possibilities in +that crude young spirit. So often in the past the older woman had given +herself abundantly only to meet disappointment and ingratitude. Why +should it be different now? What was there in this unformed child that +appealed so strongly to her sympathy and tenderness? Not beauty surely, +for Patty was merely pretty. Charm she had unmistakably; but it was a +charm that men would feel rather than women; and of all the feminine +varieties that Corinna had known in the past, she disliked most heartily +"the man's woman." Was her impulse to help only the need of a fresh +interest, the craving for a new amusement? The heart of life she had +never reached. Something was missing--the unfading light, the starry +flower that she had never found in her search. Now at last, in a golden +middle age, she told herself that she would build her happiness not on +perfection, but on the second best of experience. She would accept the +milder joys, the daily miracles, the fulfilled adventures. And so, +partly because she liked the girl, and partly because of a generous +whim, she said presently: + +"You shall have a friend--a real friend--from this day." + +Patty who had been gazing into the fire turned on her a face that was as +sparkling as a sunbeam. "I would rather have you for a friend than +anybody in the world," she responded in a voice so caressing that +Stephen would not have believed it belonged to her. + +"I am sure that I can be useful to you," said Corinna, for the gratitude +in the girl's voice touched and embarrassed her, "and I know that you +can be to me. How would you like to come every morning and help me for +an hour or two in my shop? There isn't anything to do, but we may get to +know each other better." After all, she might as well show a fighting +spirit and see the adventure through to the end. + +Patty's eyes shone, but all she said was, "Oh, I'd love to! It is so +beautiful here." + +"Do you like it?" asked Corinna, and wondered how much the girl really +saw. Did she have the eyes and the soul to see and feel beauty? "I have +some good things at home. You must come out there." + +"If you'll only let me sit and watch you!" exclaimed Patty fervently. + +"As long as you like." A smile crossed Corinna's lips, as she imagined +those large bright eyes, like stars in a spring twilight, shining on her +hour after hour. How could she possibly endure their unfaltering +candour? How could she adjust her life to their adoring regard? "How +long has your mother been dead, Patty?" she asked suddenly. "Do you +know--of course you don't--scarcely anybody has ever heard it--that I +had a child once, a little girl, and she lived only one day." + +"And she might have been like you," was all Patty said, but Corinna +understood. + +"Do you remember your mother, dear?" + +"Only a little," answered Patty, and then she told of the spangled skirt +and the silver wand with the star on the end of it. "That is all I can +remember." + +She rose with a shy movement and held out her hand. "Then I may come +to-morrow?" + +"Every day if you will, and most of all on the days when you need a +friend." Bending her head, she kissed the girl lightly on the cheek. "Do +you like my cousin Stephen?" she asked suddenly. + +A look of scorn came into Patty's eyes. "He is so superior," she +answered, with a gesture of complete indifference. "I don't like +superior persons." + +"Ah," thought Corinna, watching her closely, "she is really interested, +poor child!" + +After this the girl went out into a changed world--into a world which +had become, as if by a miracle, less impersonal and unfriendly. The +amber light of the sunset seemed to envelop her softly as if she were +surrounded by happiness. It was like first love without its troubled +suspense, this new wonderful feeling! It was like a religious awakening +without the sense of sin that she associated with her early conversion. +Nothing, she felt, could ever be so beautiful again! Nothing could ever +mean so much to her in the rest of life! In one moment, almost by magic, +she had learned her first lesson in discrimination, in the relative +values of experience; she had attained her first clear perception of the +difference between the things that mattered a little and the things that +mattered profoundly. + +The every-day world had faded from her so completely that it seemed a +natural incident--it caused her scarcely a start of surprise--when she +met Stephen Culpeper under the Washington monument. He had evidently +just left his office, for there was a bulky package of papers in his +hand; and he greeted her as if it were the merest accident that had +taken him through the Square. As a matter of fact it was less of an +accident than he made it appear, for he had declined to go home in the +Judge's car because of some vague hope that by walking he might meet +either Patty or Gideon Vetch. Since the evening of the Berkeleys' dinner +the young man's interest had shifted inexplicably from Patty to her +father. + +"You looked so much like Mr. Benham a little way off," said Patty, as +he turned to walk back with her, "that I might have mistaken you for +him." + +"If you only knew it," he replied, laughing, "you have paid me the +highest compliment of my life." + +She blushed. "I didn't mean it as a compliment." + +"That makes it all the better. But don't you like Benham?" + +Patty pondered the question. "I can't get near enough to him either to +like or dislike him. He is very good looking." + +"He is more than good looking. He is magnificent." + +"You think a great deal of him?" + +"I couldn't think more," he responded with young enthusiasm. "Every one +feels that way about him. He stands for--well, for everything that one +would like to be." + +"I've heard of him, of course," said the girl slowly. "Father has been +fighting him ever since he went into politics; but I never saw Mr. +Benhem close enough to speak to him until the other evening." She raised +her black lashes and looked straight at Stephen with her challenging +glance. "All the men seemed so serious, except you." + +He laughed and flushed slightly. "And I did not?" + +Though her manner could not have been more indifferent, there was an +undercurrent of feeling in her voice, as if she meant something more +than she had put into words. He might take it as he chose, lightly or +seriously, her look implied--and it was, he admitted, a thrilling look +from such eyes as hers. + +"You are nearer my age," she rejoined, "though you do seem so old +sometimes." + +A depressing dampness fell on his mood. "Do I seem old to you? I am only +twenty-six." + +Her inquiring eyebrows were raised in mockery. "That is too old to play, +isn't it?" + +"Well, I might try," he answered, and added curiously, "I wonder whom +you find to play with? Not your father?" + +"Oh, no, not Father. He is as serious as Mr. Benham, only he laughs a +great deal more. Father jokes all the time, but there is something +underneath that isn't a joke at all." + +"I should like to talk to your father. I want to find out, if I can, +what he really believes." + +"You won't find out that," said Patty, "by talking to him." + +"You mean he will not tell me?" + +"Oh, he may tell you; but you won't know it. Half the time when he is +telling the truth, it sounds like a joke, and that keeps people from +believing him. He says the best way to keep a secret is to shout it from +the housetops; and I've heard him say things straight out that sounded +so far fetched nobody would think he was in earnest. I was the only +person who knew that he was speaking the truth. They call that a +'method', the politicians. They used to like it before he was elected; +but now it makes them restless. They complain that they can't do +anything with him." + +"That," remarked Stephen, as she paused, "appears to be the chronic +complaint of politicians." + +"Does it? Well, Mr. Gershom is always saying now that Father can't be +depended on. It was much more peaceable," she concluded with artless +confidence, "when he let them manage him. Now there are discussions and +disagreements all the time. It all seems to be about what they think +people want. Have you any idea what they want?" + +"Does anybody know what they want--except when they want money?" + +"Well, some of them would like Father to go to the Senate," she returned +naively, "and some of them wouldn't. Do you think that Mr. Benham would +be better in the Senate?" + +"I think so, of course. But you mustn't judge, you know, by what my +thoughts happen to be." + +"I'm not judging. I hate politics. I always have. I want to get as far +away from them as I can." + +He looked at her intently. "And where would you like to go?" + +"Into the movies." Her eyes sparkled at the thought. "At least I wanted +to go into the movies until I saw Mrs. Page this afternoon." + +"Mrs. Kent Page?" he asked in astonishment. "My Cousin Corinna?" + +"Yes, in the old print shop. Isn't she adorable?" + +He smiled at her fervour. "I have always found her so. But what has she +to do with your change of ambition?" + +"Oh, nothing, except that she is lovelier than any actress I ever saw." + +They had reached the house, and while they ascended the steps, the sound +of the Governor's voice, raised in vehement protest, floated to them +through the half-open door. + +"He must be talking to Julius Gershom," whispered Patty. "It is always +like that." + +"I don't care a damn for the whole bunch of you," said Vetch suddenly. +"You can go and tell that to the crowd!" + +"Well, I'll come back again after I've told them," Gershom replied in an +insolent tone; and the next moment the door swung back and he appeared +on the threshold. + +At sight of Patty and Stephen he attempted to cover his embarrassment +with a jest. "Your father and I were having one of our little arguments +about a Ladies' Aid Society," he said. "He is beginning to kick against +too much ice cream." + +"Well, if you argue as loud as that," replied the girl with +imperturbable coolness, "it won't be necessary to go and tell it to the +crowd." + +In an instant she had changed from the sparkling elusive creature +Stephen had known into a woman of authority and composure. What an +eternal enigma was the feminine mind! He had flattered himself that he +had reached the end of her superficial attractions; and in a minute, by +some startling metamorphosis, she was changed from a being of +transparent shallows into the immemorial riddle of sex. She might be +anything, or everything, except the ingenuous girl of the moment before. + +"We must learn to lower our voices," said the Governor in a laughing +tone. His anger, if it were anger, had blown over him like a summer +storm, and the clear blue of his glance was as winning as ever. "I've +been looking into the matter of that appointment Judge Page asked me +about," he added, "and I think I may see my way to oblige him." + +"If you are free for half an hour I'd like to have the talk we spoke of +the other day," answered Stephen. + +"Oh, I'm free except for Darrow. You won't mind Darrow." + +He turned toward the library on the left of the hall; and as Stephen +entered the room, after a gay and friendly smile in Patty's direction, +he told himself that the man promised to be more interesting than any +girl he had ever known. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE + + +A tall old man was standing by the window in the library, and as he +turned his face away from the light of the sunset, Stephen had a vague +impression that he had seen him before--not in actual life but in some +half-forgotten picture or statue. The Governor's visitor was evidently a +carpenter, with a tall erect figure and a face which had in it a dignity +that belonged less to an individual than to an era. Beneath his abundant +white hair, his large brown eyes still shone with the ardour of a +convert or a disciple, and his blanched, strongly marked features had +the aristocratic distinction and serenity that are found in the faces of +the old who have lived in communion either with profound ideas or with +the simple elemental forces of sky and sea. In spite of his gnarled +hands and the sawdust that had lodged in the frayed creases of his +clothes, he was in his way, Stephen realized, as great a gentleman and +as typical a Virginian as Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. Both men were +the descendants of a privileged order; both were inheritors of a formal +and authentic tradition. + +"This is Mr. Darrow," said Vetch in a voice which contained a note of +affectionate deference. "I think he knew your father, Culpeper. Didn't +you tell me, Darrow, that you had known this young man's father?" + +"No, sir, I only said I'd worked for him," replied Darrow, with an air +of genial irony which brought the Judge to Stephen's mind again. "That's +a big difference, I reckon. I did some repairs a few years ago on a row +of houses that belonged to Mr. Culpeper; but the business was all +arranged by the agent." + +"That was part of the estate, I suppose," explained Stephen. "My father +leaves all that to his agent." + +"Yes, I thought as much," replied Darrow simply; and after shaking hands +with his rough, strong clasp, he sat down in a chair by the window. +"They've made a lot of changes inside this house," he remarked. "Before +they added on that part at the back the dining-room used to be in the +basement. I remember doing some work down there when I was a young man +and there was going to be a wedding." + +"Well, that long room is very little use to me," returned Vetch. "As far +as I am concerned they might have left the house as it was built." Then +turning abruptly to Stephen, he said sharply: "You heard Gershom's +parting shot at me, didn't you?" There was a gleam of quizzical humour +in his eyes, and Stephen found himself asking, as so many others had +asked before him, "Is the man serious, or is he making a joke? Does he +wish me to receive this as a confidence or with pretended hilarity?" + +"Something about telling the crowd?" he answered. "Yes, I heard it." + +"We were having a tussle," continued Vetch lightly. "The fat's in the +fire at last." + +Stephen laughed drily. "Then I hope you will keep it there." + +"You mean you would like an explosion?" + +"I mean that anything that could clear up the situation would be +welcome." + +At this Vetch turned to Darrow and observed whimsically: "He doesn't +seem to fancy our friend Gershom." + +Darrow looked round with a smile from the window. "Well, there are times +when I don't myself," he confessed in his deliberate way. "Of all +bullies, your political bully is the worst. But he is not bad, he is +just foolish. His heart is set on this general strike, and he can't set +his heart on anything without losing his head." As the old man turned +his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile +reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving. Was +this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had +entered the room? + +"To tell the truth," said Stephen frankly, "the fellow strikes me as +particularly obnoxious; but I may be prejudiced." + +"I think you are," responded Vetch. "I owe Gershom a great deal. He was +useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I +don't owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!" As he met +Stephen's glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish +candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech: "I like +your face, and I'm going to talk frankly to you." + +"You may," replied the young man impulsively. It was impossible to +resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor's +manner. The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was +mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the +charlatan. In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had +already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator +that dwelt apart in his brain. + +"You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow," +resumed Vetch, with his charming smile. "I can safely assume that if you +didn't want something, you wouldn't be here. Good Lord, if a man so much +as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think +that he is either a half-wit or a ne'er-do-well." + +"At least I want nothing for myself," laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply. + +"Nor does Darrow, God bless him!--nor, for the matter of that, does +Judge Page. I've got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you +are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board." The gleam of +humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice. + +"We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley. He is +the man you need." + +"For a hobby, yes. That's all right, of course, but, my dear young sir, +you can't run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can +administer it as a philanthropy." + +"Perhaps. But can you administer it successfully without philanthropy?" + +At this Darrow turned with a smile. "Can't you see that he is fooling +with you?" he said. "Prison reform is one of his fads--that and the +rights of the indigent aged and orphans and animals and any other mortal +thing that has to live on what he calls the stones of charity. He knows +why you came, and he likes you the better because of it." + +"Gershom and I have had a word or two about that board," resumed Vetch; +and as he stopped to strike a match, Stephen noticed that the cigar he +held was of a cheap and strong brand. "Between the Legislature on one +side and that bunch of indefatigable lobbyists on the other, I shan't be +permitted presently to appoint the darkey who waits on my table." The +cigar was lighted now, and to Stephen's sensitive nostrils the air was +rapidly becoming too heavy. Oddly enough, he reflected, nothing had +"placed" Vetch so forcibly as the brand of that cigar. + +"That," observed the young man briefly, "is the penalty of political +office." + +"So long as I was merely a dark horse," said Vetch, "I was afraid to +pull on the curb; but now that I've won the race, they'll find that I'm +my own master. Won't you smoke?" + +Stephen shook his head. "Not now. There is always the next race to be +considered, I suppose." + +The Governor's rugged, rather heavy features hardened suddenly until +they looked as if they were formed of some more durable substance than +flesh. Under the thick sandy hair his eyes lost their blueness and +appeared as gray as Stephen had once thought them. "Have you ever +heard," he asked with biting sarcasm, "that I was easy to manage and +that that was why certain people put me in office?" + +"Yes, I've heard that." As the young man replied, Darrow turned from the +window and looked at him attentively. + +"And may I ask what else you have heard?" inquired Vetch. + +Stephen laughed and coloured. "I've heard that it was becoming difficult +to do anything with you." + +"Because I have the people behind me?" + +"Well, because you think you have the people behind you." + +Vetch leaned forward with a confiding movement, and flicked the ashes +of his objectionable cigar on the immaculate sleeve of Stephen's coat. +Yet, even in the careless gesture, a breath of freshness and health, of +mental and physical cleanliness, seemed to emanate like an invigorating +breeze from his robust spirit. "Of course I admit," he said +thoughtfully, "that we are obliged to have some kind of party +organization to begin with. There must be method and policy and all +sorts of team-pulling and log-rolling until you get started. That kind +of thing is useful just as far as it helps and not a step farther. I won +my fight as an Independent--and, by George, I'll remain an Independent! +I've got the upper hand now. I am strong enough to stand alone. If any +party on earth thinks it can manage me--well, I'll show it that I can be +my own party!" + +Was it true, what they said of him,--that success had already gone to +his head, that the best way to get rid of him was to give him a +political rope with which he might hang himself? Or was there some solid +foundation of fact in his blustering assumption of power? Was he +actually a force that would have to be reckoned with in the future? From +a mass of confused impressions Stephen could gather nothing clearly +except his inability to form a definite opinion of the man. On the one +side was the weight of prejudice, of preconceived judgment; and on the +other he could place only the effect of a personal magnetism which was +as real and as intangible as light or colour. + +"Do you think that is possible?" he asked sceptically. "In a democracy +like ours is any man so strong that he can stand alone?" + +"Well, of course he is not alone as long as he has the support of the +majority." + +"You may have this support--I neither affirm nor deny it--but upon what +does it rest? What do you offer the people that is better than the +principles or the promises of the old parties? I heard you speak once, +but you did not answer this question--to my mind the only question that +is vital. You talked a great deal about humanizing industry--a vague +phrase which might mean anything or nothing, since humanity covers all +the vices as well as all the virtues of the race. Benham could use that +phrase as oratorically as you do, for it rolls easily off the tongue and +commits one to nothing." + +Vetch's face lost suddenly its rigid gravity, as if he had suffered a +rush of energy to the brain. His eyes became blue again, and as keen as +the blade of a knife. + +"I believe, and the people who are with me believe, that I can make +something out of the muddle if I am given a chance," he replied. "Oh, I +know that the reactionaries are in the saddle now--that they have been +ever since they had the war as an excuse to mount! But I know also that +you can no more drive out by law the spirit of liberalism from the +American mind than you can drive out nature with a pitchfork. For a +little while you may think you have got the better of it; but it will +crop out in spite of you. Now, I am a part of returning nature, of the +inevitable rebound toward the spirit of liberalism. In the thought of +the people who voted for me, I stand for the indestructible common sense +of the American mind. I am one of the first signs of the new times." + +"And you believe that you prove this," asked Stephen frankly, "by +turning over your power of appointment to a group of self-interested +politicians? You show your ability to govern by evading the first +requirement of good government--that there should be honest and able men +in control of public offices?" + +A flicker came and went in the blue eyes. "I told you the other day," +answered Vetch in a low voice, "that I used the tools at my command, and +I tell you now that I am sometimes forced to use rotten ones. People say +that I am an opportunist; but who has ever discovered any other policy +that deals with life so completely? They say also that I am without +public conscience--another name for opinions that have crystallized into +prejudices. The truth is that the end for which I work seems to me +vastly more important than the methods I use or the instruments that I +employ." + +It was the familiar chicanery of the popular leader, the justification +of expediency, that Stephen had always found most repugnant as a +political theory; and while he drew back, repelled and disgusted, he +asked himself if the national conscience, the moral integrity of the +race, was in the keeping of demagogues? + +"I am curious to know," he remarked after a moment, "how you are able to +justify the sacrifice of what I regard as common honesty in public +affairs?" + +To his surprise, instead of answering directly, Vetch put a personal +question. "Then you think I am not honest? Darrow wouldn't agree with +you." + +At this Darrow turned from the window. "Perhaps he doesn't mean what we +do," he said quietly. "I've seen honest men that I knew ought to have +been in prison." + +"I am speaking of course of the doctrines you advocate," answered +Stephen. "That seems to me to be, in the jargon of the reformer, +somewhat unethical. Can you, I question, achieve anything important +enough to compensate for what you sacrifice?" + +Darrow turned again with his dry laugh. "You speak as if public honesty, +by which I reckon you mean clean elections and unsold offices, were +something we had actually possessed," he said. + +"Oh, I know the old proceedings were bad enough," replied Stephen, "but +I am trying to find out how the Governor expects to make them better. +You understand that I am trying merely to see your point of view--to get +at the roots of your theory of government. What you tell me will never +find its way to the public." + +"I realize that," said Vetch gravely, and he added with a quick glance +at Darrow: "Do you think if I were not honest that I'd talk to you so +frankly?" + +Stephen smiled. "It might be. The political coat has many colours. I +don't mean to be rude, you know, but one good turn in frankness deserves +another." + +"I like you the better for that." A cluster of fine lines appeared at +the corners of the Governor's laughing eyes. "But, once for all, you +must get rid of your false impressions of me, and see me as a fact, not +as a kind of social scarecrow. First of all, you think I am an +extremist--well, I am not. I am merely a man of facts. I see the world +as it is and you see it as you wish it to be--that is the difference +between us. I have lived with realities; I know actual conditions--and +you know only what you have been told or imagined. Oh, I admit that you +saw an edge of reality in the trenches; but, after all, life in the +trenches was as abnormal as life in the movies. Each represents an +extreme. What you know of average human life, of hunger and pain and +labour, could be learned in an academy for young ladies. Yet you imagine +that it is experience! You have lived so long in your lily-pond, with +the rushes hemming you in, that when you hear all the frogs croaking on +the same note, you think complacently, 'that is the voice of the +people'. Why, I tell you, man, you are so ignorant of the conditions in +this very town, that Darrow could take you out and show you things that +would make you feel like Robinson Crusoe!" + +Stephen turned eagerly to the old man at the window. "I am ready for +you, Mr. Darrow." + +Darrow nodded with a reluctant assent. "I've got my Ford around the +corner," he answered. "If you would like to go up town with me I can +show you a thing or two that might interest you." + +"You mean the conditions in this city?" + +"The conditions in all cities. They differ only in the name of the +town." + +"He will show you a little--just a little--of what getting back to peace +means," said Vetch earnestly. "By next winter it will be worse, of +course, but it has already begun. The rate of wages is falling--for +wages always fall first--and the cost of living is still as high as in +war times. Rents are going up every day, Darrow can tell you more about +the speculation in rents than I can, and the housing of the +working-classes, both white and coloured, is growing worse. We shall +soon be facing the most serious problem of the system under which we +live, the problem of the unemployed. Already it is beginning. Darrow was +telling me just before you came in of a man in one of the houses where +he has been working--a returned soldier too--who has walked the streets +for weeks in search of work. He has been unable to pay his rent, so of +course he is obliged to move somewhere, if he can find a place to move +into. Oh, I realize perfectly what you are going to say! The brief +prosperity of the war still envelops the labouring man in your mind; and +you are preparing to remind me of the lace curtains and victrolas of +yesterday. Yes, I admit that lace curtains and victrolas are not +necessities. It was a case where nature cropped out in the wrong spot. +Even the working-man may have suppressed desires, you see, and lace +curtains and victrolas may stand not only for the improvidence of the +poor, but for the neurasthenic yearnings of the rich. Talk about the +economy of Nature! Why, nothing in the universe, not even the +civilization of man, has ever equalled her indecent prodigality!" + +As the man's words poured out in his rich, deep voice, Stephen stared at +him in a silence which reminded him humorously of the pause in church +before the sermon began. Was this the reason of Vetch's influence and +authority--this flow of ideas, as from a horn of plenty, that left the +listener both charmed and bewildered? + +"I admit it all," rejoined the young man, "except that you have +discovered the remedy." + +The Governor laughed and settled back in his big leather-covered chair. +"You think that I blow my own horn too loudly," he continued, "but, +after all, who knows how to blow it half so well as I do? For the same +reason some over-sensitive nerve of yours may wince at my behaviour at +times, my lack of dignity or reserve; but have I ever lost a vote--I put +it to you plainly--or the shadow of a vote by an occasional resort to +spectacular advertising? It pays to advertise in politics, we all know +that!--but it was honest advertising since I never failed to deliver the +goods. I started out to prove my strength and to flay my opponents, and +you tell me, you group of black-coated conservatives, that I make myself +ridiculous because I strike an attitude. The people laughed--but, by +George, they laughed with me! Oh, I know you think that I am wandering +from my point; but I haven't forgotten your question, and I am going to +answer it, if you will give me time. You ask me what I believe--" + +"If you could tell me in few words and plainly." + +"Well, first of all, I make no pretence. I do not promise to work +miracles. I do not, like your conventional candidates, talk in +platitudes. I do not undertake to achieve a regeneration of politics out +of unregenerate human nature. As long as we have cherries we shall have +blackbirds; as long as we have politics we shall have politicians. I +acknowledge the good and the bad, and all that I promise is to get as +good results as I can out of the mixture. Definitely I stand for a +progressive reorganization of society--for a fairer social order and a +practical system of cooperative industry, the only logical method of +increasing production without reducing the labourer to the old +disorganized slavery. I believe in the trite formula we workers +preach--in the eight-hour day, the old age pension, which is only the +inevitable step from the mother's pension, the gradual nationalization +of mines and railroads. I believe in these things which are the +commonplace of to-morrow; but it is not because of my beliefs that the +people follow me. It is something bigger than all this that catches the +crowd. What the people see in me is not the man who believes, but the +man who acts. I stand to them not for words--though you and Benham think +I've made my way by a gift of tongue--but for deeds--for things +performed as well as planned. Other men can tell them what they want. My +hold over them is that they feel I can get them what they want--a very +big difference! Oh, I use words, I know, like the rest. I have read a +few books, and I can talk as well as any political parrot of the lot +when I get started. But the words I use are living words, if you notice +them. I talk always about the things that I can do, never about the +things that I think. Well, that is my secret--my pose, if you prefer--to +present my argument to the crowd as an act, not as an idea. There are +plenty of imposing statues standing around. What they see in me is a +human being like themselves, one who wants what they want, and who will +fight to the last ditch to get it for them." + +It was plausible; it sounded convincing and logical; and yet, even while +Stephen responded to the Governor's personal touch, some obstinate fibre +of race or inflexible bent of judgment, refused to surrender. Vetch was +probably sincere--it was fairer to give him the benefit of the +doubt--but on the surface at least he was parading a spectacular pose. +The role of the Friend of the People has seldom been absent from the +drama of history. + +With a glance at the window, where twilight was falling, Stephen rose, +and held out his hand. "I shall remember your frankness," he said, "the +next time I hear you speak. That, I hope, will be soon." + +"And you will wait until then to be converted?" + +"I shall wait until then to be wholly convinced." + +"Well, Darrow may have better results. You go with Darrow?" + +"If he will take me?" The deference with which the old man had inspired +the Governor showed in Stephen's manner. "I shall be grateful for a lift +on the way home." + +Darrow had risen also; and after shaking hands with Vetch, he looked +back at the younger man from the doorway. "I'll have my Ford round here +in five minutes. Meet me at the nearest gate." + +He went out hurriedly; and as Stephen followed him, after the delay of a +few minutes, he found himself face to face with Patty, who was coming +from "the blue room" on the opposite side of the hall. + +"I hope you got what you came for," she said gaily. + +"I came for nothing," he retorted lightly, "and I'm sure I got it." + +"Well, that won't matter so much since it wasn't for yourself," she +mocked. "Nobody ever wants anything for himself in politics. Father +could tell you that." + +"He told me a good many things--but not that." + +"Did he tell you," she inquired daringly, "why he is falling out with +Julius Gershom?" + +"Is he falling out with him?" + +"Didn't you see it--and hear it--when you came in?" + +"I suspected as much; but after all it was none of my business." + +"And you confine your curiosity to your own business?" + +"Not entirely," he answered, and wondered if she were experimenting +with the letter "C". "For instance I am curious about you." + +Her eyes challenged him with their old defiance. "And I am certainly not +your business." + +"I admit that you are not--but that does not decrease my curiosity." + +For a moment her smile grew wistful. "And what, I wonder," she asked, +with the faintest quiver of her cherry-coloured lips, "would you like to +know?" + +"Oh, everything!" he replied unhesitatingly. There was no longer in his +mind the slightest wish to avoid the approaching flirtation. On the +contrary, he felt he should welcome it, if she would only continue to +look like this. She was not beautiful--yet he realized that she did not +need beauty when she could play so easily with a look or a smile on the +heartstrings. A rush of tenderness overwhelmed his reserve at the very +instant when her lashes trembled and drooped, and she murmured in a +whisper that enchanted him: "Oh, but everything is too little." Though +it was only the old lure of youth and sex, he felt that it was as +divinely fresh and wonderful as first love. + +"Is it too little?" he asked, and his voice sounded so far off that it +was faint in his ears. + +She raised her lashes and gave him a glance charged with meaning. "That +depends," she answered, and suddenly, without warning, she passed to the +lightest and gayest of tones. "Everything depends on something else, +doesn't it? Now Father is coming out, and I must run upstairs and +dress." + +It was a dismissal, he knew, and yet he hesitated. "May I come again +soon?" he asked, and held out his hand. + +To his surprise Patty greeted his question with a laugh. "Do you really +like politics so much?" she retorted; and fled lightly toward the +staircase beyond the library. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS + + +Darrow's little car was waiting before the entrance; and as soon as +Stephen had taken his place by the old man's side, they shot forward +into the smoky twilight. A policeman, standing in the circle of +electric light at the corner, held up a warning hand; and then, as he +recognized Darrow, he nodded with a smile, and there stole into his face +the look of deference which Stephen had seen in the Governor's eyes. +Glancing up at the sombre ruggedness of the profile beside him, the +younger man asked himself curiously from what source of character or +Circumstance this old man had derived his strange impressiveness and his +Authority over men. With his gaunt length, his wide curving nostrils, +his thick majestic lips, he looked, as Stephen had first seen him, a +rock-hewn Pharaoh of a man. An unusual type to survive in modern +America--republican and imperial! Did he represent, this carpenter who +was also a politician, the political despotism of the worker--the crook +and scourge of the labourer's power? + +Suddenly, while he wondered, Darrow turned toward him. "What do you +think of the Governor?" + +"I hardly know," answered Stephen thoughtfully. "It is too soon to ask; +but I think he is honest." + +"He is more than honest," rejoined the other quietly. "He is human. He +understands. He belongs to us." + +"Belongs?" Stephen repeated the word with a note of interrogation. + +Very slowly the old man answered. "I mean that he is more than anything +that he says or thinks. He is bigger than his message." + +"I suppose he stands for a great deal?" + +"A man stands only for what he is, not for an inch more, not for an inch +less. The trouble with all the leaders we've had in the past was that +their thought outstripped their characters. They believed more than they +were and they broke down under it. I'm an old man now. I've watched them +come and go." + +"You think that Vetch is a great leader?" + +"I think he is a great leader, but I don't mean that I think he will +ever lead us anywhere." + +"You feel that he is losing his grip on the crowd?" + +Up from Main Street the workers were pouring out of the factories; and +while they moved in a dark stream through the light and shadow on the +pavement, the faces flowed past Stephen with a pallid intensity which +made him think of dead flowers drifting on a river. In all those faces +how little life there seemed, how little individuality and animation! + +"When I was a small kid I used to live by the seashore," said the old +man presently in his dry, emphatic tones. "Many is the time I've stood +and watched the tide coming in, and I never once saw it come in that it +didn't go out again." + +"Then you believe that the tide is turning against Vetch?" + +For a minute, while they sped on in the obscurity of a side street, +Darrow meditated. + +"No, sir, I ain't saying that much--not yet. But the way I calculate is +something like this. Vetch came in on a wave of popular emotion, and a +wave of popular emotion is just about like the tide of the sea. It may +rise a certain distance, but it can't stand still, and it can't go any +farther. It's obliged to turn; and when it turns, it's pretty sure to +bring back a good deal that it carried with it. A crowd impulse--as they +call it in the pulpit and on the platform--is a dangerous thing. It's +dangerous because you can't count on it." + +"It looks to me as if Vetch counted upon it a little too much." + +"That's his nature. He was born on the sunny side of the street. He +thinks because he sees the way to help people that they want to be +helped. I've been mixed up in politics now for fifty years, and in the +labour movement, as they say, ever since it began to move in the +South--and I've found out that people don't really want to be +helped--they want to be fooled. Vetch offers 'em facts, and all the time +it ain't facts they're wanting, but names." + +"I see," assented Stephen. "Names that they can repeat over and over +until they get at last to believe that they are things. Long +reverberating names like Democratic or Republican--" + +Darrow laughed grimly. "That's right, sir, that's the way I've worked it +out in my mind. The crowd will come a little way after a fact; but in +the end it gets tired because the fact won't work magic, like that +conjure-stuff of the darkeys, and then it turns and goes back to the old +names that mean nothing. Only when a crowd moves all together it's +dangerous because it's like the flood-tide and ebb-tide of the sea." + +"And the most irritating part of it," said Stephen, with an insight +which had sometimes visited him in the trenches, "is that it gets what +it deserves because it can always have whatever it wants--even the truth +and honest government." + +They were passing rows of narrow old-fashioned tenement-houses, +standing, like crumbling walls of red brick, behind sagging wooden +fences; and suddenly, while Stephen's eyes were on the lights that came +and went so fitfully in the basement dining-rooms, Darrow stopped the +car in the gutter of cobblestones, and motioned in silence toward the +pavement. As Stephen got out, he glanced vaguely round him at the +strange neighbourhood. + +"Where are we?" + +"North of Marshall Street. A quarter which was once very prosperous; but +that was before your day. This is one of several rows of old houses, +well-built in their time, better built, indeed, than any houses we're +putting up now; but their day is over. The cost of repairing them would +be so great that the agent is deliberately letting the property run down +in the hope that this part of the street will soon be turned over to +negroes. The negroes are so crowded in their quarter that they are +obliged to expand, and when they do, this investment will yield a still +higher interest. Coloured tenants stand crowding better than white ones, +and they will pay a better rent for worse housing. As it is the rent of +these houses has doubled since the beginning of the war." + +"Good God!" said Stephen. "Do we stop here?" + +"I want you to see Canning, the man the Governor told you about. He +can't pay his rent, which was raised last Saturday, and the family is +moving to-morrow." + +"He ought to be paid for living here. Where will he go?" + +"Oh, people can always find a worse place, if they look long enough. +Canning was in the war, by the way. He's got some nervous trouble--not +crazy enough to be taken care of--just on edge and unstrung. The war +used him up, I reckon, and anxiety and undernourishment used up his wife +and children. It all seems to have come out in the baby--queerest little +kid you ever saw--born about a year ago. Mighty funny--ain't it?--the +way we let children just a few squares away from us grow up pinched, +half-starved, undersized, uneducated, and as little moral as the gutters +can make 'em, and all the time we're parading and begging and even +collecting the pennies out of orphan asylums, for the sake of the +children on the other side of the world. But it's a queer thing, +charity, however you happen to look at it. My father used to say--and he +had as much sense as any man I ever met--that charity is the greatest +traveller under the sun; and even if it begins at home it ain't ever +content to stop there over night." + +Standing there in the dim street, before the silent rows of bleak houses +with their tattered window-shades and their fitful lights, Stephen +stared wonderingly at the gaunt shape of the man before him. For the +first time he was brought face to face with the other half of his world, +with the half of the world where poverty and toil are stark realities. +This was the way men like Darrow were thinking, men perhaps like Gideon +Vetch! These men saw poverty not as a sentimental term, but as a human +experience. They knew, while he and his kind only imagined. With a +sensation as acute as physical nausea, a sensation that the thought of +the Germans used to bring when he was in the trenches, there swept over +him a memory of the social hysteria which had followed, like a mental +pestilence or famine, in the track of the war. The moral platitudes, the +sentimental philanthropy, and the hypocritical command of conscience to +put all the world, except our own cellars, in order, where were these +impulses now in a time which had gone mad with the hatred of work and +the craving for pleasure? Yet he had once thought that he was returning +to a world which could be rebuilt on a foundation of justice, and it was +this lost belief, he knew, which had made him bitter in spirit and +unfair in judgment. + +The gate swung back with a grating noise, and they entered the yard, and +walked over scattered papers and empty bottles to the narrow flight of +brick steps, which led from the ground to the area in front of the +basement dining-room. As Stephen descended by the light from the +dust-laden window, a chill dampness rose like a fog from the earth below +and filled his nostrils and mouth and throat--a dampness which choked +him like the effluvium of poverty. Glancing in from the area a moment +later, he saw a scantily furnished room, heated by an open stove and +lighted by a single jet of gas, which flickered in a thin greenish +flame. In the centre of the room a pine table, without a cloth, was laid +for supper, and three small children, in chairs drawn close together, +were impatiently drumming with tin spoons on the wood. A haggard woman, +in a soiled blue gingham dress, was bringing a pot of coffee from the +adjoining room; and in one corner, on a sofa from which the stuffing +sagged in bunches, a man sat staring vacantly at a hole in the rag +carpet. Tied in a high chair, which stood apart as if it were the +pedestal of an idol, a baby, with the smooth unlined face not of an +infant, but of a philosopher, was mutely surveying the scene. + +More than anything else in the room, more even than the sodden +hopelessness of the man's expression, the hopelessness of neurasthenia, +this baby, tied with a strip of gingham in his high chair, arrested and +held Stephen's attention. Very pallid, with the pallor not of flesh but +of an ivory image, with hair as thin and white as the hair of an old +man, and eyes that were as opaque as blue marbles, the baby sat there, +with its look of stoical philosophy and superhuman experience. And this +look said as plainly as if the tiny mute lips had opened and spoken +aloud: "I am tired before I begin. I am old before I begin. I am ending +before I begin." + +Darrow knocked at the door, and the woman opened it with the coffee-pot +still in her hand. + +"So you've come back," she said in a voice that was without surprise and +without gratitude. + +"I came back to ask what you've done about a place. This gentleman is +with me. You don't mind his stepping inside a minute?" + +"Oh, no, I don't mind. I don't mind anything." She drew back as she +answered, and the two men entered the room and stood gazing at the stove +with the look of embarrassment which the sight of poverty brings to the +faces of the well-to-do. + +"When are you moving?" asked Darrow, withdrawing his gaze from the +glimmer of the embers in the stove, and fixing it on the steam that +issued from the coffee-pot. + +"In the morning. We've found a cheaper place, though with rent going up +every week, it looks as if we'd soon have nowhere worse to move to, +unless it's gaol alley." Her tone dripped bitterness, and the lines of +her pale lips settled into an expression of scornful resignation. + +Without replying to her words, Darrow nodded in the direction of the +young man, who had never looked up, but sat in the same rigid attitude, +with his vacant eyes staring at the hole in the carpet. + +"Any better?" + +"How can he be better," returned the woman grimly, "when all he does is +to walk the streets until he's fit to drop, and then drag himself home +and sit there like that for hours, too worn out even to lift his eyes +from the floor. This is the last coffee I've got. I've been saving it +since Christmas, but I made it for him because he seems more down than +usual to-night." Then a nervous spasm shook her thin figure, and she +added in a fierce whisper: "He's sick, that's the matter with him. He +ain't sick enough to be in a government hospital, but he'd be better off +if he was. Even when he gets work he ain't able to stick to it. The +folks that hire him don't have any patience. As long as he was over +yonder in France it looked as if every woman in America was knitting for +him; and now since he's back here he can't get a job to keep him and the +children alive." + +"How have you fed the children?" + +"On what I could get cheapest. You see how sickly and peaked they look, +and it's been awful damp in these rooms sometimes. The doctor says he +ain't sick; it ain't his body, it's his mind. He says he's had a kind +of horror inside of him ever since he came home. He's turned against +everything he used to do, and even everything he used to believe in." + +"That's hell!" exclaimed Stephen suddenly; and at her surprised glance, +he added, "I've been there and I know. Nerves, they say, but just as +real as your skin." He looked away from her to the man on the sofa. "To +have _that_, and be in poverty!" Turning away from the father, his +glance met the calm eyes of the baby fixed on him with that gaze which +was as old and as pitiless as philosophy. + +"Ma, may I help myself?" screamed one of the children, drumming loudly +on the table. "I'd rather have bread and molasses!" cried another; and +"Oh, Ma, when we move to-morrow will you let me take the kitten I +found?" + +"Well, I've talked to the Governor," said Darrow, in his level voice +which sounded to Stephen so unemotional, "and I think we can find a job +for your husband." + +Suddenly the man on the sofa looked up. "I voted against him," he +whispered angrily. + +Darrow laughed shortly. "You don't know the Governor if you think he'd +hold that against you," he replied. "But for that little weakness of his +he might not be a political problem." + +"That's the way he goes on," remarked the woman despairingly. "Always +saying things straight out that other people would keep back. He don't +care what happens, that's the whole truth of it. He don't care about +anything on earth, not even his tobacco." + +"Life!" thought Stephen, with a dull pain in his heart. "That's what +life is!" And the old familiar feeling of suffocation, of distaste for +everything that he had ever felt or thought or believed, smothered him +with the dryness of dust. Going quickly over to the sofa, he laid his +hand on the man's shoulder, and spoke in a high ringing voice which he +tried to make cheerful. "It will pass, old fellow," he said, and could +have laughed aloud at the insincerity of his tone. "I know because I've +been there." And he added cynically, as a kind of sacrifice on the altar +of truth: "Everything will pass if you only wait long enough." + +The man started and looked up. With an air of surprise he glanced round +the dingy room, at his wife, at the whimpering children, at the +dispassionate baby enthroned in his high chair, and at the majestic +profile of Darrow. "It's the rottenness of the whole blooming show," he +said doggedly. "It ain't just the hole I'm in. I could put up with that +if it wasn't for the rottenness of it all." + +"I know," replied Stephen quietly. "There are times when the show does +look rotten, but we're all in it together." + +Then, because he felt that he could stand it no longer, he turned +abruptly, and went out into the dusk of the area. In a few minutes +Darrow joined him, and in silence the two men felt their way up the +brick steps to the bare ground of the front yard. + +"I don't know what I ought to do, but I've got to do something," said +Stephen, when he had opened the gate and passed through to the pavement +where the car waited. Lifting his sensitive young face, he stared up at +the row of decaying tenements. "What places for homes!" + +For a moment Darrow looked at him without speaking; and then he +answered in a voice which sounded as impersonal as the distant rumble of +street cars. "I thought you might be interested because these houses, +these and the other rows on the next block or two, are part of the +Culpeper estate." + +"The Culpeper estate?" repeated Stephen in an expressionless tone; and +raising his eyes again he looked up at the bleak houses. In that +instant, it seemed to him that he was seeing, not the sharp projection +of the roofs against the ashen sky, but a long line of pleasant and +prosperous generations. Beyond him stood his father, beyond his father +stood his grandfather, beyond the tranquil succession of his +grandfathers stood--what? Civilization? Humanity? + +"Do you mean," he asked quietly, "that we--our family--own these +houses?" + +"The whole block, and the next, and the next. It is the Culpeper estate. +You've never seen 'em before, I reckon. I doubt even if your father has +ever seen 'em. The agent attends to all this, and if the agent didn't +see that the rents were as high as people would pay, or were paying in +the next places, he would be soon out of a job. I'm not blaming him, you +know. I've got a son-in-law who is a real estate agent. It's just one of +the cases where it's nobody's fault, and everybody's." + +Without replying, Stephen turned away and got into the car. He felt +bruised and sick, and he wanted to be alone, to think things out by +himself in the darkness. "This is only one instance," he thought, as +they started down the dim street toward the white blaze of the business +quarter in the distance. "Only one out of millions! In every city. All +over the world it is the same. Wherever there is wealth it casts its +shadow of poverty." + +"I used to bother about it too when I was young," said the old man at +his side. "I used to feel, I reckon, pretty near as bad as you are +feeling now, but it don't last. When you get on a bit you'll sort of +settle down and begin to work it out. That's life. Yes, but it ain't the +whole of life. It ain't even the biggest part. Those folks we've been to +see have had their good times like the rest of us, only we saw 'em just +now when they were in the midst of a bad time. Life ain't confined to a +ditch any more than it is to what Gideon calls a lily-pond. Keep your +balance, that's the main thing. Whatever else you lose, you must be sure +to keep your balance, or you'll be in danger of going overboard." + +"Do you mean that there is no remedy for conditions like this?" + +The old man pondered his answer so long that Stephen thought he had +either given up or forgotten the question. + +"The only remedy I have ever been able to see is to work not on +conditions, but on human nature," he replied. "Improve human nature, and +then you will improve the conditions in which it lives. Improve the rich +as well as the poor. Teach 'em to be human beings, not machines, to one +another--that's Gideon's idea, you know,--humanize--Christianize, if you +like it better--civilize. It's a pretty hopeless problem--the individual +case--charity is all rotten from root to branch. If you could see the +harm that's been done by mistaken charity! Why, look at my friend, Mrs. +Page, now. She tried to work it out that way, and what came of it +except more rottenness? And yet until the State looks after the +unemployed, there is obliged to be charity." + +"Do you mean Mrs. Kent Page?" asked Stephen in surprise, and remembered +that his mother had once accused Corinna of trying to "undermine +society." + +"She is one of my best friends," answered the old man, with mingled +pride and affection. "I go to see her in her shop every now and then, +and I reckon she values my advice about her affairs as much as +anybody's. Well, when she came home from Europe she found that she +owned a row of tenements like this one, and her agent was profiteering +in rents like most of the others. I wish you could have seen her when +she discovered it. Splendid? Well, I reckon she's the most splendid +thing this old world has ever had on top of it! She went straight to +work and had those houses made into modern apartments--bathrooms, steam +heat, and back yards full of trees and grass and flowers, just like +Monroe Park, only better. The rent wasn't raised either! She put that +back just where it was before the war; and then she let the whole row to +the tenants for two years. You never saw anything like the interest she +took in that speculation--you'd have thought to hear her that she was +setting out to bring what the preachers call the social millennium." + +"She never mentioned it to me," said Stephen, with interest. "How did it +turn out?" + +Darrow threw back his great head with a laugh. "I don't reckon she did +mention it, bless her! It don't bear mentioning even now. Why, when she +went back last fall to see those houses, she found that the tenants had +all moved into dirty little places in the alley, and were letting out +the apartments, at five times the rent they paid, to other tenants. +They were doing a little special profiteering of their own--and, bless +your life, there wasn't so much as a blade of grass left in the yards, +even the trees had been cut down and sold for wood. And you say she +never mentioned it?" + +"How could she? But, after all, I suppose the question goes deeper than +that?" + +"The question," replied Darrow, with an energy that shook the little +car, "goes as deep as hell!" + +They were driving rapidly up Grace Street; and as they shot past the +club on the corner, Stephen noticed the serene aristocratic profile of +Peyton at one of the brilliantly lighted windows. A little farther on, +when they turned into Franklin Street, he saw that the old print shop +was in darkness, except for the lights in the rooms of the caretaker +and the lodgers in the upper storey. Corinna had gone home, he supposed, +and he wondered idly if she were with Benham? As they went on they +passed the house of the Blairs, where he caught a glimpse of Margaret on +the porch, parting from the handsome young clergyman. The sight stirred +him strangely, as if the memory of his dead life had been awakened by a +scent or a faded flower in a book. How different he was from the boy +Margaret had known in that primitive period which people defined as +"before the war"! It was as if he had belonged then to some primary +emotional stratum of life. All the complex forces, the play and +interplay of desire and repulsion, of energy and lassitude, had +developed in the last two or three years. + +On either side, softly shaded lights were shining from the windows, and +women, in rich furs, were getting out of luxurious cars. It was the +world that Stephen knew; life moulded in sculptural forms and encrusted +with the delicate patina of tradition. Here was all that he had once +loved; yet he realized suddenly, with a sensation of loneliness, that +here, not in the mean streets, he felt, as Vetch would have said, +"stranger than Robinson Crusoe." Something was missing. Something was +lost that he could never recover. Was it Vetch, after all, who had shown +him the way out, who had knocked a hole in the wall? + +When Darrow stopped the car before the Culpeper gate, Stephen turned and +held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. "I shall see you again." + +Crossing the pavement with a rapid step, he entered the gate and ran up +the steps to the porch between the white columns. As he passed into the +richly tempered glow of the hall, it seemed to him that an invisible +force, an aroma of the past, drifted out of the old house and enveloped +him like the sweetness of flowers. He was caught again, he was +submerged, in the spirit of race. + +A little later, when he was passing his mother's door, he glanced in and +saw her standing before the mirror in her evening gown of gray silk, +with the foam-like ruffles of rose-point on her bosom and at her elbows, +which were still round and young looking. + +Catching his reflection in the glass, she called out in her crisp tones, +"My dear boy, where on earth have you been? You know we promised to dine +with Julia, and then to go to those tableaux for the benefit of the +children in Vienna. She has worked so hard to make them a success that +she would never forgive us if we stayed away." + +"Yes, I know. I had forgotten," he replied. Why was he always +forgetting? Then he asked impulsively, while pity burned at white heat +within him, "Is Father here? I want to speak to him before we go out." + +"He came in an hour ago," said Mrs. Culpeper; and as she spoke the mild +leonine countenance of Mr. Culpeper, vaguely resembling some playful and +domesticated king of beasts, appeared at the door of his dressing-room. + +"Do you wish to see me, my boy?" he asked affectionately. "We were just +wondering if you had forgotten and stayed at the club." + +"No, I wasn't at the club. I've been looking over the Culpeper estate--a +part of it." Stephen's voice trembled in spite of the effort he made to +keep it impersonal and indifferent. "Father, do you know anything about +those old houses beyond Marshall Street?" + +It was the peculiar distinction of Mr. Culpeper that, in a community +where everybody talked all the time, he had been able to form the habit +of silence. While his acquaintances continually vociferated opinions, +scandals, experiences, or anecdotes, he remained imperturbably reticent +and subdued. All that he responded now to Stephen's outburst was, "Has +anybody offered to buy them?" + +"Why, what in the world!" exclaimed Mrs. Culpeper, who was neither +reticent nor subdued. From the depths of the mirror her bright brown +eyes gazed back at her husband, while she fastened a cameo pin, +containing the head of Minerva framed in pearls, in the rose-point on +her bosom. + +"To buy them?" repeated Stephen. "Why, they are horrors, Father, to live +in--crumbling, insanitary horrors! And yet the rent has been doubled in +the last two or three years." + +From the mirror his mother's face looked back at him, so small and +clear and delicately tinted that it seemed to him merely an exaggerated +copy of the cameo on her bosom, "I hope that means we shall have a +little more to live on next year," she said reflectively, while the +expression that Mary Byrd impertinently called her "economic look" +appeared in her eyes. "What with the high cost of everything, and the +low interest on Liberty Bonds, and the innumerable relief organizations +to which one is simply forced to contribute, it has been almost +impossible to make two ends meet. Poor Mary Byrd hasn't been able to +give a single party this winter." + +Before Stephen's gaze there passed a vision of the dingy basement room, +the embittered face of the woman, the sickly tow-headed children, the +man who could not lift his eyes from the hole in the carpet, and the +baby with that look of having been born not young, but old, the look of +pre-natal experience and disillusionment. And he heard Darrow's dry +voice complaining because the well-to-do classes still gave to starving +orphans across the world. After all, what was there to choose between +the near-sighted and the far-sighted social vision? How narrow they both +appeared and how crooked! Darrow would let all the children of Europe +starve as long as their crying did not interfere with the aims of his +Federation of Labour; Stephen's sister Julia, with her instinct for +imitation and her remote sense of responsibility, would step over the +poverty at her door, while she held out her hands, in the latest +fashionable gesture of philanthropy, to the orphans in France or Vienna. +And beside them both his mother, who because of her constitutional +inability to see anything beyond the family, perceived merely the fact +that her own child would be disappointed if the tableaux for the benefit +of starving children somewhere did not go off well. The question, he +realized, was not which one of the three points of view was the most +admirable, but simply which one served best the ultimate purpose of the +race. Selfishness seemed to have as little as altruism to do with the +problem. Was Corinna, who had failed in philanthropy and chosen beauty, +the only wise one among them? + +"But children are living in these houses," he said, "and not only +living--they are forced to move out because the rent has become so high +that they must find a worse place. I've just seen it with my own eyes. +Three sickly little children and a dreadful baby--a baby that knows +everything already." + +A quiver of pain crossed Mr. Culpeper's handsome features; but he said +only, "I will speak to the agent." + +"Won't you look into it yourself?" asked Stephen hopelessly. "The agent +is only the agent--but the responsibility is yours--ours. Of course the +agent doesn't want to make expensive repairs when he can get as high +rent without doing so. He knows that people are obliged to have a roof +over them; and if the roofs are too bad for white people, he can always +find negroes to pay anything that he asks. Can't you see what it is in +reality--that we are preying on the helpless?" + +Turning suddenly from the mirror, Mrs. Culpeper crossed the floor +hastily and put her arms about her son's shoulders. Her face was very +motherly and there was a compassionate light in her eyes, "My dear, dear +boy," she murmured in the soothing tone that one uses to the ill or the +mentally unbalanced. "My dear boy, you must really go and dress. Julia +will never forgive us." In her heart she was sincerely grieved by what +he had told her. She would have helped cheerfully if it had been +possible to her nature; but stronger than compassion, stronger even than +reason, was the instinct of evasive idealism which the generations had +bred. He understood, while he looked down on her white hair and unlined +face, that even if he took her with him to that basement room, she would +see it not as it actually was, but as she wished it to be. Her +romanticism was invulnerable because it had no contact, even through +imagination, with the edge of reality. + +And he knew also, while she held him in her motherly arms, that +something had broken down within his soul--some barrier between himself +and humanity. The wall of tradition and sentiment no longer divided him +from Darrow, or Gideon Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything +but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited +place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a +nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look +of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a +spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the +very law of his being, which was the law of order, of manners, of +self-control, the inbred horror, older than himself or his parents, of +giving himself away, of making a scene of his own emotions, this +ancestral custom of good breeding closed over him like the lid of a +coffin. + +With a smile he looked into the anxious face of his father. "Isn't there +some way out of it, Dad?" + +The muscles about Mr. Culpeper's mouth contracted as if he were going +to cry; but when he spoke his voice was completely under control. "I +can't interfere, son, with the way the agent manages the property," he +answered, "but, of course, if you have discovered a peculiarly +distressing case--if it is an object of charity--" + +He paused abruptly in amazement, for Stephen was laughing, laughing in a +way, as Mrs. Culpeper remarked afterward, that nobody had ever even +thought of laughing before the whole world had become demoralized. + +"Damn charity!" he exclaimed hilariously. "I beg your pardon, Mother, +but if you only knew how inexpressibly funny it is!" Then the laughter +stopped, and a wistful look came into his eyes, for beyond the broken +walls he saw Patty Vetch in her red cape, and around her stretched the +wind-swept roads of that hidden country. + +A minute later, as he left the room, his mother's eyes followed him +anxiously. "Poor boy, we must bear with him," she said in melting +maternal accents. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CORINNA WONDERS + + +After a winter of Italian skies spring had come in a night. It was a +morning in April, blue and soft as a cloud, with a roving fragrance of +lilacs and hyacinths in the air. Already the early bloom of the orchard +had dropped, and the freshly ploughed fields, with splashes of henna in +the dun-coloured soil, were surrounded by the budding green of the +woods. + +As Mrs. Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna's shop, she noticed that +the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing +narcissi. For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, +framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and +anxious. Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the +tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were suddenly touched with spring. + +"How delicious the flowers smell," she remarked when Corinna opened the +door; and then, as she entered the room and glanced curiously round her, +she asked incredulously, "Do people really pay money for these old +illustrations, Corinna?" + +"Not here, Cousin Harriet. I bought these in London." + +"And they cost you something?" + +"Some of these, of course, cost more than others. That," Corinna pointed +to a mezzotint of the Ladies Waldegrave by Valentine Green, "cost a +little less than ten thousand dollars." + +"Ten thousand dollars!" Mrs. Culpeper gazed at the print as +disapprovingly as if it were an open violation of the Eighteenth +Amendment. "We didn't pay anything like that for our largest copy of a +Murillo. Well, I may not be artistic, but, for my part, I could never +understand why any one should want an old book or an old picture." +Sitting rigidly upright in one of the tapestry-covered chairs, she added +condescendingly: "Stephen admires this room very much." + +"Stephen," remarked Corinna pleasantly, "is a dear boy." + +"Just now," returned Stephen's mother, with her accustomed air of duty +unflinchingly performed, "he is giving us a great deal of anxiety. Never +before, not even when he was in the war, have I spent so many sleepless +nights over him." + +"I am sorry. Poor Stephen, what has he done?" + +"I have always hoped," observed Mrs. Culpeper firmly, "that Stephen +would marry Margaret." + +"I am aware of that." A flicker of amusement brightened Corinna's eyes. +"So, I think, is Stephen." + +"I have tried to be honest. It seems to me that a mother's wish should +carry a great deal of weight in such matters." + +"It ought to," assented Corinna, "but I've never heard of its doing so." + +"Everything would have been satisfactory if he had not allowed himself +to be carried away by a foolish fancy." + +"I cannot imagine," said Corinna primly, "that Stephen could ever be +foolish. It gives me hope of him." + +Impaling her, as if she had been a butterfly, with a glance as sharp as +a needle, Mrs. Culpeper demanded sternly, "How much do you know of this +affair, my dear?" + +In spite of her natural courage Corinna was seized with a shiver of +apprehension. "Do you think it is an affair?" she asked. + +"I think it is worse. I think it is an infatuation." + +"What, Stephen? Not really?" Corinna's voice was mirthfully incredulous. + +"I have seen the girl once or twice," resumed Mrs. Culpeper, "and she +seems to me objectionable from every point of view." + +"Only from the Culpeper one," protested Corinna. "I find her very +attractive." + +"Well, I do not." Mrs. Culpeper had relapsed into her tone of habitual +martyrdom. "If Stephen chooses to kill me," she added, "he may do it." + +Corinna leaned toward her ingratiatingly. "Don't you admit, Cousin +Harriet, that I have improved Patty tremendously?" + +"I see no difference." + +"Oh, but there is one--a great difference! If you had come to one of the +Governor's receptions last winter, you couldn't have told that she +wasn't--well, one of us. She has been so quick to pick up things that it +is amazing." + +Mrs. Culpeper lifted the transparent mesh from the point of her nose. +"Do you know," she demanded, "that the girl was born in a circus tent?" + +"So I have heard. It was a romantic beginning." + +Foiled but undaunted, the older woman fixed on Corinna the stare with +which she would have attempted the conversion of an undraped pagan if +she had ever encountered one. Though she was unconscious of the fact as +she sat there, suffering yet unbending, in the Florentine chair, she +represented the logical result of the conservative principle in nature, +of the spirit that forgets nothing and learns nothing, of the instinct +of the type to reproduce itself, without variation or development, until +the pattern is worn too thin to endure. That Stephen had inherited this +passive force, Corinna knew, but she knew also, that it was threatened +by his incurable romanticism, by that inarticulate longing for heroic +adventures. + +Suddenly, as if moved by a steel spring, Mrs. Culpeper rose. "I know you +have a great deal of influence over Stephen," she said, "and I hoped +that, instead of encouraging him in his folly, you would sympathize with +me." + +"I do sympathize with you, Cousin Harriet--only I have learned that it +is sometimes very difficult to decide what is folly and what is wisdom +in a man's life." + +"There can scarcely be a doubt, I think, about this. Surely you cannot +imagine that there would be happiness for my son in a marriage with the +daughter of Gideon Vetch?" + +There was a dreamy sweetness in Corinna's eyes. "I can't answer that, +Cousin Harriet, because I don't know. But are you sure it has gone as +far as that? Has Stephen really thought of marriage?" + +"I don't know. He tells me nothing," replied Mrs. Culpeper hopelessly, +and she added after a pause: "But I can't help having eyes. It is either +that--or he is going into politics." Her tone was as despairing as if +she had said, "he is coming down with fever." + +For a minute Corinna hesitated; then she responded cheerfully, "If it +is any comfort to you, Cousin Harriet, I feel that you are making a +mountain out of a mole hill. When it comes to the point, I believe that +Stephen will revert to type like the rest of us." + +Mrs. Culpeper clutched desperately at the straw that was offered her. +"You think he won't ask her to marry him?" + +"If he does," said Corinna firmly, "I shall be more surprised than I +have ever been in my life." + +The look of martyrdom faded slowly from her visitor's features. "You say +this because you know Stephen?" + +"Because I know Stephen--and men," answered Corinna, while she thought +of John Benham. "Frankly, I think it would be a splendid thing for +Stephen to do. It would prove, you know, that he cared enough to make a +sacrifice. I think it would be splendid; but I think also that we are of +the breed that looks too long before it leaps. Our great adventures take +place in dreams or in talk. We like to play with forlorn hopes; but the +only forlorn hope we have actually embraced is the conservative +principle; and we couldn't let that go, even if we tried, because it is +bred in our bone. So I believe that the ^hereditary habit will drag +Stephen safely back before he rushes into danger. He may play with the +thought of Patty, but he will probably marry Margaret." + +If Mrs. Culpeper's too refined features could have expressed passion, it +would have been the passion of thankfulness. "It was worth coming," she +said, "to hear you say that of Stephen." + +When at last she had gone, primly grateful for the scrap of comfort, +Corinna stood for a minute with her eyes on the sunbeams at the window. +Outside there were the roving winds and the restless spirit of April; +and feeling suddenly that she could stand the close walls and the +familiar objects no longer, she put on her hat and gloves and went out +into the street. Scarcely knowing why, with some vague thought that she +might go to see Patty, she turned in the direction of the Capitol +Square, walking with her buoyant grace which seemed a part of the +fugitive beauty of April. The air was so fragrant, the sunshine so +softly burning, that it was as if summer were advancing, not gradually, +but in a single miracle of florescence. It was one of those days which +release all the secret inexpressible dreams of the heart. Every face +that she passed was touched with the wistful longing which is the very +essence of spring. She saw it in the faces of the women who hurried, +warm, flushed, and impatient, from the shops or the markets; she saw it +in the faces of the men returning from work and thinking of freedom; and +she saw it again in the long sad faces of the dray-horses standing +hitched to a city cart at the corner. + +In the Square the sunlight lay in splinters over the young grass, which +was dotted with buttercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the +trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves. Back and forth from the +grassy slopes to the winding brick walks, squirrels darted, busy and +joyous; and a few old men, never absent from the benches, were smiling +vaguely at the passers-by. + +When she reached the gate of the Governor's house, her wish to see Patty +had vanished, and she decided that she would go on to the library and +ask for a book that she had recently heard John Benham discussing. How +much of her life now, in spite of its active impersonal interests, was +beginning to centre in John Benham! They were planning to be married in +June, and beyond that month of roses, which was once so saturated with +memories of her early romance, she saw ahead of her long years of +tranquil happiness. Well, she could not complain. After all, was not +tranquil happiness the best that life had to offer? + +She had ascended the steps of the library, and was about to enter the +swinging doors, when she turned and glanced back at the dappled boughs +of an old sycamore, outlined so softly, with its budding leaves, against +the green hill and the changeable blue of the sky. The long walk was +almost deserted. A fountain played gently at the end of the slope; a few +coloured nurses were dozing on a bench, while their be-ribboned charges +scattered peanuts before a fluttering crowd of sparrows, pigeons, and +squirrels; and, leaning on a rude crutch, a lame old negro woman was +dragging a basket of brushwood to the brow of the hill. The scene was +very peaceful, wrapped in that languorous stillness which is the +pervading charm of the South; and beyond the high spikes of the iron +fence, the noise of passing street cars sounded far off and unreal. + +She was still standing there, with her dreamy eyes on the old negress +toiling up the hill with her basket of brushwood, when a man passed the +fountain hurriedly, and came with a brisk, springy stride up the brick +walk below the library. As she watched him, at first without +recognition, she thought vaguely that his rugged figure made a picture +of embodied activity, of physical energy and enjoyment. The next minute +he reached the old negress, glanced at her casually in passing, and +turning abruptly round, lifted the basket, and carried it to the top of +the hill. Then, as he looked back at the old woman, who limped after +him, he laughed with boyish merriment, and Corinna saw in amazement that +the man was Gideon Vetch. + +"He is obliged to be theatrical," remarked a voice behind her, and +glancing over her shoulder she saw that she had been joined by a +severe-looking young woman with several books under her arm. + +"Is it that?" asked Corinna doubtfully, and she added to herself after a +moment, "I wonder?" + +A little later, as she was leaving the Square, Stephen overtook her, and +she told him of the incident. "The Governor is always breaking out like +an epidemic where you least expect him," she concluded with a smile. + +"I know. I've caught him." Though the young man's eyes reflected her +smile, his tone was serious. "I can't rid myself of the fellow." + +"Have you been to see him this morning?" + +He laughed. "I should say not! But I've been in a worse fix. I've just +walked up the street with--well, imagine it!--that bounder Gershom." + +"So you both haunt the Square?" + +At the question Stephen turned and faced her frankly. "How, in Heaven's +name, does she stand him?" + +"That's a riddle. To me he is impossible." + +"He is more than that. He is unspeakable." As he looked into her eyes a +deep anxiety or disturbance appeared beneath the superficial gaiety of +his smile. "The fellow had evidently had a quarrel, perhaps a permanent +break, with Vetch. He was in a kind of cold rage; and do you know what +he said to me? He told me,--not openly, but in pretended secrecy,--that +Vetch had never married Patty's mother--" + +For an instant Corinna gazed at him in silence. Then her words came in a +gasp of indignation. "Of course there isn't a word of truth in it!" + +"So I said to him. He insists that he has the proofs. You know what it +means?" + +"Oh, I know--poor Patty! You understand why he told you?" + +"I couldn't at first see the reason; but afterward it came to me." + +"The reason is as clear as daylight. He is infatuated, and he imagines +that you stand in his way." + +"Not only that. I think he has some idea of using whatever proofs he has +to bend Vetch to his will. He was sharp enough not to say so, for he +knew that would be pure blackmail. The ground he took was one of +nauseating morality, but I inferred that he is trying to force Vetch to +agree to this general strike, and that he is prepared to threaten him +with some kind of exposure if he doesn't. This, however, was mere +surmise on my part. The fellow is as shrewd as he is unprincipled." + +When Corinna believed it was in full measure and overflowing. "It's not +true. I know it's not true." + +"Has Patty told you anything?" + +"Nobody has told me anything. One doesn't have to have a reason for +knowing things--at least one doesn't unless one is a man. I know it +because I know it." Then, without waiting for his reply, she continued +with cheerful firmness: "The best way to treat scandal is to forget it. +Don't you think that Patty improves every day?" + +He reddened and looked away from her. "Yes, she grows more attractive, +I--" While she still waited for him to complete his sentence, he shot +out in an embarrassed tone: "Corinna, do you believe in Gideon Vetch?" + +For an instant Corinna hesitated. "I believe that he is--well, just +Gideon Vetch," she answered enigmatically. + +"Just a professional politician?" + +"Not at all. He is a great deal more than that, but what that great deal +is I cannot pretend to say." + +"Do you ever see him away from Patty?" + +"Now and then. He has been to the shop." + +"And you like him?" + +Again she hesitated. "Yes, I like him." Turning her head, she looked +straight at him with a glow in her eyes. "That is," she corrected +softly, "I should like him if it were not for John." + +"You compare him with John?" + +"Don't you?" + +"Naturally. Of course the Governor loses by that." + +"Who wouldn't?" + +Her face flushed at the thought, and as Stephen watched her, he asked in +a gentler voice, "Are you really to be married in June?" + +She smiled an assent, with her dreaming gaze on the young leaves and the +blue sky. + +"Are you happy?" he persisted. + +Her smile answered him again. "One dreads the lonely fireside as one +grows older." Then suddenly, as if the shadow of a cloud had drifted +over the bright sky, he saw the smile fade from her lips and the glow +from her upraised eyes. Somewhere within her brain a voice as hollow as +an echo was repeating, "_Isn't that life--sparrows for larks always?_" + +"Well, you know what I feel about you, and what I think about Benham," +replied Stephen. "You two together stand for all that I admire." As if +ashamed of the tone of sentiment, he continued carelessly after a +moment: "Vetch is very far from being a Benham, and yet there is +something about the man that holds one's attention. People are for ever +discussing him. A little while ago we were talking about his personal +peculiarities and his political offences. Now we are wondering how he +will handle this strike if it comes off; and what effect it will have on +his career? Benham, of course, thinks that he is an instrument in the +hands of a political group; that his office was the price they paid him +not to interfere in the strike. As for me I have no opinion. I am +waiting to see what will happen." + +They had reached the old print shop; and, as they paused beneath the +cedars in the front yard, Stephen glanced up at the window under the +quaint shingled roof. The upper storey, he knew, was rented to a couple +of tenants, and he was not surprised when he saw the curtains of dotted +swiss pushed aside and a woman's face look down on him over the red +geranium on the window-sill. The face was familiar; but, while he stared +back at it, searching his memory for a resemblance, the white curtains +dropped together again, veiling the features. Where had he seen that +woman before? What association of ideas did the sight of her recall? In +a flash, while he still groped through mental obscurity, light broke on +him. + +"Who is that woman, Corinna?" he asked. "What do you know of her?" + +"That woman?" Corinna repeated; then, as he lifted his eyes to the +window, she added, "Oh, that's Mrs. Green. A pathetic face, isn't it? I +know nothing about her except that she came in a few weeks ago, and the +caretaker tells me that she is leaving to-morrow." + +"Do you know where she came from?" + +"My dear Stephen! Why, what in the world?" A laugh broke from Corinna's +lips. "Did you ever see her before?" + +"Twice, and both times in the Capitol Square. I thought her dreadful to +look at." + +"I've only glanced at her, but she appeared to me more pathetic than +dreadful. She has been ill, I imagine, and she looks terribly poor. I'm +afraid the rent is too high, but I can't do anything, for she rented her +room from the tenants. I suppose, poor thing, that she is merely a sad +adventuress, and it is not the sad adventuresses, but the glad ones, who +usually enlist a young man's sympathy. By the way, I am lunching with +the Governor to-morrow." + +"Is it a party?" + +"No, just the family. That shows how intimate I have become with the +Vetches. Don't tell Cousin Harriet, or she would think I was beginning +to corrupt your politics. But I may use my influence to find out what +the Governor intends to do about the strike, and a cousin with a +political secret is worth having." + +With a laugh Stephen went on his way, wondering vaguely what there was +about the woman at the window, Mrs. Green Corinna had called her, that +made it impossible for him to rid his mind of her? Glancing back from +the end of the block, he saw that Corinna had entered the shop and that +the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the +dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for +some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by +gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was almost deserted? + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE + + +Corinna had not expected to see the Governor until luncheon next day; +but, to her surprise, he came to the shop just as she was about to lock +the door and go home for the afternoon. At first she thought that the +visit was merely a casual one--it was not unusual for him to drop in as +he was going by--but he had no sooner glanced about the room to see if +they were alone than he broke out with his characteristic directness. + +"There is something I want to ask you. Will you answer me frankly?" + +"That depends. Tell me what it is and then I will answer your question." + +"It is about Patty. You've seen a great deal of her, haven't you?" + +"A great deal. I am very fond of her." + +"Then perhaps you can tell me if she is interested in this young +Culpeper?" + +For a minute Corinna struggled against a burst of hysterical laughter. +Oh, if Cousin Harriet had only met him here, she thought, what a comedy +they would have made! + +"Surely if any one has an opinion about that, it must be you," she +rejoined as gravely as she could. + +"I haven't; not the shadow of one." He was plainly puzzled. "I thought +you might help me. You have a way of seeing things." + +"Have I?" The spontaneous tribute touched her. "I wish I could see +this, but I can't. Frankly, since you ask me, I may say that I have been +troubled about it. There are things that Patty hides, even from me, and +I think I have her confidence." + +"I dare say you wonder why I have come to you to-day," he said. "I can +handle most situations; but I have never had to handle the love affairs +of a girl, and I'm perfectly capable of making a mess of them. Things +like that are outside of my job." + +He seemed to her a pathetic figure as he stood there, in his boyish +embarrassment and his redundant vitality, confessing an inability to +surmount the obstacle in his way. She had never known any one, man or +woman, who was so obviously lacking in subtlety of perception, in all +those delicate intuitions on which she relied more completely than on +judgment for an accurate impression of life. Was he, with his bigness, +his earnestness, his luminous candour, only an overgrown child? Even his +physical magnetism, and she felt this in the very moment when she was +trying to analyse it, even his physical magnetism might be nothing more +than the spell exercised by primitive impulse over the too complex +problems of civilization. She had heard that he was unscrupulous--vague +charges that he had never been able to repel--yet she was conscious now +of a secret wish to protect him from the consequences of his duplicity, +as she might have wished to protect an irresponsible child. Some +mysterious sense perception made her aware that beneath what appeared to +be discreditable public actions there was the simple bed-rock of +honesty. For the quality she felt in Vetch was a profound moral +integrity, an integrity which was bred by nature in the innermost fibre +of the man. + +"If you will tell me--" she began, and checked herself with a sensation +of helplessness. After all, what could he tell her that she did not +know? + +"I want to do what is right for her," he said abruptly. "I should hate +for her to be hurt." + +While he talked it seemed to Corinna that she was living in some absurd +comedy, which mimicked life but was only acting, not reality. In her +world of reserves and implications no man would have dared to make +himself ridiculous by a visit like this. + +"Do you believe that she cares for Stephen?" she asked bluntly. + +"It didn't start with me. Miss Spencer, that's the lady who lives with +us you know, is afraid that Patty sees too much of him. He is at the +house every day--" + +"Well?" Corinna waited patiently. She was not in the least afraid of +what Stephen might do. She knew that she could trust him to be a +gentleman; but being a gentleman, she reflected, did not necessarily +keep one from breaking a woman's heart. And Patty had a wild, free heart +that might be broken. + +"I don't know what to do about it," Vetch was saying while she pondered +the problem. "As I told you a minute ago this is all outside my job." + +"Have you spoken to Patty?" + +"I started to, but she made fun of the idea--you know the way she has. +She asked me if I had ever heard of any one falling in love with a +plaster saint?" + +Corinna smiled. "So she called Stephen a plaster saint?" + +"She was chaffing, of course." + +"Well, I don't see that there is anything you can do unless you send +Patty away." + +"She wouldn't go," he responded simply; then after a moment of +embarrassed hesitation, he blurted out nervously, "Is this young +Culpeper what you would call a marrying man?" + +This time it was impossible for Corinna to suppress her amusement, and +it broke out in a laugh that was like the chiming of silver bells. Oh, +if only Cousin Harriet could hear him! Then observing the gravity of +Vetch's expression, she checked her untimely mirth with an effort. + +"That depends, I suppose. At his age how can any one tell?" In her heart +she did not believe that Stephen would marry Patty; she was not sure +even that she, Corinna, should wish him to do so. There was too much at +stake, and though her philosophy was fearless, her conduct had never +been anything but conventional. While in theory she despised discretion, +she realized that the virtue she despised, not the theory she admired, +had dominated her life. The great trouble with acts of reckless nobility +was that the recklessness was only for a moment, but the nobility was +obliged to last a lifetime. It was not difficult, she knew, for persons +like Stephen or herself to be heroic in appropriate circumstances; the +difficulty began when one was compelled to sustain the heroic role long +after the appropriate circumstances had passed away. Yet, in spite of +the cynical lucidity of her judgment, the romantic in her heart longed +to have Stephen, by one generous act of devotion, prove her theory +fallacious. Her strongest impulse, the impulse to create happiness, to +repair, as her father had once described it, crippled destinies; this +impulse urged her now to help Patty's pathetic romance in every way in +her power. It would be very fine if Stephen cared enough to forget what +he was losing. It would be magnificent, she felt, but it would not be +masculine. For she had had great experience; and though men might vary +in a multitude of particulars, she had found that the solidarity of sex +was preserved in some general code of emotional expediency. + +"Do you think," Vetch was making another attempt to explain his meaning, +"that he is seriously interested?" + +"I am perfectly sure," she replied, "that he is more than half in love +with her." + +"Is he the kind, then, to let himself go the rest of the way?" + +She shook her head. "That I cannot answer. From my knowledge of the +restraining force of the Culpeper fibre, I should say that he is not." + +"You mean he wouldn't think it a suitable marriage?" + +She blushed for his crudeness. "I mean his mother wouldn't think it a +suitable marriage. Patty is very attractive, but they know nothing about +her except that. You see they have had the disadvantage of knowing +everything about every one who has married, or who has even wished to +marry, into the family for the last two hundred years. It is a +disadvantage, as I've said, for the strain is so highly bred that each +generation becomes mentally more and more like the fish in caves that +have lost their eyes because they stopped trying to see. Stephen is +different in a way--and yet not different enough. It would be his +salvation if he could care enough for Patty to take a risk for her sake; +but his mother, of course, would fight against it with every particle +of her influence, and her influence is enormous." Then she met his eyes +boldly: "Wouldn't you fight against it in her place?" she asked. + +"I? Oh, I shouldn't care a hang what anybody thought if I liked the +girl," he retorted. His smile shone out warmly. "Would you?" he demanded +in his turn. + +For an instant his blunt question disconcerted her, and while she +hesitated she felt his blue eyes on her downcast face. "You can't judge +by me," she answered presently. "Only those who have been in chains know +the meaning of freedom." + +"Are you free now?" + +"Not entirely. Who is?" + +He was looking at her more closely; and when at last she raised her +eyelashes and met his gaze, the lovely glow which gave her beauty its +look of October splendour suffused her features. Anger seized her in the +very moment that the colour rushed to her cheeks. Why should she blush +like a schoolgirl because of the way this man--or any man--looked at +her? + +"Are you going to marry Benham?" he asked; and there was a note in his +voice which disturbed her in spite of herself. Though she denied +passionately his right to question her, she answered simply enough: +"Yes, I am going to marry him." + +"Do you care for him?" + +With an effort she turned her eyes away and looked beyond the green +stems and the white flowers of the narcissi in the window to the street +outside, where the shadows of the young leaves lay like gauze over the +brick pavement. + +"If I didn't care do you think that I would marry him?" she asked in a +low voice. Through the open window a breeze came, honey-sweet with the +scent of narcissi, and she realized, with a start, that this early +spring was poignantly lovely and sad. + +"Well, I wish I'd known you twenty years ago," said Vetch presently. "If +I'd had a woman like you to help me, I might have been almost anything. +Nobody knows better than I how much help a woman can be when she's the +right sort." + +She tore her gaze from the sunshine beyond, from the beauty and the +wistfulness of April. What was there in this man that convinced her in +spite of everything that Benham had told her? + +"Your wife has been dead a long time?" She spoke gently, for his tone +more than his words had touched her sympathy. + +As soon as she asked the question, she realized that it was a mistake. +An expressionless mask closed over his face, and she received the +impression that he had withdrawn to a distance. + +"A long time," was all he answered. His voice had become so impersonal +that it was toneless. + +"Well, it hasn't kept you back--not having help," she hastened to reply +as naturally as she could. "You are almost everything you wished to be +in the world, aren't you?" It was a foolish speech, she felt, but the +change in his manner had surprised and bewildered her. + +He laughed shortly without merriment. "I?" he replied, and she noticed +for the first time that he looked tired and worried beneath his +exuberant optimism. "I am the loneliest man on earth. The loneliest man +on earth is the one who stands between two extremes." As she made no +reply, he continued after a moment, "You think, of course, that I stand +with one extreme, not in the centre, but you are mistaken. I am in the +middle. When I try to bring the two millstones together they will grind +me to powder." + +She had never heard him speak despondently before; and while she +listened to the sound of his expressive voice, so full, for the hour at +least, of discouragement, she felt drawn to him in a new and personal +way. It was as if, by showing her a side of his nature the public had +never seen, he had taken her into his confidence. + +"But surely your influence is as great as ever," she said presently. A +trite remark, but the only one that occurred to her. + +"I brought the crowd with me as far as I thought safe," he answered, +"and now it is beginning to turn against me because I won't lead it over +the precipice into the sea. That's the way it always is, I reckon. +That's the way it's been, anyhow, ever since Moses tried to lead the +Children of Israel out of bondage. Take these strikers, for instance. I +believe in the right to strike. I believe that they ought to have every +possible protection. I believe that their families ought to be provided +for in order to take the weapon of starvation out of the hands of the +capitalists. I'd give them as fair a field as it is in my power to +provide, and anybody would think that they would be satisfied with +simple fairness. But, no, what they are trying to do is not to strike +_for_ themselves, but to strike _at_ somebody else. They are not +satisfied with protection from starvation unless that protection +involves the right to starve somebody else. They want to tie up the +markets and stop the dairy trains, and they won't wink an eyelash if all +the babies that don't belong to them are without milk. That's war, they +tell me; and I answer that I'd treat war just as I'd treat a strike, if +I had the power. As soon as an army began to prey on the helpless, I'd +raise a bigger army if I could and throw the first one out into the +jungle where it belonged. But people don't see things like that now, +though they may in the next five hundred years. The trouble is that all +human nature, including capitalist and labourer, is tarred with the same +brush and tarred with selfishness. What the oppressed want is not +freedom from oppression, but the opportunity to become oppressors." + +Was this only a mood, she wondered, or was it the expression of a +profound disappointment? Sympathy such as John Benham had never awakened +overflowed from her heart, and she was conscious suddenly of some deep +intuitive understanding of Vetch's nature. All that had been alien or +ambiguous became as close and true and simple as the thoughts in her own +mind. What she saw in Vetch, she perceived now, was that resemblance to +herself which the Judge had once turned into a jest. She discerned his +point of view not by looking outside of herself, but by looking within. + +"I know," she responded in her rich voice. "I think I know." + +He gazed at her with a smile which had grown as tired as the rest of +him. "Then if you know why don't you help--you others?" he asked. "Don't +you see that by standing aside, by keeping apart, you are doing all the +harm that you can? If democracy doesn't seem good enough for you, then +get down into the midst of it and make it better. That's the only +way--the only way on earth to make a better democracy--by putting the +best we've got into it. You can't make bread rise from the outside. +You've got to mix the yeast with the dough, if you want it to leaven the +whole lump." + +She had been standing with her hands clasped before her and her eyes on +the sky beyond the window; and when he paused, with a husky tone in his +voice, she spoke almost as if she were in a dream. "I believe in you," +she said, and then again, as he did not speak she repeated very slowly: +"I believe in you." + +"That helps," he answered gravely. "I don't suppose you will ever +realize how much that will help me." As he finished he turned toward the +door; and a minute afterward, without another word or look, he went out +into the street, and she saw his figure cross the flowers and the +sunlight in the window. + +When he had gone Corinna opened the door and stood watching the long +black shadows of the cedars creep over the walk of broken flagstones. +Always when she was alone her thoughts would return like homing birds to +John Benham; but this afternoon, though she spoke his name in her +reflections, she was conscious of an inner detachment from the vital +interests of her personal life. For a little while, so strong was the +mental impression Vetch had made on her, she saw his image even while +she thought the name of John Benham. Then, with an effort of will, she +put the Governor and all that he had said out of her mind. After all, +how little would she ever see of him now--how seldom would their paths +cross in the future! A strange and interesting man, a man who had, in +one instant of mental sympathy, stirred something within her heart that +no one, not even Kent Page, had ever awakened before. For that one +instant a ripple, nothing more, had moved on the face of the deep--of +the deep which was so ancient that it was older even than the blood of +her race. Then the ripple passed and the sunny stillness settled again +on her spirit. + +She thought of John Benham easily now; and while she stood there a quiet +happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years, +life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden +of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and +disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for +perfection, for the starry flower of the heights. Something that she +could worship! So often in the past it had seemed to her that she missed +it by the turn of a corner, the stop on the roadside, by the choice of a +path that led down into the valley instead of up into the hills. So +often her god had revealed the feet of clay just as she was preparing to +scatter marigolds on his altar. It appeared to her as she looked back on +the past, that life had been merely a succession of great opportunities +that one did not grasp, of high adventures that one never followed. + +The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a +big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to +stop at her door. An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she +saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling. Even a glimpse of that +flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid +current of Corinna's thoughts. Could she never forget? Must she, who +had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment +against the woman? + +With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed +the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old +print shop. In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small +straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, +more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in +her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a +dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her +appearance. If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, +Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on +perfection. + +"I've just got back," began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her +metallic voice could produce. "It's been an age since I've seen you--not +since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys', and I'm so much +interested in the news I have heard." + +For a minute Corinna stared at her. "Yes, my shop has been very +successful," she answered, after a pause in which she tried and failed +to think of a reply that would sound more disdainful. "If you are +looking for prints, I can show you some very good ones." + +"Oh, I don't mean that." Mrs. Stribling appeared genuinely amused by the +mistake. "I am not looking for prints--to tell the truth I shouldn't +know one if I saw it. I mean your engagement, of course. There isn't +anybody in the world who admires John Benham more than I do. I always +say of him that he is the only man I know who will sacrifice himself +for a principle. All his splendid record in the army--when he was over +age too--and then the way he behaved about that corporation! I never +understood just why he did it--I'm sure I could never bring myself to +refuse so much money,--but that doesn't keep me from admiring him." For +a minute she looked at Corinna with a smile which seemed as permanent as +the rest of her surface, while she discreetly sharpened her wits for the +stab which was about to be dealt. "I can't tell you how surprised I was +to hear you had announced your engagement. You know we were so sure that +he was going to marry Alice Rokeby after she got her divorce. Of course +nobody knew. It was just gossip, and you and I both know how absurd +gossip can be." + +So this was why she had stopped! Corinna flinched from the thrust even +while she told herself that there was no shadow of truth in the old +rumour, that malice alone had prompted Rose Stribling to repeat it. In a +woman like that, an incorrigible coquette, every relation with her own +sex would be edged with malice. + +"Well, I just stopped to wish you happiness. I must go now, but I'll +come again, when I have time, and look at your shop. Such a funny +idea--a shop, with all the money you've got! But no idea seems too funny +for people to-day. And that reminds me of the Governor. Have you seen +the Governor again since the evening we dined with him?" + +Her turn had come, and Corinna, for she was very human, planted the +sting without mercy. "Oh, very often. He was here a few minutes ago." + +"Then it's true? Somebody told me he admired you so much." + +Corinna smiled blandly. "I hope he does. We are great friends." Would +there always be women like that in the world, she asked herself--women +whose horizon ended with the beginning of sex? It was a feminine type +that seemed to her as archaic as some reptilian bird of the primeval +forests. How long would it be, she wondered, before it would survive +only in the dry bones of genealogical scandals? As she looked after Rose +Stribling's bright green car, darting like some gigantic dragon-fly up +the street, her lips quivered with scorn and disgust. "I wonder if she +thought I believed her?" she said to herself in a whisper. "I wonder if +she thought she could hurt me?" + +The sunshine was in her eyes, and she was about to turn and go back into +the shop, when she saw that Alice Rokeby was coming toward her with a +slow dragging step, as if she were mentally and bodily tired. The +lace-work of shadows fell over her like a veil; and high above her head +the early buds of a tulip tree made a mosaic of green and yellow lotus +cups against the Egyptian blue of the sky. Framed in the vivid colours +of spring she had the look of a flower that has been blighted by frost. + +"How ill, how very ill she looks," thought Corinna, with an impulse of +sympathy. "I wish she would come in and rest. I wish she would let me +help her." + +For an instant the violet eyes, with their vague wistfulness, their mute +appeal, looked straight into Corinna's; and in that instant an +inscrutable expression quivered in Alice Rokeby's face, as if a wan +light had flickered up and died down in an empty room. + +"The heat is too much for you," said Corinna gently. "It is like +summer." + +"Yes, I have never known so early a spring. It has come and gone in a +week." + +"You look tired, and your furs are too heavy. Won't you come in and rest +until my car comes?" + +The other woman shook her head. She was still pretty, for hers was a +face to which pallor lent the delicate sweetness of a white rose-leaf. + +"It is only a block or two farther. I am going home," she answered in a +low voice. + +"Won't you come to my shop sometimes? I have missed seeing you this +winter." The words were spoken sincerely, for Corinna's heart was open +to all the world but Rose Stribling. + +"Thank you. How lovely your cedars are!" The wan light shone again in +Alice Rokeby's face. Then she threw her fur stole from her shoulders as +if she were fainting under the weight of it, and passed on, with her +dragging step, through the lengthening shadows on the pavement. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CORINNA OBSERVES + + +Yes, Patty was in love, this Corinna decided after a single glance. The +girl appeared to have changed miraculously over-night, for her hard +brightness had melted in the warmth of some glowing flame that burned at +her heart. Never had she looked so Ariel-like and elusive; never had she +brought so hauntingly to Corinna's memory the loveliness of youth and +spring that is vivid and fleeting. + +"Can it be that Stephen is really in earnest?" asked the older woman of +her disturbed heart; and the next instant, shaking her wise head, she +added, "Poor little redbird! What does she know of life outside of a +cedar tree?" + +At luncheon the Governor, in an effort to hide some perfectly evident +anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected. It was his way, +she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity. +There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of +coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical +style. With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of +dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent +with her gaze on her plate. Only Corinna laughed, as she laughed at any +honest jest however out of place. After all, if you began to judge men +by the quality of their jokes where would it lead you? + +Patty, with her eyes drooping beneath her black lashes, sat lost in a +day dream. She dressed now, by Corinna's advice, in straight slim gowns +of serge or velvet; and to-day she was wearing a scant little frock of +blue serge, with a wide white collar that gave her the look of a +delicate boy. There were wonderful possibilities in the girl, Corinna +mused, looking her over. She had not a single beautiful feature, except +her remarkable eyes; and yet the softness and vagueness of her face lent +a poetic and impressionistic charm to her appearance. "In that dress she +looks as if she had stepped out of the Middle Ages, and might step back +again at any minute," thought Corinna. "I wonder if I can be mistaken in +Stephen, and if he is seriously in love with her?" + +"Patty is grooming me for the White House," remarked Vetch, with his +hearty laugh which sounded a trifle strained and affected to-day. "She +thinks it probable that I shall be President." + +"Why not, Father?" asked Patty loyally. "They couldn't find a better +one." + +"Do you hear that?" demanded the Governor in delight. "That is what one +coming voter thinks of me." + +"And a good many others, I haven't a doubt," replied Corinna, with her +cheerful friendliness. Through the windows of the dining-room she could +see the long grape arbour and the gray boughs of the crepe myrtle trees +in the garden. + +She had dressed herself carefully for the occasion in a black gown that +followed closely the lines of her figure. Her beauty, which a painter in +Europe had once compared to a lamp, was still so radiant that it seemed +to drain the colour and light from her surroundings. Even Patty, with +her fresh youth, lost a little of her vividness beside the glowing +maturity of the other woman. When Corinna had accepted the girl's +invitation, she had resolved that she would do her best; that, however +tiresome it was, she would "carry it off." Always a match for any +situation that did not include Kent Page or a dangerous emotion, she +felt entirely competent to "manage," as Mrs. Culpeper would have said, +the most radical of Governors. She liked the man in spite of his errors; +she was sincerely attached to Patty; and their artless respect for her +opinion gave her a sense of power which she told herself merrily was +"almost political." Though the Governor might be without the rectitude +which both Benham and Stephen regarded as fundamental, she perceived +clearly that, even if Vetch were lacking in the particular principle +involved, he was not devoid of some moral excellence which filled not +ignobly the place where principle should have been. She was prepared to +concede that the Governor was a man of many defects and a single virtue; +but this single virtue impressed her as more tremendous than any +combination of qualities that she had ever encountered. She admitted +that, from Benham's point of view, Vetch was probably not to be trusted; +yet she felt instinctively that she could trust him. The two men, she +told herself tolerantly, were as far apart as the poles. That the +cardinal virtue Vetch possessed in abundance was the one in which Benham +was inadequate had not occurred to her; for, at the moment, she could +not bring herself to acknowledge that any admirable trait was absent +from the man whom she intended to marry. + +"You would make a splendid president, Father," Patty was insisting. + +"Well, I'm inclined to think that you're right," Vetch responded +whimsically, "but you'll have to convince a few others of that, I +reckon, before we begin to plan for the White House. First of all, +you'll have to convince the folks that started the boom to make me +Governor. It looks as if some of them were already thinking that they'd +made a mistake." + +"Oh, that horrid Julius," said Patty lightly. "He doesn't matter a bit, +does he, Mrs. Page?" + +"Not to me," laughed Corinna, "but I'm not a politician. Politicians +have queer preferences." + +"Or queer needs," suggested Vetch. "You don't like Gershom, I infer; but +when you are ready to sweep, remember you mustn't be over-squeamish +about your broom." + +"I have heard," rejoined Corinna, still laughing, "that a new broom +sweeps clean. Why not try a new one next time?" + +"You mean when I run for the Presidency?" Was he joking, or was there an +undercurrent of seriousness in his words? + +They had risen from the table; and as they passed through the long +reception-room, which stretched between the dining-room and the wide +front hall, Abijah brought the information that Mr. Gershom awaited the +Governor in the library. + +"I shall probably be kept there most of the afternoon," said Vetch, and +she could see that his regret was not assumed. "The next time you come I +hope I shall have better luck." Then he hurried off to his appointment, +while Corinna stopped at the foot of the staircase and followed with +her gaze the slender balustrade of mahogany. "If they had only left +everything as it was!" she thought; and then she said aloud: "It is so +lovely out of doors. Get your hat and we'll walk awhile in the Square. I +can talk to you better there, and I want to talk to you seriously." + +After the girl had disappeared up the quaint flight of stairs, Corinna +stood gazing meditatively at the bar of sunlight over the front door. +She was thinking of what she should say to Patty--how could she possibly +warn the girl without wounding her?--and it was very gradually that she +became aware of raised voices in the library and the hard, short sound +of words that beat like hail into her consciousness. + +"I tell you we can put it over all right if you will only have the sense +to keep your hands off!" stormed Gershom in a tone that he was trying in +vain to subdue. + +"Are you sure they will strike?" + +"Dead sure. You may bet your bottom dollar on that. We can tie up every +road in this state within twenty-four hours after the order goes out--" + +Arousing herself with a start, Corinna opened the door and went out. She +could not have helped hearing what Gershom had said; and after all this +was nothing more than a repetition of the plain facts that Vetch had +already confided to her. But why, she wondered, did they persist in +holding their conferences at the top of their voices? + +In a few minutes Patty came down, wearing a sailor hat which made her +look more than ever like an attractive boy; and they descended the steps +together, and strolled past the fountain of the white heron to the gate +in front of the house. Turning to the left as they entered the Square, +they walked slowly down the wide brick pavement, which trailed by the +library and a larger fountain, to the dingy business street beyond the +iron fence at the foot of the hill. As they went by, a woman, who was +feeding the squirrels from one of the benches, lifted her face to stare +at them curiously, and something vaguely familiar in her features caused +Corinna to pause and glance back. Where had she seen her before? And how +ill, how hopelessly stricken, the haggard face looked under the thick +mass of badly dyed hair. The next minute she remembered that the woman +had lodged for a week or two above the old print shop, and that only +yesterday Stephen had asked about her. Poor creature, what a life she +must have had to have wrecked her so utterly. + +In the golden-green light of afternoon the Square was looking peaceful +and lovely. For the hour a magic veil had dropped over the nakedness of +its outlines, and the bare buildings and bare walks were touched with +the glamour of spring. Soft, pale shadows of waving branches moved back +and forth, like the ghosts of dreams, over the grassy hill and the brick +pavements. + +Turning to the girl beside her, Corinna looked thoughtfully at the fresh +young face above the white collar which framed the lovely line of the +throat. Under the brim of the sailor hat Patty's eyes were dewy with +happiness. + +"Are you happy, Patty?" + +"Oh, yes," rejoined Patty fervently, "so much happier than I ever was in +my life!" + +"I am glad," said the older woman tenderly. Then taking the girl's hand +in hers she added earnestly: "But, my dear, we must be careful, you and +I, not to let our happiness depend too much upon one thing. We must +scatter it as much as we can." + +"I can't do that," answered Patty simply. "I am not made that way. I +pour everything into one thought." + +"I know," responded Corinna sadly, and she did. She had lived through it +all long ago in what seemed to her now another life. + +For a moment she was silent; and when she spoke again there was an +anxious sound in her voice and an anxious look in the eyes she lifted to +the arching boughs of the sycamore. "Do you like Stephen very much, +Patty?" she asked. + +Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn +broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as +if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low +voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!" + +"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him +often?" Now, since she felt she had won the girl's confidence, her +purpose appeared more difficult than ever. + +"Very often," replied Patty in a thrilling tone. "He comes every day." +The luminous candour, the fearless sincerity of Gideon Vetch, seemed to +envelop her as she answered. + +"Do you think he cares for you, dear?" asked Corinna softly. + +"Oh, yes." The response was unhesitating. "I know it." + +How naive, how touchingly ingenuous, the girl was in spite of her +experience of life and of the uglier side of politicians. No girl in +Corinna's circle would ever have appeared so confiding, so innocent, so +completely beneath the spell of a sentimental illusion. The girls that +Corinna knew might be unguarded about everything else on earth; but even +the most artless one of them, even Margaret Blair, would have learned by +instinct to guard the secret of her emotions. + +"Has he asked you to marry him?" Corinna's voice wavered over the +question, which seemed to her cruel; but Patty met it with transparent +simplicity. + +"Not yet," she answered, lifting her shining eyes to the sky, "but he +will. How can he help it when he cares for me so much?" + +"If he hasn't yet, my dear"--while the words dropped from her reluctant +lips, Corinna felt as if she were inflicting a physical stab,--"how can +you tell that he cares so much for you?" + +"I wasn't sure until yesterday," replied Patty, with beaming lucidity, +"but I knew yesterday because--because he showed it so plainly." + +With a lovely protective movement the older woman put her arm about the +girl's shoulders. "You may be right--but, oh, don't trust too much, +Patty," she pleaded, with the wisdom that the years bring and take away. +"Life is so uncertain--fine impulses--even love--yes, love most of +all--is so uncertain--" + +"Of course you feel that way," responded the girl, sympathetic but +incredulous. "How could you help it?" + +After this what could Corinna answer? She knew Stephen, she told +herself, and she knew that she could trust him. She believed that lie +was capable of generous impulses; but she doubted if an impulse, however +generous, could sweep away the inherited sentiments which encrusted his +outlook on life. In spite of his youth, he was in reality so old. He was +as old as that indestructible entity, the spirit of race--as that +impalpable strain which had existed in every Culpeper, and in all the +Culpepers together, from the beginning. It was not, she realized +plainly, such an anachronism as a survival of the aristocratic +tradition. Deeper than this, it had its roots not in belief but in +instinct--in the bone and fibre of Stephen's character. It was a part of +that motive power which impelled him in the direction of the beaten +road, of the established custom, of things as they have always been in +the past. + +Her kind heart was troubled; yet before the happiness in the girl's face +what could she say except that she hoped Stephen was as fine as Patty +believed him to be? "You may be right. I hope so with all my heart; but, +oh, my dear, try not to care too much. It never does any good to care +too much." She stooped and kissed the girl's cheek. "There, my car is at +the door, and I must hurry back to the shop. I'll do anything in the +world that I can for you, Patty, anything in the world." + +As the car rolled through the gate and down the wide drive to the +Washington monument, Patty stood gazing after it, with a burning +moisture in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Terror had seized her in +an instant, terror of unhappiness, of missing the one thing in life on +which she had passionately set her heart. What had Mrs. Page meant by +her questions? Had she intended them as a warning? And why should she +have thought it necessary to warn her against caring too much for +Stephen? + +The girl had started to enter the house when, remembering suddenly that +Gershom was still there, she turned hurriedly away from the door, and +walked back down the brick pavement to the fountain beyond the library. +The squirrels still scampered over the walk; the thirsty sparrows were +still drinking; the few loungers on the benches still stared at her with +dull and incurious eyes. Not a cloud stained the intense blue of the +sky; and over the bright grass on the hillside the sunshine quivered +like an immense swarm of bees. + +As she approached the fountain where she had first met Stephen, it +seemed to her that a romantic light, a visionary enchantment, fell over +this one spot of ground, and divided it by some magic circle from every +other place in the world. The crude iron railing, the bare gravel, the +ugly spouting fountain which was stripped of every leaf or blade of +grass--these things appeared to her through an indescribable glamour, as +if they stood there as the visible gateway to some invisible garden of +dreams. Whenever she looked at this ordinary spot of earth a breathless +realization of the wonder and delight of life rushed over her. She knew +nothing of the mental processes by which these external objects were +associated with the deepest emotions of the heart. Only when she visited +this place that wave of happiness swept over her; and she lived again as +vividly as she lived in the moments when Stephen was with her and she +was looking into his eyes. + +His voice called her while she stood there; and turning quickly, she saw +that he was coming toward her down the walk. Immediately the loungers on +the benches vanished by magic; the murmur of the fountain became like +the music of harps; and the sunshine on the grassy hill was alive with +the quiver of wings. As she went toward him she was aware of the blue +sky, of the golden green of the trees, of the happy sounds of the birds, +and over all, as if it were outside of herself, of the rapturous beating +of her own heart. + +"I was looking for you," he said when he reached her. + +"And you found me at last." Her eyes were like wells of joy. + +"I'd never have given up until I found you." The words were trivial; but +it was the things he said without words that really mattered. Already +they had established a communion that was independent of speech. He had +never told her that he loved her; yet she saw it in every glance of his +eyes and heard it in every tone of his voice. + +While they walked slowly up the hill she wondered trustingly why, when +he had told her so plainly in every other way that he loved her, he +should never have put it into words. There could not be any doubt of it; +perhaps this was the reason he hesitated. The present was so perfect +that it was like the most exquisite hour of a spring afternoon. One +longed to hold it back even though one knew that it led to something +more lovely still. + +"Are you happy?" she asked, and wondered if he would kiss her again when +they parted as he had kissed her yesterday in the dusk of the hall? + +"Yes, and no." He drew nearer to her. "I am happy now like this--here +with you--but at other times I am troubled. I can't see my way clearly." + +"But why should you? Why should any one be troubled when it is so easy +to be happy?" + +"Easy?" He laughed. "If life were only as simple as that!" + +"It is if one knows what one wants." + +"Well, one may know what one wants, and yet not know if one is wise in +wanting it." + +"Oh, wise!" She shook her head with an impatient movement. "Isn't the +only wisdom to be happy and kind?" + +He looked at her thoughtfully, while a frown drew his straight dark +eyebrows together. "If you wanted a thing with all your heart, and yet +were not sure--" + +Her impatience answered him. "I couldn't want it with all my heart +without being sure." + +"Sure I mean that it is best--best for every one--not just for +oneself--" + +Her laugh was like a song. "Do you suppose there has ever been anything +since the world began that was best for every one? If I knew what I +wanted I shouldn't ask anything more. I would spread my wings and fly to +it." + +He smiled. "You are so much like your father at times--even in the +things that you say. Yes, I suppose you would fly to it because you have +been trained that way--to be direct and daring. But I am made +differently. Life has taught me; it is in my blood and bone to stop and +question, to look so long that at last I lose the will to choose, or to +leap. There are some of us like that, you know." + +"Perhaps," she smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to +be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable +fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always +through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight +onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for +what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before it eluded her. +Yet she knew that fighting would not do any good. She could do nothing +while her happiness hung on a thread. She could do nothing but fold her +hands and wait, though her heart burned hot with the injustice of it, +and she longed to speak aloud all the words that were rising to her +tightly closed lips. + +"Oh, don't you see--can't you see?" she asked brokenly, baring her heart +with a desperate impulse. Her eyes were drawing him toward the future; +and, in the deep stillness of her look, it seemed to him that she was +putting forth all her power to charm; that her youth and bloom shed a +sweetness that was like the fragrance of a flower. + +For an instant every thought, every feeling, surrendered to her appeal. +Then his face changed as abruptly as if he had put a mask over his +features; and glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that his mother +and Margaret Blair were walking along the concrete pavement under the +few old linden trees. As they approached it seemed to the girl that +Stephen turned slowly from a man of flesh and blood into a figure of +granite. In one instant he was petrified by the force of tradition. + +"It is my mother," he said in a low voice. "She has not been in the +Square for years. I was telling her yesterday how pretty it looks in the +spring." He went forward with an embarrassed air, and Mrs. Culpeper laid +a firm, possessive touch on his arm. + +"I thought a little stroll might do me good," she explained. "The car is +waiting across the street at Doctor Bradley's." Then she held out her +free hand to Patty, with a smile which, the girl said afterward to +Corinna, looked as if it had frozen on her lips. "Stephen speaks of you +very often, Miss Vetch," she said. "He talks a great deal about his +friends, doesn't he, Margaret?" + +Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood +looking guardedly into each other's eyes. "She is attractive," thought +Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, "but I can't +understand just what he sees in her." And at the same moment Patty was +saying to herself, "Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing +that he enjoys." + +Aloud the elder girl said casually, "It is so quaint living down here in +the Square, isn't it?" + +"But it is too far away from everything," replied Stephen hurriedly. "It +must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here, +Mother." + +"Very," answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was +still on her lips. + +"It doesn't seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a +spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her +heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale +face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed +in the turn of her head, in her fragile hands, in the lovely liquid +sound of her voice. + +"Cousin Corinna has promised to bring me to see you," said Margaret in +her kind and gentle way. + +"I hope you'll come," replied Patty politely; but in her thoughts she +added, "I hope you won't. I hope I'll never see you again." She couldn't +be natural; she couldn't be anything but stiff and awkward; and she was +aware all the time that Stephen was as embarrassed as she was. All the +things that she must fight against, that she must triumph over, were +embodied in that small black figure with the ivory face, so inelastic, +so unbending, so secure in its inherited authority. There was war +between her and Stephen's mother; and she stood alone, with only her +undaunted spirit to support her, while on the opposite side were +entrenched all the immovable dead ranks of the generations. "I shall +fight it out," thought the girl bitterly. "I don't care what she thinks +of me. I shall fight it out to the end." + +With her hand on Stephen's arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away. "I +feel a little tired," she explained politely to Patty, "so I am sure +that you won't mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son +help me back to the car." + +"Oh, I don't mind," replied Patty, with gay indifference. + +"I'll see you very soon," said Stephen; and it seemed to the girl as she +watched him walking toward the Washington monument that he looked as old +and as tired as his mother. + +Of course he was obliged to go. There wasn't anything else that he could +do, and yet--and yet--as Patty gazed after the three slowly moving +figures, she felt that a cold hand had reached out of the sunshine and +clutched her heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE FEAR OF LIFE + + +Stephen had intended to go back as soon as he had put his mother into +the car; but she clung so tightly to his arm, and there was something so +appealing in her fragile dependence, that, almost without realizing it, +he found that he was sitting in front of her, and that she was taking +him down to his office. + +"We will leave you and go back, Stephen," she said, while a look of +faintness spread over her features. "I feel as if one of my heart +attacks might be coming on." + +"Wouldn't you rather I went home with you?" he inquired solicitously. + +His mother shook her head and reached feebly for Margaret's hand. +"Margaret will take care of me," she replied in the weak voice before +which her husband and her children had learned to tremble. + +As he sat there uneasily in the stuffy car, which smelt of camphor and +reminded him of a hearse, he was threatened by that familiar sensation +of oppression, of closing walls. Would he ever again be free from this +impalpable terror, from this dread of being shut within a space so small +that he must smother if he did not escape? And not only places but +persons, as he had found long ago, persons with closed souls, with +narrow minds, produced in him this feeling of physical suffocation. +Margaret, with her serenity, her changeless sweetness, affected him +precisely as he was affected by the stained glass windows of a church. +He felt that he should stifle unless he could break away into a place +where there were winds and blown shadows and pure sunshine. He admired +her; he might have loved her; but she smothered him like that rich and +heavy wave of the past from which he was still struggling to free +himself. For he knew now that it was not the past he wanted; it was the +future. Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and +yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was +not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the +master, of tradition. He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel +and to live. Only through emotion, only through some courageous +adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach +liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he +could not lose his life in order that he might find it. Corinna was +right, he felt, when she called him a prig. She was right though he +hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let +himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He +longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and +yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional, +and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his +buttonhole. The thought of Patty rushed over him like the wind at dawn +or the light of the sunrise. There was deliverance; there was freedom of +spirit! She was the impulse he dared not follow, the risk he dared not +take, the red flower he dared not wear. + +"What lovely eyes Miss Vetch has," Margaret was saying. "Don't you think +so, Cousin Harriet?" + +Mrs. Culpeper sniffed at her bottle of smelling-salts. "She seemed to +me very ordinary," she answered stiffly. "How could Gideon Vetch's +daughter be anything else?" + +"Yes, it's a pity about her father," admitted Margaret placidly. "If +what Mr. Benham thinks is true, I suppose the Governor has agreed not to +interfere in this dreadful strike." + +Again Mrs. Culpeper sniffed. "Every one knows he is merely a tool in the +hands of those people," she said. + +In the weeks that followed Stephen heard his mother's opinion repeated +wherever he went. Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere, +in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated. +It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the +Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by +the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who +thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders. +There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints +that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the +faction whose tool he had become. "Don't tell me, sir, that they didn't +put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old +Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years. +Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed +facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing +for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still +possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching +morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair of virtue." + +For the people who condemned Vetch were quite as emphatic in praise of +John Benham; and in these weeks of unrest and anxiety, Corinna's face +was glowing with pride and pleasure. That Benham, in his unselfish +service, was leading the way, no one doubted. Tireless, unrewarded,--for +it was admitted by those who esteemed him most that he was never really +in touch with the crowd, that his zeal awakened no human response,--he +had sacrificed his private practice in order to devote himself day and +night to averting the strike. Stephen, inspired to hero worship, asked +himself again what the difference was, beyond simple personal rectitude, +between Vetch and Benham? Vetch, lacking, so far as the young man knew, +every public virtue except the human touch which enkindles either the +souls or the imaginations of men, could overturn Benham's argument with +a dramatic gesture, an emotional phrase. Why was it that Benham, +possessing both the character of the patriot and the graces of the +orator, should fall short in the one indefinable attribute which makes a +man the natural leader of men? + +"People admire him, but they won't follow him," Stephen thought in +perplexity. "Vetch has something that Benham lacks; and it is this +something that makes people believe in him in spite of themselves." + +This idea was in his mind when he met Benham one day on the steps of his +club, and stopped to congratulate him on the great speech he had made +the evening before. + +"By Jove, it makes me want to throw my hat into the ring!" he exclaimed, +half in jest, half in earnest. + +"I wish you would," replied the other gravely. "We need young men. It is +youth that turns the world." + +Never, Stephen thought, had Benham, appeared more impressive, more +perfectly finished and turned out; never had he appeared so near to his +tailor and so far from his audience. He was a handsome man in his rather +colourless fashion, a man who would look any part with distinction from +policeman to President. His sleek iron-gray hair had as usual the rich +sheen of velvet; his thin, sharp profile was like the face on a Roman +coin. A man of power, of intellect, of character; and yet a man who had +missed, in some inexplicable way, greatness, achievement. On the whole +Stephen was glad that Corinna had announced her engagement. She and +Benham seemed so perfectly suited to each other--and, of course, there +was nothing in that old story about Alice Rokeby. A friendship, nothing +more! Only the other day Benham had spoken casually of his "friendship" +for Mrs. Rokeby; he always called her "Mrs. Rokeby"; and Stephen had +accepted the phrase as a satisfactory explanation of their past +association. + +"I'd like to go into some public work," said the young man. "To tell the +truth I can't settle down." + +"I know," Benham responded sympathetically. "I went through it all +myself; but there is nothing like throwing oneself into some outside +work. I wish you would come into this fight. If we can avert this strike +it will be worth any sacrifice." + +That Benham was making tremendous personal sacrifices, Stephen knew, and +the young man's voice was tinged with emotion as he answered, "I'm +afraid I'm not much of a speaker." + +"Oh, you would be, if you would only let yourself go." There it was +again! Even Benham recognized his weakness; even Benham knew that he was +afraid of life. + +"Besides we need men of every type," Benham was saying smoothly. "We +need especially good organizers. The fight won't be over to-morrow. Even +if we win this time, we must organize against Vetch and defeat him once +and for all in the next elections." + +"Then you think he is really as dangerous as the papers are trying to +make him appear?" + +"I think," Benham replied shortly, "that he is in it for what he can get +out of it." + +"Well, call on me when I can help you," said Stephen, as they parted; +and a minute later when he reached the pavement, he found occasion to +repeat his impulsive offer to Judge Horatio Lancaster Page. + +"I've promised Benham that I'll do all I can to help him defeat Vetch." + +"You're right," returned the Judge, with his smile of discerning irony. +"I suppose we're obliged to fight him." + +"If we don't what will happen?" + +"That's what I'd like to see, my boy. I'd give ten years full measure +and running over to see exactly what would happen." + +"Benham is afraid his crowd may send him to the Senate." + +"Perhaps, but there is always a chance of their sending him to Jericho +instead." + +Stephen nodded. "Yes, there's trouble already, I believe, over this +strike." + +The Judge laughed with a note of cynical humour. "I can understand why +he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human +nature." + +"He's dead right, too. It is so easy to be a philosopher--or a +philanthropist--in a desert. I've felt like that ever since I came +home." + +But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice +when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind +hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief +deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is +going to count. I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling, +merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it +better. Of course it is all crude and raw. It needs cultivation and +direction; but it's there--the vital principle, even if we don't +recognize it when we see it. All the same," he concluded in a lighter +tone, "I'm glad you are going into the fight. We can't hurt a principle +by fighting it, you know." + +Then he passed on his way; and the transient enthusiasm which had +illuminated Stephen's mind drifted away like clouds of blown smoke. How +could he fight with any heart when there seemed to him nothing on either +side that was worth fighting for--nothing except the unselfish +patriotism of John Benham? He remembered the fervour, the exaltation +with which he had gone to France that first year of the war. The belief +in a righteous cause which would bring peace on earth and good will +toward men; the belief in a human fellowship which would grow out of +sacrifice; the belief in a fairer social order which would flower from +the bloodstained memories of the battlefields,--what was there left of +these romantic illusions to-day? Was it true, as Vetch had once said, +that organized killing, even in a just cause, must bring its spiritual +punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the +love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and +I won from it--what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again +the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he +had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth +fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, or +desire passionately--anything!" + +Just as Corinna had longed for perfection, for something to worship, he +found himself longing now for a cause, for any cause, even a lost one, +to which he could give himself. He wanted facts, deeds, certainties. He +was suffocated by shams and insincerities--and phrases. + +Then suddenly, this was one of the symptoms of his nervous malady, the +reaction swept over him in a wave of energy which receded almost +immediately. If he could only find deliverance from himself and his own +subjective processes! If he could only be borne away by the passion he +felt and yet could not feel completely! He wanted Patty, he knew, but +did he want her enough to justify the effort that he must make to win +her? Would she be worth to him the break with his mother, with his +traditions, with his inherited ideals? He saw her small, slight figure +in the dappled sunlight under the budding trees. He saw her vivid +flower-like face, her romantic eyes, and the arch and charming smile +with which she watched his approach. Yes, he wanted her, he wanted her, +and she was the only thing on God's earth, he told himself rhetorically, +that he did want with the whole of his nature! + +Quickening his steps, he turned in the direction of the Capitol Square, +which stretched, like the painted curtain of a theatre, across the end +of the street. A singular intuition, a presentiment, had come to him +that if he could sustain this impulse, this tide of energy until he saw +Patty, he should be cured--he should find freedom of spirit. Only +through love, he had discovered, could there be resurrection from this +spiritual death of the last two or three years. Only through some +tremendous rush of desire could he overcome the partial paralysis of his +will. His instinct, he knew, was right, but would his resolution last +until he had found Patty? + +It was early afternoon, and the faintly tinted shadows, as smooth as +silk, were falling straight across the bright green grass on the +hillside. The Square was almost deserted at this hour, except for the +old men on the benches and the squirrels that were preparing to return +to their nests in the trees. The breath of spring was over all, roving, +fragrant, provocative. + +He shrank from going straight to the house; but Patty was not in the +walks, and he realized that if he found her at all it would be within +doors. Perhaps it was better so. After all, he must become accustomed to +the mansion and all that it contained, including Gideon Vetch, if he +really loved Patty! And did he really love her? Oh, was it all to begin +over again after the days and nights when he had threshed it out alone +in desperation of mind? Had he lost not only all that was vital, but all +that was stable, that was positive and affirmative in his life? + +He stood for a moment with his eyes on the fresh young leaves which +stirred softly. Then, as if hope and courage had passed into him with +the air of spring, he turned away and walked rapidly to the gate of the +Governor's house. His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to +enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch +with Julius Gershom. Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen +watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly +out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square. She was talking +eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked +the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked. Her face was like a +pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes, +beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming +archness that he had imagined so vividly. If she saw him, she made no +sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering +if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his +neglect of the past two or three weeks? But even then, accepting that +charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of +Gershom? Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of +Gershom? + +The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not +only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green +hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches +overhead. + +In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the +gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight +street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +MRS. GREEN + + +As Patty went by so quickly, she saw Stephen without appearing to glance +in his direction. For the last few weeks a flame had run over her +whenever she remembered, and there was scarcely a moment when it was out +of her mind, that she had shown her heart so openly and that, as she +expressed it bitterly, "he had hidden behind his mother." "If he comes +back again," she told herself recklessly, and she felt scorched when she +thought that he might never come back, "I'll let him see that I can +trifle as well as, or better, than he can. I'll let him see that two can +play at that kind of game." A hundred times Corinna's warning returned +to her. The words, which had made so slight an impression when she heard +them, were burned now into her memory. Oh, Mrs. Page had known all along +what it meant! She had understood from the beginning; and she had tried, +without hurting her, to make her see the blind folly of such an +infatuation. As she thought of this to-day, Patty's heart ached with +injured pride and resentment, not only against Stephen, but against the +unfairness of life. Why was it that men and circumstances would never +let one be natural and generous? Was there a conspiracy of events, as +Mrs. Page had once said, to prevent the finest impulses from coming to +flower? "I'd have done anything on earth for him," thought the girl with +passionate indignation. "I'd have made any sacrifice. I could have been +anything that he wanted." And she felt bitterly that the best in her +soul, the sacred places of her life had been invaded and destroyed. The +blighted sensation which accompanies the recoil of an emotion seemed to +suspend not only the energy of her spirit, but the very breath in her +body. A change had passed over her heart and the world around her and +the persons and events which had so recently composed her universe. She +felt now that she cared for none of them, that, one and all, they had +ceased to interest her; and that the things which filled their lives +were all vacant and meaningless forms. It was as if the vitality of +existence had been drained away, leaving an empty shell. Nothing was +real, nothing was alive but the aching core of her own wounded heart. + +"I don't care. I won't let it spoil my life," she resolved while she bit +back a sob. "Whatever happens, I am not going to let my life be ruined." +She had repeated this so often that it had begun to drone in her mind +like a line out of a hymn-book; and she was still repeating it when she +swept by Stephen without so much as a word or a look. A dangerous mood +was upon her. Nothing mattered, she felt, if she could only prove to him +that she also had been trifling; that his kiss had meant as little to +her as to him; that from the beginning to the end she had been as +indifferent as he was. + +Her step quickened into a run; and Gershom, striding, in order to keep +up with her, looked at her with the jovial laugh that she hated. "You're +in a powerful hurry to-day, ain't you?" he remarked. + +"I'm always in a hurry. You have to hurry to get anything out of life." +As she glanced up into his admiring eyes, she found herself wondering +what Stephen had thought while he watched her? She wished that it had +been anybody but Gershom. He seemed an unworthy instrument of revenge, +though, she reflected, with a touch of her father's sagacity, one +couldn't always choose the tools one would like best. Most people would +admit that he was good-looking in a common way, she supposed; and it was +only of late that she had realized how essentially vulgar he was. + +"I'm sorry you haven't time to listen," he said. "I have news for you." +Then, as she fell into a slower step, he added, with an abrupt change to +a slightly hectoring tone: "We passed that young Culpeper just now. Did +you see him?" + +She shook her head disdainfully. "I wasn't looking at him." + +"He may have been on his way to the mansion." There was a taunting note +in his voice, as if he were trying deliberately to work her into a +temper. + +"It doesn't matter." She spoke flippantly. "I don't care whether he was +or not." + +Gershom laughed. "That sounds good to me even if I take it with a grain +of salt. I was beginning to be afraid that you liked him." + +She turned on him angrily. "What business is that of yours?" + +His amiability, as soon as he had struck fire, became imperturbable. +"Well, I've known you a long time, Patty, and I take an interest in you, +you see. Now, I don't fancy this young Culpeper. He is a conceited sort +of ass like his father before him, the sort that thinks all clover is +his fodder." + +Though Gershom would have scorned philosophy had he ever heard of it, +he was well grounded in that practical knowledge of human perversity +from which all philosophers and most philosophic systems have sprung. +Had his next words been barbed with steel they could not have pierced +Patty's girlish pride more sharply. "I reckon he imagines all he's got +to do is to look sweet at a girl, and she'll fall at his feet." + +Patty's eyes flashed with anger. "He is not unusual in that, is he?" she +asked mockingly. + +"Well, you can't accuse me of that, Patty," said Gershom, with a +sincerity which made him appear less offensively oily. "I never looked +long at but one girl in my life, not since I first saw you, anyway--and +I don't seem ever to have had an idea that she would fall at my feet. +But I didn't bring you out here to begin kidding. I want to talk to you +about the Governor, and I was afraid he would catch on to something if +we stayed indoors." + +"About Father?" She looked at him in alarm. "Is there anything the +matter with Father?" + +Without turning his head, he glanced at her keenly out of the corner of +his eye. It was a trick of his which always irritated her because it +reminded her of the sly and furtive side of his character. + +"You've a pretty good opinion of the old man, haven't you, Patty?" + +"I think he is the greatest man in the world." + +"And you wouldn't like him to run against a snag, would you?" + +"What do you mean? Has anything happened to worry him?" + +He had stopped just beyond the nearest side entrance to the Square, and +he stood now, with his eyes on the automobiles before the City Hall, +while he fingered thoughtfully the ornamental scarf-pin in his green and +purple tie. "There's always more or less to worry him, ain't there?" + +She frowned impatiently. "Not Father. He is hardly ever anything but +cheerful. Please tell me what you are hinting." + +"I wasn't hinting. But, if you don't mind talking to me a minute, +suppose we get away from these confounded cars." + +He turned east, following the iron fence of the Square until they +reached the high grass bank and the old box hedge which surrounded the +garden at the back of the Governor's house. At the corner of the street, +which sank far below the garden terrace, he stopped again and laid a +restraining hand on her arm. + +"He thinks a great deal of you too." + +She shook his hand from her sleeve. "Why shouldn't he? I am his only +child." Then her voice hardened, and she glanced at him suspiciously. "I +wish for once you would try to be honest." + +"Honest?" His amusement was perfectly sincere. "I am as honest as the +day, and I've always been. That's why I'm in politics." + +"Then tell me what you are trying to say about Father. If there's +anything wrong, I'd rather be told at once." + +They were still standing on the deserted corner below the garden, and +while she waited for his answer, she glanced away from him up the side +street, which rose in a steep ascent from the business quarter of the +town. The sun was still high over the distant housetops and the light +turned the brick pavement to a rich red and shot the clouds of gray dust +with silver. The neighbourhood was one which had seen better days, and +some well-built old houses, with red walls and white porches, lent an +air of hospitality and comfortable living to the numerous cheap boarding +places that filled the street. Crowds of children were playing games or +skating on roller skates over the sidewalk; and on the porches a few +listless women gossiped idly; or gazed out over newspapers which they +did not read. + +"Well, there ain't anything wrong exactly--yet," replied Gershom. + +"But there may be, you think?" + +"That depends upon him. If he keeps headed the way he's going, and he's +as stubborn as a mule, there'll be trouble as sure as my name is +Julius." + +"Is that what you've quarrelled about of late--the way he's going?" + +"Bless your heart, honey, we ain't quarrelled! Has it sounded like that +to you? I've just been trying to make him see reason, that's all. He +ain't got a right, you know, to turn against his best friends the way +he's doing. Friends are friends whether you are in office or out, and +there's a lot that a man owes to the folks that have stood by him. I +tell you I know politics from the bottom up, and there ain't no room in +'em for the man--I don't give a darn who he is--that don't stand by his +friends. If he's the President of the United States, he'll find that he +can't afford not to stand by the people who put him there!" + +So this was the trouble! He had let out his grievance at last, and from +the smouldering resentment in his eyes, she understood that some real +or imaginary injustice had put him, for the moment at least, in an ugly +temper. If he had not met her when he left the house, if he had waited +to grow cool, to reflect, he would probably never have taken her into +his confidence. Chance again, she thought, not without bitterness. How +much of the happiness or unhappiness of life depended upon chance! + +"I don't believe it," she returned emphatically. "He always stands by +people." + +"He used to," he replied sullenly, "but that was in the old days when he +needed 'em. The truth is he's got his head turned by his election. He +thinks he's so strong that he can go on alone and keep the crowd at his +back; but he'll find he's mistaken, and that the crowd, when it ain't +worked right from the inside, is a poor thing to depend on. The crowd +does the shouting, but it's a man's friends that start the tune." + +"Are you talking about the strike?" she asked. "I thought he was in +sympathy with the strikers." + +"Oh, he says he is, but he won't prove it." + +She faced him squarely, with her head held high and her eyes cold and +determined. "What do you want me to do? Please don't beat about the bush +any longer." + +He hesitated a moment, and she inferred that he was trying to decide how +far he might venture with safety. "Well, I thought you might speak a +word to him," he said. "He sets such store by what you would like. I +thought you might drop a hint that he ought to stand by his friends." + +"To stand by his friends--that means you," she rejoined. + +"Oh, he'll know quick enough what it means! You must be smart about it, +of course, but I don't mind his knowing that I've been speaking to you. +It's for his own good that I'm talking--for the very minute that the +fellows find out he ain't been on the square with 'em, it will be +'nothing doing' for the Governor." + +"It is a threat, then?" she asked sharply. + +"I'd call it something else if I were you. Look here," he continued +briskly. "You'd like to see the old man go to the Senate, and maybe +higher up, wouldn't you?" + +"Oh, of course. What has that to do with it?" + +He winked and laughed knowingly. "Well, you just take my advice and drop +a hint to him about this business. Then, perhaps, you'll see." + +"If he doesn't take the hint, what will you do?" + +"Ask me that in the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become +offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last +word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever +met in his life." + +She had drawn disdainfully away from him; but at his last words she came +a step nearer. "I'll tell him exactly what you say," she answered; and +then she asked suddenly in a firmer tone: "Have you heard anything more +of my aunt?" + +He looked at her intently. "Why, yes. You hadn't mentioned her again, so +I thought you'd ceased to be interested. Would you like to see her?" he +demanded abruptly after a pause. + +"How can I? I don't know where she is." + +For a minute or two before replying he studied her closely. "I wish you +would let your hair grow out, Patty," he remarked at the end of his +examination, and there was a note of genuine feeling in his bantering. +"I remember how pretty you used to look as a little girl, with your hair +flying behind you like the mane of a pony." + +"Let my hair alone. Do you know where my aunt is?" + +He appeared to yield reluctantly to her insistence. "If you're so bent +on knowing--and, mind you, I tell you only because you make me--she +ain't so very far from where we are standing. I could take you to her in +ten minutes." + +She looked at him as if she scarcely believed his words. "You mean that +she is in town?" + +"Haven't you known me long enough to find out that I always mean what I +say?" + +"Then you can take me to her now?" + +He laughed shortly, and dug the end of his walking stick between the +pavement and the edge of the curbstone. "What do you reckon the Governor +would say to it?" + +"I needn't tell him--not just yet, anyhow. But are you really and truly +sure that she is my mother's sister?" + +"Well, they had the same parents, and I reckon that makes 'em sisters if +anything does. I knew 'em both out yonder in California, and I never +heard anybody suggest they weren't related." + +"Why did she come here? Was it to see me?" + +"Partly that, and partly--well, she's been pretty sick. I reckon she's +likely to go off at any time, and she wanted to be back where she was +born. She had pneumonia two years ago, and then again last winter. Her +lungs are about used up." + +"Then, if I went to see her, I'd better go now, hadn't I?" + +"It would be surer. Something may happen almost any day. That's why I +spoke to you." + +"I am glad you did. If it isn't far, will you take me now?" + +But instead of walking on with her, he dug the end of his stick more +firmly between the pavement and the curbstone. "I don't want to do you +any harm, Patty," he said gently at last. "It may give you a shock to +see her, you know. She's been through some hard times, and she's about +come to the end of her rope. Good Lord, the way life is! When I first +saw her out in California she was one of the prettiest pieces of flesh I +ever laid eyes on. She had something of your look, too, though you +wouldn't believe it now." + +But the girl had already started to cross the street. "Don't let's waste +any time talking. Which way do we go?" + +At her decision his hesitation vanished, and he joined her with a laugh +and a flourish of the diamond ring on the little finger of his left +hand. "Well, you are a sport, Patty! You always were, even when you +weren't much more than knee high to a duck. If you've made up your mind +to go, you won't be blaming me afterward?" + +"Oh, I shan't blame you, of course. Do we turn up this street?" + +"Yes, go ahead. It ain't far--just a little way up Leigh Street." + +They walked on rapidly, and presently, so swift and determined was +Patty's step, Gershom ceased to speak, and only glanced at her now and +then in a furtive and anxious way. There was a look of tragic resolution +on her small face--oh, she was meeting life in earnest, she +reflected--and even to the coarse mind and the dull imagination of the +man beside her, she assumed gradually the appearance of some ethereal +messenger. At the moment she was thinking of Stephen, but this he did +not suspect. He saw only that there was something almost unearthly in +her expression; and he felt the kind of awe that came over him on Sunday +when he entered a church. He wouldn't hurt the girl, he told himself, +with a twinge, for a pocketful of money. + +They had turned into Leigh Street, and had walked some distance in +silence, when Patty asked suddenly without looking round, "Then she +doesn't know I am coming?" + +"I told her I'd bring you whenever I could; but she ain't looking for +you this evening. There, that's the house--the one in the middle, with +that wooden swing and all those kids in the yard." + +He pointed to what had once been a fine old house of stuccoed brick, +with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on +loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red +brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been +white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with +its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of +mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and +well-preserved houses stood on the block, for of the whole +neighbourhood, it appeared to the girl, they had chosen the most +dilapidated dwelling and the one which was most crowded with children. + +"We're here all right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they +ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down +he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? +Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it +again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I +reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly to Patty: "I +always had a soft spot for the kids. Never could pass one in the street +without stopping." + +On the porch, beside a broken perambulator, which contained a black-eyed +baby with a bottle of milk, a stout man sat reading the afternoon paper, +while with one hand he patiently pushed the rickety carriage back and +forth. As they reached the porch, he laid aside his paper, and rose with +his hand still on the perambulator. + +"Oh, it's you," he said, "Mr. Gershom." + +"I've brought this lady to see Mrs. Green," returned Gershom. "How is +she?" + +The stout man shook his head and surveyed Patty curiously but not +discourteously. He had a kindly, humorous look, and she felt at once +that she preferred his blunt frankness to Gershom's facetious +insincerity. There was something in his face that suggested the +black-eyed baby sucking placidly at the rubber nipple on the bottle of +milk. + +"She's worse if anything. The doctor came this morning." The baby, +having dropped the bottle, lifted a despairing wail, and the father bent +over and replaced the nipple gently between the quivering lips. "The +rent was due yesterday," he added, "I understood that there was to be no +trouble about it." + +"Oh, there's no trouble about that. I'm responsible," replied Gershom +quickly. He was about to pass on; but changing his mind, he stopped and +drew out his pocket book. "I'll settle it now. Are there any extras?" + +"Yes, she's had to have eggs and milk, and there have been medicines. It +comes to twelve dollars in all. I'll show you the account." + +"Very well. Get anything that she needs." Then, as Gershom followed +Patty into the hall, he pointed to the fine old staircase. "It's the +back room. Go straight up. You ain't timid, are you?" + +"Timid? Oh, no." Running lightly up the stairs, the girl hesitated a +moment before the half-open door of the room at the back of the house. +Then, in obedience to a gesture from Gershom as he pushed the door +wider, she crossed the threshold, and went rapidly toward a couch in +front of the window. As she went forward there floated to her a heavy, +sweetish scent which seemed to her to be the very breath of despair. Her +first thought was that the sun had gone under a cloud; the next instant +she perceived that the window was shaded by a ragged ailantus tree and +that beyond the tree there was a high brick wall which shut out the +daylight. Then she looked at the woman lying under a ragged blanket on +the couch; and she felt vaguely that the haggard features framed in +coarse black hair awakened a troubled sense of familiarity or +recognition. The next instant there returned to her the memory of her +walk in the Square with Corinna a few weeks before, and of the strange +woman who had looked at them so curiously. + +"I have come to see you," she began gently, "Mr. Gershom brought me." + +Raising her head, the woman stared at her without replying. Her eyes +were dull and heavy, with drooping lids beneath which a sombre glow +flickered and died down. There was a wan yellow tinge over her face; and +yet now that the approach of death had refined and purified her +features, she was not without a gravity of expression which made her +strangely impressive, like some wax mask of an avenging Fate. With a +sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a +calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a +single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which +seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla +lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the +close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the +sickening sweetish odour with which she was unfamiliar, the waxen mask +and the blank, drooping eyes of the woman; all these things seemed to +exist not in her actual surroundings, but in some hideous dream from +which she was struggling to awake. Somewhere long ago, in a dreadful +nightmare, she had smelled that cloying scent and seen those half-shut +eyes looking back at her. Somewhere--and yet it was impossible. She +could only have imagined it all. + +Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's +daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?" + +"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me." + +"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over +her expressionless eyes. "Oh, you mean Julius. Yes, I told him I wanted +to see you." A quiver of animation passed like a spasm over her +features, and she inquired eagerly, "Where is he? Did he come?" + +"I'm here all right," said Gershom, stepping briskly into the range of +her vision. + +She gazed up at him as he approached her with the look of a famished +animal, a look so little human and so full of physical hunger that Patty +turned her eyes again to the calla lily on the window-sill, and then to +the young green on the ailantus tree and the brick wall beyond. To the +girl it seemed that minutes must have gone by before the next words +came. "You brought the medicine?" + +"Yes, I brought it. The doctor gave it to me; but it is hard to get, and +he said you were to have it only on condition that you do everything +that we tell you." + +"Oh, I will, I will." She reached out her hand eagerly for the package +he had taken from his coat pocket; and when Patty looked at her again a +curious change had passed over her face, revivifying it with the colour +of happiness. "I have been in such pain--such pain," she whispered. "I +was afraid it would come back before you came. Oh, I was so afraid." +Then she added hurriedly: "Is that all? Did you bring nothing else?" + +Though a look of embarrassment crossed his face, he carried off the +difficult situation with his characteristic assurance. "The doctor sent +you a little stimulant. Perhaps I'd better give you a dose now. It +might pick you up." Taking a bottle from his pocket, he poured some +whiskey into a glass and added a little water from a pitcher on the +table. "There, now," he remarked, with genuine sympathy as he held the +glass to her lips. "You'll begin to feel better in a minute. This young +lady can't stay but a little while, so you'd better try to buck up." + +"I'll try," answered the woman obediently. "I'll try--but it isn't easy +to come back out of hell." Lifting her head from the pillow, as if it +were a dead weight that did not belong to her, she stared at Patty while +her tormented mind made an effort to remember. In a minute her mouth +worked pathetically, and she burst into tears. "I can't come back now, I +can't come back now," she repeated in a whimpering tone. "But I'll be +better before long, and then I want to see you. There are things I want +to tell you when I get the strength. I can't think of them now, but they +are things about Gideon Vetch." + +"About Father?" asked the girl, and her voice trembled. + +The woman stopped crying, and looked up appealingly, while she wiped her +eyes on the ragged edge of the blanket. "Yes, about Gideon Vetch. That's +his name, ain't it?" + +"I wouldn't talk any more now, if I were you," said Gershom, putting his +hand gently on her pillow. "We'll come again when you're feeling +spryer." + +The woman nodded. "Yes, come again. Bring her again." + +"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty reassuringly; but +instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla +lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I +want you to tell me about my mother--everything. I remember her just +once, the night before they took her to the asylum. She was in spangled +skirts that stood out like a ballet dancer's, and there was a crown of +stars on her hair and a star on the end of the wand she carried. I +remember it all just as plainly as if it were yesterday--though they +tell me I was too little--" + +She broke off because the woman was gazing at her so strangely. "You +were too little," she cried, and burst into hysterical weeping. "I can't +stand it," she said wildly. "I never had a chance, and I can't stand +it." + +"I think we'd better go," said Gershom. It amazed Patty to find how +gentle he could be when his sympathy was touched. "I oughtn't to have +brought you to-day." Turning away, he left the room hurriedly, as if the +scene were too much for him. + +At this the woman controlled herself with a convulsive effort. "No, I +wanted to see you," she said. "You are pretty, but you aren't prettier +than your mother was at your age." + +For a moment the girl looked pityingly down on her. "I hope you will +soon be better," she responded in a tone which she tried to make +sympathetic in spite of the physical shrinking she felt. "Let me know +when you wish to see me, and I will come back." + +The woman shivered. "Do you mean that?" she asked. "Will you come when I +send for you? I want to see you again--once--before I die." + +"I promise you that I will come. I'll send you something, too, and so +will Father." + +"Gideon Vetch," said the woman very slowly, as if she were trying to +hold the name in her consciousness before it slipped away from her. +"Gideon Vetch." + +As the girl broke away and ran out of the room that expressionless +repetition followed her into the hall and down the staircase, growing +fainter and fainter like the voice of one who is falling asleep: +"_Gideon Vetch. Gideon Vetch._" + +On the porch, where the stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty +found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby +in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his +face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the +clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When +Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully +tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind of thought +the little one might like a chance to get out of that buggy," he +observed, while he straightened himself briskly, and adjusted his tie. + +"She must be very ill," said the girl, as they went out of the gate and +turned down the street. + +"A sure thing," replied Gershom concisely. Then he whistled sharply, and +added, "Rotten, that's what I call it." + +"She said she'd never had a chance," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "I +wonder what she meant." + +The funereal expression spread like a pall over Gershom's features, but +his intermittent whistle sounded as sprightly as ever. "Well, how many +folks in this world have ever had what you might call a decent chance?" +he asked. + +"I don't know. I hadn't thought." The girl looked depressed and +puzzled. "It's a dreadful thing to think that nobody cares when you're +dying." Then her tone grew more hopeful. "Do you suppose anybody thinks +that Father never had a chance?" she asked. + +Gershom broke into a laugh. "Well, if he had it, you may be pretty sure +that he made it himself," he retorted. + +"Then I wish he could make some for other people." + +"He says he's trying to, doesn't he? But between us, Patty, my child, +you won't forget what you have to say to the old man, will you?" + +"What have I to say? Oh, you mean about standing by his friends?" + +"That's just it. You tell him from yours truly that the best thing he +can do all round is to stick fast to his friends." + +"And that means the strikers?" + +"It means what I tell you." + +"Well, I'll repeat exactly what you say; it won't make any difference if +his mind is made up." + +"Maybe so. Are you going to tell him where you've been?" + +"I don't know. I hate to worry him; but that poor woman must need help." + +"Oh, she needs it. We all need it," remarked Gershom flippantly. Then, +as they reached the entrance to the Square, he held out his hand. "Well, +I'm off now, and I hope you aren't feeling any worse because of your +visit. The world ain't made of honeycomb, you know, and there's no use +pretending it is. But you're a darn good sport, Patty. You're as good a +sport as I ever struck up with in this little affair of life." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +MYSTIFICATION + + +Walking slowly home across the Square, Patty told herself that the +future had been taken out of her hands. She seemed to have been moved +mentally, if not bodily, into another world, into a world where the +sleepy old Square, wrapped in a soft afternoon haze, still existed, but +from which Stephen Culpeper had vanished in a rosy cloud. She did not +know why she had relinquished the thought of Stephen since her visit to +the house in East Leigh Street; but some deep instinct warned her that +she had widened the gulf between them by her excursion with Gershom. "I +can't help it," she thought sensibly enough. "There wasn't anything in +it before that, and I might as well go ahead and stop thinking about +it." Her anger at Stephen's neglect had melted into a vague and +impersonal resentment, a resentment, rather for the dying woman than for +herself, against all the needless cruelties of life. Even Gershom, even +the unspeakable Gershom, had had discernment enough to see that +something good in that poor woman had been blighted and crushed. Was it +true that no one was ever given the chance to be one's best? Was this +true, not only of that dying woman, but of her father and Stephen and +Corinna and herself and all human beings everywhere? + +Lingering a moment near the Washington monument, she stood watching the +straggling groups that were crossing the Square. Bit by bit, snatches +of conversation drifted into her mind and then blew out again, leaving +scarcely the shadow of an impression. "They tell me it's going up. I +don't know, but I'll find out to-morrow." "I wouldn't wear one of those +things for a million dollars, and he says--" "Yes, I've arranged to go +unless the strike should be called next week." + +The strike? Oh, she had almost forgotten it! She had almost forgotten +the message she had promised to deliver to her father. With a gesture +that appeared to sweep her last remaining illusion behind her, she +started resolutely up the drive to the house. After all, whatever came, +she would not let them think that she was either afraid of life or +disappointed in love. She would not mope, and she would not show the +white feather. On one point she was passionately determined--no man, by +any method known to the drama of sex, was going to break her heart! + +She had quickened her steps while she made her resolve; and, a minute +later, she broke into a run when she saw that Corinna's car stood at the +door and that Corinna waited for her in the hall. Had the girl only +realized it, Corinna's heart also was troubled; and the visit was one +result of the discouraging talk she had had recently with Stephen. + +"I had to go down town, so I stopped on the way back to speak to you." +Though she said no word of her anxiety, Patty could hear it in every +note of her expressive voice and feel it in the protective pressure of +her arm. "I want you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance Wednesday +night, and I want you to look your very prettiest." + +"But I'm not even asked." + +"Oh, you are. Mrs. Harrison has just told me she was sending your +invitation with a number that had not gone out." How like Corinna it was +to put it that way! "They are giving it for that English girl who is +staying with them. She is pretty, but you must look ever so much +prettier. I want you to wear that green and silver dress that makes you +look like a mermaid." The kind voice, so full of sympathy, so forgetful +of self, flooded Patty's heart like sunshine after darkness. + +"I will go, if you wish me to," she answered, raising Corinna's hand to +her cheek. And the thought flashed through her mind, "Stephen will be +there. Even if everything is over, I'd like him to see me." + +"I'll come for you a little before ten," said Corinna; and then, as the +door of the library opened and Vetch came out, she added hurriedly: "I +must go now. Remember to look your prettiest." + +"No, don't go," begged Patty. "Father will be so disappointed." She had +remembered the message, and she felt that Corinna, whose wisdom was +infallible, might help her to understand it. Though it had sounded so +casual on the surface, her natural sagacity detected both a warning and +a menace; and the very touch of Corinna's hand, in her long white glove, +was reassuring and helpful. + +Whatever may have threatened Vetch, he seemed oblivious of it as he came +forward with his hearty greeting. "It's queer," he said, "but something +told me you were here. I looked out to make sure." His simple pleasure +touched Corinna like the artless joy of a child. It was impossible to +resist his magnetism, she thought, as she looked up into his sanguine +face, for what was it, after all, except an unaffected enjoyment of +little things, an unconquerable belief in life? + +"I stopped to ask Patty about a dance," she explained. "I must go on +immediately." + +He glanced at the girl a little anxiously. "Is she going to a party with +you? I am glad." + +In spite of his buoyant manner, there was an abstracted look in his +eyes, as if his mind were working at a distance while he talked. After +the first minute or two Patty observed this and it helped her to make +her decision. "Are you busy, Father?" she asked. "I promised Mr. Gershom +that I would give you a message--such a silly message it is too." + +"Gershom?" He repeated, and his face darkened. "What did he say to you? +No, don't go, Mrs. Page. Come into the library, and let us have the +message." + +Corinna glanced uncertainly over her shoulder. "I really must be going," +she murmured, and then yielding suddenly either to inclination or to the +pressure of Patty's hand, she crossed the threshold of the library and +walked over to the front window. Outside, beyond the yard and the +grotesque fountain, she saw the splendid outline of Washington, and +beyond this the faint afternoon haze above the spires and chimneys of +the city. "The sun will go down soon. I must hurry," she thought; yet +she stood there, without moving, looking out on the monument and the +sky. For a moment she gazed in silence; then turning quickly, she +glanced with smiling eyes about the small, stiffly furnished room, with +the leather chairs and couch and the business looking writing-table in +the centre of the floor. + +"How comfortable you look here," she observed lightly, "and how +business-like." + +"Yes, I work here a good deal in the evenings." He turned a chair toward +the window, and when she sat down, he remained for a minute still +standing, with his hand on the back of the chair, smiling thoughtfully +not at her, but at the disarray on his desk. The glow of pleasure which +the sight of her had brought was still in his face; and she thought that +she had never seen him so nearly good-looking. It occurred to her now, +as it had done so often before, that in the hour of trouble he would be +like a rock to lean on. However else he might fail, she surmised that in +human relations he would be for ever dependable. And what was life, +after all, except a complex and intricate blend of human relations? She +decided suddenly and positively that she had always liked Gideon Vetch. +She liked the way his broad bulging forehead swept back into his sandy +hair, which was quite gray on the temples; she liked the contrast +between the quizzical humour in his eyes and the earnest expression of +his generous mouth with its deep corners. He stood in her mind for the +straight and simple things of life, and she had lost her way so often +among the bewildering ramification of human motives. He had no trivial +words, she knew. He was incapable of "making conversation"; and she, who +had been bred in a community of ceaseless chatter, was mentally +refreshed by the sincerity of his interest. It was as restful, she said +to herself now, as a visit to the country. + +"So Gershom asked you to give me a message?" remarked Vetch abruptly to +Patty. "Where did you see him?" + +"He joined me when I went out," replied Patty, speaking slowly and +carefully with her eyes on Corinna. "I tried to slip away, but he +wouldn't let me. He asked me to speak to you about something that was +worrying him, and a great many others, he said. He didn't put it into +words, but I think he meant the strike--" + +Vetch looked up quickly. "Oh, that is worrying him, is it?" + +"What is it all about, Father? Why are they going to strike?" + +"Can you answer that, Mrs. Page?" The Governor turned to Corinna with a +sportive gesture, as if he were casting upon her the burden of a reply. +His smile was sketched so faintly about his mouth that it seemed merely +to emphasize the gravity of his expression. + +"I?" Corinna looked round with a start of surprise. "Why, what should I +know of it?" + +"Then they don't talk about it where you are?" + +"Oh, yes, they talk about it a great deal." She appeared to hesitate, +and then added with deliberate audacity, "but they think that you know +more about it than any one else." + +He did not smile as he answered her. "Do they expect the men to strike?" + +Though she made a graceful gesture of evasion, she met his question +frankly. "They expect them to, I gather--unless you prevent it." + +A shade of irritation crossed his features. "How can I prevent it? They +have a right to stop work." + +"They seem to think, the people I know, that it depends upon how safe +the leaders think it will be." + +"How safe? I can't tie their hands, can I?" + +"Of course I am only repeating what I hear." She gazed at him with +friendly eyes. "No one could know less about it than I do." + +"People are saying, I suppose," he continued in a tone of exasperation, +"that these men had an understanding with me before I came into office. +They seem to think that I can make the strike a success by standing +aside and holding my hands. That, of course, is pure nonsense. If the +men want to stop work, nobody has a right to interfere with them. +Certainly I haven't. But have they the right--the question hangs on this +point--to interfere with the farmers who want to get their crops to +market as badly as the strikers want to quit work? The kind of general +strike these people have in mind bears less relation to industry than it +does to war; and you know what I think about war and the rights of +non-combatants. They want to tie up the whole system of transportation +until they starve their opponents into submission. The old damnable +Prussian theory again, you see, that crops up wherever men take the +stand, which they do everywhere they have the power, that might is a law +unto itself. Now, I am with these men exactly half way, and no further. +As long as their method of striking doesn't interfere with the rights of +the public, they seem to me fair enough. But when it comes to raising +the price of food still higher and cutting off the city milk +supply--well, when they talk of that, then I begin to think of the human +side of it." He broke off abruptly, and concluded in a less serious +tone, "that's the only thing in the whole business I care about--the +human side of it all--" + +A phrase of Benham's floated suddenly into her mind, and she found +herself repeating it aloud: "There are no human rights where a principle +is involved." + +Vetch laughed. "That's not you; it's Benham. I recognize it. He's the +sort that would believe that, I suppose--the sort that would write a +political document in blood if he didn't have ink." + +"Oh, don't!" she protested. There was a grain of truth in the epigram, +but she resented it the more keenly for this. + +"Well, I may have intended it as a compliment," rejoined Vetch gaily. +"He would take it that way, I reckon. And, anyhow, you have heard him +make worse flings at me." + +She coloured, admitting and denying at the same time, the truth of his +words. "You could never understand each other. You are so different." + +He looked at her gravely; but even gravity could not wholly drive the +gleam of humour from his eyes. "At any rate I admire Benham. I have the +advantage of him there." The quickness of his wit made her smile. "But, +as you say, we are different," he added after a moment. "I reckon I've +turned my hand at times to jobs of which Benham would disapprove; but +I'd be hanged before I'd write the greatest document ever penned +in--well, in the blood of one of those squirrels out yonder in the +Square!" + +As he finished he turned his face toward the window, and following his +gaze, she saw the sunlight sparkling like amber wine on the rich grass +and the delicate green of the trees. As she looked back at him, she +wondered what his past could have been--how deep, how complex, how +varied was his experience of life? She was aware again of that curiously +primitive attraction which she had felt the other afternoon in the +shop. It was as if he appealed, not to the beliefs and sentiments with +which life had obscured and muffled her nature, but to some buried self +beneath the self that she and the world knew, to some ancient instinct +which was as deep as the oldest forests of earth. After all, was there a +hidden self, a buried forest within her soul which she had never +discovered? + +"But Patty has not given you her message!" she exclaimed, startled and +confused by the strangeness of the sensation. + +"Oh, there isn't much to tell," answered Patty, wondering if she could +ever learn, even if she practised every day, to speak and move like +Corinna. "It was only that you ought to stand by your friends." + +"To stand by my friends," repeated Vetch; then he drew in his breath +with a whistling sound. "Well, I like his impudence!" he exclaimed. + +Corinna rose with a laugh. "So do I," she observed, "and he seems to +possess it in abundance." Then she folded Patty in a light and fragrant +embrace. "You must be the belle of the ball," she said. "I have a genius +for being a chaperon." + +When she had gone, and they watched her car pass the monument, the girl +turned back into the hall, with her hand clinging tightly to Vetch's +arm. + +"Father, what do you suppose that message meant?" + +"Is it obliged to mean anything?" + +"Things generally do, don't they?" + +Vetch smiled as he looked down at her; but his smile conveyed anxiety +rather than amusement to her observant eyes. "Oh, if things are said by +Gershom, they generally mean hell," he responded. "Perhaps I'll find +out Thursday night; there's to be a meeting then, and it looks as if +somebody might make trouble." Then he patted her shoulder. "Don't worry +about Gershom, honey," he added in the way he used to speak when she +fell and hurt herself as a child. "Don't worry your mind about Gershom. +I'll take care of him." + +It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was not worrying +about Gershom, but about the woman dying all alone in that dark room in +Leigh Street. If he had only looked less disturbed she might have done +so; and when she thought of it afterward, she understood that frankness +would have been by far the wiser course. However, while she wondered +what she ought to say, the opportunity slipped by, and the ringing of +the telephone on his desk called him away from her. + +Corinna, meanwhile, was rolling down the drive over the slanting shadows +of the linden trees. She looked thoughtful, for she was trying to decide +what it was about Vetch that made her believe in him so profoundly when +she was with him and yet begin to distrust him as soon as she got far +enough away to gain a perspective? Gossip probably, she reflected. When +she was with him her confidence was the natural response of her own +unbiassed perceptions; when she left him she passed immediately into an +atmosphere that was charged with the suspicions of other people. She +remembered the stories, true or false, which had been hinted and +whispered before the last election. Malicious gossip that, and as +unfounded no doubt as the rest. She recalled the muttered insinuations +of fraudulent political stratagems, of what Benham had called the +Governor's weathercock principles. In Vetch's presence, she realized +that she invariably lost sight of these structural or surface blemishes, +and judged him by some standard which was different from the one she had +inherited with the shape of her nose and the colour of her eyes. What +troubled her was not so much the riddle of Vetch's personality as the +fact that there was another mental world beyond the one she had always +inhabited, and that this other world was filled, like her own, with +obscure moral and spiritual images. + +As she approached the club at the corner she saw Benham come out of the +door; and stopping the car she waited, smiling, until he joined her. +While she watched him cross the pavement, she rejoiced in the +thoroughbred fineness and thinness of his appearance--in his clear-cut +Roman features and in the impenetrable reticence of his expression. Yes, +she loved him as well as she could love any man; and that, she told +herself, with a touch of cynical amusement, was just so much and no +more, just enough to bring happiness, but not enough to bring pain. + +"I'll take you home," she said, as he reached her, and there seemed to +her something delightful and romantic in this accidental meeting. + +"What luck!" The severity melted from his features while he took his +place beside her. "I was thinking only this morning that I owe a +sacrifice to the god of chance. May I tell the man to drop me at my +rooms?" + +She nodded, watching him contentedly while he spoke to the chauffeur and +then turned to look at her with his level impersonal gaze. Happiness had +brought the youth back to her face. Her hair swept like burnished wings +under her small close hat, and the eyes that she raised to his were dark +and splendid. There was about her always in moments of happiness the +look of a beauty too bright to last or to grow old; and now, in this +last romance of her life, she appeared to be drenched in autumn +sunshine. + +"One does want to make sacrifices," she answered. "That is the penalty +of joy. One can scarcely believe in it before it goes." + +"Well, I believe in this. You are very lovely. Where have you been?" + +"To the Governor's. I wanted to speak to Patty. I feel sorry for Patty +to-day. I feel sorry for almost every one," she added, with an +enchanting smile, "except myself." + +"And me. Surely you don't waste your pity on me? But what of Miss Vetch? +Hasn't she her own particular happiness?" + +"I wonder--" Then, without finishing her sentence, she left the subject +of Patty because she surmised from Benham's tone that he would not be +sympathetic. "I had a long talk with the Governor. John, what do you +think will come of the strike?" + +He answered her question with another. "What did he tell you?" + +"Nothing except that the men have a right to strike if they wish to." + +He laughed. "Well, that's safe enough. But don't talk of Vetch. I +dislike him so heartily that I have a sneaking feeling I may be unjust +to him." + +It was so like him, that fine impersonal sense of fairness, that her +eyes warmed with admiration. "That is splendid," she responded. "It is +just the kind of thing that Vetch could never feel." Suddenly she knew +that she was ashamed of having believed in Vetch when she contrasted him +with John Benham. How could she have imagined for an instant that the +Governor could stand a comparison like this? + +He pressed her hand as the car stopped before the apartment house where +he lived. "In a few hours I shall see you again," he said; and his +voice, in its eagerness, reminded her of the voice of Kent Page when he +had made love to her in her girlhood. Ah, she had learned wisdom since +then! Just so much and no more, that was the secret of happiness. Give +with the mind and the heart; but keep always one inviolable sanctity of +the spirit--of the buried self beneath the self. + +The streets were almost deserted; and as the car went on, Corinna +thought that she had never seen the city look so fresh and charming. +Through the long green vista of the trees, there was a shimmer of silver +air, and wrapped in this sparkling veil, she saw the bronze statues and +the ardent glow of the sunset. Everything at which she looked was +steeped in a wonderful golden light; and this light seemed to come, not +from the burning horizon, but from the happiness that flooded her +thoughts. She saw the world again as she had seen it in her first youth, +suffused with joy that was like the vivid freshness of dawn. The long +white road, the arching trees, the glittering dust, the spring flowers +blooming in gardens along the roadside, the very faces of the people who +passed her; all these things at which she looked were illuminated by +this radiance which seemed, in some strange way, to shine not without +but within her heart. "It is too beautiful to last," she said to +herself in a whisper. "It is youth, more beautiful even than the +reality, come back again for an hour--for one little hour before it goes +out for ever." + +Then, because it seemed safer as well as wiser to be practical, to +discourage wild dreaming, she tried to direct her thoughts to +insignificant details. Yet even here that rare golden light penetrated +to the innermost recesses of her mind; and each drab uninteresting fact +glittered with a fresh interest and charm. "I forgot to order that +cretonne for the porch," she thought disconnectedly, in an endeavour to +conciliate the Fates by pretending that life was as commonplace as it +had always been. "That black background with the blue larkspur is +pretty--and I must have the porch furniture repainted the blue-green +that they do so well in Italy. That reminds me that Patty must be the +belle of the dance in her green dress. I shall see that she has no lack +of partners--at least I can manage that;--if I cannot make her happy. I +am sorry for the child--if only Stephen--but, no--I left the book I was +reading in the shop. What was the name of it? Silly and sentimental! Why +will people always write things they don't mean and know are not true +about love? Yes, the black background with the blue larkspur was the +best that I saw. I wonder what I did with the sample. Oh, why can't +everybody be happy?" + +The car turned out of the road into the avenue of elms, which led to the +Georgian house of red brick, with its quaint hooded doorway. In front of +the door there was a flagged walk edged with box; and after the car had +gone, Corinna followed this walk to the back of the house, where rows of +white and purple iris were blooming on the garden terrace. For a moment +she looked on the garden as one who loved it; then turning reluctantly, +she ascended the steps, and entered the door which a coloured servant +held open. + +"A lady's in there waiting for you," said the man, who having lost the +dialect, still retained the dramatic gestures of his race. "She would +wait, and she says she can't go without seeing you." + +With a faintness of the heart rather than the mind, Corinna looked +through the doorway, and saw the face of Alice Rokeby glimmering +narcissus white in the dusk of the drawing-room. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE SIXTH SENSE + + +As Corinna went forward, with that strange premonitory chill at her +heart, it seemed to her that all the fragrance of the garden floated +toward her with a piercing sweetness that was the very essence of youth +and spring. Through the wide-open French windows she could see the +garden terrace, the pale rows of iris, and the straight black cedars +rising against the pomegranate-coloured light of the afterglow. A few +tall white candles were shining in old silver candlesticks; but it was +by the vivid tint in the sky that she saw the large, frightened eyes of +the woman who was waiting for her. + +"If I had only known you were here, I should have hurried home," began +Corinna cordially. Drawing a chair close to her visitor, she sat down +with a movement that was protecting and reassuring. Her quick sympathies +were already aroused. She surmised that Alice Rokeby had come to her +because she was in trouble; and it was not in Corinna's nature to refuse +to hear or to help any one who appealed to her. + +Alice threw back her lace veil as if she were stifled by the transparent +mesh. "In the shop there are so many interruptions," she answered. "I +wanted to see you--" Breaking off hurriedly, she hesitated an instant, +and then repeated nervously, "I wanted to see you--" + +Corinna smiled at her. "Would you like to go out into the garden? May +is so lovely there." + +"No, it is very pleasant here." Alice made a vague, helpless gesture +with her small hands, and said for the third time, "I wanted to see +you--" + +"I am afraid you are not well." Corinna spoke very gently. "Perhaps it +is not too late for tea, or may I get you a glass of wine? All winter +I've intended to go and inquire because I heard you'd been ill. It has +been so long since we really saw anything of each other; but I remember +you quite well as a little girl--such a pretty little girl you were too. +You are ever so much younger, at least ten years younger, than I am." + +As she rippled on, trying to give the other time to recover herself, she +thought how lovely Alice had once been, and how terribly she had broken +since her divorce and her illness. She would always be appealing--the +kind of woman with whom men easily fell in love--but one so soon reached +the end of mere softness and prettiness. + +"Yes, you were one of the older girls," answered Alice, "and I admired +you so much. I used to sit on the front porch for hours to watch you go +by." + +"And then I went abroad, and we lost sight of each other." + +"We both married, and I got a divorce last year." + +"I heard that you did." It seemed futile to offer sympathy. + +"My marriage was a mistake. I was very unhappy. I have had a hard life," +said Alice, and her lower lip, as soft as a baby's, trembled nervously. +How little character there was in her face, how little of anything +except that indefinable allurement of sex! + +"I know," responded Corinna consolingly. She felt so strong beside this +helpless, frightened woman that the old ache to comfort, to heal pain, +was like a pang in her heart. + +"Everything has failed me," murmured Alice, with the restless volubility +of a weak nature. "I thought there was something that would make up for +what I had missed--something that would help me to live--but that has +failed me like everything else--" + +"Things will fail," assented Corinna, with sympathy, "if we lean too +hard on them." + +A delicate flush had come into Alice's face, bringing back for a moment +her old flower-like loveliness. Her fine brown hair drooped in a wave on +her forehead, and beneath it her violet eyes were deep and wistful. + +"What a beautiful room!" she said in a quivering voice. "And the garden +is like one in an old English song." + +"Yes, I hardly know which I love best--my garden or my shop." + +The words were so far from Corinna's thoughts that they seemed to drift +to her from some distant point in space, out of the world beyond the +garden and the black brows of the cedars. They were as meaningless as +the wind that brought them, or the whirring of the white moth at the +window. Beneath her vacant words and expressionless gestures, which were +like the words and gestures of an automaton, she was conscious of a +profound current of feeling which flowed steadily between Alice Rokeby +and herself; and on this current there was borne all the inarticulate +burden of womanhood. "Poor thing, she wants me to help her," she +thought; but aloud she said only: "The roses are doing so well this +year. They will be the finest I have ever had." + +Suddenly Alice lowered her veil and rose. "I must go. It is late," she +said, and held out her hand. Then, while she stood there, with her hand +still outstretched, all that she had left unspoken appeared to rush over +her in a torrent, and she asked rapidly, while her lips jerked like the +lips of a hurt child, "Is it true, Corinna, that you are going to marry +John Benham?" + +For an instant Corinna looked at her without speaking. The sympathy in +her heart ceased as quickly as a fountain that is stopped; and she was +conscious only of that lifeless chill with which she had entered the +room. Now that the question had come, she knew that she had dreaded it +from the first moment her eyes had rested on the face of her visitor, +that she had expected it from the instant when she had heard that a +woman awaited her in the house. It was something of which she had been +aware, and yet of which she had been scarcely conscious--as if the +knowledge had never penetrated below the surface of her perceptions. And +it would be so easy, she knew, to evade it now as she had evaded it from +the beginning, to push to-day into to-morrow for the rest of her life. +Nothing stood in her way; nothing but that deep instinct for truth on +which, it seemed to her now, most of her associations with men had been +wrecked. Then, because she was obliged to obey the law of her nature, +she answered simply, "Yes, we expect to be married." + +A strangled sound broke from Alice's lips, but she bit it back before it +had formed into a word. The hand that she had thrown out blindly fell on +the fringe of her gown, and she began knitting it together with +trembling fingers. "Has he--does he care for you?" she asked presently +in that hurried voice. + +For the second time Corinna hesitated; and in that instant of +hesitation, she broke irrevocably with the past and with the iron rule +of tradition. She knew how her mother, how her grandmother, how all the +strong and quiet women of her race would have borne themselves in a +crisis like this--the implications and evasions which would have walled +them within the garden that was their world. Her mother, she realized, +would have been as incapable of facing the situation as she would have +been of creating it. + +"Yes, he cares for me," she answered frankly; and then, before the +terror that leaped into the eyes of the other woman, as if she longed to +turn and run out of the house, Corinna touched her gently on the +shoulder. "Don't look like that!" It was unendurable to her +compassionate heart that she should have brought that look into the eyes +of any living creature. + +She led Alice back to the chairs they had left; and when the servant +came in to turn on the softly shaded lamps, they sat there, facing each +other, in a silence which seemed to Corinna to be louder than any sound. +There was the noise of wonder in it, and tragedy, and something vaguely +menacing to which she could not give a name. It was fear, and yet it was +not fear because it was so much worse. Only the blank terror in Alice's +face, the terror of the woman who has lost hope, could express what it +meant. And this terror translated into sound asked presently: + +"Are--are you sure?" + +A wave of pity surged through Corinna's heart. Her strength became to +her something on which she could rest--which would not fail her; and +she understood why she had had to meet so many disappointments in life, +why she had had to bear so much that was almost unbearable. It was +because, however strong emotion was in her nature, there was always +something deep down in her that was stronger than any emotion. She had +been ruled not by passion but by law, by some clear moral discernment of +things as they ought to be; and this was why weak persons, or those who +were the prey to their own natures, leaned on her with all their weight. +In that instant of self-realization she knew that the refuge of the weak +would be for ever denied her, that she should always be alone because +she was strong enough to rely on her own spirit. + +"Before I answer your question," she said, "I must know if you have the +right to ask it." + +The wistful eyes grew bright again. How graceful she was, thought +Corinna as she watched her; and she knew that this woman, with her +clinging sweetness, like the sweetness of honeysuckle, and her shallow +violence of mood, could win the kind of love that had been denied to her +own royal beauty. This other woman was the ephemeral incarnate, the +thing for which men gave their lives. She was nothing; and therefore +every man would see in her the reflection of what he desired. + +"I have the right," she answered desperately, without pride and without +shame. "I had the right before I got my divorce--" + +"I understand," said Corinna, and her voice was scarcely more than a +breath. Though she did not withdraw the hand that the other had taken, +she looked away from her through the French window, into the garden +where the twilight was like the bloom on a grape. The fragrance became +suddenly intolerable. It seemed to her to be the scent not only of +spring, but of death also, the ghost of all the sweetness that she had +missed. "I shall never be able to bear the smell of spring again in my +life," she thought. She had made no movement of surprise or resentment, +for there was neither surprise nor resentment in her heart. There was +pain, which was less pain than a great sadness; and there was the +thought that she was very lonely; that she must always be lonely. Many +thoughts passed through her mind; but beyond them, stretching far away +into the future, she saw her own life like a deserted road filled with +dead leaves and the sound of distant voices that went by. She could +never find rest, she knew. Rest was the one thing that had been denied +her--rest and love. Her destiny was the destiny of the strong who must +give until they have nothing left, until their souls are stripped bare. +"He must have cared for you," she said at last. Oh, how empty words +were! How empty and futile! + +"He could never care again like that for any one else," replied Alice, +reaching out her hand as if she were pushing away an object she feared. +"Whatever he thinks now, he could never care that much again." + +Whatever he thinks now! A smile tinged with bitter knowledge flickered +on Corinna's lips for an instant. After all, how little, how very little +she knew of John Benham. She had seen the face he turned to the world; +she had seen the crude outside armour of his public conscience. A laugh +broke from her at the phrase because she remembered that Vetch had first +used it. This other woman had entered into the secret chamber, the +hidden places, of John Benham's life; she had been a part of the light +and darkness of his soul. To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his +dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the +discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, +had been overthrown. Certainly in their serene and sentimental +association she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of +that earlier passion. Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even +in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths +of his nature. It was Alice Rokeby--frightened, shallow, desperate, +deserted, whom he had loved. + +"What do you want?" she asked quietly. "What do you wish me to do?" + +"Oh, I don't know!" replied Alice. "I don't know. I haven't thought--but +there ought to be something. There ought to be something more permanent +than love for one to live by." + +In her anguish she had wrung a profound truth from experience; and as +soon as she had uttered it, she lifted her pale face and stared with +that mournful interrogation into the twilight. Something permanent to +live by! In the mute desperation of her look she appeared to be +searching the garden, the world, and the immense darkness of the sky, +for an answer. The afterglow had faded slowly into the blue dusk of +night; only a faint thread of gold still lingered beyond the cedars on +the western horizon. Something permanent and indestructible! Was this +what humanity had struggled for--had lived and fought and died +for--since man first came up out of the primeval jungle? Where could one +find unalterable peace if it were not high above the ebb and flow of +desire? She herself might break away from codes and customs; but she +could not break away from the strain of honour, of simple rectitude, +which was in her blood and had made her what she was. + +"Yes, there ought to be something. There is something," she said slowly. +Though her hand still clasped Alice Rokeby's, she was gazing beyond her +across the terrace into the garden. She thought of many things while she +sat there, with that look of clairvoyance, of radiant vision, in her +eyes. Of Alice Rokeby as a little girl in a white dress, with a blue +hair ribbon that would never stay tied; of John Benham when she had +played ball with him in her childhood; of Kent Page and that young love, +so poignant while it lasted, so utterly dead when it was over; of her +long, long search for perfection, for something that would not pass +away; of the brief pleasures and the vain expectations of life; of the +gray deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of voices far +off--Nothing but dead leaves and distant voices that went by! In spite +of her beauty, her brilliance, her gallant heart, this was what life had +brought to her at the end. Only loneliness and the courage of those who +have given always and never received. + +"There is something else," she said again. "There is courage." Then, as +the other woman made no reply, she went on more rapidly: "I will do what +I can. It is very little. I cannot change him. I cannot make him feel +again. But you can trust me. You are safe with me." + +"I know that," answered Alice in a voice that sounded muffled and husky. +"I have always known that." She rose and readjusted her veil. "That +means a great deal," she added. "Oh, I think it means that the world +has grown better!" + +Corinna stooped and kissed her. "No, it only means that some of us have +learned to live without happiness." + +She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the +steps and enter the small closed car in the drive. There was a touching +grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single +image all the women in the world who had lost hope. "Yet it is the weak, +the passive, who get what they want in the end," thought Corinna, as +dispassionately as if she were merely a spectator. "I suppose it is +because they need it more. They have never learned to do without. They +do not know how to carry a broken heart." Then she smiled as she turned +back into the house. "It is very late, and the only certain rules are +that one must dine and one must dress for dinner." + +A little later, when John Benham was announced and she came down to the +drawing-room, her first glance at his face told her that she must be +looking her best. She was wearing black, and beneath the white lock in +her dark hair, her face was flushed with the colour of happiness. Only +her eyes, velvet soft and as deep as a forest pool, had a haunted look. + +"I have never," he said, "seen you look better." + +She laughed. After all, one might permit a touch of coquetry in the +final renouncement! "Perhaps you have never really seen me before." + +Though he looked puzzled, he responded gaily: "On the contrary, I have +seen little else for the last two or three months." + +There was an edge of irony to her smile. "Were you looking at me or my +shadow?" + +He shook his head. "Are shadows ever as brilliant as that?" + +Then before she could answer the Judge came in with his cordial +outstretched hand and his air of humorous urbanity, as if he were too +much interested in the world to censure it, and yet too little +interested to take it seriously. His face, with its thin austere +features and its kindly expression, showed the dryness that comes less +from age than from quality. Benham, looking at him closely, thought, "He +must be well over eighty, but he hasn't changed so much as a hair of his +head in the last twenty years." + +At dinner Corinna was very gay; and her father, whose habit it was not +to inquire too deeply, observed only that she was looking remarkably +well. The dining-room was lighted by candles which flickered gently in +the breeze that rose and fell on the terrace. In this wavering +illumination innumerable little shadows, like ghosts of butterflies, +played over the faces of the two men, whose features were so much alike +and whose expressions differed so perversely. In both Nature had bred a +type; custom and tradition had moulded the plastic substance and refined +the edges; but, stronger than either custom or tradition, the individual +temperament, the inner spirit of each man, had cast the transforming +flame and shadow over the outward form. And now they were alike only in +their long, graceful figures, in their thin Roman features, in their +general air of urbane distinction. + +"We were talking at the club of the strike," said the Judge, who had +finished his soup with a manner of detachment, and sat now gazing +thoughtfully at his glass of sherry. "The opinion seems to be that it +depends upon Vetch." + +Benham's voice sounded slightly sardonical. "How can anything depend +upon a weathercock?" + +"Well, there's a chance, isn't there, that the weather may decide it?" + +"Perhaps. In the way that the Governor will find to his advantage." +Benham had leaned slightly forward, and his face looked very attractive +by the shimmering flame of the candles. + +"Isn't that the way most of us decide things," asked Corinna, "if we +know what is really to our advantage?" + +As Benham looked up he met her eyes. "In this case," he answered, with a +note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, "the +advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth +considering." + +For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, passed through +Corinna's mind. She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom, +"Oh, damn the public!"--but instead she remarked in the formal accents +her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkward impulses, "Isn't it +ridiculous that we can never get away from Gideon Vetch?" + +The Judge laughed softly. "He has a pushing manner," he returned; and +then, still curiously pursuing the subject: "Perhaps, he may get his +revenge at the meeting Thursday night." + +"Is there to be a meeting?" retorted Corinna indifferently. She was +thinking, "When John is eighty he will look like Father. I shall be +seventy-eight when he is eighty. All those years to live, and nothing +in them but little pleasures, little kindnesses, little plans and +ambitions. Charity boards and committee meetings and bridge. That is +what life is--just pretending that little things are important." + +"That's the strikers' meeting," the Judge was saying over his glass of +sherry. "The next one is John's idea. We hope to arbitrate. If we can +get Vetch interested there may be a settlement of some sort." + +"So it's Vetch again! Oh, I am getting so tired of the name of Gideon +Vetch!" laughed Corinna. And she thought, "If only I didn't have to play +on the flute all my life. If I could only stop playing dance music for a +little while, and break out into a funeral march!" + +"He has already agreed to come," said Benham, "but I expect nothing from +him. I have formed the habit of expecting nothing from Vetch." + +"Well, I don't know," replied the Judge. "We may persuade him to stand +firm, if there hasn't been an understanding between him and those +people." The old gentleman always used the expression "those people" for +persons of whose opinions he disapproved. + +"You know what I think of Vetch," rejoined Benham, with a shrug. + +It seemed to Corinna, watching Benham with her thoughtful gaze, +that the subject would never change, that they would argue all +night over their foolish strike and their tiresome meeting, and +over what this Gideon Vetch might or might not do in some problematic +situation. What sentimentalists men were! They couldn't understand, +after the experience of a million years, that the only things +that really counted in life were human relations. They were obliged +to go on playing a game of bluff with their consecrated +superstitions--playing--playing--playing--and yet hiding behind some +graven image of authority which they had built out of stone. +Sentimental, yes, and pathetic too, when one thought of it with +patience. + +When dinner was over, and the Judge had gone to a concert in town, +Corinna's mockery fell from her, and she sat in a long silence watching +Benham's enjoyment of his cigar. It occurred to her that if he were +stripped of everything else, of love, of power, of ambition, he could +still find satisfaction in the masculine habit of living--in the simple +pleasures of which nothing except physical infirmity or extreme poverty +can ever deprive one. Moderate in all things, he was capable of taking a +serious pleasure in his meals, in his cigar, in a dip in a swimming +pool, or a game of cards at the club. Whatever happened, he would have +these things to fall back upon; and they would mean to him, she knew, +far more than they could ever, even in direst necessity, mean to a +woman. + +The long drawing-room, lighted with an amber glow and drenched with the +sweetness of honeysuckle, had grown very still. Outside in the garden +the twilight was powdered with silver, and above the tops of the cedars +a few stars were shining. A breeze came in softly, touching her cheek +like the wing of a moth and stirring the iris in a bowl by the window. +The flowers in the room were all white and purple, she observed with a +tremulous smile, as if the vivid colours had been drained from both her +life and her surroundings. "What a foolish fancy," she added, with a +nervous force that sent a current of energy through her veins. "My +heart isn't broken, and it will never be until I am dead!" + +And then, with that natural aptitude for facing facts, for looking at +life steadily and fearlessly, which had been born in a recoil from the +sentimental habit of mind, she said quietly, "John, Alice Rokeby came to +see me this afternoon." + +He started, and the ashes dropped from his cigar; but there was no +embarrassment in the level glance he raised to her eyes. Surprise there +was, and a puzzled interrogation, but of confusion or disquietude she +could find no trace. + +"Well?" he responded inquiringly, and that was all. + +"You used to care for her a great deal--once?" + +He appeared to ponder the question. "We were great friends," he +answered. + +Friends! The single word seemed to her to express not only his attitude +to Alice Rokeby, but his temperamental inability to call things by their +right names, to face facts, to follow a straight line of thought. Here +was the epitome of that evasive idealism which preferred shams to +realities. + +"Are you still friends?" + +He shook his head. "No, we've drifted apart in the last year or so. I +used," he said slowly, "to go there a great deal; but I've had so many +responsibilities of late that I've fallen into the habit of letting +other interests go in a measure." + +It was harder even than she had imagined it would be--harder because she +realized now that they did not speak the same language. She felt that +she had struck against something as dry and cold and impersonal as an +abstract principle. A ludicrous premonition assailed her that in a +little while he would begin to talk about his public duty. This lack of +genuine emotion, which had at first appeared to contradict his +sentimental point of view, was revealed to her suddenly as its supreme +justification. Because he felt nothing deeply he could afford to play +brilliantly with the names of emotions; because he had never suffered +his duty would always lie, as Gideon Vetch had once said of him, "in the +direction of things he could not hurt." + +"It is a pity," she said gently, "for she still cares for you." + +The hand that held his cigar trembled. She had penetrated his reserve at +last, and she saw a shadow which was not the shadow of the wind-blown +flowers, cross his features. + +"Did she tell you that?" he asked as gently as she had spoken. + +"There was no need to tell me. I saw it as soon as I looked at her." + +For a moment he was silent; then he said very quietly, as one whose +controlling motive was a hatred of excess, of unnecessary fussiness or +frankness: "I am sorry." + +"Have you stopped caring for her?" + +The shadow on his face changed into a look of perplexity. When he spoke, +she realized that he had mistaken her meaning; and for an instant her +heart beat wildly with resentment or apprehension. + +"I am fond of her. I shall always be fond of her," he said. "Does it +make any difference to you, my dear?" + +Yes, he had mistaken her meaning. He was judging her in the dim light of +an immemorial tradition; and he had seen in her anxious probing for +truth merely a personal jealousy. Women were like that, he would have +said, applying, in accordance with his mental custom, the general law to +the particular instance. After all, where could they meet? They were as +far divided in their outlook on life as if they had inhabited different +spiritual hemispheres. A curiosity seized her to know what was in his +mind, to sound the depths of that unfathomable reserve. + +"That is over so completely that I thought it would make no difference +to you," he added almost reproachfully, as if she, not he, were to be +blamed for dragging a disagreeable subject into the light. + +Fear stabbed Corinna's heart like a knife. "But she still loves you!" +she cried sharply. + +He flinched from the sharpness of her tone. "I am sorry," he said again; +but the words glided, with a perfunctory grace, on the surface of +emotion. Suppose that what he said was true, she told herself; suppose +that it was really "over"; suppose that she also recognized only the +egoist's view of duty--of the paramount duty to one's own inclinations; +suppose--"Oh, am I so different from him?" she thought, "why cannot I +also mistake the urging of desire for the command of conscience--or at +least call it that in my mind?" For a minute she struggled desperately +with the temptation; and in that minute it seemed to her that the face +of Alice Rokeby, with its look of wistful expectancy, of hungry +yearning, drifted past her in the twilight. + +"But is it obliged to be over?" she asked aloud. "I could never care as +she does. I have always been like that, and I can't change. I have +always been able to feel just so much and no more--to give just so much +and no more." + +He looked at her attentively, a little troubled, she could see, but not +deeply hurt, not hurt enough to break down the wall which protected the +secret--or was it the emptiness?--of his nature. + +"Has the knowledge of my--my old friendship for Mrs. Rokeby come between +us?" he asked slowly and earnestly. + +While he spoke it seemed to her that all that had been obscure in her +view of him rolled away like the mist in the garden, leaving the +structure of his being bare and stark to her critical gaze. Nothing +confused her now; nothing perplexed her in her knowledge of him. The old +sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy, returned; but she understood the +cause of it now; she saw with perfect clearness the defect from which it +had arisen. He had missed the best because, with every virtue of the +mind, he lacked the single one of the heart. Possessing every grace of +character except humanity, he had failed in life because this one gift +was absent. + +"All my life," she said brokenly, "I have tried to find something that I +could believe in--that I could keep faith with to the end. But what can +one build a world on except human relations--except relations between +men and women?" + +"You mean," he responded gravely, "that you think I have not kept faith +with Mrs. Rokeby?" + +"Oh, can't you see? If you would only try, you must surely see!" she +pleaded, with outstretched hands. + +He shook his head not in denial, but in bewilderment. "I realized that I +had made a mistake," he said slowly, "but I believed that I had put it +out of my life--that we had both put it out of our lives. There were so +many more important things--the war and coming face to face with death +in so many forms. Oh, I confess that what is important to you, appears +to me to be merely on the surface of life. I have been trying to fulfil +other responsibilities--to live up to the demands on me--I had got down +to realities--" + +A laugh broke from her lips, which had grown so stiff that they hurt her +when she tried to smile. "Realities!" she exclaimed, "and yet you must +have seen her face as I saw it to-day." + +For the third time, in that expressionless tone which covered a nervous +irritation, he repeated gravely, "I am sorry." + +"There is nothing more real," she went on presently, "there is nothing +more real than that look in the face of a living thing." + +For the first time her words seemed to reach him. He was trying with all +his might, she perceived, he was spiritually fumbling over the effort to +feel and to think what she expected of him. With his natural fairness he +was honestly struggling to see her point of view. + +"If it is really like that," he said, "What can I do?" + +All her life, it seemed to Corinna, she had been adjusting the +difficulties and smoothing out the destinies of other persons. All her +life she had been arranging some happiness that was not hers. To-night +it was the happiness of Alice Rokeby, an acquaintance merely, a woman to +whom she was profoundly indifferent, which lay in her hands. + +"There is something that you can do," she said lightly, obeying now that +instinct for things as they ought to be, for surface pleasantness, which +warred in her mind with her passion for truth. "You can go to see her +again." + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +CORINNA FACES LIFE + + +AT nine o'clock the next morning Corinna came through the sunshine on +the flagged walk and got into her car. She was wearing her smartest +dress of blue serge and her gayest hat of a deep old red. Never had she +looked more radiant; never had she carried her glorious head with a more +triumphant air. + +"Stop first at Mrs. Rokeby's, William," she said to the chauffeur, "and +while I am there you may take this list to market." + +As the car rolled off, her eyes turned back lovingly to the serene +brightness of the garden into which she had infused her passion for +beauty and order and gracious living. Rain had fallen in the night, and +the glowing borders beyond the house shone like jewels in a casket. +Beneath the silvery blue of the sky each separate blade of grass +glistened as if an enchanter's wand had turned it to crystal. The birds +were busily searching for worms on the lawn; as the car passed a flash +of scarlet darted across the road; and above a clear shining puddle +clouds of yellow butterflies drifted like blown rose-leaves. + +"How beautiful everything is," thought Corinna. "Why isn't beauty +enough? Why does beauty without love turn to sadness?" Her head, which +had drooped for a moment, was lifted gallantly. "It ought to be enough +just to be alive and not hungry on a morning like this." + +The house in which Mrs. Rokeby lived appeared to Corinna, as she +entered it presently, to have given up hope as utterly as its mistress +had done. Though it was nearly ten o'clock, the front pavement had not +been swept, the hall was still dark, and a surprised coloured maid, in a +soiled apron, answered the doorbell. + +"Poor thing," thought, Corinna. "I always heard that she was a good +housekeeper. It is queer how soon one's state of mind passes into one's +surroundings. I wonder if unhappiness could ever make me so indifferent +to appearances?" To the maid, who knew her, she said, "I think Mrs. +Rokeby will see me if she is awake. It is only for a minute or two." + +Then she went into the drawing-room, where the shades were still down, +and stood looking at the furniture and the curtains which were powdered +with dust. On the table, where the books and photographs were +disarranged and a fancy box of chocolates lay with the top off, there +was a crystal vase of flowers; but the flowers were withered, and the +water smelt as if it had not been changed for a week. Over the +mantelpiece the long gilt-framed mirror reflected, through a gray film, +the darkened room with its forlorn disarrangement. The whole place had +the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very +odour of unhappiness. + +"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power +to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless +endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the +dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of +confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into +harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be. She +longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the +dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones. +She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, "to get her hands on +the room." If she could only change all this hopelessness into +happiness! If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the +semblance of peace! "It is just as well that all of us can't feel things +this much," she reflected. + +"Mrs. Rokeby ain't dressed, but she says would you mind coming up?" The +maid, having attired herself in a clean apron and a crooked cap, stood +in the doorway. As Corinna followed her, she led the way up the narrow +stairs into the bedroom where Alice was waiting. + +"I thought you wouldn't be dressed," began Corinna cheerfully, "but it's +the only time I have free, and I wanted to see you this morning." + +"It is so good of you," responded Alice, putting out her hand. +"Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven't been well, and one of +the servants has gone to a funeral in the country." + +"It doesn't matter," Corinna hesitated an instant, "only I wish you +would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs." + +"I haven't been in the room for a week," replied Alice, dropping back on +the couch as if her strength had failed her. "I don't seem to care about +the house or anything else." + +As soon as her surprise at Corinna's visit had faded, she sank again +into a listless attitude. Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation +died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of passive +tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never passive, feel that she should +like to shake her. Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked +under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy +features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint. Over her nightgown, she +had thrown on a Japanese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum +blossoms which looked wilted. Everything about her, Corinna thought, +looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been +stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit. To Corinna's energetic +temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid +resignation. "Un-happiness like this is contagious," she thought. "And +all because one man has ceased to love her! What utter folly!" Aloud she +said only, "I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance." + +"To-morrow? Oh, Corinna, I couldn't!" + +"Do you remember that blue dress--the one that is the colour of wild +hyacinths?" + +"Yes, but I couldn't wear it again, and I haven't anything else." + +"Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is +becoming. You must look ethereal, and you must look happy. Men hate a +sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder +you, they resent your reproaching them." + +There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which +she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to +treat refractory circumstances is to bully them into submission. "If you +once let life get the better of you, you are lost," she said to herself. + +"You can't understand," Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes. +"You have always had what you wanted." + +Corinna laughed. "I am glad you see it that way," she rejoined, "but you +would be nearer the truth if you had said I'd always wanted what I had." + +"It seems to me that you've had everything." + +"Very likely. The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which +distance lends enchantment." + +"You mean that you haven't been happy?" + +"Oh, yes, I've been happy. If I hadn't been, with all I've had, I should +be ashamed to admit it." + +But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence. She had pitied herself +so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the +lives of others. It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and +when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and +regret. + +"Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you," she said, "but +you were so brave, poor dear, that nobody suspected it until you were +separated." + +"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many +things in life for me besides marriage." + +"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a +submissive manner but a stubborn mind. + +Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation +there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite +of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your +place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by +mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it." + +"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of +despair. + +A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, +she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside +down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which +was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have +gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only +background that is appropriate to you." + +Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna +felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna," +she returned, "but you have so little sentiment." + +"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very +well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly +about the room, because the sight of that passive figure, wrapped in +wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You +can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you +are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be +a pretty one, or it is all over with you." + +The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility +over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've +lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important +point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't +cared so much, things might have been different." + +Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I +didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool +she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain. + +Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a +stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her +head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have +never been loved to desperation and then deserted." + +"No," responded Corinna, with the ripe judgment that is the fruit of +bitter experience, "but, if I were ever loved to desperation, I should +expect to be. Desperation does things like that." + +"You couldn't bear it any better than I can. No woman could." + +"Perhaps not." Though Corinna's voice was flippant, there was a stern +expression on her beautiful face--the expression that Artemis might have +worn when she surveyed Aphrodite. "But I should never have been +deserted. I should have taken good care to prevent it." + +"I took care too," retorted Alice, with passion, "but I couldn't prevent +it." + +"Your measures were wrong. It is always safer to be on the side of the +active rather than the passive verb." + +With a careless movement, Corinna picked up her beaded bag, which she +had laid on the table, and turned to adjust her veil before the mirror. +"If you will let me manage your life for a little while," she observed, +with an appreciative glance at the daring angle of the red hat, "I may +be able to do something with it, for I am a practical person as well as +a capable manager. Father calls me, you know, the repairer of +destinies." + +"If I thought it would do any good, I'd go to the ball with you," said +Alice eagerly, while a delicate colour stained the wan pallor of her +face. + +"Do you really think," asked Corinna brightly, "that John, able +politician though he is, is worth all that trouble?" + +"Oh, it isn't just John," moaned Alice; "it is everything." + +"Well, if I am going to repair your destiny, I must do it in my own +practical way. For a time at least we will let sentiment go and get down +to facts. As long as you haven't much sense, it is necessary for you to +make yourself as pretty as possible, for only intelligent women can +afford to take liberties with their appearances. The first step must be +to buy a hat that is full of hope as soon as you can. Oh, I don't mean +anything jaunty or frivolous; but it must be a hat that can look the +world in the face." + +A keen interest awoke in Alice's eyes, and she looked immediately +younger. "If I can find one, I'll buy it," she answered. "I'll get +dressed in a little while and go out." + +"And remember the hyacinth-blue dress. Have it made fresh for +to-morrow." Turning in the doorway, Corinna continued with humorous +vivacity, "There is only one little thing we must forget, and that is +love. The less said about it the better; but you may take it on my +authority that love can always be revived by heroic treatment. If John +ever really loved you, and you follow my advice, he will love you +again." + +With a little song on her lips, and her gallant head in the red hat +raised to the sunlight, she went out of the house and down the steps +into her car. "Fools are very exhausting," she thought, as she bowed to +a passing acquaintance, "but I think that she will be cured." Then, at +the sight of Stephen leaving the Culpeper house, she leaned out and +waved to him to join her. + +"My dear boy, how late you are!" she exclaimed, when the car had stopped +and he got in beside her. + +"Yes, I am late." He looked tired and thoughtful. "I stopped to have a +talk with Mother, and she kept me longer than I realized." + +"Is anything wrong?" + +He set his lips tightly. "No, nothing more than usual." + +Corinna gazed up at the blue sky and the sunlight. Why wouldn't people +be happy? Why were they obliged to cause so much unnecessary discomfort? +Why did they persist in creating confusion? + +"Well, I hope you are coming to the dance to-morrow night," she said +cheerfully. + +"Yes. Mother has asked me to take Margaret Blair." + +"I am glad. Margaret is a nice girl. I am going to take Patty Vetch." + +He started, and though she was not looking at him, she knew that his +face grew pale. "Don't you think she will look lovely, just like a +mermaid, in green and silver?" she asked lightly. + +"I don't know," he answered stiffly. "I am trying not to think about +her." + +Corinna laughed. "Oh, my dear, just wait until you see her in that +sea-green gown!" + +That he was caught fast in the web of the tribal instinct, Corinna +realized as perfectly as if she had seen the net closing visibly round +him. Though she was unaware of the blow Patty had dealt him, she felt +his inner struggle through that magical sixth sense which is the gift +of the understanding heart, of the heart that has outgrown the shell of +the personal point of view. If he would only for once break free from +artificial restraints! If he would only let himself be swept into +something that was larger than his own limitations! + +"I am very fond of Patty," she said. "The more I see of her, the finer I +think she is." + +His lips did not relax. "There is a great deal of talk at the club about +the Governor." + +"Oh, this strike of course! What do they say?" + +"A dozen different things. Nobody knows exactly how to take him." + +"I wonder if we have ever understood him," said Corinna, a little sadly. +"I sometimes think--" Then she broke off hurriedly. "No, don't get out, +I'll take you down to your office. I sometimes think," she resumed, +"that none of us see him as he really is because we see him through a +veil of prejudice, or if you like it better, of sentiment--" + +Stephen laughed without mirth. "I don't like it better. I'd like to get +into a world--or at least I feel this morning that I'd like to get into +a world where one was obliged to face nothing softer than a fact--" + +Corinna looked at him tenderly. She had a sincere, though not a very +deep affection, for Stephen, and she felt that she should like to help +him, as long as helping him did not necessitate any emotional effort. +"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked gently, "that the trouble with +you, after all, is simply lack of courage?" At the start he gave, she +continued hastily, "Oh, I don't mean physical courage of course. I do +not doubt that you were as brave as a lion when it came to meeting the +Germans. But there are times when life is more terrible than the +Germans! And yet the only courage we have ever glorified is brute +courage--the courage of the lion. I know that you could face machine +guns and bayonets and all the horrors of war; but it seems to me that +you have never had really the courage of living--that you have always +been a little afraid of life." + +For a long while he did not answer. His eyes were on the sky; and she +watched the expression of irritation, amazement, dread, perplexity, and +shocked comprehension, pass slowly over his features. "By Jove, I've got +a feeling that you may be right," he said at last. "You probed the +wound, and it hurt for a minute; but it may heal all the quicker for +that. You've put the whole rotten business into a nutshell. I'm a coward +at bottom, that's the trouble with me. Oh, like you, of course, I'm not +talking about actual dangers. They are easy enough, for one can see them +coming. It's not fear of the Germans. It's fear of something that one +can't touch or feel--that doesn't even exist--the fear of one's +imagination. But the truth is that I've funked things for the last year +or so. I've been in a chronic blue funk about living." + +She smiled at him brightly. "It is like a bit of thistle-down. Bring it +out into the air and sunlight, and it will blow away." + +"I wonder if you're right. Already I feel better because I've told you; +and yet I've gone in terror lest my mother should discover it." + +When she spoke again she changed the subject as lightly as if they had +been discussing the weather. "You used to be interested in public +matters. Do you remember how you talked to me in your college days +about outstripping John in the race? You were full of ideas then, and +full of ambition too." She was touching a string that had never failed +her yet, and she waited, with an inscrutable smile, for the response. + +"I know," he answered, "but that was in another life--that was before +the war." + +"Do those ideas never come back to you? Have you lost your ambition?" + +"I can't tell. I sometimes think that it died in France. I got to feel +over there that these political issues were merely local and temporary. +Often, the greater part of the time, I suppose, I feel like that now. +Then suddenly all my old ambition comes back in a spurt, and for a +little while I think I am cured. While that lasts I am as eager, as full +of interest, as I used to be. But it dies down as suddenly as it sprang +up, and the reaction is only indifference and lassitude. I seem to have +lost the power to keep a single state of mind, or even an interest." + +"But do you ever think seriously of the part you might take in this +town?" + +The look of immobility passed from his face; his eyes grew warmer, and +it seemed to her that he became more alive and more human. "Oh, I think +a great deal. My ideas have changed too." He was talking rapidly and +without connection. "I am not the same man that I was a few years ago. I +may be wrong, but I feel that I've got down to a firmer basis--a basis +of facts." Then he turned to her impulsively, "I wouldn't say this to +any one else, Corinna, because no one else would understand what I +mean--but I've learned a good deal from Gideon Vetch." + +"Ah!" Her eyes were smiling. "I think I know what you mean." + +"Of course you know. But imagine Father! He would think, if I told him, +that it was a symptom of mental derangement--that some German shell had +left a permanent dent in my brain." + +"Perhaps. Yet I am not sure that you understand your father. I think he +is more like you than you fancy; that if you once pierced his reserve, +you would find him a sentimentalist at heart. There is your office," she +added, "but you must not get out now. We will turn back for a quarter of +an hour." She spoke to the chauffeur, and then said to Stephen, with a +sensation of unutterable relief, "a quarter of an hour won't make any +difference at the office to-day." + +"Perhaps not when I've lost three hours already. I sometimes think they +would never notice it if I stayed away all the time. But what I mean +about Vetch is simply that he has set me thinking. He does that, you +know. Oh, I admit that he is mistaken--or downright wrong--in a number +of ways! He is too sensational for our taste--too flamboyant; but one +can't get away from him. He has shaken the dust from us; he has jolted +us into movement. I have a feeling somehow that his personality is +spread all over the place--that we are smeared with Gideon Vetch, as the +darkeys would say." + +He was already a different Stephen from the one who had got into her car +an hour ago, and she breathed a secret prayer of thanksgiving. + +"I think even John feels that now and then," she said, and a moment +afterward, "Is it possible, do you suppose, that we shall find when it +is too late that this Gideon Vetch is the stone that the builders +rejected? A ridiculous fancy, and yet who knows, it might turn out to be +true. Stranger things have happened than that!" + +"It may be. One never can tell." Then he laughed with tolerant +affection. "I've found out the trouble with John." + +"The trouble with John?" Her voice trembled. + +"Yes, the trouble with John is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is +trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton--to build the world +over on a skull and cross-bones--and it can't be done. I admire John as +much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch +is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John +needs to make him complete." + +She nodded. "I know. You mean feeling?" + +"Human sympathy--the sympathy that means imagination and insight. That +is the only power that Vetch has, but, by Jove, it is the greatest of +all! It is the spirit that comprehends, that reconciles, and recreates. +Both Vetch and John have failed, I think; Vetch for want of education, +system, method, and John because, having all this essential framework, +he still lacked the blood and fibre of humanity. In its essence, I +suppose it is a difference of principle, the old familiar struggle +between the romantic and the realistic temperament, which divides in +politics into the progressive and the conservative forces. There is +nothing in history, I learned that at college, except the war between +these two irreconcilable spirits. Irreconcilable, they call them, and +yet I wonder, I wonder more and more, if this is not a misinterpretation +of history? It seems to me that the leader of the future, even in so +small a community as this one, must be big enough to combine opposite +elements; that he must take the good where he finds it; that he must +vitalize tradition and discipline progress--" + +"You mean that he must accept both the past and the future?" While her +heart craved the substance of truth, she dispensed platitudes with a +benevolent air. + +"How can it be otherwise? That, it seems to me, is the only logical way +out of the muddle. The difficulty, of course, is to remain +practical--not to let the vision run away with one. It will require +moderation, which Vetch has not, and adaptability, which John has never +learned." + +"And never will learn," rejoined Corinna. "He is made of the mettle that +breaks but does not bend." + +"Like my father; like all those who have petrified in the shape of a +convention. And yet the new stuff--the ideas that haven't turned to +stone--are full of froth--they splash over. Take Vetch and this strike, +for instance. I myself believe that he wants to do the right thing, to +protect the public at any cost; but he has gone too far; he has splashed +over the dividing line between principle and expediency. Will he be able +to stand firm at the last?" + +"Father says there is to be a meeting Thursday night." + +"Yes, and he'll be obliged to come to some decision then, or at least to +drop a hint as to the line he intends to pursue. I am afraid there will +be trouble either way." + +"The Governor shows the strain," said Corinna. "I saw him yesterday." + +"How can he help it? He has got himself into a tight place. Oh, there +are times when temporizing is more dangerous than action! It's hard to +see how he'll get out of it unless he cuts a way, and if he does that, +he'll probably lose the strongest support he has ever had." + +Stephen's face was transfigured now. It had lost the look of dryness, of +apathy; and she watched the glow of health shine again in his eyes as it +used to shine when he was at college. So it was not emotion that was to +restore him! It was the ancient masculine delusion, as invulnerable as +truth, that the impersonal interests are the significant ones. Well, she +was not quarrelling with delusions as long as they were beneficent! And +since it was impossible for her fervent soul to care greatly for general +principles, or to dwell long among impersonal forms of thought, she +found herself regarding this public crisis, less as a warfare of +political theories, than as a possible cure for Stephen's condition. For +the rest, except for their results, beneficial or otherwise, to the +individual citizen, problems of government interested her not at all. +The whole trouble with life seemed to her to rise, not from mistaken +theory, but from the lack of consideration with which human beings +treated one another. Happiness, after all, depended so little upon +opinions and so much upon manners. + +"Throw yourself into this work, Stephen," she urged. "It is a splendid +opportunity." + +He smiled at her in the old boyish way. "An opportunity for what?" + +"For--" It was on the tip of her tongue to say "for health"; but she +checked herself, remembering the incurable distaste men have for +calling things by their right names, and replied instead, "an +opportunity for usefulness." + +His smile faded, and he turned on her eyes that were almost melancholy, +though the fire of animation still warmed them. "I am interested now. I +care a great deal--but will it last? Haven't I felt this way a hundred +times in the last six months, only to grow indifferent and even bored +within the next few hours?" + +She looked at him closely. "Isn't there any feeling--any interest that +lasts with you?" + +He hesitated, while a burning colour, like the flush of fever, swept up +to his forehead. "Only one, and I am trying to get over that," he +answered after a moment. + +"If it is a genuine feeling, are you wise to get over it?" she asked. +"Genuine feeling is so rare. I think if I could feel an overwhelming +emotion, I should hug it to my heart as the most precious of gifts." + +"Even if everything were against it?" + +Her head went up with a dauntless gesture. "Oh, my dear, what is +everything?" It was a changed voice from the one in which she had +lectured Alice Rokeby an hour ago. "Feeling is everything." + +"It is real," he replied, looking away from her eyes. "I am sure of that +because I have struggled against it. I can't explain what it is; I don't +know what it was that made me care in the beginning. All I know about it +is that it seems to give me back myself. It is only when I let myself go +in the thought of it that I become really free. Can you understand what +I mean?" + +"I can," assented Corinna softly; and though she smiled there was a mist +over her eyes which made the world appear iridescent. "Oh, my dear, it +is the only way. Throw away everything else--every cause, every +conviction, every interest--but keep that one open door into reality." + +The car stopped before his office, and she held out her hand. "I shall +see you to-morrow night?" + +He glanced back merrily from the pavement. "Do you think I shall let you +escape me?" Then he turned away and went, with a firm and energetic +step, into the building, while Corinna took out her shopping list and +studied it thoughtfully. + +"Back to the shop," she said at last. "I have had enough for one +morning." As the car started up the street, a smile stirred her lips, "I +shall have three unhappy lovers on my hands for the dance to-morrow." +Then she laughed softly, with a very real sense of humour, "If I am +going to sacrifice myself, I may as well do it in the grand manner," she +thought, for Corinna had a royal soul. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +DANCE MUSIC + + +At breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Culpeper observed, with maternal +solicitude, that Stephen was looking more cheerful. While she poured his +coffee, with one eye on the fine old coffee pot and one on the animated +face of her son, she reflected that he appeared to have come at last to +his senses. "If he would only stop all this folly and settle down," she +thought. "Surely it is quite time now for him to become normal again." +As she looked at him her expression softened, in spite of her general +attitude of disapprobation, and the sharp brightness of her eyes gave +place to humid tenderness. Of all her children he had long been her +favourite, for the reason, perhaps, that he was the only one who had +ever caused her any anxiety; and though she would have gone to the stake +cheerfully for all and each of them, there would have been a keener edge +to the martyrdom she suffered in Stephen's behalf. + +"Be sure and make a good breakfast, Mr. Culpeper," she urged, glancing +down the table to where her husband was dividing his attention between +the morning paper and his oatmeal. "My poor father used to say that if +he didn't make a good breakfast he felt it all day long." + +"He was right, my dear. I have no doubt that he was right," replied Mr. +Culpeper, in the tone of solemn sentiment which he reserved for +deceased parents. Though he was dyspeptic by constitution, and inclined +to gout and other bodily infirmities, he applied himself philosophically +to a heavy breakfast such as his wife's father had enjoyed. + +"Stephen is looking so well this morning," remarked Mrs. Culpeper in a +sprightly voice. "He has quite a colour." + +Mr. Culpeper rolled his large brown eyes, as handsome and as opaque as +chestnuts, in the direction of his son. Though he would never have +observed the improvement unless his wife had called his attention to it, +his kind heart was honestly relieved to discover that Stephen looked +better. He had worried a good deal in his sluggish way over what he +thought of as "the effect of the war" on his son. With the strong +paternal instinct which beheld every child as a branch on a genealogical +tree, he had been as much disturbed as his wife by the gossip which had +reached him about the daughter of Gideon Vetch. + +"Feeling all right, my boy?" he inquired now, in the tone of indulgent +anxiety which, from the first day of his return, had exasperated Stephen +so profoundly. + +"Oh, first rate," responded the young man lightly. "Is there anything +you would like me to help you about?" + +"No, there's nothing I can't attend to myself--" Mr. Culpeper had begun +to reply, when catching sight of his wife's frowning face, he continued +hurriedly: "Unless you would care to glance over that deed about those +lots of your mother's?" + +Stephen smiled, for he had seen the warning change in his mother's +expression, and he was thinking that she was still a remarkably pretty +woman. "With pleasure," he returned. "I shall be busy all day, but I'll +look it over to-morrow. To-night I am going to the Harrisons' dance." + +"Oh, you're going!" exclaimed Mary Byrd, who had come in late and was +just taking her seat. "I suppose Mother is making you take Margaret +Blair?" + +Again Mrs. Culpeper made a vague frowning movement of her eyebrows and +gently shook her head; but the gesture of disapproval to which her +husband had responded obediently was entirely wasted upon her youngest +daughter. "You needn't shake your head at me, Mother," she remarked +lightly. "Of course I know you are making him take her when he would +rather a hundred times go with Patty Vetch." + +The frown on Mrs. Culpeper's face turned to a look of panic. "Mary Byrd, +you are impossible," she said sternly. + +"I saw Cousin Corinna yesterday," observed Victoria indiscreetly. "She +is going to take Patty Vetch." + +Mrs. Culpeper said nothing, but her fine black brows drew ominously +together. She had worked so busily over the coffee urn and the sugar +bowl that she had not had time to eat her breakfast, and the oatmeal in +the plate before her had grown stiff and cold before she tasted it. When +Stephen stooped to kiss her cheek before going out, she looked up at him +with a proud and admiring glance. "I hope you remembered to order +flowers for Margaret?" + +He laughed. It was so characteristic of her to feel that even his love +affairs must be managed! "Yes, I ordered gardenias. Is that right?" + +When she nodded amiably, he turned away and went out into the hall, +where he found his father waiting. "I wanted to see you a minute without +your mother," explained Mr. Culpeper, in a voice which sounded husky +because he tried to subdue it to a whisper. "It's just as well, I think, +that your mother shouldn't know that I'm having those houses you looked +at attended to." + +"Oh, you are!" returned Stephen, with a curious mixture of thankfulness +and humility. So the old chap was the best sport of them all! In his +slow way he had accomplished what Stephen had merely talked about. For +the first time it occurred to the young man that his father was not by +any means so obvious or so simple as he had believed him to be. Had +Corinna spoken the truth when she called him a sentimentalist at heart? + +"It's better not to mention it before your mother," Mr. Culpeper was +saying huskily, while Stephen wondered. "She's the kindest heart in the +world. There isn't a better woman on earth; but she'd always think the +money ought to go to one of the married children. She couldn't +understand that it's good business to keep up the property. Women have +queer ideas about business." + +"Well, you're a brick, Father!" exclaimed the young man, and he meant it +from his heart. His voice trembled, and he put his hand on his father's +arm for a minute as he used to do when he was a child. Words wouldn't +come to him; but he was deeply touched, and it seemed to him that the +barrier which had divided him from his family had suddenly fallen. Never +since his return from France had he felt so near to his father as he +felt at that moment. + +"Well, well, I thought you'd like to know," rejoined Mr. Culpeper, and +his voice also shook a little. "I must be getting down town now. May I +take you in my car?" + +"No, I rather like the walk, sir. It does me good." Then, without a word +more, but with a smile of sympathy and understanding, they parted, and +Stephen went out of the house and descended the steps to the street. + +It was true, as his mother had observed, that he was happier to-day than +he had been for weeks; but this happiness was founded upon what Mrs. +Culpeper would have regarded as the most reprehensible of deceptions. He +was happier simply because, in spite of everything he had done to +prevent it, Fate had decreed that he was soon to see Patty again. The +longing of the past few weeks was to be appeased, if only for an hour, +and he was to see her again! He did not look beyond the coming night. He +did not attempt to analyse either his motive or his emotions. The future +was still obscure; life was still evolving its inscrutable problem; but +it was enough for him, at the moment, to know that he should see her +again. And this certainty, coming after the hungry pain of the last +three weeks, brought a glow to his eyes and that haunting smile, like +the smile of memory, to his lips. + +The light that Corinna had kindled illumined not a political career, but +the small vivid image of Patty. Wherever he looked he saw her flitting +ahead of him, a figure painted on sunlight. He had never found her so +desirable as in those few days since he had irrevocably given her up. +His self-denial, his vain endeavours to avoid her and forget her, seemed +merely to have poured themselves into the deep rebellious longing of his +heart. He lived always now in that hidden country of the mind, where +the winds blew free and strong and the sun never set on the endless +roads and the far horizon. + +And yet, so inexplicable are the laws of the mind, this escape from the +tyranny of convention, from the irksome round of practical details, +recoiled perversely into an increased joy of living. Because he could +escape at will from the routine, he no longer dreaded to return to it. +The light which irradiated the image of Patty transfigured the events +and circumstances amid which he moved. It shed its glory over external +incidents as well as into the loneliest vacancy, the deserted places, of +his being. Everything around and within him, the very youth in his soul, +became more intense in the hours when he allowed this emotion to assume +control of his thoughts. Just to be alive, that was enough! Just to be +free again from the sensation of stifling in trivial things, of +suffocating in the monotony which rushed over one like a torrent of +ashes. Just to escape with Patty into that wild kingdom of the mind +where the sun never set! + +When he returned home that evening, his mother met him as he entered the +hall, and followed him upstairs. + +"It is a beautiful evening for the dance, dear. They are having the +garden illuminated." + +Though he smiled back at her, his smile had that dreamy remoteness, that +look of meaning more than it revealed, which was bewildering to an acute +and practical intelligence. From long and intimate association with her +husband, Mrs. Culpeper was accustomed to dealing with ponderous barriers +to knowledge; but this plastic and variable substance of Stephen's +resistance, gave her an uncomfortable feeling of helplessness. Even when +her son acquiesced, as he did usually in her demands, she suspected that +his acquiescence was merely on the surface, that in the depths of his +mind he was, as she said to herself resentfully, "holding something +back." + +"Margaret is looking so sweet," she began in her smoothest tone. "Of +course she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is, but, in her quiet way, +she is very handsome." + +"No, she isn't the beauty that Mary Byrd is," conceded Stephen, so +pleasantly that she realized he was repeating parrot-like the phrase she +had uttered. His thoughts were somewhere else, she observed bitterly; it +was perfectly evident that he was not paying the slightest attention to +anything that she said. + +"You must use your father's car," she remarked, as amiably as before. +"It is better to have a chauffeur, and Mary Byrd is going with Willy +Tarleton." + +"And the other girls?" he asked, for her words appeared at last to have +penetrated the haze that enveloped his mind. + +"Harriet is spending the night with Lily Whittle, and she will go from +there. Of course Victoria has given up dancing since she came home from +France, and poor Janet stopped going to parties the year she came out." + +This pitiless maternal classification of Janet aroused his amusement. +"Well, I'd be glad to take Janet anywhere, even if her nose is a little +longer than Mary Byrd's," he retorted. "She's the jolliest of the lot, +and she seems to me very well contented as she is." + +"Oh, she is," assented his mother eagerly. "I always tell her that her +disposition is worth a fortune; and she has a very good figure too. But, +of course, a pretty face is the most important thing before marriage and +the least important thing afterward," she added shrewdly, as she left +him at his door. + +In a dream he dressed himself and went down to the dining-room; in a +dream he sat through the slow ceremonious supper; in a dream he got into +his father's car; and in a dream he stopped for Margaret and drove on +again with her fragrant presence beside him. When he entered the +glaring, profusely decorated house of the Harrisons, he felt that he was +still only half awake to the actuality. + +The May night was as warm as summer, and swinging garlands of ferns and +peonies concealed electric fans which were suspended from the ceiling. +In the midst of the strong wind of the whirring fans, the dancers in the +two long drawing-rooms appeared to be blown violently in circles and +eddies, like coloured leaves in a high wind. For a few minutes after +Stephen had entered, the rooms seemed to him merely a brilliant haze, +where the revolving figures appeared and vanished like the colours of a +kaleidoscope. Near the door he became aware of the resplendent form of +his hostess, stationed appropriately against a background of peonies; +and after she had greeted him with absent-minded cordiality, he passed +with Margaret in the direction of the thundering sounds which came from +the bank of ferns behind which the musicians were hidden. + +"Shall we try this?" he shouted into Margaret's ear. + +She shook her head. "It's one of those horrid new things." Her high, +clear tones pierced the din like the music of a flute. "Let's wait until +they play something nice. I hate jazz." + +She was looking very pretty in a dress like a white cloud, with garlands +of tiny rosebuds on the skirt; and he thought, as he looked at her, that +if she had only been a trifle less fastidious and refined, she might +easily have won the reputation of a beauty. Nothing but a delicate +superiority to the age in which she had been born, stood in the way of +her success. Sixty years ago, in modest crinolines, she might have made +history; and duels would probably have been fought for her favour. But +other times, other tastes, he reflected. + +For the rest of the dance, they sat sedately between two bay-trees in +green tubs that occupied a corner of the room. Then "something nicer" +started,--a concession to Mrs. Harrison's mother, who shared Margaret's +disapproval of jazz,--and Stephen and Margaret drifted slowly out among +the revolving couples. After the third dance, relief appeared in the +person of the young clergyman, who had come to look on; and leaving +Margaret with him between the bay-trees, Stephen started eagerly to +search for Patty where the dancers were thickest. + +Across the room, he had already caught a glimpse of Corinna, in a +queenly gown of white and silver brocade. She had stopped dancing now; +and standing between Alice Rokeby and John Benham, she was glancing +brightly about her, while she waved slowly a fan of white ostrich +plumes. Among all these fresh young girls, she could easily hold her +own, not because of her beauty, but because of that deeper fascination +which she shed like a light or a perfume. She had the something more +than beauty which these girls lacked and could never acquire--a +legendary enchantment, the air of romance. Was this the result, he +wondered now, of what she had missed in life rather than of what she had +attained? Was it because she had never lived completely, because she had +preferred the dream to the event, because she had desired and refrained, +because she had missed both enchantment and disenchantment--was it +because of the profound inadequacy of experience, that she had been able +to keep undimmed the glow of her loveliness? It was not that she looked +young, he realized while he watched her, but that she looked ageless and +immortal, a creature of the spirit. While he gazed at her across the +violent whirl of colours in the ballroom, he remembered the evening star +shining silver white in the afterglow. Perhaps, who could tell, she may +have had the best that life had to give? + +Making his way, with difficulty, through the throng, he followed +Corinna's protecting gaze, until he saw that it rested on Alice Rokeby, +who was wearing a dress that reminded him of wild hyacinths. For a +moment, the sight of this other woman's face, with its soft, hungry +eyes, and its expression of passive and unresisting sweetness, gave him +a start of surprise; and he found himself knocking awkwardly against one +of the dancers. Something had happened to her! Something had restored, +if only for an evening, the peculiar grace, the appealing prettiness, +too trivial and indefinite for beauty, which he recalled vividly now, +though for the last year or two he had almost forgotten that she ever +possessed it. Yes, something had changed her. She looked to-night as she +used to look before he went away, with a faint flush over her whole +face and those soft flower-like eyes, lifted admiringly to some man, to +any man except Herbert Rokeby. Then, as he disentangled himself from the +whirl, and went toward Corinna, she came a step or two forward, and left +John Benham and Alice Rokeby together. + +"Everything is going well," she said; and he noticed, for the first +time, that her charming smile was tinged with irony, as if the humour of +the show, not the drama, were holding her attention. "I am having a +beautiful time." + +He glanced over her shoulder. "What have you done to Mrs. Rokeby?" + +She shook her head, with a laugh which, he surmised sympathetically, was +less merry than it sounded. "That is my secret. I have a magic you +know--but she looks well, doesn't she? I did her hair myself. If you +could have seen the way she had it arranged! That dress is very +becoming, I think, it makes her eyes look like frosted violets. Her +appearance is a success--but 'More brain, O Lord, more brain'!" + +"Do you suppose that type will ever pass?" he asked. + +She met his inquiring look with eyes that were golden in the coloured +light. "Do you suppose that women will ever mean more to men than pegs +on which to hang their sentiments? Alice and her kind will always be +convenient substitutes for a man's admiration of himself." + +"Which he calls love, you think?" + +"Which he probably calls by the most romantic name that occurs to him. +Have you seen Patty?" + +Before he could reply, she turned away to speak to some one who was +approaching on her other side; and a minute later, with a joyous smile +at Stephen, she floated off in the dance. Was she really as happy as she +looked, or was it only a gallant pretence, nothing more? + +He had not found Patty yet; and while he stood there, with his eyes +eagerly searching the revolving throng for her face, he had a singular +visitation, a poignant sense that some rare and beautiful event was +eluding him in its flight, a feeling that the wings of the moment had +brushed him like feathers as it sped by into experience. Once or twice +in his life before he had received this impression; first in his boyhood +when he rose one morning at sunrise to go hunting, and again in France +after he had come out of the trenches. Now it was so vivid that it +brought with it a sensation of fear, as if happiness itself were +escaping his pursuit. He felt that his heart was burning with +impatience, and there was a persistent hammering in his ears as if he +had been running. What finding her would mean, what the future would +bring, he did not know, he did not even seek to discover. All he +understood was that the old indifference, the old apathy, the old +subjective, tormenting egoism, had given place to a consuming interest, +an impassioned delight. He felt only that he was thirsty for life, and +that he must drink deep to be satisfied. + +Then, suddenly, it seemed to him that the music grew softer and slower, +and the wind-blown throng faded from him into a rosy haze. From the +centre of the room, borne round and round like a flower on a stream, he +saw her face and her romantic eyes looking at him with a deep expectancy +that brought a pang to his heart. Her head was thrown back; the short +black hair blew about her like mist; and her cheeks and lips were +glowing with geranium red. At that instant she was not only the girl he +loved--she was youth and spring and adventure. + +The impatience had died now; the burning of his heart was cooled; and +life had grown miraculously simple and easy. He knew at last what he +wanted. His strength of purpose, his will to live had returned to him; +and he felt that he was cured; that he was completely himself for the +first time since his return. The dark depression, the shadows of the +prison, were behind him now. Straight ahead were the roads of that +hidden country, and for the first time he saw them flushed with an April +bloom. + +Then the music stopped; the throng scattered; and she came toward him +with a tall young man, very slim and nimble, whose name was Willy +Tarleton. In her dress of green and silver, with a wreath of leaves in +her hair, she reminded him again of a flower, but of a flower of foam. +As he held out his hand the dance began again; Willy Tarleton vanished +into air; and Patty stood looking at him in silence. After the tumult of +his impatience, it seemed to him that when they met, they must speak +words of profound significance; but all he said was, + +"It is so warm in here. Will you come out on the porch?" + +She shook her head. "I thought you were with Miss Blair?" + +"I am--I was--but I must speak to you before I go back. Come on the +porch where it is so much quieter." + +The deep expectancy was still in her eyes. "I have promised every dance. +Mrs. Page saw that my card was filled in the beginning. Why don't you +ask some of the girls who haven't any partners? It is so dreadful for +them. If men only knew!" + +"I don't know, and I don't care. I want you. If you will come on the +porch for just three minutes--" + +"Yes, it is quieter," she assented, and passed, with a dancing step, +through the French window out on the long porch which was hung with +Chinese lanterns. Beyond was the wide lawn, suffused with a light that +was the colour of amethyst, and beyond the lawn there was a narrow view +of Franklin Street, where the flashing lamps of motor cars went by, or +shadowy figures moved for a little space in obscurity. From this other +world, now and then, the sharp sound of a motor horn punctuated the +monotonous rhythm of the music within the house; while under the Chinese +lanterns, where the shadows of the poplar leaves trembled like flowers, +the struggle in Stephen's heart came to an end--the struggle between +tradition and life, between the knowledge of things as they are and the +vision of things as they ought to be, between the conservative and the +progressive principle in nature. After the long insensibility, spring +was having her way with him, as she was having it with the grass and the +flowers and the bloom on the trees. It was one of those moments of +awakening, of ecstatic vision, which come only to introspective and +imaginative minds--to minds that have known darkness as well as light. +In that instant of realization, he knew, beyond all doubt, that he stood +not for the past, but for the future, that he stood not for philosophy, +but for adventure--for the will to be and to dare. He would choose, once +for all, to take the risk of happiness; to conquer inch by inch a little +more of the romantic wilderness of wonder and delight. While he stood +there, looking down into her eyes, these impressions came to him less +in words than in a glorious sense of youth, of power, of security of +spirit. + +"I looked for you so long," he said, and then breathlessly, as if he +feared lest she might escape him, "Oh, Patty, I love you!" + +Before she could reply, before he could repeat the words that drummed in +his brain, the door into the present swung open, and the dream world, +with its flower-like shadows and its violet dusk, vanished. + +"Patty!" called Corinna's voice. "Patty, dear, I am looking for you." +Corinna, in her rustling white and silver brocade, stepped from the +French window out on the porch. "Some one has sent for you--your aunt, I +think they said, who is dying--" + +The girl started and drew back. Her face changed, while the light faded +from her eyes until they became wells of darkness. "I know," she +answered. "I must go. I promised that I would go." + +"My car is waiting. I will take you," said Corinna. + +She turned to enter the house, and Patty, without so much as a look at +Stephen's face, went slowly after her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +THE NIGHT + + +As the car passed through the deserted streets, Corinna placed her hand +on Patty's with a reassuring pressure. Without appearing to do so, she +was studying the girl's soft profile, now flashing out in a sudden sharp +light, now melting back again into the vagueness of the shadows. What +was there about this girl, Corinna asked herself, which appealed so +strongly to the protective impulse in her heart? Was it because this +undisciplined child, with that curious sporting instinct which supplied +the place of Victorian morality, represented for her, as well as for +Stephen, some inarticulate longing for the unknown, for the adventurous? +Did Patty's charm for them both lie in her unlikeness to everything they +had known in the past? In Corinna, as in Stephen, two opposing spirits +had battled unceasingly, the realistic spirit which accepted life as it +was, and the romantic spirit which struggled toward some unattainable +perfection, which endeavoured to change and decorate the actuality. More +than Stephen, perhaps, she had faced life; but she had not accepted it +without rebellion. She had learned from disappointment to see things as +they are; but deep in her heart some unspent fire of romance, some +imprisoned esthetic impulse, sought continually to gild and enrich the +experience of the moment. And this girl, so young, so ingenuous, so +gallant and so appealing, stood in Corinna's mind for the poetic +wildness of her spirit, for all that she had seen in a vision and had +missed in reality. + +When the car reached the Square, it turned sharply north. Sometimes it +passed through lighted spaces and sometimes through pools of darkness; +and as it went on rapidly, it seemed to Corinna that it was the one +solid fact in a night that she imagined. Patty was very still; but +Corinna felt the warm clasp of her hand, and heard her soft breathing, +which became a part of the muffled undercurrent of the sleeping city. In +all those closely packed houses, where the obscurity was broken here and +there by a lighted window, other human beings were breathing, sleeping, +dreaming, like Patty and herself, of some impractical and visionary +to-morrow. Of something which had never been, but still might be! Of +something which they had just missed, but might find when the sun rose +again! Of a miracle that might occur at any moment and make everything +different! It was after midnight; and to Corinna it seemed that the +darkness had released the collective spirit of the city, which would +retreat again into itself with the breaking of dawn. Once a cry sounded +far off and was hushed almost immediately; once a light flashed and went +out in the window beneath a roof; but as the car sped on by rows of +darkened tenements, the mysterious penumbra of the night appeared to +draw closer and closer, as if that also were a phantom of the +encompassing obscurity. + +"Is this the aunt you told me of, Patty?" asked Corinna abruptly. + +"Yes, I went to see her once--not long ago. I promised her that I'd come +back when she sent for me. She wanted to tell me something, but she was +so ill that she couldn't remember what it was. It was about Father, she +said." + +"Stephen will come for us after he has taken Margaret home. I gave him +the number." + +Patty turned and gave her a long look. They were passing under an +electric light at the time, and Corinna thought, as she looked into the +girl's face, that all the wistful yearning of the night was reflected in +her eyes. What had happened, she wondered, to change their sparkling +brightness into this brooding expectancy. + +The car stopped before the house to which Patty had come with Gershom; +and as they got out, they saw that it was entirely dark except for the +dim flicker of a jet of gas in the hall. By the pavement a car was +standing, and from somewhere at the back there came the sound of a baby +crying inconsolably in the darkness. While they entered the hall, and +went up the broad old-fashioned flight of stairs, that plaintive wail +followed them, growing gradually fainter as they ascended, but never +fading utterly into silence. When they reached the second storey, and +turned toward the back of the house, a door at the end of the passage +opened, and an old woman, with a hunch back, and a piece of knitting in +her gnarled hands, came slowly to meet them. Standing there under the +jet of gas, which flickered with a hissing noise, she looked at them +with glassy impersonal eyes and a face that was as austere as Destiny. +Afterward, when Corinna thought over the impressions of that tragic +night, she felt that they were condensed into the symbol of the old +woman with the crooked back, and the thin crying of the baby which +floated up from the darkness below. + +"We came to see Mrs. Green," explained Corinna. + +The old woman nodded, and as she turned to limp down the passage, her +ball of gray yarn slipped from her grasp and rolled after her until +Corinna recovered it. In silence the cripple led the way, and in silence +they followed her, until she opened the closed door at the end of the +hall, and they entered the room, with the sickening sweetish smell and +the window which gave on the black hulk of the ailantus tree. From +behind a screen, which was covered with faded wall paper, the figure of +the doctor emerged while they waited, an ample middle-aged man, with the +air of having got into his clothes in a hurry and the face of a +pragmatic philosopher. He motioned commandingly for them to approach; +and going to the other side of the screen, they found the dying woman +gazing at them with eager eyes. + +"She is doing nicely," remarked the doctor, with the cheerful alacrity +of one in whom familiarity has bred contempt of death. "Keep her quiet. +One can never tell about these cases." + +He made an explanatory gesture in the direction of his pocket. "I'll go +down on the porch and smoke a cigar, and then if she hasn't had a +relapse, I think it will be safe for me to go home. You can telephone if +you need me. I am only a few blocks away." He went out with a brisk, +elastic step, while his hand began to feel for the end of the cigar in +his pocket. + +"She's bad now," said the old woman. "It's the medicine, but she'll come +to in a minute." She brought two wooden chairs with broken legs to the +foot of the bed. "You'd better sit down. It may be a long waiting." + +"I hope she'll know me," returned Patty. "She must have wanted to see +me, or she wouldn't have sent." Her eyes left the stricken face and +clung to the calla lily on the window-sill, as they had done that +afternoon when she came here with Gershom. The single blossom on the +lily had not faded; it was still as perfect as it had been then--only +two days ago!--and not one of the closed buds had begun to open beside +it. + +"Oh, she wanted to see you," answered the old woman, in a croaking voice +which seemed to Corinna to contain a sinister note. "As long as she was +able to keep on her feet she used to go and sit in the Square just to +watch you come out--" + +"Do you mean that she cared for me like that?" asked the girl, in a +hushed incredulous tone. "Was she really fond of me?" + +The cripple turned her glassy eyes on the fresh young face. "Well, I +don't know that she was fond," she responded bleakly, "but when you're +as bad off as that, there ain't many things that you can think of." + +A murmur fell from the lips of the dying woman, while she rolled her +head slowly from side to side, as if she were seeking ease less from +physical pain than from the thought in her mind. Her thick black hair, +matted and damp where it had been brushed back from her forehead, spread +like a veil over the pillow; and this sombre background lent a graven +majesty to her features. At the moment her head appeared as +expressionless as a mask; but in a few minutes, while they waited for +returning consciousness, a change passed slowly over the waxen face, and +the full colourless lips began to move rapidly and to form broken and +disconnected sentences. For a time they could not understand; then the +words came in a long sobbing breath. "It has been too long. It has been +too long." + +"That goes on all the time," said the old woman. "I've been up with her +for three nights, and she rambles almost every minute. But sick folks +are like that," she concluded philosophically. She had not laid down her +knitting for an instant; and standing now beside the bed, she jerked the +gray yarn automatically through her twisted fingers. The clicking of the +long wooden needles formed an accompaniment to the dry, hard sound of +her words. + +"Why doesn't some one hush that child?" asked Corinna impatiently. +Through the open window a breeze entered, bringing the thin restless +wail of the baby. + +"The mother tries, but she can't do anything. She thinks the milk went +wrong and gave it colic." + +The woman on the bed spoke suddenly in a clear voice. "Why doesn't he +come?" she demanded. Raising her heavy lids she looked straight into +Corinna's eyes, with a lucid and comprehending expression, as if she had +just awakened from sleep. + +Holding her knitting away from the bed with one hand, and bending over, +until her deformed shape made a hill against the bedpost, the old woman +screamed into the ear on the pillow, as if the hearer were either deaf +or at a great distance. Though her manner was not heartless, it was as +impassive as philosophy. + +"He is coming," she shrieked. + +"Is he bringing the child?" + +"She is already here. Can't you see her there at the foot of the bed?" + +The large black eyes, drained of any human expression, turned slowly +toward the figure of Patty. + +"But she is a little thing," said the woman doubtfully. "She is not +three years old yet. What has he done with her? He told me that he would +take care of her as if she belonged to him." + +The old hunchback, bending her inscrutable face, screamed again into the +ear on the pillow. + +"That was near sixteen years ago, Maggie," she said. "Have you +forgotten?" + +The woman closed her eyes wearily. "Yes, I had forgotten," she answered. +"Time goes so." + +But it appeared to Corinna, sitting there, with her eyes on the strip of +sky which was visible through the window, that time would never go on. A +pitiless fact was breaking into her understanding, shattering wall after +wall of incredulity, of conviction that such a thing was too terrible to +be true. She longed to get Patty away; but when she urged her in a +whisper to go downstairs, the girl only shook her head, without moving +her eyes from the haggard face on the pillow. The minutes dragged by +like hours while they waited there, in hushed suspense, for they +scarcely knew what. Outside in the backyard, the flowering ailantus tree +shed a disagreeable odour; downstairs the feeble crying, which had +stopped for a little while, was beginning again. While she remained +motionless at the foot of the bed, wild and rebellious thoughts flocked +through Corinna's mind. If she had only held back that message! If she +had only kept Patty away until it was too late! She thought of the girl +a few hours ago, flushed with happiness, dancing under the swinging +garlands of flowers, to the sound of that thunderous music. Dancing +there, with the restless pleasure of youth, while in another street, so +far away that it might have been in a distant city, in a different +world even, this woman, with the face of tragedy, lay dying with that +fretful wail in her ears. A different world it might have been, and yet +what divided her from this other woman except the blind decision of +chance, the difference between beauty and ugliness, nothing more. In +this dingy room, smelling of dust and drugs and the heavy odour of the +ailantus tree, she felt a presence more profoundly real, more poignantly +significant, than any material forms--the presence of those elemental +forces which connect time with eternity. This little room, within its +partial shadow, like the shadow of time itself, was touched with the +solemnity of a cathedral. It seemed to Corinna, with her imaginative +love of life, that a window into experience had opened sharply, a wall +had crumbled. For the first time she understood that the innumerable and +intricate divisions of human fate are woven into a single tremendous +design. + +While they waited there in silence the hours dragged on like years. At +last the woman appeared to sleep, and when she opened her eyes again, +her gaze had become clear and lucid. + +"Have you sent for them?" she asked. + +"Yes, I sent for them," answered the old woman, lowering her voice to a +natural pitch. "The girl is here." + +"Patty? Where is she?" + +Drawing her hand from Corinna's clasp, Patty moved slowly to the head of +the bed, and standing there beside the deformed old woman, she looked +down on the upturned face. + +"I came as I promised. Can I help you?" she asked; and her voice was so +quiet, so repressed, that Corinna looked at her anxiously. How much had +the girl understood? And, if she understood, what difference would it +make in her life--and in Stephen's life? + +"I couldn't tell you the other day because of Julius," said the woman, +in a strangled tone. "I couldn't say things before Julius." Then, +glancing toward the door, she asked breathlessly, "Didn't Gideon Vetch +come with you?" + +"Father?" responded Patty, wonderingly. "Do you want Father to come?" + +A smile crossed the woman's face, and she made a movement as if she +wanted to raise her head. "Do you call him Father?" she returned in a +pleased voice. + +At the question, Corinna sprang up and made an impulsive step forward. +"Oh, don't!" she cried out pleadingly. "Don't tell her!" + +"But he is my father," Patty's tone was stern and accusing. "He is my +father." + +The smile was still on the woman's face; but while Corinna watched it, +she realized that it was unlike any smile she had ever seen before in +her life--a smile of satisfaction that was at the same time one of +relinquishment. + +"They thought I was married to him," she said slowly. "Julius thought, +or pretended to think, that he could harm him by making me swear that I +was married to him. They gave me drugs. I would have done anything for +drugs--and I did that! But the old woman there knows better. She's got a +paper. I made her keep it--about Patty--" + +"Don't!" cried Corinna again in a sharper tone. "Oh, can't you see that +you must not tell her!" + +For the first time the woman turned her eyes away from the girl. "It is +because of Gideon Vetch," she answered slowly. "I may get well again, +and then I'll be sorry." + +"But he would rather you wouldn't." Corinna's voice was full of pain. +"You know--you must know, if you know him at all, that he would rather +you spared her--" + +"Know him?" repeated the woman, and she laughed with a dry, rattling +sound. "I don't know him. I never saw him but once in my life." + +"You never saw him but once." The words came so slowly from Patty's lips +that she seemed to choke over them. "But you said that you knew my +mother?" + +Again the woman made that dry, rattling sound in her chest. "Your mother +never saw him but once," she answered grimly. "She never saw him but +once, and that was for a quarter of an hour on the night they were +taking her to prison. I would never have told but for Julius," she +added. "I would never have told if they hadn't tried to make out that I +knew him, and that he was really your father. It would ruin him, they +said, and that was what they wanted. But when they bring it out, with +the paper they got me to sign, I want you to know that it is a lie--that +I did it because I'd have died if I hadn't got hold of the drugs--" + +"But he is my father," repeated Patty quite steadily--so steadily that +her voice was without colour or feeling. + +The only reply that came was a gasping sound, which grew louder and +louder, with the woman's struggle for breath, until it seemed to fill +the room and the night outside and even the desolate sky. As she lay +back, with the arm of the old cripple under her head and her streaming +hair, the spasm passed like a stain over her face, changing its waxen +pallor to the colour of ashes, while a dull purplish shadow encircled +her mouth. For a few minutes, so violent was the struggle for air, it +appeared to Corinna that nothing except death could ever quiet that +agonized gasping; but while she waited for the end, the sound became +gradually fainter, and the woman spoke quite plainly, though with an +effort that racked not only her strangled chest, but her entire body. +Each syllable came so slowly, and now and then so faintly, that there +were moments when it seemed that the breath in that tormented body would +not last until the words had been spoken. + +"You were going on three years old when he first saw you. They were +taking me away to prison--that's over now, and it don't matter--but I +hadn't any chance--" The panting began again; but by force of will, the +woman controlled it after a minute, and went on, as if she were +measuring her breath inch by inch, almost as if it were a material +substance which she was holding in reserve for the end. "Your father +died the first year I married him, and things went from bad to +worse--there's no use going over that, no use--They were taking me to +prison from the circus, and I had you in my arms, when Gideon Vetch came +by and saw me--" Again there was a pause and a desperate battle for air; +and again, after it was over, she went on in that strangled whisper, +while her eyes, like the eyes of a drowning animal, clung neither to +Patty nor Corinna, but to the austere face of the old hunchback. "'What +am I to do with the child?' I asked, and he stepped right out of the +circus crowd, and answered 'Give me the child. I like children'--" An +inarticulate moan followed, and then she repeated clearly and slowly. +"Just like that--nothing more--'Give me the child. I like children.' +That was the first time I ever saw him. He had come to see some of the +people in the circus, and I've never seen him since then except in the +Square. The trial went against me, but that's all over. Oh, I'm tired +now. It hurts me. I can't talk--" + +She broke into terrible coughing; and the old woman, dropping her +knitting for the first time since they had entered the room, seized a +towel from a chair by the bed. "Talking was too much for her," she said. +"I thought she'd pull through. She was so much better--but talking was +too much." + +"She is so ill that she doesn't know what she is saying," murmured +Corinna in the girl's ear. "She is out of her mind." + +"No, she isn't out of her mind," replied Patty quietly. "She isn't out +of her mind." In her ball gown of green and silver, like the colours of +sunlit foam, with a wreath of artificial leaves in her hair, her +loveliness was unearthly. "It is every bit true. I know it," she +reiterated. + +"She's bleeding again," muttered the old woman. "You'd better find the +doctor. I ain't used to stopping hemorrhages." Then, as Corinna went out +of the room, she added querulously to Patty: "She didn't have no +business trying to talk; but she would do it. She said she'd do it if it +killed her--and I reckon she don't mind much if it does--She'd have +killed herself sooner than this if I'd let her alone." From the street +below there came the sound of a motor horn; then the noise of a car +running against the curbstone; and then the opening and shutting of a +door, followed by rapid footsteps on the stairs. + +"That's the doctor now, I reckon," remarked the old woman; but the words +had scarcely left her lips when the door opened, and Corinna came back +into the room with Gideon Vetch. + +"Where is Patty?" he asked anxiously. "She oughtn't to be here." + +"Yes, I ought to be here," answered Patty. As she turned toward Gideon +Vetch, she swayed as if she were going to fall, and he caught her in his +arms. "Go home, daughter," he said almost sternly. "You oughtn't to be +here. Mrs. Page, can't you make her go home?" + +"I have tried," responded Corinna; then a moan from the bed reached her, +and she turned toward the woman who lay there. To die like that with +nobody caring, with nobody even observing it! Exhausted by the loss of +blood, the woman had fallen back into unconsciousness, and the towel the +old cripple held to her lips was stained scarlet. + +"The doctor had gone to bed. He will come as soon as he gets dressed," +said Corinna. "He warned us to keep her quiet." + +"If he don't hurry, she'll be gone before he gets here," replied the old +woman, looking round over her twisted shoulder. + +"Oh, Father, Father!" cried Patty, flinging her arms about his neck; and +then over again like a frightened child, "Father, Father!" + +He patted her head with a large consoling hand. "There, there, +daughter," he returned gently. "A little thing like that won't come +between you and me." + +With his arm still about her, he drew her slowly to the bedside, and +stood looking down on the dying woman and the old cripple, who hovered +over her with the stained towel in her hand. + +"I don't even know her name," he said, and immediately afterward, "She +must have had a hell of a life!" Though there was a wholesome pity in +his voice, it was without the weakness of sentimentality. He had done +what he could, and he was not the kind to worry over events which he +could not change. For a few minutes he stood there in silence; then, +because it was impossible for his energetic nature to remain inactive in +an emergency, he exclaimed suddenly, "The doctor ought to be here!" and +turning away from the bed, went rapidly across the room and through the +half open door into the hall. + +Outside the darkness was dissolving in a drab light which crept slowly +up above the roofs of the houses; and while they waited this light +filled the yard and the room and the passage beyond the door which +Gideon Vetch had not closed. Far away, through the heavy boughs of the +ailantus tree, day was breaking in a glimmer of purple-few birds were +twittering among the leaves. Along the high brick wall a starved gray +cat was stealing like a shadow. Drawing her evening wrap closer about +her bare shoulders, Corinna realized that it was already day in the +street. + +"She's gone," said the old hunchback, in a crooning whisper. Her twisted +hand was on the arm of the dead woman, which stretched as pallid and +motionless as an arm of wax over the figured quilt. "She's gone, and she +never knew that he had come." With a gesture that appeared as natural as +the dropping of a leaf, she pressed down the eyelids over the +expressionless eyes. "Well, that's the way life is, I reckon," she +remarked, as an epitaph over the obscure destiny of Mrs. Green. + +"Yes, that's the way life is," repeated Corinna under her breath. +Already the old cripple had started about her inevitable ministrations: +but when Corinna tried to make Patty move away from the bedside, the +girl shook her head in a stubborn refusal. + +"I am trying to believe it," she said. "I am trying to believe it, and I +can't." Then she looked at them calmly and steadily. "I want to think it +out by myself," she added. "Would you mind leaving me alone in here for +just a few minutes?" + +Though there was no grief in her voice--how could there be any grief, +Corinna asked herself?--there was an accent of profound surprise and +incredulity, as of one who has looked for the first time on death. +Standing there in her spring-like dress beside the dead woman who had +been her mother, Corinna felt intuitively that Patty had left her +girlhood behind her. The child had lived in one night through an inner +crisis, through a period of spiritual growth, which could not be +measured by years. Whatever she became in the future, she would never be +again the Patty Vetch that Corinna and Stephen had known. + +Yes, she had a right to be alone. Beckoning to the old woman to follow +her, Corinna went out softly, closing the door after her. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE DAWN + + +Outside in the narrow passage, smelling of dust and yesterday's cooking, +the pallid light filtered in through the closed window; and it seemed to +Corinna that this light pervaded her own thoughts until the images in +her mind moved in a procession of stark outlines against a colourless +horizon. In this unreal world, which she knew was merely a distorted +impression of the external world about her, she saw the figure of the +dead woman, still and straight as the effigy of a saint, the twisted +shape of the old hunchback, and after these the shadow of the starved +cat stealing along the top of the high brick wall. What was the meaning +in these things? Where was the beauty? What inscrutable purpose, what +sardonic humour, joined together beauty and ugliness, harmony and +discord, her own golden heritage with the drab destinies of that dead +woman and this work-worn cripple? + +"I can't stand it any longer," she thought. "I must breathe the open +air, or I shall die." + +Then, just as she was about to hurry toward the stairs, she checked +herself and stood still because she realized that the old woman had +followed her and was droning into her ear. + +"Yes, ma'am, that's the way life is," the impersonal voice was +muttering, "but it ain't the only way that it is, I reckon. I sees so +many sick and dying folks that you'd think I was obliged to look at +things unnatural-like. But I don't, not me, ma'am. It ain't all that +way, with nothing but waiting and wanting, and then disappointment. Even +Maggie had her good times somewhere in the past. You can't expect to be +always dressed in spangles and riding bareback, that's what I used to +say to her. You've got to take your share of bad times, same as the rest +of us. And look at me now. I've done sick nursing for more'n fifty +years--as far back as I like to look--but it ain't all been sick +nursing. There's been a deal in it besides. + +"Naw'm, I've got a lot to be thankful for when I begin to take stock." +Her wrinkled face caught the first gleam of sunlight that fell through +the unwashed window panes. "I've done sick nursing ever since I was a +child almost; but I've managed mighty well all things considering, and +I've saved up enough to keep me out of the poor house when I get too old +to go on. When I give up I won't have to depend on charity, and the city +won't have to bury me either when I'm dead. And I've got a heap of +satisfaction out of my red geraniums too. I don't reckon you ever saw +finer blooms--not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the +complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know it." + +Her old eyes shone; her sunken mouth was trembling, not with self-pity, +Corinna realized, with a pang that was strangely like terror, but with +the courage of living. The pathos of it appeared intolerable for a +moment; and gathering her cloak about her, Corinna felt that she must +cover her eyes and fly before she broke out into hysterical screaming. +Then the terror passed; and she saw, in a single piercing flash of +insight, that what she had mistaken for ugliness was simply an +impalpable manifestation of beauty. Beauty! Why it was everywhere! It +was with her now in this squalid house, in the presence of this crippled +old woman, unmoved by death, inured to poverty, screwing, grinding, +pinching, like flint to the crying baby, and yet cherishing the blooms +of her red geranium, her passionate horror of the poor house, and her +dream of six feet of free earth not paid for by charity at the end. Yes, +that was the way of life. Blind as a mole to the universe, and yet +visited by flashes of unearthly light. + +"Thank you," said Corinna hurriedly. "I must go down. I must get a +breath of air, but I will come back in a little while." Then she started +at a run down the stairs, while the old woman gazed after her, as if the +flying figure, in the cloak of peacock-blue satin and white fur, was +that of a demented creature. "Air!" she repeated, with scornful +independence. "Air!", and turning away in disgust, she limped painfully +back to wait outside of the closed door. Here, when she had seated +herself in a sagging chair, she lifted her bleak eyes to the +smoke-stained ceiling, and repeated for the third time in a tone of +profound contempt: "Air!" + +At the foot of the stairs, Corinna ran against Gideon Vetch. "She died +soon after you went out," she said, "but Patty is still there." + +"I'll go up to her," he answered; and then as he placed his foot on the +bottom step, he looked back at her, and added, "I tried to spare her +this." + +She assented almost mechanically. Fatigue had swept over her from head +to foot like some sinister drug and she felt incapable of giving out +anything, even sympathy, even the appearance of compassion. "Then it is +all true?" she asked. "Patty is not your child?" + +A shadow crossed his face, but he did not hesitate in his reply. "I +never had a child. I was never married." + +"You took her like that--because the mother was going to prison?" + +He nodded. "She was a child. What difference did it make whether she was +mine or not? She was the nicest little thing you ever saw. She is +still." + +"Yes, she is still. But you never knew what became of the mother?" + +"I didn't know her real name. I didn't want to. The circus people called +her Queenie, that was all I knew. She'd stuck a knife into a man in a +jealous rage, and he happened to die. They said the trial would be +obliged to go against her. I was leaving California that night, and I +brought the child with me. I have never been back--" He spread out his +broad hand with a gesture that was strangely human. "You would have done +it in my place?" + +She shook her head. "No, I should have wanted to, but I couldn't. I am +not big enough for that." + +He was already ascending the stairs, but at her words, he turned and +smiled down on her. "It was nothing to make a fuss about," he said. +"Anybody would have done it." + +Then he mounted the stairs lightly for his great height, taking two +steps at a time, while she passed out on the porch where Stephen was +waiting for her. As he rose wearily from the wicker rocking chair beside +the empty perambulator, she felt as if he were a stranger. In that one +night she seemed to have put the whole universe between her and the old +order that he represented. + +"I kept my car waiting for you," he began. "It was better to let your +man go home." + +She smiled at him in the pale light, and he broke out nervously: "You +look as if you would drop. What have they done to you?" Though she wore +the cloak of peacock-blue over her evening gown, the pointed train wound +on the floor behind her, and the fan of white ostrich plumes, which she +had forgotten to leave in the car, was still in her hand. Her face was +wan and drawn; there were violet circles under her eyes; and she looked +as if she had grown ten years older since the evening before. It was the +outward impression of the night, he knew. In this house one passed back +again into the power of time; youth could not be prolonged here for a +single night. + +"I don't know what it means," he said, with a mixture of exasperation +and curiosity. "I wish you would tell me what it means." + +"I feel," she answered, in an expressionless tone, as if the +insensibility of her nerves had passed into her voice, "that I have +faced life for the first time." + +"Tell me what it means," he reiterated impatiently. + +Dropping into the chair from which he had risen, she drew her train +aside while the doctor passed them hurriedly, with a muttered apology, +and went into the house. Then, leaning forward, with the fan clasped in +her hands, and her eyes on the straight deserted street, which ended +abruptly on the brow of a hill, she repeated word for word all that the +dying woman had said. The sun had not yet risen, but a faint opalescent +glow suffused the sky in the east, and flushed with a delicate colour +the round cobblestones in the street and the herring-bone pattern of the +pavement, where blades of grass sprouted among the bricks. Though she +did not look up at Stephen's face, she was aware while she talked of +some subtle emanation of thought outside of herself, as if the struggle +in his mind had overflowed mechanical processes and physical boundaries, +and was escaping into the empty street and the city beyond. And this +silent struggle, so charged with intensity that it produced the effect +of a cry, became for her merely a part, a single voice, in that greater +struggle for victory over circumstances which went on ceaselessly day +and night in the surrounding houses. Everywhere about her there was the +vague groping toward some idea of freedom, toward independence of +spirit; everywhere there was this perpetual striving toward a universe +that was larger. The dwellers in this crowded house, with their vision +of space and sunlight; the village with its vision of a city; the city +with its vision of a country; the country with its vision of a republic +of the world--all these universal struggles were condensed now into the +little space of a man's consciousness. To Corinna, in whose veins flowed +the blood of Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor, it seemed that the greater +victory must lie with those who charged from out the cover of philosophy +into the mystery of the unknown. If she had been in Stephen's place, she +knew that she should have taken the risk, that she should have flung +herself into the enterprise of life as into a voyage of discovery. Yet, +at the moment, appreciating all that it meant to him, she asked herself +if she had been wise to let him see the thought in her mind. For an +instant, after telling him, she hesitated, and in this instant Stephen +spoke. + +"So he isn't her father?" + +"No, he isn't her father. He had never seen her mother; he did not even +know her name, for he met the woman by accident when she was arrested in +the circus. Patty was over two years old then--about two and a half, I +think. Gideon Vetch took the child because of an impulse--a very human +impulse of pity--but he knew nothing of her parentage. He knows nothing +now, not even her real name. It is much worse than we ever imagined. Try +to understand it. Try to take it in clearly before you act rashly. There +is still time to weigh things--to stop and reflect. Nothing whatever is +known of Patty's birth, except that her father, so the woman said, died +in the first year of their marriage, before the child was born, and less +than two years later the mother was sent to prison for killing another +man--" + +She broke off hurriedly, wiping her lips as if the mere recital of the +sordid facts had stained them with blood. It all sounded so horrible as +she repeated it--so incredibly evil! + +"Oh, my dear boy, try to take it in however much it may hurt you," she +pleaded, turning a coward not on her own account, not even on his, but +for the sake of something deeper and more sacred which belonged to them +both and to the tradition for which they stood. A passionate longing +seized her now to protect Stephen from the risk that she had urged him +to take. + +"I understand. It is terrible for her," he answered. + +"I hate you to see Patty. Poor child, she looks seared." Then a possible +way occurred to her, even though she hated herself while she suggested +it. "I am not sure that it is wise for you to wait. There are so many +things you must think of. There is first of all your family--" + +He laughed shortly. "It is late in the day to remember that." + +"I know." A look of compunction crossed her face. "Forgive me." + +"Of course I think of them," he said presently. "Poor Dad. He is the +best of us all, I believe." Though there was an expression of pain in +his eyes, she noticed that the unnatural lethargy, the nervous +irritation, had disappeared. He looked as if a load had dropped from his +shoulders. + +As with many women who have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a +man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was +almost a shock to her. She had believed that her knowledge of him was +perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her +analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental +misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative +and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic +in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk +while he accepts the extraordinary one. She had forgotten that men of +Stephen's nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same +time capable of large ones; that, though they may not endure petty +discomforts with fortitude, they are able, in moments of vivid +experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid nobility. For +the old order was not merely the outward form of the conservative +principle, it was also the fruit of heroic tradition. + +"You must think it over, Stephen," she pleaded. "Go away now, and try +to realize all that it will mean to you." + +"Thinking doesn't get me anywhere," he replied. His face was pale and +thoughtful; and Corinna knew, while she watched him, that he had found +freedom at last; that he had come into his manhood. "I've made my +choice, and I'll stand by it to-day even if I regret it to-morrow. +You've got to take chances; to leave the safe road and strike out into +open country. That's living. Otherwise you might as well be dead. I +can't just cling like moss to institutions that other people have made; +to the things that have always been. I've got to take chances--and I'm +enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me--" + +The part of Corinna's nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the +part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in +sympathy with his resolve. Though she gazed down the straight deserted +street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the +cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible +world. + +"I understand, dear," she answered softly. "I can't tell whether or not +it is the safe way; but I know it is the gallant way." + +"It is the only way," he responded steadily. "If I am ever to make +anything of my life, this is the test. I see that I've got to meet it. I +shall probably have to meet it every day of my life--but, by Jove, I'll +meet it! Patty isn't just Patty to me. She is strength and courage. She +is the risk of the future. I suppose she is the pioneer in my blood, or +my mind. I can't help what she came from, nor can she. I've got to take +that as I take everything else, with the belief that it is worth all the +cost. The thing I feel now is that she has given me back myself. She has +given me a free outlook on life--" + +He stopped abruptly, for there was the sound of footsteps in the house, +and after a minute or two, Patty and Gideon Vetch came out on the porch. +The girl looked, except for the red of her mouth, as if the blood had +been drawn from her veins, and her eyes were like dark pansies. All the +light had faded from them, changing even their colour. + +"Patty," said Stephen; and he made a step toward her, with his hands +outstretched as if he would gather her to him. Then he stopped and fell +back, for the girl was shrinking away from him with a look of fear. + +"I can't talk now," she answered, smiling with hard lips. "I am tired. I +can't talk now." Running ahead she went down the steps, through the +gate, and into Vetch's car which was standing beside the curbstone. + +"She's worn out," explained Vetch. "I'll take her home, and you'd better +try to get some sleep, Mrs. Page. You look as tired as Patty." + +"Let me go with you," returned Corinna. "Your car is closed, and Patty +and I are both bareheaded." For a moment she turned back to put her hand +on Stephen's arm. "I must sleep," she said. "I shan't go to the shop +to-day." + +Vetch was waiting at the door of the car, and when she stumbled over her +train, she fell slightly against him. "How exhausted you are," he +observed gently, "and what a rock you are to lean on!" + +She looked at him with a smile. "Those are the very words I've used +about you." + +He laughed and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his +unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on +them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps +you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference +between her and me. Won't you try to see that, daughter?" + +"Oh, Father!" exclaimed Patty with a sob, "it makes all the difference +in the world!" + +"There it is," said Vetch with anxious weariness. "That is all I can get +out of her." + +"She is so tired," replied Corinna. "Let her rest." Though her gaze was +on the street, she saw still the dusk beyond the ailantus tree and the +old woman, with the crooked back, pressing down the eyelids over those +staring eyes. + +They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached +the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to +Corinna. "I can never tell you," she began, "I can never tell +you--" Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the +staircase beyond the library. + +"Let her rest," said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch. +"Leave her to herself. She needs sleep, but she is very young--and for +youth there is no despair that does not pass." + +"You are as tired as she is," he returned. + +She nodded. "I am going home to sleep, but the look of that child +worries me." + +"I kept it from her for sixteen years," he said slowly, "and she found +out by an accident." + +"I never suspected, or I might have prevented it." + +"No, I trusted too much to chance. I have always trusted to chance." + +"I think," she said, "that you have trusted most to your good +instincts." + +He smiled, and she saw that he was deeply touched. "Well, I'm trusting +to them now," he responded. "They have led me between two extremes, and +it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets. I've got them all +against me, but it isn't over yet, by Jove! It is a long road that has +no turning--" + +They had descended the steps together, and walking a little way beyond +the drive, they stood in the bright green grass looking up at the clear +gold of the sunrise. + +"There is a meeting to-night," she said. + +"Of the strikers--yes, I may win them. I can generally win people if +they let me talk--but the trouble goes deeper than that. It isn't that I +can't carry them with me for an hour. It is simply that I can't make any +of them see where we are going. It is a question not of loyalty, but of +understanding. They can't understand anything except what they want." + +"Whether you win or not," she answered, "I am glad that at last I am on +your side." + +His face lighted. "On my side? Even if it means failure?" + +As she looked up at him the sunrise was in her face. The sky was turning +slowly to flame-colour, and each dark pointed leaf of the magnolia tree +stood out illuminated against a background of fire. "It may be failure, +but it is magnificent," she said. + +He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood +there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice +before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal +life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being, +something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was +responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. All that +she had missed in life--completeness, perfection--seemed to shine about +her for an instant before it passed on into the sunlight. A fancy, +nothing more! A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth! For if she +had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have +said, "Give me what I have never had. Make me what I have never been." +But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not +alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in +flight. + +"I thank you," he answered in a low voice. "I shall remember that." + +The moment had passed, and she held out her hand with a smile. "I shall +come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night," she +said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in +silence. + +A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing +in the bright grass with the sunrise above his head. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH + + +That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor's +house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps. + +"I waited for you," he said; and then as the car moved away, he took her +hand and turned back to the porch. + +"I couldn't come before," explained Corinna. "I had a headache all day, +and it kept me in bed. Have you seen Patty?" + +"I have seen her, but that is all. I can do nothing with her." + +"But she cares for you." + +"She doesn't deny it. That's not the trouble. Something about Vetch +stands in the way. I can't make out what she means." + +"Let me talk to her," responded Corinna reassuringly. "Is the Governor +here?" + +"No, he has gone to the strikers' meeting. They must reach some decision +to-night it appears. I have talked with him, and I believe he will stand +firm whatever happens. It means, I think, that his career is over." + +"It is too late for him to win over the conservative forces?" + +"It was always too late. In a battle of extremes the most dangerous +position is in the centre." + +"He told me something like that once. The trouble with him is that he +hasn't a point of view, but a vision. He sees the whole, and politics is +only a little part of it." + +"Yes, he sees a human fight, while they are trying to make a political +squabble. He may win them over to-night, but this is only the beginning. +The real fight is against individual self-interest." He laughed in an +undertone. "I remember he told me once that the only trouble with +Christianity was the Christians. 'You can't have Christianity', he said, +'until Christians are different'. That's just as true, of course, of +politics. The only trouble with politics is the politicians." + +"Well, it's a muddle," she responded impatiently. "However you look at +it. Come back in an hour or two, and I may be able to help you." Her +cheerful smile shone on him for an instant; then she entered the house +and closed the door after her. + +In one of the worn leather chairs in the library, Patty was sitting +perfectly still, with her eyes fixed on the orderly row of papers on the +Governor's desk. She wore a white dress with a black ribbon at her +waist, and in the dim light, with her pale face and her cloudy hair, she +had a ghostly look as if she would turn to mist at a touch. When Corinna +entered, she rose and held out her hands. "You are so good," she said. +"I never dreamed that any body could be so good and so beautiful too!" + +"My dear," began Corinna brightly, and while she spoke she drew the girl +to the leather-covered couch by the window, and sat down still holding +the cold hands in her warm ones. "So you are going to marry Stephen." + +"I can't," replied Patty, and she turned her face slightly away as if +she shrank from meeting Corinna's eyes. "I can't after what I know. I +can't do it because of Father." + +"Because of your father?" repeated Corinna. "But surely your father +wishes you to be happy?" + +"Oh, I know he does. It isn't that. But this will all come out. That is +what Julius Gershom meant when he threatened. They are trying to do him +some harm--Father, I mean--" + +"I understand that, but still how in the world--" + +Before she could finish her sentence Patty interrupted in an hysterical +voice--the voice of youth that is always dramatic: "Nobody will ever +mean as much to me as Father does," she cried. "I know that now. I've +known it ever since I found out that he began it just out of +kindness--that I had no claim on him of any kind--" + +"That is natural, dear, but still I don't understand." + +Rising from the couch, Patty moved to a chair in front of Corinna, and +sinking into it, began nervously plaiting and unplaiting a fold of her +white dress. "I can do anything with Julius Gershom if I am nice to +him," she murmured. "If he stands by Father most of the others will +also." + +With a gasp Corinna sat up very straight and tried to see Patty's eyes +in the obscurity. What sordid horror was the child facing now? What +unspeakable degradation? "You can't think of marrying Gershom, Patty!" +she exclaimed, with a gesture of loathing. "You must be out of your mind +even to dream of it!" + +"I can make him do anything I want if I will promise to marry him," she +answered in a steady voice, though a shiver of aversion passed over her. + +Corinna drew her breath sharply, restraining at the same time an impulse +to laugh. Oh, the mock heroics of youth! Of youth with its fantastic +heroism and its dauntless inexperience! "If you only knew," she breathed +indignantly, "if you only knew what marriage means!" + +Patty turned and gave her a long look. "I could do more than that for +Father," she answered. + +So this was the other side of Gideon Vetch--of that man of ignoble +circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand +him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his +power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was +inspired by an exalted illusion--the illusion of human perfectibility. +In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the +dissolution and readjustment of ideals; in the modern conflict between +the spirit that accepts and the spirit that rejects; in this age of +destiny--was not an unconquerable optimism, an invincible belief in +life, the one secure hope for the future? It is the human touch that +creates hope, she thought; and the power of Gideon Vetch was revealed to +her as simply the human touch magnified into a force. + +She became aware after a minute that Patty was speaking. "I can never +tell you--I can never tell any one what he used to be to me when I was a +little girl, and he was very poor. Sometimes--for a long time--I +couldn't have a nurse, and he would dress and undress me, and leave me +with the neighbours when he went away to work. I can see him now heating +milk for me over an old oil lamp. Once when I was ill he sat up night +after night with me. Oh, I don't mean that he was perfect, but that he +was kind--always. I know the quarrels he had--that he has still with the +people who won't go his way. The one thing he can't forgive in people is +that they never forget themselves, that they never think of anything +except what they want. That angers him, and he flies out. I know that. +But there's no use trying I can't make anybody, I can't make even you, +know all that he did for me--" The words ended in tears; and she sat +there, lost in memory, while the dim light seemed to absorb her white +dress and her pale features and the small hand that lay on the fringe of +her black sash. + +"My dear, my dear," murmured Corinna because she could think of no words +that sounded less ineffectual. + +There was a ring at the doorbell while she spoke and after a pause +which appeared to her interminable, she heard the shuffling tread of old +Abijah, and then the clear tone of Stephen's voice, followed immediately +by another speaker who sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not +recall now where she had listened to him before. It was not Julius +Gershom, she knew, though it might be some man that she had heard at a +meeting. + +"Let me speak to Mrs. Page first," said Stephen. "Ask her if she will +come into the drawing-room." + +For an instant Corinna hung back, with the chill of dread at her heart; +and in that instant Patty flew past her like a startled spirit, while +the ends of her black sash streamed behind her. With the penetrating +insight of love the girl had surmised, had seen, had understood, before +a word of explanation had reached her, before even the door had swung +open, and she had met the blanched faces of the men in the hall. "It is +Father," she said quietly. "They have hurt him. Oh, I knew all the time +that they were going to hurt him!" + +Corinna, standing close at her side without touching her, for some +intuition told her that the girl did not wish any support, was aware of +the faces of these men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights, +out of the shadows in the hall--first Stephen's face, with its shocked +compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless; +then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of +its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to +her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an +expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but of the +stony fortitude of the ages. Beyond this there was the open door and the +glamour of the spring night, and in the night another group with its +dark burden. + +"I met them just outside, and they told me," said Stephen. "Gershom +thinks it was an accident, but we shall never know probably. Two +opposing sides were fighting it out. A question had come up--nobody can +remember what it was--nothing important, I think--but two men came to +blows and he got in between them--he stood in the way--and somebody shot +him--" + +He was talking, Corinna realized, in an effort to hold Patty's gaze, to +divert her eyes by the force of his look from the burden which the men +were bringing slowly up the steps outside and into the hall. + +"Nobody meant to harm him," said Gershom suddenly, speaking from the +edge of the group. "The pistol went off by mistake. He got in the way +before any one saw him--" But from his look, Corinna knew that it was +not an accident, that they had shot him because he came between them and +the thing that they wanted. + +The slow steps crossed the hall into the library, and above the measured +beat and pause of the sound, Corinna heard the voice of Vetch as +distinctly as if he were standing there before her in the centre of the +group. "The loneliest man on earth is the one who stands between two +extremes." Yes, at the end as well as at the beginning, he had stood +between two extremes! Then Patty's cry of anguish floated to her from +the room across the hall into which they had taken him. "Father! +Father!" Only that one word over and over again. "Father! Father!" Only +that one word uttered steadily and softly in a tone of imploring +helplessness like the wail of a frightened child. It never ceased, this +piteous sobbing, until at last the doctor went out, and left Corinna +alone with the girl and Gideon Vetch. Then Patty fell on her knees +beside the couch where he lay, and a silence that was almost suffocating +closed over the room. + +The house had become very still. While Corinna waited there at Patty's +side, the only noise came from the restless movement of the city, which +sounded far off and vaguely ominous, like the disturbance in a nightmare +from which one has just awakened. She had turned off the unshaded +electric light; and for a few minutes Patty knelt alone in a merciful +dimness, which left her white dress and the composed features of the +dead man the only luminous spots in the room. It was as if these two +pallid spaces were living things in the midst of inanimate darkness. For +a moment only this impression lasted, for overcome by the pathos of it, +Corinna crossed the room with noiseless footsteps and lighted the wax +candles on the mantelpiece. + +Death had come so suddenly that, lying there in the trembling light of +the candles, Vetch appeared to be merely resting a moment in his +energetic career. His rugged features still wore their look of exuberant +vitality, of triumphant faith. There was about him even in death the +radiance of his indestructible illusion. As Corinna looked down on him, +it seemed incredible to her that he should not stretch himself in a +moment, and rise and go out again into the struggle of living. It seemed +incredible that his work should be finished for ever when he was still +so unspent, so full of tireless activity. Was death always like this--a +victory of material and mechanical forces? An accident, an automatic +gesture, and the complex power which stood for the soul of Gideon Vetch +was dissolved--or released. The crumbling of a rock, the falling of a +leaf! Her eyes left the face of the dead man, left Patty's bowed head at +her side, and travelled beyond the open window into the glamour and +mystery of the night, and beyond the night into the sky-- + +There was a knock at the door, and she turned away and went out to join +the men in the hall. What had it meant to them, she wondered. How much +had they understood? How much had they ever understood of that symbol of +a changing world which they had loved and hated under the name of Gideon +Vetch? + +"Give her a few minutes more," she said. "Leave her alone with him." + +There were four men waiting--her father, Stephen, old Darrow, and +Julius Gershom--and these four, she felt, were the men who had known +Vetch best, and who, with the exception of Darrow, had perhaps +understood least what he meant. No one had understood him, least of all, +she saw now, had she herself understood him-- + +Gershom spoke first. "He was the biggest man we've ever had," he said, +"and we never doubted it--" Yet he had never for an instant, Corinna +knew, seen Vetch as he really was, or recognized the end for which he +was fighting. + +"He was the only one who could have held us together," sighed old +Darrow, and his face looked as if a searing iron had passed over it. +"This will put us back at least fifty years--" + +The Judge was gazing through the open door out into the night, where +lamps shone in the Square and a luminous cloud hung over the city, that +city which was outgrowing its youth, outgrowing the barriers of +tradition, outgrowing alike the forces of reaction and the forces of +progress. + +"A few months," he said slowly, "and nothing accomplished that one can +point out and say that we owe directly to him. Yet I doubt if a single +one of us will ever forget him. I doubt if a single one of us will ever +be exactly, in every little way, just what we should have been if we had +never known Vetch, or spoken to him. The merest ripple of change, +perhaps, but it counts--it counts because in touching him we touched a +humanity that is as rare as genius itself." Yet they had killed him, +Corinna knew, because they could not understand him! + +For a moment there was silence, and then Stephen spoke in a whisper: +"There are some things that you can't see until you stand far enough +away from them. I doubt if any of us really saw him until to-night. +To-morrow he will begin to live." As he lifted his eyes to Corinna's +face, she saw in them a fidelity that pledged itself to the future. + +"Go to Patty," she whispered. "Go to her and repeat what you have said +to us." Putting her hand on his arm, she led him into the room where the +girl was kneeling, and then drew back while he went quickly forward. +Watching from the threshold, she saw Patty look up uncertainly, and rise +slowly from the floor where she had been kneeling; she saw Stephen put +out his arms with a movement of love and pity; and she saw the girl +hesitate for an instant, and then turn to his clasp as a hurt child +turns for comfort. That was youth, that was the future, thought Corinna, +and closing the door softly, she left them together. Yes, youth was for +the future, and for herself, _she_ realized with a pang, were the things +that she had never had in the past. Only the things that she had never +had were really hers! Only the unfulfilled, she saw in that moment of +illuminating insight, is the permanent. + +Passing the group in the hall, she went out on the porch, and looked +with swimming eyes over the fountain into the Square. Beyond the white +streams of electricity and the black patterns of the shadows, she saw +the sharp outlines of the city, and beyond that the immense blue field +of the sky sown thickly with stars. Life was there--life that embraced +success and failure, illusion and disillusion, birth and death. In the +morning she would go back to it--she would begin again--in the morning +she would will herself to pick up the threads of middle age as lightly +as Stephen and Patty would pick up the threads of youth. To-morrow she +would start living again--but to-night for a few hours she would rest +from life; she would look back now, as she had looked back that morning, +to where a man was standing in the bright grass with the sunrise above +his head. + + + + + +BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW + + LIFE AND GABRIELLA + + ONE MAN IN HIS TIME + + PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET + + THE ANCIENT LAW + + THE BATTLE-GROUND + + THE BUILDERS + + THE DELIVERANCE + + THE DESCENDANT + + THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS + + THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH + + THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN + + THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE + + THE WHEEL OF LIFE + + VIRGINIA + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE MAN IN HIS TIME*** + + +******* This file should be named 15603.txt or 15603.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/6/0/15603 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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