_ CHAPTER XX. CORINNA FACES LIFE
AT nine o'clock the next morning Corinna came through the sunshine on the flagged walk and got into her car. She was wearing her smartest dress of blue serge and her gayest hat of a deep old red. Never had she looked more radiant; never had she carried her glorious head with a more triumphant air.
"Stop first at Mrs. Rokeby's, William," she said to the chauffeur, "and while I am there you may take this list to market."
As the car rolled off, her eyes turned back lovingly to the serene brightness of the garden into which she had infused her passion for beauty and order and gracious living. Rain had fallen in the night, and the glowing borders beyond the house shone like jewels in a casket. Beneath the silvery blue of the sky each separate blade of grass glistened as if an enchanter's wand had turned it to crystal. The birds were busily searching for worms on the lawn; as the car passed a flash of scarlet darted across the road; and above a clear shining puddle clouds of yellow butterflies drifted like blown rose-leaves.
"How beautiful everything is," thought Corinna. "Why isn't beauty enough? Why does beauty without love turn to sadness?" Her head, which had drooped for a moment, was lifted gallantly. "It ought to be enough just to be alive and not hungry on a morning like this."
The house in which Mrs. Rokeby lived appeared to Corinna, as she entered it presently, to have given up hope as utterly as its mistress had done. Though it was nearly ten o'clock, the front pavement had not been swept, the hall was still dark, and a surprised coloured maid, in a soiled apron, answered the doorbell.
"Poor thing," thought, Corinna. "I always heard that she was a good housekeeper. It is queer how soon one's state of mind passes into one's surroundings. I wonder if unhappiness could ever make me so indifferent to appearances?" To the maid, who knew her, she said, "I think Mrs. Rokeby will see me if she is awake. It is only for a minute or two."
Then she went into the drawing-room, where the shades were still down, and stood looking at the furniture and the curtains which were powdered with dust. On the table, where the books and photographs were disarranged and a fancy box of chocolates lay with the top off, there was a crystal vase of flowers; but the flowers were withered, and the water smelt as if it had not been changed for a week. Over the mantelpiece the long gilt-framed mirror reflected, through a gray film, the darkened room with its forlorn disarrangement. The whole place had the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very odour of unhappiness.
"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be. She longed to fling up the shades, to let in the sunshine, to drive out the dust and cobwebs, to put fresh flowers in the place of the dead ones. She longed, as she said to herself with a smile, "to get her hands on the room." If she could only change all this hopelessness into happiness! If she could only restore pleasure here, or at least the semblance of peace! "It is just as well that all of us can't feel things this much," she reflected.
"Mrs. Rokeby ain't dressed, but she says would you mind coming up?" The maid, having attired herself in a clean apron and a crooked cap, stood in the doorway. As Corinna followed her, she led the way up the narrow stairs into the bedroom where Alice was waiting.
"I thought you wouldn't be dressed," began Corinna cheerfully, "but it's the only time I have free, and I wanted to see you this morning."
"It is so good of you," responded Alice, putting out her hand. "Everything looks dreadful, I know; but I haven't been well, and one of the servants has gone to a funeral in the country."
"It doesn't matter," Corinna hesitated an instant, "only I wish you would make some one throw out those dead flowers downstairs."
"I haven't been in the room for a week," replied Alice, dropping back on the couch as if her strength had failed her. "I don't seem to care about the house or anything else."
As soon as her surprise at Corinna's visit had faded, she sank again into a listless attitude. Her figure grew relaxed; the faint animation died in her face; and she gazed at her visitor with a look of passive tragedy, which made Corinna, who was never passive, feel that she should like to shake her. Her soft brown hair, as fine as spun silk, was tucked under a cap of old lace, and beneath the drooping frill her melancholy features reminded Corinna of a Byzantine saint. Over her nightgown, she had thrown on a Japanese kimono of ashen blue, embroidered in plum blossoms which looked wilted. Everything about her, Corinna thought, looked wilted, as if each inanimate object that surrounded her had been stricken by the hopelessness of her spirit. To Corinna's energetic temperament, there was something positively immoral in this languid resignation. "Un-happiness like this is contagious," she thought. "And all because one man has ceased to love her! What utter folly!" Aloud she said only, "I came to ask you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance."
"To-morrow? Oh, Corinna, I couldn't!"
"Do you remember that blue dress--the one that is the colour of wild hyacinths?"
"Yes, but I couldn't wear it again, and I haven't anything else."
"Well, I like you in that, but wear whatever you please as long as it is becoming. You must look ethereal, and you must look happy. Men hate a sad face because it seems to reproach them, and, even if they murder you, they resent your reproaching them."
There was a deliberate purpose in her levity, for an intuition to which she trusted was warning her that there are times when the only way to treat refractory circumstances is to bully them into submission. "If you once let life get the better of you, you are lost," she said to herself.
"You can't understand," Alice was murmuring while she wiped her eyes. "You have always had what you wanted."
Corinna laughed. "I am glad you see it that way," she rejoined, "but you would be nearer the truth if you had said I'd always wanted what I had."
"It seems to me that you've had everything."
"Very likely. The lot of another person is one of the mountains to which distance lends enchantment."
"You mean that you haven't been happy?"
"Oh, yes, I've been happy. If I hadn't been, with all I've had, I should be ashamed to admit it."
But Alice was in a mood of mournful condolence. She had pitied herself so overwhelmingly that some of the sentiment had splashed over on the lives of others. It was her habit to sit still under affliction, and when one sits still, one has a long time in which to remember and regret.
"Your marriage must have been a disappointment to you," she said, "but you were so brave, poor dear, that nobody suspected it until you were separated."
"I am not a poor dear," retorted Corinna, "and there were a great many things in life for me besides marriage."
"There wouldn't have been in my place," insisted Alice, with a submissive manner but a stubborn mind.
Corinna gazed at her speculatively for a moment; and in her speculation there was the faintest tinge of contempt, the contempt which, in spite of her pity, she felt for all weakness. "I shouldn't have got into your place," she responded presently, "and if I ever found myself there by mistake, I'd make haste to get out of it."
"But suppose you had been like me, Corinna?" The words were a wail of despair.
A laugh rippled like music from Corinna's lips. It was cruel to laugh, she knew, but it was all so preposterous! It was turning things upside down with vehemence when one tried to live by feeling in a world which was manifestly designed for the service of facts. "You ought to have gone on the stage, Alice," she said. "Painted scenery is the only background that is appropriate to you."
Alice sighed. She looked very pretty in her shallow fashion, or Corinna felt that she couldn't have borne it. "You are awfully kind, Corinna," she returned, "but you have so little sentiment."
"I know, my dear, but I have some common sense which has served me very well in its place." As Corinna spoke she got up and roamed restlessly about the room, because the sight of that passive figure, wrapped in wilted plum blossoms, made her feel as if she wanted to scream. "You can't help being a fool, Alice," she said sternly, "and as long as you are a pretty one, I suppose men won't mind. But you must continue to be a pretty one, or it is all over with you."
The face that Alice turned on her showed a curious mixture of humility over the criticism and satisfaction over the compliment. "I know I've lost my looks dreadfully," she replied, grasping the most important point first, "and, of course, I have been a fool about John. If I hadn't cared so much, things might have been different."
Corinna stopped her impatient moving about and looked down on her. "I didn't mean that kind of fool," she retorted; but just what kind of fool she had meant, she thought it indiscreet to explain.
Suddenly, with a dash of nervous energy which appeared to run like a stimulant through her veins, Alice straightened herself and lifted her head. "It is easy for you to say that," she rejoined, "but you have never been loved to desperation and then deserted."
"No," responded Corinna, with the ripe judgment that is the fruit of bitter experience, "but, if I were ever loved to desperation, I should expect to be. Desperation does things like that."
"You couldn't bear it any better than I can. No woman could."
"Perhaps not." Though Corinna's voice was flippant, there was a stern expression on her beautiful face--the expression that Artemis might have worn when she surveyed Aphrodite. "But I should never have been deserted. I should have taken good care to prevent it."
"I took care too," retorted Alice, with passion, "but I couldn't prevent it."
"Your measures were wrong. It is always safer to be on the side of the active rather than the passive verb."
With a careless movement, Corinna picked up her beaded bag, which she had laid on the table, and turned to adjust her veil before the mirror. "If you will let me manage your life for a little while," she observed, with an appreciative glance at the daring angle of the red hat, "I may be able to do something with it, for I am a practical person as well as a capable manager. Father calls me, you know, the repairer of destinies."
"If I thought it would do any good, I'd go to the ball with you," said Alice eagerly, while a delicate colour stained the wan pallor of her face.
"Do you really think," asked Corinna brightly, "that John, able politician though he is, is worth all that trouble?"
"Oh, it isn't just John," moaned Alice; "it is everything."
"Well, if I am going to repair your destiny, I must do it in my own practical way. For a time at least we will let sentiment go and get down to facts. As long as you haven't much sense, it is necessary for you to make yourself as pretty as possible, for only intelligent women can afford to take liberties with their appearances. The first step must be to buy a hat that is full of hope as soon as you can. Oh, I don't mean anything jaunty or frivolous; but it must be a hat that can look the world in the face."
A keen interest awoke in Alice's eyes, and she looked immediately younger. "If I can find one, I'll buy it," she answered. "I'll get dressed in a little while and go out."
"And remember the hyacinth-blue dress. Have it made fresh for to-morrow." Turning in the doorway, Corinna continued with humorous vivacity, "There is only one little thing we must forget, and that is love. The less said about it the better; but you may take it on my authority that love can always be revived by heroic treatment. If John ever really loved you, and you follow my advice, he will love you again."
With a little song on her lips, and her gallant head in the red hat raised to the sunlight, she went out of the house and down the steps into her car. "Fools are very exhausting," she thought, as she bowed to a passing acquaintance, "but I think that she will be cured." Then, at the sight of Stephen leaving the Culpeper house, she leaned out and waved to him to join her.
"My dear boy, how late you are!" she exclaimed, when the car had stopped and he got in beside her.
"Yes, I am late." He looked tired and thoughtful. "I stopped to have a talk with Mother, and she kept me longer than I realized."
"Is anything wrong?"
He set his lips tightly. "No, nothing more than usual."
Corinna gazed up at the blue sky and the sunlight. Why wouldn't people be happy? Why were they obliged to cause so much unnecessary discomfort? Why did they persist in creating confusion?
"Well, I hope you are coming to the dance to-morrow night," she said cheerfully.
"Yes. Mother has asked me to take Margaret Blair."
"I am glad. Margaret is a nice girl. I am going to take Patty Vetch."
He started, and though she was not looking at him, she knew that his face grew pale. "Don't you think she will look lovely, just like a mermaid, in green and silver?" she asked lightly.
"I don't know," he answered stiffly. "I am trying not to think about her."
Corinna laughed. "Oh, my dear, just wait until you see her in that sea-green gown!"
That he was caught fast in the web of the tribal instinct, Corinna realized as perfectly as if she had seen the net closing visibly round him. Though she was unaware of the blow Patty had dealt him, she felt his inner struggle through that magical sixth sense which is the gift of the understanding heart, of the heart that has outgrown the shell of the personal point of view. If he would only for once break free from artificial restraints! If he would only let himself be swept into something that was larger than his own limitations!
"I am very fond of Patty," she said. "The more I see of her, the finer I think she is."
His lips did not relax. "There is a great deal of talk at the club about the Governor."
"Oh, this strike of course! What do they say?"
"A dozen different things. Nobody knows exactly how to take him."
"I wonder if we have ever understood him," said Corinna, a little sadly. "I sometimes think--" Then she broke off hurriedly. "No, don't get out, I'll take you down to your office. I sometimes think," she resumed, "that none of us see him as he really is because we see him through a veil of prejudice, or if you like it better, of sentiment--"
Stephen laughed without mirth. "I don't like it better. I'd like to get into a world--or at least I feel this morning that I'd like to get into a world where one was obliged to face nothing softer than a fact--"
Corinna looked at him tenderly. She had a sincere, though not a very deep affection, for Stephen, and she felt that she should like to help him, as long as helping him did not necessitate any emotional effort. "Has it ever occurred to you," she asked gently, "that the trouble with you, after all, is simply lack of courage?" At the start he gave, she continued hastily, "Oh, I don't mean physical courage of course. I do not doubt that you were as brave as a lion when it came to meeting the Germans. But there are times when life is more terrible than the Germans! And yet the only courage we have ever glorified is brute courage--the courage of the lion. I know that you could face machine guns and bayonets and all the horrors of war; but it seems to me that you have never had really the courage of living--that you have always been a little afraid of life."
For a long while he did not answer. His eyes were on the sky; and she watched the expression of irritation, amazement, dread, perplexity, and shocked comprehension, pass slowly over his features. "By Jove, I've got a feeling that you may be right," he said at last. "You probed the wound, and it hurt for a minute; but it may heal all the quicker for that. You've put the whole rotten business into a nutshell. I'm a coward at bottom, that's the trouble with me. Oh, like you, of course, I'm not talking about actual dangers. They are easy enough, for one can see them coming. It's not fear of the Germans. It's fear of something that one can't touch or feel--that doesn't even exist--the fear of one's imagination. But the truth is that I've funked things for the last year or so. I've been in a chronic blue funk about living."
She smiled at him brightly. "It is like a bit of thistle-down. Bring it out into the air and sunlight, and it will blow away."
"I wonder if you're right. Already I feel better because I've told you; and yet I've gone in terror lest my mother should discover it."
When she spoke again she changed the subject as lightly as if they had been discussing the weather. "You used to be interested in public matters. Do you remember how you talked to me in your college days about outstripping John in the race? You were full of ideas then, and full of ambition too." She was touching a string that had never failed her yet, and she waited, with an inscrutable smile, for the response.
"I know," he answered, "but that was in another life--that was before the war."
"Do those ideas never come back to you? Have you lost your ambition?"
"I can't tell. I sometimes think that it died in France. I got to feel over there that these political issues were merely local and temporary. Often, the greater part of the time, I suppose, I feel like that now. Then suddenly all my old ambition comes back in a spurt, and for a little while I think I am cured. While that lasts I am as eager, as full of interest, as I used to be. But it dies down as suddenly as it sprang up, and the reaction is only indifference and lassitude. I seem to have lost the power to keep a single state of mind, or even an interest."
"But do you ever think seriously of the part you might take in this town?"
The look of immobility passed from his face; his eyes grew warmer, and it seemed to her that he became more alive and more human. "Oh, I think a great deal. My ideas have changed too." He was talking rapidly and without connection. "I am not the same man that I was a few years ago. I may be wrong, but I feel that I've got down to a firmer basis--a basis of facts." Then he turned to her impulsively, "I wouldn't say this to any one else, Corinna, because no one else would understand what I mean--but I've learned a good deal from Gideon Vetch."
"Ah!" Her eyes were smiling. "I think I know what you mean."
"Of course you know. But imagine Father! He would think, if I told him, that it was a symptom of mental derangement--that some German shell had left a permanent dent in my brain."
"Perhaps. Yet I am not sure that you understand your father. I think he is more like you than you fancy; that if you once pierced his reserve, you would find him a sentimentalist at heart. There is your office," she added, "but you must not get out now. We will turn back for a quarter of an hour." She spoke to the chauffeur, and then said to Stephen, with a sensation of unutterable relief, "a quarter of an hour won't make any difference at the office to-day."
"Perhaps not when I've lost three hours already. I sometimes think they would never notice it if I stayed away all the time. But what I mean about Vetch is simply that he has set me thinking. He does that, you know. Oh, I admit that he is mistaken--or downright wrong--in a number of ways! He is too sensational for our taste--too flamboyant; but one can't get away from him. He has shaken the dust from us; he has jolted us into movement. I have a feeling somehow that his personality is spread all over the place--that we are smeared with Gideon Vetch, as the darkeys would say."
He was already a different Stephen from the one who had got into her car an hour ago, and she breathed a secret prayer of thanksgiving.
"I think even John feels that now and then," she said, and a moment afterward, "Is it possible, do you suppose, that we shall find when it is too late that this Gideon Vetch is the stone that the builders rejected? A ridiculous fancy, and yet who knows, it might turn out to be true. Stranger things have happened than that!"
"It may be. One never can tell." Then he laughed with tolerant affection. "I've found out the trouble with John."
"The trouble with John?" Her voice trembled.
"Yes, the trouble with John is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton--to build the world over on a skull and cross-bones--and it can't be done. I admire John as much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John needs to make him complete."
She nodded. "I know. You mean feeling?"
"Human sympathy--the sympathy that means imagination and insight. That is the only power that Vetch has, but, by Jove, it is the greatest of all! It is the spirit that comprehends, that reconciles, and recreates. Both Vetch and John have failed, I think; Vetch for want of education, system, method, and John because, having all this essential framework, he still lacked the blood and fibre of humanity. In its essence, I suppose it is a difference of principle, the old familiar struggle between the romantic and the realistic temperament, which divides in politics into the progressive and the conservative forces. There is nothing in history, I learned that at college, except the war between these two irreconcilable spirits. Irreconcilable, they call them, and yet I wonder, I wonder more and more, if this is not a misinterpretation of history? It seems to me that the leader of the future, even in so small a community as this one, must be big enough to combine opposite elements; that he must take the good where he finds it; that he must vitalize tradition and discipline progress--"
"You mean that he must accept both the past and the future?" While her heart craved the substance of truth, she dispensed platitudes with a benevolent air.
"How can it be otherwise? That, it seems to me, is the only logical way out of the muddle. The difficulty, of course, is to remain practical--not to let the vision run away with one. It will require moderation, which Vetch has not, and adaptability, which John has never learned."
"And never will learn," rejoined Corinna. "He is made of the mettle that breaks but does not bend."
"Like my father; like all those who have petrified in the shape of a convention. And yet the new stuff--the ideas that haven't turned to stone--are full of froth--they splash over. Take Vetch and this strike, for instance. I myself believe that he wants to do the right thing, to protect the public at any cost; but he has gone too far; he has splashed over the dividing line between principle and expediency. Will he be able to stand firm at the last?"
"Father says there is to be a meeting Thursday night."
"Yes, and he'll be obliged to come to some decision then, or at least to drop a hint as to the line he intends to pursue. I am afraid there will be trouble either way."
"The Governor shows the strain," said Corinna. "I saw him yesterday."
"How can he help it? He has got himself into a tight place. Oh, there are times when temporizing is more dangerous than action! It's hard to see how he'll get out of it unless he cuts a way, and if he does that, he'll probably lose the strongest support he has ever had."
Stephen's face was transfigured now. It had lost the look of dryness, of apathy; and she watched the glow of health shine again in his eyes as it used to shine when he was at college. So it was not emotion that was to restore him! It was the ancient masculine delusion, as invulnerable as truth, that the impersonal interests are the significant ones. Well, she was not quarrelling with delusions as long as they were beneficent! And since it was impossible for her fervent soul to care greatly for general principles, or to dwell long among impersonal forms of thought, she found herself regarding this public crisis, less as a warfare of political theories, than as a possible cure for Stephen's condition. For the rest, except for their results, beneficial or otherwise, to the individual citizen, problems of government interested her not at all. The whole trouble with life seemed to her to rise, not from mistaken theory, but from the lack of consideration with which human beings treated one another. Happiness, after all, depended so little upon opinions and so much upon manners.
"Throw yourself into this work, Stephen," she urged. "It is a splendid opportunity."
He smiled at her in the old boyish way. "An opportunity for what?"
"For--" It was on the tip of her tongue to say "for health"; but she checked herself, remembering the incurable distaste men have for calling things by their right names, and replied instead, "an opportunity for usefulness."
His smile faded, and he turned on her eyes that were almost melancholy, though the fire of animation still warmed them. "I am interested now. I care a great deal--but will it last? Haven't I felt this way a hundred times in the last six months, only to grow indifferent and even bored within the next few hours?"
She looked at him closely. "Isn't there any feeling--any interest that lasts with you?"
He hesitated, while a burning colour, like the flush of fever, swept up to his forehead. "Only one, and I am trying to get over that," he answered after a moment.
"If it is a genuine feeling, are you wise to get over it?" she asked. "Genuine feeling is so rare. I think if I could feel an overwhelming emotion, I should hug it to my heart as the most precious of gifts."
"Even if everything were against it?"
Her head went up with a dauntless gesture. "Oh, my dear, what is everything?" It was a changed voice from the one in which she had lectured Alice Rokeby an hour ago. "Feeling is everything."
"It is real," he replied, looking away from her eyes. "I am sure of that because I have struggled against it. I can't explain what it is; I don't know what it was that made me care in the beginning. All I know about it is that it seems to give me back myself. It is only when I let myself go in the thought of it that I become really free. Can you understand what I mean?"
"I can," assented Corinna softly; and though she smiled there was a mist over her eyes which made the world appear iridescent. "Oh, my dear, it is the only way. Throw away everything else--every cause, every conviction, every interest--but keep that one open door into reality."
The car stopped before his office, and she held out her hand. "I shall see you to-morrow night?"
He glanced back merrily from the pavement. "Do you think I shall let you escape me?" Then he turned away and went, with a firm and energetic step, into the building, while Corinna took out her shopping list and studied it thoughtfully.
"Back to the shop," she said at last. "I have had enough for one morning." As the car started up the street, a smile stirred her lips, "I shall have three unhappy lovers on my hands for the dance to-morrow." Then she laughed softly, with a very real sense of humour, "If I am going to sacrifice myself, I may as well do it in the grand manner," she thought, for Corinna had a royal soul. _