THE FEAR OF LIFE
Stephen had intended to go back as soon as he had put his mother into
the car; but she clung so tightly to his arm, and there was something so
appealing in her fragile dependence, that, almost without realizing it,
he found that he was sitting in front of her, and that she was taking
him down to his office.
"We will leave you and go back, Stephen," she said, while a look of
faintness spread over her features. "I feel as if one of my heart
attacks might be coming on."
"Wouldn't you rather I went home with you?" he inquired solicitously.
His mother shook her head and reached feebly for Margaret's hand.
"Margaret will take care of me," she replied in the weak voice before
which her husband and her children had learned to tremble.
As he sat there uneasily in the stuffy car, which smelt of camphor and
reminded him of a hearse, he was threatened by that familiar sensation
of oppression, of closing walls. Would he ever again be free from this
impalpable terror, from this dread of being shut within a space so small
that he must smother if he did not escape? And not only places but
persons, as he had found long ago, persons with closed souls, with
narrow minds, produced in him this feeling of physical suffocation.
Margaret, with her serenity, her changeless sweetness, affected him
precisely as he was affected by the stained glass windows of a church.
He felt that he should stifle unless he could break away into a place
where there were winds and blown shadows and pure sunshine. He admired
her; he might have loved her; but she smothered him like that rich and
heavy wave of the past from which he was still struggling to free
himself. For he knew now that it was not the past he wanted; it was the
future. Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and
yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was
not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the
master, of tradition. He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel
and to live. Only through emotion, only through some courageous
adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach
liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he
could not lose his life in order that he might find it. Corinna was
right, he felt, when she called him a prig. She was right though he
hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let
himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse. He
longed to dare, and yet he had never dared. He longed to take risks, and
yet he studied every step of the road. He longed to be unconventional,
and yet he would have died rather than wear a red flower in his
buttonhole. The thought of Patty rushed over him like the wind at dawn
or the light of the sunrise. There was deliverance; there was freedom of
spirit! She was the impulse he dared not follow, the risk he dared not
take, the red flower he dared not wear.
"What lovely eyes Miss Vetch has," Margaret was saying. "Don't you think
so, Cousin Harriet?"
Mrs. Culpeper sniffed at her bottle of smelling-salts. "She seemed to
me very ordinary," she answered stiffly. "How could Gideon Vetch's
daughter be anything else?"
"Yes, it's a pity about her father," admitted Margaret placidly. "If
what Mr. Benham thinks is true, I suppose the Governor has agreed not to
interfere in this dreadful strike."
Again Mrs. Culpeper sniffed. "Every one knows he is merely a tool in the
hands of those people," she said.
In the weeks that followed Stephen heard his mother's opinion repeated
wherever he went. Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere,
in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated.
It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the
Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by
the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who
thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders.
There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints
that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the
faction whose tool he had become. "Don't tell me, sir, that they didn't
put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old
Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years.
Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed
facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing
for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still
possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching
morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair of virtue."
For the people who condemned Vetch were quite as emphatic in praise of
John Benham; and in these weeks of unrest and anxiety, Corinna's face
was glowing with pride and pleasure. That Benham, in his unselfish
service, was leading the way, no one doubted. Tireless, unrewarded,--for
it was admitted by those who esteemed him most that he was never really
in touch with the crowd, that his zeal awakened no human response,--he
had sacrificed his private practice in order to devote himself day and
night to averting the strike. Stephen, inspired to hero worship, asked
himself again what the difference was, beyond simple personal rectitude,
between Vetch and Benham? Vetch, lacking, so far as the young man knew,
every public virtue except the human touch which enkindles either the
souls or the imaginations of men, could overturn Benham's argument with
a dramatic gesture, an emotional phrase. Why was it that Benham,
possessing both the character of the patriot and the graces of the
orator, should fall short in the one indefinable attribute which makes a
man the natural leader of men?
"People admire him, but they won't follow him," Stephen thought in
perplexity. "Vetch has something that Benham lacks; and it is this
something that makes people believe in him in spite of themselves."
This idea was in his mind when he met Benham one day on the steps of his
club, and stopped to congratulate him on the great speech he had made
the evening before.
"By Jove, it makes me want to throw my hat into the ring!" he exclaimed,
half in jest, half in earnest.
"I wish you would," replied the other gravely. "We need young men. It is
youth that turns the world."
Never, Stephen thought, had Benham, appeared more impressive, more
perfectly finished and turned out; never had he appeared so near to his
tailor and so far from his audience. He was a handsome man in his rather
colourless fashion, a man who would look any part with distinction from
policeman to President. His sleek iron-gray hair had as usual the rich
sheen of velvet; his thin, sharp profile was like the face on a Roman
coin. A man of power, of intellect, of character; and yet a man who had
missed, in some inexplicable way, greatness, achievement. On the whole
Stephen was glad that Corinna had announced her engagement. She and
Benham seemed so perfectly suited to each other--and, of course, there
was nothing in that old story about Alice Rokeby. A friendship, nothing
more! Only the other day Benham had spoken casually of his "friendship"
for Mrs. Rokeby; he always called her "Mrs. Rokeby"; and Stephen had
accepted the phrase as a satisfactory explanation of their past
association.
"I'd like to go into some public work," said the young man. "To tell the
truth I can't settle down."
"I know," Benham responded sympathetically. "I went through it all
myself; but there is nothing like throwing oneself into some outside
work. I wish you would come into this fight. If we can avert this strike
it will be worth any sacrifice."
That Benham was making tremendous personal sacrifices, Stephen knew, and
the young man's voice was tinged with emotion as he answered, "I'm
afraid I'm not much of a speaker."
"Oh, you would be, if you would only let yourself go." There it was
again! Even Benham recognized his weakness; even Benham knew that he was
afraid of life.
"Besides we need men of every type," Benham was saying smoothly. "We
need especially good organizers. The fight won't be over to-morrow. Even
if we win this time, we must organize against Vetch and defeat him once
and for all in the next elections."
"Then you think he is really as dangerous as the papers are trying to
make him appear?"
"I think," Benham replied shortly, "that he is in it for what he can get
out of it."
"Well, call on me when I can help you," said Stephen, as they parted;
and a minute later when he reached the pavement, he found occasion to
repeat his impulsive offer to Judge Horatio Lancaster Page.
"I've promised Benham that I'll do all I can to help him defeat Vetch."
"You're right," returned the Judge, with his smile of discerning irony.
"I suppose we're obliged to fight him."
"If we don't what will happen?"
"That's what I'd like to see, my boy. I'd give ten years full measure
and running over to see exactly what would happen."
"Benham is afraid his crowd may send him to the Senate."
"Perhaps, but there is always a chance of their sending him to Jericho
instead."
Stephen nodded. "Yes, there's trouble already, I believe, over this
strike."
The Judge laughed with a note of cynical humour. "I can understand why
he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human
nature."
"He's dead right, too. It is so easy to be a philosopher--or a
philanthropist--in a desert. I've felt like that ever since I came
home."
But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice
when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind
hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief
deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is
going to count. I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling,
merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it
better. Of course it is all crude and raw. It needs cultivation and
direction; but it's there--the vital principle, even if we don't
recognize it when we see it. All the same," he concluded in a lighter
tone, "I'm glad you are going into the fight. We can't hurt a principle
by fighting it, you know."
Then he passed on his way; and the transient enthusiasm which had
illuminated Stephen's mind drifted away like clouds of blown smoke. How
could he fight with any heart when there seemed to him nothing on either
side that was worth fighting for--nothing except the unselfish
patriotism of John Benham? He remembered the fervour, the exaltation
with which he had gone to France that first year of the war. The belief
in a righteous cause which would bring peace on earth and good will
toward men; the belief in a human fellowship which would grow out of
sacrifice; the belief in a fairer social order which would flower from
the bloodstained memories of the battlefields,--what was there left of
these romantic illusions to-day? Was it true, as Vetch had once said,
that organized killing, even in a just cause, must bring its spiritual
punishment? Could the lust of blood be changed by a document into the
love of one's brother? "I gave my youth in that war," he thought, "and
I won from it--what? Disillusionment." With the reflection he felt again
the exhaustion of the nerves, the infirmity of purpose against which he
had struggled ever since his return. "If there were only something worth
fighting for, worth believing in! If I could only believe earnestly, or
desire passionately--anything!"
Just as Corinna had longed for perfection, for something to worship, he
found himself longing now for a cause, for any cause, even a lost one,
to which he could give himself. He wanted facts, deeds, certainties. He
was suffocated by shams and insincerities--and phrases.
Then suddenly, this was one of the symptoms of his nervous malady, the
reaction swept over him in a wave of energy which receded almost
immediately. If he could only find deliverance from himself and his own
subjective processes! If he could only be borne away by the passion he
felt and yet could not feel completely! He wanted Patty, he knew, but
did he want her enough to justify the effort that he must make to win
her? Would she be worth to him the break with his mother, with his
traditions, with his inherited ideals? He saw her small, slight figure
in the dappled sunlight under the budding trees. He saw her vivid
flower-like face, her romantic eyes, and the arch and charming smile
with which she watched his approach. Yes, he wanted her, he wanted her,
and she was the only thing on God's earth, he told himself rhetorically,
that he did want with the whole of his nature!
Quickening his steps, he turned in the direction of the Capitol Square,
which stretched, like the painted curtain of a theatre, across the end
of the street. A singular intuition, a presentiment, had come to him
that if he could sustain this impulse, this tide of energy until he saw
Patty, he should be cured--he should find freedom of spirit. Only
through love, he had discovered, could there be resurrection from this
spiritual death of the last two or three years. Only through some
tremendous rush of desire could he overcome the partial paralysis of his
will. His instinct, he knew, was right, but would his resolution last
until he had found Patty?
It was early afternoon, and the faintly tinted shadows, as smooth as
silk, were falling straight across the bright green grass on the
hillside. The Square was almost deserted at this hour, except for the
old men on the benches and the squirrels that were preparing to return
to their nests in the trees. The breath of spring was over all, roving,
fragrant, provocative.
He shrank from going straight to the house; but Patty was not in the
walks, and he realized that if he found her at all it would be within
doors. Perhaps it was better so. After all, he must become accustomed to
the mansion and all that it contained, including Gideon Vetch, if he
really loved Patty! And did he really love her? Oh, was it all to begin
over again after the days and nights when he had threshed it out alone
in desperation of mind? Had he lost not only all that was vital, but all
that was stable, that was positive and affirmative in his life?
He stood for a moment with his eyes on the fresh young leaves which
stirred softly. Then, as if hope and courage had passed into him with
the air of spring, he turned away and walked rapidly to the gate of the
Governor's house. His hand was on the iron fence, and he was about to
enter the yard, when the door opened and Patty came out on the porch
with Julius Gershom. Stepping quickly back under the trees, Stephen
watched the girl descend the steps, pass the fountain, and go swiftly
out of the gate into the broad drive of the Square. She was talking
eagerly to her companion; and, though she had told him that she disliked
the man, she was smiling up at him while she talked. Her face was like a
pink flower under the dark brim of her sailor hat, and in her eyes,
beneath the inquiring eyebrows, there was the expression of charming
archness that he had imagined so vividly. If she saw him, she made no
sign; and for a moment after she had gone by, he stood vaguely wondering
if she had seen him and if she had chosen this way to punish him for his
neglect of the past two or three weeks? But even then, accepting that
charitable interpretation, what explained the objectionable presence of
Gershom? Was there anything that could explain or excuse the presence of
Gershom?
The fire in his heart died down to cinders, while the light faded not
only from that hidden country of the endless roads, but from the green
hill and the blue sky and the little shining leaves of the branches
overhead.
In the distance, he could see the two figures moving onward toward the
gate of the Square; and beyond them there was only the long straight
street filled with gray dust and the empty shadows of human beings.