One Man in His Time Part 37

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 sh.e.l.l 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. n.o.body 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, pa.s.s 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 nutsh.e.l.l. 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 la.s.situde. 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l 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 plat.i.tudes 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."