Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
CHAPTER XIII
Indirect Influence
IN January a heavy snow fell, and Letty, who had begun to cough again, was kept indoors for a week. After the morning lessons were over, Mammy Riah amused the child, while Caroline put on her hat and coat, and went for a brisk walk down the lane to the road. Once or twice Mary joined her, but since Alan's return Caroline saw the girl less and less, and no one else in the house appeared to have the spirit for exercise. Blackburn she met only at breakfast and luncheon, and since Christmas he seemed to have become completely engrossed in his plans. After the talk she had heard on the terrace, his figure slowly emerged out of the mist of perplexity in her mind. He was no longer the obscure protagonist of a vague political unrest, for the old dishonourable bond which had linked him, in her imagination, to the Southern Republicans of her father's day, was broken forever. She was intelligent enough to grasp the difference between the forces of reaction and development; and she understood now that Blackburn had worked out a definite theory – that his thinking had crystallized into a constructive social philosophy. "He knows the South, he understands it," she thought. "He sees it, not made, but becoming. That is the whole difference between him and father. Father was as patriotic as Mr. Blackburn, but father's patriotism clung to the past – it was grateful and commemorative – and Mr. Blackburn's strives toward the future, for it is active and creative. Father believed that the South was separate from the Union, like one of the sacred old graveyards, with bricked-up walls, in the midst of cornfields, while the younger man, also believing it to be sacred, is convinced that it must be absorbed into the nation – that its traditions and ideals must go to enrich the common soil of America." Already she was beginning insensibly to associate Blackburn with the great group of early Virginians, with the men in whom love of country was a vital and living thing, the men who laid the foundation and planned the structure of the American Republic.
"Do you think Mr. Blackburn feels as strongly as he talks?" she asked Mrs. Timberlake one afternoon when they were standing together by the nursery window. It had been snowing hard, and Caroline, in an old coat with a fur cap on her head, was about to start for a walk.
Mrs. Timberlake was staring intently through her spectacles at one of the snow-laden evergreens on the lawn. A covering of powdery white wrapped the drive and the landscape, and, now and then, when the wind rattled the ice-coated branches of the elms, there was a sharp crackling noise as of breaking boughs.
"I reckon he does," she replied after a pause, "though I can't see to save my life what he expects to get out of it."
"Do you think it is ambition with him? It seems to me, since I heard him talk, that he really believes he has a message, that he can serve his country. Until I met him," Caroline added, half humorously, "I had begun to feel that the men of to-day loved their country only for what they could get out of it."
"Well, I expect David is as disinterested as anybody else," observed Mrs. Timberlake drily, "but that seems to me all the more reason why he'd better let things jog along as they are, and not try to upset them. But there isn't any use talking. David sets more store by those ideas of his than he does by any living thing in the world, unless it's Letty. They are his life, and I declare I sometimes think he feels about them as he used to feel about Angelica before he married her – the sort of thing you never expect to see outside of poetry." She had long ago lost her reserve in Caroline's presence, and the effect of what she called "bottling up" for so many years, gave a crispness and roundness to her thoughts which was a refreshing contrast to Angelica's mental vagueness.
"I can understand it," said Caroline, "I mean I can understand a man's wanting to have some part in moulding the thought of his time. Father used to be like that. Only it was Virginia, not America, that he cared for. He wanted to help steer Virginia over the rapids, he used to say. I was brought up in the midst of politics. That's the reason it sounded so natural to me when Mr. Blackburn was talking."
Letty, who had been playing with her dolls on the hearthrug, deserted them abruptly, and ran over to the window.
"Oh, Miss Meade, do you think I am going to be well for Aunt Mary's wedding?"
"Why, of course you are. This is only January, darling, and the wedding won't be till June."
"And is that a very long time?"
"Months and months. The roses will be blooming, and you will have forgotten all about your cold."
"Well, I hope I shan't miss that too," murmured the child, going gravely back to her dolls.
"I never heard anything like the way that child runs on," said Mrs. Timberlake, turning away from the window. "Are you really going out in this cold? There doesn't seem a bit of sense in getting chilled to the bone unless you are obliged to."
"Oh, I like it. It does me good."
"You've stopped motoring with Angelica, haven't you?"
"Yes, we haven't been for several weeks. For one thing the weather has been so bad."
"I got an idea it was because of Roane Fitzhugh," said the old lady, in her tart way. "I hope you won't think I am interfering, but I'm old and you're young, and so you won't mind my giving you a little wholesome advice. If I were you, my dear, I shouldn't pay a bit of attention to anything that Roane says to me."
"But I don't. I never have," rejoined Caroline indignantly. "How on earth could you have got such an idea?"
A look of mystification flickered over Mrs. Timberlake's face. "Well, I am sure I don't mean any harm, my child," she responded soothingly. "I didn't think you would mind a word of warning from an old woman, and I know that Roane can have a very taking way when he wants to."
"I think he's hateful – perfectly hateful," replied Caroline. Then, drawing on her heavy gloves, she shook her head with a laugh as she started to the door. "If that's all you have to worry about, you may rest easy," she tossed back gaily. "Letty, darling, when I come in I'll tell you all about my adventures and the bears I meet in the lane."
The terrace and the garden were veiled in white, and the only sound in the intense frozen stillness was the crackling of elm boughs as the wind rocked them. A heavy cloud was hanging low in the west, and beneath it a flock of crows flew slowly in blue-black curves over the white fields. For a minute or two Caroline stood watching them, and, while she paused there, a clear silver light streamed suddenly in rays over the hills, and the snow-covered world looked as if it were imprisoned in crystal. Every frosted branch, every delicate spiral on the evergreens, was intensified and illuminated. Then the wind swept up with a rush of sound from the river, and it was as if the shining landscape had found a melodious voice – as if it were singing. The frozen fountain and the white trees and the half buried shrubs under the mounds of snow, joined in presently like harps in a heavenly choir. "I suppose it is only the wind," she thought, "but it is just as if nature were praising God with music and prayer."
In the lane the trees were silvered, and little darting shadows, like violet birds, chased one another down the long white vista to the open road. Walking was difficult on the slippery ground, and Caroline went carefully, stopping now and then to look up into the swinging boughs overhead, or to follow the elusive flight of the shadows. When she reached the end of the lane, she paused, before turning, to watch a big motor car that was ploughing through the heavy snowdrifts. A moment later the car stopped just in front of her, a man jumped out into a mound of snow, and she found herself reluctantly shaking hands with Roane Fitzhugh.
"Tom Benton was taking me into town," he explained, "but as soon as I saw you, I told him he'd have to go on alone. So this is where you walk? Lucky trees."
"I was just turning." As she spoke she moved back into the lane. "It is a pity you got out."
"Oh, somebody else will come along presently. I'm in no sort of hurry."
His face was flushed and mottled, and she suspected, from the excited look in his eyes, that he had been drinking. Even with her first impulse of recoil, she felt the pity of his wasted and ruined charm. With his straight fine features, so like Angelica's, his conquering blue eyes, and his thick fair hair, he was like the figure of a knight in some early Flemish painting.
"It's jolly meeting you this way," he said, a trifle thickly. "By Jove, you look stunning – simply stunning."
"Please don't come with me. I'd rather go back alone," she returned, with chill politeness. "Your sister went into Richmond an hour ago. I think she is at a reception Mrs. Colfax is giving."
"Well, I didn't come to see Anna Jeannette." He spoke this time with exaggerated care as if he were pronouncing a foreign language. "Don't hurry, Miss Meade. I'm not a tiger. I shan't eat you. Are you afraid?"
"Of you?" she glanced at him scornfully. "How could you hurt me?"
"How indeed? But if not of me, of yourself? I've seen women afraid of themselves, and they hurried just as you are doing."
Unconsciously her steps slackened. "I am not afraid of myself, and if I were, I shouldn't run away."
"You mean you'd stay and fight it out?"
"I mean I'd stay and get the better of the fear, or what caused it. I couldn't bear to be afraid."
His careless gaze became suddenly intense, and before the red sparks that glimmered in his eyes, she drew hastily to the other side of the lane. A wave of physical disgust, so acute that it was like nausea, swept over her. Even in the hospital the sight of a drunken man always affected her like this, and now it was much worse because the brute – she thought of him indignantly as "the brute" – was actually trying to make love to her – to her, Caroline Meade!
"Then if you aren't afraid of me, why do you avoid me?" he demanded.
At this she stopped short in order to face him squarely. "Since you wish to know," she replied slowly, "I avoid you because I don't like the kind of man you are."
He lowered his eyes for an instant, and when he raised them they were earnest and pleading. "Then make me the kind of man you like. You can if you try. You could do anything with me if you cared – you are so good."
"I don't care." A temptation to laugh seized her, but she checked it, and spoke gravely. The relations between men and women, which had seemed as natural and harmonious as the interdependence of the planets, had become jangled and discordant. Something had broken out in her universe which threatened to upset its equilibrium. "I don't doubt that there are a number of good women who would undertake your regeneration, but I like my work better," she added distantly. She was sure now that he had been drinking, and, as he came nearer and the smell of whiskey reached her, she quickened her steps almost into a run over the frozen ground. Some deep instinct told her that at her first movement of flight he would touch her, and she thought quite calmly, with the clearness and precision of mind she had acquired in the hospital, that if he were to touch her she would certainly strike him. She was not frightened – her nerves were too robust for fear – but she was consumed with a still, cold rage, which made even the icy branches feel warm as they brushed her cheek.
"Now, you are running again, Miss Meade. Why won't you be kind to me? Can't you see that I am mad about you? Ever since the first day I saw you, you've been in my thoughts every minute. Honestly you could make a man out of me, if you'd only be a little bit human. I'll do anything you wish. I'll be anything you please, if you'll only like me."
For a moment she thought he was going to break down and cry, and she wondered, with professional concern, if a little snow on his forehead would bring him to his senses. This was evidently the way he had talked to Mary when Blackburn ordered him out of the house.
"I wish you would go back," she said in a tone she used to delirious patients in the hospital. "We are almost at the house, and Mr. Blackburn wouldn't like your coming to Briarlay."
"Well, the old chap's in town, isn't he?"
"It is time for him to come home. He may be here any moment." Though she tried to reason the question with him, she was conscious of a vague, uneasy suspicion that they were rapidly approaching the state where reasoning would be as futile as flight. Then she remembered hearing somewhere that a drunken man would fall down if he attempted to run, and she considered for an instant making an open dash for the house.
"I'll go, if you'll let me come back to-morrow. I'm not a bad fellow, Miss Meade." A sob choked him. "I've got a really good heart – ask Anna Jeannette if I haven't – "
"I don't care whether you are bad or not. I don't want to know anything about you. Only go away. Nothing that you can do will make me like you," she threw out unwisely under the spur of anger. "Women never think that they can cajole or bully a person into caring – only men imagine they have the power to do that, and it's all wrong because they can't, and they never have. Bullying doesn't do a bit more good than whining, so please stop that, too. I don't like you because I don't respect you, and nothing you can say or do will have the slightest effect unless you were to make yourself into an entirely different sort of man – a man I didn't despise." Her words pelted him like stones, and while he stood there, blinking foolishly beneath the shower, she realized that he had not taken in a single sentence she had uttered. He looked stunned but obstinate, and a curious dusky redness was beating like a pulse in his forehead.
"You can't fight me," he muttered huskily. "Don't fight me."
"I am not fighting you. I am asking you to go away."
"I told you I'd go, if you'd let me come back to-morrow."
"Of course I shan't. How dare you ask me such a thing? Can't you see how you disgust me?"
As she spoke she made a swift movement toward the turn in the lane, and the next minute, while her feet slipped on the ice, she felt Roane's arms about her, and knew that he was struggling frantically to kiss her lips. For years no man had kissed her, and as she fought wildly to escape, she was possessed not by terror, but by a blind and primitive fury. Civilization dropped away from her, and she might have been the first woman struggling against attack in the depths of some tropic jungle. "I'd like to kill you," she thought, and freeing one arm, she raised her hand and struck him between the eyes. "I wonder why some woman hasn't killed him before this? I believe I am stronger than he is."
The blow was not a soft one, and his arms fell away from her, while he shook his head as if to prevent a rush of blood to the brain. "You hurt me – I believe you wanted to hurt me," he muttered in a tone of pained and incredulous surprise. Then recovering his balance with difficulty, he added reproachfully, "I didn't know you could hit like that. I thought you were more womanly. I thought you were more womanly," he repeated sorrowfully, while he put his hand to his head, and then gazed at it, as if he expected to find blood on his fingers.
"Now, perhaps you'll go," said Caroline quietly. While the words were on her lips, she became aware that a shadow had fallen over the snow at her side, and glancing round, she saw Blackburn standing motionless in the lane. Her first impression was that he seemed enormous as he stood there, with his hands hanging at his sides, and the look of sternness and immobility in his face. His eyelids were half closed with the trick he had when he was gazing intently, and the angry light seemed to have changed his eyes from grey to hazel.
"I am sorry to interrupt you," he said in a voice that had a dangerous quietness, "but I think Roane is scarcely in a fit state for a walk."
"I'd like to know why I am not?" demanded Roane, sobered and resentful. "I'm not drunk. Who says I am drunk?"
"Well, if you aren't, you ought to be." Then the anger which Blackburn had kept down rushed into his voice. "You had better go!"
Roane had stopped blinking, and while the redness ebbed from his forehead, he stood staring helplessly not at Blackburn, but at Caroline. "I'll go," he said at last, "if Miss Meade will say that she forgives me."
But there was little of the sister of mercy in Caroline's heart. She had been grossly affronted, and anger devoured her like a flame. Her blue eyes shone, her face flushed and paled with emotion, and, for the moment, under the white trees, in the midst of the frosted world, her elusive beauty became vivid and dazzling.
"I shall not forgive you, and I hope I shall never see you again," she retorted.
"You'd better go, Roane," repeated Blackburn quietly, and as Caroline hurried toward the house, he overtook her with a rapid step, and said in a troubled voice, "It is partly my fault, Miss Meade. I have intended to warn you."
"To warn me?" Her voice was crisp with anger.
"I felt that you did not understand."
"Understand what?" She looked at him with puzzled eyes. "I may be incredibly stupid, but I don't understand now."
For an instant he hesitated, and she watched a deeper flush rise in his face. "In a way you are under my protection," he said at last, "and for this reason I have meant to warn you against Roane Fitzhugh – against the danger of these meetings."
"These meetings?" Light burst on her while she stared on him. "Is it possible that you think this was a meeting? Do you dream that I have been seeing Roane Fitzhugh of my own accord? Have you dared to think such a thing? To imagine that I wanted to see him – that I came out to meet him?" The note of scorn ended in a sob while she buried her face in her hands, and stood trembling with shame and anger before him.
"But I understood. I was told – " He was stammering awkwardly. "Isn't it true that you felt an interest – that you were trying to help him?"
At this her rage swept back again, and dropping her hands, she lifted her swimming eyes to his face. "How dare you think such a thing of me?"
"I am sorry." He was still groping in darkness. "You mean you did not know he was coming to-day?"
"Of course I didn't know. Do you think I should have come out if I had known?"
"And you have never met him before? Never expected to meet him?"
"Oh, what are you saying? Why can't you speak plainly?" A shiver ran through her.
"I understood that you liked him." After her passionate outburst his voice sounded strangely cold and detached.
"And that I came out to meet him?"
"I was afraid that you met him outside because I had forbidden him to come to Briarlay. I wanted to explain to you – to protect you – "
"But I don't need your protection." She had thrown back her head, and her shining eyes met his bravely. Her face had grown pale, but her lips were crimson, and her voice was soft and rich. "I don't need your protection, and after what you have thought of me, I can't stay here any longer. I can't – "
As her words stopped, checked by the feeling of helplessness that swept her courage away, he said very gently, "But there isn't any reason – Why, I haven't meant to hurt you. I'm a bit rough, perhaps, but I'd as soon think of hurting Letty. No, don't run away until I've said a word to you. Let's be reasonable, if there has been a misunderstanding. Come, now, suppose we talk it out as man to man."
His tone had softened, but in her resentment she barely noticed the change. "No, I'd rather not. There isn't anything to say," she answered hurriedly. Then, as she was about to run into the house, she paused and added, "Only – only how could you?"
He said something in reply, but before it reached her, she had darted up the steps and into the hall. She felt bruised and stiff, as if she had fallen and hurt herself, and the one thought in her mind was the dread of meeting one of the household – of encountering Mary or Mrs. Timberlake, before she had put on her uniform and her professional manner. It seemed impossible to her that she should stay on at Briarlay, and yet what excuse could she give Angelica for leaving so suddenly? Angelica, she surmised, would not look tolerantly upon any change that made her uncomfortable.
The dazzling light of the sunset was still in Caroline's eyes, and, for the first moment or two after she entered the house, she could distinguish only a misty blur from the open doors of the drawing-room. Then the familiar objects started out of the gloom, and she discerned the gilt frame and the softly blended dusk of the Sistine Madonna over the turn in the staircase. As she reached the floor above, her heart, which had been beating wildly, grew gradually quiet, and she found herself thinking lucidly, "I must go away. I must go away at once – to-night." Then the mist of obscurity floated up to envelop the thought. "But what does it mean? Could there be any possible reason?"
The nursery door was open, and she was about to steal by noiselessly, when Mrs. Timberlake's long, thin shadow stretched, with a vaguely menacing air, over the threshold.
"I wanted to speak to you, my dear. Why, what is the matter?" As the housekeeper came out into the hall, she raised her spectacles to her forehead, and peered nervously into Caroline's face. "Has anybody hurt your feelings?"
"I am going away. I can't stay." Though Caroline spoke clearly and firmly, her lips were trembling, and the marks of tears were still visible under her indignant eyes, which looked large and brilliant, like the eyes of a startled child.
"You are going away? What on earth is the reason? Has anything happened?" Then lowering her voice, she murmured cautiously, "Come into my room a minute. Letty is playing and won't miss you." Putting her lean arm about Caroline's shoulders, she led her gently down the hall and to her room in the west wing. Not until she had forced her into an easy chair by the radiator, and turned back to close the door carefully, did she say in an urgent tone, "Now, my dear, you needn't be afraid to tell me. I am very fond of you – I feel almost as if you were my own child – and I want to help you if you will let me."
"There isn't anything except – except there has been a misunderstanding – " Caroline looked up miserably from the big chair, with her lips working pathetically. All the spirit had gone out of her. "Mr. Blackburn seems to have got the idea that I care for Roane Fitzhugh – that I even went out to meet him."
Mrs. Timberlake, whose philosophy was constructed of the bare bones of experience, stared out of the window with an expression that made her appear less a woman than a cynical point of view. Her profile grew sharper and flatter until it gave the effect of being pasted on the glimmering pane.
"Well, I reckon David didn't make that up in his own mind," she observed with a caustic emphasis.
"I met him – I mean Roane Fitzhugh to-day. Of course it was by accident, but he had been drinking and behaved outrageously, and then Mr. Blackburn found us together," pursued Caroline slowly, "and – and he said things that made me see what he thought. He told me that he believed I liked that dreadful man – that I came out by appointment – "
"But don't you like him, my dear?" The housekeeper had turned from the sunset and taken up her knitting.
"Of course I don't. Why in the world – how in the world – "
"And David told you that he thought so?" The old lady looked up sharply.
"He said he understood that I liked him – Roane Fitzhugh. I didn't know what he meant. He was obliged to explain." After all, the tangle appeared to be without beginning and without end. She realized that she was hopelessly caught in the mesh of it.
"Well, I thought so, too," said Mrs. Timberlake, leaning forward and speaking in a thin, sharp voice that pricked like a needle.
"You thought so? But how could you?" Caroline stretched out her hand with an imploring gesture. "Why, I've never seen him alone until to-day – never."
"And yet David believed that you were meeting him?"
"That is what he said. It sounds incredible, doesn't it?"
For a few minutes Mrs. Timberlake knitted grimly, while the expression, "I know I am a poor creature, but all the same I have feelings" seemed to leap out of her face. When at last she spoke it was to make a remark which sounded strangely irrelevant. "I've had a hard time," she said bluntly, "and I've stood things, but I'm not one to turn against my own blood kin just because they haven't treated me right." Then, after another and a longer pause, she added, as if the words were wrung out of her, "If I didn't feel that I ought to help you I'd never say one single word, but you're so trusting, and you'd never see through things unless somebody warned you."
"See through things? You mean I'd never understand how Mr. Blackburn got that impression?"
Mrs. Timberlake twisted the yarn with a jerk over her little finger. "My dear, David never got that idea out of his own head," she repeated emphatically. "Somebody put it there as sure as you were born, and though I've nothing in the world but my own opinion to go on, I'm willing to bet a good deal that it was Angelica."
"But she couldn't have. She knew better. There couldn't have been any reason."
"When you are as old as I am, you will stop looking for reasons in the way people act. In the first place, there generally aren't any, and in the second place, when reasons are there, they don't show up on the surface."
"But she knew I couldn't bear him."
"If you'd liked him, she wouldn't have done it. She'd have been trying too hard to keep you apart."
"You mean, then, that she did it just to hurt me?"
Lifting her slate-coloured eyes, the old lady brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead. "I don't believe Angelica ever did a thing in her life just to hurt anybody," she answered slowly.
"Then you wouldn't think for an instant – "
"No, I shouldn't think for an instant that she did it just for that. There was some other motive. I don't reckon Angelica would ever do you any harm," she concluded with a charitable intonation, "unless there was something she wanted to gain by it." From her manner she might have been making a point in Angelica's favour.
"But even then? What could she possibly gain?"
"Well, I expect David found out that Roane had been here – that he had been motoring with you – and Angelica was obliged to find some excuse. You see, responsibility is one of the things Angelica can't stand, and whoever happens to be about when it is forced on her, usually bears it. Sometimes, you know, when she throws it off like that, it chances to light by accident just in the proper place. The strangest thing about Angelica, and I can never get used to it, is the way she so often turns out to be right. Look at the way it all happened in Letty's illness. Now, Angelica always stuck out that Letty wouldn't die, and, as it turned out, she didn't. I declare, it looks, somehow, as if not only people, but circumstances as well, played straight into her hands."
"You mean she told him that about me just to spare herself?" Caroline's voice was angry and incredulous.
"That's how it was, I reckon. I don't believe she would have done it for anything else on earth. You see, my dear, she was brought up that way – most American girls are when they are as pretty as Angelica – and the way you're raised seems to become a habit with you. At home the others always sacrificed themselves for her, until she got into the habit of thinking that she was the centre of the universe, and that the world owed her whatever she took a fancy for. Even as a girl, Roane used to say that her feelings were just inclinations, and I expect that's been true of her ever since. She can want things worse than anybody I've ever seen, but apart from wanting, I reckon she's about as cold as a fish at heart. It may sound mean of me to say it, but I've known Cousin Abby to sit up at night and sew her eyes out, so the girl might have a new dress for a party, and all the time Angelica not saying a word to prevent it. There never was a better mother than Cousin Abby, and I've always thought it was being so good that killed her."
"But even now I can't understand," said Caroline thoughtfully. "I felt that she really liked me."
"Oh, she likes you well enough." Mrs. Timberlake was counting some dropped stitches. "She wasn't thinking about you a minute. I doubt if she ever in her life thought as long as that about anybody except herself. The curious part is," she supplemented presently, "that considering how shallow she is, so few people ever seem to see through her. It took David five years, and then he had to be married to her, to find out what I could have told him in ten minutes. Most of it is the way she looks, I expect. It is so hard for a man to understand that every woman who parts her hair in the middle isn't a Madonna."
"I knew she was hard and cold," confessed Caroline sadly, "but I thought she was good. I never dreamed she could be bad at heart."
Mrs. Timberlake shook her head. "She isn't bad, my dear, that's where you make a mistake. I believe she'd let herself be burned at the stake before she'd overstep a convention. When it comes to that," she commented with acrid philosophy, "I reckon all the bad women on earth could never do as much harm as some good ones – the sort of good ones that destroy everything human and natural that comes near them. We can look out for the bad ones – but I've come to believe that there's a certain kind of virtue that's no better than poison. It poisons everything it touches because all the humanity has passed out of it, just like one of those lovely poisonous flowers that spring up now and then in a swamp. Nothing that's made of flesh and blood could live by it, and yet it flourishes as if it were as harmless as a lily. I know I'm saying what I oughtn't to, but I saw you were getting hurt, and I wanted to spare you. It isn't that Angelica is wicked, you know, I wouldn't have you believe that for a minute. She is sincere as far as her light goes, and if I hadn't seen David's life destroyed through and through, I suppose I shouldn't feel anything like so bitterly. But I've watched all his trust in things and his generous impulses – there was never a man who started life with finer impulses than David – wither up, one after one, just as if they were blighted."
