One Man in His Time | Page 7

her lips. "It isn't the first time I've
had to grit my teeth and bear things--but it's getting worse instead of
better all the time, and I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to help me up
the hill. I was waiting until I thought I could manage it by myself."
So that was why she had kept him! She had hoped all the time that she
could go on presently without his aid, and she realized now that it was
impossible. Insensibly his judgment of her softened, as if his romantic
imagination had spun iridescent cobwebs about her. By Jove, what
pluck she had shown, what endurance! There came to him suddenly the
realization that if she had learned to treat a sprained ankle so lightly, it
could mean only that her short life had been full of misadventures
beside which a sprained ankle appeared trivial. She could "play the
game" so perfectly, he grasped, because she had been obliged either to

play it or go under ever since she had been big enough to read the cards
in her hand. To be "a good sport" was perhaps the best lesson that the
world had yet taught her. Though she could not be, he decided, more
than eighteen, she had acquired already the gay bravado of the
experienced gambler with life.
"Let me help you," he said eagerly, "I am sure that I can carry you, you
are so small. If you will only let me throw away this confounded bird, I
can manage it easily."
"No, give it to me. It would die of cold if we left it." She stretched out
her hand, and in silence he gave her the wounded pigeon. Her
tenderness for the bird, conflicting as it did with his earlier impression
of her, both amused and perplexed him. He couldn't reconcile her quick
compassion with her resentful and mocking attitude toward himself.
At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and
stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite
unnecessary to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't
need to be carried," she said. "That sort of thing went out of fashion
ages ago. If you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill."
She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the
hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most
embarrassing one through which he had ever lived. The fugitive gleam,
the romantic glamour, had vanished now. He wondered what it was
about her that he had at first found attractive. It was the spirit of the
place, he decided, nothing more. With every step of the way there
closed over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence,
his instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour. Conventions were
the breath of his young nostrils, and yet he was passing through an
atmosphere, without, thank Heaven, his connivance or inclination,
where it seemed to him the hardiest convention could not possibly
survive. When the lights of the mansion shone nearer through the bared
boughs, he heaved a sigh of relief.
"Have I tired you?" asked the girl in response, and the curious lilting
note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden

suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging
some hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that
she would be capable of such a performance, or of anything else that
invited her amazing vivacity. His one hope was that he might leave her
in some obscure corner of the house, and slip away before anybody
capable of making a club joke had discovered his presence. The hidden
country was lost now, and with it the perilous thrill of enchantment.
He rang the bell, and the door was opened by an old coloured butler
who had been one of the family servants of the Culpepers. How on
earth, Stephen wondered, could the Governor tolerate the venerable
Abijah, the chosen companion of Culpeper children for two generations?
While he wondered he recalled something his mother had said a few
weeks ago about Abijah's having been lured away by the offer of
absurd wages. "You needn't worry," she had added shrewdly, "he will
return as soon as he gets tired of working."
"I hurt my ankle, Abijah," said the girl.
"You ain't, is you, Miss Patty?" replied Abijah, in an indulgent tone
which conveyed to Stephen's delicate ears every shade of difference
between the Vetchs' and the Culpepers' social standing.
"How are you, Abijah?" remarked the young man with the air of lordly
pleasantry he used to all servants who were not white. Beyond the