One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

When he had gone Corinna opened the door and stood watching the long black shadows of the cedars creep over the walk of broken flagstones. Always when she was alone her thoughts would return like homing birds to John Benham; but this afternoon, though she spoke his name in her reflections, she was conscious of an inner detachment from the vital interests of her personal life. For a little while, so strong was the mental impression Vetch had made on her, she saw his image even while she thought the name of John Benham. Then, with an effort of will, she put the Governor and all that he had said out of her mind. After all, how little would she ever see of him now—how seldom would their paths cross in the future! A strange and interesting man, a man who had, in one instant of mental sympathy, stirred something within her heart that no one, not even Kent Page, had ever awakened before. For that one instant a ripple, nothing more, had moved on the face of the deep—of the deep which was so ancient that it was older even than the blood of her race. Then the ripple passed and the sunny stillness settled again on her spirit.

She thought of John Benham easily now; and while she stood there a quiet happiness shone in her eyes. After the storm and stress of twenty years, life in this Indian summer of the emotions was like an enclosed garden of sweetness and bloom. She had had enough of hunger and rapture and disappointment. Never again would she take up the old search for perfection, for the starry flower of the heights. Something that she could worship! So often in the past it had seemed to her that she missed it by the turn of a corner, the stop on the roadside, by the choice of a path that led down into the valley instead of up into the hills. So often her god had revealed the feet of clay just as she was preparing to scatter marigolds on his altar. It appeared to her as she looked back on the past, that life had been merely a succession of great opportunities that one did not grasp, of high adventures that one never followed.

The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to stop at her door. An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling. Even a glimpse of that flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid current of Corinna's thoughts. Could she never forget? Must she, who had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment against the woman?

With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old print shop. In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her appearance. If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on perfection.

"I've just got back," began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her metallic voice could produce. "It's been an age since I've seen you—not since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys', and I'm so much interested in the news I have heard."

For a minute Corinna stared at her. "Yes, my shop has been very successful," she answered, after a pause in which she tried and failed to think of a reply that would sound more disdainful. "If you are looking for prints, I can show you some very good ones."

"Oh, I don't mean that." Mrs. Stribling appeared genuinely amused by the mistake. "I am not looking for prints—to tell the truth I shouldn't know one if I saw it. I mean your engagement, of course. There isn't anybody in the world who admires John Benham more than I do. I always say of him that he is the only man I know who will sacrifice himself for a principle. All his splendid record in the army—when he was over age too—and then the way he behaved about that corporation! I never understood just why he did it—I'm sure I could never bring myself to refuse so much money,—but that doesn't keep me from admiring him." For a minute she looked at Corinna with a smile which seemed as permanent as the rest of her surface, while she discreetly sharpened her wits for the stab which was about to be dealt. "I can't tell you how surprised I was to hear you had announced your engagement. You know we were so sure that he was going to marry Alice Rokeby after she got her divorce. Of course nobody knew. It was just gossip, and you and I both know how absurd gossip can be."

So this was why she had stopped! Corinna flinched from the thrust even while she told herself that there was no shadow of truth in the old rumour, that malice alone had prompted Rose Stribling to repeat it. In a woman like that, an incorrigible coquette, every relation with her own sex would be edged with malice.

"Well, I just stopped to wish you happiness. I must go now, but I'll come again, when I have time, and look at your shop. Such a funny idea—a shop, with all the money you've got! But no idea seems too funny for people to-day. And that reminds me of the Governor. Have you seen the Governor again since the evening we dined with him?"

Her turn had come, and Corinna, for she was very human, planted the sting without mercy. "Oh, very often. He was here a few minutes ago."