One Man in His Time Part 24

For an instant Corinna hesitated. "I believe that he is--well, just Gideon Vetch," she answered enigmatically.

"Just a professional politician?"

"Not at all. He is a great deal more than that, but what that great deal is I cannot pretend to say."

"Do you ever see him away from Patty?"

"Now and then. He has been to the shop."

"And you like him?"

Again she hesitated. "Yes, I like him." Turning her head, she looked straight at him with a glow in her eyes. "That is," she corrected softly, "I should like him if it were not for John."

"You compare him with John?"

"Don't you?"

"Naturally. Of course the Governor loses by that."

"Who wouldn't?"

Her face flushed at the thought, and as Stephen watched her, he asked in a gentler voice, "Are you really to be married in June?"

She smiled an a.s.sent, with her dreaming gaze on the young leaves and the blue sky.

"Are you happy?" he persisted.

Her smile answered him again. "One dreads the lonely fireside as one grows older." Then suddenly, as if the shadow of a cloud had drifted over the bright sky, he saw the smile fade from her lips and the glow from her upraised eyes. Somewhere within her brain a voice as hollow as an echo was repeating, "_Isn't that life--sparrows for larks always?_"

"Well, you know what I feel about you, and what I think about Benham,"

replied Stephen. "You two together stand for all that I admire." As if ashamed of the tone of sentiment, he continued carelessly after a moment: "Vetch is very far from being a Benham, and yet there is something about the man that holds one's attention. People are for ever discussing him. A little while ago we were talking about his personal peculiarities and his political offences. Now we are wondering how he will handle this strike if it comes off; and what effect it will have on his career? Benham, of course, thinks that he is an instrument in the hands of a political group; that his office was the price they paid him not to interfere in the strike. As for me I have no opinion. I am waiting to see what will happen."

They had reached the old print shop; and, as they paused beneath the cedars in the front yard, Stephen glanced up at the window under the quaint shingled roof. The upper storey, he knew, was rented to a couple of tenants, and he was not surprised when he saw the curtains of dotted swiss pushed aside and a woman's face look down on him over the red geranium on the window-sill. The face was familiar; but, while he stared back at it, searching his memory for a resemblance, the white curtains dropped together again, veiling the features. Where had he seen that woman before? What a.s.sociation of ideas did the sight of her recall? In a flash, while he still groped through mental obscurity, light broke on him.

"Who is that woman, Corinna?" he asked. "What do you know of her?"

"That woman?" Corinna repeated; then, as he lifted his eyes to the window, she added, "Oh, that's Mrs. Green. A pathetic face, isn't it? I know nothing about her except that she came in a few weeks ago, and the caretaker tells me that she is leaving to-morrow."

"Do you know where she came from?"

"My dear Stephen! Why, what in the world?" A laugh broke from Corinna's lips. "Did you ever see her before?"

"Twice, and both times in the Capitol Square. I thought her dreadful to look at."

"I've only glanced at her, but she appeared to me more pathetic than dreadful. She has been ill, I imagine, and she looks terribly poor. I'm afraid the rent is too high, but I can't do anything, for she rented her room from the tenants. I suppose, poor thing, that she is merely a sad adventuress, and it is not the sad adventuresses, but the glad ones, who usually enlist a young man's sympathy. By the way, I am lunching with the Governor to-morrow."

"Is it a party?"

"No, just the family. That shows how intimate I have become with the Vetches. Don't tell Cousin Harriet, or she would think I was beginning to corrupt your politics. But I may use my influence to find out what the Governor intends to do about the strike, and a cousin with a political secret is worth having."

With a laugh Stephen went on his way, wondering vaguely what there was about the woman at the window, Mrs. Green Corinna had called her, that made it impossible for him to rid his mind of her? Glancing back from the end of the block, he saw that Corinna had entered the shop and that the curtains at the upper window had been pushed back again while the dim face of Mrs. Green looked down into the street. Was she watching for some one? Or was she merely relieving the monotony of life indoors by gazing down into Franklin Street at an hour when it was almost deserted?

CHAPTER XIV

A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE

Corinna had not expected to see the Governor until luncheon next day; but, to her surprise, he came to the shop just as she was about to lock the door and go home for the afternoon. At first she thought that the visit was merely a casual one--it was not unusual for him to drop in as he was going by--but he had no sooner glanced about the room to see if they were alone than he broke out with his characteristic directness.

"There is something I want to ask you. Will you answer me frankly?"

"That depends. Tell me what it is and then I will answer your question."

"It is about Patty. You've seen a great deal of her, haven't you?"

"A great deal. I am very fond of her."

"Then perhaps you can tell me if she is interested in this young Culpeper?"

For a minute Corinna struggled against a burst of hysterical laughter.

Oh, if Cousin Harriet had only met him here, she thought, what a comedy they would have made!

"Surely if any one has an opinion about that, it must be you," she rejoined as gravely as she could.

"I haven't; not the shadow of one." He was plainly puzzled. "I thought you might help me. You have a way of seeing things."

"Have I?" The spontaneous tribute touched her. "I wish I could see this, but I can't. Frankly, since you ask me, I may say that I have been troubled about it. There are things that Patty hides, even from me, and I think I have her confidence."

"I dare say you wonder why I have come to you to-day," he said. "I can handle most situations; but I have never had to handle the love affairs of a girl, and I'm perfectly capable of making a mess of them. Things like that are outside of my job."

He seemed to her a pathetic figure as he stood there, in his boyish embarra.s.sment and his redundant vitality, confessing an inability to surmount the obstacle in his way. She had never known any one, man or woman, who was so obviously lacking in subtlety of perception, in all those delicate intuitions on which she relied more completely than on judgment for an accurate impression of life. Was he, with his bigness, his earnestness, his luminous candour, only an overgrown child? Even his physical magnetism, and she felt this in the very moment when she was trying to a.n.a.lyse it, even his physical magnetism might be nothing more than the spell exercised by primitive impulse over the too complex problems of civilization. She had heard that he was unscrupulous--vague charges that he had never been able to repel--yet she was conscious now of a secret wish to protect him from the consequences of his duplicity, as she might have wished to protect an irresponsible child. Some mysterious sense perception made her aware that beneath what appeared to be discreditable public actions there was the simple bed-rock of honesty. For the quality she felt in Vetch was a profound moral integrity, an integrity which was bred by nature in the innermost fibre of the man.

"If you will tell me--" she began, and checked herself with a sensation of helplessness. After all, what could he tell her that she did not know?

"I want to do what is right for her," he said abruptly. "I should hate for her to be hurt."

While he talked it seemed to Corinna that she was living in some absurd comedy, which mimicked life but was only acting, not reality. In her world of reserves and implications no man would have dared to make himself ridiculous by a visit like this.

"Do you believe that she cares for Stephen?" she asked bluntly.

"It didn't start with me. Miss Spencer, that's the lady who lives with us you know, is afraid that Patty sees too much of him. He is at the house every day--"

"Well?" Corinna waited patiently. She was not in the least afraid of what Stephen might do. She knew that she could trust him to be a gentleman; but being a gentleman, she reflected, did not necessarily keep one from breaking a woman's heart. And Patty had a wild, free heart that might be broken.

"I don't know what to do about it," Vetch was saying while she pondered the problem. "As I told you a minute ago this is all outside my job."