"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 RedCross. 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 everyminute 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 threwhimself 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 sunwas 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 aregoing 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 hadwon 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 shecould, 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 havea 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 itthe 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 docileway; 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?"
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 inher 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 thecallers 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. Aman'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 ofthe 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 andobligations 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 obligationsof 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 purposesand 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 Blackburnhesitated. "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 beforeus 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 andmovements. 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 feelshas 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 localgovernments 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 stopand 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 thecontrol 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 mustmeet 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."
ASthe 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 momentat 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, "thoughmy 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 toCaroline, "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, hisfigure 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 works, and luck ain't nothing but accident when you come to look at it."
Mrs. Blackburn frowned slightly. It was plain that she did not care to diminish the space between Blackburn and his workmen, and Ridley's contemptuous tone was not entirely to her liking. She wanted to stoop, not to stand on a level with the objects of her charity.
"The war abroad has opened so many opportunities," she observed, amiably but vaguely.
"It's shut down a sight more than it's opened," rejoined Ridley, who possessed the advantage of knowing something of what he was talking about. "All the works except the steel and munition plants are laying off men every hour. It's easy enough on men like Mr. Blackburn, but it's hard on us poor ones, and it don'tmake it any easier to be sending all of this good stuff out of the country. Let the folks in Europe look after themselves, that's what I say. There are hungry mouths enough right here in this country without raising the price of everything we eat by shipping the crops over the water. I tell you I'll vote for any man, I don't care what he calls himself, who will introduce a bill to stop sending our provisions to the folks over yonder who are fighting when they ought to be working——."
"But surely we must do our best to help the starving women and children of Europe. It wouldn't be human, it wouldn't be Christian——" Angelica paused and threw an appealing glance in the direction of Caroline, who shook her head scornfully and looked away to the children on the pavement. Why did she stoop to argue with the man? Couldn't she see that he was merely the cheapest sort of malcontent?
"The first thing you know we'll be dragged into this here war ourselves," pursued Ridley, rolling the wad of tobacco in his mouth, "and it's the men like Mr. Blackburn that will be doing it. There's a lot of fellows down at the works that talk just as he does, but that's because they think they know which side their bread is buttered on! Some of 'em will tell you the boss is the best friend they have on earth; but they are talking through their hats when they say so. As for me, I reckon I've got my wits about me, and as long as I have they ain't going to make me vote for nobody except the man who puts the full dinner pail before any darn squabble over the water. I ain't got anything against you, ma'am, but Mr. Blackburn ain't treated me white, and if my turn ever comes, I'm going to get even with him as sure as my name is James Ridley."
"I think we'd better go," said Caroline sternly. She had suspected from the first that Ridley had been drinking, and his rambling abuse was beginning to make her angry. It seemed not only foolish, but wicked to make a martyr of such a man.
"Yes, we must go," assented Mrs. Blackburn uneasily. "I won't see Mrs. Ridley to-day," she added. "Tell her to let me know when she has finished the socks, and I will send for them. I am giving her some knitting to do for the War Relief."
"All right, she may do what she pleases as long as she's paid for it," rejoined Ridley with a grin. "I ain't interfering."
Then, as the procession moved to the car, with the footman and the empty basket making a dignified rear-guard, he added apologetically, "I hope you won't bear me a grudge for my plain speaking, ma'am?"
"Oh, no, for I am sure you are honest," replied Mrs. Blackburn, with the manner of affable royalty.
At last, to Caroline's inexpressible relief, they drove away amid the eager stares of the children that crowded the long straight street. "I always wonder how they manage to bring up such large families," remarked Angelica as she gazed with distant benignity out of the window. "Oh, I quite forgot. I must speak to Mrs. Macy about some pillow cases. John, we will stop at Mrs. Macy's in the next block."
In a dark back room just beyond the next corner, they found an elderly woman hemstitching yards of fine thread cambric ruffling. As they entered, she pinned the narrow strip of lawn over her knee, and looked up without rising. She had a square, stolid face, which had settled into the heavy placidity that comes to thosewho expect nothing. Her thin white hair was parted and brushed back from her sunken temples, and her eyes, between chronically reddened lids, gazed at her visitors with a look of passive endurance. "My hip is bad to-day," she explained. "I hope you won't mind my not getting up." She spoke in a flat, colourless voice, as if she had passed beyond the sphere of life in which either surprises or disappointments are possible. Suffering had moulded her thought into the plastic impersonal substance of philosophy.
"Oh, don't think of moving, Mrs. Macy," returned Angelica kindly. "I stopped by to bring you the lace edging you needed, and to ask if you have finished any of the little pillow slips? Now, that your son is able to get back to work, you ought to have plenty of spare time for hemstitching."
"Yes, there's plenty of time," replied Mrs. Macy, without animation, "but it's slow work, and hard on weak eyes, even with spectacles. You like it done so fine that I have to take twice the trouble with the stitches, and I was just thinking of asking you if you couldn't pay me twenty cents instead of fifteen a yard? It's hard to make out now, with every mouthful you eat getting dearer all the time, and though Tom is a good son, he's got a large family to look after, and his eldest girl has been ailing of late, and had to have the doctor before she could keep on at school."
A queer look had crept into Angelica's face—the prudent and guarded expression of a financier who suspects that he is about to be over-matched, that, if he is not cautious, something will be got from him for nothing. For the instant her features lost their softness, and became sharp and almost ugly, while there flashed throughCaroline's mind the amazing thought, "I believe she is stingy! Yet how could she be when she spends such a fortune on clothes?" Then the cautious look passed as swiftly as it had come, and Mrs. Blackburn stooped over the rocking-chair, and gathered the roll of thread cambric into her gloved hands. "I can have it done anywhere for fifteen cents a yard," she said slowly.
"Well, I know, ma'am, that used to be the price, but they tell me this sort of work is going up like everything else. When you think I used to pay eight and ten cents a pound for middling, and yesterday they asked me twenty-six cents at the store. Flour is getting so high we can barely afford it, and even corn meal gets dearer every day. If the war in Europe goes on, they say there won't be enough food left in America to keep us alive. It ain't that I'm complaining, Mrs. Blackburn, I know it's a hard world on us poor folks, and I ain't saying that anybody's to blame for it, but it did cross my mind, while I was thinking over these things a minute ago, that you might see your way to pay me a little more for the hemstitching."
While she talked she went on patiently turning the hem with her blunted thumb, and as she finished, she raised her head for the first time and gazed stoically, not into Angelica's face, but at a twisted ailantus tree which grew by the board fence of the backyard.'
"I am glad you look at things so sensibly, Mrs. Macy," observed Angelica cheerfully. She had dropped the ruffling to the floor, and as she straightened herself, she recovered her poise and amiability. "One hears so many complaints now among working people, and at a time like this, when the country is approaching a crisis, it is so important"—this was a favourite phrase withher, and she accented it firmly—"it is so important that all classes should stand together and work for the common good. I am sure I try to do my bit. There is scarcely an hour when I am not trying to help, but I do feel that the well-to-do classes should not be expected to make all the sacrifices. The working people must do their part, and with the suffering in Europe, and the great need of money for charities, it doesn't seem quite fair, does it, for you to ask more than you've been getting? It isn't as if fifteen cents a yard wasn't a good price. I can easily get it done elsewhere for that, but I thought you really needed the work."
"I do," said Mrs. Macy, with a kind of dry terror. "It's all I've got to live on."
"Then I'm sure you ought to be thankful to get it and not complain because it isn't exactly what you would like. All of us, Mrs. Macy, have to put up with things that we wish were different. If you would only stop to think of the suffering in Belgium, you would feel grateful instead of dissatisfied with your lot. Why, I can't sleep at night because my mind is so full of the misery in the world."