CORINNA GOES TO WAR
"Yes, I've had a mean life," thought Corinna, while she stood before her
mirror carefully placing a patch on her cheek. In her narrow gown of
black velvet, with the silver heels of her slippers shining beneath the
transparent draperies, she had more than ever the look of festival, of
October splendour. If her beauty had lost in roundness and softness, it
had gained immeasurably in authority, in that air of having been a part
of great events, of historic moments which clung to her like a legend.
Romance and mystery were in her smile; and yet what had life held for
her, she mused now, except the frustrated hope, the blighted fruit, the
painted lily? Her beauty had brought her nothing that was not tawdry,
nothing that was not a gaudy imitation of happiness. She had given
herself for what? For the shadow of reality, for the tinted shreds of a
damaged illusion. The past, in spite of her many triumphs, had been
worse than tragic; it had been comic--since it had left her beggared.
Looking back upon it now she saw that it had lacked even the mournful
dignity of a broken heart.
"I have had a mean life; but it isn't over yet, and I may make something
better of the rest of it," she thought. "At least I have fighting blood
in my veins, and I will never give up. After all, even if my life has
been mean, I haven't been--and that is what really counts in the end.
If I haven't been happy, I have tried to be gallant--and it takes
courage to be gallant with an aching heart--"
As she fastened the long string of pearls--one of Kent Page's early
gifts--she drew back from the mirror, with the light of philosophy, if
not of happiness, overflowing her eyes. With her grace and her radiance
she stood for the flower of the Virginian aristocratic tradition; with
her sincerity and her fearlessness she embodied the American democratic
ideal. Her forefathers had brought representative government to the New
World. They had sat in the first General Assembly ever summoned in
America; and through the generations they had fought always on the side
of liberty tempered by discipline, of democracy exalted by patriotism.
They had stood from the beginning for dignity, for manners, for the
essence of social culture which places art at the service of life.
Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always
they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing
cult of the second best. From this source, from the inherited instinct
for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order
and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of
life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body. She had
been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an age when
beauty had been bartered for usefulness. Would the delicate
discriminations in which she had been trained, the lights and shadows of
her soul, become submerged in the modern effort to reduce all
distinctions to a level, all diversities to an average?
Turning away from the mirror, Corinna glanced over the charming room,
with the wood fire, the white bearskin rug, the ivory bed draped in blue
silk, the long windows opening on the garden terrace and the starlit
darkness. There had been luxury always. Money she had had in abundance;
yet there had been no hour in the last twenty years when she would not
have exchanged it all--everything that money could bring her--for the
dinner of herbs where love was. She had possessed everything except the
one thing she had wanted. She had served the tin gods in temples of gold
and jade. With the deep instinct for perfection in her blood, she had
spent her life in an endless compromise with the inferior.
"Was there something lacking in me?" she asked now of her glowing
reflection. "Was there some vital spark left out when I was born? And
to-night? Why should I care how it goes? What is Rose Stribling to me or
I to her?" Why should she still cherish that dull resentment, that
smothered sense of injury in her heart? Was it the burden of her
inheritance, the weakness of the older races, that she could not
forget? She had loved a man who was unworthy; she had loved him for no
better reason, she understood now, than a superficial charm, a romantic
appeal. The fault was in the man, she knew, yet she had forgiven the
man long ago, while she still hated Rose Stribling. Perversity,
inconsistency--but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it. "If
she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but
she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day. It was
vanity then, and it is vanity now. You cannot hurt her heart--only her
pride--"
Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her
image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue
velvet. She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on
that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she
had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses. She had lost
much since then, freshness, innocence, the trusting heart and the
transparent gaze, but she had lost neither charm nor radiance.
"So we are invited to meet Gideon Vetch," remarked the Judge as they
went down the steps; and from the whimsical sound of his voice, she knew
that there was a smile on his face. The house, with its picturesque
English front half hidden by Virginia creeper, stood at the end of a
long avenue, in the centre of a broad lawn planted in fine old elms.
"Yes, there must be some reason for the dinner, but Sarah Berkeley did
not tell me."
"Well, I'll be glad to see the Governor again," said the Judge, leaning
comfortably back as the car rolled down the avenue to the road, "but you
will have a dreary evening, I fear, unless John should be there."
Corinna smiled in the darkness. So even her father, who so rarely
noticed anything, had observed her growing interest in John Benham.
After all, might this be--this sudden revival of an old sentiment in
John's heart--"the something different," the ultimate perfection for
which she had sought all her life? "He is beginning to mean more to me
than any one else," she thought. "If only I had never heard that old
gossip about Alice Rokeby."
Leaning over, she patted the Judge's hand. "Don't have me on your mind,
Father darling. Go ahead and enjoy the Governor as much as you can. I am
easy to amuse, you know, and besides, I have my own particular iron in
the fire to-night."
"You are never without expedients, my child, but I hope this one has no
bearing on Vetch."
"Oh, but it has. Like Esther, the queen, I have put on royal apparel for
an ulterior object. Did you notice that I had made myself as terrible as
an army with banners?"
"I thought you were looking unusually lovely," replied the Judge
gracefully. "But you are always so handsome that I suspected no guile."
Corinna laughed merrily. "But I am full of guile, dear innocent! I go
forth to conquer."
"Not the Governor, I hope?"
"Oh, no, the Governor is nothing--a prize, nothing more. My antagonist
is Mrs. Stribling."
"Rose Stribling?" The Judge was mildly astonished. "Why, I remember her
as a little girl in white dresses."
Corinna's smile became scornful. "Well, she isn't a little girl any
longer, and she oughtn't to be in white dresses."
"Dear me, dear me," rejoined the old gentleman. "I am aware that you
have a dramatic temperament, but it is scarcely possible that you are
jealous of little Rose. She is a good deal younger than you, if I am not
mistaken--but my memory is not all that it once was."
"She is twelve years younger and at least twenty years more malicious,"
retorted Corinna lightly. "But those twelve years aren't as long as they
were in your youth, my dear. A generation ago they would have spelt an
end of my conquests; to-day they mean only new worlds to conquer."
The Judge looked perplexed. "Am I to infer from this that you have
designs on the Governor? And may I inquire what use you intend to make
of him after you have captured him from the enemy?"
Corinna shrugged her shoulders. "I hadn't thought of that. Release him,
probably. But, whatever happens, I shall have saved him from a worse
fate. For that he ought to thank me, and he will if he is reasonable."
"Few men are reasonable in captivity. Do you think, by the way, that
Mrs. Stribling would like another husband, and such a husband as our
friend the demagogue?"
"I think she would like a political career, and of course her only way
of obtaining a career of any kind is to marry one. Though she isn't
discerning, she has sense enough to perceive that. They tell me that the
Governor is starting straight for the Senate, and the wife of a
senator--of any senator--might have a very good time in Washington.
Besides, there is always the chance of course that the winds of public
folly may blow him into the White House."
"If what you say is true it would be a hard fate for an honest rogue,"
admitted the Judge. "In your hands he would at least go unharmed."
"Oh, unharmed certainly. Perhaps helped."
"Then it is better so. But the thing that interests me in Vetch, is not
his value as a matrimonial or romantic prize; I am concerned solely and
simply with his opinions."
"Well, you will have the advantage of Mrs. Stribling and me, for we
shall probably find the cigars an impediment to our attack. At any rate,
we ought to have a less tedious evening than you expect."
A little later, when she entered the long drawing-room where the other
guests were already assembled, Corinna threw an inquiring glance in the
direction of Mrs. Stribling. Could the shallow pink and white loveliness
of that other woman, the historic type of the World's Desire, bear
comparison with her own starry beauty? It was a petty rivalry. She had
entered into it half in jest, half in irritation, yet some sportsmanlike
instinct prompted her to play the game to the end. She would prove to
Rose Stribling that those twelve years of knowledge and suffering had
taught her not to surrender, but to conquer.
The Berkeleys were what was still known in their small social world as
"quiet people." They entertained little, and always with a definite
object which they were not afraid to disclose. Their house, an
incongruous example of Mid-Victorian architecture, was still suffused
for them with the sentimental glamour of their wedding day. The walls,
untouched for years, were covered with embossed paper and panelled in
yellow oak. The furniture, protected for five months of the year by
covers of striped linen, was stiffly upholstered in pea-green brocade;
and the pictures, hanging very high, were large but inferior oil
paintings in heavily gilded frames that represented preposterous sheaves
of wheat or garlands of roses. Forty years ago the house reproduced
within and without "the best taste" of the period, and was as bad as the
Berkeleys could afford to make it. Since then fashions had come and
gone; yet the hospitable home remained as unchanged as the politics of
the host or the figure of the hostess. The Berkeleys were still content
to be "old-fashioned people," with the fine feeling and the
indiscriminate taste of an era which had flowered not in architecture
but in character, when the standard of living was high and the style in
furniture correspondingly low. To-night the ten guests (the Berkeleys
never gave large dinners) had been carefully chosen, and the evening
would probably be distinguished by good talk and good wine. Though they
were law-abiding persons to the core, the bitterness of the Eighteenth
Amendment had not penetrated to the subterranean darkness where Mr.
Berkeley's treasures were stored.
Mrs. Berkeley, a brisk, compact little woman, with a pretty florid face
and the prominent bosom and tapering waist of forty years ago, turned
from the Governor as Corinna and the Judge entered, and hurried forward
in her animated way, which reminded one of the manner of a child that is
trying to make a success of a dolls' party. Beyond Mr. Berkeley, a
short, neutral-tinted man without emphasis of personality, Corinna saw
Mrs. Stribling's tall, full figure draped in a gown of jade-coloured
velvet, with a daringly short skirt from which a narrow, sharply pointed
train wound like a serpent. Her heavy hair, of an unusual shade of pale
gold, had the smooth, polished look of metal which had been moulded in
waves close to her head. In spite of her active life and her disastrous
affairs, she presented an unblemished complexion, as if her hard rosy
surface were protected by some indestructible glaze. Beside her opulent
attractions the frail prettiness of Alice Rokeby, who was dining out for
the first time this winter, looked wistful and pathetic. Every one,
except Corinna, who had been abroad at the time, knew of the old affair
between Alice Rokeby and John Benham; and every one who knew of it had
thought that they would be married as soon as she got her divorce. But
time had dragged on; Corinna had come home again; and Alice Rokeby's
violet eyes had grown deeper and more wistful, with a haunted look in
them as if they were denying a hungry heart. She had never dressed well;
she had never, as Mrs. Stribling remarked, known how to bring out her
best points; and to-night she had been even less successful than usual.
Both Corinna and Mrs. Stribling could have told her that she should have
avoided violent shades; and yet she was wearing now a dress of vivid
purple which made her pale rose-leaf complexion look almost sallow.
Though she could exercise when she chose a strangely passive attraction,
her charm usually failed in the end for lack of intelligent guidance.
A little beyond Alice Rokeby, where her eyes could follow his gestures,
John Benham was talking in his pleasant subdued voice to Patty Vetch,
who looked, in her frock of scarlet tulle, as if she had just alighted
from the chorus of a musical comedy. Her boyish dark head was bent over
a fan of scarlet feathers, a toy which appeared ridiculously large
beside her small figure. It was evident that the girl was trying to
cover an uncomfortable shyness with an air of mocking effrontery; and a
moment later, when Corinna joined them, Benham glanced up with a flash
of satirical amusement in his eyes. He was a tall thin man of middle
age, with a striking appearance and the straight composed features of an
early American portrait. His dark hair, brushed back from his forehead,
had the shining gloss that comes of good living and careful grooming,
and this gloss was reflected in his smiling gray eyes and in the healthy
red of his well-cut though not quite generous mouth. He was a charming
guest, an impressive speaker, a sympathetic listener; yet there had
always seemed to Corinna to be a subtle deficiency in his character. It
was only of late, since their friendship had turned into a warmer
feeling, that she had been able to overcome that sense of something
wanting which had troubled her when she was with him. She could define
no quality that was absent; but the impression he still gave her at
times was one of a man tremendously gifted and yet curiously inadequate.
A mental thinness perhaps? An emotional dryness? Or was it merely that
here also she felt, rather than perceived, the intrinsic weakness of the
old order?
Beyond Benham, Gideon Vetch, rugged, sanguine, and wearing the wrong tie
with his evening clothes as valiantly as he had worn the rumpled brown
suit in which Stephen had last seen him, was talking in a loud voice to
Miss Maria Berkeley--one of those serene single women arrayed in
dove-colour who belong as appropriately as crewel work or antimacassars
to another century. If Patty was shy and self-conscious, it was evident
that her state of mind was not shared by her father. He was interested
because he was expressing a cherished opinion, and he was talking in an
emphatic tone because he hoped that he might be overheard. When Mrs.
Berkeley drew him away in order to introduce him to Corinna, he resumed
his theme immediately, as if he were addressing a public meeting and had
scarcely noticed that there had been a change in his audience. "Miss
Berkeley was asking me what I thought of the effects of prohibition,"
he explained presently with his smile of unguarded friendliness. How
was it possible to arrest the attention of a man who insisted on talking
of prohibition?
At the table a little later Corinna asked herself the question again,
while she made light conversation for the retired general who had taken
her in--an anecdotal, bewhiskered presence, with the husky voice and the
glazed eyes of successful pomposity. Glancing occasionally at Vetch who
sat on her left, she found that he was describing to Mrs. Berkeley the
best protection against forest fires. As far as Corinna was concerned,
she felt that she might as well have been a view from the window, or the
portrait of Mr. Berkeley's great aunt that hung over the mantelpiece. He
had probably, she reflected, classified her lightly as "another
gray-haired woman," and passed on to Rose Stribling, who bloomed
triumphantly between John Benham and Stephen Culpeper. Vetch was so
different from what Corinna had expected to find him that, in some vague
way, she felt disappointed and absurdly resentful. Had her imagination,
she wondered, prepared her to meet one of the picturesque radicals of
fiction? Had she looked for a middle-aged Felix Holt; and was this why
the Governor's prosaic figure, his fresh-coloured, undistinguished face
and his vehement, spectacular gestures, dispelled immediately the
interest she had felt in the meeting? There were no salient points in
his appearance, nothing that she could detach from the rest in her
mental image of him. There was no single characteristic of which she
could say: "He may be common; he may be vulgar; but he strikes the note
of greatness here--and here--and here." With such a man, she felt, the
direct and obvious appeal of Rose Stribling would be victorious. He
could discern pink and white and blue and gold; but the indeterminate
shades, the subtleties and mysteries of charm were enigmatical to him.
His emotions would be as literal as his convictions or his oratory. Yet
there must be some faculty in him which did not appear on the surface,
some primitive grasp of realities in his understanding of men. Why
should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, she asked
herself the next minute, be greater than the influence of John Benham,
who possessed every admirable trait except the ability to make people
follow him? What was this fundamental difference in material or
structure which divided them so completely? When she had traced it to
its source would she discover the secret of Vetch's conquering
personality?
Looking away from the General, her eyes rested for a moment on Stephen
Culpeper, who was listening with his reserved impersonal attention to
the amusing prattle of Patty Vetch. Obeying an imperative rule, Mrs.
Berkeley had placed her youngest guests together; and yet, if Stephen
had been seventy-five instead of twenty-six, he could sparcely have had
less in common with the Governor's daughter. With her small glossy head,
and her scarlet cheeks and lips above the fan of ostrich feathers, the
girl reminded Corinna of a spray of Christmas holly, all dark and bright
and shining. Ever since Patty's first visit to the print shop Corinna
had felt a genuine liking for her. The girl had something deeper than
charm, reflected the older woman; she had determination and endurance,
the essentials of character. Of course she was crude, she was ignorant;
but these are never insurmountable obstacles except to the dull. With
intelligence and resourcefulness all things are possible--even the
metamorphosis of a circus rider's daughter into a woman of the world.
Becoming suddenly aware that Vetch was silent, and that Mrs. Berkeley
had turned to Judge Page on her left, Corinna looked for the first time
into the frank blue eyes of the Governor. Strange eyes they were, she
thought, the one striking feature in a face that was ordinary. It was
like looking down into the very fountain of life--no, of humanity.
"I have been watching your daughter," she began casually. "She is very
pretty."
"Yes, she is pretty enough"--his tone was playful--"but I don't like
this craze for short hair."
She looked him over calmly. Indirect methods would be wasted on such an
opponent. "You must admire Mrs. Stribling's."
"I do. Don't you?" His glance roved to the ample beauty beside John
Benham. "It looks exactly like a rope of flax."
"A rope suggests a hanging to me," she rejoined grimly.
He laughed, and she noticed that his eyes were brimming over with
humour. Yes, they were extraordinary eyes, and they made one feel
sympathetic and friendly. The man had a quality, she couldn't deny it.
"We don't hang any longer," he replied.
"Oh, yes, we do sometimes--without the law."
The blue sparkles in his eyes contracted to points of light. She had at
last, by arresting his wandering attention, succeeded in making him look
at her.
"I wonder what you mean," he mused aloud, and added frankly, "I've never
seen you before, have I?"
"Have I?" she mimicked gaily. "Wouldn't you remember me? Or are all
gray-haired women alike to you?"
His gaze travelled to her hair. "I didn't mean it that way. Of course I
should have remembered." He spoiled this by adding: "I never forget a
face," and continued before she could answer, "I don't know whether your
hair is gray or only powdered a little; but you are as young as--as
summer."
"Or as your political party."
"That's good. I like a nimble wit." He was plainly amused. "But my party
isn't young, you know. It is as old as Esau and Jacob. Oh, yes, I've
read my Bible. I was brought up on it."
"That is why your speech is so direct," she said when he paused,
concluding slowly after a minute, "and so sincere."
"You feel that I am sincere?"
She met his eyes gravely. "Doesn't every one?"
He laughed shortly. "Ah, you know better than that!"
"Well, my father does. He says that it is your sincerity that makes you
resemble me."
To her surprise he did not laugh at this. "Do I resemble you?" he asked
simply.
"Father thinks so. He says that people won't take us seriously because
we tell them the truth."
An impression drifted like smoke across the blue of his eyes. Who was
it, she wondered, who had said that his eyes were gray? "Don't they take
you seriously?" he asked.
"As a woman, yes. As a human being, no."
He smiled. "You are too deep. I can't follow. I understand only the
plain bright ideas of the half educated, you know."
Her brilliant glance shone on him steadily. "I shan't try to explain.
What one doesn't understand without an explanation isn't worth knowing.
But somebody must take you seriously, or you wouldn't be where you are."
"Do you know where I am?" he demanded impulsively.
"I know that you are Governor of Virginia."
"Oh, that! I thought you meant something more than that," he returned
with a note of disappointment in his voice.
"What could I mean more than that? Isn't it the first step upward in a
political career?"
"Perhaps. But I was thinking of something else. The chief thing seems to
me to be to work a way out of the muddle. Anybody may be Governor or
even President if he tries hard enough--but it is a different matter to
bring some kind of order out of this confusion. I've got an idea that
I've been hammering at for the last twenty years. Not a great one,
perhaps, though I think it is; and I'd like to get a chance to put it
into practice before I die. I want to wake up people and tell them the
truth."
Was he, for all his matter-of-fact appearance, simply another political
dreamer, another visionary without a definite vision?
"And will they listen when you tell them?" she asked.
He laughed. "Who knows what may happen? When I was a kid in the
circus--you have heard, of course, that I spent my childhood in a
travelling circus"--how simply he brought this out!--"the fat woman, we
called her 'the fat lady' in those days, had a favourite proverb: 'When
the skies fall we shall catch larks'. I reckon when the skies fall the
people will learn wisdom."
"But you have caught your larks, haven't you?"
"No, I used to set snares by the hundred, but I never caught anything
better than a sparrow."
A wistful look crossed her face, and for an instant the youth seemed to
droop and fade in her eyes. "Isn't that life?--sparrows for larks
always?"
His sanguine spirit rejected this as she had known that it would. "Life
is all right," he replied, "as long as there's a fighting chance left to
you. That is the only thing that makes it worth while, fighting to win."
She gazed meditatively at the points of flame on the white candles. "I
suppose it would be so with you; for you fit into the age. You are a
part of this variable uncertain quantity called democracy, which some of
us old-fashioned folk look upon as a boomerang."
"Yes, I am a part of it," he answered slowly. "I see it as it is, I
think. It is pure buncombe, of course, to say that it hasn't its ugly
side; but I believe, if I have a chance, that I can make something of
it." He paused a moment while he hesitated over the silver beside his
plate; but there was no uncertainty in his voice when he went on again,
after deliberately picking up the fork he preferred. It was a little
thing to remember a man by--the merest trifle--but she never forgot it.
Only a big man could be as natural as that, she reflected. "I reasoned
it all out before I went into politics," he was saying. "I didn't get it
out of books either--unless you count the Bible and 'Robinson Crusoe,'
which are the only two I ever read as a boy. But the way I worked it out
at last was that democracy, like life, isn't anything that's already
finished. It is raw stuff. We are making it every minute of the time;
and it depends on us whether we put it through as a straight job or a
failure. Democracy, as I see it, isn't a word or a phrase out of a book,
or a formula, or anything that has frozen into a fixed shape or pattern.
It is warm and fluid, and it is teeming with living forms. It is as much
alive as the earth or air or water, and it can be used to develop as
many varying energies. That is why it is all so amazingly interesting.
As long as you don't fall away from that thought you have your feet
planted on solid ground--you can face things squarely--"
"You preach a kind of political pragmatism," she said as he paused.
"Pragmatism? That's a muscular word, but I don't know it. I wonder if
Robinson Crusoe discovered it."
"If Robinson Crusoe didn't discover it, he lived it," she rejoined
gaily; and then, as the voice of Mrs. Berkeley was heard purring softly
on Vetch's other side, Corinna turned to the bewhiskered General, whose
only sense, she had already ascertained, was the historic sense.
While she leaned back, with her head bent in the direction of his husky
voice, she was visited by a piercing realization of the emptiness, the
artificiality of her life. Futility--weariness--disenchantment--a gray
lane without a turning that stretched on into nothingness! Many thoughts
were blown through her mind like leaves in a high wind. She saw herself
from the beginning--striving without rest--searching--searching--for
what? For happiness--for perfection--for the starry flower that she had
never found. All was tawdry, all was tarnished, all was unreal. In
looking back she saw that the festival of her life was an affair of
tinselled splendour and glittering dust. Was this only the impression of
Vetch on her mood? Did he possess some magic gift of personality which
caused the artificial, the counterfeit, to wither in his presence?
Conversation was not animated; and while she listened with a smile to
dreary anecdotes of the War Between the States, she allowed her gaze to
wander slowly down the table to where Alice Rokeby sat, with her large
soft eyes, so vague and wistful, asking of life, "Why have you passed me
by?" Now and then these eyes, which reminded Corinna of the eyes in a
dream, would turn timidly to John Benham, and then there would steal
into them that strange look of hunger, of desperation. What did it mean?
Corinna wondered. Surely there was no truth in the old gossip that she
had heard long ago and forgotten?
John Benham had put a question to the Governor across the table; and he
sat now, leaning a little forward, while he waited for an answer. The
light from the tall white candles, in branched candelabra of the Queen
Anne pattern, fell directly on his handsome austere face, so full of
delicate reserves and fine intentions; and all the disturbing questions
fled from Corinna's mind while she looked at him. Surely, she repeated
to herself, with a triumphant emphasis, surely there was no truth in
that old ugly gossip! The backward sweep of his iron-gray hair
accentuated the height of his forehead, and produced at first sight an
impression of intellectual superiority. His nose was long and slightly
aquiline; his mouth firm and clear-cut, with thin lips that closed
tightly; his chin jutted a little forward, giving a hatchet-like
severity to his profile. It was the face of a fair fighter, of a man who
could be trusted absolutely beyond personal limitations, of a man who
would always keep the vision of the end through any enterprise, who
would always put the curb of expediency on emotional impulses, who would
invariably judge a theory not by its underlying principle, but by its
practical application. A charming face, too, complex and imaginative, a
face which made the rugged and open countenance of the Governor appear
primitive and undeveloped. Corinna admired Benham; she respected him;
she liked--was it even possible, she asked herself, that she loved him?
Yet here again she was conscious of that baffled feeling of inadequacy,
of something wanting, as if an essential faculty of soul had been either
left out by Nature, or refined away by the subtle impersonal processes
of his mind.
Clearly there had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs.
Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable
allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the
flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming
enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty
Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from
one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused Corinna,
for the same reason that she herself had been unable to arouse the
admiration of Gideon Vetch. The lesson it taught, she repeated
cynically, was simply that it was futile to stray too far from one's
type. Vetch had talked to her as he might have talked to her father or
to the husky warrior on her right; but he had never once looked at her.
His attention would be arrested by large, sudden, bright things like the
rosy curve of Mrs. Stribling's shoulders or the shining ropes of her
hair.
"How absurd it was to imagine that I could compare with that!" thought
Corinna with amusement. Her sense of defeat was humorous rather than
resentful; yet she realized that it contained a disagreeable sting. Was
her long day over at last? Had the sun set on her conquests? Had her
adventurous return to power been merely a prelude to the ultimate
Waterloo? Lifting her eyes suddenly from her plate she met the deep
meditative gaze of John Benham across the marigolds on the table; and
the faint flush that kindled her face made her eyes glow like embers.
Had he read the thought in her mind? Was the tenderness in his glance
only an ironical comment on the ignominious end of her Hundred Days?
She glanced away quickly, and as she did so she looked straight into the
eyes of Alice Rokeby--those eyes that asked perpetually of life, "Why
have you passed me by?"