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The Builders

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow · English · Gutenberg #37463 · 608,760 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Builders

Author: Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow


        
Release date: September 17, 2011 [eBook #37463]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37463

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BUILDERS ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)








    THE BUILDERS

   BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  ANCIENT LAW, THE
  THE BATTLE-GROUND, THE
  THE DELIVERANCE, THE
  THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS, THE
  THE LIFE AND GABRIELLA
  MILLER OF OLD CHURCH, THE
  THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN, THE
  THE VIRGINIA
  VOICE OF THE PEOPLE, THE
  THE WHEEL OF LIFE




THE BUILDERS

BY
ELLEN GLASGOW

[Illustration: colophon]

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1919

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN




CONTENTS

BOOK FIRST

APPEARANCES


CHAPTER                                          PAGE

I. CAROLINE                                         3

II. THE TIME                                       20

III. BRIARLAY                                      25

IV. ANGELICA                                       44

V. THE FIRST NIGHT                                 59

VI. LETTY                                          70

VII. CAROLINE MAKES DISCOVERIES                    84

VIII. BLACKBURN                                   102

IX. ANGELICA'S CHARITY                            122

X. OTHER DISCOVERIES                              142

XI. THE SACRED CULT                               165

XII. THE WORLD'S VIEW OF AN UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE  176

XIII. INDIRECT INFLUENCE                          194


BOOK SECOND

REALITIES

I. IN BLACKBURN'S LIBRARY                         219

II. READJUSTMENTS                                 231

III. MAN'S WOMAN                                  245

IV. THE MARTYR                                    257

V. THE CHOICE                                     268

VI. ANGELICA'S TRIUMPH                            281

VII. COURAGE                                      293

VIII. THE CEDARS                                  310

IX. THE YEARS AHEAD                               324

X. THE LIGHT ON THE ROAD                          339

XI. THE LETTER                                    348

XII. THE VISION                                   359




BOOK FIRST

APPEARANCES




THE BUILDERS




CHAPTER I

CAROLINE


The train was late that day, and when the old leather mail pouch was
brought in, dripping wet, by Jonas, the negro driver, Mrs. Meade put
down the muffler she was knitting, and received it reluctantly.

"At least there aren't any bills at this time of the month," she
observed, with the manner of one who has been designed by Providence to
repel disaster.

While she unbuckled the clammy straps, her full, round face, which was
still fresh and pretty in spite of her seventy years, shone like an
auspicious moon in the dusky glow of the fire. Since wood was scarce,
and this particular strip of southside Virginia grew poorer with each
year's harvest, the only fire at The Cedars was the one in "the
chamber," as Mrs. Meade's bedroom was called. It was a big, shabby room,
combining, as successfully as its owner, an aspect of gaiety with a
conspicuous absence of comforts. There were no curtains at the windows,
and the rugs, made from threadbare carpets, had faded to indeterminate
patterns; but the cracked mahogany belonged to a good period, and if the
colours had worn dim, they were harmonious and restful. The house,
though scarred, still held to its high standards. The spirit of the
place was the spirit of generous poverty, of cheerful fortitude.

The three girls on the hearthrug, knitting busily for the War Relief
Association, were so much alike in colouring, shape, and feature, that
it was difficult at a casual glance to distinguish Maud, who was almost,
if not quite, a beauty, from Margaret and Diana, who were merely pretty
and intelligent. They were all natural, kind-hearted girls, who had been
trained from infancy to make the best of things and to laugh when they
were hurt. From the days when they had played with ears of corn instead
of dolls, they had acquired ingenuity and philosophy. For Mrs. Meade,
who derived her scant income from a plantation cultivated "on shares" by
negro tenants, had brought up her girls to take life gaily, and to rely
on their own resourcefulness rather than on fortuitous events.

"Here is a nice fat letter for Caroline, and it looks as if it weren't
an advertisement." With one plump hand she held out the letter, while
she handed the dripping mail bag to Jonas. "Bring some wood for the
fire, Jonas, and be sure to shut the door after you."

"Dar ain' no mo' wood, ole Miss."

For an instant Mrs. Meade stopped to think. "Well, the garden fence is
falling down by the smoke-house. Split up some of the rails. Here is
your letter, Caroline."

A woman's figure, outlined against the rocking branches of an old cedar
beyond the window, turned slowly toward the group on the hearthrug. In
Caroline's movements, while she lingered there for a moment, there was
something gallant and free and spirited, which was a part of the world
outside and the swaying boughs. Though she was older than the three
girls by the fire, she was young with an illusive and indestructible
grace of the soul. At thirty-two, in spite of the stern sweetness about
her thin red lips, and the defiant courage which flashed now and then
from the shadowy pallor of her face, one felt that the flame and ardour
of her glance flowed not from inward peace, but from an unconquerable
and adventurous spirit. Against the grey rain her face seemed the face
of some swiftly changing idea, so expressive of an intangible beauty was
the delicate curve of the cheek and the broad, clear forehead beneath
the dark hair, which grew low in a "widow's peak" above the arched
eyebrows and the vivid blue of the eyes. If there was austerity in the
lines of her mouth, her eyes showed gaiety, humour, and tenderness. Long
ago, before the wreck of her happiness, her father, who had a taste for
the striking in comparisons, had said that Caroline's eyes were like
bluebirds flying.

The letter could wait. She was not interested in letters now, rarely as
they came to her. It was, she knew, only the call to a patient, and
after nearly eight years of nursing, she had learned that nothing varied
the monotonous personalities of patients. They were all alike, united in
their dreadful pathos by the condition of illness--and as a mere matter
of excitement there was little to choose between diphtheria and
pneumonia. Yet if it were a call, of course she would go, and her brief
vacation would be over. Turning away from the firelight, she deferred as
long as possible the descent from her thoughts to the inevitable bondage
of the actuality.

Beyond the window, veiled in rain, she could see the pale quivering
leaves of the aspens on the lawn, and the bend in the cedar avenue,
which led to the big white gate and the private road that ran through
the farm until it joined the turnpike at the crossroads. Ever since she
was born, it seemed to her, for almost thirty-two years, she had watched
like this for something that might come up that long empty road. Even in
the years that she had spent away, she had felt that her soul waited
there, tense and expectant, overlooking the bend in the avenue and the
white gate, and then the road over which "the something different," if
it came at all, must come at last to The Cedars. Nothing, not change,
not work, not travel, could detach the invisible tendrils of her life
from the eager, brooding spirit of the girl who had once watched there
at the window. She had been watching--watching--she remembered, when the
letter that broke her heart had come in the old mail pouch, up the road
beyond, and through the gate, and on into the shadows and stillness of
the avenue. That was how the blow had come to her, without warning,
while she waited full of hope and expectancy and the ardent sweetness of
dreams.

"My poor child, your heart is broken!" her mother had cried through her
tears, and the girl, with the letter still in her hands, had faced her
defiantly.

"Yes, but my head and my hands are whole," she had replied with a laugh.

Then, while the ruins of her happiness lay at her feet, she began
rebuilding her house of life with her head and her hands. She would
accept failure on its own terms, completely, exultantly, and by the very
audacity of her acceptance, she would change defeat into victory. She
would make something out of nothing; she would wring peace, not from
joy, but from the heart of an incredible cruelty; she would build with
courage, not with gladness, but she would build her house toward the
stars.

"There must be something one can live on besides love," she thought, "or
half the world would go famished."

"Come and read your letter, Caroline," called Maud, as she reached the
end of a row. "There isn't anything for the rest of us."

"I am so afraid it is a call, dear," said Mrs. Meade; and then, as
Caroline left the window and passed into the firelight, the old lady
found herself thinking a little vaguely, "Poor child, the hard work is
beginning to show in her face--but she has never been the same since
that unfortunate experience. I sometimes wonder why a just Providence
lets such things happen." Aloud she added, while her beaming face
clouded slightly, "I hope and pray that it isn't anything catching."

As Caroline bent over the letter, the three younger girls put down their
knitting and drew closer, while their charming faces, brown, flushed,
and sparkling, appeared to catch and hold the glow of the flames. They
were so unlike Caroline, that she might have been mistaken, by a
stranger, for a woman of a different race. While she bent there in the
firelight, her slender figure, in its cambric blouse and skirt of faded
blue serge, flowed in a single lovely curve from her drooping dark head
to her narrow feet in their worn russet shoes.

"It is from an old friend of yours, mother," she said presently, "Mrs.
Colfax."

"Lucy Colfax! Why, what on earth is she writing to you about? I hope
there isn't anything wrong with her."

"Read it aloud, Caroline," said Diana. "Mother, this fire will go out
before Jonas can fix it."

"He has to split the wood, dear. Look out on the back porch and see if
you can find some chips. They'll be nice and dry." Mrs. Meade spoke with
authority, for beneath her cheerful smile there was the heart of a
fighter, and like all good fighters, she fought best when she was driven
against the wall. "Now, Caroline, I am listening."

"She wants me to take a case. It sounds queer, but I'll read you what
she says. 'Dear Caroline'--she calls me 'Caroline.'"

"That's natural, dear. We were like sisters, and perhaps she took a
fancy to you the time she met you in Richmond. It would be just like her
to want to do something for you." The sprightly old lady, who was
constitutionally incapable of seeing any prospect in subdued colours,
was already weaving a brilliant tapestry of Caroline's future.

"'Dear Caroline:

"'My cousin, Angelica Blackburn, has asked me to recommend a trained
nurse for her little girl, who is delicate, and I am wondering if you
would care to take the case. She particularly wishes a self-reliant and
capable person, and Doctor Boland tells me you have inherited your
mother's sweet and unselfish nature (I don't see how he knows. Everybody
is unselfish in a sick-room. One has to be.)'"

"Well, I'm sure you have a lovely nature," replied Mrs. Meade tenderly.
"I was telling the girls only yesterday that you never seemed to think
of yourself a minute." In her own mind she added, "Any other girl would
have been embittered by that unfortunate experience" (the phrase
covered Caroline's blighted romance) "and it shows how much character
she has that she was able to go on just as if nothing had happened. I
sometimes think a sense of humour does as much for you as religion."

"'I remember my poor father used to say,'" Caroline read on smoothly,
"'that in hard dollars and cents Carrie Warwick's disposition was worth
a fortune.'"

"That's very sweet of Lucy," murmured Mrs. Meade deprecatingly.

"'As you are the daughter of my old friend, I feel I ought not to let
you take the case without giving you all the particulars. I don't know
whether or not you ever heard of David Blackburn--but your mother will
remember his wife, for she was a Fitzhugh, the daughter of Champ
Fitzhugh, who married Bessie Ludwell.'"

"Of course I remember Bessie. She was my bosom friend at Miss Braxton's
school in Petersburg."

"Let me go on, mother darling. If you interrupt me so often I'll never
get to the interesting part."

"Very well, go on, my dear, but it does seem just like Providence. When
the flour gave out in the barrel last night, I knew something would
happen." For Mrs. Meade had begun life with the shining certainty that
"something wonderful" would happen to her in the future, and since she
was now old and the miracle had never occurred, she had transferred her
hopes to her children. Her optimism was so elastic that it stretched
over a generation without breaking.

"'Mrs. Blackburn--Angelica Fitzhugh, she was--though her name is really
Anna Jeannette, and they called her Angelica as a child because she
looked so like an angel--well, Mrs. Blackburn is the cousin I spoke of,
whose little girl is so delicate.' She is all tangled up, isn't she,
mother?"

"Lucy always wrote like that," said Mrs. Meade. "As a girl she was a
scatterbrain."

"'I do not know exactly what is wrong with the child,'" Caroline resumed
patiently, "'but as long as you may go into the family, I think I ought
to tell you that I have heard it whispered that her father injured her
in a fit of temper when she was small.'"

"How horrible!" exclaimed Diana. "Caroline, you couldn't go there!"

"'She has never been able to play with other children, and Doctor Boland
thinks she has some serious trouble of the spine. I should not call her
a disagreeable child, or hard to manage, just delicate and rather
whining--at least she is whenever I see her, which is not often. Her
mother is one of the loveliest creatures on earth, and I can imagine no
greater privilege than living in the house with her. She is far from
strong, but she seems never to think of her health, and all her time is
devoted to doing good. Doctor Boland was telling me yesterday that he
had positively forbidden her undertaking any more charitable work. He
says her nerves are sensitive, and that if she does not stop and rest
she will break down sooner or later. I cannot help feeling--though of
course I did not say this to him--that her unhappy marriage is the cause
of her ill health and her nervousness. She was married very young, and
they were so desperately poor that it was a choice between marriage and
school teaching. I cannot blame anybody for not wanting to teach school,
especially if they have as poor a head for arithmetic as I have, but if
I had been Angelica, I should have taught until the day of my death
before I should have married David Blackburn. If she had not been so
young it would be hard to find an excuse for her. Of course he has an
immense fortune, and he comes of a good old family in southside
Virginia--your mother will remember his father--but when you have said
that, you have said all there is to his credit. The family became so
poor after the war that the boy had to go to work while he was scarcely
more than a child, and I believe the only education he has ever had was
the little his mother taught him, and what he managed to pick up at
night after the day's work was over. In spite of his birth he has had
neither the training nor the advantages of a gentleman, and nothing
proves this so conclusively as the fact that, though he was brought up a
Democrat, he voted the Republican ticket at the last two Presidential
elections. There is something black in a man, my dear old father used to
say, who goes over to the negroes---- '"

"Of course Lucy belongs to the old school," said Mrs. Meade. "She talks
just as her father used to--but I cannot see any harm in a man's voting
as he thinks right."

"'I am telling you all this, my dear Caroline, in order that you may
know exactly what the position is. The salary will be good, just what
you make in other cases, and I am sure that Angelica will be kindness
itself to you. As for David Blackburn, I scarcely think he will annoy
you. He treats his wife abominably, I hear, but you can keep out of his
way, and it is not likely that he will be openly rude to you when you
meet. The papers just now are full of him because, after going over to
the Republicans, he does not seem satisfied with their ways.

"'Give my fondest love to your mother, and tell her how thankful I am
that she and I are not obliged to live through a second war. One is
enough for any woman, and I know she will agree with me--especially if
she could read some of the letters my daughter writes from France. I
feel every hour I live how thankful we ought to be to a kind Providence
for giving us a President who has kept us out of this war. Robert says
if there were not any other reason to vote for Mr. Wilson, that would be
enough--and with Mr. Hughes in the White House who knows but we should
be in the midst of it all very soon. David Blackburn is making fiery
speeches about the duty of America's going in, but some men can never
have enough of a fight, and I am sure the President knows what is best
for us, and will do what he thinks is right.

"'Be sure to telegraph me if you can come, and I will meet your train in
Angelica's car.

"'Your affectionate friend,

      LUCY COLFAX.

"'I forgot to tell you that Doctor Boland says I am prejudiced against
David Blackburn, but I do not think I am. I tell only what I hear, for
the stories are all over Richmond.'"

As Caroline finished the letter she raised her head with a laugh.

"It sounds like a good place, and as for Bluebeard--well, he can't kill
me. I don't happen to be his wife."

Her figure, with its look of relaxed energy, of delicate yet inflexible
strength, straightened swiftly, while her humorous smile played like an
edge of light over her features. The old lady, watching her closely,
remembered the way Caroline's dead father had laughed in his youth.
"She is as like him as a girl could be," she thought, with her eyes on
her daughter's wide white brow, which had always seemed to her a shade
too strong and thoughtful for a woman. Only the softly curving line of
hair and the large radiant eyes kept the forehead from being almost
masculine. "She might be as pretty as Maud if only she had more colour
and her brow and chin were as soft as her eyes. Her mouth isn't full and
red like Maud's, and her nose isn't nearly so straight, but the girls'
father used to say that the best nose after all is a nose that nobody
remembers." Smiling vaguely at the recollection, Mrs. Meade readjusted
her mental processes with an effort, and took up her work. "I hope Lucy
is prejudiced against him," she observed brightly. "You know her father
was once Governor of Virginia, and she can't stand anybody who doesn't
support the Democratic Party."

"But she says he treats his wife abominably, and that it's all over
Richmond!" exclaimed Maud indignantly.

Before this challenge Mrs. Meade quailed. "If she is prejudiced about
one thing, she may be about others," she protested helplessly.

"Well, he can't hurt me," remarked Caroline with firmness. "People can't
hurt you unless you let them." Nothing, she felt, in an uncertain world
was more certain than this--no man could ever hurt her again. She knew
life now; she had acquired experience; she had learned philosophy; and
no man, not even Bluebeard himself, could ever hurt her again.

"There was something about him in the paper this morning," said
Margaret, the serious and silent one of the family. "I didn't read it,
but I am sure that I saw his name in the headlines. It was about an
independent movement in politics."

"Well, I'm not afraid of independent movements," rejoined Caroline
gaily, "and I'm not like Mrs. Colfax--for I don't care what he does to
the Democratic Party."

"I hate to have you go there, my dear," Mrs. Meade's voice shook a
little, "but, of course, you must do what you think right." She
remembered the empty flour barrel, and the falling fence rails, and the
habit of a merciful Providence that invariably came to her aid at the
eleventh hour. Perhaps, after all, there was a design working through
it, she reflected, as she recovered her sprightliness, and Providence
had arranged the case to meet her necessities. "It seems disagreeable,
but one never knows," she added aloud.

"It isn't the first time I've had a disagreeable case, mother. One can't
nurse seven years and see only the pleasant side of people and things."

"Yes, I know, my child, I know. You have had so much experience." She
felt quite helpless before the fact of her daughter's experience. "Only
if he really does ill treat his wife, and you have to see it----"

"If I see it, perhaps I can stop it. I suppose even Bluebeard might have
been stopped if anybody had gone about it with spirit. It won't be my
first sudden conversion." Her eyes were still laughing, but her mouth
was stern, and between the arched black eyebrows three resolute little
lines had appeared. Before her "unfortunate experience," Mrs. Meade
thought sadly, there had been no grimness in Caroline's humour.

"You have a wonderful way of bringing out the good in people, Caroline.
Your Uncle Clarence was telling me last Sunday that he believed you
could get the best out of anybody."

"Then granting that Bluebeard has a best, I'd better begin to dig for it
as soon as I get there."

"I am glad you can take it like that. If you weren't so capable, so
resourceful, I'd never be easy about you a minute, but you are too
intelligent to let yourself get into difficulties that you can't find a
way out of." The old lady brightened as quickly as she had saddened.
After all, if Caroline had been merely an ordinary girl she could never
have turned to nursing so soon after the wreck of her happiness. "If a
man had broken my heart when I was a girl, I believe I should have died
of it," she told herself. "Certainly, I should never have been able to
hold up my head and go on laughing like that. I suppose it was pride
that kept her up, but it is queer the way that pride affects people so
differently. Now a generation ago pride would not have made a girl laugh
and take up work. It would have killed her." And there flashed through
her thoughts, with the sanguine irrelevance of her habit of mind, "What
I have never understood is how any man could go off with a little
yellow-haired simpleton like that after knowing Caroline. Yet, I
suppose, as Clarence said, if she hadn't been a simpleton, it would have
been that much worse."

"Well, I'm going," said Caroline so briskly that her mother and sisters
looked at her in surprise. "Jonas will have to saddle Billy and take the
telegram to the station, and then you can stop knitting and help me
finish those caps. This is my war and I'm going to fight it through to
the end."

She went out with the telegram, and a little later when she came back
and turned again to the window, Mrs. Meade saw that her eyes were
shining. After all, it looked sometimes as if Caroline really liked a
battle. Always when things went wrong or appeared disastrous, this
shining light came to her eyes.

Outside an eddying wind was driving the rain in gusts up the avenue, and
the old cedar dashed its boughs, with a brushing sound, against the
blurred window panes. As Caroline stood there she remembered that her
father had loved the cedar, and there drifted into her thoughts the
words he had spoken to her shortly before his death. "I haven't much to
leave you, daughter, but I leave you one good thing--courage. Never
forget that it isn't the victory that matters, it is the fight."

She heard Mrs. Meade telling Jonas, who was starting to the station,
that he must haul a load of wood from Pine Hill when the rain was over,
and while she listened, it seemed to her that she had never really known
her mother until this instant--that she had never understood her simple
greatness. "She has fought every minute," she thought, "she has had a
hard life, and yet no one would know it. It has not kept her from being
sweet and gay and interested in every one else. Even now in that calico
dress, with an apron on, she looks as if she were brimming with
happiness." Out of the wreck of life, out of poverty and sacrifice and
drudgery, she realized that her mother had stood for something fine and
clear and permanent--for an ideal order. She had never muddled things
under the surface; she had kept in touch with realities; she had looked
always through the changing tissue of experience to the solid structure
of life. Like the old house she had held through all vicissitudes to her
high standards.

Then her thoughts left her mother, and she faced the unknown future with
the defiant courage she had won from disillusionment. "If we were not so
poor I'd go to France," she reflected, "but how could they possibly do
without the hundred dollars a month I can earn?" No, whatever happened
she must stick to her task, and her task was keeping the roof from
falling in over her mother and the girls. After a month's rest at The
Cedars, she would start again on the round of uninspiring patients and
tedious monotony. The place Mrs. Colfax offered her seemed to her
uninteresting and even sordid, and yet she knew that nothing better
awaited her. She hated darkness and mystery, and the house into which
she was going appeared to her to be both dark and mysterious. She was
sure of her own strength; she had tested her courage and her endurance,
and she was not afraid; yet for some vague and inexplicable reason she
shrank from the position she had accepted. Mrs. Colfax's picture of the
situation she thought tinged with melodrama, and her honest and lucid
intelligence despised the melodramatic. They might all have been on the
stage--the good wife, the brutal husband, and the delicate child; they
seemed to her as unrelated to actual life as the sombre ghost that
stalked through Hamlet.

"Angelica! It is a lovely name," she mused, seizing upon the one
charming thing in Mrs. Colfax's description, "I wonder what she is
like?" Fair, graceful, suffering, she saw this unknown woman against the
background of the unhappy home, in an atmosphere of mystery and
darkness. "She must be weak," she thought. "If she were not weak, she
would not let him hurt her." And she longed to pour some of her own
strength of will, her own independence and determination and philosophy,
into the imaginary figure of Mrs. Blackburn. "It may be that I can help
her. If I can only help her a little, it will all be worth while."

She tried presently to think of other things--of the caps she must
finish, of the uniforms she had intended to make during her vacation, of
the piece of white lawn she must cut up into kerchiefs, of the mending
she would ask the girls to do for her before they went to bed. There was
so much to occupy her time and her thoughts in the one evening that was
left to her--yet, do what she would--look where she pleased--the sweet
veiled image of Mrs. Blackburn floated to her through the twilight, up
the long, dim road and round the bend in the avenue--as if this stranger
with the lovely name were the "something different" she had waited for
in the past. By a miracle of imagination she had transferred this single
character into actual experience. The sense of mystery was still there,
but the unreality had vanished. It was incredible the way a woman whose
face she had never seen had entered into her life. "Why, she is more
real than anything," she thought in surprise. "She is more real even
than the war."

For the war had not touched her. She stood secure, enclosed, protected
from disaster, in her little green corner of southside Virginia. Her
personal life had not been overpowered and submerged in the current of
impersonal forces. The age of small things still surrounded her--but the
quiver and vibration of great movements, of a world in dissolution, the
subdued, insistent undercurrent of new spiritual energies in
action--these were reaching her, with the ebb and flow of psychological
processes, as they were reaching the Virginia in which she lived.

The world was changing--changing--while she went toward it.




CHAPTER II

THE TIME


At midnight, when she was alone in her room, Caroline's mind passed from
an intense personal realization of the Blackburns to a broader
conception of the time in which she was living--the time which this
generation had helped to create, and which, like some monster of the
imagination, was now devouring its happiness. She thought of her
father--a man of intellectual abilities who had spent his life out of
touch with his environment, in an uncongenial employment. Young as she
was when he died, she had been for years the solitary confidant of his
mind, for he also, like these strangers into whose lives she was about
to enter, had been the victim of the illimitable and inscrutable forces
which shape the thought of an age. He had been different from his
generation, and because he had been different, it had destroyed him. Yet
his single idea had outlived the multitudinous actions and reactions
that surrounded him. He saw not to-day, but to-morrow; and though he was
of another mettle from this Blackburn of whom she had been reading, he
appeared now in her fancy to take a place beside him in the vivid life
of the age.

The lamp was smoking, and after lowering the wick, she sat gazing into
the darkness beyond the loosened shutters, which rattled when the wind
shook them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in the early autumn of nineteen hundred and sixteen, the moment
in history when America, hesitating on the verge of war, discovered that
it was no longer an Anglo-Saxon nation; that, in spite of its language
and literature, its shell of customs and traditions, a new race had been
created out of a complicated mass of diverse interacting sympathies,
prejudices, attractions, and repulsions. Confronted now with problems
demanding a definite expression of the national will, it became evident
that the pioneer stock had undergone profound modifications, and that
from a mingling of many strains had been born an emphatic American
spirit, with aspirations essentially different from those of the races
from which its lifeblood was drawn. In the arrogant vigour of youth this
spirit resented any disposition on the part of its kindred to dictate or
even influence its policy or its purpose.

For two years Europe had been at war. The outbreak of the struggle had
come as a distant thunderbolt to a nation unaccustomed to threatening
armies, and ignorant of the triumphant menace of military ideals; and
stunned by a calamity which it had believed impossible, America had been
inclined at first to condemn indiscriminately those who had permitted
the disaster for apparently insignificant causes. There was sympathy
with Belgium because it had been destroyed; with France because it had
been invaded; and with England because it had worked sincerely in the
interests of peace; but as early as the autumn of nineteen hundred and
sixteen this sympathy was little more than uncrystallized sentiment. To
the people the problem was irrelevant and disguised in words. For a
century they had been taught that their geographical isolation was
indestructible, and that European history concerned them only after it
had been successfully transmuted into literature. The effect of these
political illusions had been accentuated by the immediate demands upon
the thoughts and energies of the nation, by the adventure of conquering
a rich and undeveloped continent, and by the gradual adjustment of
complex institutions to a rapidly expanding social and economic life.
Secure in its remoteness, the country had grown careless in its
diplomacy. Commerce was felt to be vital, but foreign relations were
cheerfully left to the President, with the assumption that he was acting
under the special guidance of Providence, on those memorable occasions
when he acted at all. With the sinking of the _Lusitania_, the spirit of
the country had flamed into a passionate demand for redress or war. Then
the indignation had been gradually allayed by diplomatic phrases and
bewildering technicalities; and the masses of the people, busy with an
extravagant war prosperity, resigned international matters into the
hands of the Government, while, with an uneasy conscience but genuine
American optimism, they continued actively to hope for the best.

To an aerial philosopher the Government of the hour might have appeared
a composite image of the time--sentimental, evasive of realities,
idealistic in speech, and materialistic in purpose and action. Dominated
by a single strong intellect, it was composed mainly of men who were
without knowledge of world questions or experience in world affairs. At
the moment war was gathering, yet the demand for preparation was either
ignored or ridiculed as hysteria.

As the national elections approached both parties avoided the direct
issue, and sought by compromise and concession to secure the support of
the non-American groups. While the country waited for leadership, the
leaders hesitated in the midst of conflicting currents of public
sentiment, and endeavoured to win popularity through an irresolute
policy of opportunism. To Virginians, who thought politically in terms
of a party, the great question was resolved into a personal problem.
Where the President led they would follow.

From the beginning there had been many Americans who looked beneath the
shifting surface of events, and beheld in this war a challenge to the
principles which are the foundation-stones of Western civilization. They
realized that this was a war not of men, not of materials, but of
ideals--of ideals which are deeper than nationality since they are the
common heritage of the human race. They saw that the ideals assailed
were the basis of American institutions, and that if they should be
overthrown the American Republic could not endure. As in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the problems of European civilization were
fought out in the forests of America, so to-day, they felt, the future
of America would be decided on the battlefields of Europe. The cause was
the cause of humanity, therefore it was America's war.

And now as the elections drew nearer, these clearer thinkers stood apart
and watched the grotesque political spectacle, with its unctuous
promises of "peace and prosperity," in the midst of world tragedy.
Though the struggle would be close, it was already evident that the
sentiment of the country was drifting, not so much toward the policies
of the administration, as away from the invectives of the opposite
party. Since neither party stood for principle, nor had the courage to
declare fearlessly for the maintenance of American rights, there was a
measure of comfort in the reflection that, though the purposes of the
Government were not wholly approved, they were at least partly known.

By the early autumn the campaign had passed through a fog of
generalization and settled into a sham battle of personal and sectional
issues, while in Europe the skies grew darker, and the events of the
coming year gathered like vultures before the approaching storm.

And always, while America waited and watched, the forces that mould the
destinies of men and of nations, were moving, profound, obscure, and
impenetrable, beneath the surface of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Caroline's lamp flickered and went out, while her thoughts rushed back
to the shelter of the house. The room was in darkness, but beyond the
shutters, where the wind swept in gusts, the clouds had scattered, and a
few stars were shining.




CHAPTER III

BRIARLAY


In the train Caroline sat straight and still, with her eyes on the
landscape, which unrolled out of the golden web of the distance. Now and
then, when her gaze shifted, she could see the pale oval of her face
glimmering unsteadily in the window-pane, like a light that is going out
slowly. Even in the glass, where her eyes were mere pools of darkness,
her mouth looked sad and stern, as if it had closed over some tragic and
for ever unutterable secret. It was only when one saw her eyes--those
eyes which under the arch of her brows and hair made one think of
bluebirds flying--it was only when their colour and radiance lighted her
features, that her face melted to tenderness.

While she sat there she thought of a hundred things, yet never once did
she think of herself or her own interests as the centre around which her
imagination revolved. If life had repressed and denied her, it had
trained her mental processes into lucid and orderly habits. Unlike most
women, she had learned to think impersonally, and to think in relations.
Her spirit might beat its wings against the bars of the cage, but she
knew that it would never again rise, with a dart of ecstasy, to test its
freedom and its flight in the sky. She had had her day of joy. It was
short, and it had left only sadness, yet because she had once had it,
even for so brief a time, she might be disillusioned, but she could not
feel wholly defrauded. Through that dead emotion she had reached, for an
instant, the heart of life; she had throbbed with its rapture; she had
felt, known, and suffered. And in confronting the illusions of life, she
had found the realities. Because she had learned that thought, not
emotion, is the only permanent basis of happiness, she had been able to
found her house on a rock. It was worth a good deal of pain to discover
that neither desire nor disappointment is among the eternal verities of
experience.

To-day, as on many other days since she had passed through her training
in the hospital, she was leaving home, after a vacation in which she had
thought of herself scarcely a minute, for the kind of service in which
she would not have time to think of herself at all. Work had been the
solution of her problem, the immediate restorative; and she knew that it
had helped her through the anguish, and--worse than anguish--through the
bleakness of her tragedy, as nothing else could have done. "I will not
sit down and think of myself," she had said over and over in those first
bitter days, and in the years since then, while she was passionately
rebuilding her universe, she had kept true to her resolve. She had been
active always; she had never brooded among the romantic ruins of the
past. If her inner life had grown indifferent, cold, and a little hard,
her external sympathies had remained warm, clear, and glowing. The
comfort she had denied herself, she had given abundantly to others; the
strength she had not wasted in brooding, she had spent freely in a
passion of service and pity. In her face there was the beauty and
sweetness of a fervent, though disciplined, spirit.

"I am so sorry to leave them," she thought, with her eyes on the amber,
crimson, and purple of the forest. "Mother is no longer young. She needs
all the help I can give her, and the girls have so few pleasures. I wish
there was something more I could do for them. I would work my fingers to
the bone to give them a little happiness." And there floated before her,
against the background of the forest, a still yet swiftly fleeting
vision, of the fire-lit room, with the girls gathered, knitting, on the
hearthrug, and her mother turning to look at her with the good and
gentle expression that shone always in her face. Beyond the window the
rain fell; the cedar brushed its boughs against the panes with a sound
like that of ghostly fingers; on the roof above she heard the measured
dropping of acorns. In the flickering light the old mahogany gleamed
with a bronze and gold lustre, and the high white bed, under its fringed
Marseilles coverlet, stood, like an embodiment of peace and sleep, in
the corner. "It looks so happy, so sheltered," she thought, "and yet--"
she was going to add, "and yet unhappiness came up the road, from a
great distance, and found me there----" but she shattered the vague idea
before it formed in her mind.

At the station Mrs. Colfax was waiting, and though Caroline had seen her
only once, ten years ago, she recognized her by a bird-like, pecking
manner she had never forgotten. As the ruin of a famous beauty the old
lady was not without historic distinction. Though she was now shrunken
and withered, and strung with quaint gold chains, which rattled with
echoes of an earlier period, she still retained the gracious social art
of the "sixties." Her eyes, hollowed under thin grey eyebrows, were
black and piercing, and her small aristocratic features looked mashed,
as if life had dealt them too hard a blow.

"My dear child, I should have known you anywhere, so, you see, I haven't
yet lost my memory. It was years ago that I met you, wasn't it?"

A man in livery--she discovered afterwards that he was the Blackburn's
footman--took her bag, and Caroline helped Mrs. Colfax out of the
station and into the big limousine at the door. "It was so good of you
to meet me," she said, for it was all she could think of, and to the
last she had been haunted by the fear that Mr. Blackburn might decide to
come for her.

"Good of me? Why, I wanted to come." As she watched Caroline's face, the
old lady was thinking shrewdly, "She isn't so pretty as she used to be.
I doubt if many men would think twice about her--but she has a lovely
expression. I never saw a more spiritual face."

Once safely started she rambled on while the car shot into Franklin
Street, and ran straight ahead in the direction of Monument Avenue.

"I always meant to meet you, and just as soon as your telegram came, I
'phoned Angelica about the car. She wanted to come down herself, but the
doctor makes her lie down two hours every afternoon. Do you see that new
office building at the corner? Your mother and I went to school on that
spot before we boarded at Miss Braxton's in Petersburg. At that time
this part of Franklin Street was very fashionable, but everything has
moved west, and everybody who can afford it is building in the country.
It isn't like your mother's day at all. New people have taken possession
of the town, and anybody who has money can get into society now. We are
coming to Monument Avenue. All the houses are brand new, but it is
nothing to the country outside. The Blackburns' place just off the River
Road is the finest house anywhere about Richmond, they tell me. He built
it the year before his marriage, and I remember an artist, who came down
to lecture before the Woman's Club, saying to me that Briarlay was like
its owner--everything big in it was good and everything little in it was
bad. I don't know much about such things, but he poked fun at the
fireplaces--said they were Gothic or Italian--I can't remember
which--and that the house, of course, is Colonial."

A fit of coughing stopped her, and while she dived into her black silk
bag for a handkerchief, Caroline asked curiously, "Has Mr. Blackburn so
much money?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose he is the richest man we have here. He owns the
large steel works down by the river, and he discovered some new cheap
process, they say, which brought him a fortune. I remember hearing this,
but I haven't much of a head for such matters. Just now he is having a
good deal of trouble with his men, and I'm sure it serves him right for
deserting the ways of his father, and going over to the Republicans.
Charles takes up for him because David has always stood by him in
business, but of course out of respect for father's memory he couldn't
openly sympathize with his disloyalty."

"Does anybody follow him, or is he all alone?" inquired Caroline, less
from active interest in the question than from the desire to keep the
old lady animated.

"You'll have to ask Charles, and he will be delighted to answer. In this
new-fangled idea about breaking the solid South--did you ever hear such
stuff and nonsense?--I believe he has had a very bad influence over a
number of young men. Then, of late, he has been talking extravagantly
about its being our duty to go into this war--as if we had any business
mixing ourselves up in other people's quarrels--and that appeals to a
lot of fire-eaters and fight-lovers. Of course, a man as rich as David
Blackburn will always have a trail of sycophants and addlepates at his
heels. What I say is that if Providence had intended us to be in this
war, we shouldn't have been given a President wise and strong enough to
keep us out of it. If Mr. Wilson is elected for a second term--and my
brother Charles says there isn't a doubt of it--it will be because the
country feels that he has kept us out of war. There was a long editorial
in the paper this morning warning us that, if Mr. Hughes is elected, we
shall be fighting Germany within two months. Then think of all the
destruction and the dreadful high taxes that would follow----"

"But I thought there was a great deal of war spirit here? At home we
work all the time for the Allies."

"Oh, there is, there is. Angelica is president or chairman of two or
three societies for helping the wounded, and they even made me head of
something--I never can remember the name of it--but it has to do with
Belgian orphans. Everybody wants to help, but that is different from
going into the actual fighting, you know, and people are very much
divided. A few, like David Blackburn, wanted us to declare war the day
after the Lusitania was destroyed, but most of us feel--especially the
wiser heads--that the President knows more about it than any one
else----"

"I suppose he does," admitted Caroline, and she added while she looked
at the appointments of the car, "What a beautiful car!"

She sighed gently, for she was thinking of the rotting fence rails and
the leaking roof at The Cedars. How far she could make a few thousand
dollars go in repairing the house and the out-buildings! If only the
leaks could be mended, and the roof reshingled over the wings! If only
they could hire a younger man to help poor old Jones, who was growing
decrepit!

"This car is Angelica's," said the old lady, "and everything she has is
wonderful. As soon as she was married she began to re-decorate Briarlay
from garret to cellar. When David first made his money, he went about
buying everything he laid eyes on, and she gave whole wagon-loads of
furniture to her relatives. There are people who insist that Angelica
overdoes things in her way as much as her husband does in his--both were
poor when they grew up--but I maintain that her taste is perfect--simply
perfect. It is all very well for my daughter Lucy, who has studied
interior decoration in New York, to turn up her nose at walls hung with
silk in a country house, but to my mind that pink silk in Angelica's
parlours is the most beautiful thing she could have, and I reckon I've
as good a right to my ideas as Lucy has to hers. After all, as I tell
her, it is only a question of taste."

It was a mild, bright afternoon in October, and as the car turned into
the River Road, the country spread softly, in undulations of green,
gold, and bronze, to the deep blue edge of the horizon. The valley lay
in shadow, while above it shreds of violet mist drifted slowly against
the golden ball of the sun. Near at hand the trees were touched with
flame, but, as they went on, the brilliant leaves melted gradually into
the multi-coloured blend of the distance.

"Mrs. Blackburn must be so beautiful," said Caroline presently. As she
approached Briarlay--the house of darkness and mystery that she had seen
in her imagination--she felt that the appeal of this unknown woman
deepened in vividness and pathos, that it rushed to meet her and
enveloped her with the intensity and sweetness of a perfume. It was as
if the name Angelica were not a sound, but a thing composed of colour
and fragrance--sky-blue like a cloud and as sweet-scented as lilies.

"She was the most beautiful girl who ever came out in Richmond," replied
Mrs. Colfax. "The family was so poor that her mother couldn't do
anything for her--she didn't even have a coming-out party--but with a
girl like that nothing matters. David Blackburn saw her at some
reception, and lost his head completely. I won't say his heart because
I've never believed that he had one. Of course he was far and away the
best chance she was ever likely to have down here, for it wasn't as if
they could have sent her to the White Sulphur. They couldn't afford
anything, and they were even educating Angelica to be a teacher. What
she would have done if David Blackburn hadn't come along when he did, I
cannot imagine--though, as I wrote you, I'd have taught school to my
dying day before I'd have married him."

"But didn't she care anything for him?" asked Caroline, for it was
incredible to her that such a woman should have sold herself.

Mrs. Colfax sniffed at her smelling-salts. "Of course I haven't the
right to an opinion," she rejoined, after a pause, "but as I always
reply to Charles when he tells me I am talking too much, 'Well, I can't
help having eyes.' I remember as well as if it were yesterday the way
Angelica looked when she told me of her engagement. 'I have decided to
marry David Blackburn, Cousin Lucy,' she said, and then she added, just
as if the words were wrung out of her, 'I loathe the thought of
teaching!' It doesn't sound a bit like Angelica, but those were her very
words. And now, my dear, tell me something about your mother. Does she
still keep up her wonderful spirits?"

After this she asked so many questions that Caroline was still answering
them when the car turned out of the road and sped up a long, narrow
lane, which was thickly carpeted with amber leaves. At the end of the
lane, the vista broadened into an ample sweep of lawn surrounding a red
brick house with white columns and low wings half hidden in Virginia
creeper. It was a beautiful house--so beautiful that Caroline held her
breath in surprise. Under the October sky, in the midst of clustering
elms, which shed a rain of small bronze leaves down on the bright grass
and the dark evergreens, the house appeared to capture and imprison the
mellow light of the sunset. It was so still, except for a curving flight
of swallows over the roof, and the elm leaves, which fell slowly and
steadily in the soft air, that the gleaming windows, the red walls, and
the white columns, borrowed, for a moment, the visionary aspect of a
place seen in a dream.

"There is a formal garden at the back, full of box-borders and
cypresses--only they are really red cedars," said Mrs. Colfax. "From
the terrace there is a good view of the river, and lower down Angelica
has made an old-fashioned garden, with grass walks and rose arbours and
mixed flower beds. I never saw such Canterbury bells as she had last
summer."

As they entered the circular drive, a touring car passed them slowly on
the way out, and a man leaned forward and bowed to Mrs. Colfax. From her
casual glance Caroline received an impression of a strong, sunburned
face, with heavy brows and dark hair going a little grey on the temples.

"What searching eyes that man has," she observed carelessly, and added
immediately, "You know him?"

"Why, that was David Blackburn. I forgot you had never seen him."

"He isn't at all what I expected him to be." While Caroline spoke she
felt an inexplicable sense of disappointment. She scarcely knew what she
had expected; yet she realized that he was different from some vague
image she had had in her mind.

"His face looked so set I'm afraid he has been quarrelling with
Angelica," said the old lady. "Poor child, I feel so distressed."

They had reached the house, and as they were about to alight, the door
opened, and a girl in a riding habit, with two Airedale terriers at her
heels, strolled out on the porch. At sight of Mrs. Colfax, she came
quickly forward, and held out her hand. She had a splendid figure, which
the riding habit showed to advantage, and though her face was plain, her
expression was pleasant and attractive. Without the harsh collar and the
severe arrangement of her hair, which was braided and tied up with a
black ribbon, Caroline imagined that she might be handsome.

Mrs. Colfax greeted her as "Miss Blackburn" and explained immediately
that she lived at Briarlay with her brother. "She is a great lover of
dogs," added the old lady, "and it is a pity that Angelica doesn't like
to have them about."

"Oh, they don't mind, they're such jolly beggars," replied the girl in a
cheerful, slangy manner, "and besides they get all they want of me. I'm
so sorry you didn't come in time for tea. Now I'm just starting for a
ride with Alan."

While she was speaking a man on horseback turned from the lane into the
drive, and Caroline saw her face change and brighten until it became
almost pretty. "There he is now!" she exclaimed, and then she called out
impulsively, "Oh, Alan, I've waited for ever!"

He shouted back some words in a gay voice, but Caroline did not catch
them, and before he dismounted, Mrs. Colfax led her through the open
door into the hall.

"That's Alan Wythe," said the old lady in a whisper, and she resumed a
moment later when they stood within the pink silk walls of Angelica's
drawing-room, "Mary has been engaged to him for a year, and I never in
my life saw a girl so much in love. I suppose it's natural enough--he's
charming--but in my day young ladies were more reserved. And now we'll
go straight upstairs to Angelica. She is sure to be lying down at this
hour."

As they passed through the wide hall, and up the beautiful Colonial
staircase, Caroline felt that the luxury of the place bewildered her.
Though the house, except in size, was not unlike country homes she had
seen in southside Virginia, there was nothing in her memory, unless she
summoned back stray recollections of photographs in Sunday newspapers,
that could compare with the decoration of the drawing-room. "It is
beautiful, but there is too much of it," she thought, for her eyes,
accustomed to bare surfaces and the formal purity of Sheraton and
Chippendale, were beginning to discriminate.

"I want you to notice everything when you have time," said Mrs. Colfax.
"I tell Angelica that it is a liberal education just to come inside of
this house."

"It would take weeks to see it," responded Caroline; and then, as she
moved toward a long mirror in the hall upstairs, it seemed to her that
her reflection, in her severe blue serge suit, with the little round
blue hat Diana had trimmed, looked as grotesquely out of place as if she
had been one of the slender Sheraton chairs at The Cedars. "If I appear
a lady I suppose it is as much as I can hope for," she thought, "and
besides nobody will notice me."

The humour leaped to her eyes, while Mrs. Colfax, watching her with a
side-long glance, reflected that Carrie Warwick's daughter had
distinction. Her grace was not merely the grace of a slender body with
flowing lines; it was the grace of word, of glance, of smile, of
gesture, that indefinable and intangible quality which is shed by a
lovely soul as fragrance is shed by a flower. "Even if she lives to be
as old as I am, she will still keep her poise and her charm of
appearance," thought the old lady, "she will never lose it because it
isn't a matter of feature--it isn't dependent on outward beauty. Years
ago she was prettier than she is to-day, but she wasn't nearly so
distinguished." Aloud she said presently, "Your hair grows in such a
nice line on your forehead, my dear, just like your mother's. I remember
we always made her brush hers straight back as you do, so she could show
her 'widow's peak' in the centre. But yours is much darker, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is almost black. Mother's was the loveliest shade of chestnut.
I have a lock of it in an old breast-pin."

A door at the end of the hall opened, and a thin woman, in rusty black
alpaca, came to meet them.

"That's the housekeeper--Matty Timberlake, the very salt of the earth,"
whispered Mrs. Colfax. "She is Angelica's cousin."

When the housekeeper reached them, she stooped and kissed Mrs. Colfax
before she spoke to Caroline. She was a long, narrow, neuralgic woman,
with near-sighted eyes, thin grey hair which hung in wisps on her
forehead, and a look which seemed to complain always that she was poor
and dependent and nobody noticed her.

"Angelica is lying down," she said, "but she would like to speak to Miss
Meade before I take her to her room."

Caroline's heart gave a bound. "At last I shall see her," she thought,
while she followed Mrs. Timberlake down the hall and across the
threshold of Angelica's room. The influence that she had felt first in
the twilight at The Cedars and again in the drive out from Richmond,
welcomed her like a caress.

Her first impression was one of blue and ivory and gold. There was a
bed, painted in garlands, with a scalloped canopy of blue silk; and
Caroline, who was accustomed to mahogany testers or the little iron
beds in the hospital, was conscious of a thrill of delight as she
looked at it. Then her eyes fell on the white bear-skin rug before the
fire, and from the rug they passed to the couch on which Mrs. Blackburn
was lying. The woman and the room harmonized so perfectly that one might
almost have mistaken Angelica for a piece of hand-painted furniture. At
first she appeared all blue silk and pale gold hair and small delicate
features. Then she sat up and held out her hand, and Caroline saw that
she looked not only human, but really tired and frail. There were faint
shadows under her eyes, which were like grey velvet, and her hair,
parted softly in golden wings over her forehead, showed several barely
perceptible creases between her eyebrows. She was so thin that the bones
of her face and neck were visible beneath the exquisite texture of her
flesh, yet the modelling was as perfect as if her head and shoulders had
been chiselled in marble.

"You are Caroline Meade," she said sweetly. "I am so glad you have
come."

"I am glad, too. I wanted to come." The vibrant voice, full of warmth
and sympathy, trembled with pleasure. For once the reality was fairer
than the dream; the woman before her was lovelier than the veiled figure
of Caroline's imagination. It was one of those unforgettable moments
when the mind pauses, with a sensation of delight and expectancy, on the
edge of a new emotion, of an undiscovered country. This was not only
something beautiful and rare; it was different from anything that had
ever happened to her before; it was a part of the romantic mystery that
surrounded the unknown. And it wasn't only that Mrs. Blackburn was so
lovely! More than her beauty, the sweetness of her look, the appeal of
her delicacy, of her feminine weakness, went straight to the heart. It
was as if her nature reached out, with clinging tendrils, seeking
support. She was like a fragile white flower that could not live without
warmth and sunshine.

"The other nurse leaves in the morning," Mrs. Blackburn was saying in
her gentle voice, which carried the merest note of complaint, as if she
cherished at heart some secret yet ineradicable grievance against
destiny, "So you have come at the right moment to save me from anxiety.
I am worried about Letty. You can understand that she is never out of my
thoughts."

"Yes, I can understand, and I hope she will like me."

"She will love you from the first minute, for she is really an
affectionate child, if one knows how to take her. Oh, Miss Meade, you
have taken a load off my shoulders! You look so kind and so competent,
and I feel that I can rely on you. I am not strong, you know, and the
doctor won't let me be much with Letty. He says the anxiety is too
wearing, though, if I had my way, I should never think of myself."

"But you must," said Caroline quietly. She felt that the child's illness
and the terrible cause of it were wrecking Mrs. Blackburn's health as
well as her happiness.

"Of course, I must try to take care of myself because in the end it will
be so much better for Letty." As she answered, Angelica slipped her feet
into a pair of embroidered blue silk _mules_, and rising slowly from her
lace pillows, stood up on the white rug in front of the fire. Though she
was not tall, her extraordinary slenderness gave her the effect of
height and the enchanting lines of one of Botticelli's Graces. "With
you in the house I feel that everything will be easier," she added,
after a minute in which she gazed down at the new nurse with a
thoughtful, appraising look.

"It will be as easy as I can make it. I will do everything that I can."
The words were not spoken lightly, for the opportunity of service had
brought a glow to Caroline's heart, and she felt that her reply was more
than a promise to do her best--that it was a vow of dedication from
which only the future could release her. She had given her pledge of
loyalty, and Mrs. Blackburn had accepted it. From this instant the bond
between them assumed the nature and the obligation of a covenant.

A smile quivered and died on Angelica's lips, while the pathos in her
expression drew the other to her as if there were a visible wound to be
healed. "You will be a blessing. I can tell that when I look at you,"
she murmured; and her speech sounded almost empty after the overflowing
sympathy of the silence. To Caroline it was a relief when the
housekeeper called to her from the doorway, and then led her upstairs to
a bedroom in the third storey.

It was a delightful room overlooking the circular drive, and for a
minute they stood gazing down on the lawn and the evergreens.

"Everything is so lovely!" exclaimed Caroline presently. One could rest
here, she thought, even with hard work and the constant strain, which
she foresaw, on her sympathies.

"Yes, it is pretty," answered the housekeeper. Already Mrs. Timberlake
had proved that, though she might be the salt of the earth, she was a
taciturn and depressing companion--a stranded wreck left over from too
voluble a generation of women.

"And I never saw any one lovelier than Mrs. Blackburn," said Caroline,
"she looks like an angel."

"Well, I reckon there is mighty little you can say against Angelica's
looks unless your taste runs to a trifle more flesh," responded Mrs.
Timberlake drily.

"She ought to be happy," pursued Caroline, with a feeling that was
almost one of resentment. "Anyone as beautiful as that ought to be
happy."

Mrs. Timberlake turned slowly toward her, and Caroline was aware of a
spasmodic stiffening of her figure, as if she were nerving herself for
an outburst. When the explosion came, however, it was in the nature of
an anti-climax.

"I expect you are going to be very useful to her," she said; and in
answer to a hurried summons at the door, she made one of her nervous
gestures, and went out into the hall.

"It would be perfect," thought Caroline, "if I didn't have to meet Mr.
Blackburn"; and she concluded, with a flash of her mother's unquenchable
optimism, "Well, perhaps I shan't see him to-night!"

The sun had set, and almost imperceptibly the afterglow had dissolved
into the twilight. Outside, the lawn and the evergreens were in shadow;
but from the house a misty circle of light fell on the drive, and on a
narrow strip of turf, from which each separate blade of grass emerged
with exaggerated distinctness as if it were illuminated. Within this
circle, with its mysterious penumbra, human life also seemed exaggerated
by the luminous haze which divided it from the partial shadow of the
evening. The house stood enclosed in light as in a garden; and beyond
it, where the obscurity began, there was the space and silence of the
universe. While she stood there, she felt, with a certainty more
profound than a mere mental conviction, that this lighted house
contained, for her, all the joy and tragedy of human experience; that
her life would be interwoven with these other lives as closely as
branches of trees in a forest. The appeal of Mrs. Blackburn had stirred
her heart and intensified her perceptions. From the bleakness of the
last seven years, she had awakened with revived emotions.

"It is just my fancy," she thought, "but I feel as if something
wonderful had really happened--as if life were beginning all over again
to-night."

The words were still in her mind, when a child's laugh rang out from a
window below, and the figure of a man passed from the outlying obscurity
across the illuminated grass. Though he moved so hurriedly out of the
light, she caught the suggestion of a smile; and she had a singular
feeling that he was the same man, and yet not the same man, that she had
seen in the motor.

"I do hope I shan't have to meet him to-night," she repeated at the very
instant that a knock fell on her door, and an old coloured woman came in
to bring a message from Mrs. Blackburn.

She was a benevolent looking, aristocratic negress, with a fine, glossy
skin as brown as a chestnut, and traces of Indian blood in her high
cheekbones. A white handkerchief was bound over her head like a turban,
and her black bombazine dress hung in full, stately folds from her
narrow waist line. For a minute, before delivering her message, she
peered gravely at Caroline by the dim light of the window.

"Ain't you Miss Carrie Warwick's chile, honey? You ax 'er ef'n she's
done forgot de Fitzhugh chillun's mammy? I riz all er de Fitzhugh
chillun."

"Then you must be Mammy Riah? Mother used to tell me about you when I
was a little girl. You told stories just like Bible ones."

"Dat's me, honey, en I sutney is glad ter see you. De chillun dey wuz
al'ays pesterin' me 'bout dose Bible stories jes' exactly de way Letty
wuz doin' dis ve'y mawnin'."

"Tell me something about the little girl. Is she really ill?" asked
Caroline; and it occurred to her, as she put the question, that it was
strange nobody had mentioned the child's malady. Here again the darkness
and mystery of the house she had imagined--that house which was so
unlike Briarlay--reacted on her mind.

The old negress chuckled softly. "Naw'm, she ain' sick, dat's jes' some
er Miss Angy's foolishness. Dar ain' nuttin' in de worl' de matter wid
Letty 'cep'n de way dey's brung 'er up. You cyarn' raise a colt ez ef'n
hit wuz a rabbit, en dar ain' no use'n tryin'." Then she remembered her
message. "Miss Angy sez she sutney would be erbleeged ter you ef'n you
'ould come erlong down ter dinner wid de res' un um. Miss Molly Waver's
done 'phone she cyarn' come, en dar ain' nobody else in de house ez kin
set in her place."

For an instant Caroline hesitated. "If I go down, I'll have to meet Mr.
Blackburn," she said under her breath.

A gleam of humour shot into the old woman's eyes.

"Marse David! Go 'way f'om yer, chile, whut you skeered er Marse David
fur?" she rejoined. "He ain' gwine ter hu't you."




CHAPTER IV

ANGELICA


At a quarter of eight o'clock, when Caroline was waiting to be called,
Mrs. Timberlake came in to ask if she might fasten her dress.

"Oh, you're all hooked and ready," she remarked. "I suppose nurses learn
to be punctual."

"They have to be, so much depends on it."

"Well, you look sweet. I've brought you a red rose from the table. It
will lighten up that black dress a little."

"I don't often go to dinner parties," said Caroline while she pinned on
the rose. "Will there be many people?" There was no shyness in her voice
or manner; and it seemed to Mrs. Timberlake that the black gown, with
its straight, slim skirt, which had not quite gone out of fashion, made
her appear taller and more dignified. Her hair, brushed smoothly back
from her forehead, gave to her clear profile the look of some delicate
etching. There was a faint flush in her cheeks, and her eyes were richer
and bluer than they had looked in the afternoon. She was a woman, not a
girl, and her charm was the charm not of ignorance, but of intelligence,
wisdom, and energy.

"Only twelve," answered the housekeeper, "sometimes we have as many as
twenty." There was an expression of pain in her eyes, due to chronic
neuralgia, and while she spoke she pressed her fingers to her temples.

"Is Mr. Wythe coming?" asked Caroline.

"He always comes. It is so hard to find unattached men that the same
ones get invited over and over. Then there are Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers.
They are from New York and the dinner is given to them--and the
Ashburtons and Robert Colfax and his wife--who was Daisy Carter--she is
very good looking but a little flighty--and Mr. Peyton, old Mrs.
Colfax's brother."

"I know--'Brother Charles'--but who are the Ashburtons?"

"Colonel Ashburton is very amusing. He is on Mr. Blackburn's side in
politics, and they are great friends. His wife is dull, but she means
well, and she is useful on committees because she is a good worker and
never knows when she is put upon. Well, it's time for you to go down, I
reckon. I just ran up from the pantry to see if I could help you."

A minute later, when Caroline left her room, Mary Blackburn joined her,
and the two went downstairs together. Mary was wearing a lovely gown of
amber silk, and she looked so handsome that Caroline scarcely recognized
her. Her black hair, piled on the crown of her head, gave her, in spite
of her modern dash and frankness, a striking resemblance to one of the
old portraits at The Cedars. She was in high spirits, for the ride with
Alan had left her glowing with happiness.

"We'd better hustle. They are waiting for us," she said. "I was late
getting in, so I tossed on the first dress I could find."

Then she ran downstairs, and Caroline, following her more slowly, found
herself presently shaking hands with the dreaded David Blackburn. He was
so quiet and unassuming that only when he had taken her hand and had
asked her a few conventional questions about her trip, did she realize
that she was actually speaking to him. In evening clothes, surrounded by
the pink silk walls of Angelica's drawing-room, his face looked firmer
and harder than it had appeared in the motor; but even in this
extravagant setting, he impressed her as more carefully dressed and
groomed than the average Virginian of her acquaintance. She saw now that
he was younger than she had at first thought; he couldn't, she surmised,
be much over forty. There were deep lines in his forehead; his features
had settled into the granite-like immobility that is acquired only
through grim and resolute struggle; and his dark, carefully brushed hair
showed a silvery gloss on the temples--yet these things, she realized,
were the marks of battles, not of years. What struck her most was the
quickness with which the touch of arrogance in his expression melted
before the engaging frankness of his smile.

"I'm glad you've come. I hope you will get on with Letty," he said; and
then, as he turned away, the vision of Angelica, in white chiffon and
pearls, floated toward her from a group by the fireplace.

"Colonel Ashburton is an old friend of your mother's, Miss Meade. He
took her to her first cotillion, and he is eager to meet her daughter."
There followed swift introductions to the Ashburtons, the Chalmers, and
the Colfaxes; and not until Caroline was going into the dining-room on
the arm of Mrs. Colfax's "Brother Charles," was she able to distinguish
between the stranger from New York, who looked lean and wiry and
strenuous, and the white-haired old gentleman who had taken her mother
to the cotillion. She was not confused; and yet her one vivid impression
was of Angelica, with her pale Madonna head, her soft grey eyes under
thick lashes, and her lovely figure in draperies of chiffon that flowed
and rippled about her.

Though the house was an inappropriate setting for David Blackburn, it
was, for all its newness and ornate accessories, the perfect frame for
his wife's beauty. She reminded Caroline of the allegorical figure of
Spring in one of the tapestries on the dining-room walls--only she was
so much softer, so much more ethereal, as if the floral image had come
to life and been endowed with a soul. It was the rare quality of Mrs.
Blackburn's beauty that in looking at her one thought first of her
spirit--of the sweetness and goodness which informed and animated her
features. The appeal she made was the appeal of an innocent and
beautiful creature who is unhappy. Against the background of an
unfortunate marriage, she moved with the resigned and exalted step of a
Christian martyr.

Sitting silently between the flippant "Brother Charles" and the imposing
Colonel Ashburton, who was still talking of her mother, Caroline tried
to follow the conversation while she studied the faces and the dresses
of the women. Mrs. Chalmers, who was large and handsome in a superb gown
of green velvet, appeared heavy and indifferent, and Mrs. Ashburton, an
over-earnest middle-aged woman, with a classic profile and a look of
impersonal yet hungry philanthropy, was so detached that she seemed,
when she spoke, to be addressing an invisible audience. In spite of her
regular features and her flawless complexion, she was as devoid of charm
as an organized charity. On her right sat Allan Wythe, a clean-cut,
good-looking chap, with romantic eyes and the air of a sportsman.
Though Caroline had heard that he wrote plays, she thought that he
needed only a gun and a dog to complete his appearance. "He is the only
good-looking man here," she concluded. "Some people might think Mr.
Blackburn good-looking, but I suppose I know too much about him." And
she remembered that her father had said a man's character always showed
in his mouth.

Next to Alan there was Mrs. Robert Colfax--a beautiful Spanish-looking
creature, straight as a young poplar, and as full of silvery lights and
shadows. She had no sooner sat down than she began to ask Angelica, with
an agreeable though flighty animation, if she had seen somebody since he
had come back from his wedding trip? For the next quarter of an hour
they kept up an excited interchange of gossip, while Mr. Chalmers
listened with polite attention, and Caroline tried in vain to discover
who the unknown person was, and why his wedding trip should interest
anybody so profoundly.

"Well, I never thought he'd get another wife after his last
misadventure," rippled Mrs. Colfax, "but they tell me he had only to
wink an eyelash. I declare I don't know a more discouraging spectacle
than the men that some women will marry."

At the other end of the table, Mrs. Blackburn was talking in a low voice
to Mr. Chalmers, and the broken clauses of her conversation were
punctuated by the laughter of the irrepressible Daisy, who was never
silent. Though Angelica was not brilliant, though she never said
anything clever enough for one to remember, she had what her friends
called "a sweet way of talking," and a flattering habit, when she was
with a man, of ending every sentence with a question. "I'm sure I don't
see how we are to keep out of this war, do you, Mr. Chalmers?" or "I
think the simplest way to raise money would be by some tableaux, don't
you, Colonel Ashburton?"; and still a little later there floated to
Caroline, "I tell Mary she rides too much. Don't you think it is a pity
for a woman to spend half her life in the saddle? Of course if she
hasn't anything else to do--but in this age, don't you feel, there are
so many opportunities of service?"

"Oh, when it comes to that," protested Mrs. Colfax, in the tone of airy
banter she affected, "There are many more of us trying to serve than
there are opportunities of service. I was telling mother only the other
day that I couldn't see a single war charity because the vice-presidents
are so thick."

A lull fell on the table, and for the first time Caroline heard
Blackburn's voice. Mrs. Chalmers was asking him about the house, and he
was responding with a smile that made his face almost young and
sanguine. His mouth, when he was not on guard, was sensitive and even
emotional, and his eyes lost the sharpness that cut through whatever
they looked at.

"Why, yes, I built it before my marriage," he was saying. "Dodson drew
the plans. You know Dodson?"

Mrs. Chalmers nodded. "He has done some good things in New York. And
this lovely furniture," she was plainly working hard to draw him out.
"Where did you find it?"

He met the question lightly. "Oh, I had a lot of stuff here that
Angelica got rid of."

From the other end of the table Mrs. Blackburn's voice floated
plaintively, "There isn't a piece of it left," she said. "It made the
house look exactly like an Italian hotel."

The remark struck Caroline as so unfortunate that she turned, with a
start of surprise, to glance at her hostess. Could it be that Mrs.
Blackburn was without tact? Could it be that she did not realize the
awkwardness of her interruption? Yet a single glance at Angelica was
sufficient to answer these questions. A woman who looked like that
couldn't be lacking in social instinct. It must have been a casual slip,
nothing more. She was probably tired--hadn't old Mrs. Colfax said that
she was delicate?--and she did not perceive the effect of her words.
Glancing again in Blackburn's direction, Caroline saw that his features
had hardened, and that the hand on the tablecloth was breaking a piece
of bread into crumbs.

The change in his manner was so sudden that Caroline understood, even
before she saw the twitching of his eyebrows, and the gesture of
irritation with which he pushed the bread crumbs away, that, in spite of
his reserve and his coldness, he was a bundle of over-sensitive nerves.
"He was behaving really well," she thought. "It is a pity that she
irritated him." Though she disliked Blackburn, she was just enough to
admit that he had started well with Mrs. Chalmers. Of course, no one
expected him to appear brilliant in society. A man who had had no
education except the little his mother had taught him, and who had
devoted his life to making a fortune, was almost as much debarred from
social success as a woman who knew only trained nursing. Yet, in spite
of these defects, she realized that he appeared to advantage at his own
table. There was something about him--some latent suggestion of
force--which distinguished him from every other man in the room. He
looked--she couldn't quite define the difference--as if he could do
things. The recollection of his stand in politics came to her while she
watched him, and turning to Mr. Peyton, who was a trifle more human than
Colonel Ashburton, she asked:

"What is this new movement Mr. Blackburn is so much interested in? I've
seen a great deal about it in the papers."

There was a bluff, kind way about Charles Peyton, and she liked the
natural heartiness of the laugh with which he answered. "You've seen a
great deal more than you've read, young lady, I'll warrant. No, it isn't
exactly a new movement, because somebody in the North got ahead of
him--you may always count on a Yankee butting in just before you--but he
is organizing the independent voters in Virginia, if that's what you
mean. At least he thinks he is, though even way down here I've a
suspicion that those Yankees have been meddling. Between you and me,
Miss Meade, it is all humbug--pure humbug. Haven't we got one party
already, and doesn't that one have a hard enough time looking after the
negroes? Why do we want to go and start up trouble just after we've got
things all nicely settled? Why does David want to stir up a hornet's
nest among the negroes, I'd like to know?"

On the other side of Caroline, Colonel Ashburton became suddenly
audible. "Ask that Rip Van Winkle, Miss Meade, if he was asleep while we
made a new constitution and eliminated the vote of the negroes? You
can't argue with these stand-patters, you know, because they never read
the signs of the times."

"Well, there isn't a better way of proving it's all humbug than by
asking two questions," declared the jovial Charles--a plethoric,
unwieldy old man, with a bald head, and a figure that was continually
brimming over his waistcoat. "What I want to know, Billy Ashburton, is
just this--wasn't your father as good a man as you are, and wasn't the
Democratic Party good enough for your father? I put the same to you,
Miss Meade, wasn't the Democratic Party good enough for your father?"

"Ah, you're driven to your last trench," observed the Colonel, with
genial irony, while Caroline replied slowly: "Yes, it was good enough
for father, but I remember he used to be very fond of quoting some lines
from Pope about 'principles changing with the times.' I suppose the
questions are different from what they were in his day."

"I'd like to see any questions the Democrats aren't able to handle,"
persisted Charles. "They always have handled them to my satisfaction,
and I reckon they always will, in spite of Blackburn and Ashburton."

"I wish Blackburn could talk to you, Miss Meade," said Colonel
Ashburton. "He doesn't care much for personalities. He has less small
talk than any man I know, but he speaks well if you get him started on
ideas. By-the-way, he is the man who won me over. I used to be as
strongly prejudiced against any fresh departure in Virginia politics as
our friend Charles there, but Blackburn got hold of me, and convinced
me, as he has convinced a great many others, against my will. He proved
to me that the old forms are worn out--that they can't do the work any
longer. You see, Blackburn is an idealist. He sees straight through the
sham to the truth quicker than any man I've ever known----"

"An idealist!" exclaimed Caroline, and mentally she added, "Is it
possible for a man to have two characters? To have a public character
that gives the lie to his private one?"

"Yes, I think you might call him that, though, like you, I rather shy at
the word. But it fits Blackburn, somehow, for he is literally on fire
with ideas. I always say that he ought to have lived in the glorious
days when the Republic was founded. He belongs to the pure breed of
American."

"But I understood from the papers that it was just the other way--that
he was--that he was----"

"I know, my child, I know." He smiled indulgently, for she looked very
charming with the flush in her cheeks, and after thirty years of happy
companionship with an impeccable character, he preferred at dinner a
little amiable weakness in a woman. "You have seen in the papers that he
is a traitor to the faith of his fathers. You have even heard this
asserted by the logical Charles on your right."

She lifted her eyes, and to his disappointment he discovered that
earnestness, not embarrassment, had brought the colour to her cheeks.
"But I thought that this new movement was directed at the Democratic
Party--that it was attempting to undo all that had been accomplished in
the last fifty years. It seems the wrong way, but of course there must
be a right way toward better things."

For a minute he looked at her in silence; then he said again gently, "I
wish Blackburn could talk to you." Since she had come by her ideas
honestly, not merely borrowed them from Charles Colfax, it seemed only
chivalrous to treat them with the consideration he accorded always to
the fair and the frail.

She shook her head. The last thing she wanted was to have Mr. Blackburn
talk to her. "I thought all old-fashioned Virginians opposed this
movement," she added after a pause. "Not that I am very old-fashioned.
You remember my father, and so you will know that his daughter is not
afraid of opinions."

"Yes, I remember him, and I understand that his child could not be
afraid either of opinions or armies."

She smiled up at him, and he saw that her eyes, which had been a little
sad, were charged with light. While he watched her he wondered if her
quietness were merely a professional habit of reserve which she wore
like a uniform. Was the warmth and fervour which he read now in her face
a glimpse of the soul which life had hidden beneath the dignity of her
manner?

"But Blackburn isn't an agitator," he resumed after a moment. "He has
got hold of the right idea--the new application of eternal principles.
If we could send him to Washington he would do good work."

"To Washington?" She looked at him inquiringly. "You mean to the Senate?
Not in the place of Colonel Acton?"

"Ah, that touches you! You wouldn't like to see the 'Odysseus of
Democracy' dispossessed?"

Laughter sparkled in her eyes, and he realized that she was more girlish
than he had thought her a minute ago. After all, she had humour, and it
was a favourite saying of his that ideas without humour were as bad as
bread without yeast.

"Only for another Ajax," she retorted merrily. "I prefer the strong to
the wise. But does Mr. Blackburn want the senatorship?"

"Perhaps not, but he might be made to take it. There is a rising tide in
Virginia."

"Is it strong enough to overturn the old prejudices?"

"Not yet--not yet, but it is strengthening every hour." His tone had
lost its gallantry and grown serious. "The war in Europe has taught us a
lesson. We aren't satisfied any longer, the best thought isn't
satisfied, with the old clutter and muddle of ideas and sentiments. We
begin to see that what we need in politics is not commemorative
gestures, but constructive patriotism."

As he finished, Caroline became aware again that Blackburn was speaking,
and that for the first time Mrs. Chalmers looked animated and
interested.

"Why, that has occurred to me," he was saying with an earnestness that
swept away his reserve. "But, you see, it is impossible to do anything
in the South with the Republican Party. The memories are too black. We
must think in new terms."

"And you believe that the South is ready for another party? Has the hour
struck?"

"Can't you hear it?" He looked up as he spoke. "The war abroad has
liberated us from the old sectional bondage. It has brought the world
nearer, and the time is ripe for the national spirit. The demand now is
for men. We need men who will construct ideas, not copy them. We need
men strong enough to break up the solid South and the solid North, and
pour them together into the common life of the nation. We want a
patriotism that will overflow party lines, and put the good of the
country before the good of a section. The old phrases, the old gestures,
are childish to-day because we have outgrown them----" He stopped
abruptly, his face so enkindled that Caroline would not have known it,
and an instant later the voice of Mrs. Blackburn was heard saying
sweetly but firmly, "David, I am afraid that Mrs. Chalmers is not used
to your melodramatic way of talking."

In the hush that followed it seemed as if a harsh light had fallen over
Blackburn's features. A moment before Caroline had seen him inspired and
exalted by feeling--the vehicle of the ideas that possessed him--and
now, in the sharp flash of Angelica's irony, he appeared insincere and
theatrical--the claptrap politician in motley.

"It is a pity she spoke just when she did," thought Caroline, "but I
suppose she sees through him so clearly that she can't help herself. She
doesn't want him to mislead the rest of us."

Blackburn's guard was up again, and though he made no reply, his brow
paled slowly and his hand--the nervous, restless hand of the emotional
type--played with the bread crumbs.

"Yes, it is a pity," repeated Caroline to herself. "It makes things very
uncomfortable." It was evident to her that Mrs. Blackburn watched her
husband every instant--that she was waiting all the time to rectify his
mistakes, to put him in the right again. Then, swiftly as an arrow,
there flashed through Caroline's mind, "Only poor, lovely creature, she
achieves exactly the opposite result. She is so nervous she can't see
that she puts him always in the wrong. She makes matters worse instead
of better every time."

From this moment the dinner dragged on heavily to its awkward end.
Blackburn had withdrawn into his shell; Mrs. Chalmers looked depressed
and bored; while the giddy voice of Mrs. Colfax sounded as empty as the
twitter of a sparrow. It was as if a blight had fallen over them, and in
this blight Angelica made charming, futile attempts to keep up the
conversation. She had tried so hard, her eyes, very gentle and pensive,
seemed to say, and all her efforts were wasted.

Suddenly, in the dull silence, Mrs. Colfax began asking, in her
flightiest manner, about Angelica's family. For at least five minutes
she had vacillated in her own mind between the weather and Roane
Fitzhugh, who, for obvious reasons, was not a promising topic; and now
at last, since the weather was too perfect for comment, she recklessly
decided to introduce the unsavoury Roane.

"We haven't seen your brother recently, Angelica. What do you hear from
him?"

For an instant Mrs. Blackburn's eyes rested with mute reproach on her
husband. Then she said clearly and slowly, "He has been away all summer,
but we hope he is coming next week. David," she added suddenly in a
louder tone, "I was just telling Daisy how glad we are that Roane is
going to spend the autumn at Briarlay."

It was at that instant, just as Mrs. Blackburn, smiling amiably on her
husband, was about to rise from the table, that the astounding, the
incredible thing happened, for Blackburn looked up quickly, and replied
in a harsh, emphatic manner, "He is not coming to Briarlay. You know
that we cannot have him here."

Then before a word was uttered, before Mrs. Colfax had time to twitter
cheerfully above the awkwardness, Mrs. Blackburn rose from her chair,
and the women trailed slowly after her out of the dining-room. As
Caroline went, she felt that her heart was bursting with sympathy for
Angelica and indignation against her husband. "How in the world shall I
ever speak to him after this?" she thought. "How shall I ever stay under
the same roof with him?" And glancing pityingly to where Mrs.
Blackburn's flower-like head drooped against the rosy shade of a lamp,
she realized that Angelica never looked so lovely as she did when she
was hurt.




CHAPTER V

THE FIRST NIGHT


When the last guest had gone, Caroline went upstairs to her room, and
sitting down before the little ivory and gold desk, began a letter to
her mother. For years, ever since her first night in the hospital, she
had poured out her heart after the day's work and the day's self-control
and restraint were over. It was a relief to be free sometimes, to break
through the discipline of her profession, to live and love for oneself,
not for others.

The house was very still--only from the darkness outside, where the wind
had risen, a few yellow leaves fluttered in through the window.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am here, at last, dearest mother, and I have been longing to tell you
about it. First of all, I had a good trip, my train was exactly on time,
and Mrs. Colfax met me in the most beautiful car I ever saw, and brought
me out to Briarlay. She was very nice and kind, but she looks ever so
much older than you do, and I cannot help feeling that, in spite of the
loss of so many children and father's dreadful disappointments, your
life has been happier than hers. As I get older, and see more of the
world--and heaven knows I have seen anything but the best of it these
last seven or eight years--I understand better and better that happiness
is something you have to find deep down in yourself, not in other people
or outside things. It shines through sometimes just as yours does and
lights up the world around and the dark places, but it never, _never_
comes from them--of this I am very sure.

I wish I could describe this house to you, but I cannot--I simply
cannot, the words will not come to me. It is big and beautiful, but I
think it is too full of wonderful things--there are rooms that make me
feel as if I were in a museum because of the tapestries and crowded rugs
and French furniture. I like English mahogany so much better, but that
may be just because I am used to it. I suppose it is natural that Mrs.
Blackburn should prefer surroundings that are opulent and florid, since
they make her look like a lovely flower in a greenhouse. She is even
more beautiful than I thought she would be, and she does not seem the
least bit snobbish or spoiled or arrogant. I have always said, you
remember, that nursing has taught me not to rely on mere impressions
whether they are first or last ones--but I have never in my life met any
one who attracted me so strongly in the beginning. It is years since I
have felt my sympathy so completely drawn out by a stranger. I feel that
I would do anything in the world that I could for her; and though I
cannot write frankly about what I have observed here, I believe that she
needs help and understanding as much as any one I ever saw. The
situation seems worse even than we were led to expect. Of course I have
seen only the surface so far, but my heart has been wrung for her ever
since I have been in the house, and this evening there was a very
painful scene at the dinner table. I shall not write any more about it,
though I imagine it will be spread all over Richmond by young Mrs.
Colfax.

About Mr. Blackburn I have not quite made up my mind. I do not doubt
that everything Mrs. Colfax wrote us is true, and I know if I stay on
here that I shall make no attempt to conceal from him how much I dislike
him. That will be no secret. I simply could not pretend even to him that
I was not heart and soul on the side of his wife. It is so perfectly
dreadful when one has to take sides with a husband or wife, isn't it?
When I think how wonderful a marriage like yours and father's can be, it
makes me feel sorry and ashamed for human nature as I see it here. But
you cannot become a nurse and keep many illusions about love. The thing
that remains after years of such work is no illusion at all--but the
clear knowledge of the reality. A nurse sees the best and the worst of
humanity--and the very best of it is the love that some people keep to
the end.

As for this marriage, there is not a person in Richmond, nor a servant
in the house, who does not know that it is an unhappy one. Mrs.
Blackburn cannot be at fault--one has only to look at her to realize
that she is too gentle and sweet to hurt any one--and yet I discovered
to-night that she does not know how to treat him, that she says the
wrong thing so often without meaning to, and that unconsciously she
irritates him whenever she speaks. It is impossible to blame her, for
she must have suffered a great many things that no one knows of, and I
suppose her nerves are not always under control. But nothing could be
more unfortunate than her manner to him at times.

Strange to say (I do not understand why) some people appear to admire
him tremendously. I went down to dinner to-night because one of the
guests did not come, and Colonel Ashburton--he said he used to know
you--talked in the most extravagant fashion about Mr. Blackburn's
abilities. The air here is heavy with politics because of the elections,
and I tried to listen as closely as I could. I thought how intensely
interested father would have been in the discussion. As far as I can
understand Mr. Blackburn's way of thinking is not unlike father's, and
but for his behaviour to his wife, this would give me a sympathetic
feeling for him. I forgot to tell you that he looked very well
to-night--not in the least rough or common. His face is not ugly, only
he wears his hair brushed straight back, and this makes his features
look sterner than they really are. His eyes are the keenest I ever
saw--grey, I think, and yet, funny as it sounds, there are times when
they are almost pathetic--and his smile is very nice and reminds me in
a way of father's. This may have been why I thought of father all the
time I was at dinner--this and the political talk which went on as long
as we were at the table.

Well, I started to tell you about the elections, and I know you are
thinking I shall never go on. It seems that Mr. Blackburn intends to
vote for Hughes--though I heard him tell Mr. Chalmers that if he lived
in the North he should probably vote with the Democrats. Voting for a
man, he feels, is not nearly so important as voting against a
section--at least this is what I gathered. There was a great deal said
about the war, but nobody, except Mrs. Colfax's brother Charles, who
does not count, seemed to think there was the faintest chance of our
being in it. Mr. Chalmers told me afterwards that if Wilson should be
re-elected, it would be mainly because of the slogan "he kept us out of
war." As far as I could discover Mr. Chalmers stands firmly by the
President, but I heard Mr. Blackburn tell Colonel Ashburton that what he
hoped for now was conduct so flagrant, on Germany's part, that the
public conscience would demand a more vigorous policy. By the way, Mr.
Chalmers said that the feeling was so strong in New York that he
expected the State to go to the Republicans because there was a general
impression that to vote with them meant to vote for war. Of course, he
added, this was mere German propaganda--but that was only another way of
saying he did not agree with it. Opinions change every hour, and just as
soon as a new one begins to be popular, people forget all that they
believed just as ardently a few weeks before. Don't you remember how
complacent we were about our splendid isolation and our pluperfect
pacifism and our being "too proud to fight" such a very short while ago?
Well, nobody remembers now the way we crowed over Europe and patted one
another on the back, and congratulated ourselves because we could stand
aside and wait until history showed who was right. That is over and
gone now, and "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier" has joined the
dust of all the other rag-time. If the slow coach of history ever does
come up with us, it may find us in the thick of the fight after all, and
not waiting by the roadside. Mr. Chalmers believes that if the President
is re-elected, and can get the country behind him, the Government will
declare that a state of war exists--but Mr. Blackburn, on the other
hand, is convinced that both Wilson and Hughes are pledged to fulfil
their promises of "peace and prosperity." He insists that there was more
war spirit over the whole country the week after the _Lusitania_ was
sunk, than there has ever been since, and that we were as ready to fight
then as we shall be after the elections. It is like being in the midst
of electric currents to sit still and listen to these men argue. Can you
imagine anything more unlike father's day when all Virginians, except
those whom nobody knew, thought exactly alike? Now, though the vote is
solid still, and the great majority accepts the policies of the
Democrats as uncritically as it accepts Scripture, opinions about
secondary issues vary as much as they do anywhere else. There are some
who regard the President as greater than George Washington--and others
who say that the moment is great, not the man. Mr. Colfax believes that
he is a generation ahead of his country, and Colonel Ashburton believes
just as strongly that he is a generation behind it--that it is a case
where a wave of destiny is sweeping a man on to greatness. I suppose
here again we shall have to wait until history shows who is right.

I have not seen the little girl yet--her name is Letty. They have to be
careful not to excite her in the evening, and the other nurse is still
with her.

Now I must go to bed.

    Your devoted child,
         CAROLINE.

       *       *       *       *       *

She had finished her letter and glanced at her watch on the bureau--it
was one o'clock--when a cry or moan reached her from the darkness and
silence of the house, and a few minutes afterwards there came the sound
of running footsteps on the stairs, and a hasty knock fell on her door.

"Miss Meade, will you please come as quickly as you can?"

Opening the door, she met the frightened face of a maid.

"What has happened? Is Mrs. Blackburn ill?"

"I don't know. She hasn't undressed and she is too ill to speak. I left
her on the couch, and ran upstairs to call you."

They were already in the hall, and while they hurried to the staircase,
Caroline asked a few questions in a whisper.

"Is there any medicine that she is accustomed to take?"

"I give her ammonia sometimes, but to-night it didn't do any good."

"Does she faint often?"

"I'm not sure. She has these attacks, but only after--after----"

The woman paused in confusion, and before she could recover herself,
Caroline had opened the door and walked swiftly to the prostrate figure,
in white chiffon, on the couch in front of the fire. Bending over she
felt Angelica's pulse and lowered her head, with its loosened amber
hair, on the pillows.

"Your pulse is good. Do you feel better now?" she asked tenderly, for,
in spite of the quiet competence of her professional attitude, her heart
was aching with pity.

"I was sure I could count on your sympathy." As she answered, Mrs.
Blackburn stretched out her hands until they rested on Caroline's arm.
"Has Mary gone out of the room?"

"Your maid? Yes, she has just gone. What can I do for you?"

Even in the midst of the emotional crisis, Angelica's manner had not
lost a trace of its charming self-possession, its rather colourless
sweetness. Her grey eyes, drenched in tears which left no redness on the
firm white lids, were as devoid of passion as the eyes of a child.

"I cannot tell you--I cannot tell any one," she said after a moment, not
in answer to the other's question, but with a plaintive murmur. Then she
began to cry very gently, while she clung to Caroline with her lovely
hands which were as soft and fragrant as flowers.

"I think I know without your telling me," responded Caroline soothingly.
"Let me help you." All her years of nursing had not enabled her to watch
suffering, especially the suffering of helpless things, without a pang
of longing to comfort. She was on her knees now by the couch, her smooth
dark head bending over Angelica's disarranged fair one, her grave,
compassionate face gazing down on the other's delicate features, which
were softened, not disfigured, by tears.

"The worst is about Roane--my brother," began Angelica slowly. "He came
here to-night, but they--" she lingered over the word, "sent him away
before I could talk to him. He is downstairs now on the terrace because
he is not allowed to come into the house--my brother. I must get this
cheque to him, but I do not like to ask one of the servants----"

"You wish me to take it to him?" Caroline released herself from the
clinging hands, and rose quickly to her feet. Here at last was a
definite call to action.

"Oh, Miss Meade, if you would!" Already Angelica's eyes were dry.

"I will go at once. Is the cheque written?"

"I carried it down with me, but I could not get a chance to give it to
Roane. Poor boy," she added in a low rather than a soft tone, "Poor boy,
after all, he is more sinned against than sinning!"

Drawing the cheque from under the lace pillows, she gave it into
Caroline's hand with a gesture of relief. "Go through the dining-room to
the terrace, and you will find him outside by the windows. Tell him that
I will see him as soon as I can, and ask him please not to trouble me
again."

She had rung for her maid while she was speaking, and when the woman
appeared, she rose and waited, with a yawn, for her dress to be
unfastened. Then suddenly, as if she had forgotten something, she gave
Caroline a smile full of beauty and pathos. "Thank you a thousand tunes,
dear Miss Meade," she exclaimed gratefully.

It was dark downstairs, except for a nebulous glow from the hall above
and a thin reddish line that ran beneath the closed door of the library.
Not until she reached the dining-room did Caroline dare turn on the
electric light, and as soon as she did so, the terrace and the garden
appeared by contrast to be plunged in blackness. When she opened one of
the long French windows, and stepped out on the brick terrace, her eyes
became gradually accustomed to the starlight, and she discerned
presently the shrouded outlines of the juniper trees and a marble
fountain which emerged like a ghost from the quivering spray of water.
As she went quickly down the steps to the lower terrace, she felt as
much alone in her surroundings as if the house and Mrs. Blackburn had
receded into a dream. Overhead there was the silvery glitter of stars,
and before her she divined the simplicity and peace of an autumn garden,
where the wind scattered the faint scent of flowers that were already
beginning to drop and decay.

When she approached the fountain, the figure of a man detached itself
from the vague shape of an evergreen, and came toward her.

"Well, I've waited awhile, haven't I?" he began airily, and the next
instant exclaimed with scarcely a change of tone, "Who are you? Did Anna
Jeannette send you?"

"I am Letty's new nurse--Miss Meade."

"What! A spirit yet a woman too!" His voice was full of charm.

"Mrs. Blackburn sent me with this." As she held out the cheque, he took
it with a gesture that was almost hungry. "She asked me to say that she
would see you very soon, and to beg you not to trouble her again."

"Does she imagine that I do it for pleasure!" He placed the cheque in
his pocket book. "She cannot suppose that I came here to-night for the
sake of a row."

Though he was unusually tall, he carried his height with the ease of an
invincible dignity and self-possession; and she had already discerned
that his sister's pathos had no part in the tempestuous ardour and
gaiety of his nature.

"She didn't tell me," answered Caroline coldly. "There is nothing else,
is there?" Her features were like marble beneath the silken dusk of her
hair which was faintly outlined against the cloudier darkness.

"There is a great deal--since you ask me."

"Nothing, I mean, that I may say to your sister?"

"You may say to her that I thank her for her message--and her
messenger."

He was about to add something more, when Caroline turned away from him
and moved, without haste, as if she were unaware that he followed her,
up the shallow steps of the terrace. When she reached the window, she
passed swiftly, like a dissolving shadow, from the darkness into the
light of the room. Nothing had been said that she found herself able to
resent, and yet, in some indefinable way, Roane's manner had offended
her. "For a trained nurse you are entirely too particular," she said to
herself, smiling, as she put out the light and went through the wide
doorway into the hall. "You have still a good deal of haughtiness to
overcome, Miss Meade, if you expect every man to treat you as if you
wore side curls and a crinoline."

The hall, when she entered it, was very dim, but as she approached the
door of the library, it opened, and Blackburn stood waiting for her on
the threshold. Behind him the room was illuminated, and she saw the rich
sheen of leather bindings and the glow of firelight on the old Persian
rug by the hearth.

"You have been out, Miss Meade?"

"Yes, I have been out." As she threw back her head, the light was full
on her face while his was in shadow.

"Do you need anything?"

"Nothing, thank you."

For an instant their eyes met, and in that single glance, charged with
an implacable accusation, she made Angelica's cause her own. Grave,
remote, dispassionate, her condemnation was as impersonal as a judgment
of the invisible Powers.

"That is all, then, good-night," he said.

"Good-night."

While he watched her, she turned as disdainfully as she had turned from
Roane, and ascended the stairs.




CHAPTER VI

LETTY


In the breakfast room next morning, Caroline found the little girl in
charge of Miss Miller, the nurse who was leaving that day. Letty was a
fragile, undeveloped child of seven years, with the dark hair and eyes
of her father, and the old, rather elfish look of children who have been
ill from the cradle. Her soft, fine hair hung straight to her shoulders,
and framed her serious little face, which was charming in spite of its
unhealthy pallor. Caroline had questioned Miss Miller about the child's
malady, and she had been reassured by the other nurse's optimistic view
of the case.

"We think she may outgrow the trouble, that's why we are so careful
about all the rules she lives by. The doctor watches her closely, and
she isn't a difficult child to manage. If you once gain her confidence
you can do anything with her, but first of all you must make her believe
in you."

"Was she always so delicate?"

"I believe she was born this way. She is stunted physically, though she
is so precocious mentally. She talks exactly like an old person
sometimes. The things she says would make you laugh if it wasn't so
pathetic to know that a child thinks them."

Yes, it was pathetic, Caroline felt, while she watched Letty cross the
room to her father, who was standing before one of the French windows.
As she lifted her face gravely, Blackburn bent over and kissed her.

"I'm taking a new kind of medicine, father."

He smiled down on her. "Then perhaps you will eat a new kind of
breakfast."

"And I've got a new nurse," added Letty before she turned away and came
over to Caroline. "I'm so glad you wear a uniform," she said in her
composed manner. "I think uniforms are much nicer than dresses like Aunt
Matty's."

Mrs. Timberlake looked up from the coffee urn with a smile that was like
a facial contortion. "Anything might be better than my dresses, Letty."

"But you ought to get something pretty," said the child quickly, for her
thoughts came in flashes. "If you wore a uniform you might look happy,
too. Are all nurses happy, Miss Miller?"

"We try to be, dear," answered Miss Miller, a stout, placid person,
while she settled the little girl in her chair. "It makes things so much
easier."

Blackburn, who had been looking out on the terrace and the formal
garden, turned and bowed stiffly as he came to the table. It was evident
that he was not in a talkative mood, and as Caroline returned his
greeting with the briefest acknowledgment, she congratulated herself
that she did not have to make conversation for him. Mary had not come in
from her ride, and since Mrs. Timberlake used language only under the
direct pressure of necessity, the sound of Letty's unembarrassed
childish treble rippled placidly over the constrained silence of her
elders.

"Can you see the garden?" asked the child presently. "I don't mean the
box garden, I mean the real garden where the flowers are?"

Caroline was helping herself to oatmeal, and raising her eyes from the
dish, she glanced through the window which gave on the brick terrace.
Beyond the marble fountain and a dark cluster of junipers there was an
arch of box, which framed the lower garden and a narrow view of the
river.

"That's where my garden is, down there," Letty was saying. "I made it
all by myself--didn't I, Miss Miller?--and my verbenas did better than
mother's last summer. Would you like to have a garden, father?" she
inquired suddenly, turning to Blackburn, who was looking over the
morning paper while he waited for his coffee. "It wouldn't be a bit more
trouble for me to take care of two than one. I'll make yours just like
mine if you want me to."

Blackburn put down his paper. "Well, I believe I should like one," he
replied gravely, "if you are sure you have time for it. But aren't there
a great many more important things you ought to do?"

"Oh, it doesn't take so much time," returned the child eagerly, "I work
all I can, but the doctor won't let me do much. I'll make yours close to
mine, so there won't be far to go with the water. I have to carry it in
a very little watering-pot because they won't let me lift a big one."

A smile quivered for an instant on her father's lips, and Caroline saw
his face change and soften as it had done the evening before. It was
queer, she thought, that he should have such a sensitive mouth. She had
imagined that a man of that character would have coarse lips and a
brutal expression.

"Now, it's odd, but I've always had a fancy for a garden of that sort,"
he responded, "if you think you can manage two of them without
over-taxing yourself. I don't want to put you to additional trouble, you
know. After all, that's just what I hire Peter for, isn't it?"

While the child was assuring him that Peter had neither the time nor the
talent for miniature gardening, Miss Miller remarked pleasantly, as if
she were visited by a brilliant idea, "You ought to make one for your
mother also, Letty."

"Oh, mother doesn't want one," returned the child: "The big ones are
hers, aren't they, father?" Then, as Blackburn had unfolded his paper
again, she added to Caroline, with one of the mature utterances Miss
Miller had called pathetic, "When you have big things you don't care for
little things, do you?"

As they were finishing breakfast, Mary Blackburn dashed in from the
terrace, with the Airedale terriers at her heels.

"I was afraid you'd have gone before I got back, David," she said,
tossing her riding-crop and gloves on a chair, and coming over to the
table. "Patrick, put the dogs out, and tell Peter to give them their
breakfast." Then turning back to her brother, she resumed carelessly,
"That man stopped me again--that foreman you discharged from the works."

Blackburn's brow darkened. "Ridley? I told him not to come on the place.
Is he hanging about?"

"I met him in the lane. He asked me to bring a message to you. It seems
he wants awfully to be reinstated. He is out of work; and he doesn't
want to go North for a job."

"It's a pity he didn't think of that sooner. He has made more trouble in
the plant than any ten men I've ever had. It isn't his fault that
there's not a strike on now."

"I know," said Mary, "but I couldn't refuse to hear him. There's Alan
now," she added. "Ask him about it."

She looked up, her face flushing with pride and happiness, as Alan Wythe
opened the window. There was something free and noble in her candour.
All the little coquetries and vanities of women appeared to shrivel in
the white blaze of her sincerity.

"So you've been held up by Ridley," remarked Blackburn, as the young man
seated himself between Mary and Mrs. Timberlake. "Did he tell you just
what political capital he expects to make out of my discharging him? It
isn't the first time he has tried blackmail."

Alan was replying to Mrs. Timberlake's question about his coffee--she
never remembered, Caroline discovered later, just how much sugar one
liked--and there was a pause before he turned to Blackburn and answered:
"I haven't a doubt that he means to make trouble sooner or later--he has
some pull, hasn't he?--but at the moment he is more interested in
getting his job back. He talked a lot about his family--tried to make
Mary ask you to take him on again----"

Blackburn laughed, not unpleasantly, but with a curious bluntness and
finality, as if he were closing a door on some mental passage. "Well,
you may tell him," he rejoined, "that I wouldn't take him back if all
the women in creation asked me."

Alan received this with his usual ease and flippancy. "The fellow
appears to have got the wrong impression. He told me that Mrs. Blackburn
was taking an interest in his case, and had promised to speak to you."

"He told you that?" said Blackburn, and stopped abruptly.

For a minute Alan looked almost disconcerted. In his riding clothes he
was handsomer and more sportsmanlike than he had been the evening
before, and Caroline told herself that she could understand why Mary
Blackburn had fallen so deeply in love with him. What she couldn't
understand--what puzzled her every instant--was the obvious fact that
Alan had fallen quite as deeply in love with Mary. Of course the girl
was fine and sensible and high-spirited--any one could see that--but she
appeared just the opposite of everything that Alan would have sought in
a woman. She was neither pretty nor feminine; and Alan's type was the
one of all others to which the pretty and feminine would make its
appeal. "He must love her for her soul," thought Caroline. "He must see
how splendid she is at heart, and this has won him."

In a few minutes Blackburn left the table, while Letty caught Caroline's
hand and drew her through the window out on the terrace. The landscape,
beyond the three gardens, was golden with October sunlight, and over the
box maze and the variegated mist of late blooming flowers, they could
see the river and the wooded slopes that folded softly into the
sparkling edge of the horizon. It was one of those autumn days when the
only movement of the world seems to be the slow fall of the leaves, and
the quivering of gauzy-winged insects above the flower-beds. Perfect as
the weather was, there was a touch of melancholy in its brightness that
made Caroline homesick for The Cedars. "It is hard to be where nobody
cares for you," she thought. "Where nothing you feel or think matters to
anybody." Then her stronger nature reasserted itself, and she brushed
the light cloud away. "After all, life is mine as much as theirs. The
battle is mine, and I will fight it. It is just as important that I
should be a good nurse as it is that Mrs. Blackburn should be beautiful
and charming and live in a house that is like fairyland."

Letty called to her, and running down the brick steps from the terrace,
the two began a gentle game of hide-and-seek in the garden. The
delighted laughter of the child rang out presently from the rose-arbours
and the winding paths; and while Caroline passed in and out of the
junipers and the young yew-trees, she forgot the loneliness she had felt
on the terrace. "I'll not worry about it any more," she thought,
pursuing Letty beyond the marble fountain, where a laughing Cupid shot a
broken arrow toward the sun. "Mother used to say that all the worry in
the world would never keep a weasel out of the hen-house." Then, as she
twisted and doubled about a tall cluster of junipers, she ran directly
across the shadow of Blackburn.

As her feet came to a halt the smile died on her lips, and the reserve
she had worn since she reached Briarlay fell like a veil over her
gaiety. While she put up her hand to straighten her cap, all the dislike
she felt for him showed in her look. Only the light in her eyes, and the
blown strands of hair under her cap, belied her dignity and her silence.

"Miss Meade, I wanted to tell you that the doctor will come about noon.
I have asked him to give you directions."

"Very well." Against the dark junipers, in her white uniform, she looked
like a statue except for her parted lips and accusing eyes.

"Letty seems bright to-day, but you must not let her tire herself."

"I am very careful. We play as gently as possible."

"Will you take her to town? I'll send the car back for you."

For an instant she hesitated. "Mrs. Blackburn has not told me what she
wishes."

He nodded. "Letty uses my car in the afternoon. It will be here at three
o'clock."

In the sunlight, with his hat off, he looked tanned and ruddy, and she
saw that there was the power in his face which belongs to expression--to
thought and purpose--rather than to feature. His dark hair, combed
straight back from his forehead, made his head appear distinctive and
massive, like the relief of a warrior on some ancient coin, and his
eyes, beneath slightly beetling brows, were the colour of the sea in a
storm. Though his height was not over six feet, he seemed to her, while
he stood there beside the marble fountain, the largest and strongest man
she had ever seen. "I know he isn't big, and yet he appears so," she
thought: "I suppose it is because he is so muscular." And immediately
she added to herself, "I can understand everything about him except his
mouth--but his mouth doesn't belong in his face. It is the mouth of a
poet. I wonder he doesn't wear a moustache just to hide the way it
changes."

"I shall be ready at three o'clock," she said. "Mrs. Colfax asked me to
bring Letty to play with her children."

"She will enjoy that," he answered, "if they are not rough." Then, as he
moved away, he observed indifferently, "It is wonderful weather."

As he went back to the house Letty clung to him, and lifting her in his
arms, he carried her to the terrace and round the corner where the car
waited. For the time at least the play was spoiled, and Caroline, still
wearing her professional manner, stood watching for Letty to come back
to her. "I could never like him if I saw him every day for years," she
was thinking, when one of the French windows of the dining-room opened,
and Mary Blackburn came down the steps into the garden.

"I am so glad to find you alone," she said frankly, "I want to speak to
you--and your white dress looks so nice against those evergreens."

"It's a pity I have to change it then, but I am going to take Letty to
town after luncheon. The doctor wants her to be with other children."

"I know. She is an odd little thing, isn't she? I sometimes think that
she is older and wiser than any one in the house." Her tone changed
abruptly. "I want to explain to you about last night, Miss Meade. David
seemed so dreadfully rude, didn't he?"

Caroline gazed back at her in silence while a flush stained her cheeks.
After all, what could she answer? She couldn't and wouldn't deny that
Mr. Blackburn had been inexcusably rude to his wife at his own table.

"It is so hard to explain when one doesn't know everything," pursued
Mary, with her unfaltering candour. "If you had ever seen Roane
Fitzhugh, you would understand better than I can make you that David is
right. It is quite impossible to have Roane in the house. He drinks,
and when he was here last summer, he was hardly ever sober. He was rude
to everyone. He insulted me."

"So that was why----" began Caroline impulsively, and checked herself.

"Yes, that was why. David told him that he must never come back again."

"And Mrs. Blackburn did not understand."

Mary did not reply, and glancing at her after a moment, Caroline saw
that she was gazing thoughtfully at a red and gold leaf, which turned
slowly in the air as it detached itself from the stem of a maple.

"If you want to get the best view of the river you ought to go down to
the end of the lower garden," she said carelessly before she went back
into the house.

In the afternoon, when Caroline took Letty to Mrs. Colfax's, a
flickering light was shed on the cause of Mary's reticence.

"Oh, Miss Meade, wasn't it perfectly awful last evening?" began the
young woman as soon as the children were safely out of hearing in the
yard. "I feel so sorry for Angelica!"

Even in a Southern woman her impulsiveness appeared excessive, and when
Caroline came to know her better, she discovered that Daisy Colfax was
usually described by her friends as "kind-hearted, but painfully
indiscreet."

"It was my first dinner party at Briarlay. As far as I know they may all
end that way," responded Caroline lightly.

"Of course I know that you feel you oughtn't to talk," replied Mrs.
Colfax persuasively, "but you needn't be afraid of saying just what you
think to me. I know that I have the reputation of letting out
everything that comes into my mind--and I do love to gossip--but I
shouldn't dream of repeating anything that is told me in confidence."
Her wonderful dusky eyes, as vague and innocent as a child's, swept
Caroline's face before they wandered, with their look of indirection and
uncertainty, to her mother-in-law, who was knitting by the window.
Before her marriage Daisy had been the acknowledged beauty of three
seasons, and now, the mother of two children and as lovely as ever, she
managed to reconcile successfully a talent for housekeeping with a taste
for diversion. She was never still except when she listened to gossip,
and before Caroline had been six weeks in Richmond, she had learned that
the name of Mrs. Robert Colfax would head the list of every dance, ball,
and charity of the winter.

"If you ask me what I think," observed the old lady tartly, with a
watchful eye on the children, who were playing ring-around-the-rosy in
the yard. "It is that David Blackburn ought to have been spanked and put
to bed."

"Well, of course, Angelica had been teasing him about his political
views," returned her daughter-in-law. "You know how she hates it all,
but she didn't mean actually to irritate him--merely to keep him from
appearing so badly. It is as plain as the nose on your face that she
doesn't know how to manage him."

They were sitting in the library, and every now and then the younger
woman would take up the receiver of the telephone, and have a giddy
little chat about the marketing or a motor trip she was planning. "But
all I've got to say," she added, turning from one of these breathless
colloquies, "is that if you have to manage a man, you'd better try to
get rid of him."

"Well, I'd like to see anybody but a bear-tamer manage David Blackburn,"
retorted the old lady. "With Angelica's sensitive nature she ought never
to have married a man who has to be tamed. She never dares take her eyes
off him, poor thing, for fear he'll make some sort of break."

"I wonder," began Caroline, and hesitated an instant. "I wonder if it
wouldn't be better just to let him make his breaks and not notice them?
Of course, I know how trying it must be for her--she is so lovely and
gentle that it wrings your heart to see him rude to her--but it makes
every little thing appear big when you call everybody's attention to it.
I don't know much about dinner parties," she concluded with a desire to
be perfectly fair even to a man she despised, "but I couldn't see that
he was doing anything wrong last night. He was getting on very well with
Mrs. Chalmers, who was interested in politics----" She broke off and
asked abruptly, "Is Mrs. Blackburn's brother really so dreadful?"

"I've often wondered," said the younger Mrs. Colfax, "if Roane Fitzhugh
is as bad as people say he is?"

"Well, he has always been very polite to me," commented the old lady.
"Though Brother Charles says that you cannot judge a man's morals by his
manners. Was Alan Wythe there last night?"

"Yes, I sat by him," answered Daisy. "I wish that old uncle of his in
Chicago would let him marry Mary."

This innocent remark aroused Caroline's scorn. "To think of a man's
having to ask his uncle whom he shall marry!" she exclaimed
indignantly.

"You wouldn't say that, my dear," replied old Mrs. Colfax, "if you knew
Alan. He is a charming fellow, but the sort of talented ne'er-do-well
who can do anything but make a living. He has an uncle in Chicago who is
said to be worth millions--one of the richest men, I've heard, in the
West--but he will probably leave his fortune to charity. As it is he
doles out a pittance to Alan--not nearly enough for him to marry on."

"Isn't it strange," said Caroline, "that the nice people never seem to
have enough money and the disagreeable ones seem to have a great deal
too much? But I despise a man," she added sweepingly, "who hasn't enough
spirit to go out into the world and fight."

The old lady's needles clicked sharply as she returned to her work.
"I've always said that if the good Lord would look after my money
troubles, I could take care of the others. Now, if Angelica's people had
not been so poor she would have been spared this dreadful marriage. As
it is, I am sure, the poor thing makes the best of it--I don't want you
to think that I am saying a word against Angelica--but when a woman runs
about after so many outside interests, it is pretty sure to mean that
she is unhappy at home."

"It's a pity," said the younger woman musingly, "that so many of her
interests seem to cross David's business. Look at this Ridley matter,
for instance--of course everyone says that Angelica is trying to make up
for her husband's injustice by supporting the family until the man gets
back to work. It's perfectly splendid of her, I know. There isn't a
living soul who admires Angelica more than I do, but with all the needy
families in town, it does seem that she might just as well have selected
some other to look after."

The old lady, having dropped some stitches, went industriously to work
to pick them up. "For all we know," she observed piously, "it may be
God's way of punishing David."




CHAPTER VII

CAROLINE MAKES DISCOVERIES


At four o'clock Daisy Colfax rushed off to a committee meeting at
Briarlay ("something very important, though I can't remember just which
one it is"), and an hour later Caroline followed her in Blackburn's car,
with Letty lying fast asleep in her arms.

"I am going to do all I can to make it easier for Mrs. Blackburn," she
thought. "I don't care how rude he is to me if he will only spare her. I
am stronger than she is, and I can bear it better." Already it seemed to
her that this beautiful unhappy woman filled a place in her life, that
she would be willing to make any sacrifice, to suffer any humiliation,
if she could only help her.

Suddenly Letty stirred and put up a thin little hand. "I like you, Miss
Meade," she said drowsily. "I like you because you are pretty and you
laugh. Mammy says mother never laughs, that she only smiles. Why is
that?"

"I suppose she doesn't think things funny, darling."

"When father laughs out loud she tells him to stop. She says it hurts
her."

"Well, she isn't strong, you know. She is easily hurt."

"I am not strong either, but I like to laugh," said the child in her
quaint manner. "Mammy says there isn't anybody's laugh so pretty as
yours. It sounds like music."

"Then I must laugh a great deal for you, Letty, and the more we laugh
together the happier we'll be, shan't we?"

As the car turned into the lane, where the sunlight fell in splinters
over the yellow leaves, a man in working clothes appeared suddenly from
under the trees. For an instant he seemed on the point of stopping them;
then lowering the hand he had raised, he bowed hurriedly, and passed on
at a brisk walk toward the road.

"His name is Ridley, I know him," said Letty. "Mother took me with her
one day when she went to see his children. He has six children, and one
is a baby. They let me hold it, but I like a doll better because dolls
don't wriggle." Then, as the motor raced up the drive and stopped in
front of the porch, she sat up and threw off the fur robe. "There are
going to be cream puffs for tea, and mammy said I might have one. Do you
think mother will mind if I go into the drawing-room? She is having a
meeting."

"I don't know, dear. Is it a very important meeting?"

"It must be," replied Letty, "or mother wouldn't have it. Everything she
has is important." As the door opened, she inquired of the servant,
"Moses, do you think this is a very important meeting?"

Moses, a young light-coloured negro, answered solemnly, "Hit looks dat
ar way ter me, Miss Letty, caze Patrick's jes' done fotched up de las'
plate uv puffs. Dose puffs wuz gwine jes' as fast ez you kin count de
las' time I tuck a look at um, en de ladies dey wuz all a-settin' roun'
in va' yous attitudes en eatin' um up like dey tasted moughty good."

"Then I'm going in," said the child promptly. "You come with me, Miss
Meade. Mother won't mind half so much if you are with me." And grasping
Caroline's hand she led the way to the drawing-room. "I hope they have
left one," she whispered anxiously, "but meetings always seem to make
people so hungry."

In the back drawing-room, where empty cups and plates were scattered
about on little tables, Angelica was sitting in a pink and gold chair
that vaguely resembled a throne. She wore a street gown of blue velvet,
and beneath a little hat of dark fur, her hair folded softly on her
temples. At the first glance Caroline could see that she was tired and
nervous, and her pensive eyes seemed to plead with the gaily chattering
women about her. "Of course, if you really think it will help the
cause," she was saying deprecatingly; then as Letty entered, she broke
off and held out her arms. "Did you have a good time, darling?"

The child went slowly forward, shaking hands politely with the guests
while her steady gaze, so like her father's, sought the tea table. "May
I have a puff and a tart too, mother?" she asked as she curtseyed to
Mrs. Ashburton.

"No, only one, dear, but you may choose."

"Then I'll choose a puff because it is bigger." She was a good child,
and when the tart was forbidden her, she turned her back on the plate
with a determined gesture. "I saw the man, mother--the one with the
baby. He was in the lane."

"I know, dear. He came to ask your father to take him back in the works.
Perhaps if you were to go into the library and ask him very gently, he
would do it. It is the case I was telling you about, a most distressing
one," explained Angelica to Mrs. Ashburton. "Of course David must have
reason on his side or he wouldn't take the stand that he does. I suppose
the man does drink and stir up trouble, but we women have to think of so
much besides mere justice. We have to keep close to the human part that
men are so apt to overlook." There was a writing tablet on her knee, and
while she spoke, she leaned earnestly forward, and made a few straggling
notes with a yellow pencil which was blunt at the point. Even her
efficiency--and as a chairman she was almost as efficient as Mrs.
Ashburton--was clothed in sweetness. As she sat there, holding the blunt
pencil in her delicate, blue-veined hand, she appeared to be bracing
herself, with a tremendous effort of will, for some inexorable demand of
duty. The tired droop of her figure, the shadow under her eyes, the
pathetic little lines that quivered about her mouth--these things, as
well as the story of her loveless marriage, awakened Caroline's pity.
"She bears it so beautifully," she thought, with a rush of generous
emotion. "I have never seen any one so brave and noble. I believe she
never thinks of herself for a minute."

"I always feel," observed Mrs. Ashburton, in her logical way which was
trying at times, "that a man ought to be allowed to attend to his own
business."

A pretty woman, with a sandwich in her hand, turned from the tea table
and remarked lightly, "Heaven knows it is the last privilege of which I
wish to deprive him!" Her name was Mallow, and she was a new-comer of
uncertain origin, who had recently built a huge house, after the Italian
style, on the Three Chopt Road. She was very rich, very smart, very
dashing, and though her ancestry was dubious, both her house and her
hospitality were authentic. Alan had once said of her that she kept her
figure by climbing over every charity in town; but Alan's wit was
notoriously malicious.

"In a case like this, don't you think, dear Mrs. Ashburton, that a woman
owes a duty to humanity?" asked Angelica, who liked to talk in general
terms of the particular instance. "Miss Meade, I am sure, will agree
with me. It is so important to look after the children."

"But there are so many children one might look after," replied Caroline
gravely; then feeling that she had not responded generously to
Angelica's appeal, she added, "I think it is splendid of you, perfectly
splendid to feel the way that you do."

"That is so sweet of you," murmured Angelica gratefully, while Mrs.
Aylett, a lovely woman, with a face like a magnolia flower and a
typically Southern voice, said gently, "I, for one, have always found
Angelica's unselfishness an inspiration. With her delicate health, it is
simply marvellous the amount of good she is able to do. I can never
understand how she manages to think of so many things at the same
moment." She also held a pencil in her gloved hand, and wrote earnestly,
in illegible figures, on the back of a torn envelope.

"Of course, we feel that!" exclaimed the other six or eight women in an
admiring chorus. "That is why we are begging her to be in these
tableaux."

It was a high-minded, unselfish group, except for Mrs. Mallow, who was
hungry, and Daisy Colfax, who displayed now and then an inclination to
giddiness. Not until Caroline had been a few minutes in the room did she
discover that the committee had assembled to arrange an entertainment
for the benefit of the Red Cross. Though Mrs. Blackburn was zealous as
an organizer, she confined her activities entirely to charitable
associations and disapproved passionately of women who "interfered" as
she expressed it "with public matters." She was disposed by nature to
vague views and long perspectives, and instinctively preferred, except
when she was correcting an injustice of her husband's, to right the
wrongs in foreign countries.

"Don't you think she would make an adorable Peace?" asked Mrs. Aylett of
Caroline.

"I really haven't time for it," said Angelica gravely, "but as you say,
Milly dear, the cause is everything, and then David always likes me to
take part in public affairs."

A look of understanding rippled like a beam of light over the faces of
the women, and Caroline realized without being told that Mrs. Blackburn
was overtaxing her strength in deference to her husband's wishes. "I
suppose like most persons who haven't always had things he is mad about
society."

"I've eaten it all up, mother," said Letty in a wistful voice. "It
tasted very good."

"Did it, darling? Well, now I want you to go and ask your father about
poor Ridley and his little children. You must ask him very sweetly, and
perhaps he won't refuse. You would like to do that, wouldn't you?"

"May I take Miss Meade with me?"

"Yes, she may go with you. There, now, run away, dear. Mother is so busy
helping the soldiers she hasn't time to talk to you."

"Why are you always so busy, mother?"

"She is so busy because she is doing good every minute of her life,"
said Mrs. Aylett. "You have an angel for a mother, Letty."

The child turned to her with sudden interest. "Is father an angel too?"
she inquired.

A little laugh, strangled abruptly in a cough, broke from Daisy Colfax,
while Mrs. Mallow hastily swallowed a cake before she buried her flushed
face in her handkerchief. Only Mrs. Aylett, without losing her
composure, remarked admiringly, "That's a pretty dress you have on,
Letty."

"Now run away, dear," urged Angelica in a pleading tone, and the child,
who had been stroking her mother's velvet sleeve, moved obediently to
the door before she looked back and asked, "Aren't you coming too, Miss
Meade?"

"Yes, I'm coming too," answered Caroline, and while she spoke she felt
that she had never before needed so thoroughly the discipline of the
hospital. As she put her arm about Letty's shoulders, and crossed the
hall to Blackburn's library, she hoped passionately that he would not be
in the room. Then Letty called out "father!" in a clear treble, and
almost immediately the door opened, and Blackburn stood on the
threshold.

"Do you want to come in?" he asked. "I've got a stack of work ahead, but
there is always time for a talk with you."

He turned back into the room, holding Letty by the hand, and as Caroline
followed silently, she noticed that he seemed abstracted and worried,
and that his face, when he glanced round at her, looked white and tired.
The red-brown flush of the morning had faded, and he appeared much
older.

"Won't you sit down," he asked, and then he threw himself into a chair,
and added cheerfully, "What is it, daughter? Have you a secret to tell
me?"

Against the rich brown of the walls his head stood out, clear and fine,
and something in its poise, and in the backward sweep of his hair, gave
Caroline an impression of strength and swiftness as of a runner who is
straining toward an inaccessible goal. For the first time since she had
come to Briarlay he seemed natural and at ease in his surroundings--in
the midst of the old books, the old furniture, the old speckled
engravings--and she understood suddenly why Colonel Ashburton had called
him an idealist. With the hardness gone from his eyes and the restraint
from his thin-lipped, nervous mouth, he looked, as the Colonel had said
of him, "on fire with ideas." He had evidently been at work, and the
fervour of his mood was still visible in his face.

"Father, won't you please give Ridley his work again?" said the child.
"I don't want his little children to be hungry." As she stood there at
his knee, with her hands on his sleeve and her eyes lifted to his, she
was so much like him in every feature that Caroline found herself
vaguely wondering where the mother's part in her began. There was
nothing of Angelica's softness in that intense little face, with its
look of premature knowledge.

Bending over he lifted her to his knee, and asked patiently, "If I tell
you why I can't take him back, Letty, will you try to understand?"

She nodded gravely. "I don't want the baby to be hungry."

For a moment he gazed over her head through the long windows that opened
on the terrace. The sun was just going down, and beyond the cluster of
junipers the sky was turning slowly to orange.

"Miss Meade," he said abruptly, looking for the first time in Caroline's
face, "would you respect a man who did a thing he believed to be unjust
because someone he loved had asked him to?"

For an instant the swiftness of the question--the very frankness and
simplicity of it--took Caroline's breath away. She was sitting straight
and still in a big leather chair, and she seemed to his eyes a different
creature from the woman he had watched in the garden that morning. Her
hair was smooth now under her severe little hat, her face was composed
and stern, and for the moment her look of radiant energy was veiled by
the quiet capability of her professional manner.

"I suppose not," she answered fearlessly, "if one is quite sure that the
thing is unjust."

"In this case I haven't a doubt. The man is a firebrand in the works. He
drinks, and breeds lawlessness. There are men in jail now who would be
at work but for him, and they also have families. If I take him back
there are people who would say I do it for a political reason."

"Does that matter? It seems to me nothing matters except to be right."

He smiled, and she wondered how she could have thought that he looked
older. "Yes, if I am right, nothing else matters, and I know that I am
right." Then looking down at Letty, he said more slowly, "My child, I
know another family of little children without a father. Wouldn't you
just as soon go to see these children?"

"Is there a baby? A very small baby?"

"Yes, there is a baby. I am sending the elder children to school, and
one of the girls is old enough to learn stenography. The father was a
good man and a faithful worker. When he died he asked me to look after
his family."

"Then why doesn't Mrs. Blackburn know about them?" slipped from
Caroline's lips. "Why hasn't any one told her?"

The next instant she regretted the question, but before she could speak
again Blackburn answered quietly, "She is not strong, and already she
has more on her than she should have undertaken."

"Her sympathy is so wonderful!" Almost in spite of her will, against her
instinct for reticence where she distrusted, against the severe code of
her professional training, she began by taking Mrs. Blackburn's side in
the household.

"Yes, she is wonderful." His tone was conventional, yet if he had adored
his wife he could scarcely have said more to a stranger.

There was a knock at the door, and Mammy Riah inquired querulously
through the crack, "Whar you, Letty? Ain't you comin' ter git yo'
supper?"

"I'm here, I'm coming," responded Letty. As she slid hurriedly from her
father's knees, she paused long enough to whisper in his ear, "Father,
what shall I tell mother when she asks me?"

"Tell her, Letty, that I cannot do it because it would not be fair."

"Because it would not be fair," repeated the child obediently as she
reached for Caroline's hand. "Miss Meade is going to have supper with
me, father. We are going to play that it is a party and let all the
dolls come, and she will have bread and milk just as I do."

"Will she?" said Blackburn, with a smile. "Then I'd think she'd be
hungry before bed-time."

Though he spoke pleasantly, Caroline was aware that his thoughts had
wandered from them, and that he was as indifferent to her presence as he
was to the faint lemon-coloured light streaming in at the window. It
occurred to her suddenly that he had never really looked at her, and
that if they were to meet by accident in the road he would not recognize
her. She had never seen any one with so impersonal a manner--so encased
and armoured in reserve--and she began to wonder what he was like under
that impenetrable surface? "I should like to hear him speak," she
thought, "to know what he thinks and feels about the things he cares
for--about politics and public questions." He stood up as she rose, and
for a minute before Letty drew her from the room, he smiled down on the
child. "If I were Miss Meade, I'd demand more than bread and milk at
your party, Letty." Then he turned away, and sat down again at his
writing table.

An hour or two later, when Letty's supper was over, Angelica came in to
say good-night before she went out to dinner. She was wearing an evening
wrap of turquoise velvet and ermine, and a band of diamonds encircled
the golden wings on her temples. Her eyes shone like stars, and there
was a misty brightness in her face that made her loveliness almost
unearthly. The fatigue of the afternoon had vanished, and she looked as
young and fresh as a girl.

"I hope you are comfortable, Miss Meade," she said, with the manner of
considerate gentleness which had won Caroline from the first. "I told
Fanny to move you into the little room next to Letty's."

"Yes, I am quite comfortable. I like to sleep where she can call me."

The child was undressing, and as her mother bent over her, she put up
her bare little arms to embrace her. "You smell so sweet, mother, just
like lilacs."

"Do I, darling? There, don't hug me so tight or you'll rumple my hair.
Did you ask your father about Ridley?"

"He won't do it. He says he won't do it because it wouldn't be fair." As
Letty repeated the message she looked questioningly into Mrs.
Blackburn's face. "Why wouldn't it be fair, mother?"

"He will have to tell you, dear, I can't." Drawing back from the child's
arms, she arranged the ermine collar over her shoulders. "We must do all
we can to help them, Letty. Now, kiss me very gently, and try to sleep
well."

She went out, leaving a faint delicious trail of lilacs in the air, and
while Caroline watched Mammy Riah slip the night-gown over Letty's
shoulders, her thoughts followed Angelica down the circular drive,
through the lane, and on the road to the city. She was fascinated, yet
there was something deeper and finer than fascination in the emotion
Mrs. Blackburn awakened. There was tenderness in it and there was
romance; but most of all there was sympathy. In Caroline's narrow and
colourless life, so rich in character, so barren of incident, this
sympathy was unfolding like some rare and exquisite blossom.

"Did you ever see any one in your life look so lovely?" she asked
enthusiastically of Mammy Riah.

The old woman was braiding Letty's hair into a tight little plait, which
she rolled over at the end and tied up with a blue ribbon. "I wan' bawn
yestiddy, en I reckon I'se done seen er hull pa'cel un um," she replied.
"Miss Angy's de patte'n uv whut 'er ma wuz befo' 'er. Dar ain' never
been a Fitzhugh yit dat wan't ez purty ez a pictur w'en dey wuz young,
en Miss Angy she is jes' like all de res' un um. But she ain' been riz
right, dat's de gospel trufe, en I reckon ole Miss knows hit now way up
yonder in de Kingdom Come. Dey hed a w'ite nuss to nuss 'er de same ez
dey's got for Letty heah, en dar ain' never been a w'ite nuss yit ez
could raise a chile right, nairy a one un um."

"But I thought you nursed all the Fitzhughs? Why did they have a white
nurse for Mrs. Blackburn?"

"Dy wuz projeckin', honey, like dey is projeckin' now wid dis yer chile.
Atter I done nuss five er dem chillun ole Miss begun ter git sort er
flighty in her haid, en ter go plum 'stracted about sto' physick en real
doctahs. Stop yo' foolishness dis minute, Letty. You git spang out er
dat baid befo' I mek you, en say yo' pray'rs. Yas'm, hit's de gospel
trufe, I'se tellin' you," she concluded as Letty jumped obediently out
of bed and prepared to kneel down on the rug. "Ef'n dey hed lemme raise
Miss Angy de fambly wouldn't hev run ter seed de way hit did atter old
Marster died, en dar 'ouldn't be dese yer low-lifeted doin's now wid
Marse David."

Later in the night, lying awake and restless in the little room next to
Letty's, Caroline recalled the old woman's comment. Though she had
passionately taken Angelica's side, it was impossible for her to deny
that both Mrs. Timberlake and Mammy Riah appeared to lean
sympathetically at least in the direction of Blackburn. There was
nothing definite--nothing particularly suggestive even--to which she
could point; yet, in spite of her prejudice, in spite of the sinister
stories which circulated so freely in Richmond, she was obliged to admit
that the two women who knew Angelica best--the dependent relative and
the old negress--did not espouse her cause so ardently as did the
adoring committee. "The things they say must be true. Such dreadful
stories could never have gotten out unless something or somebody had
started them. It is impossible to look in Mrs. Blackburn's face and not
see that she is a lovely character, and that she is very unhappy." Then
a reassuring thought occurred to her, for she remembered that her mother
used to say that a negro mammy always took the side of the father in any
discussion. "It must be the same thing here with Mrs. Timberlake and
Mammy Riah. They are so close to Mrs. Blackburn that they can't see how
lovely she is. It is like staying too long in the room with an exquisite
perfume. One becomes at last not only indifferent, but insensible to its
sweetness." Closing her eyes, she resolutely put the question away,
while she lived over again, in all its varied excitement, her first day
at Briarlay. The strangeness of her surroundings kept her awake, and it
seemed to her, as she went over the last twenty-four hours, that she was
years older than she had been when she left The Cedars. Simply meeting
Mrs. Blackburn, she told herself again, was a glorious adventure; it was
like seeing and speaking to one of the heroines in the dingy old volumes
in her father's library. And the thought that she could really serve
her, that she could understand and sympathize where Mrs. Timberlake and
Mammy Riah failed, that she could, by her strength and devotion, lift a
share of the burden from Angelica's shoulders--the thought of these
things shed an illumination over the bare road of the future. She would
do good, she resolved, and in doing good, she would find happiness. The
clock struck eleven; she heard the sound of the returning motor; and
then, with her mind filled with visions of usefulness, she dropped off
to sleep.

It might have been a minute later, it might have been hours, when she
was awakened by Letty's voice screaming in terror. Jumping out of bed,
Caroline slipped into the wrapper of blue flannel Diana had made for
her, and touching the electric button, flooded the nursery with light.
Sitting very erect, with wide-open vacant eyes, and outstretched arms,
Letty was uttering breathless, distracted shrieks. Her face was frozen
into a mask, and the bones of her thin little body quivered through the
cambric of her night-gown. As the shadows leaped out on the walls, which
were covered with garlands of pink and blue flowers, she shuddered and
crouched back under the blankets.

"I am here, Letty! I am here, darling!" cried Caroline, kneeling beside
the bed, and at the same instant the door opened, and Mammy Riah, half
dressed, and without wig or turban, came in muttering, "I'se coming,
honey! I'se coming, my lamb!"

Without noticing them, the child cried out in a loud, clear voice,
"Where is father? I want father to hold me! I want my father!" Then the
terror swept over her again like some invisible enemy, and her cries
became broken and inarticulate.

"Is she often like this?" asked Caroline of the old woman. "I can't hold
her. I am afraid she will have a convulsion." With her arms about
Letty, who moaned and shivered in her grasp, she added, "Letty, darling,
shall I send for your mother?"

"Dar ain' but one thing dat'll quiet dis chile," said the old negress,
"en dat is Marse David. I'se gwine atter Marse David."

She hobbled out in her lint slippers, while the girl held Letty closer,
and murmured a hundred soothing words in her ear. "You may have father
and mother too," she said, "you may have everyone, dear, if only you
won't be frightened."

"I don't want everyone. I want father," cried the child, with a storm of
sobs. "I want father because I am afraid. I want him to keep me from
being afraid." Then, as the door opened, and Blackburn came into the
room, she held out her arms, and said in a whisper, like the moan of a
small hurt animal, "I thought you had gone away, father, and I was
afraid of the dark."

Without speaking, Blackburn crossed the room, and dropping into a chair
by the bed, laid his arm across the child's shoulders. At his touch her
cries changed into shivering sobs which grew gradually fainter, and
slipping back on the pillows, she looked with intent, searching eyes in
his face. "You haven't gone away, father?"

"No, I haven't gone anywhere. You were dreaming."

Clasping his hand, she laid her cheek on it, and nestled under the
cover. "I am afraid to go to sleep because I dream such ugly dreams."

"Dreams can't hurt you, Letty. No matter how ugly they are, they are
only dreams."

His voice was low and firm, and at the first sound of it the pain and
fear faded from Letty's face. "Were you asleep, father?"

"No, I was at work. I am writing a speech. It is twelve o'clock, but I
had not gone to bed." He spoke quite reasonably as if she were a grown
person, and Caroline asked herself if this explained his power over the
child. There was no hint of stooping, no pretense of childish words or
phrases. He looked very tired and deep lines showed in his face, but
there was an inexhaustible patience in his manner. For the first time
she thought of him as a man who carried a burden. His very shadow, which
loomed large and black on the flowered wall paper, appeared, while she
watched it, to bend beneath the pressure of an invisible weight.

"Has mother come in?" asked Letty in a still whisper.

"Yes, she has gone to bed. You must not wake your mother."

"I'll try not to," answered the child, and a minute afterwards she said
with a yawn, "I feel sleepy now, father. I'd like to go to sleep, if
you'll sit by me."

He laughed. "I'll sit by you, if you'll let Miss Meade and Mammy Riah go
to bed."

As if his laugh had driven the last terror from her mind, Letty made a
soft, breathless sound of astonishment. "Miss Meade has got on a
wrapper," she said, "and her hair is plaited just like mine only there
isn't any ribbon. Mammy Riah, do you think my hair would stay plaited
like that if it wasn't tied?"

The old woman grunted. "Ef'n you don' shet yo' mouf, I'se gwine ter send
Marse David straight down agin whar he b'longs."

"Well, I'll go to sleep," replied Letty, in her docile way; and a
minute later, she fell asleep with her cheek on her father's hand.

For a quarter of an hour longer Blackburn sat there without stirring,
while Caroline put out the high lights and turned on the shaded lamp by
the bed. Then, releasing himself gently, he stood up and said in a
whisper, "I think she is all right now." His back was to the lamp, and
Caroline saw his face by the dim flicker of the waning fire.

"I shall stay with her," she responded in the same tone.

"It is not necessary. After an attack like this she sleeps all night
from exhaustion. She seems fast asleep, but if you have trouble again
send for me."

He moved softly to the door, and as Caroline looked after him, she found
herself asking resentfully, "I wonder why Letty cried for her father?"




CHAPTER VIII

BLACKBURN


A week later, on an afternoon when the October sunshine sparkled like
wine beneath a sky that was the colour of day-flowers, Caroline sat on
the terrace waiting for Mrs. Blackburn to return from a rehearsal. In
the morning Angelica had promised Letty a drive if she were good, and as
soon as luncheon was over the child had put on a new hat and coat of
blue velvet, and had come downstairs to listen for the sound of the
motor. With a little white fur muff in her hands, she was now marching
sedately round the fountain, while she counted her circuits aloud in a
clear, monotonous voice. Under the velvet hat she was looking almost
pretty, and as Caroline gazed at her she seemed to catch fleeting
glimpses of Angelica in the serious little face. "I believe she is going
to be really lovely when she grows up. It is a pity she hasn't her
mother's colouring, but she gets more like her every day." Leaning over,
she called in a low, admonishing tone, "Letty, don't go too near the
fountain. You will get your coat splashed."

Obedient as she always was, Letty drew away from the water, and Caroline
turned to pick up the knitting she had laid aside while she waited.
Angelica had promised a dozen mufflers to the War Relief Association,
and since it made her nervous to knit, she gracefully left the work for
others to do. Now, while Caroline's needles clicked busily, and the ball
of yarn unwound in her lap, her eyes wandered from the dying beauty of
the garden to the wreaths of smoke that hung over the fringed edge of
the river. On the opposite side, beyond the glittering band of the
water, low grey-green hills melted like shadows into the violet haze of
the distance. A roving fragrance of wood-smoke was in the air, and from
the brown and russet sweep of the fields rose the chanting of
innumerable insects. All the noise and movement of life seemed hushed
and waiting while nature drifted slowly into the long sleep of winter.
So vivid yet so evanescent was the light on the meadows that Caroline
stopped her work, lest a stir or a sound might dissolve the perfect hour
into darkness.

Growing suddenly tired of play, Letty came to Caroline's side and leaned
on her shoulder. The child's hat had slipped back, and while she nestled
there she sank gradually into the pensive drowsiness of the afternoon.

"Do you think she has forgotten to come for us?"

"No, dear, it is early yet. It can't be much after three o'clock."

Up through the golden-rod and life-everlasting, along the winding
pathway across the fields, Alan and Mary were strolling slowly toward
the lower garden. "They are so happy," mused Caroline. "I wonder if she
is ever afraid that she may lose him? He doesn't look as if he could be
constant."

Suddenly one of the nearest French windows opened, and the scent of
cigar smoke floated out from the library. A moment later she heard the
words, "Let's get a bit of air," and Blackburn, followed by two callers,
came out on the terrace. While the three stood gazing across the garden
to the river, she recognized one of the callers as Colonel Ashburton,
but the other was a stranger--a tall, slender man, with crisp iron-grey
hair and thin, austere features. Afterwards she learned that he was
Joseph Sloane of New York, a man of wide political vision, and a
recognized force in the industrial life of America. He had a high,
dome-like forehead, which vaguely reminded Caroline of a tower, and a
mouth so tightly locked that it looked as if nothing less rigid than a
fact had ever escaped it. Yet his voice, when it came, was rich and
beautifully modulated. "It is a good view," he remarked indifferently,
and then looking at Blackburn, as if he were resuming a conversation
that had been broken off, he said earnestly, "A few years ago I should
have thought it a sheer impossibility, but I believe now that there is a
chance of our winning."

"With the chance strengthening every hour," observed Colonel Ashburton,
and as he turned his back to the view, his mild and innocent gaze fell
on Caroline's figure. "It is good to see you, Miss Meade," he said
gallantly, with a bow in which his blue eyes and silvery hair seemed to
mingle. "I hope the sound of politics will not frighten you?"

Caroline looked up with a smile from her knitting. "Not at all. I was
brought up in the midst of discussions. But are we in the way?"

The Colonel's gallantry was not without romantic flavour. "It is your
Eden, and we are the intruders," he answered softly. It was a pity,
thought Caroline, while she looked at him over Letty's head, that a
velvet manner like that had almost vanished from the world. It went with
plumes and lace ruffles and stainless swords.

"I am going to drive, father," called Letty, "if mother ever comes."

"That's good." Blackburn smiled as he responded, and then moving a step
or two nearer the garden, drew several deep wicker chairs into the
sunshine. For a few minutes after they had seated themselves, the men
gazed in silence at the hazy hills on the horizon, and it seemed to
Caroline that Blackburn was drawing strength and inspiration from the
radiant, familiar scene.

"I have never wanted anything like this," he said at last, speaking very
slowly, as if he weighed each separate word before it was uttered.

"Not for yourself, but for the country," replied the Colonel in his
musical voice, which sounded always as if it were pitched to arouse
sleeping enthusiasm. He had once been in Congress, and the habit of
oratorical phrasing had never entirely left him. "Do you know,
Blackburn, I sometimes think that you are one of the few statesmen we
have left. The others are mixtures of so many ingredients--ambition,
prejudice, fanaticism, self-interest--everything but the thought of the
country, and the things for which the country should stand. It's the
difference, I suppose, between a patriot and a politician."

"It is not that I am less selfish," Blackburn laughed with embarrassment
as he answered, "but perhaps I have had a harder time than the others,
and have learned something they haven't. I've seen how little material
things or their acquisition matter in life. After all, the idea is the
only thing that really counts--an idea big enough to lift a man out of
his personal boundaries, big enough to absorb and possess him
completely. A man's country may do this, but not a man's self, nor the
mere business of living."

As he paused, though his head was turned in Caroline's direction, she
had a queer impression that he was looking beyond her at some glowing
vision that was imperceptible to the others. She knew that he was
oblivious of her presence, and that, if he saw her at all, she was
scarcely more to him than an image painted on air. The golden light of
the afternoon enveloped his figure, yet she realized that the
illumination in his face was not due to the shifting rays of the sun.
She did not like him--the aversion she felt was too strong for her to
judge him tolerantly--but she was obliged to admit that his straight,
firm figure, with its look of arrested energy, of controlled power, made
Colonel Ashburton and the stranger from the North appear almost
commonplace. Even his rough brown clothes possessed a distinction apart
from the cut of his tailor; and though it was impossible for her to
define the quality which seemed to make him stand alone, to put him in a
class by himself, she was beginning to discern that his gift of
personality, of intellectual dominance, was a kind of undeveloped
genius. "He ought to have been a writer or a statesman," she thought,
while she looked at his roughened hair, which would never lie flat, at
his smoky grey eyes, and his thin, almost colourless lips. It was a face
that grew on her as she watched it, a face, she realized, that one must
study to understand, not attempt to read by erring flashes of insight.
She remembered that Colonel Ashburton had told her that Blackburn had no
small talk, but that he spoke well if he were once started on a current
of ideas. "It is true. He speaks just as if he had thought it all out
years ago," she said to herself while she listened, "just as if every
sentence, every word almost, was crystallized." She felt a mild
curiosity about his political convictions--a desire to know what he
really believed, and why his opinions had aroused the opposition of men
like Charles Peyton and Robert Colfax.

"I used to believe, not long ago, that these things counted supremely,"
Blackburn said presently, with his eyes on the river--those intense grey
eyes which seemed always searching for something. "I held as firmly as
any man by the Gospel of Achievement--by the mad scramble to acquire
things. I had never had them, and what a man hasn't had, he generally
wants. Perhaps I travelled the historic road through materialism to
idealism, the road America is following this very hour while we are
talking. I am not saying that it isn't all for the best, you know. You
may call me an optimist, I suppose, down beneath the eternal muddle of
things; but I feel that the ambition to acquire is good only as a
process, and not as a permanent condition or the ultimate end of life. I
haven't a doubt that the frantic struggle in America to amass things, to
make great fortunes, has led to discoveries of incalculable benefit to
mankind, and has given a splendid impetus to the development of our
country. We wanted things so passionately that we were obliged to create
them in order to satisfy our desires. This spirit, this single phase of
development, is still serving a purpose. We have watched it open the
earth, build railroads, establish industries, cut highways over
mountains, turn deserts into populous cities; and through these things
lay the foundation of the finer and larger social order--the greater
national life. We are fond of speaking of the men who have made this
possible as money-grubbers or rank materialists. Some of them were,
perhaps, but not the guiding spirits, the real builders. No man can do
great constructive work who is not seeking to express an imperishable
idea in material substance. No man can build for to-morrow who builds
only with bricks and mortar."

He leaned forward to flick the ashes from his cigar, while the sunshine
sprinkling through the junipers deepened the rapt and eager look in his
face. "It all comes back to this--the whole problem of life," he pursued
after a moment. "It all comes back to the builders. We are--with
apologies for the platitude--a nation of idealists. It is our ability to
believe in the incredible, to dream great dreams, not our practical
efficiency, that has held our body politic together. Because we build in
the sky, I believe we are building to last----"

"But our mistakes, our follies, our insanities----?" As Blackburn paused
the voice of Colonel Ashburton fell like music on the stillness. "Even
our fairest dreams--the dream of individual freedom--what has become of
it? Show me the man who is free among us to-day?" With his bowed white
head, his blanched aristocratic features, and his general air of having
been crushed and sweetened by adversity, he reminded Caroline of one of
the perpetual mourners, beside the weeping willow and the classic tomb,
on the memorial brooch her great-grandmother used to wear.

"I believe you are wrong," replied Blackburn slowly, "for, in spite of
the voice of the demagogue, America is a land of individual men, not of
classes, and the whole theory of the American State rests upon the
rights and obligations of the citizen. If the American Republic
survives, it will be because it is founded upon the level of
conscience--not upon the peaks of inspiration. We have no sovereign
mind, no governing class, no body of men with artificial privileges and
special obligations. Every American carries in his person the essential
elements of the State, and is entrusted with its duties. To this extent
at least, Colonel, your man is free."

"Free to sink, or to swim with the current?"

Blackburn smiled as he answered. "Well, I suppose your pessimism is
natural. In Colonel Ashburton, Sloane, you behold a sorrowful survivor
of the Age of Heroes. By Jove, there were giants in those days!" Then he
grew serious again, and went on rapidly, with the earnest yet impersonal
note in his voice: "Of course, we know that as long as a people is
striving for its civil rights, for equality of right before the law,
there is a definite objective goal. Now, in theory at least, these
things have been attained, and we are confronted to-day with the more
difficult task of adjusting the interests, without impairing the rights,
of the individual man. The tangled skeins of social and economic justice
must be unravelled before we can weave them into the fabric of life."

"And for the next fifty years this is our business," said Sloane,
speaking suddenly in the rich, strong voice which seemed to strike with
unerring blows at the root of the question.

"Yes, this is our business for the next fifty years. I believe with you,
Sloane, that this may be done. I believe that this work will be
accomplished when, and only when, the citizen recognizes that he is the
State, and is charged with the duties and the obligations of the State
to his fellowmen. To reach this end we must overthrow class prejudice,
and realize that justice to all alike is the cornerstone of democracy.
We must put aside sectional feeling and create a national ideal by
merging the State into the nation. We must learn to look beyond the
material prosperity of America and discern her true destiny as the
champion of the oppressed, the giver of light. It is for us to do this.
After all, we are America, you and I and Ashburton and the man who works
in my garden. When all is said, a nation is only an organized crowd, and
can rise no higher, or sink no lower, than its source--the spirit of the
men who compose it. As a man thinketh in his heart so his country will
be."

For a moment there was silence, and then Sloane said sharply: "There is
one thing that always puzzles me in you Southerners, and that is the
apparent conflict between the way you think and the way you act, or to
put it a trifle more accurately, between your political vision and your
habit of voting. You see I am a practical man, an inveterate believer in
the fact as the clinching argument in any question, and I confess that I
have failed so far to reconcile your theory with your conduct. You are
nationalists and idealists in theory, you Virginians, yet by your votes
you maintain the solid South, as you call it, as if it were not a part
of the American Republic. You cherish and support this heresy regardless
of political issues, and often in defiance of your genuine convictions.
I like you Virginians. Your history fascinates me like some brilliantly
woven tapestry; but I can never understand how this people, whose heroic
qualities helped to create the Union, can remain separated, at least in
act, from American purposes and ideals. You give the lie to your great
statesmen; you shatter their splendid dream for the sake of a paradox.
Your one political party battens on the very life of the South--since
you preserve its independence in spite of representatives whom you
oppose, and, not infrequently, in spite even of principles that you
reject. However broad may be our interpretation of recent events, as
long as this heresy prevails, the people of the South cannot hope to
recover their historic place in the councils of the nation. And this
condition," he concluded abruptly, "retards the development of our
future. A short while ago--so short a while, indeed, as the year
1896--the security of the nation was endangered by the obsession of a
solid and unbreakable South. This danger passed yesterday, but who knows
when it may come again?"

As he finished, Blackburn leaned eagerly forward as if he were bracing
himself to meet an antagonist. To the man whose inner life is compacted
of ideas, the mental surgery of the man of facts must always appear
superficial--a mere trick of technique. A new light seemed to have
fallen over him, and, through some penetrating sympathy, Caroline
understood that he lived in a white blaze not of feeling, but of
thought. It was a passion of the mind instead of the heart, and she
wondered if he had ever loved Angelica as he loved this fugitive,
impersonal image of service?

"I sometimes doubt," he said gravely, "if a man can ever understand a
country unless he was born in it--unless its sun and dust have entered
into his being."

"And yet we Southerners, even old-fashioned ones like myself, see these
evils as clearly as you Northerners," interposed Colonel Ashburton while
Blackburn hesitated. "The difference between us is simply that you
discern the evils only, and we go deep enough to strike the root of the
trouble. If you want really to understand us, Sloane, study the motive
forces in English and American history, especially the overpowering
influence of racial instinct, and the effect of an injustice on the mind
of the Anglo-Saxon."

With the Colonel's voice the old sense of familiarity pervaded
Caroline's memory like a perfume, and she seemed to be living again
through one of her father's political discussions at The Cedars--only
the carefully enunciated phrases of Sloane and Blackburn were more
convincing than the ringing, colloquial tones of the country orators. As
she listened she told herself that these men were modern and
constructive while her father and his group of Confederate soldiers had
been stationary and antiquated. They had stood like crumbling landmarks
of history, while Blackburn and his associates were building the
political structure of the future.

"Of course I admit," Sloane was saying frankly, "that mistakes were made
in the confusion that followed the Civil War. Nobody regrets these
things more than the intelligent men of the North; but all this is past;
a new generation is springing up; and none of us desires now to put your
house in order, or force any government upon you. The North is perfectly
willing to keep its hands off your domestic affairs, and to leave the
race problem to you, or to anybody else who possesses the ability to
solve it. It seems to me, therefore, that the time has come to put these
things behind us, and to recognize that we are, and have been, at least
since 1865, a nation. There are serious problems before us to-day, and
the successful solution of these demands unity of thought and purpose."

There was a slight ironic twist to his smile as he finished, and he sat
perfectly still, with the burned-out cigar in his hand, watching
Blackburn with a look that was at once sympathetic and merciless.

"Colonel Ashburton has pointed out the only way," rejoined Blackburn
drily. "You must use the past as a commentary before you can hope
clearly to interpret the present."

"That is exactly what I am trying to do." The irony had vanished, and a
note of solemnity had passed into Sloane's voice. "I am honestly trying
to understand the source of the trouble, to discover how it may be
removed. I see in the solid South not a local question, but a great
national danger. There is no sanctity in a political party; it is merely
an instrument to accomplish the ends of government through the will of
the people. I realize how men may follow one party or another under
certain conditions; but no party can always be right, and I cannot
understand how a people, jealous of its freedom, intensely patriotic in
spirit, can remain through two generations in bondage to one political
idea, whether that idea be right or wrong. This seems to me to be beyond
mere politics, to rise to the dignity of a national problem. I feel that
it requires the best thought of the country for its adjustment. It is
because we need your help that I am speaking so frankly. If we go into
this war--and there are times when it seems to me that it will be
impossible for us to keep out of it--it must be a baptism of fire from
which we should emerge clean, whole, and united."

"Ashburton is fond of telling me," said Blackburn slowly, "that I live
too much in the next century, yet it does not seem to me unreasonable to
believe that the chief end of civilization is the development of the
citizen, and of a national life as deeply rooted in personal
consciousness as the life of the family. The ideal citizen, after all,
is merely a man in whom the patriotic nerve has become as sensitive as
the property nerve--a man who brings his country in touch with his
actual life, who places the public welfare above his private aims and
ambitions. It is because I believe the Southern character is rich in the
material for such development that I entered this fight two years ago.
As you know I am not a Democrat. I have broken away from the party, and
recently, I have voted the Republican ticket at Presidential
elections----"

"This is why I am here to-day," continued Sloane. "I am here because we
need your help, because we see an opportunity for you to aid in the
great work ahead of us. With a nation the power to survive rests in the
whole, not in the parts, and America will not become America until she
has obliterated the sections."

Blackburn was gazing at the hills on the horizon, while there flickered
and waned in his face a look that was almost prophetic.

"Well, of course I agree with you," he said in a voice which was so
detached and contemplative that it seemed to flow from the autumnal
stillness, "but before you can obliterate the sections, the North as
well as the South must cease to be sectional--especially must the North,
which has so long regarded its control of the Federal Government as a
proprietary right, cease to exclude the South from participation in
national affairs and movements. Before you can obliterate the sections,
you must, above all, understand why the solidarity of the South exists
as a political issue--you must probe beneath the tissue of facts to the
very bone and fibre of history. Truth is sometimes an inconvenient
thing, but experience has found nothing better to build on. First of
all--for we must clear the ground--first of all, you must remember that
we Virginians are Anglo-Saxons, and that we share the sporting spirit
which is ready to fight for a principle, and to accept the result
whether it wins or loses. When the war was over--to dig no deeper than
the greatest fact in our past--when the war was over we Virginians, and
the people of the South, submitted, like true sportsmen, to the logic of
events. We had been beaten on the principle that we had no right to
secede from the Union, and therefore were still a part of the Union. We
accepted this principle, and were ready to resume our duties and
discharge our obligations; but this was not to be permitted without the
harsh provisions of the Reconstruction acts. Then followed what is
perhaps the darkest period in American history, and one of the darkest
periods in the history of the English-speaking race----"

"I admit all this," interrupted Sloane quickly, "and yet I cannot
understand----"

"You must understand before we work together," replied Blackburn
stubbornly. "I shall make you understand if it takes me all night and
part of to-morrow. Politics, after all, is not merely a store of
mechanical energy; even a politician is a man first and an automaton
afterwards. You can't separate the way a man votes from the way he
feels; and the way he feels has its source in the secret springs of his
character, in the principles his parents revered, in the victories, the
shames, the sufferings and the evasions of history. Until you realize
that the South is human, you will never understand why it is solid.
People are ruled not by intellect, but by feeling; and in a democracy
mental expediency is no match for emotional necessity. Virginia proved
this philosophical truth when she went into the war--when she was
forced, through ties of blood and kinship, into defending the
institution of slavery because it was strangely associated with the
principle of self-government--and she proved it yet again when she began
slowly to rebuild the shattered walls of her commonwealth."

For a moment he was silent, and Colonel Ashburton said softly with the
manner of one who pours oil on troubled waters with an unsteady hand, "I
remember those years more clearly than I remember last month or even
yesterday."

His voice trailed into silence, and Blackburn went on rapidly, without
noticing the interruption: "The conditions of the Reconstruction period
were worse than war, and for those conditions you must remember that the
South has always held the Republican Party responsible. Not content with
the difficulties which would inevitably result from the liberation of an
alien population among a people who had lost all in war, and were
compelled to adjust themselves to new economic and social conditions,
the Federal Government, under the influence of intemperate leaders,
conferred upon the negroes full rights of citizenship, while it denied
these rights to a large proportion of the white population--the former
masters. State and local governments were under the control of the most
ignorant classes, generally foreign adventurers who were exploiting the
political power of the negroes. The South was overwhelmed with debts
created for the private gain of these adventurers; the offices of local
governments were filled either by alien white men or by negroes; and
negro justices of the peace, negro legislators, and even negro members
of Congress were elected. My own county was represented in the
Legislature of Virginia by a negro who had formerly belonged to my
father."

"All this sounds now like the ancient history of another continent,"
remarked Sloane with anxious haste, "Fifty years can change the purpose
of a people or a party!"

"Often in the past," resumed Blackburn, "men who have taken part in
revolutions or rebellions have lost their lives as the punishment of
failure; but there are wrongs worse than death, and one of these is to
subject a free and independent people to the rule of a servile race; to
force women and children to seek protection from magistrates who had
once been their slaves. The Republican Party was then in control, and
its leaders resisted every effort of the South to re-establish the
supremacy of the white race, and to reassert the principles of
self-government. We had the Civil Rights Act, and the Federal Election
Laws, with Federal supervisors of elections to prevent the white people
from voting and to give the vote to the negroes. Even when thirty years
had passed, and the South had gained control of its local governments,
the Republicans attempted to pass an election law which would have
perpetuated negro dominance. You have only to stop and think for a
minute, and you will understand that conditions such as I have suggested
are the source of that national menace you are trying now to remove."

"It is all true, but it is the truth of yesterday," rejoined Sloane
eagerly. "If we have made mistakes in the past, we wish the more
heartily to do right in the present. What can prove this more clearly
than the fact that I am here to ask your help in organizing the
independent vote in Virginia? There is a future for the man who can lead
the new political forces."

The sun was dropping slowly in the direction of the wooded slopes on the
opposite shore; the violet mist on the river had become suddenly
luminous; and the long black shadows of the junipers were slanting over
the grass walks in the garden. In the lower meadows the chanting rose so
softly that it seemed rather a breath than a sound; and this breath,
which was the faint quivering stir of October, stole at last into the
amber light on the terrace.

"If I had not known this," answered Blackburn, and again there flickered
into his face the look of prophecy and vision which seemed to place him
in a separate world from Sloane and Colonel Ashburton, "I should have
spoken less frankly. As you say the past is past, and we cannot solve
future problems by brooding upon wrongs that are over. The suffrage is,
after all, held in trust for the good of the present and the future; and
for this reason, since Virginia limited her suffrage to a point that
made the negro vote a negligible factor, I have felt that the solid
South is, if possible, more harmful to the Southern people than it is to
the nation. This political solidarity prevents constructive thought and
retards development. It places the Southern States in the control of
one political machine; and the aim of this machine must inevitably be
self-perpetuation. Offices are bestowed on men who are willing to submit
to these methods; and freedom of discussion is necessarily discouraged
by the dominant party. In the end a governing class is created, and this
class, like all political cliques, secures its privileges by raising
small men to high public places, and thereby obstructs, if it does not
entirely suppress, independent thought and action. I can imagine no more
dangerous condition for any people under a republican form of
government, and for this reason, I regard the liberation of the South
from this political tyranny as the imperative duty of every loyal
Southerner. As you know, I am an independent in politics, and if I have
voted with the Republicans, it is only because I saw no other means of
breaking the solidarity of the South. Yet--and I may as well be as frank
at the end as I was at the beginning of our discussion, I doubt the
ability of the Republican Party to win the support of the Southern
people. The day will come, I believe, when another party will be
organized, national in its origin and its purposes; and through this new
party, which will absorb the best men from both the Republican and the
Democratic organizations, I hope to see America welded into a nation. In
the meantime, and only until this end is clearly in sight," he added
earnestly, "I am ready to help you by any effort, by any personal
sacrifice. I believe in America not with my mind only, but with my
heart--and if the name America means anything, it must mean that we
stand for the principle of self-government whatever may be the form.
This principle is now in danger throughout the world, and just as a man
must meet his responsibilities and discharge his obligations regardless
of consequences, so a nation cannot shirk its duties in a time of
international peril. We have now reached the cross-roads--we stand
waiting where the upward and the downward paths come together. I am
willing to cast aside all advantage, to take any step, to face
misunderstanding and criticism, if I can only help my people to catch
the broader vision of American opportunity and American destiny----"

The words were still in the air, when there was a gentle flutter of pink
silk curtains, and Angelica came out, flushed and lovely, from a
successful rehearsal. An afternoon paper was in her hand, and her eyes
were bright and wistful, as if she were trying to understand how any one
could have hurt her.

"Letty, dear, I am waiting!" she called; and then, as her gaze fell on
Sloane, she went toward him with outstretched hand and a charming manner
of welcome. "Oh, Mr. Sloane, how very nice to see you in Richmond!" The
next instant she added seriously, "David, have you seen the paper? You
can't imagine what dreadful things they are saying about you."

"Well, they can call him nothing worse than a traitor," retorted Colonel
Ashburton lightly before Blackburn could answer. "Surely, the word
traitor ought to have lost its harshness to Southern ears!"

"But Robert Colfax must have written it!" Though she was smiling it was
not because the Colonel's rejoinder had seemed amusing to her. "I know I
am interrupting," she said after a moment. "It will be so nice if you
will dine with us, Mr. Sloane--only you must promise me not to encourage
David's political ideas. I couldn't bear to be married to a
politician."

As she stood there against a white column, she looked as faultless and
as evanescent as the sunbeams, and for the first time Sloane's face lost
its coldness and austerity.

"I think your husband could never be a politician," he answered gently,
"though he may be a statesman."




CHAPTER IX

ANGELICA'S CHARITY


As the car turned into the lane it passed Alan and Mary, and Mrs.
Blackburn ordered the chauffeur to stop while she leaned out of the
window and waited, with her vague, shimmering look, for the lovers to
approach. "I wanted to ask you, Mr. Wythe, about that article in the
paper this morning," she began. "Do you think it will do David any real
harm?"

Her voice was low and troubled, and she gazed into Alan's face with eyes
that seemed to be pleading for mercy.

"Well, I hardly think it will help him if he wants an office," replied
Alan, reddening under her gaze. "I suppose everything is fair in
politics, but it does seem a little underhand of Colfax doesn't it? A
man has a right to expect a certain amount of consideration from his
friends."

For the first time since she had known him, Caroline felt that Alan's
nimble wit was limping slightly. In place of his usual light-hearted
manner, he appeared uncomfortable and embarrassed, and though his eyes
never left Angelica's face, they rested there with a look which it was
impossible to define. Admiration, surprise, pleasure, and a fleeting
glimpse of something like dread or fear--all these things Caroline
seemed to read in that enigmatical glance. Could it be that he was
comparing Angelica with Mary, and that, for the moment at least, Mary's
lack of feminine charm, was estranging him? He looked splendidly
vigorous with the flush in his cheeks and a glow in his red-brown
eyes--just the man, Caroline fancied, with whom any woman might fall in
love.

"But don't you think," asked Angelica hesitatingly, as if she dared not
trust so frail a thing as her own judgment, "that it may be a matter of
principle with Robert? Of course I know that David feels that he is
right, and there can't be a bit of truth in what people say about the
way he runs his works, but, after all, isn't he really harming the South
by trying to injure the Democratic Party? We all feel, of course, that
it is so important not to do anything to discredit the Democrats, and
with Robert I suppose there is a great deal of sentiment mixed with it
all because his grandfather did so much for Virginia. Oh, if David could
only find some other ambition--something that wouldn't make him appear
disloyal and ungrateful! I can't tell you how it distresses me to see
him estrange his best friends as he does. I can't feel in my heart that
any political honour is worth it!"

There was a flute-like quality in her voice, which was singularly
lacking in the deeper and richer tones of passion, like the imperfect
chords of some thin, sweet music. Though Angelica had the pensive eyes
and the drooping profile of an early Italian Madonna, her voice, in
spite of its lightness and delicacy, was without softness. At first it
had come as a surprise to Caroline, and even now, after three weeks at
Briarlay, she was aware of a nervous expectancy whenever Mrs. Blackburn
opened her lips--of a furtive hope that the hard, cold tones might melt
in the heat of some ardent impulse.

"It isn't ambition with David," said Mary, speaking bluntly, and with an
arrogant conviction. "He doesn't care a rap for any political honour,
and he is doing this because he believes it to be his duty. His country
is more to him, I think, than any living creature could be, even a
friend."

"Well, as far as that goes, he has made more friends by his stand than
he has lost," observed Alan, with unnatural diffidence. "I shouldn't let
that worry me a minute, Mrs. Blackburn. David is a big man, and his
influence grows every hour. The young blood is flowing toward him."

"Oh, but don't you see that this hurts me most of all?" responded
Angelica. "I wouldn't for the world say this outside, but you are
David's friend and almost one of the family, and I know you will
understand me."

She lifted her eyes to his face--those large, shining eyes as soft as a
dove's breast--and after a moment in which he gazed at her without
speaking, Alan answered gently, "Yes, I understand you."

"It would grieve me if you didn't because I feel that I can trust you."

"Yes, you can trust me--absolutely." He looked at Mary as he spoke, and
she smiled back at him with serene and joyous confidence.

"That is just what I tell Mary," resumed Angelica. "You are so
trustworthy that it is a comfort to talk to you, and then we both feel,
don't we, dear?" she inquired turning to the girl, "that your wonderful
knowledge of human nature makes your judgment of such value."

Alan laughed, though his eyes sparkled with pleasure. "I don't know
about that," he replied, "though my opinion, whatever it may be worth,
is at your service."

"That is why I am speaking so frankly because I feel that you can help
me. If you could only make David see his mistake--if you could only
persuade him to give up this idea. It can't be right to overturn all the
sacred things of the past--to discredit the principles we Virginians
have believed in for fifty years. Surely you agree with me that it is a
deplorable error of judgment?"

As she became more flattering and appealing, Alan recovered his gay
insouciance. "If you want a candid answer, Mrs. Blackburn," he replied
gallantly, "there isn't an ambition, much less a principle on earth, for
which I would disagree with you."

Angelica smiled archly, and she was always at her loveliest when her
face was illumined by the glow and colour of her smile. Was it possible,
Caroline wondered while she watched her, that so simple a thing as the
play of expression--as the parting of the lips, the raising of the
eyebrows--could make a face look as if the light of heaven had fallen
over it?

"If you get impertinent, I'll make Mary punish you!" exclaimed Angelica
reproachfully; and a minute later the car passed on, while she playfully
shook her finger from the window.

"How very handsome he is," said Caroline as she looked back in the lane.
"I didn't know that a man could be so good-looking."

Angelica was settling herself comfortably under the robe. "Yes, he is
quite unusual," she returned, and added after a pause, "If his uncle
ever dies, and they say he is getting very feeble, Alan will inherit one
of the largest fortunes in Chicago."

"I'm so glad. That's nice for Miss Blackburn."

"It's nice for Mary--yes." Her tone rather than her words, which were
merely conventional, made Caroline glance at her quickly; but Angelica's
features were like some faultless ivory mask. For the first time it
struck the girl that even a beautiful face could appear vacant in
repose.

"Where are we going now, mother?" asked Letty, who had been good and
quiet during the long wait in the lane.

"To the Ridleys', dear. I've brought a basket." There was a moment's
delay while she gave a few directions to the footman, and then, as Letty
snuggled closely against Caroline's arm, the car went on rapidly toward
the city.

The Ridleys lived in a small frame house in Pine Street; and when the
car stopped before the door, where a number of freshly washed children
were skipping rope on the pavement, Angelica alighted and held out her
hand to Letty.

"Do you want to come in with me, Letty?"

"I'd rather watch these children skip, mother. Miss Meade, may I have a
skipping-rope?"

Behind them the footman stood waiting with a covered basket, and for an
instant, while Mrs. Blackburn looked down on it, a shadow of irritation
rippled across her face. "Take that up to the second floor, John, and
ask Mrs. Ridley if she got the yarn I sent for the socks?" Then,
changing her mind as John disappeared into the narrow hall, from which a
smell of cabbage floated, she added firmly, "We won't stay a minute,
Letty, but you and Miss Meade must come up with me. I always feel," she
explained to Caroline, "that it does the child good to visit the poor,
and contrast her own lot with that of others. Young minds are so
impressionable, and we never know when the turning-point comes in a
life." Grasping Letty's hand she stepped over the skipping-rope, which
the children had lowered in awe to the pavement.

"Letty has a cold. I'm afraid she oughtn't to go in," said Caroline
hastily, while the child, rescued in the last extremity, threw a
grateful glance at her.

"You really think so? Well, perhaps next time. Ah, there is Mr. Ridley
now! We can speak to him without seeing his wife to-day." Instinctively,
before she realized the significance of her action, she had drawn
slightly aside.

A tall man, with a blotched, irascible face and a wad of tobacco in his
mouth, lurched out on the porch, and stopped short at the sight of his
visitors. He appeared surly and unattractive, and in her first
revulsion, Caroline was conscious of a sudden sympathy with Blackburn's
point of view. "He may be right, after all," she admitted to herself.
"Kind as Mrs. Blackburn is, she evidently doesn't know much about
people. I suppose I shouldn't have known anything either if I hadn't
been through the hospital."

"I am glad to see you down, Mr. Ridley," said Angelica graciously. "I
hope you are quite well again and that you have found the right kind of
work."

"Yes, 'm, I'm well, all right, but there ain't much doing now except
down at the works, and you know the way Mr. Blackburn treats me whenever
I go down there." He was making an effort to be ingratiating, and while
he talked his appearance seemed to change and grow less repelling. The
surliness left his face, his figure straightened from the lurching
walk, and he even looked a shade cleaner. "It is wonderful the power she
has over people," reflected the girl. "I suppose it comes just from
being so kind and lovely."

"You mustn't give up hope," Mrs. Blackburn replied encouragingly. "We
never know at what moment some good thing may turn up. It is a pity
there isn't more work of the kind in Richmond."

"Well, you see, ma'am, Mr. Blackburn has cornered the whole lot. That's
the way capital treats labour whenever it gets the chance." His face
assumed an argumentative expression. "To be sure, Mr. Blackburn didn't
start so very high himself, but that don't seem to make any difference,
and the minute a man gets to the top, he tries to stop everybody else
that's below him. If he hadn't had the luck to discover that cheap new
way to make steel, I reckon he wouldn't be very far over my head to-day.
It was all accident, that's what I tell the men down at the work

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