"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."
ATa 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 handand 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. ThoughCaroline 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'svoice 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 wassomething 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. Heproved 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 favouritesaying 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 togetherinto 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 seethat 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.
WHENthe 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 worldaround and the dark places, but it never,nevercomes 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 arealmost 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 gonenow, 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 theLusitaniawas 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 ormoan 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." Asshe 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 releasedherself 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 ghostfrom 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 werelike 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, shemade 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.
INthe 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 standingbefore 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 thatmade 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 Roanein 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 thesebreathless 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 needyfamilies 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."
ATfour 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. "Youcome 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. "Ofcourse 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 herhospitality 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.