One Man in His Time Part 31

Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?"

"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me."

"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over her expressionless eyes. "Oh, you mean Julius. Yes, I told him I wanted to see you." A quiver of animation pa.s.sed like a spasm over her features, and she inquired eagerly, "Where is he? Did he come?"

"I'm here all right," said Gershom, stepping briskly into the range of her vision.

She gazed up at him as he approached her with the look of a famished animal, a look so little human and so full of physical hunger that Patty turned her eyes again to the calla lily on the window-sill, and then to the young green on the ailantus tree and the brick wall beyond. To the girl it seemed that minutes must have gone by before the next words came. "You brought the medicine?"

"Yes, I brought it. The doctor gave it to me; but it is hard to get, and he said you were to have it only on condition that you do everything that we tell you."

"Oh, I will, I will." She reached out her hand eagerly for the package he had taken from his coat pocket; and when Patty looked at her again a curious change had pa.s.sed over her face, revivifying it with the colour of happiness. "I have been in such pain--such pain," she whispered. "I was afraid it would come back before you came. Oh, I was so afraid."

Then she added hurriedly: "Is that all? Did you bring nothing else?"

Though a look of embarra.s.sment crossed his face, he carried off the difficult situation with his characteristic a.s.surance. "The doctor sent you a little stimulant. Perhaps I'd better give you a dose now. It might pick you up." Taking a bottle from his pocket, he poured some whiskey into a gla.s.s and added a little water from a pitcher on the table. "There, now," he remarked, with genuine sympathy as he held the gla.s.s to her lips. "You'll begin to feel better in a minute. This young lady can't stay but a little while, so you'd better try to buck up."

"I'll try," answered the woman obediently. "I'll try--but it isn't easy to come back out of h.e.l.l." Lifting her head from the pillow, as if it were a dead weight that did not belong to her, she stared at Patty while her tormented mind made an effort to remember. In a minute her mouth worked pathetically, and she burst into tears. "I can't come back now, I can't come back now," she repeated in a whimpering tone. "But I'll be better before long, and then I want to see you. There are things I want to tell you when I get the strength. I can't think of them now, but they are things about Gideon Vetch."

"About Father?" asked the girl, and her voice trembled.

The woman stopped crying, and looked up appealingly, while she wiped her eyes on the ragged edge of the blanket. "Yes, about Gideon Vetch. That's his name, ain't it?"

"I wouldn't talk any more now, if I were you," said Gershom, putting his hand gently on her pillow. "We'll come again when you're feeling spryer."

The woman nodded. "Yes, come again. Bring her again."

"I'll come whenever you send for me," said Patty rea.s.suringly; but instead of looking at the woman, she stooped over and touched the calla lily with her lips, as if it were human and could respond to her. "I want you to tell me about my mother--everything. I remember her just once, the night before they took her to the asylum. She was in spangled skirts that stood out like a ballet dancer's, and there was a crown of stars on her hair and a star on the end of the wand she carried. I remember it all just as plainly as if it were yesterday--though they tell me I was too little--"

She broke off because the woman was gazing at her so strangely. "You were too little," she cried, and burst into hysterical weeping. "I can't stand it," she said wildly. "I never had a chance, and I can't stand it."

"I think we'd better go," said Gershom. It amazed Patty to find how gentle he could be when his sympathy was touched. "I oughtn't to have brought you to-day." Turning away, he left the room hurriedly, as if the scene were too much for him.

At this the woman controlled herself with a convulsive effort. "No, I wanted to see you," she said. "You are pretty, but you aren't prettier than your mother was at your age."

For a moment the girl looked pityingly down on her. "I hope you will soon be better," she responded in a tone which she tried to make sympathetic in spite of the physical shrinking she felt. "Let me know when you wish to see me, and I will come back."

The woman s.h.i.+vered. "Do you mean that?" she asked. "Will you come when I send for you? I want to see you again--once--before I die."

"I promise you that I will come. I'll send you something, too, and so will Father."

"Gideon Vetch," said the woman very slowly, as if she were trying to hold the name in her consciousness before it slipped away from her.

"Gideon Vetch."

As the girl broke away and ran out of the room that expressionless repet.i.tion followed her into the hall and down the staircase, growing fainter and fainter like the voice of one who is falling asleep: "_Gideon Vetch. Gideon Vetch._"

On the porch, where the stout man had returned to his newspaper, Patty found Gershom standing beside the perambulator, with the black-eyed baby in his arms. He was gazing gravely over the round bald head, and his face wore a funereal expression which contrasted ludicrously with the clucking sounds he was making to the attentive and interested baby. When Patty joined him he put the child back into the carriage, carefully tucking the crocheted robe about the tiny shoulders. "I kind of thought the little one might like a chance to get out of that buggy," he observed, while he straightened himself briskly, and adjusted his tie.

"She must be very ill," said the girl, as they went out of the gate and turned down the street.

"A sure thing," replied Gershom concisely. Then he whistled sharply, and added, "Rotten, that's what I call it."

"She said she'd never had a chance," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "I wonder what she meant."

The funereal expression spread like a pall over Gershom's features, but his intermittent whistle sounded as sprightly as ever. "Well, how many folks in this world have ever had what you might call a decent chance?"

he asked.

"I don't know. I hadn't thought." The girl looked depressed and puzzled. "It's a dreadful thing to think that n.o.body cares when you're dying." Then her tone grew more hopeful. "Do you suppose anybody thinks that Father never had a chance?" she asked.

Gershom broke into a laugh. "Well, if he had it, you may be pretty sure that he made it himself," he retorted.

"Then I wish he could make some for other people."

"He says he's trying to, doesn't he? But between us, Patty, my child, you won't forget what you have to say to the old man, will you?"

"What have I to say? Oh, you mean about standing by his friends?"

"That's just it. You tell him from yours truly that the best thing he can do all round is to stick fast to his friends."

"And that means the strikers?"

"It means what I tell you."

"Well, I'll repeat exactly what you say; it won't make any difference if his mind is made up."

"Maybe so. Are you going to tell him where you've been?"

"I don't know. I hate to worry him; but that poor woman must need help."

"Oh, she needs it. We all need it," remarked Gershom flippantly. Then, as they reached the entrance to the Square, he held out his hand. "Well, I'm off now, and I hope you aren't feeling any worse because of your visit. The world ain't made of honeycomb, you know, and there's no use pretending it is. But you're a darn good sport, Patty. You're as good a sport as I ever struck up with in this little affair of life."

CHAPTER XVIII

MYSTIFICATION

Walking slowly home across the Square, Patty told herself that the future had been taken out of her hands. She seemed to have been moved mentally, if not bodily, into another world, into a world where the sleepy old Square, wrapped in a soft afternoon haze, still existed, but from which Stephen Culpeper had vanished in a rosy cloud. She did not know why she had relinquished the thought of Stephen since her visit to the house in East Leigh Street; but some deep instinct warned her that she had widened the gulf between them by her excursion with Gershom. "I can't help it," she thought sensibly enough. "There wasn't anything in it before that, and I might as well go ahead and stop thinking about it." Her anger at Stephen's neglect had melted into a vague and impersonal resentment, a resentment, rather for the dying woman than for herself, against all the needless cruelties of life. Even Gershom, even the unspeakable Gershom, had had discernment enough to see that something good in that poor woman had been blighted and crushed. Was it true that no one was ever given the chance to be one's best? Was this true, not only of that dying woman, but of her father and Stephen and Corinna and herself and all human beings everywhere?

Lingering a moment near the Was.h.i.+ngton monument, she stood watching the straggling groups that were crossing the Square. Bit by bit, s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation drifted into her mind and then blew out again, leaving scarcely the shadow of an impression. "They tell me it's going up. I don't know, but I'll find out to-morrow." "I wouldn't wear one of those things for a million dollars, and he says--" "Yes, I've arranged to go unless the strike should be called next week."

The strike? Oh, she had almost forgotten it! She had almost forgotten the message she had promised to deliver to her father. With a gesture that appeared to sweep her last remaining illusion behind her, she started resolutely up the drive to the house. After all, whatever came, she would not let them think that she was either afraid of life or disappointed in love. She would not mope, and she would not show the white feather. On one point she was pa.s.sionately determined--no man, by any method known to the drama of s.e.x, was going to break her heart!

She had quickened her steps while she made her resolve; and, a minute later, she broke into a run when she saw that Corinna's car stood at the door and that Corinna waited for her in the hall. Had the girl only realized it, Corinna's heart also was troubled; and the visit was one result of the discouraging talk she had had recently with Stephen.

"I had to go down town, so I stopped on the way back to speak to you."

Though she said no word of her anxiety, Patty could hear it in every note of her expressive voice and feel it in the protective pressure of her arm. "I want you to go with me to the Harrisons' dance Wednesday night, and I want you to look your very prettiest."