CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP
As Stephan left the Square there floated before him a picture of the old
print shop in Franklin Street, where Corinna Page (still looking at
forty-eight as if she had stepped out of a portrait by Romney) sat amid
the rare prints which she never expected to sell. After an unfortunate
early marriage, her husband had been Kent Page, her first cousin, she
had accepted her recent widowhood, if not with relief, well, obviously
with resignation. For years she had wandered about the world with her
father, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, who had once been Ambassador to
Great Britain. Now, having recently returned from France, she had
settled in a charming country house on the Three Chopt Road, and had
opened the ridiculous old print shop, a shop that never sold an
engraving, in a quaint place in Franklin Street. She had rented out the
upper floors to a half-dozen tenants, had built a couple of rooms beside
the kitchen for the caretaker, and had planted two pyramidal cedars and
a hedge of box in the short front yard. "A shop is the only place where
you may have calls from people who haven't been introduced to you," she
had said; and of course as long as she had money to throw away, what did
it matter, Stephen reflected, whether she ever sold a picture or not? At
forty-eight she was lovelier, he thought, than ever; she would always be
lovelier than any one else if she lived to be ninety. There wasn't a
girl in his set who could compare with her, who had the glow and charm,
the flame-like inner radiance; there wasn't one who had the singing
heart of Corinna. Yes, that was the phrase he had been trying to
remember, trite as it was--the singing heart--that was Corinna. She had
had a hard life, he knew, in spite of her beauty and her wealth; yet she
had never lost the quality of youth, the very essence of gaiety and
adventure. When he thought of her, Patty Vetch appeared merely cheap and
common, though he felt instinctively that Corinna would have liked Patty
if she had seen her in the Square with the pigeon. It was a part of
Corinna's charm perhaps, certainly a part of her enjoyment of life that
she liked almost every one--every one, that is, except Rose Stribling,
whom she quite frankly hated. But, then, people said that Rose
Stribling, twelve years younger than Corinna and as handsome as a Red
Cross poster, had run too often across Kent Page in the first year of
the war. Kent Page had died in Prance of Spanish influenza before he
ever saw a trench or a battlefield; and Rose Stribling, all blue eyes
and white linen, had nursed him at the last. At that time Corinna was in
America, and she hadn't so much as looked at Kent for years; but a woman
has a long memory for emotions, and she is capable of resenting the loss
of a husband who is no longer hers. Rumour, of course, nothing more; yet
the fact remained that Corinna, who liked all the world, hated Rose
Stribling. It was the one flaw in Corinna's perfection; it was the black
patch on the stainless cheek, which had always made her adorable to
Stephen. Like the snow-white lock waving back from her forehead, it
intensified the youth in her face. He had often wondered if she could
have been half so lovely when she was a girl, before the faint shadows
and the tender little lines lent depth and mystery to her eyes, and the
single white lock swept back amid the powdered dusk of her hair.
While the young man walked rapidly up Franklin Street, he saw before him
the long delightful room beyond the pyramidal cedars and the hedge of
box. He saw the ruddy glow of the fire mingling with the paler light of
amber lamps, and this mingled radiance shining on the rich rugs, the few
old brocades, and the rare English prints which covered the walls. He
saw wide-open creamy roses in alabaster bowls which were scattered
everywhere, on tables, on stools, on window-seats, and on the rich
carving of the Spanish desk in one corner. Against the curtains of gold
silk there was the bough of twisted pine he had broken, and against the
pine branch stood the figure of Corinna in her gown of soft red, which
melted like a spray of autumn foliage into the colours of the room. She
was a tall woman, with a glorious head and eyes that reminded Stephen of
a forest pool in autumn. Who had first said of her, he wondered, that
she looked like an October morning?
As he approached the shop the glow shone out on him through the dull
gold curtains, and he traced the crooked pine bough sweeping across the
thin silk background like the bold free sketch of a Japanese print. When
he rang the bell a minute later, the door was opened by Corinna, who was
holding a basket of marigolds.
"We were just going," she said, "as soon as I had put these flowers in
water."
She drew back into the room, bending over the low brown bowl that she
was filling, while Stephen went over to the fire, and greeted the two
old men who were sitting in deep arm chairs on either side of the
hearth. It was like stepping into another world, he thought, as he
inhaled a full breath of the warmth and the fragrance of roses; it was
as if a door into a dream had suddenly opened, and he had passed out of
the night and the cold into a place where all was colour and fragrance
and pleasant magic. The other was real life--life for all but the happy
few, he found himself thinking--this was merely the enchanted fairy-ring
where children played at making believe.
"I hoped I'd catch you," he said, stretching out his hands to the log
fire. "I felt somehow that you hadn't gone, late as it is." While he
spoke he was thinking, not of Corinna, but of the strange woman he had
left in the Square. Queer how that incident had bitten into his mind.
Try as he might he couldn't shake himself free from it.
"Father is going to some dreadful public dinner," answered Corinna. "I
stayed with him here so he wouldn't have to wait at the club. It won't
matter about me. The car is coming for me, and I don't dine until eight.
Stay awhile and we'll talk," she added with her cheerful smile. "I
haven't seen you for ages, and you look as if you had something to tell
me."
"I have," he said; and then he turned from her to the two old men who
were talking drowsily in voices that sounded as far off to Stephen as
the murmuring of bees in summer meadows. He knew that it was real, that
it was the life he had always lived, and yet he couldn't get rid of the
feeling that Corinna and the two old men and the charming surroundings
were all part of a play, and that in a little while he should go out of
the theatre and step back among the sordid actualities.
"The General and I are having our little chat before dinner," said Judge
Page, a sufficiently ornamental old gentleman to have decorated any
world or any fireside--imposing and distinguished as a portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence, with a crown of silvery hair and the shining dark eyes
of his daughter. He still carried himself, for all his ironical comment,
like an ambassador of the romantic school. "It is a sad day for your
fighting man," he concluded gaily, "when the only stimulant he can get
is the conversation of an old fogy like me."
"Your fighting man," old General Powhatan Plummer, who hadn't smelt
powder for more than half a century, chuckled as he always did at the
shrewd and friendly pleasantries of the Judge. He was a jocular,
tiresome, gregarious soul, habitually untidy, creased and rumpled, who
was always thirsty, but who, as the Judge was accustomed to reply when
Corinna remonstrated, "would divide his last julep with a friend." The
men had been companions from boyhood, and were still inseparable. For
the same delusion makes strange friendships, and the General, in spite
of his appearance of damaged reality, also inhabited that enchanted
fairy-ring where no fact ever entered.
With the bowl of marigolds in her hands, Corinna came over to the
tea-table and stood smiling dreamily at Stephen. The firelight dancing
over her made a riot of colour, and she looked the image of happiness,
though the young man knew that the ephemeral illusion was created by the
red of her gown and the burnished gold of the flowers.
"John Benham sent them to me because I praised his speech," she said.
"Wasn't it nice of him?"
"He always does nice things when one doesn't expect them," he answered.
Corinna laughed. "Is it because they are nice that he does them?" she
inquired with a touch of malice. "Or because they are not expected?"
"I didn't mean that." There was a shade of confusion in Stephen's tone.
"Benham is my friend--my best friend almost though he is so much older.
There isn't a man living whom I admire more."
"Yes, I know," replied Corinna; and then--was it in innocence or in
malice?--she asked sweetly: "Have you seen Alice Rokeby this winter?"
For an instant Stephen gazed at her in silence. Was it possible that she
had not heard the gossip about Benham and Mrs. Rokeby? Was she trying to
mislead him by an appearance of flippancy? Or was there some deeper
purpose, some serious attempt to learn the truth beneath her casual
question?
"Only once or twice," he answered at last. "She is looking badly since
her divorce. Freedom has not agreed with her."
Corinna smiled; but the transient illumination veiled rather than
revealed her obscure motives.
"Perhaps, like our Allies, she was making the future safe for further
entanglements," she observed. "I always thought--everybody thought that
she got her divorce in order to marry John Benham."
Frankly perplexed, he gazed wonderingly into her eyes. He knew that she
saw a great deal of Benham; he believed that their friendship had
developed into a deeper emotion on Benham's side at least; and it
seemed to him unlike Corinna, who was, as he told himself, the most
loyal soul on earth, to turn such an association into a cynical jest.
"I heard that too," he replied guardedly, "but of course nobody knows."
There was really nothing else that he could answer. Though he could
discuss Alice Rokeby, one of those vague, sweet women who seem designed
by Nature to develop the sentiment of chivalry in the breast of man, he
felt that it would be disloyal to speak lightly of his hero, John
Benham. "You could never guess where I've been," he said with relief
because he had got rid of the subject. "I might as well tell you in the
beginning that I have just left the Governor."
"Gideon Vetch!" exclaimed Corinna, as she dropped into a chair at his
side. "Why, I thought you were as far apart as the poles!"
"So we were until ten minutes--no, until exactly an hour ago."
"It makes my blood boil when I think of that circus rider in the
Governor's mansion," said the General indignantly. "Do you know what my
father would have called that fellow? He would have called him a common
scalawag--a common scalawag, sir!"
The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed,
that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy.
"Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The
trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village
stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians
were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may
have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out
with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the
archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept--. We
must let in new blood."
"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got
to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?"
"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be
only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made
up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say
that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view,
it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him
the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of
things."
"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he
spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the
fellow ain't even in your class, sir!"
"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the
Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make
a friendship."
"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted
to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the
way."
The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of
Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me
more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows
human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles
of the Confederacy."
"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's
something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one
in spite of oneself."
The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed
presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent
candour. Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours
it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his
Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment--straight
and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard
simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't--and
I'll say as much for our friend Gideon."
"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is
honestly dishonest?"
The Judge's suavity clothed him like velvet. "I know nothing about his
honesty. I doubt if any one does. He may be a liar and yet speak the
truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives. But I am not maintaining
that he is entirely right, you understand--merely that like the rest of
us he is not entirely wrong. I am not taking sides, you know. I am too
old to fight anybody's battles--even distressed Virtue's."
"Then you think--you really think that he is sincere?" asked Stephen.
"Sincere? Well, yes, in a measure. Nothing advertises one so widely as a
reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for
self-advertisement. He has found that it pays in politics to speak the
truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice. It takes courage, of
course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous
than the rest of us. To that extent, I should say that he has the
advantage of us."
"Do you mean to imply," demanded the General wrathfully, "that a common
circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is
better than this lady and myself, sir?"
"Well, hardly better than Corinna," replied the Judge. "Indeed, I was
about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and
Vetch. There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of
Corinna."
"Father!" gasped Corinna. "Stephen, do you think he has gone out of his
mind?"
"That is the first sign that wisdom has broken its cage," commented her
father. "No, my dear, I did not mean that you look like him; you are far
handsomer. I meant simply that you both habitually speak the truth, and
because you speak the truth the world mistakes you for a successful
comedian and Vetch for a kind of political Robin Hood."
"Well, he is trying to hold us up in highwayman fashion, isn't he?"
asked Corinna.
"Does it look that way?" inquired the Judge, with his beaming smile
which cast an edge of genial irony on everything that he said. "On the
contrary, it seems to me that Vetch is telling us the things we have
known about ourselves for a very long time. He says the world might be a
better place if we would only take the trouble to make it so; if we
would only try to live up to our epitaphs, I believe he once remarked.
He says also, I understand, that he is trying to climb to the top over
somebody else; and when I say 'he' I mean, of course, his order or his
class, whatever the fashionable phrase is. Now, unfortunately, there
appears to be but one way of reaching the top of the world, doesn't
there?--and that is by climbing up on something or somebody. Even you,
my dear Stephen, who occupy that high place, merely inherited the seat
from somebody who scrambled up there a few centuries ago. Somebody else
probably got broken shoulders before your nimble progenitor took
possession. Of course I am willing to admit that time does create in us
the sense of a divine right in anything that we have owned for a number
of years, as if our inheritance were the crown of some archaic king. I
myself feel that strongly. If it came to the point, though I have said
that I am too old to fight for distressed Virtue, I should very likely
die in the last ditch for every inch of land and every worthless object
I ever owned. When Vetch talks about taxing property more heavily I am
utterly and openly against him because it is my instinct to be. I refuse
to give up my superfluous luxuries in the cause of equal justice for
all, and I shall fight against it as long as there is a particle of
fight left in my bones. But because I am against him there is no reason,
I take it, why I shouldn't enjoy the pleasure of perceiving his point of
view. It is an interesting point of view, perhaps the more interesting
because we think it is a dangerous one. To approach it is like rounding
a sharp curve at high speed."
As he rose to his feet and reached for his walking stick, Stephen
remembered that in England the Judge was supposed to have the fine
presence and the flashing eagle eyes of Gladstone. Were they alike also,
he wondered, in their fantastic mental processes?
"It's time for me to go, Corinna," said the old man, stooping to kiss
his daughter, "so I shan't see you until to-morrow." Then turning to
Stephen, he added with a whimsical smile, "If you are so much afraid of
Vetch, why don't you fight him with his own weapons? What were you
doing, you and John, when the people voted for him?"
"To tell the truth nobody ever dreamed that he would be elected,"
replied Stephen, flushing. "Who would have thought that an independent
candidate could win over both parties?"
The Judge had moved to the door, and he looked back, as Stephen
finished, with a dramatic flourish of his long white hand. "Well,
remember next time, my dear young sir," he answered, "that in politics
it is always the impossible that happens." The long white hand fell
caressingly on the shoulders of old Powhatan Plummer, and the two men
passed out of the door together.
When Stephen turned to Corinna, she was resting languidly against the
tapestry-covered back of her chair, while the firelight flickering in
her eyes changed them to the deep bronze of the marigolds on the table.
With her slenderness, her grace, her brilliant darkness, she seemed to
him to belong in one of the English mezzotints on the wall.
"Did you buy that print because it is so much like you?" he asked,
pointing to an engraving after Hoppner's portrait of the Duchess of
Bedford.
She laughed frankly. "Every one asks me that. I suppose it was one of my
reasons."
As he sat down again in front of the fire, his eyes travelled slowly
over the walls; over the stipple engravings of Bartolozzi, over the rich
mezzotints of Valentine Green and John Raphael Smith, over the
bewitching face of Lady Hamilton as it shone back at him from the prints
of John Jones, of Cheesman, of Henry Meyer. Was not Corinna's place
among those vanished beauties of a richer age, rather than among the
sour-faced reformers and the Gideon Vetches of to-day? The wonderful
tone of the old prints, the silvery dusk, or the softly glowing colours
that were like the sunset of another century; the warmth and splendour
of the few brocades she had picked up in Italy; the suave religious
feeling of the worn red velvet from some church in Florence; the candles
in wrought-iron sconces, the shimmering firelight and the dreamy
fragrance of tea roses--all these things together made him think
suddenly of sunshine over the Campagna and English gardens in the month
of May and the burning reds and blues and golden greens of the Middle
Ages. Corinna with her unfading youth became a part of all the
loveliness that he had ever seen--of all beauty everywhere.
"I haven't had a chance to tell you," she said, "that I am going to meet
the Governor."
"Where? At the Berkeleys'?"
"Yes, at the Berkeleys' dinner on Thursday. Are you going?"
He laughed. "Mrs. Berkeley called me up this morning and asked me if I
would take somebody's place. She didn't say whose place it was, but she
did divulge the fact that the dinner is given to Vetch. I told her I'd
come--that I was so used to taking other people's places I could fill
six at the same time. But a dinner to Vetch! I wonder why she is doing
it?"
"That's easy. Mr. Berkeley wants something from the Governor. I don't
know what he wants, but I do know that whatever it is he wants it very
badly."
"And he thinks he'll get it by asking him to dinner? There seems to me
an obvious flaw in Berkeley's reasoning. I doubt if Vetch is the kind of
man who follows when you hold out an apple. He appears to be exactly the
opposite, and I think he's more likely to dash off than to come when he
is called. I wonder, by the way, if they are going to have Mrs.
Stribling?"
"Rose Stribling?" A gleam of anger shone in Corinna's eyes. "Why should
that interest you?"
"Oh, they say--at least Mrs. Berkeley says, and if there is any
misinformation abroad she ought to be aware of it--that Mrs. Stribling's
latest attachment to her train is the Governor himself."
He had expected his gossip to arouse Corinna, and in this he was not
mistaken. Springing up from her relaxed position, she sat straight and
unbending, with her indignant eyes on his face. "Why, I thought the war
had cured her."
"The war was not a cure; it was merely a temporary drug for our vanity,"
he rejoined gaily. "It didn't cure me, so you could hardly regard it as
a remedy for Mrs. Stribling's complaint. I imagine coquetry is a more
obstinate malady even than priggishness, and, Heaven knows, I tried hard
enough to get rid of that."
"I hoped you would," admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make
you human--and you've never been really human all through, you know--was
not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they
made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France--he had
gone into the war before his country--and to the nervous malady, the
disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more
esteem, but to lose some that you've got. Your salvation lies in the
opposite direction from where flags are waving. If you could only
deliberately arrange to do something that would lower your reputation in
the eyes of gouty old gentlemen or mothers with marriageable daughters!
If you could manage to get your nose broken, or elope with a chorus
girl, or commit an unromantic murder, I should begin to have hopes of
you."
"I may do something as bad some day and surprise you."
"It would surprise me. But I'm not sure, after all, that I don't like
you better as you are, with your fine air of superiority. It makes one
believe, somehow, in human perfectibility. Now, I can never believe in
that when I realize how I feel about Rose Stribling. There is nothing
perfectible in such emotions."
"Rose Stribling! Beside you she is like a pumpkin in the basket with a
pomegranate!"
Corinna laughed with frank pleasure. "There are a million who would
prefer the pumpkin to the pomegranate," she answered. "Rose Stribling,
you must admit, is the type that has been the desire of the world since
Venus first rose from the foam."
"Can you imagine Mrs. Stribling rising from foam?" Stephen retorted
impertinently.
"No, Venus has grown fatter through the ages," assented Corinna, "but
the type is unchanged. Now, among all the compliments that have been
paid me in my life, no one has ever compared me to the Goddess of Love.
I have been painted with the bow of Diana, but never with the doves of
Venus."
Because he felt that her gaiety rippled over an undercurrent of pain,
Stephen bent forward and touched her hand with an impulse of tenderness.
"You are more beautiful than you ever were in your life," he said.
"There isn't a woman in the world who can compare with you." Then he
laughed merrily. "I shall watch you two to-morrow evening, you and Rose
Stribling."
"I am sorry," replied Corinna in a troubled voice. "I may tell you the
truth since Father says it is the last thing any one ever believes--and
the truth is that she makes me savage--yes, I mean it--she makes me
savage."
"I know what the Judge means when he says you are like Vetch," returned
Stephen abruptly. Then, without waiting for her reply, he added in an
impulsive tone: "Triumph over her to-morrow night, Corinna. Go out to
fight with all your weapons and seize the trophies from Mrs. Stribling."
"You funny boy!" exclaimed Corinna, but the sadness had left her voice
and her eyes were shining. "Why, I am twelve years older than Rose
Stribling, and those twelve years are everything."
"Those twelve years are nothing unless you imagine that you are in a
novel. It is only in books that there is a chronology of the emotions."
"She is a fat blonde without a heart," insisted Corinna, "and they are
invulnerable."
"Well, snatch Vetch away from her. He deserves something better than
that combination."
"Oh, she can't hurt him very much, even though she no longer has a
husband to get in her way. Have you ever wondered how George Stribling
stood her? It must have been a relief to find himself safely dead."
"He stood her as one stands sultry weather probably, but with less hope
of a change. He had that slow and heavy philosophy that wears well. I
think it even dawned upon him now and then that there was something
funny about it."
"Of course he knew that she married him for his money," said Corinna,
"but that is the last thing the natural man appears to resent."
Stephen rose and bent over her. "Promise me that you will save Vetch,"
he implored mockingly.
"Why this sudden interest in Vetch?" Corinna rose also and reached for
her fur coat. "It makes me curious to meet him. Yes, I promise you that
I will go to-morrow night attired as for a carnival in all the mystery
of a velvet mask. I may not save Vetch, but I think at least that I can
eclipse Rose Stribling. My motive may not be admirable, but it is as
feminine as a string of beads."
He kissed her hand. "Bless your heart because you are both human and my
cousin." For an instant he hesitated, and then as they reached the door
together, he turned with his hand on the knob, and looked into her eyes.
"The Governor has a daughter. Did you know it?" he asked.
"Why, of course I know it. Isn't Patty Vetch as well advertised as the
newest illustrated weekly?"
"I was wondering," again he hesitated over the words, "if you had seen
her and what you think of her?"
"I have seen her twice. She was in here the other day to look at my
prints, and," her brilliant eyes grew soft, "well, I feel sorry for
her."
"Sorry? But do you like her?"
"Haven't you always told me that I like everybody?"
He laughed. "With one exception!"
"With one particular exception!"
"But honestly, Corinna." His tone was insistent. "Do you like Patty
Vetch?"
"Honestly, my dear Stephen, I do. There is something--well, something
almost pathetic about the girl; and I think she is genuine. One day last
week she came here and made me tell her everything I could about my
prints. I don't mean really that she made me, you know. There wasn't
anything forward about her then, though I hear there is sometimes. She
seemed to me a restless, lonely, misdirected intelligence hungry to know
things. That is the only way I can describe her, but you will
understand. She has had absolutely no advantages; she doesn't even know
what culture means, or social instinct, or any of the qualities you were
born with, my dear boy; but she feels vaguely that she has missed
something, and she is reaching out gropingly and trying to find it. I
like the spirit. It strikes me as American in the best sense--that young
longing to make up in some way for her deficiencies and lack of
opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her
upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know.
I like the courage that is in the girl--I am sure it is courage--and her
straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things
she was never taught, to make herself over if need be."
"Is this Patty Vetch, Corinna, or your own dramatic instinct?"
"Oh, it's Patty Vetch! I had no interest in her whatever. Why should I
have had? But I liked the way she went straight as a dart at the thing
she wanted. There was no affectation about her, no pretence of being
what she was not. She asked about prints because she saw the name and
she didn't know what it meant. She would have asked about Browning, or
Swinburne, or Meredith in exactly the same way if this had been a
book-shop. She wanted to know the difference between a mezzotint and a
stipple print. She wanted to know all about the portraits too, and the
names of the painters and who Lady Hamilton was and the Duchess of
Bedford and the Ladies Waldegrave and 'Serena,' and if Morland's
Cottagers were really as happy as they were painted? She asked as many
questions as Socrates, and I fear got as inadequately answered."
"Well, she didn't strike me as in the least like that; but you can be a
great help to her if she is really in earnest."
"She didn't strike you like that, my dear, simply because you are a man,
and some girls are never really themselves with men; they are for ever
acting a part; a vulgar part, I admit, but one they have learned before
they were born, the instinctive quarry eluding the instinctive hunter.
The girl is naturally shy; I could tell that, and she covers it with a
kind of boldness that isn't--well, particularly attractive to one of
your fastidious mind. Yet there is something rather taking about her.
She reminds me of a small, bright tropical bird."
"Of a Virginia redbird, you mean."
"A redbird? Then you have seen her?"
"Yes, I've seen her--only twice--but the last time she indulged her
sense of humour in a practical joke about a sprained ankle."
"I suppose she would joke like that. Even the modern girl that we know
isn't in the best possible taste. And you must remember that Patty Vetch
is something very different from the girls that you admire. I hope
she'll let me help her, but I doubt it. She is the sort that wouldn't
come if you tried to call and coax her. You said her father was like
that, didn't you? Well, with that kind of wildness, or shyness, one
can't put out a cage, you know. The only way is to scatter crumbs on the
window-sill and then stand and wait. Will you let me take you home?"
They had crossed the pavement to her car, and she waited now with her
smile of whimsical gaiety.
"If you will. It is only a few blocks, but I want to hear about the gown
you will wear for your triumph."
It seemed to him that there was the chime of silver bells in her
laughter. "Oh, my dear, must every victory of my life end in a forlorn
hope!"