One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

Patty turned and gave her a long look. "I could do more than that for Father," she answered.

So this was the other side of Gideon Vetch—of that man of ignoble circumstances and infinite magnanimity! How could any one understand him? How, above all, could any one judge him? How could one fathom his power for good or for evil? She beheld him suddenly as a man who was inspired by an exalted illusion—the illusion of human perfectibility. In the changing world about her, the breaking up and the renewing, the dissolution and readjustment of ideals; in the modern conflict between the spirit that accepts and the spirit that rejects; in this age of destiny—was not an unconquerable optimism, an invincible belief in life, the one secure hope for the future? It is the human touch that creates hope, she thought; and the power of Gideon Vetch was revealed to her as simply the human touch magnified into a force.

She became aware after a minute that Patty was speaking. "I can never tell you—I can never tell any one what he used to be to me when I was a little girl, and he was very poor. Sometimes—for a long time—I couldn't have a nurse, and he would dress and undress me, and leave me with the neighbours when he went away to work. I can see him now heating milk for me over an old oil lamp. Once when I was ill he sat up night after night with me. Oh, I don't mean that he was perfect, but that he was kind—always. I know the quarrels he had—that he has still with the people who won't go his way. The one thing he can't forgive in people is that they never forget themselves, that they never think of anything except what they want. That angers him, and he flies out. I know that. But there's no use trying I can't make anybody, I can't make even you, know all that he did for me—" The words ended in tears; and she sat there, lost in memory, while the dim light seemed to absorb her white dress and her pale features and the small hand that lay on the fringe of her black sash.

"My dear, my dear," murmured Corinna because she could think of no words that sounded less ineffectual.

There was a ring at the doorbell while she spoke and after a pause which appeared to her interminable, she heard the shuffling tread of old Abijah, and then the clear tone of Stephen's voice, followed immediately by another speaker who sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not recall now where she had listened to him before. It was not Julius Gershom, she knew, though it might be some man that she had heard at a meeting.

"Let me speak to Mrs. Page first," said Stephen. "Ask her if she will come into the drawing-room."

For an instant Corinna hung back, with the chill of dread at her heart; and in that instant Patty flew past her like a startled spirit, while the ends of her black sash streamed behind her. With the penetrating insight of love the girl had surmised, had seen, had understood, before a word of explanation had reached her, before even the door had swung open, and she had met the blanched faces of the men in the hall. "It is Father," she said quietly. "They have hurt him. Oh, I knew all the time that they were going to hurt him!"

Corinna, standing close at her side without touching her, for some intuition told her that the girl did not wish any support, was aware of the faces of these men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights, out of the shadows in the hall—first Stephen's face, with its shocked compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless; then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but of the stony fortitude of the ages. Beyond this there was the open door and the glamour of the spring night, and in the night another group with its dark burden.

"I met them just outside, and they told me," said Stephen. "Gershom thinks it was an accident, but we shall never know probably. Two opposing sides were fighting it out. A question had come up—nobody can remember what it was—nothing important, I think—but two men came to blows and he got in between them—he stood in the way—and somebody shot him—"

He was talking, Corinna realized, in an effort to hold Patty's gaze, to divert her eyes by the force of his look from the burden which the men were bringing slowly up the steps outside and into the hall.