Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
And because the collective soul of the race is only the sum total of individual souls, I can discern no way to true national greatness except through the cultivation of citizenship. Experience has proved that there can be no stability either of law or league unless it is sustained by the moral necessity of mankind; and, for this reason, I feel that our first international agreement should be the agreement on a world standard of honour – on a rule of ethical principles in public as well as in private relations. I confess that a paternalism that enfeebles the character appears to me scarcely less destructive than a license that intoxicates. Between the two lies the golden mean of power with charity, of enlightened individualism, of Christian principles, not applied on the surface, but embodied in the very structure of civilization. Though I am not a religious man in the orthodox meaning, the last year has taught me that the world's hope lies not in treaties, but in the law of Christ that ye love one another.
This splendid dream of the perfectibility of human nature may not have led us very far in the past, but at least it has never once led us wrong. There are ideas that flash by like comets, bearing a trail of light; and such an idea is that of world peace and brotherhood. Only those whose eyes are on the heavens behold it; yet these few may become the great adventurers of the spirit, the prophets and seers of the new age for mankind. There has never been a great invention that did not begin as a dream, just as there has never been a great truth that did not begin as a heresy. And, if we look back over history, we find that the sublime moments with men and with nations, are those in which they break free from the anchorage of the past, and set sail toward the unknown seas, on a new spiritual voyage of discovery.
It is thus that I would see America, not as schoolmistress or common scold to the nations, but as chosen leader by example, rather than by authority. I would see her, when this crisis is safely past, keeping still to her onward vision, and her high and solemn mood of service and sacrifice; and it is in the spirit of humility, not of pride, that I would have her stretch the hand of friendship alike to the great and the little peoples. She has had no wiser leaders than the Founders of this Republic, and I would see her return, as far as she can return, to the lonely freedom in which they left her. I would see her enter no world covenant except one that is sustained not by physical force, but by the moral law; and I would, above all, see her follow her own great destiny with free hands and unbandaged eyes. For her true mission is not that of universal pedagogue – her true mission is to prove to the incredulous Powers the reality of her own political ideals – to make Democracy, not a sublime postulate, but a self-evident truth.
I have written as words came to me, knowing that I could write to you freely and frankly, as I could to no one else, of the life of the mind. Your friendship I can trust always, in any circumstances; and it is only by thinking impersonally that I can escape the tyranny of personal things. I have not written of my surroundings over here, because I could tell you only what you have read in hundreds of letters – in hundreds of magazines. It is all alike. One and all, we see the same sights. War is not the fine and splendid thing some of us at home believe it to be. There is dirt and cruelty and injustice in France, as well as glory and heroism. I have seen the good and the evil of the battlefields, just as I have seen the good and the evil of peace, and I have learned that the romance of war depends as much upon the thickness of the atmosphere as upon the square miles of the distance. It is pretty prosaic at close range; yet at the very worst of it, I have seen flashes of an almost inconceivable beauty. For it brings one up against the reality, and the reality is not matter, but spirit.
I am trying to do the best work of my life, and I am doing it just for my country.
God bless you.
DAVID BLACKBURN.
CHAPTER XII
The Vision
AT the end of June, Caroline learned from the papers that Blackburn had returned to Briarlay; and the same day she heard through Daisy Colfax that Alan Wythe had been killed in France.
"I feel so sorry for poor Angelica," said the young woman mournfully. "They were always such devoted friends. But, of course, it is splendid to think that he was a hero, and I know that is the way Angelica will look at it."
At the moment, though Caroline had liked Alan, the thing that impressed her most was the way in which the whole world shared in the conspiracy to protect Angelica from the consequences of her own acts. Evidently no hint of scandal had ever touched her friendship for Alan.
"I am sorry," said Caroline, "I always liked him."
"Oh, everybody did! You know that Mr. Blackburn has come home?"
"Yes, I saw it in the paper."
"And Cousin Matty tells me that you are going away to camp?"
"I have just had my call, and I am leaving next week. I hope it means France very soon, but of course no one knows."
"Well, be sure to take a great deal more than they tell you to. I know a nurse who said she almost froze the first winter. Do you really have to wear woollen stockings? I should think they would make your flesh creep."
She passed on, blooming and lovely, and Caroline, with her bundle of woollen stockings under her arm, left the shop, and turned down a side street on her way to Mrs. Dandridge's. She was glad of the call, and yet – and yet – she had hoped deep down in her heart, a hope unspoken and unacknowledged, that she should see David again before she left Richmond. A moment would be enough – only it might be for the last time, and she felt that she must see him. In the last two months she had thought of him very little. Her work had engrossed her, and the hope of going to France had exhilarated her like wine through all the long days of drudgery. She had grown to expect so little of life that every pleasure was magnified into a blessing, and she found, in looking back, that an accumulation of agreeable incidents had provided her with a measure of happiness. Underneath it all was the knowledge of Blackburn, though love had come at last to take the place of a creed that one believes in, but seldom remembers. Yet she still kept the jewel in the casket, and it was only when she stopped now and then to reflect on her life, that she realized how long it had lain in its secret corner where the light of day never shone.
As she approached the boarding-house she saw a car by the sidewalk, and a minute afterwards, Mrs. Timberlake turned away from the door, and came down to the gate.
"Oh, Caroline, I was afraid I had missed you! Are you going very soon?"
"Not until next week." Did the housekeeper hear, she wondered, the wild throbbing of her heart?
"I came to see if you could come out for the night? Letty has been ailing for several days, and the doctor says she has a touch of fever. Miss Bradley is ill in bed, and we can't get a nurse anywhere until to-morrow. Of course Mammy Riah and I can manage, but David and I would both feel so much easier if you would come."
"Of course, I'll come. I'll get my bag in a minute. It is already packed." Without waiting for Mrs. Timberlake's reply, she ran into the house, and came out with the suitcase in her hands. "Tell me about Letty. Is her temperature high?"
"It has been all day, but you know how it is with children, as I told David this morning. You heard that David was back?"
"I saw it in the paper."
"He came very unexpectedly. Of course he couldn't cable about the boat, and the telegram he sent from New York didn't get to me until after he was in the house. He is looking badly, but I am sure it isn't the work. I believe other things have been worrying him."
The car had passed out of Grace Street, and was running in the direction of Monument Avenue. As they went on, Caroline remembered the April morning when she had come in this same car down the familiar street, where flags were flying so gaily. It seemed a hundred years ago – not one year, but a hundred! Life was the same, and yet not the same, since the very heart of it was altered. The same sky shone, deeply blue, overhead; the same sun illuminated the houses; the same flags were flying; the same persons passed under the glittering green of the leaves. It was all just as it had been on that April morning – and yet how different!
"I suppose he is anxious about Letty?" she said.
"Even before that I noticed how much he had changed. It was only when he was telling me about Roane that he looked a bit like himself. My dear, can you believe that Roane has really turned into a hero?"
"No, I cannot. It must have been a long turning." She was talking only to make sound. How could it matter to her what Roane had turned into?
"He's been fighting with the French, and David says he's won every decoration they have to give. He is doing splendid things, like saving lives under fire, and once he even saved a Red Cross dog at the risk of his life. David says it's the way he makes a jest of it that the French like – as if he were doing it for amusement. That's like Roane Fitzhugh, isn't it? What do you suppose David meant when he said that beneath it all was a profound disillusionment?"
"I don't know, but I never denied that Roane had a sense of humour."
"You never liked him, and neither did David. He says now that Roane isn't really any more of a hero than he always was, but that he has found a background where his single virtue is more conspicuous than his collective vices. I believe he is the only human being I ever knew David to be unjust to."
Caroline laughed. "There are some virtues it is simply impossible to believe in. Whenever I hear of Roane Fitzhugh – even when I hear things like this – I always remember that he kissed me when he was drunk."
"He hasn't touched a drop since the war. David says he is getting all the excitement he wants in other ways."
"And I suppose when the war is over he'll have to get it again from drink." It didn't make any difference whether he was a hero or not, she told herself, she should always feel that way about him. After all, he was probably not the first hero who had given a woman good cause to despise him.
"Oh, I hope not!" Unlike Caroline, the housekeeper had always had a weakness for Roane, though she disapproved of his habits. But a good man, she often said to herself in excuse, might have bad habits, just as a bad man might have good ones. The Lord would have to find something else to judge people by at the day of reckoning. "He is the only man I've ever known who could see through Angelica," she concluded after a pause.
"He began early. She always got everything he wanted when they were children. I've heard him say so."
"Well, I wrote to him about her the other day. Did I tell you I'd heard from Cousin Fanny Baylor, who has been with her in Chicago?"
"No, you didn't tell me. How long ago was it?"
"It couldn't have been more than three weeks. She wrote me that Angelica was only the wreck of herself, and that the operation was really much more serious than we had ever been told. The doctor said there was no hope of any permanent cure, though she might linger on, as an invalid, for a good many years."
"And does she know? Mrs. Blackburn, I mean?"
"They wouldn't tell her. Cousin Fanny said the doctors and nurses had all been so careful to keep it from her, and that the surgeon who operated said he could not strike hope out of Angelica's heart by telling her. Angelica has shown the most beautiful spirit, she wrote, and everybody in the hospital thought her perfectly lovely. She left there some months ago, and, of course, she believed that she was going to get well in time. It's funny, isn't it, that the doctor who is attending her now should be so crazy about her? Cousin Fanny says he is one of the most distinguished men in Chicago, but it sounds to me very much as if he were the sort of fool that Alan Wythe was."
"Could the war have changed her? Perhaps she is different now since Alan Wythe was killed?"
Mrs. Timberlake met this with a sound that was between a sniff and a snort. "I expect it's only in books that war, or anything else, makes people over in a minute like that. In real life women like Angelica don't get converted, or if they do, it doesn't last overnight. You can't raise a thunderstorm in a soap bubble. No, Angelica will go on until she dies being exactly what she has always been, and people will go on until she dies and afterwards, believing that she is different. I reckon it would take more than a world war, it would take a universal cataclysm, to change Angelica."
For a time they drove on in silence, and when the housekeeper spoke again it was in a less positive tone. "It wouldn't surprise me if she was sorry now that she ever left David."
Caroline started. "Do you mean she would want to come back?"
"It wouldn't surprise me," Mrs. Timberlake repeated firmly.
"Then she didn't get the divorce?"
"No, she didn't get it, and there wouldn't be any use in her beginning all over again, now that Alan is dead. If she is really as ill as they say, I reckon she'd be more comfortable at Briarlay – even if that doctor out yonder is crazy about her."
"Well, she could find one here who would be just as crazy." There was an accent of bitterness in Caroline's voice.
"Oh, yes, she wouldn't have to worry about that. The only thing that would seem to stand in her way is David, and I don't know that she has ever paid much attention to him."
"Not even as an obstacle. But how can she come back if he doesn't want her?" It really appeared a problem to Caroline.
"Oh, she'll make him want her – or try to – "
"Do you think she can?"
Mrs. Timberlake pondered the question. "No, I don't believe that she can, but she can make him feel sorry for her, and with David that would be half the battle."
"That and Letty, I suppose."
"Yes, she has been writing to Letty very often, and her letters are so sweet that the child has begun to ask when she is coming home. You know how easily children forget?"
Caroline sighed under her breath. "Oh, I know – but, even then, how could Mr. Blackburn?"
"He wouldn't forget. If he thought it was right, he would do it if it killed him, but he would remember till his dying day. That's how David is made. He is like a rock about his duty, and I sometimes think feelings don't count with him at all."
"Yet he did love her once."
"Yes, he loved her once – and, of course," she amended suddenly, reverting to the traditional formula, "Nobody believes that Angelica ever did anything really wrong."
For the rest of the long drive they sat in silence; and it seemed to Caroline, while the car turned into the lane and ran the last half mile to the house, that time had stopped and she was back again in the October afternoon when she had first come to Briarlay. It was no longer a hundred years ago. In the midst of the June foliage – the soft green of the leaves, the emerald green of the grass, the dark olive green of the junipers – in the midst of the wonderful brightness and richness of summer – she was enveloped, as if by a drifting fragrance, in the atmosphere of that day in autumn. It came to life not as a memory, but as a moment that existed, outside of time, in eternity. It was here, around, within, and above her, a fact like any other fact; yet she perceived it, not through her senses, but through an intuitive recognition to which she could not give a name. Under the summer sky she saw again the elm leaves falling slowly; she approached again the red walls in the glimmer of sunset; and she felt again the divine certainty that the house contained for her the whole measure of human experience. Then the car stopped; the door opened; and the scene faded like the vision of a clairvoyant. Imagination, nothing more! She had stepped from the dream into the actuality, and out of the actuality she heard Mrs. Timberlake's dry tones remarking that David had not come home from the office.
"Let me go to Letty. I should like to see Letty at once," said Caroline.
"Then run straight upstairs to the night nursery. I know she will be almost out of her head with joy."
Moses had opened the front door, and as Caroline entered, she glanced quickly about her, trying to discover if there had been any changes. But the house was unaltered. It was like a greenhouse from which the rarest blossom had been removed, leaving still a subtle and penetrating perfume. All the profusion of detail, the dubious taste, the warmth of colour, and the lavishness of decoration, were still there. From the drawing-room she caught the sheen of pink silk, and she imagined for an instant that Angelica's fair head drooped, like a golden lily, among the surroundings she had chosen. There was a lack of discrimination, she saw now even more plainly than on that first afternoon, but there was an abundance of dramatic effect. One might imagine one's self in any character – even the character of an angel – with a background like that!
As she drew near to the nursery door she heard Letty's voice exclaiming excitedly, "There's Miss Meade, mammy, I hear Miss Meade coming!" Then Mammy Riah opened the door, and the next minute the child was stretching out her arms and crying with pleasure.
"I asked father to send for you," she said, "I told him you could make me well faster than Miss Bradley." She appeared to Caroline to have grown unnaturally tall and thin, like the picture of Alice in Wonderland they used to laugh over together. Her face was curiously transparent and "peaked," as Mrs. Timberlake had said, and the flush of fever could not disguise the waxen look of the skin. In her straight little nightgown, which was fastened close at the throat, and with the big blue bow on the top of her smooth brown head, she looked so wistful and pathetic that she brought a lump to Caroline's throat. Was it any wonder that Blackburn was anxious when she gazed up at him like that?
"I want to hurry up and get well, Miss Meade," she began, "because it makes father so unhappy when I am sick. It really hurts father dreadfully."
"But you're getting well. There isn't much the matter, is there, mammy?"
"She'd be jes ez peart ez I is, ef'n Miss Matty 'ould quit pokin' physic down 'er thoat. Dar ain' nuttin' else in de worl' de matter wid 'er. Whut you reckon Miss Matty know about hit? Ain't she done been teckin' physic day in en day out sence befo' de flood, en ain't she all squinched up, en jes ez yaller ez a punkin, now?"
"I don't mind the medicine if it will make me well," said the child.
"And you take what the doctor gives you too?"
"Oh, yes, I take that too. Between them," she added with a sigh, "there is a great deal to take."
"It is because you are growing so fast. You are a big girl now."
Letty laughed. "Father doesn't want me to get much taller. He doesn't want me to be tall when I'm grown up – but I can't help it, if it keeps up. Do you think I've grown any since the last time I measured, Mammy Riah?"
"Naw, honey, dat you ain't. You ain' growed a winch."
"She means an inch," said Letty. "Some people can't understand her. Even father can't sometimes, but I always can." Then drawing Caroline down on the bed, she began stroking her arm with a soft caressing touch. "Do you suppose mother will come back now that you have?" she asked. "When you are here she wouldn't have so much trouble. She used to say that you took trouble off her."
"Perhaps she will. You would like to see her, darling?"
The child thought earnestly for a moment. "I'd like to see her," she answered, "she is so pretty."
"It would make you happier if she came back?"
A smile, which was like the wise smile of an old person, flickered over Letty's features. "Wasn't it funny?" she said. "Father asked me that this morning."
A tremor shook Caroline's heart. "And what did you tell him?"
"I told him I'd like her to come back if she wanted to very badly. It hurts mother so not to do what she wants to do. It makes her cry."
"She says she wants to come back?"
"I think she wants to see me. Her letters are very sad. They sound as if she wanted to see me very much, don't they mammy? Somebody has to read them to me because I can read only plain writing. How long will it be, Miss Meade, before I can read any kind, even the sort where the letters all look just alike and go right into one another?"
"Soon, dear. You are getting on beautifully. Now I'll run into my room, and put on my uniform. You like me in uniform, don't you?"
"I like you any way," answered Letty politely. "You always look so fresh, just like a sparkling shower, Cousin Daisy says. She means the sort of shower you have in summer when the sun shines on the rain."
Going into her room, Caroline bathed her face in cold water, and brushed her hair until it rolled in a shining curve back from her forehead. She was just slipping into her uniform when there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Timberlake said, without looking in,
"David has come home, and he has asked for you. Will you go down to the library?"
"In one minute. I am ready." Her voice was clear and firm; but, as she left the room and passed slowly down the staircase, by the copy of the Sistine Madonna, by the ivory walls of the hall and the pink walls of the drawing-room, she understood how the women felt who rode in the tumbril to the guillotine. It was the hardest hour of her life, and she must summon all the courage of her spirit to meet it. Then she remembered her father's saying, that after the worst had happened, one began to take things easier, and an infusion of strength flowed from her mind into her heart and her limbs. If the worst was before her now, in a little while it would be over – in a little while she could pass on to hospital wards, and the sounds of the battlefield, and the external horrors that would release her from the torment of personal things.
The door of the library was open, and Blackburn stood in the faint sunshine by the window – in the very spot where he had stood on the night when she had gone to tell him that Angelica had ordered her car to go to the tableaux. As she entered, he crossed the room and held her hand for an instant; then, turning together, they passed through the window, and out on the brick terrace. All the way down the stairs she had wondered what she should say to him in the beginning; but now, while they stood there in the golden light, high above the June splendour of the rose garden, she said only,
"Oh, how lovely it is! How lovely!"
He was looking at her closely. "You are working too hard. Your eyes are tired."
"I must go on working. What is there in the world except work?" Though she tried to speak brightly, there was a ripple of sadness in her voice. Her eyes were on the garden, and it seemed to her that it blazed suddenly with an intolerable beauty – a beauty that hurt her quivering senses like sound. All the magic loveliness of the roses, all the reflected wonder and light and colour of the sunset, appeared to mingle and crash through her brain, like the violent crescendo of some triumphant music. She had not wanted colour; she had attuned her life to grey days and quiet backgrounds, and the stark forms of things that were without warmth or life. But beauty, she felt, was unendurable – beauty was what she had not reckoned with in her world.
"You are going to France?" he asked.
"I am leaving for camp next week. That means France, I hope."
"Until the end of the war?"
"Until the end – or as long as I hold out. I shall not give up."
For the first time she had turned to look at him, and as she raised her lashes a veil of dry, scorching pain gathered before her eyes. He looked older, he looked changed, and, as Mrs. Timberlake had said, he looked as if he had suffered. The energy, the force which had always seemed to her dynamic, was still there in his keen brown face, in his muscular figure; only when he smiled did she notice that the youth in his eyes had passed into bitterness – not the bitterness of ineffectual rebellion, but the bitterness that accepts life on its own terms, and conquers.
"When I parted from you last autumn," he said suddenly, "I was full of hope. I could look ahead with confidence, and with happiness. I felt, in a way, that the worst was over for both of us – that the future would be better and richer. I never looked forward to life with more trust than I did then," he added, as if the memory of the past were forcing the words out of him.
"And I, also," she answered, with her sincere and earnest gaze on his face, "I believed, and I hoped."
He looked away from her over the red and white roses. "It is different now. I can see nothing for myself – nothing for my own life. Where hope was there is only emptiness."
The sunset was reflected in the shining light of her eyes. "Life can never be empty for me while I have your friendship and can think of you."
By the glow in his face she knew that her words had moved him; yet he spoke, after a moment, as if he had not heard them. "It is only fair that you should know the truth," he said slowly and gravely, "that you should know that I have cared for you, and cared, I think, in the way you would wish me to. Nothing in my life has been more genuine than this feeling. I have tested it in the last year, and I know that it is as real as myself. You have been not only an emotion in my heart – you have been a thought in my mind – every minute – through everything – " He stopped, and still without turning his eyes on her, went on more rapidly, "As a lover I might always have been a failure. There have been so many other things. Life has had a way of crowding out emotion to make room for other problems and responsibilities. I am telling you this now because we are parting – perhaps for a time, perhaps for ever. The end no one can see – "
Beyond the rose garden, in one of the pointed red cedars down in the meadow, a thrush was singing; and it seemed to her, while she listened, that the song was in her own heart as well as in the bird's – that it was pouring from her soul in a rapture of wonder and delight.
"I can never be unhappy again," she answered. "The memory of this will be enough. I can never be unhappy again."
From the cedar, which rose olive black against the golden disc of the sun, the bird sang of hope and love and the happiness that is longer than grief.
"The end no one can see," he said, and – it may have been only because of the singing bird in her heart – she felt that the roughness of pain had passed out of his voice. Then, before she could reply, he asked hurriedly, "Has Letty spoken to you of her mother?"
"Yes, she talked of her the little while that I saw her."
"You think the child would be happier if she were here?"
For an instant she hesitated. "I think," she replied at last, "that it would be fairer to the child – especially when she is older."
"Her mother writes to her."
"Yes. I think Letty feels that she wishes to come home."
The bird had stopped singing. Lonely, silent, still as the coming night, the cedar rose in a darkening spire against the afterglow.
"For us there can be no possible life together," he added presently. "We should be strangers as we have been for years. She writes me that she has been ill – that there was a serious operation – "
"Have the doctors told her the truth?"
"I think not. She knows only that she does not regain her strength, that she still suffers pain at times. Because of this it may be easier."
"You mean easier because you pity her? That I can understand. Pity makes anything possible."
"I am sorry for her, yes – but pity would not be strong enough to make me let her come back. There is something else."
"There is the child."
"The child, of course. Letty's wish would mean a great deal, but I doubt if that would be strong enough. There is still something else."
"I know," she said, "you feel that it is right – that you must do it because of that."
He shook his head. "I have tried to be honest. It is that, and yet it is not that alone. I wonder if I can make you understand?"
"Has there ever been a time when I did not understand?"
"God bless you, no. And I feel that you will understand now – that you alone – you only among the people who know me, will really understand." For a time he was silent, and when at last he went on, it was in a voice from which all emotion had faded: "Pity might move me, but pity could not drive me to do a thing that will ruin my life – while it lasts. Letty's good would weigh more with me; but can I be sure – can you, or any one else, be sure that it is really for Letty's good? The doubt in this could so easily be turned into an excuse – an evasion. No, the reason that brings me to it is larger, broader, deeper, and more impersonal than any of these. It is an idea rather than a fact. If I do it, it will be not because of anything that has happened at Briarlay; it will be because of things that have happened in France. It will be because of my year of loneliness and thought, and because of the spirit of sacrifice that surrounded me. If one's ideal, if one's country – if the national life, is worth dying for – then surely it is worth living for. If it deserves the sacrifice of all the youth of the world – then surely it deserves every other sacrifice. Our young men have died for liberty, and the least that we older ones can do is to make that liberty a thing for which a man may lay down his life unashamed."
The emotion had returned now; and she felt, when he went on again, that she was listening to the throbbing heart of the man.
"The young have given their future for the sake of a belief," he said slowly, "for the belief that civilization is better than barbarism, that humanity is better than savagery, that democracy has something finer and nobler to give mankind than has autocracy. They died believing in America, and America, unless she is false to her dead, must keep that faith untarnished. If she lowers her standards of personal responsibility, if she turns liberty into lawlessness, if she makes herself unworthy of that ultimate sacrifice – the sacrifice of her best – then spiritual, if not physical, defeat must await her. The responsibility is yours and mine. It belongs to the individual American, and it cannot be laid on the peace table, or turned over to the President. There was never a leader yet that was great enough to make a great nation."
