Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
CHAPTER VI
Angelica's Triumph
CAROLINE wrote a few nights later:
Dearest mother:
So it has come at last, and we really and truly are at war. There is not so much excitement as you would have thought – I suppose because we have waited so long – but everybody has hung out flags – and Letty and I have just helped Peter put a big beautiful one over Briarlay. Mrs. Blackburn is working so hard over the Red Cross that we have barely seen her for days, and Mary has already gone to New York on her way to France. She is going to work there with one of the war charities, and I think it will be the best thing on earth for her, for any one can see that she has been very unhappy. Mr. Wythe wants to go into the army, but for some reason he has hesitated about volunteering. I think Mrs. Blackburn opposes it very strongly, and this is keeping him back. There is a new feeling in the air, though. The world is rushing on – somewhere – somewhere, and we are rushing with it.
For days I have wanted to write you about a curious thing, but I have waited hoping that I might have been mistaken about it. You remember how very sweet Mrs. Blackburn was to me when I first came here. Well, for the last month she has changed utterly in her manner. I cannot think of any way in which I could have offended her – though I have racked my brain over it – but she appears to avoid me whenever it is possible, and on the occasions when we are obliged to meet, she does not speak to me unless it is necessary. Of course there are things I am obliged to ask her about Letty; but this is usually done through the servants, and Mrs. Blackburn never comes into the nursery. Sometimes she sends for Letty to come to her, but Mammy Riah always takes her and brings her back again. I asked Mrs. Timberlake if she thought I could have done anything Mrs. Blackburn did not like, and if I had better go to her and demand an explanation. That seems to me the only sensible and straightforward way, but Mrs. Timberlake does not think it would do any good. She is as much mystified about it as I am, and so is Mammy Riah. Nobody understands, and the whole thing has worried me more than I can ever tell you. If it wasn't for Letty, and a promise I made to Mr. Blackburn not to leave her, I should be tempted to give up the place at the end of the week. It is cowardly to let one's self be vanquished by things like that, especially at a time when the whole world needs every particle of courage that human beings can create; but it is just like fighting an intangible enemy, and not knowing at what moment one may be saying or doing the wrong thing. Not a word has been spoken to me that was rude or unkind, yet the very air I breathe is full of something that keeps me apprehensive and anxious all the time. When I am with Mr. Blackburn or Mrs. Timberlake, I tell myself that it is all just my imagination, and that I am getting too nervous to be a good nurse; and then, when I pass Mrs. Blackburn in the hall and she pretends not to see me, the distrust and suspicion come back again. I hate to worry you about this – for a long time I wouldn't mention it in my letters – but I feel to-night that I cannot go on without telling you about it.
Last night after dinner – when Mrs. Blackburn is at home Mrs. Timberlake and I dine in the breakfast-room – I went to look for Letty, and found that she had slipped into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Blackburn and Mr. Wythe were engaged in their perpetual reading. The child is very fond of Mr. Wythe – he has a charming way with her – and when I went in, she was asking him if he were really going to war? Before answering her he looked for a long time at Mrs. Blackburn, and then as Letty repeated her question, he said, "Don't you think I ought to go, Letty?"
"What is the war about, Alan?" asked the child, and he replied, "They call it a war for democracy." Then, of course, Letty inquired immediately, "What is democracy?" At this Alan burst out laughing, "You've got me there, Socrates," he retorted, "Go inquire of your father." "But father says it is a war to end war," Letty replied, and her next question was, "But if you want to fight, why do you want to end war?" She is the keenest thing for her years you can imagine. I had to explain it all to her when I got her upstairs.
Well, what I started to tell you was that all the time Mrs. Blackburn said nothing, but kept looking from Alan to the child, with that wistful and plaintive expression which makes her the very image of a grieving Madonna. She never spoke a word, but I could tell all the time that she was trying to gain something, that she was using every bit of her charm and her pathos for some purpose I could not discover. In a little while she took Letty from Alan and gave her over to me, and as we went out, I heard Alan say to her, "I would give anything on earth to keep you from being hurt any more." Of course I shouldn't repeat this to any one else, but he must have known that I couldn't help hearing it.
Mr. Blackburn has been very kind to me, and I know that he would do anything for Letty's happiness. He is so impersonal that I sometimes feel that he knows ideas, but not men and women. It is hard for him to break through the wall he has built round himself, but after you once discover what he really is, you are obliged to admit that he is fine and absolutely to be trusted. In a way he is different from any one I have ever known – more sincere and genuine. I can't make what I mean very clear, but you will understand.
For the last week I have scarcely seen him for a minute – I suppose he is absorbed in war matters – but before that he used to come in and have tea with Letty, and we had some long interesting talks. The child is devoted to him, and you know she loves above all things to set her little table in the nursery, and give tea and bread and butter to whoever happens to come in. Mrs. Colfax used to drop in very often, and so did Mary when she was here; but Mrs. Blackburn always promises to come, and then is too busy, or forgets all about it, and I have to make excuses for her to Letty. I feel sorry for Letty because she is lonely, and has no child companions, and I do everything I can to make her friendly with grown people, and to put a little wholesome pleasure into her life. A delicate child is really a very serious problem in many ways besides physical ones. Letty has not naturally a cheerful disposition, though she flies off at times into a perfect gale of high spirits. For the last week I can see that she has missed her father, and she is continually asking me where he is.
Now I must tell you something I have not mentioned to any one except Mrs. Timberlake, and I spoke of it to her only because she asked me a direct question. Something very unfortunate occurred here last winter, and Mrs. Timberlake told me yesterday that everybody in Richmond has been talking about it. As long as it is known so generally – and it appears that young Mrs. Colfax was the one to let it out – there can't be any harm in my writing frankly to you. I haven't the faintest idea how it all started, but one morning – it must have been two months ago – Mrs. Blackburn showed young Mrs. Colfax a bruise on her arm, and she either told her or let her think that it had come from a blow. Of course Mrs. Colfax inferred that Mr. Blackburn had struck his wife, and, without waiting a minute, she rushed straight out and repeated this to everybody she met. She is so amazingly indiscreet, without meaning the least harm in the world, that you might as well print a thing in the newspaper as tell it to her. No one knows how much she made up and how much Mrs. Blackburn actually told her; but the town has been fairly ringing, Mrs. Timberlake says, with the scandal. People even say that he has been so cruel to her that the servants heard her cry out in his study one afternoon, and that Alan Wythe, who was waiting in the drawing-room, ran in and interfered.
It is all a dreadful lie, of course – you know this without my telling you – but Mrs. Timberlake and I cannot understand what began it, or why Mrs. Blackburn deliberately allowed Daisy Colfax to repeat such a falsehood. Colonel Ashburton told Mrs. Timberlake that the stories had already done incalculable harm to Mr. Blackburn's reputation, and that his political enemies were beginning to use them. You will understand better than any one else how much this distresses me, not only because I have grown to like and admire Mr. Blackburn, but for Letty's sake also. As the child grows up this disagreement between her parents will make such a difference in her life.
I cannot tell you how I long to be back at The Cedars, now that spring is there and all the lilacs will so soon be in bloom. When I shut my eyes I can see you and the girls in the "chamber," and I can almost hear you talking about the war. I am not quite sure that I approve of Maud's becoming a nurse. It is a hard life, and all her beauty will be wasted in the drudgery. Diana's idea of going to France with the Y. M. C. A. sounds much better, but most of all I like Margaret's plan of canning vegetables next summer for the market. If she can manage to get an extra man to help Jonas with the garden – how would Nathan's son Abraham do? – I believe she will make a great success of it. I am so glad that you are planting large crops this year. The question of labour is serious, I know, but letting out so much of the land "on shares" has never seemed to turn out very well.
It must be almost eleven o'clock, and I have written on and on without thinking. Late as it is, I am obliged to run out to Peter's cottage by the stable and give his wife, Mandy, a hypodermic at eleven o'clock. She was taken very ill this morning, and if she isn't better to-morrow the doctor will take her to the hospital. I promised him I would see her the last thing to-night, and telephone him if she is any worse. She is so weak that we are giving her all the stimulants that we can. I sometimes wish that I could stop being a trained nurse for a time, and just break loose and be natural. I'd like to run out bareheaded in a storm, or have hysterics, or swear like Uncle George.
Dearest love,CAROLINE.
When Caroline reached the cottage, she found Mandy in a paroxysm of pain, and after giving the medicine, she waited until the woman had fallen asleep. It was late when she went back to the house, and as she crossed the garden on her way to the terrace, where she had left one of the French windows open, she lingered for a minute to breathe in the delicious roving scents of the spring night. Something sweet and soft and wild in the April air awoke in her the restlessness which the spring always brought; and she found herself wishing again that she could cast aside the professional training of the last eight or nine years, and become the girl she had been at The Cedars before love had broken her heart. "I am just as young as I was then – only I am so much wiser," she thought, "and it is wisdom – it is knowing life that has caged me and made me a prisoner. I am not an actor, I am only a spectator now, and yet I believe that I could break away again if the desire came – if life really called me. Perhaps, it's the spring that makes me restless – I could never, even at The Cedars, smell budding things without wanting to wander – but to-night there is a kind of wildness in everything. I am tired of being caged. I want to be free to follow – follow – whatever is calling me. I wonder why the pipes of Pan always begin again in the spring?" Enchantingly fair and soft, beneath a silver mist that floated like a breath of dawn from the river, the garden melted into the fields and the fields into the quivering edge of the horizon. In the air there was a faint whispering of gauzy wings, and, now and then, as the breeze stirred the veil of the landscape, little pools of greenish light flickered like glow worms in the hollows.
"I hate to go in, but I suppose I must," thought Caroline, as she went up the steps. "Fortunately Roane is off after his commission, so they can't accuse me of coming out to meet him."
For the first time she noticed that the lights were out in the house, and when she tried the window she had left open, she found that someone – probably Patrick – had fastened it. "I ought to have told them I was going out," she thought. "I suppose the servants are all in bed, and if I go to the front and ring, I shall waken everybody." Then, as she passed along the terrace, she saw that the light still glimmered beneath the curtains of the library, where Blackburn was working late, and stopping before the window, she knocked twice on the panes.
At her second knock, she heard a chair pushed back inside and rapid steps cross the floor. An instant later the window was unbolted, and she saw Blackburn standing there against the lighted interior, with a look of surprise and inquiry, which she discerned even though his face was in shadow. He did not speak, and she said hurriedly as she entered,
"I hated to disturb you, but they had locked me out."
"You have been out?" It was the question he had put to her on her first night in the house.
"Peter's wife has been ill, and I promised the doctor to give her a hypodermic at eleven o'clock. It must be midnight now. They kept me some time at the cottage."
He glanced at the clock. "Yes, it is after twelve. We are working you overtime."
She had crossed the room quickly on her way to the door, when he called her name, and she stopped and turned to look at him.
"Miss Meade, I have wanted to ask you something about Letty when she was not with us."
"I know," she responded, with ready sympathy. "It isn't easy to talk before her without letting her catch on."
"You feel that she is better?"
"Much better. She has improved every day in the last month or two."
"You think now that she may get well in time? There seems to you a chance that she may grow up well and normal?"
"With care I think there is every hope that she will. The doctor is greatly encouraged about her. In this age no physical malady, especially in a child, is regarded as hopeless, and I believe, if we keep up the treatment she is having, she may outgrow the spinal weakness that has always seemed to us so serious."
For a moment he was silent. "Whatever improvement there may be is due to you," he said presently, in a voice that was vibrant with feeling. "I cannot put my gratitude into words, but you have made me your debtor for life."
"I have done my best," she replied gravely, "and it has made me happy to do it."
"I recognize that. The beauty of it has been that I recognized that from the beginning. You have given yourself utterly and ungrudgingly to save my child. Before you came she was misunderstood always, she was melancholy and brooding and self-centred, and you have put the only brightness in her life that has ever been there. All the time she becomes more like other children, more cheerful and natural."
"I felt from the first that she needed companionship and diversion. She won my heart immediately, for she is a very lovable child, and if I have done anything over and above my task, it has been because I loved Letty."
His look softened indescribably, but all he said was, "If I go away, I shall feel that I am leaving her in the best possible care."
"You expect to go away?"
"I have offered my services, and the Government may call on me. I hope there is some work that I can do."
"Everyone feels that way, I think. I feel that way myself, but as long as I can, I shall stay with Letty. It is so hard sometimes to recognize one's real duty. If the call comes, I suppose I shall have to go to France, but I shan't go just because I want to, as long as the child needs me as much as she does now. Mother says the duty that never stays at home is seldom to be trusted."
"I know you will do right," he answered gravely. "I cannot imagine that you could ever waver in that. For myself the obligation seems now imperative, yet I have asked myself again and again if my reasons for wishing to go are as – "
He broke off in amazement, and glanced, with a startled gesture, at the door, for it was opening very slowly, and, as the crack widened, there appeared the lovely disarranged head of Angelica. She was wearing a kimono of sky-blue silk, which she had thrown on hastily over her nightgown, and beneath the embroidered folds, Caroline caught a glimpse of bare feet in blue slippers. In the hall beyond there was the staring face of the maid, and at the foot of the stairs, the figure of Mammy Riah emerged, like a menacing spirit, out of the shadow.
"I heard Mammy Riah asking for Miss Meade. She was not in her room," began Angelica in her clear, colourless voice. "We were anxious about her – but I did not know – I did not dream – " She drew her breath sharply, and then added in a louder and firmer tone, "Miss Meade, I must ask you to leave the house in the morning."
In an instant a cold breath blowing over Caroline seemed to turn her living figure into a snow image. Her face was as white as the band of her cap, but her eyes blazed like blue flames, and her voice, when it issued from her frozen lips, was stronger and steadier than Angelica's.
"I cannot leave too soon for my comfort," she answered haughtily. "Mr. Blackburn, if you will order the car, I shall be ready in an hour – " Though she saw scarlet as she spoke, she would have swept by Angelica with the pride and the outraged dignity of an insulted empress.
"You shall not go," said Blackburn, and she saw him put out his arm, as if he would keep the two women apart.
"I would not stay," replied Caroline, looking not at him, but straight into Angelica's eyes. "I would not stay if she went on her knees to me. I will not stay even for Letty – "
"Do you know what you have done?" demanded Blackburn, in a quivering voice, of his wife. "Do you know that you are ruining your child's future – your child's chance – " Then, as if words were futile to convey his meaning, he stopped, and looked at her as a man looks at the thing that has destroyed him.
"For Letty's sake I shut my eyes as long as I could," said Angelica, and of the three, she appeared the only one who spoke in sorrow and regret, not in anger. "After to-night I can deceive myself no longer. I can deceive the servants no longer – "
Her kimono was embroidered in a lavish design of cranes and water-lilies; and while Caroline gazed at it, she felt that the vivid splashes of yellow and blue and purple were emblazoned indelibly on her memory. Years afterwards – to the very end of her life – the sight of a piece of Japanese embroidery was followed by an icy sickness of the heart, and a vision of Angelica's amber head against the background of the dimly lighted hall and the curious faces of the maid and Mammy Riah.
"You shall not – " said Blackburn, and his face was like the face of a man who has died in a moment of horror. "You shall not dare do this thing – "
He was still keeping Caroline back with his outstretched hand, and while she looked at him, she forgot her own anger in a rush of pity for the humiliation which showed in every quiver of his features, in every line of his figure. It was a torture, she knew, which would leave its mark on him for ever.
"You shall not dare – " he repeated, as if the words he sought would not come to him.
Beneath his gaze Angelica paled slowly. Her greatest victories had always been achieved through her dumbness; and the instinct which had guided her infallibly in the past did not fail her in this moment, which must have appeared to her as the decisive hour of her destiny. There was but one way in which she could triumph, and this way she chose, not deliberately, but in obedience to some deep design which had its source in the secret motive-power of her nature. The colour of her skin faded to ivory, her long, slender limbs trembled and wavered, and the pathos of her look was intensified into the image of tragedy.
"I tried so hard not to see – " she began, and the next instant she gave a little gasping sob and dropped, like a broken flower, at his feet.
For a second Caroline looked down on her in silence. Then, without stooping, without speaking, she drew her skirt aside, and went out of the room and up the stairs. Her scorn was the scorn of the strong who is defeated for the weak who is victorious.
