"I reckon you're right," Mrs. Macy replied humbly, and she appeared completely convinced by the argument. "It's awful enough the wretchedness over there, and Tom and I have tried to help the little we could. We can't give much, but he has left off his pipe for a month in order to send what he spent in tobacco, and I've managed to do some knitting the last thing at night and the first in the morning. I couldn't stint on food because there wasn't any to spare, so I said to myself, 'Well, I reckon there's one thing you can give and that's sleep.' So Mrs. Miller, she lets me have theyarn, and I manage to go to bed an hour later and get up an hour sooner. When you've got to my age, the thing you can spare best is sleep."
"You're right, and I'm glad you take that rational view." Mrs. Blackburn's manner was kind and considerate. "Every gift is better that includes sacrifice, don't you feel? Tell your son that I think it is fine his giving up tobacco. He has his old place at the works, hasn't he?"
"I wrote straight to Mr. Blackburn, ma'am, and he made the foreman hold it for him. Heaven only knows how we'd have managed but for your husband. He ain't the sort that talks unless he is on the platform, but I don't believe he ever forgets to be just when the chance comes to him. There are some folks that call him a hard man, but Tom says it ain't hardness, but justice, and I reckon Tom knows. Tom says the boss hasn't any use for idlers and drunkards, but he's fair enough to the ones who stand by him and do their work—and all the stuff they are putting in the papers about trouble down at the works ain't anything on earth but a political game."
"Well, we must go," said Mrs. Blackburn, who had been growing visibly restless. On her way to the door she paused for an instant and asked, "Your son is something of a politician himself, isn't he, Mrs. Macy?"
"Yes, 'm, Tom has a good deal to do with the Federation of Labour, and in that way he comes more or less into politics. He has a lot of good hard sense if I do say it, and I reckon there ain't anybody that stands better with the workers than he does."
"Of course he is a Democrat?"
"Well, he always used to be, ma'am, but of late I'venoticed that he seems to be thinking the way Mr. Blackburn does. It wouldn't surprise me if he voted with him when the time came, and the way Tom votes," she added proudly, "a good many others will vote, too. He says just as Mr. Blackburn does that the new times take new leaders—that's one of Tom's sayings—and that both the Democratic and Republican Parties ain't big enough for these days. Tom says they are both hitched tight, like two mules, to the past."
By this time Angelica had reached the door, and as she passed out, with Letty's hand in hers, she glanced back and remarked, "I should think the working people would be grateful to any party that keeps them out of the war."
Mrs. Macy looked up from her needle. "Well, war is bad," she observed shortly, "but I've lived through one, and I ain't saying that I haven't seen things that are worse."
The air was fresh and bracing after the close room, and a little later, as they turned into Franklin Street, Angelica leaned out of the window as if she were drinking deep draughts of sunlight.
"The poor are so unintelligent," she observed when she had drawn in her head again. "They seem never able to think with any connection. The war has been going on for a long time now, and yet they haven't learned that it is any concern of theirs."
Letty had begun coughing, and Caroline drew her closer while she asked anxiously, "Do you think it is wise to take a child into close houses?"
"Well, I meant to stay only a moment, but I thought Mrs. Macy would never stop talking. Do you feel badly, darling? Come closer to mother."
"Oh, no, I'm well," answered the child. "It is just my throat that tickles." Then her tone changed, and as they stopped at the corner of the park, she cried out with pleasure, "Isn't that Uncle Roane over there? Uncle Roane, do you see us?"
A handsome, rather dissipated looking young man, with a mop of curly light hair and insolent blue eyes, glanced round at the call, and came quickly to the car, which waited under the elms by the sidewalk. The street was gay with flying motors, and long bars of sunshine slanted across the grass of the park, where groups of negro nurses gossiped drowsily beside empty perambulators.
"Why, Anna Jeannette!" exclaimed the young man, with genial mockery. "This is a pleasure which I thought your worthy Bluebeard had forbidden me!"
"Get in, and I'll take you for a little drive. This is Miss Meade. You met her that night at Briarlay."
"The angel in the house! I remember." He smiled boldly into Caroline's face. "Well, Letty, I'd like to trade my luck for yours. Look at your poor uncle, and tell me honestly if I am not the one who needs to be nursed. Lend her to me?"
"I can't lend you Miss Meade, Uncle Roane," replied the child seriously, "because she plays with me; but if you really need somebody, I reckon I can let you have Mammy Riah for a little while."
Roane laughed while he bent over and pinched Letty's cheek. That he had a bad reputation, Caroline was aware, and though she was obliged to admit that he looked as if he deserved it, she could not deny that he possessed the peculiar charm which one of the old novels at The Cedars described as "the most dangerous attributeof a rake." "I could never like him, yet I can understand how some women might fall in love with him," she thought.
"No, I decline, with thanks, your generous offer," Roane was saying. "If I cannot be nursed by an angel, I will not be nursed by a witch."
Beneath his insolent, admiring gaze a lovely colour flooded Caroline's cheeks. In the daylight his manner seemed to her more offensive than ever, and her impulsive recognition of his charm was followed by an instantaneous recoil.
"I don't like witches," said Letty. "Do you think Miss Meade is an angel, Uncle Roane?"
"From first impressions," retorted Roane flippantly, "I should say that she might be."
As Caroline turned away indignantly, Angelica leaned over and gently patted her hand. "You mustn't mind him, my dear, that's just Roane's way," she explained.
"But I do mind," replied Caroline, with spirit. "I think he is very impertinent."
"Think anything you please, only think of me," rejoined Roane, with a gallant air.
"You bad boy!" protested Angelica. "Can't you see that Miss Meade is provoked with you?"
"No woman, Anna Jeannette, is provoked by a sincere and humble admiration. Are you ignorant of the feminine heart?"
"If you won't behave yourself, Roane, you must get out of the car. And for heaven's sake, stop calling me by that name!"
"My dear sister, I thought it was yours."
"It is not the one I'm known by." She was clearly annoyed. "By the way, have you got your costume forthe tableaux? You were so outrageous at Mrs. Miller's the other night that if they could find anybody else, I believe that they would refuse to let you take part. Why are you so dreadful, Roane?"
"They require me, not my virtue, sister. Go over the list of young men in your set, and tell me if there is another Saint George of England among them?"
His air of mocking pride was so comic that a smile curved Caroline's lips, while Angelica commented seriously, "Well, you aren't nearly so good-looking as you used to be, and if you go on drinking much longer, you will be a perfect fright."
"How she blights my honourable ambition!" exclaimed Roane to Caroline. "Even the cherished career of a tableau favourite is forbidden me."
"Mother is going to be Peace," said Letty, with her stately manner of making conversation, "and she will look just like an angel. Her dress has come all the way from New York, Uncle Roane, and they sent a wreath of leaves to go on her head. If I don't get sick, Miss Meade is going to take me to see her Friday night."
"Well, if I am brother to Peace, Letty, I must be good. Miss Meade, how do you like Richmond?"
"I love it," answered Caroline, relieved by his abrupt change of tone. "The people are so nice. There is Mrs. Colfax now. Isn't she beautiful?"
They were running into Monument Avenue, and Daisy Colfax had just waved to them from a passing car.
"Yes, I proposed to her twice," replied Roane, gazing after Daisy's rose-coloured veil which streamed gaily behind her. "But she could not see her way, unfortunately, to accept me. I am not sure, between youand me, that she didn't go farther and fare worse with old Robert. I might have broken her heart, but I should never have bored her. Speaking of Robert, Anna Jeannette, was he really the author of that slashing editorial in theFree-Press?"
"Everybody thinks he wrote it, but it doesn't sound a bit like him. Wasn't it dreadful, Roane?"
"Oh, well, nothing is fair in politics, but the plum," he returned. "By the way, is it true about Blackburn's vaulting ambition, or is it just newspaper stuff?"
"Of course I know nothing positively, Roane, for David never talks to me about his affairs; but he seems to get more and more distracted about politics every day that he lives. I shouldn't like to have it repeated, yet I can't help the feeling that there is a great deal of truth in what the article says about his disloyalty to the South."
"Well, I shouldn't lose any sleep over that if I were you. No man ever took a step forward on this earth that he didn't move away from something that the rest of the world thought he ought to have stood by. There isn't much love lost between your husband and me, but it isn't a political difference that divides us. He has the bad taste not to admire my character."
"I know you never feel seriously about these things," said Angelica sadly, "but I always remember how ardently dear father loved the Democratic Party. He used to say that he could forgive a thief sooner than a traitor."
"Great Scott! What is there left to be a traitor to?" demanded Roane, disrespectfully. "A political machine that grinds out jobs isn't a particularly patriotic institution. I am not taking sides with Blackburn,my dear sister, only I'd be darned before I'd have acted the part of your precious Colfax. It may be good politics, but it's pretty bad sport, I should think. It isn't playing the game."
"I suppose Robert feels that things are really going too far," observed Angelica feebly, for her arguments always moved in a circle. "He believes so strongly, you know, in the necessity of keeping the South solid. Of course he may not really have attacked David," she added quickly. "There are other editors."
"I am sure there is not one bit of truth in that article," said Caroline suddenly, and her voice trembled with resentment. "I know Mr. Blackburn doesn't oppress his men because we've just been talking with the mother of a man who works in his plant. As for the rest, I was listening to him this afternoon, and I believe he is right." Her eyes were glowing as she finished, and her elusive beauty—the beauty of spirit, not of flesh—gave her features the rare and noble grace of a marble Diana. Her earnestness had suddenly lifted her above them. Though she was only a dark, slender woman, with a gallant heart, she seemed to Roane as remote and royal as a goddess. He liked the waving line of hair on her clear forehead, where the light gathered in a benediction; he liked her firm red lips, with their ever-changing play of expression, and he liked above all the lovely lines of her figure, which was at once so strong and so light, so feminine and so spirited. It was the beauty of character, he told himself, and, by Jove, in a woman, he liked character!
"Well, he has a splendid champion, lucky dog!" he exclaimed, with his eyes on her face.
For an instant Caroline wavered as Angelica's gaze,full of pained surprise, turned toward her; then gathering her courage, she raised her lashes and met Roane's admiring stare with a candid and resolute look.
"No, it is not that," she said, "but I can't bear to see people unjust to any one."
"You are right," ejaculated Roane impulsively, and he added beneath his breath, "By George, I hope you'll stand up for me like that when I am knocked."
INthe morning Letty awoke with a sore throat, and before night she had developed a cold which spent itself in paroxysms of coughing. "Oh, Miss Meade, make me well before Friday," she begged, as Caroline undressed her. "Isn't Friday almost here now?"
"In three days, dear. You must hurry and get over this cold."
"Do you think I am going to be well, Mammy?" They were in the nursery at Letty's bedtime, and Mammy Riah was heating a cup of camphorated oil over the fire.
"You jes' wait twel I git dish yer' red flan'l on yo' chist, en hit's gwinter breck up yo' cough toreckly," replied Mammy Riah reassuringly. "I'se done soused hit right good in dis hot ile."
"I'll do anything you want. I'll swallow it right down if it will make me well."
"Dar ain't nuttin dat'll breck up a cole quick'n hot ile," said the old woman, "lessen hit's a hot w'iskey toddy."
"Well, you can't give her that," interposed Caroline quickly, "if she isn't better in the morning I'm going to send for Doctor Boland. I've done everything I could think of. Now, jump into bed Letty, dear, and let me cover you up warm before I open the window. I am going to sleep on the couch in the corner."
"Hit pears to me like you en Marse David is done gone clean 'stracted 'bout fresh a'r," grumbled Mammy Riah, as she drew a strip of red flannel out of the oil. "Dar ain' nuttin in de worl' de matter wid dis chile but all dis night a'r you's done been lettin' in on 'er w'ile she wuz sleepin'. Huh! I knows jes ez much about night a'r ez enny er yo' reel doctahs, en I ain' got er bit er use fur hit, I ain't. Hit's a woner to me you all ain' done kilt 'er betweenst you, you and Marse David en Miss Angy, 'en yo' reel doctah. Ef'n you ax me, I 'ud let down all dem winders, en stuff up de chinks wid rags twel Letty was peart enuff ter be outer dat baid."
The danger in night air had been a source of contention ever since the first frost of the season, and though science had at last carried its point, Caroline felt that the victory had cost her both the respect and the affection of the old negress.
"I ain' never riz noner my chillun on night a'r," she muttered rebelliously, while she brought the soaked flannel over to Letty's bed.
"I hope it will cure me," said the child eagerly, and she added after a moment in which Mammy Riah zealously applied the oil and covered her with blankets, "Do you think I'd better have all the night air shut out as she says, Miss Meade?"
"No, darling," answered Caroline firmly. "Fresh air will cure you quicker than anything else."
But, in spite of the camphorated oil and the wide-open windows, Letty was much worse in the morning. Her face was flushed with fever, and she refused her breakfast, when Mammy Riah brought it, because as she said, "everything hurt her." Even her passionate interest in the tableaux had evaporated, and she lay,inert and speechless, in her little bed, while her eyes followed Caroline wistfully about the room.
"I telephoned for Doctor Boland the first thing," said Caroline to the old woman, "and now I am going to speak to Mrs. Blackburn. Will you sit with Letty while I run down for a cup of coffee?"
"Ef'n I wuz you, I wouldn't wake Miss Angy," replied the negress. "Hit'll mek 'er sick jes ez sho' ez you live. You'd better run along down en speak ter Marse David."
"I'll tell him at breakfast, but oughtn't Letty's mother to know how anxious I am?"
"She's gwine ter know soon enuff," responded Mammy Riah, "but dey don' low none un us ter rouse 'er twell she's hed 'er sleep out. Miss Angy is one er dem nervous sort, en she gits 'stracted moughty easy."
In the dining-room, which was flooded with sunshine, Caroline found the housekeeper and Blackburn, who had apparently finished his breakfast, and was glancing over a newspaper. There was a pile of half-opened letters by his plate, and his face wore the look of animation which she associated with either politics or business.
"I couldn't leave Letty until Mammy Riah came," she explained in an apologetic tone. "Her cold is so much worse that I've telephoned for the doctor."
At this Blackburn folded the paper and pushed back his chair. "How long has she had it?" he inquired anxiously. "I thought she wasn't well yesterday." There was the tender, protecting sound in his voice that always came with the mention of Letty.
"She hasn't been herself for several days, but thismorning she seems suddenly worse. I am afraid it may be pneumonia."
"Have you said anything to Angelica?" asked Mrs. Timberlake, and her tone struck Caroline as strained and non-committal.
"Mammy Riah wouldn't let me wake her. I am going to her room as soon as her bell rings."
"Well, she's awake. I've just sent up her breakfast." The housekeeper spoke briskly. "She has to be in town for some rehearsals."
Blackburn had gone out, and Caroline sat alone at the table while she hastily swallowed a cup of coffee. It was a serene and cloudless day, and the view of the river had never looked so lovely as it did through the falling leaves and over the russet sweep of autumn grasses. October brooded with golden wings over the distance.
"I had noticed that Letty had a sort of hacking cough for three days," said Mrs. Timberlake from the window, "but I didn't think it would amount to anything serious."
"Yes, I tried to cure it, and last night Mammy Riah doctored her. The child is so delicate that the slightest ailment is dangerous. It seems strange that she should be so frail. Mr. Blackburn looks strong, and his wife was always well until recently, wasn't she?"
For a moment Mrs. Timberlake stared through the window at a sparrow which was perched on the topmost branch of a juniper. "I never saw any one hate to have a child as much as Angelica did," she said presently in her dry tones. "She carried on like a crazy woman about it. Some women are like that, you know."
"Yes, I know, but she is devoted to Letty now."
The housekeeper did not reply, and her face grew greyer and harsher than ever.
"No one could be sweeter than she is with her," said Caroline, after a moment in which she tried to pierce mentally the armour of Mrs. Timberlake's reserve. "She isn't always so silent," she thought. "I hear her talking by the hour to Mammy Riah, but it is just as if she were afraid of letting out something if she opened her lips. I wonder if she is really so prejudiced against Mrs. Blackburn that she can't talk of her?" Though Caroline's admiration for Angelica had waned a little on closer acquaintance, she still thought her kind and beautiful, except in her incomprehensible attitude to the old sewing woman in Pine Street. The recollection of that scene, which she had found it impossible to banish entirely, was a sting in her memory; and as she recalled it now, her attitude toward Angelica changed insensibly from that of an advocate to a judge.
"Oh, Angelica is sweet enough," said the housekeeper suddenly, with a rasping sound, as if the words scraped her throat as she uttered them, "if you don't get in her way." Then facing Caroline squarely, she added in the same tone, "I'm not saying anything against Angelica, Miss Meade. Our grandmothers were sisters, and I am not the sort to turn against my own blood kin, but you'll hear a heap of stories about the way things go on in this house, and I want you to take it from me in the beginning that there are a plenty of worse husbands than David Blackburn. He isn't as meek as Moses, but he's been a good friend to me, and if I wanted a helping hand, I reckon I'd go to him now a sight quicker than I would to Angelica, though she's my kin and he isn't."
Rising hurriedly, as she finished, she gave a curt little laugh and exclaimed, "Well, there's one thing David and I have in common. We're both so mortal shutmouthed because when we once begin to talk, we always let the cat out of the bag. Now, if you're through, you can go straight upstairs and have a word with Angelica before she begins to dress."
She went over to the sideboard, and began counting the silver aloud, while Caroline pushed back her chair, and ran impatiently upstairs to Mrs. Blackburn's room. At her knock the maid, Mary, opened the door, and beyond her Angelica's voice said plaintively, "Oh, Miss Meade, Mary tells me that Letty's cold is very bad. I am so anxious about her."
A breakfast tray was before her, and while she looked down at the china coffee service, which was exquisitely thin and fragile, she broke off a piece of toast, and buttered it carefully, with the precise attention she devoted to the smallest of her personal needs. It seemed to Caroline that she had never appeared so beautiful as she did against the lace pillows, in her little cap and dressing sack of sky-blue silk.
"I came to tell you," said Caroline. "She complains of pain whenever she moves, and I'm afraid, unless something is done at once, it may turn into pneumonia."
"Well, I'm coming immediately, just as soon as I've had my coffee. I woke up with such a headache that I don't dare to stir until I've eaten. You have sent for the doctor, of course?"
"I telephoned very early, but I suppose he won't be here until after his office hours."
Having eaten the piece of toast, Angelica drank hercoffee, and motioned to Mary to remove the tray from her knees. "I'll get up at once," she said. "Mary, give me my slippers. You told me so suddenly that I haven't yet got over the shock."
She looked distressed and frightened, and a little later, when she followed Caroline into the nursery and stooped over Letty's bed, her attitude was that of an early Italian Madonna. The passion of motherhood seemed to pervade her whole yearning body, curving the soft lines to an ineffable beauty.
"Letty, darling, are you better?"
The child opened her eyes and stared, without smiling, in her mother's face.
"Yes, I am better," she answered in a panting voice, "but I wish it didn't hurt so."
"The doctor is coming. He will give you some medicine to cure it."
"Mammy says that it is the night air that makes me sick, but father says that hasn't anything to do with it."
From the fire which she was tending, Mammy Riah looked up moodily. "Huh! I reckon Marse David cyarn' teach me nuttin' 'bout raisin chillun," she muttered under her breath.
"Ask the doctor. He will tell you," answered Angelica. "Do you think it is warm enough in here, Miss Meade?"
"Yes, I am careful about the temperature." Almost unconsciously Caroline had assumed her professional manner, and as she stood there in her white uniform beside Letty's bed, she looked so capable and authoritative that even Mammy Riah was cowed, though she still grumbled in a deep whisper.
"Of course you know best," said Angelica, with therelief she always felt whenever any one removed a responsibility from her shoulders, or assumed a duty which naturally belonged to her. "Has she fallen asleep so quickly?"
"No, it's stupor. She has a very high fever."
"I don't like that blue look about her mouth, and her breathing is so rapid. Do you think she is seriously ill, Miss Meade?" Angelica had withdrawn from the bed, and as she asked the question, she lowered her voice until her words were almost inaudible. Her eyes were soft and anxious under the drooping lace edge of her cap.
"I don't like her pulse," Caroline also spoke in a whisper, with an anxious glance at the bed, though Letty seemed oblivious of their presence in the room. "I am just getting ready to sponge her with alcohol. That may lower her temperature."
For a moment Mrs. Blackburn wavered between the bed and the door. "I wish I didn't have to go to town," she said nervously. "If it were for anything else except these tableaux I shouldn't think of it. But in a cause like this, when there is so much suffering to be relieved, I feel that one ought not to let personal anxieties interfere. Don't you think I am right, Miss Meade?"
"I haven't thought about it," replied Caroline with her usual directness. "But I am sure you are the best judge of what you ought to do."
"I have the most important part, you see, and if I were to withdraw, it would be such a disappointment to the committee. There isn't any one else they could get at the last moment."
"I suppose not. There is really nothing that you can do here."
"That is what I thought." Angelica's tone was one of relief. "Of course if I were needed about anything it would be different; but you are better able than I am to decide what ought to be done. I always feel so helpless," she added sadly, "when there is illness in the house."
With the relinquishment of responsibility, she appeared to grow almost cheerful. If she had suddenly heard that Letty was much better, or had discovered, after harrowing uncertainty, the best and surest treatment for pneumonia, her face would probably have worn just such a relieved and grateful expression. In one vivid instant, with a single piercing flash of insight, the other woman seemed to look straight through that soft feminine body to Mrs. Blackburn's thin and colourless soul. "I know what she is now—she is thin," said Caroline to herself. "She is thin all through, and I shall never feel the same about her again. She doesn't want trouble, she doesn't want responsibility because it makes her uncomfortable—that is why she turns Letty over to me. She is beautiful, and she is sweet when nothing disturbs her, but I believe she is selfish underneath all that softness and sweetness which costs her so little." And she concluded with a merciless judgment, "That is why she wasn't kind to that poor old woman in Pine Street. It would have cost her something, and she can't bear to pay. She wants to get everything for nothing."
The iron in her soul hardened suddenly, for she knew that this moment of revelation had shattered for her the romance of Briarlay. She might still be fascinated by Mrs. Blackburn; she might still pity her and long to help her; she might still blame Blackburn bitterlyfor his hardness—but she could never again wholly sympathize with Angelica.
"There isn't anything in the world that you can do," she repeated gravely.
"I knew you'd say that, and it is so good of you to reassure me." Mrs. Blackburn smiled from the threshold. "Now, I must dress, or I shall be late for the rehearsal. If the doctor comes while I am away, please ask him if he thinks another nurse is necessary. David tells me he telephoned for an extra one for night duty; but, dear Miss Meade, I feel so much better satisfied when I know that Letty is in your charge every minute."
"Oh, she is in my charge. Even if the other nurse comes, I shall still sleep in the room next to her."
"You are so splendid!" For an instant Angelica shone on her from the hall. Then the door closed behind her, and an hour afterwards, as Caroline sat by Letty's bed, with her hand on her pulse, she heard the motor start down the drive and turn rapidly into the lane.
At one o'clock the doctor came, and he was still there a quarter of an hour later, when Mrs. Blackburn rustled, with an anxious face, into the room. She wore a suit of grey cloth, and, with her stole and muff of silver fox, and her soft little hat of grey velvet, she made Caroline think of one of the aspen trees, in a high wind, on the lawn at The Cedars. She was all delicate, quivering gleams of silver, and even her golden hair looked dim and shadowy, under a grey veil, as if it were seen through a mist.
"Oh, Doctor, she isn't really so ill, is she?" Her eyes implored him to spare her, and while she questionedhim, she flung the stole of silver fox away from her throat, as if the weight of the furs oppressed her.
"Well, you mustn't be too anxious. We are doing all we can, you know. In a day or two, I hope, we'll have got her over the worst." He was a young man, the son of Mrs. Colfax's friend, old Doctor Boland, and all his eager youth seemed to start from his eyes while he gazed at Angelica. "Beauty like that is a power," thought Caroline almost resentfully. "It hides everything—even vacancy." All the men she had seen with Mrs. Blackburn, except her husband, had gazed at her with this worshipful and protecting look; and, as she watched it shine now in Doctor Boland's eyes, she wondered cynically why David Blackburn alone should be lacking in this particular kind of chivalry. "He is the only man who looks at her as if she were a human being, not an angel," she reflected. "I wonder if he used to do it once, and if he has stopped because he has seen deeper than any of the others?"
"Then it isn't really pneumonia?" asked Angelica.
He hesitated, still trying to answer the appeal in her eyes, and to spare her the truth if it were possible.
"It looks now as if it might be, Mrs. Blackburn, but children pick up so quickly, you know." He reached out his arm as he answered, and led her to the couch in one corner. "Have you some aromatic ammonia at hand, Miss Meade? I think you might give Mrs. Blackburn a few drops of it."
Caroline measured the drops from a bottle on the table by Letty's bed. "Perhaps she had better lie down," she suggested.
"Yes, I think I'll go to my room," answered Angelica, rising from the couch, as she lifted a grateful face tothe young doctor. "A shock always upsets me, and ever since Mary told me how ill Letty was, I have felt as if I couldn't breathe."
She looked really unhappy, and as Caroline met her eyes, she reproached herself for her harsh criticism of the morning. After all, Angelica couldn't help being herself. After all, she wasn't responsible for her limited intelligence and her coldness of nature! Perhaps she felt more in her heart than she was able to express, in spite of her perfect profile and her wonderful eyes. "Even her selfishness may be due to her bringing up, and the way everyone has always spoiled her," pursued the girl, with a swift reaction from her severe judgment.
When Angelica had gone out, Doctor Boland came over to the bed, and stood gazing thoughtfully down on the child, who stirred restlessly and stared up at him with bright, glassy eyes. It was plain to Caroline that he was more disturbed than he had admitted; and his grave young features looked old and drawn while he stood there in silence. He was a thickset man, with an ugly, intelligent face and alert, nearsighted eyes behind enormous glasses with tortoise-shell rims.
"If we can manage to keep her temperature down," he said, and added as if he were pursuing his original train of thought, "Mrs. Blackburn is unusually sensitive."
"She is not very strong."
"For that reason it is better not to alarm her unnecessarily. I suppose Mr. Blackburn can always be reached?"
"Oh, yes, I have his telephone number. He asked me to call him up as soon as I had seen you."
After this he gave a few professional directions, andleft abruptly with the remark, "I'll look in early to-morrow. There is really nothing we can do except keep up the treatment and have as much fresh air as possible in the room. If all goes well, I hope she will have pulled through the worst by Friday—and if I were you," he hesitated and a flush rose to his sandy hair, "I should be careful how I broke any bad news to Mrs. Blackburn."
He went out, closing the door cautiously, as if he feared to make any sound in the house, while Caroline sat down to wonder what it was about Angelica that made every man, even the doctor, so anxious to spare her? "I believe his chief concern about poor Letty is that this illness disturbs her mother," she mused, without understanding. "Well, I hope his prophecy will come true, and that the worst will be over by Friday. If she isn't, it will be a blow to the entertainment committee."
But when Friday came, the child was so much worse that the doctor, when he hurried out before his office hours, looked old and grey with anxiety. At eleven o'clock Blackburn sent his car back to the garage, and came up, with a book which he did not open, to sit in Letty's room. As he entered, Angelica rose from the couch on which she had been lying, and laid her hand on his arm.
"I am so glad you have come, David. It makes me better satisfied to have you in the house."
"I am not going to the works. Mayfield is coming to take down some letters, and I shall be here all day."
"It is a comfort to know that. I couldn't close my eyes last night, so if you are going to be here, I think I'll try to rest a few minutes."
She was pale and tired, and for the first time since shehad been in the house, Caroline discerned a shade of sympathy in the glances they interchanged. "What a beautiful thing it would be if Letty's illness brought them together," she thought, with a wave of happiness in the midst of her apprehension. She had read of men and women who were miraculously ennobled in the crucial moments of life, and her vivid fancy was already weaving a romantic ending to the estrangement of the Blackburns. After all, more improbable things had happened, she told herself in one of her mother's favourite phrases.
At five o'clock, when Doctor Boland came, Blackburn had gone down to his library, and Caroline, who had just slipped into a fresh uniform, was alone in the room. Her eyes were unnaturally large and dark; but she looked cool and composed, and her vitality scarcely felt the strain of the three sleepless nights. Though the second nurse came on duty at six o'clock, Caroline had been too restless and wakeful to stay in her room, and had spent the nights on the couch by the nursery window.
"If we can manage to keep up her strength through the night——"
The doctor had already looked over the chart, and he held it now in his hand while he waited for a response.
"There is a fighting chance, isn't there?"
His face was very grave, though his voice still maintained its professional cheerfulness. "With a child there is always a chance, and if she pulls through the night——"
"I shall keep my eyes on her every minute." As she spoke she moved back to Letty's bed, while the doctor went out with an abrupt nod and the words,"Mr. Blackburn wishes me to spend the night here. I'll be back after dinner."
The door had hardly closed after him, when it opened again noiselessly, and Mrs. Timberlake thrust her head through the crack. As she peered into the room, with her long sallow face and her look of mutely inviting disaster, there flashed through Caroline's mind the recollection of one of her father's freckled engravings of "Hecuba Gazing Over the Ruins of Troy."
"I've brought you a cup of tea. Couldn't you manage to drink it?"
"Yes, I'd like it." There was something touching in the way Mrs. Timberlake seemed to include her in the distress of the family—to assume that her relation to Letty was not merely the professional one of a nurse to a patient.
Stepping cautiously, as if she were in reality treading on ruins, the housekeeper crossed the room and placed the tray on the table at the bedside. While she leaned over to pour out the tea, she murmured in a rasping whisper, "Mammy Riah is crying so I wouldn't let her come in. Can Letty hear us?"
"No, she is in a stupor. She has been moaning a good deal, but she is too weak to keep it up. I've just given her some medicine."
Her gaze went back to the child, who stirred and gave a short panting sob. In her small transparent face, which was flushed with fever, the blue circle about the mouth seemed to start out suddenly like the mark of a blow. She lay very straight and slim under the cover, as if she had shrunken to half her size since her illness, and her soft, fine hair, drawn smoothly back from her waxen forehead, clung as flat and close as a cap.
"I'd scarcely know her," murmured the housekeeper, with a catch in her throat.
"If she passes the crisis she will pick up quickly. I've seen children as ill as this who were playing about the room a few days afterwards." Caroline tried to speak brightly, but in spite of her efforts, there was a note of awe in her voice.
"Is it really as grave as we fear, Miss Meade?"
Caroline met the question frankly. "It is very grave, Mrs. Timberlake, but with a child, as the doctor told me a minute ago, there is always hope of a sudden change for the better."
"Have you said anything to Angelica?"
"She was in here a little while ago, just before the doctor's visit, but I tried not to alarm her. She is so easily made ill."
The windows were wide open, and Mrs. Timberlake went over to the nearest one, and stood gazing out on the lawn and the half-bared elms. A light wind was blowing, and while she stood there, she shivered and drew the knitted purple cape she wore closer about her shoulders. Beyond the interlacing boughs the sunlight streamed in a golden shower on the grass, which was still bright and green, and now and then a few sparkling drops were scattered through the broad windows, and rippled over the blanket on Letty's bed. "It is hard to get used to these new-fangled ways," observed the housekeeper presently as she moved back to the fire. "In my days we'd have thought a hot room and plenty of whiskey toddy the best things for pneumonia."
"The doctor told me to keep the windows wide open."
"I heard him say so, but don't you think you had better put on a wrap? It feels chilly."
"Oh, no, I'm quite warm." Caroline finished the cup of tea as she spoke and gave back the tray. "That did me good. I needed it."
"I thought so." From the tone in which the words were uttered Caroline understood that the housekeeper was gaining time. "Are you sure you oughtn't to say something to Angelica?"
"Say something? You mean tell her how ill Letty is? Why, the doctor gave me my instructions. He said positively that I was not to alarm Mrs. Blackburn."
"I don't think he understood. He doesn't know that she still expects to be in the tableaux to-night."
For an instant Caroline stared back at her without a word; then she said in an incredulous whisper, "Oh, she wouldn't—she couldn't!"
"She feels it to be her duty—her sacred duty, she has just told me so. You see, I don't think she in the least realizes. She seems confident that Letty is better."
"How can she be? She was in here less than an hour ago."
"And she said nothing about to-night?"
"Not a word. I had forgotten about the tableaux, but, of course, I shouldn't have mentioned them. I tried to be cheerful, to keep up her spirit—but she must have seen. She couldn't help seeing."
The housekeeper's lips twitched, and she moistened them nervously. "If you knew Angelica as well as I do," she answered flatly, "you'd realize that she can help seeing anything on earth except the thing she wants to see."
"Then you must tell her," rejoined Caroline positively. "Someone must tell her."
"I couldn't." Mrs. Timberlake was as emphatic as Caroline. "And what's more she wouldn't believe me if I did. She'd pretend it was some of my crankiness. You just wait till you try to convince Angelica of something she doesn't want to believe."
"I'll tell her if you think I ought to—or perhaps it would be better to go straight to Mr. Blackburn?"
Mrs. Timberlake coughed. "Well, I reckon if anybody can convince her, David can," she retorted. "He doesn't mince matters."
"The night nurse comes on at six o'clock, and just as soon as she gets here I'll go downstairs to Mr. Blackburn. That will be time enough, won't it?"
"Oh, yes, she isn't going until half-past seven. I came to you because I heard her order the car."
When she had gone Caroline turned back to her watch; but her heart was beating so rapidly that for a moment she confused it with Letty's feverish breathing. She reproached herself bitterly for not speaking frankly to Mrs. Blackburn, for trying to spare her; and yet, recalling the last interview, she scarcely knew what she could have said. "It seemed too cruel to tell her that Letty might not live through the night," she thought. "It seemed too cruel—but wasn't that just what Mrs. Timberlake meant when she said that Mr. Blackburn 'wouldn't mince matters?'"
The night nurse was five minutes late, and during these minutes, the suspense, the responsibility, became almost unbearable. It was as if the whole burden of Angelica's ignorance, of her apparent heartlessness, rested on Caroline's shoulders. "If she had gone I could never have forgiven myself," she was thinking when Miss Webster, the nurse, entered with her brisk, ingratiating manner.
"I stopped to speak to Mrs. Blackburn," she explained. "She tells me Letty is better." Her fine plain face, from which a wealth of burnished red hair was brushed severely back, beamed with interest and sympathy. Though she had been nursing private cases for ten years, she had not lost the energy and enthusiasm of a pupil nurse in the hospital. Her tall, erect figure, with its tightly confined hips, bent back, like a steel spring, whenever she stooped over the child.
Caroline shook her head without replying, for Letty had opened her eyes and was gazing vacantly at the ceiling. "Do you want anything, darling? Miss Webster is going to sit with you a minute while I run downstairs to speak to father."
But the child had closed her eyes again, and it was impossible to tell whether or not the words had penetrated the stupor in which she had been lying for the last two or three hours. A few moments later, as Caroline descended the staircase and crossed the hall to Blackburn's library, the memory of Letty's look floated between her and the object of her errand. "If Mrs. Blackburn could see that she would know," she told herself while she raised her hand to the panel of the door. "She couldn't help knowing."
At the knock Blackburn called to her to enter, and when she pushed the door open and crossed the threshold, she saw that he was standing by the window, looking out at the afterglow. Beyond the terrace and the dark spires of the junipers, the autumn fields were changing from brown to purple under the flower-like pink of the sky. Somewhere in the distance one of the Airedale terriers was whining softly.
As soon as he caught sight of her, Blackburn crossedthe floor with a rapid stride, and stood waiting for her to speak. Though he did not open his lips, she saw his face grow white, and the corners of his mouth contract suddenly as if a tight cord were drawn. For the first time she noticed that he had a way of narrowing his eyes when he stared fixedly.
"There hasn't been any change, Mr. Blackburn. I wish to speak to you about something else."
From the sharp breath that he drew, she could measure the unutterable relief that swept over him.
"You say there hasn't been any change?"
"Not since morning. She is, of course, very ill, but with a child," she had repeated the phrase so often that it seemed to have lost its meaning, "the crisis sometimes comes very quickly. If we can manage to keep up her strength for the next twenty-four hours, I believe the worst will be over."
His figure, as he stood there in the dim light, was impressed with a new vividness on her mind, and it was as he looked at this moment that she always remembered him.
"Do you wish anything?" he asked. "Is everything being done that is possible?"
"Everything. The doctor is coming to spend the night, and I shall sit up with Miss Webster."
"But don't you need rest? Can you go without sleep and not lose your strength?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep until she is better."
A look of gratitude leaped to his eyes, and she became aware, through some subtle wave of perception, that for the first time, she had assumed a definite image in his thoughts.
"Thank you," he answered simply, but his tone was full of suppressed feeling.
While he looked at her the old prejudice, the old suspicion and resentment faded from her face, and she gazed back at him with trusting and friendly eyes. Though she was pale and tired, and there were lines of worry and sleeplessness in her forehead, she appeared to him the incarnation of helpfulness. The spirit of goodness and gentleness shone in her smile, and ennobled her slight womanly figure, which drooped a little in its trim uniform. She looked as if she would fight to the death, would wear herself to a shadow, for any one she loved, or for any cause in which she believed.
"I came to ask you," she said very quietly, "if it would not be better to tell Mrs. Blackburn the truth about Letty?"
He started in amazement. "But she knows, doesn't she?"
"She doesn't know everything. She thinks Letty is better. Miss Webster has been talking to her."
"And you think she ought to be warned?"
Her question had evidently puzzled him.
"I think it is unfair to leave her in ignorance. She does not in the least realize Letty's condition. Mrs. Timberlake tells me she heard her order the car for half-past seven."
"Order the car?" He seemed to be groping through a fog of uncertainty. If only heaven had granted intuition to men, thought Caroline impatiently, how much time might be saved!
"To go to the tableaux. You know the tableaux are to-night."
"Yes, I had forgotten." His tone changed and grew positive. "Of course she must be told. I will tell her."
"That is all." She turned away as she spoke, and laid her hand on the knob of the door. "Mrs. Timberlake and I both felt that I ought to speak to you."
"I am glad you did." He had opened the door for her, and following her a step or two into the hall, he added gratefully, "I can never thank you enough."
Without replying, she hurried to the staircase, and ran up the steps to the second storey. When she reached the door of the nursery, she glanced round before entering, and saw that Blackburn had already come upstairs and was on his way to Angelica's room. While she watched, she saw him knock, and then open the door and cross the threshold with his rapid step.
Miss Webster was sitting by Letty's bed, and after a look at the child, Caroline threw herself on the couch and closed her eyes in the hope that she might fall asleep. Though she was profoundly relieved by her conversation with Blackburn, she was still anxious about Angelica, and impatient to hear how she had borne the shock. As the time dragged on, with the interminable passage of the minutes in a sickroom, she found it impossible to lie there in silence any longer, and rising from the couch, she glanced at the clock before going to her room to wash her hands and straighten her hair for dinner. It was exactly half-past seven, and a few minutes later, when she had finished her simple preparations, and was passing the window on her way to the hall, she heard the sound of a motor in the circular drive. "I suppose they forgot to tell John," she thought, "or can it be the doctor so soon?"
The hall was empty when she entered it; but beforeshe had reached the head of the stairs, a door opened and shut in the left wing, and the housekeeper joined her. At the bend in the staircase, beneath a copy of the Sistine Madonna, which had been crowded out of the drawing-room, the elder woman stopped and laid a detaining hand on Caroline's arm. Even through the starched sleeve her grasp felt dry and feverish.
"Miss Meade, did you get a chance to speak to David?"
"Why, yes, I spoke to him. I went straight down as soon as Miss Webster came on duty."
"Did he say he would tell Angelica?"
"He came up at once to tell her. I saw him go into her room."
Mrs. Timberlake glanced helplessly up at the Sistine Madonna. "Well, I don't know what he could have said," she answered, "for Angelica has gone. That was her motor you heard leaving the door."
WHENCaroline looked back upon it afterwards, she remembered that dinner as the most depressing meal of her life. While she ate her food, with the dutiful determination of the trained nurse who realizes that she is obliged to keep up her strength, her gaze wandered for diversion to the soft blues and pinks on the wall. The tapestries were so fresh that she wondered if they were modern. More than ever the airy figure of Spring, floating in primrose-coloured draperies through a flowery grove, reminded her of Angelica. There was the same beauty of line, the same look of sweetness and grace, the same amber hair softly parted under a wreath of pale grey-green leaves. The very vagueness of the features, which left all except the pensive outline to the imagination, seemed to increase rather than diminish this resemblance.
"Have you ever noticed how much that figure is like Mrs. Blackburn?" she asked, turning to the housekeeper, for the silence was beginning to embarrass her. Mary was away and neither Blackburn nor Mrs. Timberlake had uttered a word during the four short courses, which Patrick served as noiselessly as if he were eluding an enemy.
Mrs. Timberlake lifted her eyes to the wall. "Yes, it's the living image of her, if you stand far enough off. I reckon that's why she bought it."
Blackburn, who was helping himself to coffee, glanced up to remark, "I forgot to take sugar, Patrick," and when the tray was brought back, he selected a lump of sugar and broke it evenly in half. If he had heard the question, there was no hint of it in his manner.
Having finished a pear she had been forcing herself to eat, Caroline looked inquiringly from Blackburn to Mrs. Timberlake. If only somebody would speak! If only Mary, with her breezy chatter, would suddenly return from New York! From a long mirror over the sideboard Caroline's reflection, very pale, very grave, stared back at her like a face seen in a fog. "I look like a ghost," she thought. "No wonder they won't speak to me. After all, they are silent because they can think of nothing to say." Unlike in everything else, it occurred to her that Blackburn and the housekeeper had acquired, through dissimilar experiences, the same relentless sincerity of mind. They might be blunt, but they were undeniably honest; and contrasted with the false values and the useless accessories of the house, this honesty impressed her as entirely admirable. The brooding anxiety in Blackburn's face did not change even when he smiled at her, and then rose and stood waiting while she passed before him out of the dining-room. It wasn't, she realized, that he was deliberately inconsiderate or careless in manner; it was merely that the idea of pretending had never occurred to him. The thought was in her mind, when he spoke her name abruptly, and she turned to find that he had followed her to the staircase.
"Miss Meade, I have to see a man on business for a half hour. I shall be in the library. If there is any change, will you send for me?"
She bowed. "Yes, I shall be with Letty all the time."
"As soon as Baker goes, I'll come up. I asked the doctor to spend the night."
"He said he couldn't get here before ten or eleven, but to telephone if we needed him," broke in Mrs. Timberlake. "Mammy Riah has gone to the nursery, Miss Meade. Is there any reason why she shouldn't stay?"
"None in the world." As Caroline turned away and ascended the stairs, she remembered that there had been no question of Angelica. "I wish I could understand. I wish I knew what it means," she said to herself in perplexity. She felt smothered by the uncertainty, the coldness, the reserve of the people about her. Everybody seemed to speak with tight lips, as if in fear lest something might escape that would help to clear away the obscurity. It was all so different from The Cedars, where every thought, every joy, every grief, was lived in a common centre of experience.
When she opened the nursery door, Mammy Riah glanced up from the fire, where she was crouching over the low fender. "I'se mortal feared, honey," she muttered, while she held out her wrinkled palms to the blaze. She had flung a shawl of crimson wool over her shoulders, and the splash of barbaric colour, with her high Indian cheek bones and the low crooning sound of her voice, gave her a resemblance to some Oriental crooked image of Destiny. As the wind rocked the elms on the lawn, she shivered, and rolled her glittering eyes in the direction of Letty's bed.
"Don't give up, Mammy Riah," said Caroline consolingly. "You have nursed children through worse illnesses than this."
"Yas'm, I know I is, but dar wan' noner dese yer signs dat I see now." The flames leaped up suddenly, illuminating her stooping figure in the brilliant shawl with an intense and sinister glow. "I ain't sayin' nuttin'. Naw'm, I ain' lettin' on dat I'se seen whut I'se seen; but dar's somebody done thowed a spell on dis place jes ez sho' ez you live. Dar wuz a ring out yonder on de grass de fust thing dis mawnin', en de fros' ain' never so much ez teched it. Naw, honey, de fros' hit ain' never come a nigh hit. Patrick he seed hit, too, but he ain' let on nuttin' about hit needer, dough de misery is done cotched him in bofe er his feet."
"You don't really think we're conjured, Mammy?"
Mammy Riah cast a secretive glance over her shoulder, and the dramatic instinct of her race awoke in every fibre of her body as she made a vague, mournful gesture over the ashes. "I 'members, honey, I 'members," she muttered ominously. Though Caroline had been familiar with such superstitions from infancy, there was a vividness in these mysteries and invocations which excited her imagination. She knew, as she assured herself, that there "wasn't anything in it"; yet, in spite of her reason, the image of the old woman muttering her incantations over the fire, haunted her like a prophetic vision of evil.
Turning away she went over to Letty's bed, and laid her small, cool fingers on the child's pulse.
"Has there been any change?"
Miss Webster shook her head. "She hasn't stirred."
"I don't like her pulse."
"It seemed a little stronger after the last medicine, but it was getting more rapid a minute ago. That old woman has been talking a lot of heathen nonsense," sheadded in a whisper. "She says she found a conjure ball at the front door this morning. I am from the Middle West, and it sounds dreadfully uncanny to me."
"I know. She thinks we are conjured. That's just their way. Don't notice her."
"Well, I hope she isn't going to sit up all night with me." Then, as Mammy Riah glanced suspiciously round, and began shaking her head until the shadows danced like witches, Miss Webster added in a more distinct tone, "Is Mrs. Blackburn still hopeful? She is so sweet that I've quite lost my heart to her."
"She wasn't at dinner," answered Caroline, and going back to the fire, she sat down in a chintz-covered chair, with deep arms, and shaded her eyes from the flames. In some incomprehensible way Mammy Riah and Blackburn and Angelica, all seemed to hover in spirit round the glowing hearth.
She was still sitting there, and her hand had not dropped from her eyes, when Blackburn came in and crossed the floor to a chair at the foot of Letty's bed. After a whispered word or two with Miss Webster, he opened a book he had brought with him, and held it under the night lamp on the candle-stand. When a quarter of an hour had passed Caroline noticed that he had not turned a page, and that he appeared to be reading and re-reading the same paragraph, with the dogged determination which was his general attitude toward adversity. His face was worn and lined, and there were heavy shadows under his eyes; but he gave her still the impression of a man who could not be conquered by events. "There is something in him, some vein of iron, that you can't break, you can't even bend," she thought. She remembered that her father had once told her thatafter the worst had happened you began to take things easier; and this casual recollection seemed to give her a fresh understanding of Blackburn. "Father knew life," she thought, "I wonder what he would have seen in all this? I wonder how he would have liked Mr. Blackburn and his political theories?" The profile outlined darkly against the shade of the night lamp, held her gaze in spite of the effort she made, now and then, to avert it. It was a strong face, and seen in this light, with the guard of coldness dropped, it was a noble one. Thought and feeling and idealism were there, and the serenity, not of the philosopher, but of the soldier. He had fought hard, she saw, and some deep instinct told her that he had conquered. A phrase read somewhere long ago returned to her as clearly as if it were spoken aloud. "He had triumphed over himself." That was the meaning of his look. That was the thought for which she had been groping. He had triumphed over himself.
She started up quickly, and ran with noiseless steps to the bed, for Letty had opened her eyes and cried out.
"Is she awake?" asked Blackburn, and closing his book, he moved nearer.
Caroline's hand was on Letty's pulse, and she replied without looking at him, "She is getting restless. Miss Webster, is it time for the medicine?"
"It is not quite half-past ten. That must be the doctor now at the door."
Rising hurriedly, Blackburn went out into the hall, and when he came back, Doctor Boland was with him. As Caroline left the bedside and went to the chair by the fire, she heard Blackburn ask sharply, "What does the change mean, doctor?" and Doctor Boland's soothingresponse, "Wait a while. Wait a while." Then he stooped to make an examination, while Miss Webster prepared a stimulant, and Letty moaned aloud as if she were frightened. A clock outside was just striking eleven when the doctor said in a subdued tone, too low to be natural, yet too clear to be a whisper, "Her pulse is getting weaker." He bent over the bed, and as Caroline stood up, she saw Letty's face as if it were in a dream—the flat, soft hair, the waxen forehead, the hard, bright eyes, and the bluish circle about the small, quivering mouth. Then she crossed the floor like a white shadow, and in a little while the room sank back into stillness. Only the dropping of the ashes, and the low crooning of Mammy Riah, disturbed the almost unendurable silence.
For the first hour, while she sat there, Caroline felt that the discipline of her training had deserted her, and that she wanted to scream. Then gradually the stillness absorbed her, and there swept over her in waves a curious feeling of lightness and buoyancy, as if her mind had detached itself from her body, and had become a part of the very pulse and rhythm of the life that surrounded her. She had always lived vividly, with the complete reaction to the moment of a vital and sensitive nature; and she became aware presently that her senses were responsive to every external impression of the room and the night. She heard the wind in the elms, the whispering of the flames, the muttering of Mammy Riah, the short, fretful moans that came from Letty's bed; and all these things seemed a part, not of the world outside, but of her own inner consciousness. Even the few pale stars shining through the window, and the brooding look of the room, with its flickeringfirelight and its motionless figures, appeared thin and unsubstantial as if they possessed no objective reality. And out of this vagueness and evanescence of the things that surrounded her, there stole over her a certainty, as wild and untenable as a superstition of Mammy Riah's, that there was a meaning in the smallest incident of the night, and that she was approaching one of the cross-roads of life.
A coal dropped on the hearth; she looked up with a start, and found Blackburn's eyes upon her. "Miss Meade, have you the time? My watch has run down."
She glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. "It is exactly one o'clock."
"Thank you." His gaze passed away from her, and she leaned back in her chair, while the sense of strangeness and unreality vanished as quickly as it had come. The old negress was mending the fire with kindling wood, and every now and then she paused and shook her head darkly at the flames. "I ain' sayin' nuttin', but I knows, honey," she repeated.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, Mammy Riah?" asked Caroline pityingly.
"Naw'm, I 'ouldn't better git to baid. I'se got ter watch."
"There isn't anything that you can do, and I'll call you, if there is a change."
But the old woman shook her head stubbornly. "I'se got ter watch, honey," she replied. "Dat's one er dem ole squitch-owls out dar now. Ain't he hollerin' jes like he knows sump'n?"
Her mind was plainly wandering, and seeing that persuasion was useless, Caroline left her to her crooning grief, and went over to Letty's bed. As she passed thedoor, it opened without sound, as if it were pushed by a ghost, and Mrs. Timberlake looked in with the question, "Is she any better, doctor?"
The doctor raised his head and glanced round at her. "She is no better," he answered. "Her pulse gets worse all the time."
Unconsciously, while they spoke, they had drawn together around Letty's bed, and stooping over, Caroline listened with a rapidly beating heart, to the child's breathing. Then, dropping on her knees, she laid her arms about the pillow, as if she would hold the fragile little body to life with all her strength.
She was kneeling there, it seemed to her hours later, when the door swung wide on its hinges, and Angelica, in her white robes, with the wreath of leaves on her hair, paused on the threshold like some Luca della Robbia angel. Her golden hair made a light on her temples; her eyes were deep and starry with triumph; and a glow hung about her that was like the rosy incandescence of the stage. For a minute she stood there; then, flushed, crowned, radiant, she swept into the room.
Blackburn had not lifted his head; there was no sign in his stooping figure that he heard her when she cried out.
"Is Letty really so ill? Is she worse, Doctor Boland?"
The doctor moved a step from the bed, and reached out a protecting hand. "She has been getting weaker."
"I'd sit down and wait, if I were you, Angelica," said Mrs. Timberlake, pushing forward a chair. "There isn't anything else that you can do now."
But, without noticing her, Angelica had dropped toher knees at Caroline's side. A cry that was half a sob burst from her lips, and lifting her head, she demanded with passionate reproach and regret, "Why did nobody tell me? Oh, why did he let me go?" The words seemed driven from her against her will, and when she had uttered them, she fell forward across the foot of the bed, with her bare arms outstretched before her.
The doctor bent over her, and instinctively, as he did so, he glanced up at Blackburn, who stood, white and silent, looking down on his wife with inscrutable eyes. He uttered no word of defence, he made no movement to help her, and Caroline felt suddenly that the sympathy around him had rushed back like an eddying wave to Angelica. "If he would only speak, if he would only defend himself," she thought almost angrily. Without turning, she knew that Angelica was led to the couch by the window, and she heard Mrs. Timberlake say in unemotional tones, "I reckon we'd better give her a dose of ammonia."
The voices were silent, and except for Mrs. Blackburn's sobs and Letty's rapid breathing, there was no sound in the room. Suddenly from somewhere outside there floated the plaintive whining of the dog that Caroline had heard in the afternoon. "He must be missing Mary," she found herself thinking, while Mammy Riah murmured uneasily from the hearth, "Hit's a bad sign, w'en a dawg howls in de daid er night."
The hours dragged on like eternity, and without moving, without stirring or lifting her eyes, Caroline knelt there, pouring her strength into the life of the unconscious child. Every thought, every feeling, every throbbing nerve, was concentrated upon this solitary consuming purpose—"Letty must live." Science haddone all it could; it remained now for hope and courage to fight the losing fight to the end. "I will never give up," she said sternly under her breath, "I will never give up." If hope and courage could save, if it were possible for the human will to snatch the victory from death, she felt, deep down in the passionate depths of her heart, that, while she watched over her, Letty could not die.
And then gradually, while she prayed, a change as light as a shadow stole over the face of the child. The little features grew less waxen, the glittering eyes melted to a dewy warmth, and it seemed that the blue circles faded slowly, and even the close brown hair looked less dull and lifeless. As the minutes passed, Caroline held her breath in torture, lest the faintest sound, the slightest movement, might check the invisible beneficent current.
At last, when the change had come, she rose from her knees, and with her hand on Letty's pulse, looked up at Blackburn.
"The crisis is past. Her hand is moist, and her pulse is better," she said.
He started up, and meeting her joyous eyes, stood for an instant perfectly motionless, with his gaze on her face. "Thank God!" he exclaimed in a whisper.
As he turned away and went out of the door, Caroline glanced over her shoulder, and saw that there was a glimmer of dawn at the window.