Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
CHAPTER II
The Time
AT midnight, when she was alone in her room, Caroline's mind passed from an intense personal realization of the Blackburns to a broader conception of the time in which she was living – the time which this generation had helped to create, and which, like some monster of the imagination, was now devouring its happiness. She thought of her father – a man of intellectual abilities who had spent his life out of touch with his environment, in an uncongenial employment. Young as she was when he died, she had been for years the solitary confidant of his mind, for he also, like these strangers into whose lives she was about to enter, had been the victim of the illimitable and inscrutable forces which shape the thought of an age. He had been different from his generation, and because he had been different, it had destroyed him. Yet his single idea had outlived the multitudinous actions and reactions that surrounded him. He saw not to-day, but to-morrow; and though he was of another mettle from this Blackburn of whom she had been reading, he appeared now in her fancy to take a place beside him in the vivid life of the age.
The lamp was smoking, and after lowering the wick, she sat gazing into the darkness beyond the loosened shutters, which rattled when the wind shook them.
It was in the early autumn of nineteen hundred and sixteen, the moment in history when America, hesitating on the verge of war, discovered that it was no longer an Anglo-Saxon nation; that, in spite of its language and literature, its shell of customs and traditions, a new race had been created out of a complicated mass of diverse interacting sympathies, prejudices, attractions, and repulsions. Confronted now with problems demanding a definite expression of the national will, it became evident that the pioneer stock had undergone profound modifications, and that from a mingling of many strains had been born an emphatic American spirit, with aspirations essentially different from those of the races from which its lifeblood was drawn. In the arrogant vigour of youth this spirit resented any disposition on the part of its kindred to dictate or even influence its policy or its purpose.
For two years Europe had been at war. The outbreak of the struggle had come as a distant thunderbolt to a nation unaccustomed to threatening armies, and ignorant of the triumphant menace of military ideals; and stunned by a calamity which it had believed impossible, America had been inclined at first to condemn indiscriminately those who had permitted the disaster for apparently insignificant causes. There was sympathy with Belgium because it had been destroyed; with France because it had been invaded; and with England because it had worked sincerely in the interests of peace; but as early as the autumn of nineteen hundred and sixteen this sympathy was little more than uncrystallized sentiment. To the people the problem was irrelevant and disguised in words. For a century they had been taught that their geographical isolation was indestructible, and that European history concerned them only after it had been successfully transmuted into literature. The effect of these political illusions had been accentuated by the immediate demands upon the thoughts and energies of the nation, by the adventure of conquering a rich and undeveloped continent, and by the gradual adjustment of complex institutions to a rapidly expanding social and economic life. Secure in its remoteness, the country had grown careless in its diplomacy. Commerce was felt to be vital, but foreign relations were cheerfully left to the President, with the assumption that he was acting under the special guidance of Providence, on those memorable occasions when he acted at all. With the sinking of the Lusitania, the spirit of the country had flamed into a passionate demand for redress or war. Then the indignation had been gradually allayed by diplomatic phrases and bewildering technicalities; and the masses of the people, busy with an extravagant war prosperity, resigned international matters into the hands of the Government, while, with an uneasy conscience but genuine American optimism, they continued actively to hope for the best.
To an aërial philosopher the Government of the hour might have appeared a composite image of the time – sentimental, evasive of realities, idealistic in speech, and materialistic in purpose and action. Dominated by a single strong intellect, it was composed mainly of men who were without knowledge of world questions or experience in world affairs. At the moment war was gathering, yet the demand for preparation was either ignored or ridiculed as hysteria.
As the national elections approached both parties avoided the direct issue, and sought by compromise and concession to secure the support of the non-American groups. While the country waited for leadership, the leaders hesitated in the midst of conflicting currents of public sentiment, and endeavoured to win popularity through an irresolute policy of opportunism. To Virginians, who thought politically in terms of a party, the great question was resolved into a personal problem. Where the President led they would follow.
From the beginning there had been many Americans who looked beneath the shifting surface of events, and beheld in this war a challenge to the principles which are the foundation-stones of Western civilization. They realized that this was a war not of men, not of materials, but of ideals – of ideals which are deeper than nationality since they are the common heritage of the human race. They saw that the ideals assailed were the basis of American institutions, and that if they should be overthrown the American Republic could not endure. As in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the problems of European civilization were fought out in the forests of America, so to-day, they felt, the future of America would be decided on the battlefields of Europe. The cause was the cause of humanity, therefore it was America's war.
And now as the elections drew nearer, these clearer thinkers stood apart and watched the grotesque political spectacle, with its unctuous promises of "peace and prosperity," in the midst of world tragedy. Though the struggle would be close, it was already evident that the sentiment of the country was drifting, not so much toward the policies of the administration, as away from the invectives of the opposite party. Since neither party stood for principle, nor had the courage to declare fearlessly for the maintenance of American rights, there was a measure of comfort in the reflection that, though the purposes of the Government were not wholly approved, they were at least partly known.
By the early autumn the campaign had passed through a fog of generalization and settled into a sham battle of personal and sectional issues, while in Europe the skies grew darker, and the events of the coming year gathered like vultures before the approaching storm.
And always, while America waited and watched, the forces that mould the destinies of men and of nations, were moving, profound, obscure, and impenetrable, beneath the surface of life.
Caroline's lamp flickered and went out, while her thoughts rushed back to the shelter of the house. The room was in darkness, but beyond the shutters, where the wind swept in gusts, the clouds had scattered, and a few stars were shining.
CHAPTER III
Briarlay
IN the train Caroline sat straight and still, with her eyes on the landscape, which unrolled out of the golden web of the distance. Now and then, when her gaze shifted, she could see the pale oval of her face glimmering unsteadily in the window-pane, like a light that is going out slowly. Even in the glass, where her eyes were mere pools of darkness, her mouth looked sad and stern, as if it had closed over some tragic and for ever unutterable secret. It was only when one saw her eyes – those eyes which under the arch of her brows and hair made one think of bluebirds flying – it was only when their colour and radiance lighted her features, that her face melted to tenderness.
While she sat there she thought of a hundred things, yet never once did she think of herself or her own interests as the centre around which her imagination revolved. If life had repressed and denied her, it had trained her mental processes into lucid and orderly habits. Unlike most women, she had learned to think impersonally, and to think in relations. Her spirit might beat its wings against the bars of the cage, but she knew that it would never again rise, with a dart of ecstasy, to test its freedom and its flight in the sky. She had had her day of joy. It was short, and it had left only sadness, yet because she had once had it, even for so brief a time, she might be disillusioned, but she could not feel wholly defrauded. Through that dead emotion she had reached, for an instant, the heart of life; she had throbbed with its rapture; she had felt, known, and suffered. And in confronting the illusions of life, she had found the realities. Because she had learned that thought, not emotion, is the only permanent basis of happiness, she had been able to found her house on a rock. It was worth a good deal of pain to discover that neither desire nor disappointment is among the eternal verities of experience.
To-day, as on many other days since she had passed through her training in the hospital, she was leaving home, after a vacation in which she had thought of herself scarcely a minute, for the kind of service in which she would not have time to think of herself at all. Work had been the solution of her problem, the immediate restorative; and she knew that it had helped her through the anguish, and – worse than anguish – through the bleakness of her tragedy, as nothing else could have done. "I will not sit down and think of myself," she had said over and over in those first bitter days, and in the years since then, while she was passionately rebuilding her universe, she had kept true to her resolve. She had been active always; she had never brooded among the romantic ruins of the past. If her inner life had grown indifferent, cold, and a little hard, her external sympathies had remained warm, clear, and glowing. The comfort she had denied herself, she had given abundantly to others; the strength she had not wasted in brooding, she had spent freely in a passion of service and pity. In her face there was the beauty and sweetness of a fervent, though disciplined, spirit.
"I am so sorry to leave them," she thought, with her eyes on the amber, crimson, and purple of the forest. "Mother is no longer young. She needs all the help I can give her, and the girls have so few pleasures. I wish there was something more I could do for them. I would work my fingers to the bone to give them a little happiness." And there floated before her, against the background of the forest, a still yet swiftly fleeting vision, of the fire-lit room, with the girls gathered, knitting, on the hearthrug, and her mother turning to look at her with the good and gentle expression that shone always in her face. Beyond the window the rain fell; the cedar brushed its boughs against the panes with a sound like that of ghostly fingers; on the roof above she heard the measured dropping of acorns. In the flickering light the old mahogany gleamed with a bronze and gold lustre, and the high white bed, under its fringed Marseilles coverlet, stood, like an embodiment of peace and sleep, in the corner. "It looks so happy, so sheltered," she thought, "and yet – " she was going to add, "and yet unhappiness came up the road, from a great distance, and found me there – " but she shattered the vague idea before it formed in her mind.
At the station Mrs. Colfax was waiting, and though Caroline had seen her only once, ten years ago, she recognized her by a bird-like, pecking manner she had never forgotten. As the ruin of a famous beauty the old lady was not without historic distinction. Though she was now shrunken and withered, and strung with quaint gold chains, which rattled with echoes of an earlier period, she still retained the gracious social art of the "sixties." Her eyes, hollowed under thin grey eyebrows, were black and piercing, and her small aristocratic features looked mashed, as if life had dealt them too hard a blow.
"My dear child, I should have known you anywhere, so, you see, I haven't yet lost my memory. It was years ago that I met you, wasn't it?"
A man in livery – she discovered afterwards that he was the Blackburn's footman – took her bag, and Caroline helped Mrs. Colfax out of the station and into the big limousine at the door. "It was so good of you to meet me," she said, for it was all she could think of, and to the last she had been haunted by the fear that Mr. Blackburn might decide to come for her.
"Good of me? Why, I wanted to come." As she watched Caroline's face, the old lady was thinking shrewdly, "She isn't so pretty as she used to be. I doubt if many men would think twice about her – but she has a lovely expression. I never saw a more spiritual face."
Once safely started she rambled on while the car shot into Franklin Street, and ran straight ahead in the direction of Monument Avenue.
"I always meant to meet you, and just as soon as your telegram came, I 'phoned Angelica about the car. She wanted to come down herself, but the doctor makes her lie down two hours every afternoon. Do you see that new office building at the corner? Your mother and I went to school on that spot before we boarded at Miss Braxton's in Petersburg. At that time this part of Franklin Street was very fashionable, but everything has moved west, and everybody who can afford it is building in the country. It isn't like your mother's day at all. New people have taken possession of the town, and anybody who has money can get into society now. We are coming to Monument Avenue. All the houses are brand new, but it is nothing to the country outside. The Blackburns' place just off the River Road is the finest house anywhere about Richmond, they tell me. He built it the year before his marriage, and I remember an artist, who came down to lecture before the Woman's Club, saying to me that Briarlay was like its owner – everything big in it was good and everything little in it was bad. I don't know much about such things, but he poked fun at the fireplaces – said they were Gothic or Italian – I can't remember which – and that the house, of course, is Colonial."
A fit of coughing stopped her, and while she dived into her black silk bag for a handkerchief, Caroline asked curiously, "Has Mr. Blackburn so much money?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose he is the richest man we have here. He owns the large steel works down by the river, and he discovered some new cheap process, they say, which brought him a fortune. I remember hearing this, but I haven't much of a head for such matters. Just now he is having a good deal of trouble with his men, and I'm sure it serves him right for deserting the ways of his father, and going over to the Republicans. Charles takes up for him because David has always stood by him in business, but of course out of respect for father's memory he couldn't openly sympathize with his disloyalty."
"Does anybody follow him, or is he all alone?" inquired Caroline, less from active interest in the question than from the desire to keep the old lady animated.
"You'll have to ask Charles, and he will be delighted to answer. In this new-fangled idea about breaking the solid South – did you ever hear such stuff and nonsense? – I believe he has had a very bad influence over a number of young men. Then, of late, he has been talking extravagantly about its being our duty to go into this war – as if we had any business mixing ourselves up in other people's quarrels – and that appeals to a lot of fire-eaters and fight-lovers. Of course, a man as rich as David Blackburn will always have a trail of sycophants and addlepates at his heels. What I say is that if Providence had intended us to be in this war, we shouldn't have been given a President wise and strong enough to keep us out of it. If Mr. Wilson is elected for a second term – and my brother Charles says there isn't a doubt of it – it will be because the country feels that he has kept us out of war. There was a long editorial in the paper this morning warning us that, if Mr. Hughes is elected, we shall be fighting Germany within two months. Then think of all the destruction and the dreadful high taxes that would follow – "
"But I thought there was a great deal of war spirit here? At home we work all the time for the Allies."
"Oh, there is, there is. Angelica is president or chairman of two or three societies for helping the wounded, and they even made me head of something – I never can remember the name of it – but it has to do with Belgian orphans. Everybody wants to help, but that is different from going into the actual fighting, you know, and people are very much divided. A few, like David Blackburn, wanted us to declare war the day after the Lusitania was destroyed, but most of us feel – especially the wiser heads – that the President knows more about it than any one else – "
"I suppose he does," admitted Caroline, and she added while she looked at the appointments of the car, "What a beautiful car!"
She sighed gently, for she was thinking of the rotting fence rails and the leaking roof at The Cedars. How far she could make a few thousand dollars go in repairing the house and the out-buildings! If only the leaks could be mended, and the roof reshingled over the wings! If only they could hire a younger man to help poor old Jones, who was growing decrepit!
"This car is Angelica's," said the old lady, "and everything she has is wonderful. As soon as she was married she began to re-decorate Briarlay from garret to cellar. When David first made his money, he went about buying everything he laid eyes on, and she gave whole wagon-loads of furniture to her relatives. There are people who insist that Angelica overdoes things in her way as much as her husband does in his – both were poor when they grew up – but I maintain that her taste is perfect – simply perfect. It is all very well for my daughter Lucy, who has studied interior decoration in New York, to turn up her nose at walls hung with silk in a country house, but to my mind that pink silk in Angelica's parlours is the most beautiful thing she could have, and I reckon I've as good a right to my ideas as Lucy has to hers. After all, as I tell her, it is only a question of taste."
It was a mild, bright afternoon in October, and as the car turned into the River Road, the country spread softly, in undulations of green, gold, and bronze, to the deep blue edge of the horizon. The valley lay in shadow, while above it shreds of violet mist drifted slowly against the golden ball of the sun. Near at hand the trees were touched with flame, but, as they went on, the brilliant leaves melted gradually into the multi-coloured blend of the distance.
"Mrs. Blackburn must be so beautiful," said Caroline presently. As she approached Briarlay – the house of darkness and mystery that she had seen in her imagination – she felt that the appeal of this unknown woman deepened in vividness and pathos, that it rushed to meet her and enveloped her with the intensity and sweetness of a perfume. It was as if the name Angelica were not a sound, but a thing composed of colour and fragrance – sky-blue like a cloud and as sweet-scented as lilies.
"She was the most beautiful girl who ever came out in Richmond," replied Mrs. Colfax. "The family was so poor that her mother couldn't do anything for her – she didn't even have a coming-out party – but with a girl like that nothing matters. David Blackburn saw her at some reception, and lost his head completely. I won't say his heart because I've never believed that he had one. Of course he was far and away the best chance she was ever likely to have down here, for it wasn't as if they could have sent her to the White Sulphur. They couldn't afford anything, and they were even educating Angelica to be a teacher. What she would have done if David Blackburn hadn't come along when he did, I cannot imagine – though, as I wrote you, I'd have taught school to my dying day before I'd have married him."
"But didn't she care anything for him?" asked Caroline, for it was incredible to her that such a woman should have sold herself.
Mrs. Colfax sniffed at her smelling-salts. "Of course I haven't the right to an opinion," she rejoined, after a pause, "but as I always reply to Charles when he tells me I am talking too much, 'Well, I can't help having eyes.' I remember as well as if it were yesterday the way Angelica looked when she told me of her engagement. 'I have decided to marry David Blackburn, Cousin Lucy,' she said, and then she added, just as if the words were wrung out of her, 'I loathe the thought of teaching!' It doesn't sound a bit like Angelica, but those were her very words. And now, my dear, tell me something about your mother. Does she still keep up her wonderful spirits?"
After this she asked so many questions that Caroline was still answering them when the car turned out of the road and sped up a long, narrow lane, which was thickly carpeted with amber leaves. At the end of the lane, the vista broadened into an ample sweep of lawn surrounding a red brick house with white columns and low wings half hidden in Virginia creeper. It was a beautiful house – so beautiful that Caroline held her breath in surprise. Under the October sky, in the midst of clustering elms, which shed a rain of small bronze leaves down on the bright grass and the dark evergreens, the house appeared to capture and imprison the mellow light of the sunset. It was so still, except for a curving flight of swallows over the roof, and the elm leaves, which fell slowly and steadily in the soft air, that the gleaming windows, the red walls, and the white columns, borrowed, for a moment, the visionary aspect of a place seen in a dream.
"There is a formal garden at the back, full of box-borders and cypresses – only they are really red cedars," said Mrs. Colfax. "From the terrace there is a good view of the river, and lower down Angelica has made an old-fashioned garden, with grass walks and rose arbours and mixed flower beds. I never saw such Canterbury bells as she had last summer."
As they entered the circular drive, a touring car passed them slowly on the way out, and a man leaned forward and bowed to Mrs. Colfax. From her casual glance Caroline received an impression of a strong, sunburned face, with heavy brows and dark hair going a little grey on the temples.
"What searching eyes that man has," she observed carelessly, and added immediately, "You know him?"
"Why, that was David Blackburn. I forgot you had never seen him."
"He isn't at all what I expected him to be." While Caroline spoke she felt an inexplicable sense of disappointment. She scarcely knew what she had expected; yet she realized that he was different from some vague image she had had in her mind.
"His face looked so set I'm afraid he has been quarrelling with Angelica," said the old lady. "Poor child, I feel so distressed."
They had reached the house, and as they were about to alight, the door opened, and a girl in a riding habit, with two Airedale terriers at her heels, strolled out on the porch. At sight of Mrs. Colfax, she came quickly forward, and held out her hand. She had a splendid figure, which the riding habit showed to advantage, and though her face was plain, her expression was pleasant and attractive. Without the harsh collar and the severe arrangement of her hair, which was braided and tied up with a black ribbon, Caroline imagined that she might be handsome.
Mrs. Colfax greeted her as "Miss Blackburn" and explained immediately that she lived at Briarlay with her brother. "She is a great lover of dogs," added the old lady, "and it is a pity that Angelica doesn't like to have them about."
"Oh, they don't mind, they're such jolly beggars," replied the girl in a cheerful, slangy manner, "and besides they get all they want of me. I'm so sorry you didn't come in time for tea. Now I'm just starting for a ride with Alan."
While she was speaking a man on horseback turned from the lane into the drive, and Caroline saw her face change and brighten until it became almost pretty. "There he is now!" she exclaimed, and then she called out impulsively, "Oh, Alan, I've waited for ever!"
He shouted back some words in a gay voice, but Caroline did not catch them, and before he dismounted, Mrs. Colfax led her through the open door into the hall.
"That's Alan Wythe," said the old lady in a whisper, and she resumed a moment later when they stood within the pink silk walls of Angelica's drawing-room, "Mary has been engaged to him for a year, and I never in my life saw a girl so much in love. I suppose it's natural enough – he's charming – but in my day young ladies were more reserved. And now we'll go straight upstairs to Angelica. She is sure to be lying down at this hour."
As they passed through the wide hall, and up the beautiful Colonial staircase, Caroline felt that the luxury of the place bewildered her. Though the house, except in size, was not unlike country homes she had seen in southside Virginia, there was nothing in her memory, unless she summoned back stray recollections of photographs in Sunday newspapers, that could compare with the decoration of the drawing-room. "It is beautiful, but there is too much of it," she thought, for her eyes, accustomed to bare surfaces and the formal purity of Sheraton and Chippendale, were beginning to discriminate.
"I want you to notice everything when you have time," said Mrs. Colfax. "I tell Angelica that it is a liberal education just to come inside of this house."
"It would take weeks to see it," responded Caroline; and then, as she moved toward a long mirror in the hall upstairs, it seemed to her that her reflection, in her severe blue serge suit, with the little round blue hat Diana had trimmed, looked as grotesquely out of place as if she had been one of the slender Sheraton chairs at The Cedars. "If I appear a lady I suppose it is as much as I can hope for," she thought, "and besides nobody will notice me."
The humour leaped to her eyes, while Mrs. Colfax, watching her with a side-long glance, reflected that Carrie Warwick's daughter had distinction. Her grace was not merely the grace of a slender body with flowing lines; it was the grace of word, of glance, of smile, of gesture, that indefinable and intangible quality which is shed by a lovely soul as fragrance is shed by a flower. "Even if she lives to be as old as I am, she will still keep her poise and her charm of appearance," thought the old lady, "she will never lose it because it isn't a matter of feature – it isn't dependent on outward beauty. Years ago she was prettier than she is to-day, but she wasn't nearly so distinguished." Aloud she said presently, "Your hair grows in such a nice line on your forehead, my dear, just like your mother's. I remember we always made her brush hers straight back as you do, so she could show her 'widow's peak' in the centre. But yours is much darker, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is almost black. Mother's was the loveliest shade of chestnut. I have a lock of it in an old breast-pin."
A door at the end of the hall opened, and a thin woman, in rusty black alpaca, came to meet them.
"That's the housekeeper – Matty Timberlake, the very salt of the earth," whispered Mrs. Colfax. "She is Angelica's cousin."
When the housekeeper reached them, she stooped and kissed Mrs. Colfax before she spoke to Caroline. She was a long, narrow, neuralgic woman, with near-sighted eyes, thin grey hair which hung in wisps on her forehead, and a look which seemed to complain always that she was poor and dependent and nobody noticed her.
"Angelica is lying down," she said, "but she would like to speak to Miss Meade before I take her to her room."
Caroline's heart gave a bound. "At last I shall see her," she thought, while she followed Mrs. Timberlake down the hall and across the threshold of Angelica's room. The influence that she had felt first in the twilight at The Cedars and again in the drive out from Richmond, welcomed her like a caress.
Her first impression was one of blue and ivory and gold. There was a bed, painted in garlands, with a scalloped canopy of blue silk; and Caroline, who was accustomed to mahogany testers or the little iron beds in the hospital, was conscious of a thrill of delight as she looked at it. Then her eyes fell on the white bear-skin rug before the fire, and from the rug they passed to the couch on which Mrs. Blackburn was lying. The woman and the room harmonized so perfectly that one might almost have mistaken Angelica for a piece of hand-painted furniture. At first she appeared all blue silk and pale gold hair and small delicate features. Then she sat up and held out her hand, and Caroline saw that she looked not only human, but really tired and frail. There were faint shadows under her eyes, which were like grey velvet, and her hair, parted softly in golden wings over her forehead, showed several barely perceptible creases between her eyebrows. She was so thin that the bones of her face and neck were visible beneath the exquisite texture of her flesh, yet the modelling was as perfect as if her head and shoulders had been chiselled in marble.
"You are Caroline Meade," she said sweetly. "I am so glad you have come."
"I am glad, too. I wanted to come." The vibrant voice, full of warmth and sympathy, trembled with pleasure. For once the reality was fairer than the dream; the woman before her was lovelier than the veiled figure of Caroline's imagination. It was one of those unforgettable moments when the mind pauses, with a sensation of delight and expectancy, on the edge of a new emotion, of an undiscovered country. This was not only something beautiful and rare; it was different from anything that had ever happened to her before; it was a part of the romantic mystery that surrounded the unknown. And it wasn't only that Mrs. Blackburn was so lovely! More than her beauty, the sweetness of her look, the appeal of her delicacy, of her feminine weakness, went straight to the heart. It was as if her nature reached out, with clinging tendrils, seeking support. She was like a fragile white flower that could not live without warmth and sunshine.
