One Man in His Time Part 11

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 G.o.ds 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 peac.o.c.k-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 Was.h.i.+ngton.

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 a.s.sembled, 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 fas.h.i.+ons 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 pa.s.sive 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 antimaca.s.sars 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, cla.s.sified her lightly as "another gray-haired woman," and pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ning. 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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?"