Corinna

“ Framed in the vivid colours of spring she had the look of a flower that has been blighted by frost.
"How ill, how very ill she looks," thought Corinna, with an impulse of sympathy. "I wish she would come in and rest. I wish she would let me help her."
For an instant the violet eyes, with their vague wistfulness, their mute appeal, looked straight into Corinna's; and in that instant an inscrutable expression quivered in Alice Rokeby's face, as if a wan light had flickered up and died down in an empty room.
"The heat is too much for you," said Corinna gently. "It is like summer." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a young gentleman dined with them one day, with whom Corinna was more gay and went further in her coquetry than usual; insomuch that at last her husband grew quite out of humour; she perceived it, but did not at all alter her behaviour on that account. There was a great deal of company at the table, and Corinna was in the highest raptures to see the joy which sparkled in the eyes of the man she took most notice of; the envious, uneasy looks of all the others, and her husband's discontent. ”

“ If Fortinbras had alluded to his possession of a steam-yacht Corinna could not have been more astonished. To her he was merely the Marchand de Bonheur, eccentric Bohemian, half charlatan, half good-fellow, without private life or kindred. She sat bolt upright.
“You have a daughter?”
“Why not? Am I not a man? Haven’t I lived my life? Haven’t I had my share of its joys and sorrows? Why should it surprise you that I have a daughter?”
Corinna reddened. “You haven’t told me about her before.”
“When do I have the occasion, in this world of students, to speak of things precious to me? I tell you now. ”

“ Corinna looked thin and ill and drawn, and her blouse gaped at the back, and her fair hair exhibited the ropiness of neglect. The furniture of the room was of elementary flimsiness. Loose newspapers, pamphlets, handbills, made it as untidy as Corinna’s hair. As soon as they were alone, Martin glanced from her to her surroundings and then back again to her.
“My dear Corinna,” said he, putting hat, stick and gloves on a bamboo table, “what on earth are you doing with yourself?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I once visited Corinna when all her lovers happened to be there together. I suppose Le Vive was let in by some accident she could not avoid. The grave man of sense appeared diffident of himself, and seemed afraid to speak to her. The artful man sat silent, and seemed to be laying some very deep plot. The man who was so apt to be hurt by the behaviour of others could hardly forbear breaking out in reproaches. ”

“ They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to Corinna. "I can never tell you," she began, "I can never tell you—" Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the staircase beyond the library.
"Let her rest," said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch. "Leave her to herself. She needs sleep, but she is very young—and for youth there is no despair that does not pass." ”

“ She spoke but seldom, but what she said was always a proof of her good understanding. Her manner was grave and reserved, and her behaviour had something of that kind of quietness and stillness in it which is often imputed by the injudicious to a want of spirit. In short, notwithstanding her beauty and good sense, she wanted those little ways of setting off her charms to the best advantage which Corinna had to the greatest perfection; and, quite contrary to her sister, from her great modesty and fear of displeasing, often lost opportunities of gaining lovers which she otherwise might have had. ”

“ She was strongly attracted, and since her sympathy was easily stirred, she wished, without any great desire, to help the girl if she could. The only way, she realized, was to watch and hope, to play the waiting game as far as this was possible to her active nature. For, above all things, Corinna hated to wait; and this potent energy of soul, this vital flame, had given the look of winged radiance to her eyes.
"You are always so happy," said Patty breathlessly, as she leaned forward and held out her hands to Corinna as if she were the fire. ”

“ For a moment she was silent; and when she spoke again there was an anxious sound in her voice and an anxious look in the eyes she lifted to the arching boughs of the sycamore. "Do you like Stephen very much, Patty?" she asked.
Though Corinna did not see it, a glow that was like the flush of dawn broke over the girl's sensitive face. "He is so superior," she began as if she were repeating a phrase she had learned to speak; then in a low voice she added impulsively, "Oh, very much!"
"He is a dear boy," returned Corinna, really troubled. "Do you see him often?" ”

“ Our first impression was, “she is a fool;” our second, “she is a wit;” our third, “she is something between both!” Oh! that it were possible for us to commit to paper one-half of what was uttered by Corinna! Our recollection of our tête-à-tête is like the recollection of a dream. In dreams we remember that we were at one [Pg 68] moment in a mud-built cottage, and were the next transported to a Gothic chapel, but by what means the transmutation of place was effected our waking thoughts are unable to conceive. Thus it was when we listened to Corinna. ”

“ Charm she had unmistakably; but it was a charm that men would feel rather than women; and of all the feminine varieties that Corinna had known in the past, she disliked most heartily "the man's woman." Was her impulse to help only the need of a fresh interest, the craving for a new amusement? The heart of life she had never reached. Something was missing—the unfading light, the starry flower that she had never found in her search. Now at last, in a golden middle age, she told herself that she would build her happiness not on perfection, but on the second best of experience. ”

“ This then was the word of Corinna’s enigma. To summon him by telegraph had been the object of her sortie in the hat with the pheasant’s plume. To welcome him had been the reason of her festive garb. In order to hold unembarrassed converse she had tried to send Martin away to photograph Bourdeilles. This then was the famous student in medicine who was supposed to have won Corinna’s heart. Martin who had of late added mightily to his collection of remarkable men thought him as commonplace a young student as he had encountered since the far off days of Margett’s Universal College. ”

“ The whole place had the vague depressing smell of closed rooms, or of dead flowers, the very odour of unhappiness.
"Poor thing!" thought Corinna again. "That a man should have the power to make anybody suffer like this!" And beneath her sense of fruitless endeavour and wasted romance, there awoke and stirred in her the dominant instinct of her nature, the instinct to bring order out of confusion, to make the crooked straight, to change discord into harmony, that irresistible instinct for things as they ought to be. ”

“ People who love do not make bargains, Corinna. All that I am or ever will be is yours. Take me and make what you can of it!"
Corinna, who had not looked at him all this while, now turned a comical face of remonstrance. "But you mustn't!" she said. "You mustn't give in to me like that! You must oppose my temper and my wilfulness, whatever I say!"
It was Evan's turn to stare. Then he understood that this was surrender—Corinna's way. He laughed in pure delight and opened his arms. "Come here, you wretch!" ”

“ With a gesture that appeared as natural as the dropping of a leaf, she pressed down the eyelids over the expressionless eyes. "Well, that's the way life is, I reckon," she remarked, as an epitaph over the obscure destiny of Mrs. Green.
"Yes, that's the way life is," repeated Corinna under her breath. Already the old cripple had started about her inevitable ministrations: but when Corinna tried to make Patty move away from the bedside, the girl shook her head in a stubborn refusal. ”

“ In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, more durably glazed than ever. A slight excess, too deep a carmine in her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her appearance. If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on perfection. ”

“ Otherwise you might as well be dead. I can't just cling like moss to institutions that other people have made; to the things that have always been. I've got to take chances—and I'm enough of a sport not to whine if the game goes against me—"
The part of Corinna's nature that was not cautious, but reckless, the part in her whose source was imagination and impulse, thrilled in sympathy with his resolve. Though she gazed down the straight deserted street, her eyes were looking beyond the sprouting weeds and the cobblestones to some starry flower which bloomed only in an invisible world. ”

“ No man has any right to survive such a fiasco. I should have died with my men."
"Judging from your wounds," Corinna's mother put in, "you tried hard enough!"
"I did indeed!" he ejaculated, "and that is some comfort. And if I die now there are other comforts. For me death will be better than degradation, than living on in contempt, out of service and despised."
"We could be married at once," Corinna sobbed, "and live all our lives at Sirmio. ”

“ Corinna stooped and kissed her. "No, it only means that some of us have learned to live without happiness."
She went with Alice to the door, and then stood watching her descend the steps and enter the small closed car in the drive. There was a touching grace in the slight, shrinking figure, as if it embodied in a single image all the women in the world who had lost hope. "Yet it is the weak, the passive, who get what they want in the end," thought Corinna, as dispassionately as if she were merely a spectator. "I suppose it is because they need it more. ”

“ As Mrs. Culpeper knocked at the door of Corinna's shop, she noticed that the pine bough in the window had been replaced by bowls of growing narcissi. For a moment her stern expression relaxed, and her face, framed in a bonnet of black straw with velvet strings, became soft and anxious. Beneath the veil of white illusion which reached only to the tip of her small sharp nose, her eyes were suddenly touched with spring.
"How delicious the flowers smell," she remarked when Corinna opened the door ”

“ 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. ”

“ She took care to conceal it, because she well knew Corinna would be uneasy at parting with one admirer, although her dislike to him was ever so great. But when Corinna was married, and this gentleman compared her usage of all her lovers with Sacharissa's modest and good-natured behaviour, he fixed his love on the woman who now appeared so much the most deserving. The courtship did not last long; for as she had made it a rule never to conceal her affections from the man she loved longer than she doubted of his, decency was the only thing considered by her ”

“ I am very fond of her."
"Then perhaps you can tell me if she is interested in this young Culpeper?"
For a minute Corinna struggled against a burst of hysterical laughter. Oh, if Cousin Harriet had only met him here, she thought, what a comedy they would have made!
"Surely if any one has an opinion about that, it must be you," she rejoined as gravely as she could.
"I haven't; not the shadow of one." He was plainly puzzled. "I thought you might help me. You have a way of seeing things." ”

“ For a minute Corinna was silent. The smile on her lips had grown tenderly humorous; and there was a softness in her eyes which made him sorry that he had not known her when he was a child. "Do you know what she told me to-day?" she said. "She studies a page of the dictionary every morning, and she tries to remember and practise all day the new words that she learns. She is now in the letter M."
A peal of merriment interrupted her. "That explains it!" exclaimed Stephen with unaffected delight, "maneuver—misinformation—multitude—"
"So she has practised on you too?" ”