_ 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 circumstances 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 passionate 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 passed 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 shell. 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 passed 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 ass 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 grass 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 amusement 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."
She faced him squarely, with her head held high and her eyes cold and determined. "What do you want me to do? Please don't beat about the bush any longer."
He hesitated a moment, and she inferred that he was trying to decide how far he might venture with safety. "Well, I thought you might speak a word to him," he said. "He sets such store by what you would like. I thought you might drop a hint that he ought to stand by his friends."
"To stand by his friends--that means you," she rejoined.
"Oh, he'll know quick enough what it means! You must be smart about it, of course, but I don't mind his knowing that I've been speaking to you. It's for his own good that I'm talking--for the very minute that the fellows find out he ain't been on the square with 'em, it will be 'nothing doing' for the Governor."
"It is a threat, then?" she asked sharply.
"I'd call it something else if I were you. Look here," he continued briskly. "You'd like to see the old man go to the Senate, and maybe higher up, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, of course. What has that to do with it?"
He winked and laughed knowingly. "Well, you just take my advice and drop a hint to him about this business. Then, perhaps, you'll see."
"If he doesn't take the hint, what will you do?"
"Ask me that in the sweet bye and bye, honey!" His tone had become offensively familiar. "It's for his good, you know. If it's the last word I ever speak I'm trying to save him from the biggest snag he ever met in his life."
She had drawn disdainfully away from him; but at his last words she came a step nearer. "I'll tell him exactly what you say," she answered; and then she asked suddenly in a firmer tone: "Have you heard anything more of my aunt?"
He looked at her intently. "Why, yes. You hadn't mentioned her again, so I thought you'd ceased to be interested. Would you like to see her?" he demanded abruptly after a pause.
"How can I? I don't know where she is."
For a minute or two before replying he studied her closely. "I wish you would let your hair grow out, Patty," he remarked at the end of his examination, and there was a note of genuine feeling in his bantering. "I remember how pretty you used to look as a little girl, with your hair flying behind you like the mane of a pony."
"Let my hair alone. Do you know where my aunt is?"
He appeared to yield reluctantly to her insistence. "If you're so bent on knowing--and, mind you, I tell you only because you make me--she ain't so very far from where we are standing. I could take you to her in ten minutes."
She looked at him as if she scarcely believed his words. "You mean that she is in town?"
"Haven't you known me long enough to find out that I always mean what I say?"
"Then you can take me to her now?"
He laughed shortly, and dug the end of his walking stick between the pavement and the edge of the curbstone. "What do you reckon the Governor would say to it?"
"I needn't tell him--not just yet, anyhow. But are you really and truly sure that she is my mother's sister?"
"Well, they had the same parents, and I reckon that makes 'em sisters if anything does. I knew 'em both out yonder in California, and I never heard anybody suggest they weren't related."
"Why did she come here? Was it to see me?"
"Partly that, and partly--well, she's been pretty sick. I reckon she's likely to go off at any time, and she wanted to be back where she was born. She had pneumonia two years ago, and then again last winter. Her lungs are about used up."
"Then, if I went to see her, I'd better go now, hadn't I?"
"It would be surer. Something may happen almost any day. That's why I spoke to you."
"I am glad you did. If it isn't far, will you take me now?"
But instead of walking on with her, he dug the end of his stick more firmly between the pavement and the curbstone. "I don't want to do you any harm, Patty," he said gently at last. "It may give you a shock to see her, you know. She's been through some hard times, and she's about come to the end of her rope. Good Lord, the way life is! When I first saw her out in California she was one of the prettiest pieces of flesh I ever laid eyes on. She had something of your look, too, though you wouldn't believe it now."
But the girl had already started to cross the street. "Don't let's waste any time talking. Which way do we go?"
At her decision his hesitation vanished, and he joined her with a laugh and a flourish of the diamond ring on the little finger of his left hand. "Well, you are a sport, Patty! You always were, even when you weren't much more than knee high to a duck. If you've made up your mind to go, you won't be blaming me afterward?"
"Oh, I shan't blame you, of course. Do we turn up this street?"
"Yes, go ahead. It ain't far--just a little way up Leigh Street."
They walked on rapidly, and presently, so swift and determined was Patty's step, Gershom ceased to speak, and only glanced at her now and then in a furtive and anxious way. There was a look of tragic resolution on her small face--oh, she was meeting life in earnest, she reflected--and even to the coarse mind and the dull imagination of the man beside her, she assumed gradually the appearance of some ethereal messenger. At the moment she was thinking of Stephen, but this he did not suspect. He saw only that there was something almost unearthly in her expression; and he felt the kind of awe that came over him on Sunday when he entered a church. He wouldn't hurt the girl, he told himself, with a twinge, for a pocketful of money.
They had turned into Leigh Street, and had walked some distance in silence, when Patty asked suddenly without looking round, "Then she doesn't know I am coming?"
"I told her I'd bring you whenever I could; but she ain't looking for you this evening. There, that's the house--the one in the middle, with that wooden swing and all those kids in the yard."
He pointed to what had once been a fine old house of stuccoed brick, with a square front porch and green shutters which were sagging on loosened hinges. On the walls where the stucco had peeled away, the red brick showed in splotches, and the pillars of the porch, which had been white, were now speckled with yellow stains. Over the whole place, with its air of fallen respectability, there hung the depressing smell of mingled dust, stale cooking, and bad tobacco. A number of imposing and well-preserved houses stood on the block, for of the whole neighbourhood, it appeared to the girl, they had chosen the most dilapidated dwelling and the one which was most crowded with children.
"We're here all right. Don't go so fast," remarked Gershom, as they ascended the steps. "It ain't going to run away from you." Bending down he picked up a crying urchin from the steps. "Lost your ball, have you? Well, I expect if you dig deep enough in my pocket, you can find it again. Hello! You've got a punch, ain't you, sonny? A regular John L., I reckon." Putting the child down, he continued sheepishly to Patty: "I always had a soft spot for the kids. Never could pass one in the street without stopping."
On the porch, beside a broken perambulator, which contained a black-eyed baby with a bottle of milk, a stout man sat reading the afternoon paper, while with one hand he patiently pushed the rickety carriage back and forth. As they reached the porch, he laid aside his paper, and rose with his hand still on the perambulator.
"Oh, it's you," he said, "Mr. Gershom."
"I've brought this lady to see Mrs. Green," returned Gershom. "How is she?"
The stout man shook his head and surveyed Patty curiously but not discourteously. He had a kindly, humorous look, and she felt at once that she preferred his blunt frankness to Gershom's facetious insincerity. There was something in his face that suggested the black-eyed baby sucking placidly at the rubber nipple on the bottle of milk.
"She's worse if anything. The doctor came this morning." The baby, having dropped the bottle, lifted a despairing wail, and the father bent over and replaced the nipple gently between the quivering lips. "The rent was due yesterday," he added, "I understood that there was to be no trouble about it."
"Oh, there's no trouble about that. I'm responsible," replied Gershom quickly. He was about to pass on; but changing his mind, he stopped and drew out his pocket book. "I'll settle it now. Are there any extras?"
"Yes, she's had to have eggs and milk, and there have been medicines. It comes to twelve dollars in all. I'll show you the account."
"Very well. Get anything that she needs." Then, as Gershom followed Patty into the hall, he pointed to the fine old staircase. "It's the back room. Go straight up. You ain't timid, are you?"
"Timid? Oh, no." Running lightly up the stairs, the girl hesitated a moment before the half-open door of the room at the back of the house. Then, in obedience to a gesture from Gershom as he pushed the door wider, she crossed the threshold, and went rapidly toward a couch in front of the window. As she went forward there floated to her a heavy, sweetish scent which seemed to her to be the very breath of despair. Her first thought was that the sun had gone under a cloud; the next instant she perceived that the window was shaded by a ragged ailantus tree and that beyond the tree there was a high brick wall which shut out the daylight. Then she looked at the woman lying under a ragged blanket on the couch; and she felt vaguely that the haggard features framed in coarse black hair awakened a troubled sense of familiarity or recognition. The next instant there returned to her the memory of her walk in the Square with Corinna a few weeks before, and of the strange woman who had looked at them so curiously.
"I have come to see you," she began gently, "Mr. Gershom brought me."
Raising her head, the woman stared at her without replying. Her eyes were dull and heavy, with drooping lids beneath which a sombre glow flickered and died down. There was a wan yellow tinge over her face; and yet now that the approach of death had refined and purified her features, she was not without a gravity of expression which made her strangely impressive, like some wax mask of an avenging Fate. With a sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the sickening sweetish odour with which she was unfamiliar, the waxen mask and the blank, drooping eyes of the woman; all these things seemed to exist not in her actual surroundings, but in some hideous dream from which she was struggling to awake. Somewhere long ago, in a dreadful nightmare, she had smelled that cloying scent and seen those half-shut eyes looking back at her. Somewhere--and yet it was impossible. She could only have imagined it all.
Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?"
"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me."
"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over her expressionless eyes. "Oh, you mean Julius. Yes, I told him I wanted to see you." A quiver of animation passed like a spasm over her features, and she inquired eagerly, "Where is he? Did he come?"
"I'm here all right," said Gershom, stepping briskly into the range of her vision.
She gazed up at him as he approached her with the look of a famished animal, a look so little human and so full of physical hunger that Patty turned her eyes again to the calla lily on the window-sill, and then to the young green on the ailantus tree and the brick wall beyond. To the girl it seemed that minutes must have gone by before the next words came. "You brought the medicine?"
"Yes, I brought it. The doctor gave it to me; but it is hard to get, and he said you were to have it only on condition that you do everything that we tell you."
"Oh, I will, I will." She reached out her hand eagerly for the package he had taken from his coat pocket; and when Patty looked at her again a curious change had passed over her face, revivifying it with the colour of happiness. "I have been in such pain--such pain," she whispered. "I was afraid it would come back before you came. Oh, I was so afraid." Then she added hurriedly: "Is that all? Did you bring nothing else?"
Though a look of embarrassment crossed his face, he carried off the difficult situation with his characteristic assurance. "The doctor sent you a little stimulant. Perhaps I'd better give you a dose now. It might pick you up." Taking a bottle from his pocket, he poured some whiskey into a glass and added a little water from a pitcher on the table. "There, now," he remarked, with genuine sympathy as he held the glass to her lips. "You'll begin to feel better in a minute. This young lady can't stay but a little while, so you'd better try to buck up."
"I'll try," answered the woman obediently. "I'll try--but it isn't easy to come back out of hell." Lifting her head from the pillow, as if it were a dead weight that did not belong to her, she stared at Patty while her tormented mind made an effort to remember. In a minute her mouth worked pathetically, and she burst into tears. "I can't come back now, I can't come back now," she repeated in a whimpering tone. "But I'll be better before long, and then I want to see you. There are things I want to tell you when I get the strength. I can't think of them now, but they are things about Gideon Vetch."
"About Father?" asked the girl, and her voice trembled.
The woman stopped crying, and looked up appealingly, while she wiped her eyes on the ragged edge of the blanket. "Yes, about Gideon Vetch. That's his name, ain't it?"
"I wouldn't talk any more now, if I were you," said Gershom, putting his hand gently on her pillow. "We'll come again when you're feeling spryer."
The woman nodded. "Yes, come again. Bring her again."
"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty reassuringly; but instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I want you to tell me about my mother--everything. I remember her just once, the night before they took her to the asylum. She was in spangled skirts that stood out like a ballet dancer's, and there was a crown of stars on her hair and a star on the end of the wand she carried. I remember it all just as plainly as if it were yesterday--though they tell me I was too little--"
She broke off because the woman was gazing at her so strangely. "You were too little," she cried, and burst into hysterical weeping. "I can't stand it," she said wildly. "I never had a chance, and I can't stand it."
"I think we'd better go," said Gershom. It amazed Patty to find how gentle he could be when his sympathy was touched. "I oughtn't to have brought you to-day." Turning away, he left the room hurriedly, as if the scene were too much for him.
At this the woman controlled herself with a convulsive effort. "No, I wanted to see you," she said. "You are pretty, but you aren't prettier than your mother was at your age."
For a moment the girl looked pityingly down on her. "I hope you will soon be better," she responded in a tone which she tried to make sympathetic in spite of the physical shrinking she felt. "Let me know when you wish to see me, and I will come back."
The woman shivered. "Do you mean that?" she asked. "Will you come when I send for you? I want to see you again--once--before I die."
"I promise you that I will come. I'll send you something, too, and so will Father."
"Gideon Vetch," said the woman very slowly, as if she were trying to hold the name in her consciousness before it slipped away from her. "Gideon Vetch."
As the girl broke away and ran out of the room that expressionless repetition followed her into the hall and down the staircase, growing fainter and fainter like the voice of one who is falling asleep: "_Gideon Vetch. Gideon Vetch._"
On the porch, where the stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind of thought the little one might like a chance to get out of that buggy," he observed, while he straightened himself briskly, and adjusted his tie.
"She must be very ill," said the girl, as they went out of the gate and turned down the street.
"A sure thing," replied Gershom concisely. Then he whistled sharply, and added, "Rotten, that's what I call it."
"She said she'd never had a chance," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "I wonder what she meant."
The funereal expression spread like a pall over Gershom's features, but his intermittent whistle sounded as sprightly as ever. "Well, how many folks in this world have ever had what you might call a decent chance?" he asked.
"I don't know. I hadn't thought." The girl looked depressed and puzzled. "It's a dreadful thing to think that nobody cares when you're dying." Then her tone grew more hopeful. "Do you suppose anybody thinks that Father never had a chance?" she asked.
Gershom broke into a laugh. "Well, if he had it, you may be pretty sure that he made it himself," he retorted.
"Then I wish he could make some for other people."
"He says he's trying to, doesn't he? But between us, Patty, my child, you won't forget what you have to say to the old man, will you?"
"What have I to say? Oh, you mean about standing by his friends?"
"That's just it. You tell him from yours truly that the best thing he can do all round is to stick fast to his friends."
"And that means the strikers?"
"It means what I tell you."
"Well, I'll repeat exactly what you say; it won't make any difference if his mind is made up."
"Maybe so. Are you going to tell him where you've been?"
"I don't know. I hate to worry him; but that poor woman must need help."
"Oh, she needs it. We all need it," remarked Gershom flippantly. Then, as they reached the entrance to the Square, he held out his hand. "Well, I'm off now, and I hope you aren't feeling any worse because of your visit. The world ain't made of honeycomb, you know, and there's no use pretending it is. But you're a darn good sport, Patty. You're as good a sport as I ever struck up with in this little affair of life." _