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One Man in His Time, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Chapter 23. The Dawn |
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_ CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN Outside in the narrow passage, smelling of dust and yesterday's cooking, the pallid light filtered in through the closed window; and it seemed to Corinna that this light pervaded her own thoughts until the images in her mind moved in a procession of stark outlines against a colourless horizon. In this unreal world, which she knew was merely a distorted impression of the external world about her, she saw the figure of the dead woman, still and straight as the effigy of a saint, the twisted shape of the old hunchback, and after these the shadow of the starved cat stealing along the top of the high brick wall. What was the meaning in these things? Where was the beauty? What inscrutable purpose, what sardonic humour, joined together beauty and ugliness, harmony and discord, her own golden heritage with the drab destinies of that dead woman and this work-worn cripple? "I can't stand it any longer," she thought. "I must breathe the open air, or I shall die." Then, just as she was about to hurry toward the stairs, she checked herself and stood still because she realized that the old woman had followed her and was droning into her ear. "Yes, ma'am, that's the way life is," the impersonal voice was muttering, "but it ain't the only way that it is, I reckon. I sees so many sick and dying folks that you'd think I was obliged to look at things unnatural-like. But I don't, not me, ma'am. It ain't all that way, with nothing but waiting and wanting, and then disappointment. Even Maggie had her good times somewhere in the past. You can't expect to be always dressed in spangles and riding bareback, that's what I used to say to her. You've got to take your share of bad times, same as the rest of us. And look at me now. I've done sick nursing for more'n fifty years--as far back as I like to look--but it ain't all been sick nursing. There's been a deal in it besides. "Naw'm, I've got a lot to be thankful for when I begin to take stock." Her wrinkled face caught the first gleam of sunlight that fell through the unwashed window panes. "I've done sick nursing ever since I was a child almost; but I've managed mighty well all things considering, and I've saved up enough to keep me out of the poor house when I get too old to go on. When I give up I won't have to depend on charity, and the city won't have to bury me either when I'm dead. And I've got a heap of satisfaction out of my red geraniums too. I don't reckon you ever saw finer blooms--not even in a greenhouse. Naw'm, I ain't been the complaining sort. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I know it." Her old eyes shone; her sunken mouth was trembling, not with self-pity, Corinna realized, with a pang that was strangely like terror, but with the courage of living. The pathos of it appeared intolerable for a moment; and gathering her cloak about her, Corinna felt that she must cover her eyes and fly before she broke out into hysterical screaming. Then the terror passed; and she saw, in a single piercing flash of insight, that what she had mistaken for ugliness was simply an impalpable manifestation of beauty. Beauty! Why it was everywhere! It was with her now in this squalid house, in the presence of this crippled old woman, unmoved by death, inured to poverty, screwing, grinding, pinching, like flint to the crying baby, and yet cherishing the blooms of her red geranium, her passionate horror of the poor house, and her dream of six feet of free earth not paid for by charity at the end. Yes, that was the way of life. Blind as a mole to the universe, and yet visited by flashes of unearthly light. "Thank you," said Corinna hurriedly. "I must go down. I must get a breath of air, but I will come back in a little while." Then she started at a run down the stairs, while the old woman gazed after her, as if the flying figure, in the cloak of peacock-blue satin and white fur, was that of a demented creature. "Air!" she repeated, with scornful independence. "Air!", and turning away in disgust, she limped painfully back to wait outside of the closed door. Here, when she had seated herself in a sagging chair, she lifted her bleak eyes to the smoke-stained ceiling, and repeated for the third time in a tone of profound contempt: "Air!" At the foot of the stairs, Corinna ran against Gideon Vetch. "She died soon after you went out," she said, "but Patty is still there." "I'll go up to her," he answered; and then as he placed his foot on the bottom step, he looked back at her, and added, "I tried to spare her this." She assented almost mechanically. Fatigue had swept over her from head to foot like some sinister drug and she felt incapable of giving out anything, even sympathy, even the appearance of compassion. "Then it is all true?" she asked. "Patty is not your child?" A shadow crossed his face, but he did not hesitate in his reply. "I never had a child. I was never married." "You took her like that--because the mother was going to prison?" He nodded. "She was a child. What difference did it make whether she was mine or not? She was the nicest little thing you ever saw. She is still." "Yes, she is still. But you never knew what became of the mother?" "I didn't know her real name. I didn't want to. The circus people called her Queenie, that was all I knew. She'd stuck a knife into a man in a jealous rage, and he happened to die. They said the trial would be obliged to go against her. I was leaving California that night, and I brought the child with me. I have never been back--" He spread out his broad hand with a gesture that was strangely human. "You would have done it in my place?" She shook her head. "No, I should have wanted to, but I couldn't. I am not big enough for that." He was already ascending the stairs, but at her words, he turned and smiled down on her. "It was nothing to make a fuss about," he said. "Anybody would have done it." Then he mounted the stairs lightly for his great height, taking two steps at a time, while she passed out on the porch where Stephen was waiting for her. As he rose wearily from the wicker rocking chair beside the empty perambulator, she felt as if he were a stranger. In that one night she seemed to have put the whole universe between her and the old order that he represented. "I kept my car waiting for you," he began. "It was better to let your man go home." She smiled at him in the pale light, and he broke out nervously: "You look as if you would drop. What have they done to you?" Though she wore the cloak of peacock-blue over her evening gown, the pointed train wound on the floor behind her, and the fan of white ostrich plumes, which she had forgotten to leave in the car, was still in her hand. Her face was wan and drawn; there were violet circles under her eyes; and she looked as if she had grown ten years older since the evening before. It was the outward impression of the night, he knew. In this house one passed back again into the power of time; youth could not be prolonged here for a single night. "I don't know what it means," he said, with a mixture of exasperation and curiosity. "I wish you would tell me what it means." "I feel," she answered, in an expressionless tone, as if the insensibility of her nerves had passed into her voice, "that I have faced life for the first time." "Tell me what it means," he reiterated impatiently. Dropping into the chair from which he had risen, she drew her train aside while the doctor passed them hurriedly, with a muttered apology, and went into the house. Then, leaning forward, with the fan clasped in her hands, and her eyes on the straight deserted street, which ended abruptly on the brow of a hill, she repeated word for word all that the dying woman had said. The sun had not yet risen, but a faint opalescent glow suffused the sky in the east, and flushed with a delicate colour the round cobblestones in the street and the herring-bone pattern of the pavement, where blades of grass sprouted among the bricks. Though she did not look up at Stephen's face, she was aware while she talked of some subtle emanation of thought outside of herself, as if the struggle in his mind had overflowed mechanical processes and physical boundaries, and was escaping into the empty street and the city beyond. And this silent struggle, so charged with intensity that it produced the effect of a cry, became for her merely a part, a single voice, in that greater struggle for victory over circumstances which went on ceaselessly day and night in the surrounding houses. Everywhere about her there was the vague groping toward some idea of freedom, toward independence of spirit; everywhere there was this perpetual striving toward a universe that was larger. The dwellers in this crowded house, with their vision of space and sunlight; the village with its vision of a city; the city with its vision of a country; the country with its vision of a republic of the world--all these universal struggles were condensed now into the little space of a man's consciousness. To Corinna, in whose veins flowed the blood of Malvern Hill and Cold Harbor, it seemed that the greater victory must lie with those who charged from out the cover of philosophy into the mystery of the unknown. If she had been in Stephen's place, she knew that she should have taken the risk, that she should have flung herself into the enterprise of life as into a voyage of discovery. Yet, at the moment, appreciating all that it meant to him, she asked herself if she had been wise to let him see the thought in her mind. For an instant, after telling him, she hesitated, and in this instant Stephen spoke. "So he isn't her father?" "No, he isn't her father. He had never seen her mother; he did not even know her name, for he met the woman by accident when she was arrested in the circus. Patty was over two years old then--about two and a half, I think. Gideon Vetch took the child because of an impulse--a very human impulse of pity--but he knew nothing of her parentage. He knows nothing now, not even her real name. It is much worse than we ever imagined. Try to understand it. Try to take it in clearly before you act rashly. There is still time to weigh things--to stop and reflect. Nothing whatever is known of Patty's birth, except that her father, so the woman said, died in the first year of their marriage, before the child was born, and less than two years later the mother was sent to prison for killing another man--" 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 passionate 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 analysis, 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 fortitude, they are able, in moments of vivid experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid nobility. 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 institutions 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 pass." "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 grass 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 passed 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 passed, 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 grass with the sunrise above his head. _ |
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