Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
"I shall be ready at three o'clock," she said. "Mrs. Colfax asked me to bring Letty to play with her children."
"She will enjoy that," he answered, "if they are not rough." Then, as he moved away, he observed indifferently, "It is wonderful weather."
As he went back to the house Letty clung to him, and lifting her in his arms, he carried her to the terrace and round the corner where the car waited. For the time at least the play was spoiled, and Caroline, still wearing her professional manner, stood watching for Letty to come back to her. "I could never like him if I saw him every day for years," she was thinking, when one of the French windows of the dining-room opened, and Mary Blackburn came down the steps into the garden.
"I am so glad to find you alone," she said frankly, "I want to speak to you – and your white dress looks so nice against those evergreens."
"It's a pity I have to change it then, but I am going to take Letty to town after luncheon. The doctor wants her to be with other children."
"I know. She is an odd little thing, isn't she? I sometimes think that she is older and wiser than any one in the house." Her tone changed abruptly. "I want to explain to you about last night, Miss Meade. David seemed so dreadfully rude, didn't he?"
Caroline gazed back at her in silence while a flush stained her cheeks. After all, what could she answer? She couldn't and wouldn't deny that Mr. Blackburn had been inexcusably rude to his wife at his own table.
"It is so hard to explain when one doesn't know everything," pursued Mary, with her unfaltering candour. "If you had ever seen Roane Fitzhugh, you would understand better than I can make you that David is right. It is quite impossible to have Roane in the house. He drinks, and when he was here last summer, he was hardly ever sober. He was rude to everyone. He insulted me."
"So that was why – " began Caroline impulsively, and checked herself.
"Yes, that was why. David told him that he must never come back again."
"And Mrs. Blackburn did not understand."
Mary did not reply, and glancing at her after a moment, Caroline saw that she was gazing thoughtfully at a red and gold leaf, which turned slowly in the air as it detached itself from the stem of a maple.
"If you want to get the best view of the river you ought to go down to the end of the lower garden," she said carelessly before she went back into the house.
In the afternoon, when Caroline took Letty to Mrs. Colfax's, a flickering light was shed on the cause of Mary's reticence.
"Oh, Miss Meade, wasn't it perfectly awful last evening?" began the young woman as soon as the children were safely out of hearing in the yard. "I feel so sorry for Angelica!"
Even in a Southern woman her impulsiveness appeared excessive, and when Caroline came to know her better, she discovered that Daisy Colfax was usually described by her friends as "kind-hearted, but painfully indiscreet."
"It was my first dinner party at Briarlay. As far as I know they may all end that way," responded Caroline lightly.
"Of course I know that you feel you oughtn't to talk," replied Mrs. Colfax persuasively, "but you needn't be afraid of saying just what you think to me. I know that I have the reputation of letting out everything that comes into my mind – and I do love to gossip – but I shouldn't dream of repeating anything that is told me in confidence." Her wonderful dusky eyes, as vague and innocent as a child's, swept Caroline's face before they wandered, with their look of indirection and uncertainty, to her mother-in-law, who was knitting by the window. Before her marriage Daisy had been the acknowledged beauty of three seasons, and now, the mother of two children and as lovely as ever, she managed to reconcile successfully a talent for housekeeping with a taste for diversion. She was never still except when she listened to gossip, and before Caroline had been six weeks in Richmond, she had learned that the name of Mrs. Robert Colfax would head the list of every dance, ball, and charity of the winter.
"If you ask me what I think," observed the old lady tartly, with a watchful eye on the children, who were playing ring-around-the-rosy in the yard. "It is that David Blackburn ought to have been spanked and put to bed."
"Well, of course, Angelica had been teasing him about his political views," returned her daughter-in-law. "You know how she hates it all, but she didn't mean actually to irritate him – merely to keep him from appearing so badly. It is as plain as the nose on your face that she doesn't know how to manage him."
They were sitting in the library, and every now and then the younger woman would take up the receiver of the telephone, and have a giddy little chat about the marketing or a motor trip she was planning. "But all I've got to say," she added, turning from one of these breathless colloquies, "is that if you have to manage a man, you'd better try to get rid of him."
"Well, I'd like to see anybody but a bear-tamer manage David Blackburn," retorted the old lady. "With Angelica's sensitive nature she ought never to have married a man who has to be tamed. She never dares take her eyes off him, poor thing, for fear he'll make some sort of break."
"I wonder," began Caroline, and hesitated an instant. "I wonder if it wouldn't be better just to let him make his breaks and not notice them? Of course, I know how trying it must be for her – she is so lovely and gentle that it wrings your heart to see him rude to her – but it makes every little thing appear big when you call everybody's attention to it. I don't know much about dinner parties," she concluded with a desire to be perfectly fair even to a man she despised, "but I couldn't see that he was doing anything wrong last night. He was getting on very well with Mrs. Chalmers, who was interested in politics – " She broke off and asked abruptly, "Is Mrs. Blackburn's brother really so dreadful?"
"I've often wondered," said the younger Mrs. Colfax, "if Roane Fitzhugh is as bad as people say he is?"
"Well, he has always been very polite to me," commented the old lady. "Though Brother Charles says that you cannot judge a man's morals by his manners. Was Alan Wythe there last night?"
"Yes, I sat by him," answered Daisy. "I wish that old uncle of his in Chicago would let him marry Mary."
This innocent remark aroused Caroline's scorn. "To think of a man's having to ask his uncle whom he shall marry!" she exclaimed indignantly.
"You wouldn't say that, my dear," replied old Mrs. Colfax, "if you knew Alan. He is a charming fellow, but the sort of talented ne'er-do-well who can do anything but make a living. He has an uncle in Chicago who is said to be worth millions – one of the richest men, I've heard, in the West – but he will probably leave his fortune to charity. As it is he doles out a pittance to Alan – not nearly enough for him to marry on."
"Isn't it strange," said Caroline, "that the nice people never seem to have enough money and the disagreeable ones seem to have a great deal too much? But I despise a man," she added sweepingly, "who hasn't enough spirit to go out into the world and fight."
The old lady's needles clicked sharply as she returned to her work. "I've always said that if the good Lord would look after my money troubles, I could take care of the others. Now, if Angelica's people had not been so poor she would have been spared this dreadful marriage. As it is, I am sure, the poor thing makes the best of it – I don't want you to think that I am saying a word against Angelica – but when a woman runs about after so many outside interests, it is pretty sure to mean that she is unhappy at home."
"It's a pity," said the younger woman musingly, "that so many of her interests seem to cross David's business. Look at this Ridley matter, for instance – of course everyone says that Angelica is trying to make up for her husband's injustice by supporting the family until the man gets back to work. It's perfectly splendid of her, I know. There isn't a living soul who admires Angelica more than I do, but with all the needy families in town, it does seem that she might just as well have selected some other to look after."
The old lady, having dropped some stitches, went industriously to work to pick them up. "For all we know," she observed piously, "it may be God's way of punishing David."
CHAPTER VII
Caroline Makes Discoveries
AT four o'clock Daisy Colfax rushed off to a committee meeting at Briarlay ("something very important, though I can't remember just which one it is"), and an hour later Caroline followed her in Blackburn's car, with Letty lying fast asleep in her arms.
"I am going to do all I can to make it easier for Mrs. Blackburn," she thought. "I don't care how rude he is to me if he will only spare her. I am stronger than she is, and I can bear it better." Already it seemed to her that this beautiful unhappy woman filled a place in her life, that she would be willing to make any sacrifice, to suffer any humiliation, if she could only help her.
Suddenly Letty stirred and put up a thin little hand. "I like you, Miss Meade," she said drowsily. "I like you because you are pretty and you laugh. Mammy says mother never laughs, that she only smiles. Why is that?"
"I suppose she doesn't think things funny, darling."
"When father laughs out loud she tells him to stop. She says it hurts her."
"Well, she isn't strong, you know. She is easily hurt."
"I am not strong either, but I like to laugh," said the child in her quaint manner. "Mammy says there isn't anybody's laugh so pretty as yours. It sounds like music."
"Then I must laugh a great deal for you, Letty, and the more we laugh together the happier we'll be, shan't we?"
As the car turned into the lane, where the sunlight fell in splinters over the yellow leaves, a man in working clothes appeared suddenly from under the trees. For an instant he seemed on the point of stopping them; then lowering the hand he had raised, he bowed hurriedly, and passed on at a brisk walk toward the road.
"His name is Ridley, I know him," said Letty. "Mother took me with her one day when she went to see his children. He has six children, and one is a baby. They let me hold it, but I like a doll better because dolls don't wriggle." Then, as the motor raced up the drive and stopped in front of the porch, she sat up and threw off the fur robe. "There are going to be cream puffs for tea, and mammy said I might have one. Do you think mother will mind if I go into the drawing-room? She is having a meeting."
"I don't know, dear. Is it a very important meeting?"
"It must be," replied Letty, "or mother wouldn't have it. Everything she has is important." As the door opened, she inquired of the servant, "Moses, do you think this is a very important meeting?"
Moses, a young light-coloured negro, answered solemnly, "Hit looks dat ar way ter me, Miss Letty, caze Patrick's jes' done fotched up de las' plate uv puffs. Dose puffs wuz gwine jes' as fast ez you kin count de las' time I tuck a look at um, en de ladies dey wuz all a-settin' roun' in va' yous attitudes en eatin' um up like dey tasted moughty good."
"Then I'm going in," said the child promptly. "You come with me, Miss Meade. Mother won't mind half so much if you are with me." And grasping Caroline's hand she led the way to the drawing-room. "I hope they have left one," she whispered anxiously, "but meetings always seem to make people so hungry."
In the back drawing-room, where empty cups and plates were scattered about on little tables, Angelica was sitting in a pink and gold chair that vaguely resembled a throne. She wore a street gown of blue velvet, and beneath a little hat of dark fur, her hair folded softly on her temples. At the first glance Caroline could see that she was tired and nervous, and her pensive eyes seemed to plead with the gaily chattering women about her. "Of course, if you really think it will help the cause," she was saying deprecatingly; then as Letty entered, she broke off and held out her arms. "Did you have a good time, darling?"
The child went slowly forward, shaking hands politely with the guests while her steady gaze, so like her father's, sought the tea table. "May I have a puff and a tart too, mother?" she asked as she curtseyed to Mrs. Ashburton.
"No, only one, dear, but you may choose."
"Then I'll choose a puff because it is bigger." She was a good child, and when the tart was forbidden her, she turned her back on the plate with a determined gesture. "I saw the man, mother – the one with the baby. He was in the lane."
"I know, dear. He came to ask your father to take him back in the works. Perhaps if you were to go into the library and ask him very gently, he would do it. It is the case I was telling you about, a most distressing one," explained Angelica to Mrs. Ashburton. "Of course David must have reason on his side or he wouldn't take the stand that he does. I suppose the man does drink and stir up trouble, but we women have to think of so much besides mere justice. We have to keep close to the human part that men are so apt to overlook." There was a writing tablet on her knee, and while she spoke, she leaned earnestly forward, and made a few straggling notes with a yellow pencil which was blunt at the point. Even her efficiency – and as a chairman she was almost as efficient as Mrs. Ashburton – was clothed in sweetness. As she sat there, holding the blunt pencil in her delicate, blue-veined hand, she appeared to be bracing herself, with a tremendous effort of will, for some inexorable demand of duty. The tired droop of her figure, the shadow under her eyes, the pathetic little lines that quivered about her mouth – these things, as well as the story of her loveless marriage, awakened Caroline's pity. "She bears it so beautifully," she thought, with a rush of generous emotion. "I have never seen any one so brave and noble. I believe she never thinks of herself for a minute."
"I always feel," observed Mrs. Ashburton, in her logical way which was trying at times, "that a man ought to be allowed to attend to his own business."
A pretty woman, with a sandwich in her hand, turned from the tea table and remarked lightly, "Heaven knows it is the last privilege of which I wish to deprive him!" Her name was Mallow, and she was a new-comer of uncertain origin, who had recently built a huge house, after the Italian style, on the Three Chopt Road. She was very rich, very smart, very dashing, and though her ancestry was dubious, both her house and her hospitality were authentic. Alan had once said of her that she kept her figure by climbing over every charity in town; but Alan's wit was notoriously malicious.
"In a case like this, don't you think, dear Mrs. Ashburton, that a woman owes a duty to humanity?" asked Angelica, who liked to talk in general terms of the particular instance. "Miss Meade, I am sure, will agree with me. It is so important to look after the children."
"But there are so many children one might look after," replied Caroline gravely; then feeling that she had not responded generously to Angelica's appeal, she added, "I think it is splendid of you, perfectly splendid to feel the way that you do."
"That is so sweet of you," murmured Angelica gratefully, while Mrs. Aylett, a lovely woman, with a face like a magnolia flower and a typically Southern voice, said gently, "I, for one, have always found Angelica's unselfishness an inspiration. With her delicate health, it is simply marvellous the amount of good she is able to do. I can never understand how she manages to think of so many things at the same moment." She also held a pencil in her gloved hand, and wrote earnestly, in illegible figures, on the back of a torn envelope.
"Of course, we feel that!" exclaimed the other six or eight women in an admiring chorus. "That is why we are begging her to be in these tableaux."
It was a high-minded, unselfish group, except for Mrs. Mallow, who was hungry, and Daisy Colfax, who displayed now and then an inclination to giddiness. Not until Caroline had been a few minutes in the room did she discover that the committee had assembled to arrange an entertainment for the benefit of the Red Cross. Though Mrs. Blackburn was zealous as an organizer, she confined her activities entirely to charitable associations and disapproved passionately of women who "interfered" as she expressed it "with public matters." She was disposed by nature to vague views and long perspectives, and instinctively preferred, except when she was correcting an injustice of her husband's, to right the wrongs in foreign countries.
"Don't you think she would make an adorable Peace?" asked Mrs. Aylett of Caroline.
"I really haven't time for it," said Angelica gravely, "but as you say, Milly dear, the cause is everything, and then David always likes me to take part in public affairs."
A look of understanding rippled like a beam of light over the faces of the women, and Caroline realized without being told that Mrs. Blackburn was overtaxing her strength in deference to her husband's wishes. "I suppose like most persons who haven't always had things he is mad about society."
"I've eaten it all up, mother," said Letty in a wistful voice. "It tasted very good."
"Did it, darling? Well, now I want you to go and ask your father about poor Ridley and his little children. You must ask him very sweetly, and perhaps he won't refuse. You would like to do that, wouldn't you?"
"May I take Miss Meade with me?"
"Yes, she may go with you. There, now, run away, dear. Mother is so busy helping the soldiers she hasn't time to talk to you."
"Why are you always so busy, mother?"
"She is so busy because she is doing good every minute of her life," said Mrs. Aylett. "You have an angel for a mother, Letty."
The child turned to her with sudden interest. "Is father an angel too?" she inquired.
A little laugh, strangled abruptly in a cough, broke from Daisy Colfax, while Mrs. Mallow hastily swallowed a cake before she buried her flushed face in her handkerchief. Only Mrs. Aylett, without losing her composure, remarked admiringly, "That's a pretty dress you have on, Letty."
"Now run away, dear," urged Angelica in a pleading tone, and the child, who had been stroking her mother's velvet sleeve, moved obediently to the door before she looked back and asked, "Aren't you coming too, Miss Meade?"
"Yes, I'm coming too," answered Caroline, and while she spoke she felt that she had never before needed so thoroughly the discipline of the hospital. As she put her arm about Letty's shoulders, and crossed the hall to Blackburn's library, she hoped passionately that he would not be in the room. Then Letty called out "father!" in a clear treble, and almost immediately the door opened, and Blackburn stood on the threshold.
"Do you want to come in?" he asked. "I've got a stack of work ahead, but there is always time for a talk with you."
He turned back into the room, holding Letty by the hand, and as Caroline followed silently, she noticed that he seemed abstracted and worried, and that his face, when he glanced round at her, looked white and tired. The red-brown flush of the morning had faded, and he appeared much older.
"Won't you sit down," he asked, and then he threw himself into a chair, and added cheerfully, "What is it, daughter? Have you a secret to tell me?"
Against the rich brown of the walls his head stood out, clear and fine, and something in its poise, and in the backward sweep of his hair, gave Caroline an impression of strength and swiftness as of a runner who is straining toward an inaccessible goal. For the first time since she had come to Briarlay he seemed natural and at ease in his surroundings – in the midst of the old books, the old furniture, the old speckled engravings – and she understood suddenly why Colonel Ashburton had called him an idealist. With the hardness gone from his eyes and the restraint from his thin-lipped, nervous mouth, he looked, as the Colonel had said of him, "on fire with ideas." He had evidently been at work, and the fervour of his mood was still visible in his face.
"Father, won't you please give Ridley his work again?" said the child. "I don't want his little children to be hungry." As she stood there at his knee, with her hands on his sleeve and her eyes lifted to his, she was so much like him in every feature that Caroline found herself vaguely wondering where the mother's part in her began. There was nothing of Angelica's softness in that intense little face, with its look of premature knowledge.
Bending over he lifted her to his knee, and asked patiently, "If I tell you why I can't take him back, Letty, will you try to understand?"
She nodded gravely. "I don't want the baby to be hungry."
For a moment he gazed over her head through the long windows that opened on the terrace. The sun was just going down, and beyond the cluster of junipers the sky was turning slowly to orange.
"Miss Meade," he said abruptly, looking for the first time in Caroline's face, "would you respect a man who did a thing he believed to be unjust because someone he loved had asked him to?"
For an instant the swiftness of the question – the very frankness and simplicity of it – took Caroline's breath away. She was sitting straight and still in a big leather chair, and she seemed to his eyes a different creature from the woman he had watched in the garden that morning. Her hair was smooth now under her severe little hat, her face was composed and stern, and for the moment her look of radiant energy was veiled by the quiet capability of her professional manner.
"I suppose not," she answered fearlessly, "if one is quite sure that the thing is unjust."
"In this case I haven't a doubt. The man is a firebrand in the works. He drinks, and breeds lawlessness. There are men in jail now who would be at work but for him, and they also have families. If I take him back there are people who would say I do it for a political reason."
"Does that matter? It seems to me nothing matters except to be right."
He smiled, and she wondered how she could have thought that he looked older. "Yes, if I am right, nothing else matters, and I know that I am right." Then looking down at Letty, he said more slowly, "My child, I know another family of little children without a father. Wouldn't you just as soon go to see these children?"
"Is there a baby? A very small baby?"
"Yes, there is a baby. I am sending the elder children to school, and one of the girls is old enough to learn stenography. The father was a good man and a faithful worker. When he died he asked me to look after his family."
"Then why doesn't Mrs. Blackburn know about them?" slipped from Caroline's lips. "Why hasn't any one told her?"
The next instant she regretted the question, but before she could speak again Blackburn answered quietly, "She is not strong, and already she has more on her than she should have undertaken."
"Her sympathy is so wonderful!" Almost in spite of her will, against her instinct for reticence where she distrusted, against the severe code of her professional training, she began by taking Mrs. Blackburn's side in the household.
"Yes, she is wonderful." His tone was conventional, yet if he had adored his wife he could scarcely have said more to a stranger.
There was a knock at the door, and Mammy Riah inquired querulously through the crack, "Whar you, Letty? Ain't you comin' ter git yo' supper?"
"I'm here, I'm coming," responded Letty. As she slid hurriedly from her father's knees, she paused long enough to whisper in his ear, "Father, what shall I tell mother when she asks me?"
"Tell her, Letty, that I cannot do it because it would not be fair."
"Because it would not be fair," repeated the child obediently as she reached for Caroline's hand. "Miss Meade is going to have supper with me, father. We are going to play that it is a party and let all the dolls come, and she will have bread and milk just as I do."
"Will she?" said Blackburn, with a smile. "Then I'd think she'd be hungry before bed-time."
Though he spoke pleasantly, Caroline was aware that his thoughts had wandered from them, and that he was as indifferent to her presence as he was to the faint lemon-coloured light streaming in at the window. It occurred to her suddenly that he had never really looked at her, and that if they were to meet by accident in the road he would not recognize her. She had never seen any one with so impersonal a manner – so encased and armoured in reserve – and she began to wonder what he was like under that impenetrable surface? "I should like to hear him speak," she thought, "to know what he thinks and feels about the things he cares for – about politics and public questions." He stood up as she rose, and for a minute before Letty drew her from the room, he smiled down on the child. "If I were Miss Meade, I'd demand more than bread and milk at your party, Letty." Then he turned away, and sat down again at his writing table.
An hour or two later, when Letty's supper was over, Angelica came in to say good-night before she went out to dinner. She was wearing an evening wrap of turquoise velvet and ermine, and a band of diamonds encircled the golden wings on her temples. Her eyes shone like stars, and there was a misty brightness in her face that made her loveliness almost unearthly. The fatigue of the afternoon had vanished, and she looked as young and fresh as a girl.
"I hope you are comfortable, Miss Meade," she said, with the manner of considerate gentleness which had won Caroline from the first. "I told Fanny to move you into the little room next to Letty's."
"Yes, I am quite comfortable. I like to sleep where she can call me."
The child was undressing, and as her mother bent over her, she put up her bare little arms to embrace her. "You smell so sweet, mother, just like lilacs."
"Do I, darling? There, don't hug me so tight or you'll rumple my hair. Did you ask your father about Ridley?"
"He won't do it. He says he won't do it because it wouldn't be fair." As Letty repeated the message she looked questioningly into Mrs. Blackburn's face. "Why wouldn't it be fair, mother?"
"He will have to tell you, dear, I can't." Drawing back from the child's arms, she arranged the ermine collar over her shoulders. "We must do all we can to help them, Letty. Now, kiss me very gently, and try to sleep well."
She went out, leaving a faint delicious trail of lilacs in the air, and while Caroline watched Mammy Riah slip the night-gown over Letty's shoulders, her thoughts followed Angelica down the circular drive, through the lane, and on the road to the city. She was fascinated, yet there was something deeper and finer than fascination in the emotion Mrs. Blackburn awakened. There was tenderness in it and there was romance; but most of all there was sympathy. In Caroline's narrow and colourless life, so rich in character, so barren of incident, this sympathy was unfolding like some rare and exquisite blossom.
"Did you ever see any one in your life look so lovely?" she asked enthusiastically of Mammy Riah.
The old woman was braiding Letty's hair into a tight little plait, which she rolled over at the end and tied up with a blue ribbon. "I wan' bawn yestiddy, en I reckon I'se done seen er hull pa'cel un um," she replied. "Miss Angy's de patte'n uv whut 'er ma wuz befo' 'er. Dar ain' never been a Fitzhugh yit dat wan't ez purty ez a pictur w'en dey wuz young, en Miss Angy she is jes' like all de res' un um. But she ain' been riz right, dat's de gospel trufe, en I reckon ole Miss knows hit now way up yonder in de Kingdom Come. Dey hed a w'ite nuss to nuss 'er de same ez dey's got for Letty heah, en dar ain' never been a w'ite nuss yit ez could raise a chile right, nairy a one un um."
"But I thought you nursed all the Fitzhughs? Why did they have a white nurse for Mrs. Blackburn?"
"Dy wuz projeckin', honey, like dey is projeckin' now wid dis yer chile. Atter I done nuss five er dem chillun ole Miss begun ter git sort er flighty in her haid, en ter go plum 'stracted about sto' physick en real doctahs. Stop yo' foolishness dis minute, Letty. You git spang out er dat baid befo' I mek you, en say yo' pray'rs. Yas'm, hit's de gospel trufe, I'se tellin' you," she concluded as Letty jumped obediently out of bed and prepared to kneel down on the rug. "Ef'n dey hed lemme raise Miss Angy de fambly wouldn't hev run ter seed de way hit did atter old Marster died, en dar 'ouldn't be dese yer low-lifeted doin's now wid Marse David."
Later in the night, lying awake and restless in the little room next to Letty's, Caroline recalled the old woman's comment. Though she had passionately taken Angelica's side, it was impossible for her to deny that both Mrs. Timberlake and Mammy Riah appeared to lean sympathetically at least in the direction of Blackburn. There was nothing definite – nothing particularly suggestive even – to which she could point; yet, in spite of her prejudice, in spite of the sinister stories which circulated so freely in Richmond, she was obliged to admit that the two women who knew Angelica best – the dependent relative and the old negress – did not espouse her cause so ardently as did the adoring committee. "The things they say must be true. Such dreadful stories could never have gotten out unless something or somebody had started them. It is impossible to look in Mrs. Blackburn's face and not see that she is a lovely character, and that she is very unhappy." Then a reassuring thought occurred to her, for she remembered that her mother used to say that a negro mammy always took the side of the father in any discussion. "It must be the same thing here with Mrs. Timberlake and Mammy Riah. They are so close to Mrs. Blackburn that they can't see how lovely she is. It is like staying too long in the room with an exquisite perfume. One becomes at last not only indifferent, but insensible to its sweetness." Closing her eyes, she resolutely put the question away, while she lived over again, in all its varied excitement, her first day at Briarlay. The strangeness of her surroundings kept her awake, and it seemed to her, as she went over the last twenty-four hours, that she was years older than she had been when she left The Cedars. Simply meeting Mrs. Blackburn, she told herself again, was a glorious adventure; it was like seeing and speaking to one of the heroines in the dingy old volumes in her father's library. And the thought that she could really serve her, that she could understand and sympathize where Mrs. Timberlake and Mammy Riah failed, that she could, by her strength and devotion, lift a share of the burden from Angelica's shoulders – the thought of these things shed an illumination over the bare road of the future. She would do good, she resolved, and in doing good, she would find happiness. The clock struck eleven; she heard the sound of the returning motor; and then, with her mind filled with visions of usefulness, she dropped off to sleep.
