One Man in His Time Part 17

"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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sionate 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sion? "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 ingrat.i.tude. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt? 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 grat.i.tude in the girl's voice touched and embarra.s.sed 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, s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sociated 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 s.h.i.+fted 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?"