One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"That I can't answer. Is there anything that has escaped your instinctive understanding?"

She laughed softly. "Well, there's one thing you may be sure of. I'll know a great deal more about some things by the time I see you again." Then, with one of her darting bird-like movements, she ran down the steps and into the car. "I wish Father were here," she said, looking out at him. "He wants to talk to you."

"I should like to talk to him. I shall come again, if I may."

"Oh, of course, and next time we may both be at home." As the car started she called out teasingly. "My next maneuver may be more successful, you know!"

How provoking she was, and how inspiriting! Was she as shrewd, as sophisticated, as she tried to appear, or was he merely, he asked himself, the victim of her irrepressible humour, of a prodigious display of the modern spirit? At least she was a part of her time—not, like Margaret and himself, a discordant note, a divergent atom, in the general march toward recklessness and unrestraint. Young as she was, he felt that she had already solved the problems which he had evaded or pushed aside. She had learned the secret of transition—a perpetual motion that went in circles and was never still. Here, he realized, was where he had lost connection, where he had failed to hold his place in the turmoil. He had tried to stand off and reach a point of view, to become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to meditate, never to reason upon one's course; but to sweep onward, somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, variability—were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; martyrdom without faith. And around, above, beneath, the pervading mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the disorder. If he could find that it contained a single redeeming principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be able to surrender his disbelief.

He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the house, spoke to him abruptly.

"If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?"

With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare, he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the evening before. In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less repellent than she had appeared in the darkness. The hollowness of her features gave a certain dignity to her expression—the look of one who is returning from the shadows of death. Years ago, before illness or dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion. Her black eyes were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye.

"I am sorry," she added as she recognized him. "I did not know it was you." As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass on; but he made a movement to detain her.

"Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?"