ONE MAN IN HIS TIME

by

ELLEN GLASGOW

1922

"One man in his time plays many parts."

NOTE

No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past or present.

CONTENTS

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

BOOKS BY ELLEN GLASGOW

ONE MAN IN HIS TIME

CHAPTER I

THE SHADOW

The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through the Capitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountains were in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees the sky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over the head of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shot suddenly 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 the vague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spun mauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a new and inscrutable force—the force of an idea—had risen within the last few months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meant in his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watched the decay and dissolution of a hundred years. Nothing of the past remained untouched. Not the old buildings, not the old trees, not even the old memories. Clustering traditions had fled in the white blaze of electricity; the quaint brick walks, with their rich colour in the sunlight, were beginning to disappear beneath the expressionless mask of concrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather's day; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and naked and undistinguished—yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising. Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finer things, had overwhelmed the world of established customs in which he lived.

As he lifted his face to the sky, his grave young features revealed a subtle kinship to the statues beneath the mounted Washington in the drive, as if both flesh and bronze had been moulded by the dominant spirit of race. Like the heroes of the Revolution, he appeared a stranger in an age which had degraded manners and enthroned commerce; and like them also he seemed to survey the present from some inaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and a certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal. Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he was 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 the faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Only the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling buried beneath his