One Man in His Time Part 29

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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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."