One Man in His Time | Page 9

their minds should go habitually unclothed
yet unashamed.
"Thank you, sir," said the Governor without effusion; and he asked:

"Did you hurt yourself, Patty?" while he bent over and laid his hand on
her ankle.
A note of tenderness passed into his voice as he turned to the girl; and
when she answered after a minute, Stephen recognized the same tone of
affectionate playfulness that she used when she spoke of him.
"Not much," she replied carelessly. Then she held out the drooping
pigeon. "I found this bird. Is there anything we can do for it?"
The Governor took the bird from her, and examined it under the light
with the manner of brisk confidence which directed his slightest action.
The man, for all his restless activity, appeared to be without excess or
exaggeration when it was a matter of practical detail. He apparently
employed his whole efficient and enterprising mind on the incident of
the bird.
"The wings aren't broken," he said presently, lifting his head, "but it is
weak from hunger and exhaustion," and he rang the bell for Abijah.
"Rice and water and a warm basket," he ordered when the old negro
appeared. "You had better keep it in the house until it recovers." Then
dismissing the subject, he turned back to Stephen.
"Well, I am glad to see you, Mr. Culpeper," he said. "You had a hard
beginning, but, as they used to tell me when I was a kid, a hard
beginning makes a good ending."
For the first time a smile softened his face, and the roving blue gleam
danced blithely in his eyes. A moment before the young man had
thought the Governor's face harsh and ugly. Now he remembered that
the Judge had said "the man was not half bad to look at if you caught
him smiling." Yes, he had a charm of his own, and that charm had
swept him forward over every obstacle to the place he had reached. A
single gift, indefinable yet unerring--the ability to make men believe
absurdities, as John Benham had once said--and the material
disadvantages of poverty and ignorance were brushed aside like trivial
impediments. A strange power, and a dangerous one in unscrupulous
hands, the young man reflected.

"I remember your face," pursued the Governor, while his smile
faded--was brevity, after all, the secret of its magic? "You were at one
of my speeches last autumn, and you sat in the front row, I think. I
recall you because you were the only person in the audience who
looked bored."
"I was." Frankness called for frankness. "I am not keen about
speeches."
"Not even when Benham speaks?" The voice was gay, but through it all
there rang the unmistakable tone of authority, of conscious power.
There was one person, Stephen inferred, who had never from the
beginning disparaged or ridiculed Gideon Vetch, and that person was
Gideon Vetch himself. John Benham had once said that the man was a
mere posturer--but John Benham was wrong.
"Oh, well, you see, Benham is different," replied the young man as
delicately as he could. "He is apt to say only what I think, you know."
So far there had been no breach of good taste in the Governor's manner,
no warning reminder of an origin that was certainly obscure and
presumably low, no stale, dust-laden odours of the circus ring. He had
looked and spoken as any man of Stephen's acquaintance might have
done, facetiously, it is true, but without ostentation or vulgarity. When
the break came, therefore, it was the more shocking to the younger man
because he had been so imperfectly prepared for it.
"And because he is different, of course you think he'd make a better
Governor than I shall," said Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way
with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You
never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it
knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've
been on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so
much as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too
much electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; but you
haven't even looked back to find out whether you are right or wrong.
Talk about public spirit! Why, there isn't an ounce of live public spirit
left among you, in spite of all the moonshine your man Benham talks

about the healing virtues of tradition and the sacred taboo of your
political Pharisees. There wasn't one of you that didn't hate like the
devil to see me Governor of Virginia--and yet how many of you took
the trouble to find out what I am made