One Man in His Time Part 34

"Yes, he cares for me," she answered frankly; and then, before the terror that leaped into the eyes of the other woman, as if she longed to turn and run out of the house, Corinna touched her gently on the shoulder. "Don't look like that!" It was unendurable to her compa.s.sionate heart that she should have brought that look into the eyes of any living creature.

She led Alice back to the chairs they had left; and when the servant came in to turn on the softly shaded lamps, they sat there, facing each other, in a silence which seemed to Corinna to be louder than any sound.

There was the noise of wonder in it, and tragedy, and something vaguely menacing to which she could not give a name. It was fear, and yet it was not fear because it was so much worse. Only the blank terror in Alice's face, the terror of the woman who has lost hope, could express what it meant. And this terror translated into sound asked presently:

"Are--are you sure?"

A wave of pity surged through Corinna's heart. Her strength became to her something on which she could rest--which would not fail her; and she understood why she had had to meet so many disappointments in life, why she had had to bear so much that was almost unbearable. It was because, however strong emotion was in her nature, there was always something deep down in her that was stronger than any emotion. She had been ruled not by pa.s.sion but by law, by some clear moral discernment of things as they ought to be; and this was why weak persons, or those who were the prey to their own natures, leaned on her with all their weight.

In that instant of self-realization she knew that the refuge of the weak would be for ever denied her, that she should always be alone because she was strong enough to rely on her own spirit.

"Before I answer your question," she said, "I must know if you have the right to ask it."

The wistful eyes grew bright again. How graceful she was, thought Corinna as she watched her; and she knew that this woman, with her clinging sweetness, like the sweetness of honeysuckle, and her shallow violence of mood, could win the kind of love that had been denied to her own royal beauty. This other woman was the ephemeral incarnate, the thing for which men gave their lives. She was nothing; and therefore every man would see in her the reflection of what he desired.

"I have the right," she answered desperately, without pride and without shame. "I had the right before I got my divorce--"

"I understand," said Corinna, and her voice was scarcely more than a breath. Though she did not withdraw the hand that the other had taken, she looked away from her through the French window, into the garden where the twilight was like the bloom on a grape. The fragrance became suddenly intolerable. It seemed to her to be the scent not only of spring, but of death also, the ghost of all the sweetness that she had missed. "I shall never be able to bear the smell of spring again in my life," she thought. She had made no movement of surprise or resentment, for there was neither surprise nor resentment in her heart. There was pain, which was less pain than a great sadness; and there was the thought that she was very lonely; that she must always be lonely. Many thoughts pa.s.sed through her mind; but beyond them, stretching far away into the future, she saw her own life like a deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of distant voices that went by. She could never find rest, she knew. Rest was the one thing that had been denied her--rest and love. Her destiny was the destiny of the strong who must give until they have nothing left, until their souls are stripped bare.

"He must have cared for you," she said at last. Oh, how empty words were! How empty and futile!

"He could never care again like that for any one else," replied Alice, reaching out her hand as if she were pus.h.i.+ng away an object she feared.

"Whatever he thinks now, he could never care that much again."

Whatever he thinks now! A smile tinged with bitter knowledge flickered on Corinna's lips for an instant. After all, how little, how very little she knew of John Benham. She had seen the face he turned to the world; she had seen the crude outside armour of his public conscience. A laugh broke from her at the phrase because she remembered that Vetch had first used it. This other woman had entered into the secret chamber, the hidden places, of John Benham's life; she had been a part of the light and darkness of his soul. To Corinna, remembering his reserve, his dignity, his moderation in thought and feeling, there was a shock in the discovery that the perfect balance, the equilibrium of his temperament, had been overthrown. Certainly in their serene and sentimental a.s.sociation she had stumbled on no hidden fires, no reddening embers of that earlier pa.s.sion. Yet she understood that even in her girlhood, even in the April freshness of her beauty, she had never touched the depths of his nature. It was Alice Rokeby--frightened, shallow, desperate, deserted, whom he had loved.

"What do you want?" she asked quietly. "What do you wish me to do?"

"Oh, I don't know!" replied Alice. "I don't know. I haven't thought--but there ought to be something. There ought to be something more permanent than love for one to live by."

In her anguish she had wrung a profound truth from experience; and as soon as she had uttered it, she lifted her pale face and stared with that mournful interrogation into the twilight. Something permanent to live by! In the mute desperation of her look she appeared to be searching the garden, the world, and the immense darkness of the sky, for an answer. The afterglow had faded slowly into the blue dusk of night; only a faint thread of gold still lingered beyond the cedars on the western horizon. Something permanent and indestructible! Was this what humanity had struggled for--had lived and fought and died for--since man first came up out of the primeval jungle? Where could one find unalterable peace if it were not high above the ebb and flow of desire? She herself might break away from codes and customs; but she could not break away from the strain of honour, of simple rect.i.tude, which was in her blood and had made her what she was.

"Yes, there ought to be something. There is something," she said slowly.

Though her hand still clasped Alice Rokeby's, she was gazing beyond her across the terrace into the garden. She thought of many things while she sat there, with that look of clairvoyance, of radiant vision, in her eyes. Of Alice Rokeby as a little girl in a white dress, with a blue hair ribbon that would never stay tied; of John Benham when she had played ball with him in her childhood; of Kent Page and that young love, so poignant while it lasted, so utterly dead when it was over; of her long, long search for perfection, for something that would not pa.s.s away; of the brief pleasures and the vain expectations of life; of the gray deserted road filled with dead leaves and the sound of voices far off--Nothing but dead leaves and distant voices that went by! In spite of her beauty, her brilliance, her gallant heart, this was what life had brought to her at the end. Only loneliness and the courage of those who have given always and never received.

"There is something else," she said again. "There is courage." Then, as the other woman made no reply, she went on more rapidly: "I will do what I can. It is very little. I cannot change him. I cannot make him feel again. But you can trust me. You are safe with me."

"I know that," answered Alice in a voice that sounded m.u.f.fled and husky.

"I have always known that." She rose and readjusted her veil. "That means a great deal," she added. "Oh, I think it means that the world has grown better!"

Corinna stooped and kissed her. "No, it only means that some of us have learned to live without happiness."

She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the steps and enter the small closed car in the drive. There was a touching grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single image all the women in the world who had lost hope. "Yet it is the weak, the pa.s.sive, who get what they want in the end," thought Corinna, as dispa.s.sionately as if she were merely a spectator. "I suppose it is because they need it more. They have never learned to do without. They do not know how to carry a broken heart." Then she smiled as she turned back into the house. "It is very late, and the only certain rules are that one must dine and one must dress for dinner."

A little later, when John Benham was announced and she came down to the drawing-room, her first glance at his face told her that she must be looking her best. She was wearing black, and beneath the white lock in her dark hair, her face was flushed with the colour of happiness. Only her eyes, velvet soft and as deep as a forest pool, had a haunted look.

"I have never," he said, "seen you look better."

She laughed. After all, one might permit a touch of coquetry in the final renouncement! "Perhaps you have never really seen me before."

Though he looked puzzled, he responded gaily: "On the contrary, I have seen little else for the last two or three months."

There was an edge of irony to her smile. "Were you looking at me or my shadow?"

He shook his head. "Are shadows ever as brilliant as that?"

Then before she could answer the Judge came in with his cordial outstretched hand and his air of humorous urbanity, as if he were too much interested in the world to censure it, and yet too little interested to take it seriously. His face, with its thin austere features and its kindly expression, showed the dryness that comes less from age than from quality. Benham, looking at him closely, thought, "He must be well over eighty, but he hasn't changed so much as a hair of his head in the last twenty years."

At dinner Corinna was very gay; and her father, whose habit it was not to inquire too deeply, observed only that she was looking remarkably well. The dining-room was lighted by candles which flickered gently in the breeze that rose and fell on the terrace. In this wavering illumination innumerable little shadows, like ghosts of b.u.t.terflies, played over the faces of the two men, whose features were so much alike and whose expressions differed so perversely. In both Nature had bred a type; custom and tradition had moulded the plastic substance and refined the edges; but, stronger than either custom or tradition, the individual temperament, the inner spirit of each man, had cast the transforming flame and shadow over the outward form. And now they were alike only in their long, graceful figures, in their thin Roman features, in their general air of urbane distinction.

"We were talking at the club of the strike," said the Judge, who had finished his soup with a manner of detachment, and sat now gazing thoughtfully at his gla.s.s of sherry. "The opinion seems to be that it depends upon Vetch."

Benham's voice sounded slightly sardonical. "How can anything depend upon a weatherc.o.c.k?"

"Well, there's a chance, isn't there, that the weather may decide it?"

"Perhaps. In the way that the Governor will find to his advantage."

Benham had leaned slightly forward, and his face looked very attractive by the s.h.i.+mmering flame of the candles.

"Isn't that the way most of us decide things," asked Corinna, "if we know what is really to our advantage?"

As Benham looked up he met her eyes. "In this case," he answered, with a note of austerity, as if he were impatient of contradiction, "the advantage to the public would seem to be the only one worth considering."

For an instant a wild impulse, born of suffering nerves, pa.s.sed through Corinna's mind. She longed to cry out in the tone of Julius Gershom, "Oh, d.a.m.n the public!"--but instead she remarked in the formal accents her grandmother had employed to smooth over awkward impulses, "Isn't it ridiculous that we can never get away from Gideon Vetch?"

The Judge laughed softly. "He has a pus.h.i.+ng manner," he returned; and then, still curiously pursuing the subject: "Perhaps, he may get his revenge at the meeting Thursday night."

"Is there to be a meeting?" retorted Corinna indifferently. She was thinking, "When John is eighty he will look like Father. I shall be seventy-eight when he is eighty. All those years to live, and nothing in them but little pleasures, little kindnesses, little plans and ambitions. Charity boards and committee meetings and bridge. That is what life is--just pretending that little things are important."

"That's the strikers' meeting," the Judge was saying over his gla.s.s of sherry. "The next one is John's idea. We hope to arbitrate. If we can get Vetch interested there may be a settlement of some sort."

"So it's Vetch again! Oh, I am getting so tired of the name of Gideon Vetch!" laughed Corinna. And she thought, "If only I didn't have to play on the flute all my life. If I could only stop playing dance music for a little while, and break out into a funeral march!"

"He has already agreed to come," said Benham, "but I expect nothing from him. I have formed the habit of expecting nothing from Vetch."

"Well, I don't know," replied the Judge. "We may persuade him to stand firm, if there hasn't been an understanding between him and those people." The old gentleman always used the expression "those people" for persons of whose opinions he disapproved.

"You know what I think of Vetch," rejoined Benham, with a shrug.

It seemed to Corinna, watching Benham with her thoughtful gaze, that the subject would never change, that they would argue all night over their foolish strike and their tiresome meeting, and over what this Gideon Vetch might or might not do in some problematic situation. What sentimentalists men were! They couldn't understand, after the experience of a million years, that the only things that really counted in life were human relations. They were obliged to go on playing a game of bluff with their consecrated superst.i.tions--playing--playing--playing--and yet hiding behind some graven image of authority which they had built out of stone.

Sentimental, yes, and pathetic too, when one thought of it with patience.

When dinner was over, and the Judge had gone to a concert in town, Corinna's mockery fell from her, and she sat in a long silence watching Benham's enjoyment of his cigar. It occurred to her that if he were stripped of everything else, of love, of power, of ambition, he could still find satisfaction in the masculine habit of living--in the simple pleasures of which nothing except physical infirmity or extreme poverty can ever deprive one. Moderate in all things, he was capable of taking a serious pleasure in his meals, in his cigar, in a dip in a swimming pool, or a game of cards at the club. Whatever happened, he would have these things to fall back upon; and they would mean to him, she knew, far more than they could ever, even in direst necessity, mean to a woman.

The long drawing-room, lighted with an amber glow and drenched with the sweetness of honeysuckle, had grown very still. Outside in the garden the twilight was powdered with silver, and above the tops of the cedars a few stars were s.h.i.+ning. A breeze came in softly, touching her cheek like the wing of a moth and stirring the iris in a bowl by the window.

The flowers in the room were all white and purple, she observed with a tremulous smile, as if the vivid colours had been drained from both her life and her surroundings. "What a foolish fancy," she added, with a nervous force that sent a current of energy through her veins. "My heart isn't broken, and it will never be until I am dead!"

And then, with that natural apt.i.tude for facing facts, for looking at life steadily and fearlessly, which had been born in a recoil from the sentimental habit of mind, she said quietly, "John, Alice Rokeby came to see me this afternoon."

He started, and the ashes dropped from his cigar; but there was no embarra.s.sment in the level glance he raised to her eyes. Surprise there was, and a puzzled interrogation, but of confusion or disquietude she could find no trace.

"Well?" he responded inquiringly, and that was all.