One Man in His Time Part 23

In spite of her natural courage Corinna was seized with a s.h.i.+ver 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 pa.s.sive 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 pa.s.sion, it would have been the pa.s.sion 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 sc.r.a.p 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s, which was dotted with b.u.t.tercups, and overhead the long black boughs of the trees were sprinkled with pale green leaves. Back and forth from the gra.s.sy 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 pa.s.sers-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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing, 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?"

"n.o.body 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 embarra.s.sed tone: "Corinna, do you believe in Gideon Vetch?"