One Man in His Time

Ellen Glasgow

Description

Rather than consistently falling back on romance as an overarching framework for her novels, as did many of her peers, Virginia-born writer Ellen Glasgow often preferred the rough-and-tumble world of politics as a lens through which to explore the human condition. In One Man in His Time, an up-and-coming politician confounds many of the longstanding mores of Southern society.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776599479
• Langue: English

Extrait

ONE MAN IN HIS TIME
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ELLEN GLASGOW
 
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One Man in His Time First published in 1922 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-947-9 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-948-6 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - The Shadow Chapter II - Gideon Vetch Chapter III - Corinna of the Old Print Shop Chapter IV - The Tribal Instinct Chapter V - Margaret Chapter VI - Magic Chapter VII - Corinna Goes to War Chapter VIII - The World and Patty Chapter IX - September Roses Chapter X - Patty and Corinna Chapter XI - The Old Walls and the Rising Tide Chapter XII - A Journey into Mean Streets Chapter XIII - Corinna Wonders Chapter XIV - A Little Light on Human Nature Chapter XV - Corinna Observes Chapter XVI - The Fear of Life Chapter XVII - Mrs. Green Chapter XVIII - Mystification Chapter XIX - The Sixth Sense Chapter XX - Corinna Faces Life Chapter XXI - Dance Music Chapter XXII - The Night Chapter XXIII - The Dawn Chapter XXIV - The Victory of Gideon Vetch
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"One man in his time plays many parts."
NOTE
No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past orpresent.
Chapter I - The Shadow
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The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through theCapitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountainswere in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees thesky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over thehead of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shotsuddenly before it vanished amid the spires and chimneys of the city,which looked as visionary and insubstantial as the glowing horizon.
Stopping midway of the road, Stephen Culpeper glanced back over thevague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spunmauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a newand inscrutable force—the force of an idea—had risen within the lastfew months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meantin his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watchedthe decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the pastremained untouched. Not the old buildings, not the old trees, not eventhe old memories. Clustering traditions had fled in the white blaze ofelectricity; the quaint brick walks, with their rich colour in thesunlight, were beginning to disappear beneath the expressionless mask ofconcrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather'sday; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and nakedand undistinguished—yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising.Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finerthings, had overwhelmed the world of established customs in which helived.
As he lifted his face to the sky, his grave young features revealed asubtle kinship to the statues beneath the mounted Washington in thedrive, as if both flesh and bronze had been moulded by the dominantspirit of race. Like the heroes of the Revolution, he appeared astranger in an age which had degraded manners and enthroned commerce;and like them also he seemed to survey the present from someinaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and acertain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of hiswell-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal.Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but hewas a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him."His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed thefaculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a memberof the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Onlythe few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of anuncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feelingburied beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished aninarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds. The war had lefthim with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and thisincreased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and hisinability to make a sustained effort to change it.
The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appearedto swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred thewhite slopes with violet shadows. In the topmost branches of an oldsycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like aluminous thread. The twilight was intensely still, and the noises of thecity fell with a metallic sound on his ears, as if a multitude of bellswere ringing about him. While he walked on past the bald outline of therestored and enlarged Capitol, this imaginary concert grew graduallyfainter, until he heard above it presently the sudden closing of awindow in the Governor's mansion—as the old gray house was called.
Pausing abruptly, the young man frowned as his eyes fell on the charmingGeorgian front, which presided like a serene and spacious memory overthe modern utilitarian purpose that was devastating the Square. Alone inits separate plot, broad, low, and hospitable, the house stood theredivided and withdrawn from the restless progress and the age ofconcrete—a modest reminder of the centuries when men had built wellbecause they had time, before they built, to stop and think andremember. The arrested dignity of the past seemed to the young man tohover above the old mansion within its setting of box hedges andleafless lilac shrubs and snow-laden magnolia trees. He saw the housecontrasted against the crude surroundings of the improved and disfiguredSquare, and against the house, attended by all its stately traditions,he saw the threatening figure of Gideon Vetch. "So it has come to this,"he thought resentfully, with his gaze on the doorway where a roundyellow globe was shining. Ragged frost-coated branches framed thesloping roof, and the white columns of the square side porches emergedfrom the black crags of magnolia trees. In the centre of the circulardrive, invaded by concrete, a white heron poured a stream of melting icefrom a distorted throat.
The shutters were not closed at the lower windows, and the firelightflickered between the short curtains of some brownish muslin. As Stephenpassed the gate on his way down the hill, a figure crossed one of thewindows, and his frown deepened as he recognized, or imagined that herecognized, the shadow of Gideon Vetch.
"Gideon Vetch!" At the sound of the name the young man threw back hishead and laughed softly. A Gideon Vetch was Governor of Virginia! Herealso, he told himself, half humorously, half bitterly, democracy hadwon. Here also the destroying idea had triumphed. In sight of the bronzeWashington, this Gideon Vetch, one of "the poor white trash," born in acircus tent, so people said, the demagogue of demagogues in Stephen'sopinion—this Gideon Vetch had become Governor of Virginia! Yet theplacid course of Stephen's life flowed on precisely as it had flowedever since he could remember, and the dramatic hand of Washington hadnot fallen. It was still so recent; it had come about so unexpectedly,that people—at least the people the young man knew and esteemed—werestill trying to explain how it had happened. The old party had beensleeping, of course; it had grown too confident, some said toocorpulent; and it had slept on peacefully, in spite of the stirringstrength of the labour leaders, in spite of the threatening coalition ofthe new factions, in spite even of the swift revolt against the stubbornforces of habit, of tradition, of overweening authority. His mother, heknew, held the world war responsible; but then his mother was soconstituted that she was obliged to blame somebody or something forwhatever happened. Yet others, he admitted, as well as his mother, heldthe war responsible for Gideon Vetch—as if the great struggle had casthim out in some gigantic cataclysm, as if it had broken through the oncesolid ground of established order, and had released into the world allthe explosive gases of disintegration, of destruction.
For himself, the young man reflected now, he had always thoughtotherwise. It was a period, he felt, of humbug radicalism, of windbageloquence; yet he possessed both wit and discernment enough to see that,though ideas might explode in empty talk, still it took ideas to makethe sort of explosion that was deafening one's ears. All the flatformula of the centuries could not produce a single Gideon Vetch. Suchmen were part of the changing world; they answered not to reasonedargument, but to the loud crash of breaking idols. Stephen hated Vetchwith all his heart, but he acknowledged him. He did not try to evade theman's tremendous veracity, his integrity of being, his inevitableness.An inherent intellectual honesty compelled Stephen to admit that, "thedemagogue", as he called him, had his appropriate place in the age thatproduced him—that he existed rather as an outlet for politicaltendencies than as the product of international violence. He was morethan a theatrical attitude—a torrent of words. Even a free country—andStephen thought sentimentally of America as "a free country"—must haveits tyrannies of opinion, and consequently its rebels against currentconvictions. In the older countries he had imagined that it might bepossible to hold with the hare and run with the hounds; but in the landof opportunity for all there was less reason to be astonished when thehunted turned at last