She broke off hurriedly, wiping her lips as if the mere recital of the sordid facts had stained them with blood. It all sounded so horrible as she repeated it--so incredibly evil!
"Oh, my dear boy, try to take it in however much it may hurt you," she pleaded, turning a coward not on her own account, not even on his, but for the sake of something deeper and more sacred which belonged to them both and to the tradition for which they stood. A pa.s.sionate longing seized her now to protect Stephen from the risk that she had urged him to take.
"I understand. It is terrible for her," he answered.
"I hate you to see Patty. Poor child, she looks seared." Then a possible way occurred to her, even though she hated herself while she suggested it. "I am not sure that it is wise for you to wait. There are so many things you must think of. There is first of all your family--"
He laughed shortly. "It is late in the day to remember that."
"I know." A look of compunction crossed her face. "Forgive me."
"Of course I think of them," he said presently. "Poor Dad. He is the best of us all, I believe." Though there was an expression of pain in his eyes, she noticed that the unnatural lethargy, the nervous irritation, had disappeared. He looked as if a load had dropped from his shoulders.
As with many women who have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was almost a shock to her. She had believed that her knowledge of him was perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her a.n.a.lysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental misconception of his character. For she had forgotten that, conservative and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk while he accepts the extraordinary one. She had forgotten that men of Stephen"s nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same time capable of large ones; that, though they may not endure petty discomforts with fort.i.tude, they are able, in moments of vivid experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid n.o.bility. For the old order was not merely the outward form of the conservative principle, it was also the fruit of heroic tradition.
"You must think it over, Stephen," she pleaded. "Go away now, and try to realize all that it will mean to you."
"Thinking doesn"t get me anywhere," he replied. His face was pale and thoughtful; and Corinna knew, while she watched him, that he had found freedom at last; that he had come into his manhood. "I"ve made my choice, and I"ll stand by it to-day even if I regret it to-morrow.
You"ve got to take chances; to leave the safe road and strike out into open country. That"s living. Otherwise you might as well be dead. I can"t just cling like moss to inst.i.tutions that other people have made; to the things that have always been. I"ve got to take chances--and I"m enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me--"
The part of Corinna"s nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in sympathy with his resolve. Though she gazed down the straight deserted street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible world.
"I understand, dear," she answered softly. "I can"t tell whether or not it is the safe way; but I know it is the gallant way."
"It is the only way," he responded steadily. "If I am ever to make anything of my life, this is the test. I see that I"ve got to meet it. I shall probably have to meet it every day of my life--but, by Jove, I"ll meet it! Patty isn"t just Patty to me. She is strength and courage. She is the risk of the future. I suppose she is the pioneer in my blood, or my mind. I can"t help what she came from, nor can she. I"ve got to take that as I take everything else, with the belief that it is worth all the cost. The thing I feel now is that she has given me back myself. She has given me a free outlook on life--"
He stopped abruptly, for there was the sound of footsteps in the house, and after a minute or two, Patty and Gideon Vetch came out on the porch.
The girl looked, except for the red of her mouth, as if the blood had been drawn from her veins, and her eyes were like dark pansies. All the light had faded from them, changing even their colour.
"Patty," said Stephen; and he made a step toward her, with his hands outstretched as if he would gather her to him. Then he stopped and fell back, for the girl was shrinking away from him with a look of fear.
"I can"t talk now," she answered, smiling with hard lips. "I am tired. I can"t talk now." Running ahead she went down the steps, through the gate, and into Vetch"s car which was standing beside the curbstone.
"She"s worn out," explained Vetch. "I"ll take her home, and you"d better try to get some sleep, Mrs. Page. You look as tired as Patty."
"Let me go with you," returned Corinna. "Your car is closed, and Patty and I are both bareheaded." For a moment she turned back to put her hand on Stephen"s arm. "I must sleep," she said. "I shan"t go to the shop to-day."
Vetch was waiting at the door of the car, and when she stumbled over her train, she fell slightly against him. "How exhausted you are," he observed gently, "and what a rock you are to lean on!"
She looked at him with a smile. "Those are the very words I"ve used about you."
He laughed and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his unclouded blue eyes. "Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on them," he responded, "but since you have done so much for us, perhaps you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference between her and me. Won"t you try to see that, daughter?"
"Oh, Father!" exclaimed Patty with a sob, "it makes all the difference in the world!"
"There it is," said Vetch with anxious weariness. "That is all I can get out of her."
"She is so tired," replied Corinna. "Let her rest." Though her gaze was on the street, she saw still the dusk beyond the ailantus tree and the old woman, with the crooked back, pressing down the eyelids over those staring eyes.
They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to Corinna. "I can never tell you," she began, "I can never tell you--" Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the staircase beyond the library.
"Let her rest," said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch.
"Leave her to herself. She needs sleep, but she is very young--and for youth there is no despair that does not pa.s.s."
"You are as tired as she is," he returned.
She nodded. "I am going home to sleep, but the look of that child worries me."
"I kept it from her for sixteen years," he said slowly, "and she found out by an accident."
"I never suspected, or I might have prevented it."
"No, I trusted too much to chance. I have always trusted to chance."
"I think," she said, "that you have trusted most to your good instincts."
He smiled, and she saw that he was deeply touched. "Well, I"m trusting to them now," he responded. "They have led me between two extremes, and it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets. I"ve got them all against me, but it isn"t over yet, by Jove! It is a long road that has no turning--"
They had descended the steps together, and walking a little way beyond the drive, they stood in the bright green gra.s.s looking up at the clear gold of the sunrise.
"There is a meeting to-night," she said.
"Of the strikers--yes, I may win them. I can generally win people if they let me talk--but the trouble goes deeper than that. It isn"t that I can"t carry them with me for an hour. It is simply that I can"t make any of them see where we are going. It is a question not of loyalty, but of understanding. They can"t understand anything except what they want."
"Whether you win or not," she answered, "I am glad that at last I am on your side."
His face lighted. "On my side? Even if it means failure?"
As she looked up at him the sunrise was in her face. The sky was turning slowly to flame-colour, and each dark pointed leaf of the magnolia tree stood out illuminated against a background of fire. "It may be failure, but it is magnificent," she said.
He was smiling down on her from his great height; and while she stood there in that clear golden air, she felt again, as she had felt twice before when she was with him, that beneath the depth of her personal life, in that buried consciousness which belonged to the ages of being, something more real than any actual experience she had ever known was responding to the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice. All that she had missed in life--completeness, perfection--seemed to shine about her for an instant before it pa.s.sed on into the sunlight. A fancy, nothing more! A fading gleam of some lost wildness of youth! For if she had spoken the thought in her mind while she stood there, she would have said, "Give me what I have never had. Make me what I have never been."
But she did not speak it; the serene friendliness of her look did not alter; and the impulse vanished as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in flight.
"I thank you," he answered in a low voice. "I shall remember that."
The moment had pa.s.sed, and she held out her hand with a smile. "I shall come to stay with Patty while you are at the meeting to-night," she said; and then, as she turned away to the car, he walked beside her in silence.
A little later, when she looked back from the gate, she saw him standing in the bright gra.s.s with the sunrise above his head.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH
That evening, when Corinna got out of her car before the Governor"s house, Stephen Culpeper opened the door, and came down the steps.