Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
CHAPTER IX
The Years Ahead
TOWARD the close of an afternoon in November, Caroline was walking from the hospital to a boarding-house in Grace Street, where she was spending a few days between cases. All summer she had nursed in Richmond; and now that the autumn, for which she had longed, had at last come, she was beginning to feel the strain of hard work and sleepless nights. Though she still wore her air of slightly defiant courage, a close observer would have noticed the softer depths in her eyes, the little lines in her face, and the note of sadness that quivered now and then in her ready laughter. It was with an effort now that she moved with her energetic and buoyant step, for her limbs ached, and a permanent weariness pervaded her body.
A high wind was blowing, and from the scattered trees on the block, a few brown and wrinkled leaves were torn roughly, and then whirled in a cloud of dust up the street. The block ahead was deserted, except for an aged negro wheeling a handcart full of yellow chrysanthemums, but as Caroline approached the crossing, Daisy Colfax came suddenly from the corner of a church, and hesitated an instant before speaking. The last time that Caroline had seen her, old Mrs. Colfax had been in the car, and they had not spoken; but now that Daisy was alone, she pounced upon her with the manner of an affectionate and playful kitten.
"Oh, I didn't know you at first, Miss Meade! You are so much thinner. What have you been doing?"
She held out her hand, diffusing life, love, joy, with the warmth of her Southern charm; and while Caroline stood there, holding the soft, gloved hand in her own, a dart of envy pierced the armour of her suffering and her philosophy. How handsome Daisy looked! How happy! Her hat of the royal purple she favoured made her black hair gleam like velvet; her sealskin coat, with its enormous collar of ermine, wrapped her luxuriously from head to foot; her brilliant complexion had the glow of a peach that is just ready to drop. She also had had an unfortunate romance somewhere in the past; she had married a man whom she did not love; yet she shone, she scintillated, with the genuine lustre of happiness. Never had the superior advantages of a shallow nature appeared so incontestable.
"I saw you go by yesterday, Miss Meade, and I said to myself that I was going to stop and speak to you the first chance I got. I took such a fancy to you when you were out at Briarlay, and I want to tell you right now that I never believed there was anything queer in your going away like that so early in the morning, without saying a word to anybody. At first people didn't understand why you did it, and, of course, you know that somebody tried to start gossip; but as soon as Mrs. Timberlake told me your sister was ill, I went straight about telling everybody I saw. You were the last woman on earth, I always said, to want anything like a flirtation with a man, married or single, and I knew you used to sympathize so with Angelica. I shall never forget the way you looked at David Blackburn the night you came there, when he was so dreadfully rude to her at the table. I told mother afterwards that if a look could have killed, he would have fallen dead on the spot." She paused an instant, adjusted a loosened pin in her lace veil, and glided on smoothly again without a perceptible change in her voice, "Poor, dear Angelica! All our hearts are broken over her. I never knew David Blackburn well, but I always despised him from the beginning. A man who will sit through a whole dinner without opening his mouth, as I've known him to do, is capable of anything. That's what I always say when Robert tells me I am prejudiced. I am really not in the least prejudiced, but I just can't abide him, and there's no use trying to make me pretend that I can. Even if he hadn't ruined Angelica's life, I should feel almost as strongly about him. Everybody says that she is going to get a divorce for cruelty, though one of the most prominent lawyers in town – I don't like to mention his name, but you would know it in a minute – told me that she could get it on any grounds that she chose. Angelica has such delicacy of feeling that she went out West, where you don't have to make everything so dreadfully public, and drag in all kinds of disgraceful evidence – but they say that David Blackburn neglected her from the very first, and that he has had affairs with other women for years and years. He must have selected those nobody had ever heard of, or he couldn't have kept it all so secret, and that only proves, as I said to Robert, that his tastes were always low – "
"Why do people like to believe these things?" demanded Caroline resentfully. "Why don't they try to find out the truth?"
"Well, how in the world are they going to find out any more than they are told? I said that to Mrs. Ashburton – you know they stand up for Mr. Blackburn through thick and thin – but even they can't find a word to say against Angelica, except that she isn't sincere, and that she doesn't really care about Letty. There isn't a word of truth in that, and nobody would believe it who had seen Angelica after she told Letty good-bye. She was heartbroken – simply heartbroken. Her face was the loveliest thing I ever looked at, and, as Alan Wythe said to me the next day – it was the very afternoon before he went off to camp – there was the soul of motherhood in it. I thought that such a beautiful way of putting it, for it suited Angelica perfectly. Didn't you always feel that she was full of soul?"
"I wonder how Letty is getting on?" asked Caroline, in the pause. "Have you heard anything of her?"
"Oh, she is all right, I think. They have a nurse there who is looking after her until they find a good governess. She must miss her mother terribly, but she doesn't show it a bit. I must say she always seemed to me to be a child of very little feeling. If I go away for a week, my children cry their eyes out, and Letty has lost her mother, and no one would ever know it to watch her."
"She is a reserved child, but I am sure she has feeling," said Caroline.
"Of course you know her better than I do, and, anyhow, you couldn't expect a child not to show the effects of the kind of home life she has had. I tell Robert that our first duty in life is to provide the memory of a happy home for our children. It means so much when you're grown, don't you think, to look back on a pleasant childhood? As for Letty she might as well be an orphan now that David Blackburn has gone to France – "
"To France?" For a minute it seemed to Caroline that claws were tearing her heart, and the dull ache which she had felt for months changed into a sharp and unendurable pain. Then the grey sky and grey street and grey dust intermingled, and went round and round in a circle.
"You hadn't heard? Why, he went last week, or it may be that he is going next week – I can't remember which. Robert didn't know exactly what he was to do – some kind of constructive work, he said, for the Government. I never get things straight, but all I know is that everything seems to be for the Government now. I declare, I never worked so hard in my life as I have done in the last six or eight months, and Robert has been in Washington simply slaving his head off for a dollar a year. It does one good, I suppose. Mr. Courtland preached a beautiful sermon last Sunday about it, and I never realized before how wonderfully we have all grown in spirit since the war began. I said to Mrs. Mallow, as I came out, that it was so comforting to feel that we had been developing all the time without knowing it, or having to bother about it. Of course, we did know that we had been very uncomfortable, but that isn't quite the same, and now I can stand giving up things so much better when I realize that I am getting them all back, even if it's just spiritually. Don't you think that is a lovely way to feel about it?"
"I must go," said Caroline breathlessly. Her pulses were hammering in her ears, and she could scarcely hear what Daisy was saying.
"Well, good-bye. I am so glad to have seen you. Are you going to France like everybody else?"
"I hope so. I have offered my services."
"Then you are just as wild about war work as I am. I'd give anything on earth to go over with the Y. M. C. A., and I tell Robert that the only thing that keeps me back is the children."
She floated on to her car at the corner, while Caroline crossed the street, and walked slowly in the direction of the boarding-house. "It can make no possible difference to me. Why should I care?" she asked herself. Yet the clutch of pain had not relaxed in her heart, and it seemed to her that all the life and colour had gone out of the town. He was not here. He was across the world. Until this instant she had not realized how much it meant to her that he should be in the same city, even though she never saw him.
She reached the house, opened the drab iron gate, went up the short brick walk between withered weeds, and rang the bell beside the inhospitable door, from which the sallow paint was peeling in streaks. At the third ring, a frowzy coloured maid, in a soiled apron, which she was still frantically tying, opened the door; and when she saw Caroline, a sympathetic grin widened her mouth.
"You is done hed a caller, en he lef' his name over dar on de table. I axed 'im ef'n he wouldn't set down en res' his hat, but he jes' shuck his haid en walked right spang out agin."
Entering the hall, Caroline picked up the card, and passed into the shabby living-room, which was empty during the afternoon hours. In the centre of the hideous room, with its damaged Victorian furniture, its open stove, its sentimental engravings, and its piles of magazines long out of date – in the midst of the surroundings of a contented and tasteless period, she stared down, with incredulous eyes, at the bit of paper she was holding. So he had been there. He had come at the last moment, probably on his last day in Richmond, and she had missed him! Life had accorded her one other opportunity, and, with the relentless perversity of her fate, she had lost it by an accident, by a quarter of an hour, by a chance meeting with Daisy! It was her destiny to have the things that she desired held within reach, to watch them approach until she could almost touch them, to see them clearly and vividly for a minute, and then to have them withdrawn through some conspiracy of external events. "I didn't ask much," she thought, "only to see him once more – only the chance to let him see that I can still hold my head high and meet the future with courage." In an instant she felt that the utter futility and emptiness of the summer, of every day that she had passed since she left Briarlay, enveloped and smothered her with the thickness of ashes. "It is not fair," she cried, in rebellion, "I have had a hard life. I asked so little. It is not fair."
Going over to the window, she put the cheap curtains aside, and looked out into the street, as if searching the pavement for his vanishing figure. Nothing there except emptiness! Nothing except the wind and falling leaves and grey dust and the footsteps of a passer-by at the corner. It was like her life, that long, deserted street, filled with dead leaves and the restless sound of things that went by a little way off.
For a minute the idea stayed with her. Then, raising her head, with a smile, she looked up at the bare trees and the sombre sky over the housetops. "Life cannot hurt you unless you let it," she repeated. "I will not let it. I will conquer, if it kills me." And, so inexplicable are the processes of the soul, the resolution arising in her thoughts became interfused not only with her point of view, but with the bleak external world at which she was looking. The will to fight endowed her with the physical power of fighting; the thought created the fact; and she knew that as long as she believed herself to be unconquered, she was unconquerable. The moment of weakness had served its purpose – for the reaction had taught her that destiny lies within, not without; that the raw material of existence does not differ; and that our individual lives depend, not upon things as they are in themselves, but upon the thought with which we have modified or enriched them. "I will not be a coward. I will not let the world cheat me of happiness," she resolved; and the next instant, as she lowered her eyes from the sky, she saw David Blackburn looking up at her from the gate.
For a moment she felt that life stopped in its courses, and then began again, joyously, exuberantly, drenched with colour and sweetness. She had asked so little. She had asked only to see him again – only the chance to show him that she could be brave – and he stood here at the gate! He was still her friend, that was enough. It was enough to have him stand there and look up at her with his grave, questioning eyes.
Turning quickly away from the window, she ran out of the house and down the brick walk to the gate.
"I thought I had missed you," she said, her eyes shining with happiness.
"It is my last day in Richmond. I wanted to say good-bye." He had touched her hand with the briefest greeting; but in his face she read his gladness at seeing her; and she felt suddenly that everything had been made right, that he would understand without words, that there was nothing she could add to the joy of the meeting. It was friendship, not love, she knew; and yet, at the moment, friendship was all that she asked – friendship satisfied her heart, and filled the universe with a miraculous beauty. After the torment of the last six months, peace had descended upon her abundantly, ineffably, out of the heavens. All the longing to explain faded now into the knowledge that explanation was futile, and when she spoke again it was to say none of the things with which she had burdened her mind.
"How is Letty?" she asked, "I think of her so often."
"She is very well, but she misses you. Will you walk a little way? We can talk better in the street."
"Yes, the house will soon be full of boarders." Weariness had left her. She felt strong, gay, instinct with energy. As she moved up the deserted street, through the autumn dust, laughter rippled on her lips, and the old buoyant grace flowed in her walk. It was only friendship, she told herself, and yet she asked nothing more. She had been born again; she had come to life in a moment.
And everything at which she looked appeared to have come to life also. The heavy clouds; the long, ugly street, with the monotonous footsteps of the few passers-by; the wind blowing the dried leaves in swirls and eddies over the brick pavement; the smell of autumn which lingered in the air and the dust – all these things seemed not dead, but as living as spring. The inner radiance had streamed forth to brighten the outward greyness; the April bloom of her spirit was spreading over the earth.
"This is my hour," her heart told her. "Out of the whole of life I have this single short hour of happiness. I must pour into it everything that is mine, every memory of joy I shall ever have in the future. I must make it so perfect that it will shed a glow over all the drab years ahead. It is only friendship. He has never thought of me except as a friend – but I must make the memory of friendship more beautiful than the memory of love."
He looked at her in the twilight, and she felt that peace enveloped her with his glance.
"Tell me about yourself," he said gently. "What has life done to you?"
"Everything, and nothing." Her voice was light and cheerful. "I have worked hard all summer, and I am hoping to go to France if the war lasts – "
"All of us hope that. It is amazing the way the war has gripped us to the soul. Everything else becomes meaningless. The hold it has taken on me is so strong that I feel as if I were there already in part, as if only the shell of my body were left over here out of danger." He paused and looked at her closely. "I can talk to you of the things I think – impersonal things. The rest you must understand – you will understand?"
Her heart rose on wings like a bird. "Talk to me of anything," she answered, "I shall understand."
"No one, except my mother, has ever understood so completely. I shall always, whatever happens, look back on our talks at Briarlay as the most helpful, the most beautiful of my life."
Her glance was veiled with joy as she smiled up at him. This was more than she had ever demanded even in dreams. It was the bread of life in abundance, and she felt that she could live on it through all the barren years of the future. To have the best in her recognized, to be judged, not by a momentary impulse, but by a permanent ideal – this was what she had craved, and this was accorded her.
"For the time I can see nothing but the war," he was saying in a changed voice. "The ground has been cut from under my feet. I am groping through a ruined world toward some kind of light, some kind of certainty. The things I believed in have failed me – and even the things I thought have undergone modifications. I can find but one steadfast resolve in the midst of this fog of disappointment, and that is to help fight this war to a finish. My personal life has become of no consequence. It has been absorbed into the national will, I suppose. It has become a part of America's determination to win the war, let it cost what it may."
The old light of vision and prophecy had come back to his face while she watched it; and she realized, with a rush of mental sympathy, that his ideas were still dynamic – that they possessed the vital energy of creative and constructive forces.
"Talk to me of your work – your life," she said, and she thought exultantly, "If I cannot hold him back, I can follow him. I, too, can build my home on ideas."
"You know what I have always felt about my country," he said slowly. "You know that I have always hoped to be of some lasting service in building a better State. As a boy I used to dream of it, and in later years, in spite of disappointments – of almost unbearable disappointments and failures – the dream has come back more vividly. For a time I believed that I could work here, as well as away, for the future of America – for the genuine democracy that is founded not on force, but on freedom. For a little while this seemed to me to be possible. Then I was pushed back again from the ranks of the fighters – I became again merely a spectator of life – until the war called me to action. As long as the war lasts it will hold me. When that is over there will be fresh fields and newer problems, and I may be useful."
"It is constructive work, not fighting now, isn't it?"
"It is the machinery of war – but, after all, what does it matter if it only helps to win?"
"And afterwards? When it is over?"
His eyes grew very gentle. "If I could only see into the future! Words may come to me some day, and I may answer you – but not now – not yet. I know nothing to-day except that there is work for my hand, and I must do it. Trust me for the rest. You do trust me?"
There was a glory in her face as she answered, "To do right always. Until death – and beyond."
"If we have trust, we have everything," he said, and a note of sadness had crept into his voice. "Life has taught me that without it the rest is only ashes."
"I am glad for your sake that you can go," she replied. "It would be harder here."
The man's part was his, and though she would not have had it otherwise, she understood that the man's part would be the easier. He would go away; he would do his work; his life would be crowded to the brim with incident, with practical interests; and, though she could trust him not to forget, she knew that he would not remember as she remembered in the place where she had known him.
"The work will be worth doing," he answered, "even if the record is soon lost. It will mean little in the way of ambition, but I think that ambition scarcely counts with me now. What I am seeking is an opportunity for impersonal service – a wider field in which to burn up my energy." His voice softened, and she felt, for the first time, that he was talking impersonally because he was afraid of the danger that lay in the silence and the twilight – that he was speaking in casual phrases because the real thought, the true words, were unutterable. She was sure now, she was confident; and the knowledge gave her strength to look with clear eyes on the parting – and afterwards —
He began to talk of his work, while they turned and walked slowly back to the boarding-house.
"I will write to you," he said, "but remember I shall write only of what I think. I shall write the kind of letters that I should write to a man."
"It all interests me," she answered. "Your thought is a part of you – it is yourself."
"It is the only self I dare follow for the present, and even that changes day by day. I see so many things now, if not differently – well, at least in an altered perspective. It is like travelling on a dark road, as soon as one danger is past, others spring up out of the obscurity. The war has cast a new light on every belief, on every conviction that I thought I possessed. The values of life are changing hourly – they are in a process of readjustment. Facts that appeared so steadfast, so clear, to my vision a year ago, are now out of focus. I go on, for I always sought truth, not consistency, but I go on blindly. I am trying to feel the road since I cannot see it. I am searching the distance for some glimmer of dawn – for some light I can travel by. I know, of course, that our first task is winning the war, that until the war is won there can be no security for ideas or mankind, that unless the war is won, there can be no freedom for either individual or national development."
As they reached the gate, he broke off, and held out his hand. "But I meant to write you all this. It is the only thing I can write you. You will see Letty sometimes?"
"Whenever I can. Mrs. Timberlake will bring her to see me."
"And you will think of yourself? You will keep well?"
He held her hand; her eyes were on his; and though she heard his questions and her answers, she felt that both questions and answers were as trivial as the autumn dust at her feet. What mattered was the look in his eyes, which was like a cord drawing her spirit nearer and nearer. She knew now that he loved her; but she knew it through some finer and purer medium of perception than either speech or touch. If he had said nothing in their walk together, if he had parted from her in silence, she would have understood as perfectly as she understood now. In that moment, while her hand was in his and her radiant look on his face, the pain and tragedy of the last months, the doubt, the humiliation, the haunting perplexity and suspense, the self-distrust and the bitterer distrust of life – all these things, which had so tormented her heart, were swept away by a tide of serene and ineffable peace. She was not conscious of joy. The confidence that pervaded her spirit was as far above joy as it was above pain or distress. What she felt with the profoundest conviction was that she could never really be unhappy again in the future – that she had had all of life in a moment, and that she could face whatever came with patience and fortitude.
"Stand fast, little friend," he said, "and trust me." Then, without waiting for her reply, he turned from her and walked away through the twilight.
