One Man in His Time Part 26

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 s.e.x? 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.eness 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 rect.i.tude 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 ign.o.bly 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed. "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 bal.u.s.trade 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 repet.i.tion 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 ma.s.s 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 gra.s.sy 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.