One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"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.