_ 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 coarseness 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 rectitude 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 ignobly 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 passed 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 assumed. "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 balustrade 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 repetition 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 mass 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 grassy 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.
Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!"
"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him often?" Now, since she felt she had won the girl's confidence, her purpose appeared more difficult than ever.
"Very often," replied Patty in a thrilling tone. "He comes every day." The luminous candour, the fearless sincerity of Gideon Vetch, seemed to envelop her as she answered.
"Do you think he cares for you, dear?" asked Corinna softly.
"Oh, yes." The response was unhesitating. "I know it."
How naive, how touchingly ingenuous, the girl was in spite of her experience of life and of the uglier side of politicians. No girl in Corinna's circle would ever have appeared so confiding, so innocent, so completely beneath the spell of a sentimental illusion. The girls that Corinna knew might be unguarded about everything else on earth; but even the most artless one of them, even Margaret Blair, would have learned by instinct to guard the secret of her emotions.
"Has he asked you to marry him?" Corinna's voice wavered over the question, which seemed to her cruel; but Patty met it with transparent simplicity.
"Not yet," she answered, lifting her shining eyes to the sky, "but he will. How can he help it when he cares for me so much?"
"If he hasn't yet, my dear"--while the words dropped from her reluctant lips, Corinna felt as if she were inflicting a physical stab,--"how can you tell that he cares so much for you?"
"I wasn't sure until yesterday," replied Patty, with beaming lucidity, "but I knew yesterday because--because he showed it so plainly."
With a lovely protective movement the older woman put her arm about the girl's shoulders. "You may be right--but, oh, don't trust too much, Patty," she pleaded, with the wisdom that the years bring and take away. "Life is so uncertain--fine impulses--even love--yes, love most of all--is so uncertain--"
"Of course you feel that way," responded the girl, sympathetic but incredulous. "How could you help it?"
After this what could Corinna answer? She knew Stephen, she told herself, and she knew that she could trust him. She believed that lie was capable of generous impulses; but she doubted if an impulse, however generous, could sweep away the inherited sentiments which encrusted his outlook on life. In spite of his youth, he was in reality so old. He was as old as that indestructible entity, the spirit of race--as that impalpable strain which had existed in every Culpeper, and in all the Culpepers together, from the beginning. It was not, she realized plainly, such an anachronism as a survival of the aristocratic tradition. Deeper than this, it had its roots not in belief but in instinct--in the bone and fibre of Stephen's character. It was a part of that motive power which impelled him in the direction of the beaten road, of the established custom, of things as they have always been in the past.
Her kind heart was troubled; yet before the happiness in the girl's face what could she say except that she hoped Stephen was as fine as Patty believed him to be? "You may be right. I hope so with all my heart; but, oh, my dear, try not to care too much. It never does any good to care too much." She stooped and kissed the girl's cheek. "There, my car is at the door, and I must hurry back to the shop. I'll do anything in the world that I can for you, Patty, anything in the world."
As the car rolled through the gate and down the wide drive to the Washington monument, Patty stood gazing after it, with a burning moisture in her eyes and a lump in her throat. Terror had seized her in an instant, terror of unhappiness, of missing the one thing in life on which she had passionately set her heart. What had Mrs. Page meant by her questions? Had she intended them as a warning? And why should she have thought it necessary to warn her against caring too much for Stephen?
The girl had started to enter the house when, remembering suddenly that Gershom was still there, she turned hurriedly away from the door, and walked back down the brick pavement to the fountain beyond the library. The squirrels still scampered over the walk; the thirsty sparrows were still drinking; the few loungers on the benches still stared at her with dull and incurious eyes. Not a cloud stained the intense blue of the sky; and over the bright grass on the hillside the sunshine quivered like an immense swarm of bees.
As she approached the fountain where she had first met Stephen, it seemed to her that a romantic light, a visionary enchantment, fell over this one spot of ground, and divided it by some magic circle from every other place in the world. The crude iron railing, the bare gravel, the ugly spouting fountain which was stripped of every leaf or blade of grass--these things appeared to her through an indescribable glamour, as if they stood there as the visible gateway to some invisible garden of dreams. Whenever she looked at this ordinary spot of earth a breathless realization of the wonder and delight of life rushed over her. She knew nothing of the mental processes by which these external objects were associated with the deepest emotions of the heart. Only when she visited this place that wave of happiness swept over her; and she lived again as vividly as she lived in the moments when Stephen was with her and she was looking into his eyes.
His voice called her while she stood there; and turning quickly, she saw that he was coming toward her down the walk. Immediately the loungers on the benches vanished by magic; the murmur of the fountain became like the music of harps; and the sunshine on the grassy hill was alive with the quiver of wings. As she went toward him she was aware of the blue sky, of the golden green of the trees, of the happy sounds of the birds, and over all, as if it were outside of herself, of the rapturous beating of her own heart.
"I was looking for you," he said when he reached her.
"And you found me at last." Her eyes were like wells of joy.
"I'd never have given up until I found you." The words were trivial; but it was the things he said without words that really mattered. Already they had established a communion that was independent of speech. He had never told her that he loved her; yet she saw it in every glance of his eyes and heard it in every tone of his voice.
While they walked slowly up the hill she wondered trustingly why, when he had told her so plainly in every other way that he loved her, he should never have put it into words. There could not be any doubt of it; perhaps this was the reason he hesitated. The present was so perfect that it was like the most exquisite hour of a spring afternoon. One longed to hold it back even though one knew that it led to something more lovely still.
"Are you happy?" she asked, and wondered if he would kiss her again when they parted as he had kissed her yesterday in the dusk of the hall?
"Yes, and no." He drew nearer to her. "I am happy now like this--here with you--but at other times I am troubled. I can't see my way clearly."
"But why should you? Why should any one be troubled when it is so easy to be happy?"
"Easy?" He laughed. "If life were only as simple as that!"
"It is if one knows what one wants."
"Well, one may know what one wants, and yet not know if one is wise in wanting it."
"Oh, wise!" She shook her head with an impatient movement. "Isn't the only wisdom to be happy and kind?"
He looked at her thoughtfully, while a frown drew his straight dark eyebrows together. "If you wanted a thing with all your heart, and yet were not sure--"
Her impatience answered him. "I couldn't want it with all my heart without being sure."
"Sure I mean that it is best--best for every one--not just for oneself--"
Her laugh was like a song. "Do you suppose there has ever been anything since the world began that was best for every one? If I knew what I wanted I shouldn't ask anything more. I would spread my wings and fly to it."
He smiled. "You are so much like your father at times--even in the things that you say. Yes, I suppose you would fly to it because you have been trained that way--to be direct and daring. But I am made differently. Life has taught me; it is in my blood and bone to stop and question, to look so long that at last I lose the will to choose, or to leap. There are some of us like that, you know."
"Perhaps," she smiled. "I don't know. It seems to me a very silly way to be." The song had gone out of her voice, and a heaviness, an impalpable fear, had descended again on her heart. Why did one's path lead always through mazes of uncertainty and disappointment instead of straight onward toward one's desire? A passionate impulse seized her to fight for what she wanted, to grasp the fragile opportunity before it eluded her. Yet she knew that fighting would not do any good. She could do nothing while her happiness hung on a thread. She could do nothing but fold her hands and wait, though her heart burned hot with the injustice of it, and she longed to speak aloud all the words that were rising to her tightly closed lips.
"Oh, don't you see--can't you see?" she asked brokenly, baring her heart with a desperate impulse. Her eyes were drawing him toward the future; and, in the deep stillness of her look, it seemed to him that she was putting forth all her power to charm; that her youth and bloom shed a sweetness that was like the fragrance of a flower.
For an instant every thought, every feeling, surrendered to her appeal. Then his face changed as abruptly as if he had put a mask over his features; and glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that his mother and Margaret Blair were walking along the concrete pavement under the few old linden trees. As they approached it seemed to the girl that Stephen turned slowly from a man of flesh and blood into a figure of granite. In one instant he was petrified by the force of tradition.
"It is my mother," he said in a low voice. "She has not been in the Square for years. I was telling her yesterday how pretty it looks in the spring." He went forward with an embarrassed air, and Mrs. Culpeper laid a firm, possessive touch on his arm.
"I thought a little stroll might do me good," she explained. "The car is waiting across the street at Doctor Bradley's." Then she held out her free hand to Patty, with a smile which, the girl said afterward to Corinna, looked as if it had frozen on her lips. "Stephen speaks of you very often, Miss Vetch," she said. "He talks a great deal about his friends, doesn't he, Margaret?"
Margaret assented with a charming manner; and the two girls stood looking guardedly into each other's eyes. "She is attractive," thought Margaret, not unkindly, for she was never unkind, "but I can't understand just what he sees in her." And at the same moment Patty was saying to herself, "Oh, she is everything that he admires and nothing that he enjoys."
Aloud the elder girl said casually, "It is so quaint living down here in the Square, isn't it?"
"But it is too far away from everything," replied Stephen hurriedly. "It must be very different from what it was when you came to balls here, Mother."
"Very," answered Mrs. Culpeper stiffly because the cold hard smile was still on her lips.
"It doesn't seem far away when you are used to it," remarked Patty in a spiritless tone. The vague heaviness, like a black cloud covered her heart again. She was jealous of Margaret, jealous of her sweet, pale face, of her trusting blue eyes, of the delicate distinction that showed in the turn of her head, in her fragile hands, in the lovely liquid sound of her voice.
"Cousin Corinna has promised to bring me to see you," said Margaret in her kind and gentle way.
"I hope you'll come," replied Patty politely; but in her thoughts she added, "I hope you won't. I hope I'll never see you again." She couldn't be natural; she couldn't be anything but stiff and awkward; and she was aware all the time that Stephen was as embarrassed as she was. All the things that she must fight against, that she must triumph over, were embodied in that small black figure with the ivory face, so inelastic, so unbending, so secure in its inherited authority. There was war between her and Stephen's mother; and she stood alone, with only her undaunted spirit to support her, while on the opposite side were entrenched all the immovable dead ranks of the generations. "I shall fight it out," thought the girl bitterly. "I don't care what she thinks of me. I shall fight it out to the end."
With her hand on Stephen's arm, Mrs. Culpeper turned slowly away. "I feel a little tired," she explained politely to Patty, "so I am sure that you won't mind yielding to an infirm old woman, and will let my son help me back to the car."
"Oh, I don't mind," replied Patty, with gay indifference.
"I'll see you very soon," said Stephen; and it seemed to the girl as she watched him walking toward the Washington monument that he looked as old and as tired as his mother.
Of course he was obliged to go. There wasn't anything else that he could do, and yet--and yet--as Patty gazed after the three slowly moving figures, she felt that a cold hand had reached out of the sunshine and clutched her heart. _