One Man in His Time Part 3

It was a queer question, he thought, for any one to ask in the Square; but she was probably a stranger.

"This is the Governor's house," he answered courteously. "I suppose you are a stranger in town."

"I got here a few hours ago, and I came out for a breath of air. I was four days and nights on the way."

To this he made no reply, and he was about to pa.s.s on again, when her voice arrested him.

"You wouldn't mind telling me, would you, the Governor's name?"

"Not in the least. His name is Gideon Vetch."

"Gideon Vetch?" She repeated the name slowly, as if she were impressing it on her memory. "That's a queer name for a Governor. Was he born in this town?"

"I think not."

"And who lives with him? I saw a girl come out awhile ago. Is she his daughter, perhaps--or his wife--though she looked young for that."

"It must have been his daughter. His wife is not living."

"Is she his only child? Or has he others?" There was a quiver of suspense in her voice, and turning he looked at her more closely. Was it possible that she had known Gideon Vetch in his obscure past?

"She is his only child," he replied.

"Well, that's nice for her. Is she pretty?" An odd question if it had been put by a man; but he had been trained to accept the fact that women are different.

"Yes, you would call her pretty." As he spoke the words there flashed through his mind the picture of Patty Vetch as he had seen her that afternoon, in her red cape and her small hat with the red wings, against the snowy hill under the overhanging bough of the sycamore. Was she really pretty, or was it only the witchery of her surroundings? Now that he was out of her presence the attraction had faded. He was still smarting from the memory of that dancing figure.

"Well, it's a fine house," said the woman, "and it looks large for just two people. I thank you for telling me."

The pathos of her words appealed to the generous chivalry of his nature.

He felt sorry for her and wondered if he might offer her money.

"I hope you found lodgings," he said.

"Yes, I've found a room near here--on Governor Street, I think they call it."

"And you are not in want? You do not need any help?"

She shook her head while the rusty mourning veil shrouded her features.

"Not yet," she answered. "I'm not a beggar yet." Though her tone was not well-bred, he realized that she was neither as uneducated nor as degraded as he had at first believed.

"I am glad of that," he responded; and then lifting his hat again, he hurried quickly away from her up the road beneath the few old linden trees that were left of an avenue. Glancing back as he reached the Capitol building, he saw her black figure moving cautiously over the snow toward one of the gates of the Square.

"That was a nightmare," he thought, "and now for the pleasant dream.

I'll go to the old print shop and see my Cousin Corinna."

CHAPTER III

CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP

As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Amba.s.sador to Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm, the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to remember, trite as it was--the singing heart--that was Corinna. She had had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that she liked almost every one--every one, that is, except Rose Stribling, whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose Stribling, all blue eyes and white linen, had nursed him at the last. At that time Corinna was in America, and she hadn't so much as looked at Kent for years; but a woman has a long memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could have been half so lovely when she was a girl, before the faint shadows and the tender little lines lent depth and mystery to her eyes, and the single white lock swept back amid the powdered dusk of her hair.

While the young man walked rapidly up Franklin Street, he saw before him the long delightful room beyond the pyramidal cedars and the hedge of box. He saw the ruddy glow of the fire mingling with the paler light of amber lamps, and this mingled radiance s.h.i.+ning on the rich rugs, the few old brocades, and the rare English prints which covered the walls. He saw wide-open creamy roses in alabaster bowls which were scattered everywhere, on tables, on stools, on window-seats, and on the rich carving of the Spanish desk in one corner. Against the curtains of gold silk there was the bough of twisted pine he had broken, and against the pine branch stood the figure of Corinna in her gown of soft red, which melted like a spray of autumn foliage into the colours of the room. She was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that she looked like an October morning?

As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a j.a.panese print. When he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was holding a basket of marigolds.

"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in water."

She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had pa.s.sed out of the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance and pleasant magic. The other was real life--life for all but the happy few, he found himself thinking--this was merely the enchanted fairy-ring where children played at making believe.

"I hoped I'd catch you," he said, stretching out his hands to the log fire. "I felt somehow that you hadn't gone, late as it is." While he spoke he was thinking, not of Corinna, but of the strange woman he had left in the Square. Queer how that incident had bitten into his mind.

Try as he might he couldn't shake himself free from it.

"Father is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight.

Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell me."

"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities.

"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any world or any fireside--imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the s.h.i.+ning dark eyes of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment, like an amba.s.sador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get is the conversation of an old fogy like me."

"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular, tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For the same delusion makes strange friends.h.i.+ps, and the General, in spite of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted fairy-ring where no fact ever entered.

With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness, though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers.

"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said.

"Wasn't it nice of him?"

"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered.

Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?"

"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone.

"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older.

There isn't a man living whom I admire more."

"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?"

For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual question?

"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her."

Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than revealed her obscure motives.

"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham."