One Man in His Time Part 6

He had an impressive though stolid bearing, an amiable expression, an engaging smile, and the manner of a weary monarch. It was his boast that he had never done anything for the first time without ascertaining precisely how it had been done by the highest authority before him.

Devoid of even the rudiments of an imagination, he had never been visited in a nightmare by the suspicion that the name of Culpeper was not the best result of the best of all possible worlds. As long as his prejudices were not offended his generosity was inexhaustible. For the rest, he bore his social position as reverently as if it were a plate in church, had never spoken a profane word or recognized a joke in his life, and still dined at two o'clock in the afternoon because his grandfather, who was dyspeptic by const.i.tution, had been unable to digest a late dinner. At the time of his marriage, an unusually happy one, he was regarded as "the handsomest man of his day"; and he was still yearned over from a distance by elderly ladies of suppressed romantic temperaments.

Mrs. Culpeper, a small imperious woman of distinguished lineage and uncertain temper, had gone through an entire life seeing only one thing at a time, and never seeing that one thing as it really was. If her husband embodied the moral purpose, she herself was an incarnation of the evasive idealism of the nineteenth century. Her universe was comprised in her family circle; her horizon ended with the old brick wall between the alley and the Culpepers' garden. All that related to her husband, her eight children and her six grandchildren, was not only of supreme importance and intense interest to her, but of unsurpa.s.sed beauty and excellence. It was intolerable to her exclusive maternal instinct that either virtue or happiness should exist in any degree, except a lesser measure, outside of her own household; and praise of another woman's children conveyed to her a secret disparagement of her own. Having naturally a kind heart she could forgive any sin in her neighbours except prosperity--though as Corinna had once observed, with characteristic flippancy, "Continual affliction was a high price to pay for Aunt Harriet's favour." In her girlhood she had been a famous beauty; and she was still as fine and delicately tinted as a carving in old ivory, with a skin like a faded microphylla rose-leaf, and stiff yellowish white hair, worn a la Pompadour. Her mind was thin but firm, and having received a backward twist in its youth, it had remained inflexibly bent for more than sixty years. Unlike her husband she was gifted with an active, though perfectly concrete imagination--a kind of superior magic lantern that shot out images in black and white on a sheet--and a sense of humour which, in spite of the fact that it lost its edge when it was pointed at the family, was not without practical value in a crisis.

On the evening of Stephen's adventure in the Square, the Culpeper family had gathered in the front drawing-room, to await the arrival of a young cousin, whom, they devoutly hoped, Stephen would one day perceive the wisdom of marrying. The four daughters--Victoria, the eldest, who had nursed in France during the war; Hatty, who ought to have been pretty, and was not; Janet, who was candidly plain; and Mary Byrd, who would have been a beauty in any circle--were talking eagerly, with the innumerable little gestures which they had inherited from Mrs.

Culpeper's side of the house. They adored one another; they adored their father and mother; they adored their three brothers and their married sister, whose name was Julia; and they adored every nephew and niece in the connection. Though they often quarrelled, being young and human, these quarrels rippled as lightly as summer storms over profound depths of devotion.

"Oh, I do wish," said Mary Byrd, who had "come out" triumphantly the winter before, "that Stephen would marry Margaret." She was a slender graceful girl, with red-gold hair, which had a l.u.s.trous sheen and a natural wave in it, and the brown ox-like eyes of her father. There was a great deal of what Peyton, the second son, who lived at home, and was the most modern of the family, called "dash" about her.

"It was the war that spoiled it," said Janet, the plain one, who possessed what her mother fondly described as "a charm that was all her own." "I sometimes think the war spoiled everything."

At this Victoria, the eldest, demurred mildly. Ever since she had nursed in France, she had a.s.sumed a slightly possessive manner toward the war, as if she had in some mysterious way brought it into the world and was responsible for its reputation. She was tall and very thin, with a perfect complexion, a long nose, and a short upper lip which showed her teeth too much when she laughed. Her hair was fair and fluffy; and Mrs.

Culpeper, who could not praise her beauty, was very proud of her "aristocratic appearance."

"Why, he never even mentions the war," she protested.

"I don't care. I believe he thinks about it," insisted Janet, who would never surrender a point after she had once made it.

"He's different, anyhow," said Hatty, the one who had everything, as her mother a.s.serted, to make her pretty, and yet wasn't. "He isn't nearly so normal. Is he, Mother?"

Mrs. Culpeper raised troubled eyes from the skirt of her pale gray silk gown which she was scrutinizing dejectedly. "How on earth could I have got that spot there?" she remarked in her brisk yet soft voice. "I am afraid you are right, dear, about Stephen. He certainly hasn't been like himself for some time. I have felt really anxious, I suppose it was the war."

While the war had lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course of her family affairs. For the past two years she had refused to think of it except under pressure; and then she recalled it only as the occasion when Victoria and Stephen had been in France, and poor Peyton in a training camp. Her feeling had been violent, but entirely personal, while Mr. Culpeper, who possessed the martial patriotism characteristic of Virginians of his cla.s.s and generation, had been animated by the sacrificial spirit of a hero.

"Oh, Stephen is all right," declared Peyton, who felt impelled to take the side of his brother in a family discussion. He was an incurious and gay young man, of active sporting interests and immaculate appearance, with so few of the moral attributes of the Culpepers that his mother sometimes wondered how he could possibly be the son of his father.

Indeed there were times when this wonder extended to Mary Byrd, for it seemed incredible that anything so "advanced" as the outlook of these two should have been a legitimate offspring of either the Culpeper or the Warwick point of view.

"He would be all right," maintained Janet, "if he would only marry Margaret. I am sure she likes him."

"Oh, I don't know. There's that young clergyman," rejoined Hatty, "and Margaret is so pious. I suppose that's why she has never been popular with men."

"My dear child," breathed Mrs. Culpeper in remonstrance, and she added emphatically, as if the doubt were a disparagement of Stephen's attractions, "Of course she likes him. Why, it would be a perfectly splendid marriage for Margaret Blair."

"It isn't possible," asked Mary Byrd, for if her manners were modern, her prejudices were old-fas.h.i.+oned, "that Stephen could have met any one else over there?" She was wearing an elaborate, very short and very low gown of pink velvet, not one of the simple blue or gray silk dresses, with modest round necks, in which her sisters attired themselves in the evening. A little later she and Peyton would go on to a dance; for her mother's consternation when the frock had been unpacked from its Paris wrappings had been temporarily mitigated by the a.s.sertion that unless one danced in gowns like that, one simply couldn't be expected to dance at all. "Of course, if you wish me to be a wall-flower like Margaret Blair," Mary Byrd had protested with wounded dignity; and since Mrs.

Culpeper wished nothing on earth so little as that, her only response had been, "Well, I hope to heaven that you won't let your father see it!"

Now, as her husband was heard descending the stairs, she said hurriedly: "Mary Byrd, if you won't put a scarf over your knees, I wish you would wear one around your neck."

"Oh, Father won't mind," retorted Mary Byrd flippantly. "He is a real sport, and he knows that you have to play the game well if you play it at all." Then turning with her liveliest air, she remarked as Mr.

Culpeper entered: "Father, darling, I've just said that you were a sport."

Mr. Culpeper surveyed her with portentous disapproval. He adored her, and she knew it, but because it was impossible for his features to wear any expression lightly, the natural gravity of his look deepened to a thundercloud.

"Is Mary Byrd going in swimming?" he demanded not of his daughter, but of the family.

"No, you precious, only in dancing," replied Mary Byrd, as she rose airily and placed a kiss above the thundercloud on his forehead.

"Will you go looking like this?"

"Not if I can possibly look any worse." She swayed like a golden lily before his astonished gaze. "Can you suggest any way that I might?"

"I cannot." His face cleared under the kiss, and he held her at arm's length while paternal pride softened his look. "Do you really mean that you won't shock the young men away from you?" It was as near a jest as he had ever come, and a ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt pa.s.sed over the room.

"I may shock them, but not away." The girl was really a wonder. How in the world, he asked himself, did she happen to be his daughter?

"Do you mean that all the other girls dress like this?" It was his final appeal to an arbitrary but acknowledged authority.

"All the popular ones. You can't wish me to dress like the unpopular ones, can you?"

His appeal had failed, and he accepted defeat with the sober courage his father had displayed in a greater surrender.

"Well, I suppose if everybody does it, it is all right," he conceded; and though he was not aware of it, he had compressed into this convenient axiom his whole philosophy of conduct.

As he crossed the room to the glowing fire and the black marble mantelpiece, which had supplanted the delicate Adam one of a less resplendent period, he wore an air that was at once gentle and haughty--the expression of a man who hopes that he is a Christian and knows that his blood is blue.

"Hasn't Stephen come in yet?" he inquired of his wife. "I thought I heard him upstairs."

She shook her head helplessly. "No, and I told him Margaret was coming.

That is her ring now."

Mr. Culpeper looked at Mary Byrd. "I am sure that Margaret would clothe herself more discreetly," he remarked in a voice which sounded husky because he tried to make it facetious. "When I was a young man it was the fas.h.i.+on to compare women to flowers, and in these unromantic days I should call Margaret our last violet--"

A peal of laughter fell from the bright red lips of Mary Byrd. "It sounds as depressing as the last rose of summer," she cried, "and it's just as certain to be left on the stem--" Then she broke off, still pulsing with merriment, for the door opened slowly, and the last violet entered the room.

CHAPTER V

MARGARET

As he inserted his latch-key in the old-fas.h.i.+oned lock, Stephen remembered that his mother had instructed him not to be late because Margaret Blair was coming to spend the evening. "It takes you so long to change that I believe you begin to dream as soon as you go to your room," she had added; and while he made his way hurriedly and softly up the stairs, he wondered how he could have so completely forgotten the girl whom he had always thought of vaguely as the one who would some day--some remote day probably--become his wife. He was not in love with Margaret, and he believed, though one could never be sure, that she was not in love with him--that her fancy, if a preference so modest could be called by so capricious a name, was for the handsome young clergyman who read Browning with her every Tuesday afternoon. But he was aware also that she would marry him if he asked her; he knew that the hearts of four formidable parents were set on the match; and in his past experience his mother's heart had invariably triumphed over his less intrepid resolves. When Janet had said that the war had "spoiled" this carefully nurtured sentiment, she had described the failure with her usual accuracy. If he had never gone to France, he would certainly have married Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for romance; if he had never caught a glimpse of wider horizons, he would have restricted his vision contentedly to the tranquil current of James River. But the harm had been done, as Janet said, the exotic flower had sprung up, and he had learned that the family formula for happiness could not suffice for his needs. He craved something larger, something wider, something deeper, than the world in which his fathers had lived.

In that first year after his return he had felt that antiquated traditions were closing about him and shutting out the air, just as he had felt at times that the fine old walls of the house were pressing together over his head. At such moments the sense of suffocation, of smothering for lack of s.p.a.ce in which to breathe, had driven him like a hunted creature out into the streets. It was not long before he discovered that certain persons brought this feeling of oppression more quickly than others, that the presence of Margaret or of his parents stifled him, while Corinna made him feel as if a window had been suddenly flung open. The doctors, of course, had talked in scientific terms of diseased nerves and a specialist whom his mother had called in on one occasion had tried first to probe into the secrets of his infancy and afterward to a.n.a.lyse his symptoms away. But the war, among other lessons, had taught him that one must not take either one's sensations or scientific opinion too seriously, and he had contrived at last to turn the whole thing into the kind of family joke that his father could understand. Outwardly he took up his life as before; if the penalty of depression was psychoa.n.a.lysis, it was worth while to pretend at least to be gay. Yet beneath the surface there was, he told himself, a profound revulsion from everything that he had once enjoyed and loved--an apathy of soul which made him a moving shadow in a universe of stark unrealities. He knew that he was sinking deeper and deeper into this mora.s.s of indifference; he realized, at times vividly, that his only hope was in change, in a complete break with the past and a complete plunge into the future. His reason told him this, and yet, though he longed pa.s.sionately to let himself go--to make the wild dash for freedom--his disabled will, the nervous indecision from which he suffered, prevented both his liberation and his recovery. There were hours of grayness when he told himself that he had neither the fort.i.tude to endure the old nor the energy to embrace the new. In his nature, as in his environment, two opposing spirits were struggling: the realistic spirit which saw things as they were and the romantic spirit which saw things as they ought to be. It was the immemorial battle, brought by circ.u.mstances to a crisis, between the race and the individual, between tradition and adventure, between philosophy and experience, between age and youth.

Yes, it was "something different" that he craved. He had known Margaret too long; there was no surprise for him in any gesture that she made, in any word that she uttered. They had drunk too deeply of the same springs to offer each other the attraction of mystery, the charm of the unusual. He was familiar with every opinion she had inherited and preserved, with every dress she had worn, with every book she had read.

As a whole she embodied his ideal of feminine perfection. She was gentle, lovely and unselfish; she never asked unnecessary questions, never exacted more of one's time than one cared to give, never interfered with more important, if not more admirable, pursuits. That was the rarest of combinations, he knew--the delightful mingling of every virtue he held desirable in woman--and yet, rare and delightful as he acknowledged it to be, he was obliged to confess that it awakened not the faintest quiver of his pulses. Margaret aroused in him every sentiment except the one of interest; and he had begun to realize that at the moments when he admired her most, it was often impossible for him to make conversation. It had never occurred to him to wonder if their a.s.sociation had become emotionally unprofitable to her also, for in accordance with the system under which he lived, he had a.s.sumed that woman's part in love was as heroically pa.s.sive as it had been in religion. What he had asked himself again and again was why, since she was so perfectly desirable in every way, he had never fallen in love with her? Until this evening he had always told himself that it would come right in the end, that he was in his own phrase simply "playing for time." Margaret was handsomer, if less piquant, than Patty Vetch. She possessed every quality he had found lacking in poor Patty; yet he admitted ruefully that he felt the vague sense of disappointment which follows when one is offered a dish of one's choice and finds that the expected flavour is missing.

There was a peremptory knock at his door, and his mother looked in reproachfully. "You must hurry, Stephen, or everything will be burned to a cinder."

"I am sorry," he replied with compunction, "I didn't realize that I was late."

Her expression was stern but kind. "If you could only learn to be punctual, dear. Of course while we felt that you were not quite yourself, we tried not to worry about it. But you have been home so long now that you ought to be able to drop back into your old habits."

She was right, he knew; the exasperating thing about her was that she was always right. It was reasonable, it was logical, that after two years he should be able to drop back into his old habits of life; and yet he realized, with the intensity of revolt, that these habits represented for him the form of bondage from which he desired pa.s.sionately to escape. He could not oppose his mother, and the knowledge that he could not oppose her increased his annoyance. As far back as he could remember she had governed her household as a benevolent despot; and the fact that she lived entirely for others appeared to him to have endowed her with some unfair advantage. Her very unselfishness had developed into an unscrupulous power to ruin their lives. How was it possible to weigh one's personal preferences against an irresistible force which was actuated simply and solely by the desire for one's good?

Who could withstand a virtue which had encased itself in the first principle of religion--which gave all things and demanded nothing except the sacrifice of one's immortal soul?

"I am ready now," he said; and then as they went downstairs together, he added contritely: "After this I'll try to remember."