Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
"All this sounds now like the ancient history of another continent," remarked Sloane with anxious haste, "Fifty years can change the purpose of a people or a party!"
"Often in the past," resumed Blackburn, "men who have taken part in revolutions or rebellions have lost their lives as the punishment of failure; but there are wrongs worse than death, and one of these is to subject a free and independent people to the rule of a servile race; to force women and children to seek protection from magistrates who had once been their slaves. The Republican Party was then in control, and its leaders resisted every effort of the South to re-establish the supremacy of the white race, and to reassert the principles of self-government. We had the Civil Rights Act, and the Federal Election Laws, with Federal supervisors of elections to prevent the white people from voting and to give the vote to the negroes. Even when thirty years had passed, and the South had gained control of its local governments, the Republicans attempted to pass an election law which would have perpetuated negro dominance. You have only to stop and think for a minute, and you will understand that conditions such as I have suggested are the source of that national menace you are trying now to remove."
"It is all true, but it is the truth of yesterday," rejoined Sloane eagerly. "If we have made mistakes in the past, we wish the more heartily to do right in the present. What can prove this more clearly than the fact that I am here to ask your help in organizing the independent vote in Virginia? There is a future for the man who can lead the new political forces."
The sun was dropping slowly in the direction of the wooded slopes on the opposite shore; the violet mist on the river had become suddenly luminous; and the long black shadows of the junipers were slanting over the grass walks in the garden. In the lower meadows the chanting rose so softly that it seemed rather a breath than a sound; and this breath, which was the faint quivering stir of October, stole at last into the amber light on the terrace.
"If I had not known this," answered Blackburn, and again there flickered into his face the look of prophecy and vision which seemed to place him in a separate world from Sloane and Colonel Ashburton, "I should have spoken less frankly. As you say the past is past, and we cannot solve future problems by brooding upon wrongs that are over. The suffrage is, after all, held in trust for the good of the present and the future; and for this reason, since Virginia limited her suffrage to a point that made the negro vote a negligible factor, I have felt that the solid South is, if possible, more harmful to the Southern people than it is to the nation. This political solidarity prevents constructive thought and retards development. It places the Southern States in the control of one political machine; and the aim of this machine must inevitably be self-perpetuation. Offices are bestowed on men who are willing to submit to these methods; and freedom of discussion is necessarily discouraged by the dominant party. In the end a governing class is created, and this class, like all political cliques, secures its privileges by raising small men to high public places, and thereby obstructs, if it does not entirely suppress, independent thought and action. I can imagine no more dangerous condition for any people under a republican form of government, and for this reason, I regard the liberation of the South from this political tyranny as the imperative duty of every loyal Southerner. As you know, I am an independent in politics, and if I have voted with the Republicans, it is only because I saw no other means of breaking the solidarity of the South. Yet – and I may as well be as frank at the end as I was at the beginning of our discussion, I doubt the ability of the Republican Party to win the support of the Southern people. The day will come, I believe, when another party will be organized, national in its origin and its purposes; and through this new party, which will absorb the best men from both the Republican and the Democratic organizations, I hope to see America welded into a nation. In the meantime, and only until this end is clearly in sight," he added earnestly, "I am ready to help you by any effort, by any personal sacrifice. I believe in America not with my mind only, but with my heart – and if the name America means anything, it must mean that we stand for the principle of self-government whatever may be the form. This principle is now in danger throughout the world, and just as a man must meet his responsibilities and discharge his obligations regardless of consequences, so a nation cannot shirk its duties in a time of international peril. We have now reached the cross-roads – we stand waiting where the upward and the downward paths come together. I am willing to cast aside all advantage, to take any step, to face misunderstanding and criticism, if I can only help my people to catch the broader vision of American opportunity and American destiny – "
The words were still in the air, when there was a gentle flutter of pink silk curtains, and Angelica came out, flushed and lovely, from a successful rehearsal. An afternoon paper was in her hand, and her eyes were bright and wistful, as if she were trying to understand how any one could have hurt her.
"Letty, dear, I am waiting!" she called; and then, as her gaze fell on Sloane, she went toward him with outstretched hand and a charming manner of welcome. "Oh, Mr. Sloane, how very nice to see you in Richmond!" The next instant she added seriously, "David, have you seen the paper? You can't imagine what dreadful things they are saying about you."
"Well, they can call him nothing worse than a traitor," retorted Colonel Ashburton lightly before Blackburn could answer. "Surely, the word traitor ought to have lost its harshness to Southern ears!"
"But Robert Colfax must have written it!" Though she was smiling it was not because the Colonel's rejoinder had seemed amusing to her. "I know I am interrupting," she said after a moment. "It will be so nice if you will dine with us, Mr. Sloane – only you must promise me not to encourage David's political ideas. I couldn't bear to be married to a politician."
As she stood there against a white column, she looked as faultless and as evanescent as the sunbeams, and for the first time Sloane's face lost its coldness and austerity.
"I think your husband could never be a politician," he answered gently, "though he may be a statesman."
CHAPTER IX
Angelica's Charity
AS the car turned into the lane it passed Alan and Mary, and Mrs. Blackburn ordered the chauffeur to stop while she leaned out of the window and waited, with her vague, shimmering look, for the lovers to approach. "I wanted to ask you, Mr. Wythe, about that article in the paper this morning," she began. "Do you think it will do David any real harm?"
Her voice was low and troubled, and she gazed into Alan's face with eyes that seemed to be pleading for mercy.
"Well, I hardly think it will help him if he wants an office," replied Alan, reddening under her gaze. "I suppose everything is fair in politics, but it does seem a little underhand of Colfax doesn't it? A man has a right to expect a certain amount of consideration from his friends."
For the first time since she had known him, Caroline felt that Alan's nimble wit was limping slightly. In place of his usual light-hearted manner, he appeared uncomfortable and embarrassed, and though his eyes never left Angelica's face, they rested there with a look which it was impossible to define. Admiration, surprise, pleasure, and a fleeting glimpse of something like dread or fear – all these things Caroline seemed to read in that enigmatical glance. Could it be that he was comparing Angelica with Mary, and that, for the moment at least, Mary's lack of feminine charm, was estranging him? He looked splendidly vigorous with the flush in his cheeks and a glow in his red-brown eyes – just the man, Caroline fancied, with whom any woman might fall in love.
"But don't you think," asked Angelica hesitatingly, as if she dared not trust so frail a thing as her own judgment, "that it may be a matter of principle with Robert? Of course I know that David feels that he is right, and there can't be a bit of truth in what people say about the way he runs his works, but, after all, isn't he really harming the South by trying to injure the Democratic Party? We all feel, of course, that it is so important not to do anything to discredit the Democrats, and with Robert I suppose there is a great deal of sentiment mixed with it all because his grandfather did so much for Virginia. Oh, if David could only find some other ambition – something that wouldn't make him appear disloyal and ungrateful! I can't tell you how it distresses me to see him estrange his best friends as he does. I can't feel in my heart that any political honour is worth it!"
There was a flute-like quality in her voice, which was singularly lacking in the deeper and richer tones of passion, like the imperfect chords of some thin, sweet music. Though Angelica had the pensive eyes and the drooping profile of an early Italian Madonna, her voice, in spite of its lightness and delicacy, was without softness. At first it had come as a surprise to Caroline, and even now, after three weeks at Briarlay, she was aware of a nervous expectancy whenever Mrs. Blackburn opened her lips – of a furtive hope that the hard, cold tones might melt in the heat of some ardent impulse.
"It isn't ambition with David," said Mary, speaking bluntly, and with an arrogant conviction. "He doesn't care a rap for any political honour, and he is doing this because he believes it to be his duty. His country is more to him, I think, than any living creature could be, even a friend."
"Well, as far as that goes, he has made more friends by his stand than he has lost," observed Alan, with unnatural diffidence. "I shouldn't let that worry me a minute, Mrs. Blackburn. David is a big man, and his influence grows every hour. The young blood is flowing toward him."
"Oh, but don't you see that this hurts me most of all?" responded Angelica. "I wouldn't for the world say this outside, but you are David's friend and almost one of the family, and I know you will understand me."
She lifted her eyes to his face – those large, shining eyes as soft as a dove's breast – and after a moment in which he gazed at her without speaking, Alan answered gently, "Yes, I understand you."
"It would grieve me if you didn't because I feel that I can trust you."
"Yes, you can trust me – absolutely." He looked at Mary as he spoke, and she smiled back at him with serene and joyous confidence.
"That is just what I tell Mary," resumed Angelica. "You are so trustworthy that it is a comfort to talk to you, and then we both feel, don't we, dear?" she inquired turning to the girl, "that your wonderful knowledge of human nature makes your judgment of such value."
Alan laughed, though his eyes sparkled with pleasure. "I don't know about that," he replied, "though my opinion, whatever it may be worth, is at your service."
"That is why I am speaking so frankly because I feel that you can help me. If you could only make David see his mistake – if you could only persuade him to give up this idea. It can't be right to overturn all the sacred things of the past – to discredit the principles we Virginians have believed in for fifty years. Surely you agree with me that it is a deplorable error of judgment?"
As she became more flattering and appealing, Alan recovered his gay insouciance. "If you want a candid answer, Mrs. Blackburn," he replied gallantly, "there isn't an ambition, much less a principle on earth, for which I would disagree with you."
Angelica smiled archly, and she was always at her loveliest when her face was illumined by the glow and colour of her smile. Was it possible, Caroline wondered while she watched her, that so simple a thing as the play of expression – as the parting of the lips, the raising of the eyebrows – could make a face look as if the light of heaven had fallen over it?
"If you get impertinent, I'll make Mary punish you!" exclaimed Angelica reproachfully; and a minute later the car passed on, while she playfully shook her finger from the window.
"How very handsome he is," said Caroline as she looked back in the lane. "I didn't know that a man could be so good-looking."
Angelica was settling herself comfortably under the robe. "Yes, he is quite unusual," she returned, and added after a pause, "If his uncle ever dies, and they say he is getting very feeble, Alan will inherit one of the largest fortunes in Chicago."
"I'm so glad. That's nice for Miss Blackburn."
"It's nice for Mary – yes." Her tone rather than her words, which were merely conventional, made Caroline glance at her quickly; but Angelica's features were like some faultless ivory mask. For the first time it struck the girl that even a beautiful face could appear vacant in repose.
"Where are we going now, mother?" asked Letty, who had been good and quiet during the long wait in the lane.
"To the Ridleys', dear. I've brought a basket." There was a moment's delay while she gave a few directions to the footman, and then, as Letty snuggled closely against Caroline's arm, the car went on rapidly toward the city.
The Ridleys lived in a small frame house in Pine Street; and when the car stopped before the door, where a number of freshly washed children were skipping rope on the pavement, Angelica alighted and held out her hand to Letty.
"Do you want to come in with me, Letty?"
"I'd rather watch these children skip, mother. Miss Meade, may I have a skipping-rope?"
Behind them the footman stood waiting with a covered basket, and for an instant, while Mrs. Blackburn looked down on it, a shadow of irritation rippled across her face. "Take that up to the second floor, John, and ask Mrs. Ridley if she got the yarn I sent for the socks?" Then, changing her mind as John disappeared into the narrow hall, from which a smell of cabbage floated, she added firmly, "We won't stay a minute, Letty, but you and Miss Meade must come up with me. I always feel," she explained to Caroline, "that it does the child good to visit the poor, and contrast her own lot with that of others. Young minds are so impressionable, and we never know when the turning-point comes in a life." Grasping Letty's hand she stepped over the skipping-rope, which the children had lowered in awe to the pavement.
"Letty has a cold. I'm afraid she oughtn't to go in," said Caroline hastily, while the child, rescued in the last extremity, threw a grateful glance at her.
"You really think so? Well, perhaps next time. Ah, there is Mr. Ridley now! We can speak to him without seeing his wife to-day." Instinctively, before she realized the significance of her action, she had drawn slightly aside.
A tall man, with a blotched, irascible face and a wad of tobacco in his mouth, lurched out on the porch, and stopped short at the sight of his visitors. He appeared surly and unattractive, and in her first revulsion, Caroline was conscious of a sudden sympathy with Blackburn's point of view. "He may be right, after all," she admitted to herself. "Kind as Mrs. Blackburn is, she evidently doesn't know much about people. I suppose I shouldn't have known anything either if I hadn't been through the hospital."
"I am glad to see you down, Mr. Ridley," said Angelica graciously. "I hope you are quite well again and that you have found the right kind of work."
"Yes, 'm, I'm well, all right, but there ain't much doing now except down at the works, and you know the way Mr. Blackburn treats me whenever I go down there." He was making an effort to be ingratiating, and while he talked his appearance seemed to change and grow less repelling. The surliness left his face, his figure straightened from the lurching walk, and he even looked a shade cleaner. "It is wonderful the power she has over people," reflected the girl. "I suppose it comes just from being so kind and lovely."
"You mustn't give up hope," Mrs. Blackburn replied encouragingly. "We never know at what moment some good thing may turn up. It is a pity there isn't more work of the kind in Richmond."
"Well, you see, ma'am, Mr. Blackburn has cornered the whole lot. That's the way capital treats labour whenever it gets the chance." His face assumed an argumentative expression. "To be sure, Mr. Blackburn didn't start so very high himself, but that don't seem to make any difference, and the minute a man gets to the top, he tries to stop everybody else that's below him. If he hadn't had the luck to discover that cheap new way to make steel, I reckon he wouldn't be very far over my head to-day. It was all accident, that's what I tell the men down at the works, and luck ain't nothing but accident when you come to look at it."
Mrs. Blackburn frowned slightly. It was plain that she did not care to diminish the space between Blackburn and his workmen, and Ridley's contemptuous tone was not entirely to her liking. She wanted to stoop, not to stand on a level with the objects of her charity.
"The war abroad has opened so many opportunities," she observed, amiably but vaguely.
"It's shut down a sight more than it's opened," rejoined Ridley, who possessed the advantage of knowing something of what he was talking about. "All the works except the steel and munition plants are laying off men every hour. It's easy enough on men like Mr. Blackburn, but it's hard on us poor ones, and it don't make it any easier to be sending all of this good stuff out of the country. Let the folks in Europe look after themselves, that's what I say. There are hungry mouths enough right here in this country without raising the price of everything we eat by shipping the crops over the water. I tell you I'll vote for any man, I don't care what he calls himself, who will introduce a bill to stop sending our provisions to the folks over yonder who are fighting when they ought to be working – ."
"But surely we must do our best to help the starving women and children of Europe. It wouldn't be human, it wouldn't be Christian – " Angelica paused and threw an appealing glance in the direction of Caroline, who shook her head scornfully and looked away to the children on the pavement. Why did she stoop to argue with the man? Couldn't she see that he was merely the cheapest sort of malcontent?
"The first thing you know we'll be dragged into this here war ourselves," pursued Ridley, rolling the wad of tobacco in his mouth, "and it's the men like Mr. Blackburn that will be doing it. There's a lot of fellows down at the works that talk just as he does, but that's because they think they know which side their bread is buttered on! Some of 'em will tell you the boss is the best friend they have on earth; but they are talking through their hats when they say so. As for me, I reckon I've got my wits about me, and as long as I have they ain't going to make me vote for nobody except the man who puts the full dinner pail before any darn squabble over the water. I ain't got anything against you, ma'am, but Mr. Blackburn ain't treated me white, and if my turn ever comes, I'm going to get even with him as sure as my name is James Ridley."
"I think we'd better go," said Caroline sternly. She had suspected from the first that Ridley had been drinking, and his rambling abuse was beginning to make her angry. It seemed not only foolish, but wicked to make a martyr of such a man.
"Yes, we must go," assented Mrs. Blackburn uneasily. "I won't see Mrs. Ridley to-day," she added. "Tell her to let me know when she has finished the socks, and I will send for them. I am giving her some knitting to do for the War Relief."
"All right, she may do what she pleases as long as she's paid for it," rejoined Ridley with a grin. "I ain't interfering."
Then, as the procession moved to the car, with the footman and the empty basket making a dignified rear-guard, he added apologetically, "I hope you won't bear me a grudge for my plain speaking, ma'am?"
"Oh, no, for I am sure you are honest," replied Mrs. Blackburn, with the manner of affable royalty.
At last, to Caroline's inexpressible relief, they drove away amid the eager stares of the children that crowded the long straight street. "I always wonder how they manage to bring up such large families," remarked Angelica as she gazed with distant benignity out of the window. "Oh, I quite forgot. I must speak to Mrs. Macy about some pillow cases. John, we will stop at Mrs. Macy's in the next block."
In a dark back room just beyond the next corner, they found an elderly woman hemstitching yards of fine thread cambric ruffling. As they entered, she pinned the narrow strip of lawn over her knee, and looked up without rising. She had a square, stolid face, which had settled into the heavy placidity that comes to those who expect nothing. Her thin white hair was parted and brushed back from her sunken temples, and her eyes, between chronically reddened lids, gazed at her visitors with a look of passive endurance. "My hip is bad to-day," she explained. "I hope you won't mind my not getting up." She spoke in a flat, colourless voice, as if she had passed beyond the sphere of life in which either surprises or disappointments are possible. Suffering had moulded her thought into the plastic impersonal substance of philosophy.
"Oh, don't think of moving, Mrs. Macy," returned Angelica kindly. "I stopped by to bring you the lace edging you needed, and to ask if you have finished any of the little pillow slips? Now, that your son is able to get back to work, you ought to have plenty of spare time for hemstitching."
"Yes, there's plenty of time," replied Mrs. Macy, without animation, "but it's slow work, and hard on weak eyes, even with spectacles. You like it done so fine that I have to take twice the trouble with the stitches, and I was just thinking of asking you if you couldn't pay me twenty cents instead of fifteen a yard? It's hard to make out now, with every mouthful you eat getting dearer all the time, and though Tom is a good son, he's got a large family to look after, and his eldest girl has been ailing of late, and had to have the doctor before she could keep on at school."
A queer look had crept into Angelica's face – the prudent and guarded expression of a financier who suspects that he is about to be over-matched, that, if he is not cautious, something will be got from him for nothing. For the instant her features lost their softness, and became sharp and almost ugly, while there flashed through Caroline's mind the amazing thought, "I believe she is stingy! Yet how could she be when she spends such a fortune on clothes?" Then the cautious look passed as swiftly as it had come, and Mrs. Blackburn stooped over the rocking-chair, and gathered the roll of thread cambric into her gloved hands. "I can have it done anywhere for fifteen cents a yard," she said slowly.
"Well, I know, ma'am, that used to be the price, but they tell me this sort of work is going up like everything else. When you think I used to pay eight and ten cents a pound for middling, and yesterday they asked me twenty-six cents at the store. Flour is getting so high we can barely afford it, and even corn meal gets dearer every day. If the war in Europe goes on, they say there won't be enough food left in America to keep us alive. It ain't that I'm complaining, Mrs. Blackburn, I know it's a hard world on us poor folks, and I ain't saying that anybody's to blame for it, but it did cross my mind, while I was thinking over these things a minute ago, that you might see your way to pay me a little more for the hemstitching."
While she talked she went on patiently turning the hem with her blunted thumb, and as she finished, she raised her head for the first time and gazed stoically, not into Angelica's face, but at a twisted ailantus tree which grew by the board fence of the backyard.'
"I am glad you look at things so sensibly, Mrs. Macy," observed Angelica cheerfully. She had dropped the ruffling to the floor, and as she straightened herself, she recovered her poise and amiability. "One hears so many complaints now among working people, and at a time like this, when the country is approaching a crisis, it is so important" – this was a favourite phrase with her, and she accented it firmly – "it is so important that all classes should stand together and work for the common good. I am sure I try to do my bit. There is scarcely an hour when I am not trying to help, but I do feel that the well-to-do classes should not be expected to make all the sacrifices. The working people must do their part, and with the suffering in Europe, and the great need of money for charities, it doesn't seem quite fair, does it, for you to ask more than you've been getting? It isn't as if fifteen cents a yard wasn't a good price. I can easily get it done elsewhere for that, but I thought you really needed the work."
"I do," said Mrs. Macy, with a kind of dry terror. "It's all I've got to live on."
"Then I'm sure you ought to be thankful to get it and not complain because it isn't exactly what you would like. All of us, Mrs. Macy, have to put up with things that we wish were different. If you would only stop to think of the suffering in Belgium, you would feel grateful instead of dissatisfied with your lot. Why, I can't sleep at night because my mind is so full of the misery in the world."
"I reckon you're right," Mrs. Macy replied humbly, and she appeared completely convinced by the argument. "It's awful enough the wretchedness over there, and Tom and I have tried to help the little we could. We can't give much, but he has left off his pipe for a month in order to send what he spent in tobacco, and I've managed to do some knitting the last thing at night and the first in the morning. I couldn't stint on food because there wasn't any to spare, so I said to myself, 'Well, I reckon there's one thing you can give and that's sleep.' So Mrs. Miller, she lets me have the yarn, and I manage to go to bed an hour later and get up an hour sooner. When you've got to my age, the thing you can spare best is sleep."
"You're right, and I'm glad you take that rational view." Mrs. Blackburn's manner was kind and considerate. "Every gift is better that includes sacrifice, don't you feel? Tell your son that I think it is fine his giving up tobacco. He has his old place at the works, hasn't he?"
"I wrote straight to Mr. Blackburn, ma'am, and he made the foreman hold it for him. Heaven only knows how we'd have managed but for your husband. He ain't the sort that talks unless he is on the platform, but I don't believe he ever forgets to be just when the chance comes to him. There are some folks that call him a hard man, but Tom says it ain't hardness, but justice, and I reckon Tom knows. Tom says the boss hasn't any use for idlers and drunkards, but he's fair enough to the ones who stand by him and do their work – and all the stuff they are putting in the papers about trouble down at the works ain't anything on earth but a political game."
"Well, we must go," said Mrs. Blackburn, who had been growing visibly restless. On her way to the door she paused for an instant and asked, "Your son is something of a politician himself, isn't he, Mrs. Macy?"
"Yes, 'm, Tom has a good deal to do with the Federation of Labour, and in that way he comes more or less into politics. He has a lot of good hard sense if I do say it, and I reckon there ain't anybody that stands better with the workers than he does."
"Of course he is a Democrat?"
"Well, he always used to be, ma'am, but of late I've noticed that he seems to be thinking the way Mr. Blackburn does. It wouldn't surprise me if he voted with him when the time came, and the way Tom votes," she added proudly, "a good many others will vote, too. He says just as Mr. Blackburn does that the new times take new leaders – that's one of Tom's sayings – and that both the Democratic and Republican Parties ain't big enough for these days. Tom says they are both hitched tight, like two mules, to the past."
By this time Angelica had reached the door, and as she passed out, with Letty's hand in hers, she glanced back and remarked, "I should think the working people would be grateful to any party that keeps them out of the war."
Mrs. Macy looked up from her needle. "Well, war is bad," she observed shortly, "but I've lived through one, and I ain't saying that I haven't seen things that are worse."
The air was fresh and bracing after the close room, and a little later, as they turned into Franklin Street, Angelica leaned out of the window as if she were drinking deep draughts of sunlight.
"The poor are so unintelligent," she observed when she had drawn in her head again. "They seem never able to think with any connection. The war has been going on for a long time now, and yet they haven't learned that it is any concern of theirs."
Letty had begun coughing, and Caroline drew her closer while she asked anxiously, "Do you think it is wise to take a child into close houses?"
"Well, I meant to stay only a moment, but I thought Mrs. Macy would never stop talking. Do you feel badly, darling? Come closer to mother."
"Oh, no, I'm well," answered the child. "It is just my throat that tickles." Then her tone changed, and as they stopped at the corner of the park, she cried out with pleasure, "Isn't that Uncle Roane over there? Uncle Roane, do you see us?"
A handsome, rather dissipated looking young man, with a mop of curly light hair and insolent blue eyes, glanced round at the call, and came quickly to the car, which waited under the elms by the sidewalk. The street was gay with flying motors, and long bars of sunshine slanted across the grass of the park, where groups of negro nurses gossiped drowsily beside empty perambulators.
