One Man in His Time by Ellen Glasgow

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Death had come so suddenly that, lying there in the trembling light of
the candles, Vetch appeared to be merely resting a moment in his
energetic career. His rugged features still wore their look of exuberant
vitality, of triumphant faith. There was about him even in death the
radiance of his indestructible illusion. As Corinna looked down on him,
it seemed incredible to her that he should not stretch himself in a
moment, and rise and go out again into the struggle of living. It seemed
incredible that his work should be finished for ever when he was still
so unspent, so full of tireless activity. Was death always like this--a
victory of material and mechanical forces? An accident, an automatic
gesture, and the complex power which stood for the soul of Gideon Vetch
was dissolved--or released. The crumbling of a rock, the falling of a
leaf! Her eyes left the face of the dead man, left Patty's bowed head at
her side, and travelled beyond the open window into the glamour and
mystery of the night, and beyond the night into the sky--

There was a knock at the door, and she turned away and went out to join
the men in the hall. What had it meant to them, she wondered. How much
had they understood? How much had they ever understood of that symbol of
a changing world which they had loved and hated under the name of Gideon
Vetch?

"Give her a few minutes more," she said. "Leave her alone with him."

There were four men waiting--her father, Stephen, old Darrow, and
Julius Gershom--and these four, she felt, were the men who had known
Vetch best, and who, with the exception of Darrow, had perhaps
understood least what he meant. No one had understood him, least of all,
she saw now, had she herself understood him--

Gershom spoke first. "He was the biggest man we've ever had," he said,
"and we never doubted it--" Yet he had never for an instant, Corinna
knew, seen Vetch as he really was, or recognized the end for which he
was fighting.

"He was the only one who could have held us together," sighed old
Darrow, and his face looked as if a searing iron had passed over it.
"This will put us back at least fifty years--"

The Judge was gazing through the open door out into the night, where
lamps shone in the Square and a luminous cloud hung over the city, that
city which was outgrowing its youth, outgrowing the barriers of
tradition, outgrowing alike the forces of reaction and the forces of
progress.

"A few months," he said slowly, "and nothing accomplished that one can
point out and say that we owe directly to him. Yet I doubt if a single
one of us will ever forget him. I doubt if a single one of us will ever
be exactly, in every little way, just what we should have been if we had
never known Vetch, or spoken to him. The merest ripple of change,
perhaps, but it counts--it counts because in touching him we touched a
humanity that is as rare as genius itself." Yet they had killed him,
Corinna knew, because they could not understand him!

For a moment there was silence, and then Stephen spoke in a whisper:
"There are some things that you can't see until you stand far enough
away from them. I doubt if any of us really saw him until to-night.
To-morrow he will begin to live." As he lifted his eyes to Corinna's
face, she saw in them a fidelity that pledged itself to the future.

"Go to Patty," she whispered. "Go to her and repeat what you have said
to us." Putting her hand on his arm, she led him into the room where the
girl was kneeling, and then drew back while he went quickly forward.
Watching from the threshold, she saw Patty look up uncertainly, and rise
slowly from the floor where she had been kneeling; she saw Stephen put
out his arms with a movement of love and pity; and she saw the girl
hesitate for an instant, and then turn to his clasp as a hurt child
turns for comfort. That was youth, that was the future, thought Corinna,
and closing the door softly, she left them together. Yes, youth was for
the future, and for herself, _she_ realized with a pang, were the things
that she had never had in the past. Only the things that she had never
had were really hers! Only the unfulfilled, she saw in that moment of
illuminating insight, is the permanent.

Passing the group in the hall, she went out on the porch, and looked
with swimming eyes over the fountain into the Square. Beyond the white
streams of electricity and the black patterns of the shadows, she saw
the sharp outlines of the city, and beyond that the immense blue field
of the sky sown thickly with stars. Life was there--life that embraced
success and failure, illusion and disillusion, birth and death. In the
morning she would go back to it--she would begin again--in the morning
she would will herself to pick up the threads of middle age as lightly
as Stephen and Patty would pick up the threads of youth. To-morrow she
would start living again--but to-night for a few hours she would rest
from life; she would look back now, as she had looked back that morning,
to where a man was standing in the bright grass with the sunrise above
his head.

BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW

LIFE AND GABRIELLA

ONE MAN IN HIS TIME

PHASES OF AN INFERIOR PLANET

THE ANCIENT LAW

THE BATTLE-GROUND

THE BUILDERS

THE DELIVERANCE

THE DESCENDANT

THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS

THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH

THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

THE WHEEL OF LIFE

VIRGINIA

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