CHAPTER XII
The World's View of an Unfortunate Marriage
ON a cloudy morning in December, Caroline ran against Daisy Colfax as she came out of a milliner's shop in Broad Street.
"Oh, Miss Meade, I've been dying to see you and hear news of Letty!" exclaimed the young woman in her vivacious manner. She was wearing a hat of royal purple, with a sweeping wing which intensified the brilliant dusk of her hair and eyes.
"She is quite well again, though of course we are very careful. I came in to look for some small artificial flowers for a doll's hat. We are dressing a doll."
"It must have been a dreadful strain, and Cousin Matty Timberlake told mother she didn't know what they would have done without you. I think it is wonderful the way you keep looking so well."
"Oh, the work is easy," responded Caroline gravely.
"I am sure you are a perfect blessing to them all, especially to poor Angelica," pursued Daisy, in her rippling, shallow voice. Then, in the very centre of the crowded street, regardless of the pedestrians streaming by on either side of her, she added on a higher note: "Have you heard what everybody is saying about the way David Blackburn behaved? Robert insists he doesn't believe a word of it; but then Robert never believes anything except the Bible, so I told him I was going to ask you the very first chance I got. There isn't a bit of use trying to find out anything from Cousin Matty Timberlake because she is so awfully close-mouthed, and I said to Robert only this morning that I was perfectly sure you would understand why I wanted to know. It isn't just gossip. I am not repeating a thing that I oughtn't to; but the stories are all over town, and if they aren't true, I want to be in a position to deny them."
"What are the stories?" asked Caroline, and she continued immediately, before she was submerged again in the bubbling stream of Daisy's narrative, "Of course it isn't likely that I can help you. This is the first time I have been in town since Letty's illness."
"But that is exactly why you ought to know." As Daisy leaned nearer her purple wing brushed Caroline's face. "It is all over Richmond, Miss Meade," her voice rang out with fluting sweetness, "that David Blackburn kept Letty's condition from Angelica because he was so crazy about her being in those tableaux. They say he simply made her go, and that she never knew the child was in danger until she got back in the night. Mrs. Mallow declares she heard it straight from an intimate friend of the family, and somebody, who asked me not to mention her name, told me she knew positively that Doctor Boland hadn't any use in the world for David Blackburn. She said, of course, he hadn't said anything outright, but she could tell just by the way he looked. Everybody is talking about it, and I said to Robert at breakfast that I knew you could tell exactly what happened because we heard from Cousin Matty that you never left Letty's room."
"But why should Mr. Blackburn have wanted her to go? Why should he care?" Though Daisy's sprightly story had confused her a little, Caroline gathered vaguely that somebody had been talking too much, and she resolved that she would not contribute a single word to the gossip.
"Oh, he has always been wild about Angelica's being admired. Don't you remember hearing her say at that committee meeting at Briarlay that her husband liked her to take part in public affairs? I happen to know that he has almost forced her to go into things time and again when Doctor Boland has tried to restrain her. Mother thinks that is really why he married Angelica, because he was so ambitious, and he believed her beauty and charm would help him in the world. I suppose it must have been a blow to him to find that she couldn't tolerate his views—for she is the most loyal soul on earth—and there are a great many people who think that he voted with the Republicans in the hope of an office, and that he got mad when he didn't get one and turned Independent——"
The flood of words was checked for a moment, while the chauffeur came to ask for a direction, and in the pause Caroline remarked crisply, "I don't believe one word—not one single word of these stories."
"You mean you think he didn't make her go?"
"I know he didn't. I'm perfectly positive."
"You can't believe that Angelica really knew Letty was so ill?" her tone was frankly incredulous.
"Of course I can't answer that. I don't know anything about what she thought; but I am certain that if she didn't understand, it wasn't Mr. Blackburn's fault." Afterwards, when she recalled it, her indignant defence of David Blackburn amused her. Why should she care what people said of him?
"But they say she didn't know. Mrs. Mallow told me she heard from someone who was there that Angelica turned on her husband when she came in and asked him why he had kept it from her?"
The hopelessness of her cause aroused Caroline's fighting blood, and she remembered that her father used to say the best battles of the war were fought after defeat. Strange how often his philosophy and experience of life came back to inspirit her!
"Well, perhaps she didn't understand, but Mr. Blackburn wasn't to blame. I am sure of it," she answered firmly.
Mrs. Colfax looked at her sharply. "Do you like David Blackburn?" she inquired without malice.
Caroline flushed. "I neither like nor dislike him," she retorted courageously, and wondered how long it would take the remark to circulate over Richmond. Mrs. Colfax was pretty, amiable, and amusing; but she was one of those light and restless women, as clear as running water, on whose sparkling memories scandals float like straws. Nothing ever sank to the depths—or perhaps there were no depths in the luminous shoals of her nature.
"Well, the reason I asked," Daisy had become ingratiating, "is that you talk exactly like Cousin Matty."
"Do I?" Caroline laughed. "Mrs. Timberlake is a very sensible woman."
"Yes, mother insists that she is as sharp as a needle, even if it is so hard to get anything out of her. Oh, I've kept you an age—and, good Heavens, it is long past my appointment at the dentist's! I can't tell you how glad I am that I met you, and you may be sure that whenever I hear these things repeated, I am going to say that you don't believe one single word of them. It is splendid of you to stand up for what you think, and that reminds me of the nice things I heard Roane Fitzhugh saying about you at the Mallow's the other night. He simply raved over you. I couldn't make him talk about anything else."
"I don't like to be disagreeable, but what he thinks doesn't interest me in the least," rejoined Caroline coldly.
Daisy laughed delightedly. "Now, that's too bad, because I believe he is falling in love with you. He told me he went motoring with you and Angelica almost every afternoon. Take my word for it, Miss Meade, Roane isn't half so black as he is painted, and he's just the sort that would settle down when he met the right woman. Good-bye again! I have enjoyed so much my little chat with you."
She rushed off to her car, while Caroline turned quickly into a cross street, and hastened to meet Angelica at the office of a new doctor, who was treating her throat. A few drops of rain were falling, and ahead of her, when she reached Franklin Street, the city, with its church spires and leafless trees, emerged indistinctly out of the mist. Here the long street was almost deserted, except for a blind negro beggar, whose stick tapped the pavement behind her, and a white and liver-coloured setter nosing adventurously in the gutter. Then, in the middle of the block, she saw Angelica's car waiting, and a minute later, to her disgust, she discerned the face of Roane Fitzhugh at the window. As she recognized him, the anger that Mrs. Colfax's casual words had aroused, blazed up in her without warning; and she told herself that she would leave Briarlay before she would allow herself to be gossiped about with a man she detested.
While she approached, Roane opened the door and jumped out. "Come inside and wait, Miss Meade," he said. "Anna Jeannette is still interviewing old skull and cross-bones."
"I'd rather wait in the office, thank you." She swept past him with dignity, but before she reached the steps of the doctor's house, he had overtaken her.
"Oh, I say, don't crush a chap! Haven't you seen enough of me yet to discover that I am really as harmless as I look? You don't honestly think me a rotter, do you?"
"I don't think about you."
"The unkindest cut of all! Now, if you only knew it, your thinking of me would do a precious lot of good. By the way, how is my niece?"
"Very well. You'd scarcely know she'd been ill."
"And she didn't see the tableaux, after all, poor kid. Well, Anna Jeannette was a stunner. I suppose you saw her picture in the papers. The Washington Examiner spoke of her as the most beautiful woman in Virginia. That takes old Black, I bet!"
Caroline had ascended the steps, and as she was about to touch the bell, the door opened quickly, and Angelica appeared, lowering a net veil which was covered with a large spiral pattern. She looked slightly perturbed, and when she saw Roane a frown drew her delicate eyebrows together. Her colour had faded, leaving a sallow tone to her skin, which was of the fine, rose-leaf texture that withers early.
"I can't take you to-day, Roane," she remarked hastily. "We must go straight back to Briarlay. Miss Meade came in to do some shopping for Letty."
"You'll have to take me as far as Monument Avenue." He was as ready as ever. "It is a long way, Anna Jeannette. I cannot walk, to crawl I am ashamed."
"Well, get in, and please try to behave yourself."
"If behaviour is all that you expect, I shall try to satisfy you. The truth is I'm dead broke, and being broke always makes a Christian of me. I feel as blue as old Black."
"Oh, Roane, stop joking!" Her sweetness was growing prickly. "You don't realize that when you run on like this people think you are serious. I have just heard some silly talk about Miss Meade and you, and it came from nothing in the world except your habit of saying everything that comes into your mind."
"In the first place, my dear Anna, nothing that you hear of Miss Meade could be silly, and in the second place, I've never spoken her name except when I was serious."
"Well, you ought to be more careful how you talk to Daisy Colfax. She repeats everything in the world that she hears."
He laughed shortly. "You'd say that if you'd heard the hot shot she gave me last night about you and Blackburn. Look here, Anna Jeannette, hadn't you better call a halt on the thing?"
She flushed indignantly. "I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."
"Oh, it's all rot, I know, but how the deuce does such tittle-tattle get started? I beg your pardon, Miss Meade, I am addressing you not as a woman, but as a fount of justice and equity, and in the presence of Anna Jeannette, I ask you frankly if you don't think it's a bit rough on old Black? We had our quarrel, and I assure you that I have no intention of voting with him; but when it comes to knifing a man in the back, then I must beg the adorable Daisy to excuse me. It takes a woman to do that—and, by Jove, old Black may be a bit of a heavyweight, but he is neither a coward nor a liar."
"I think you are right," responded Caroline, and it was the first time that she had ever agreed with an opinion of Roane's.
"I wish I knew what you are talking about," said Angelica wearily, "Roane, do you get out here?"
"I do, with regret." As he glanced back from the pavement, his face, except for the droop of the well-cut lips and the alcoholic puffs under the gay blue eyes, might have been a thicker and grosser copy of Angelica's. "Will you take me to-morrow?"
Mrs. Blackburn shook her head. "I am obliged to go to a meeting."
He appeared to catch at the idea. "Then perhaps Miss Meade and Letty may take pity on me?"
A worried look sharpened Angelica's features, but before she could reply, Caroline answered quickly, "We are not going without Mrs. Blackburn. Letty and I would just as soon walk."
"Ah, you walk, do you? Then we may meet some day in the road." Though he spoke jestingly, there was an undercurrent of seriousness in his voice.
"We don't walk in the road, and we like to go by ourselves. We are studying nature." As she responded she raised her eyes, and swept his face with a careless and indifferent glance.
"Take your hand from the door, Roane," said Mrs. Blackburn, "and the next time you see Daisy Colfax, please remember what I told you."
The car started while she was speaking, and a minute later, as Roane's figure passed out of sight, she observed playfully, "You mustn't let that bad brother of mine annoy you, Miss Meade. He doesn't mean all that he says."
"I am sure that he doesn't mean anything," returned Caroline with a smile, "but, if you don't mind, I'd rather not go to drive with him again."
The look of sharpness and worry disappeared from Angelica's face. "It is such a comfort, the way you take things," she remarked. "One can always count on your intelligence."
"I shouldn't have thought that it required intelligence to see through your brother," retorted Caroline gaily. "Any old common sense might do it!"
"Can you understand," Angelica gazed at her as if she were probing her soul, "what his attraction is for women?"
"No, I can't. I hope you don't mind my speaking the truth?"
"Not in the least." Angelica was unusually responsive. "But you couldn't imagine how many women have been in love with him. It isn't any secret that Daisy Colfax was wild about him the year she came out. The family broke it up because Roane was so dissipated, but everybody knows she still cared for Roane when she married Robert."
"She seems happy now with Mr. Colfax."
"Well, I don't mean that she isn't. There are some women who can settle down with almost any man, and though I am very fond of dear Daisy, there isn't any use pretending that she hasn't a shallow nature. Still there are people, you know, who say that she isn't really as satisfied as she tries to make you believe, and that her rushing about as much as she does is a sign that she regrets her marriage. I am sure, whatever she feels or doesn't feel, that she is the love of poor Roane's life."
It was not Angelica's habit to gossip, and while she ran on smoothly, reciting her irrelevant detail as if it were poetry, Caroline became aware that there was a serious motive beneath her apparent flippancy. "I suppose she is trying to warn me away from Roane," she thought scornfully, "as if there were any need of it!"
After this they were both silent until the car turned into the drive and stopped before the white columns. The happiness Caroline had once felt in the mere presence of Angelica had long ago faded, though she still thought her lovely and charming, and kind enough if one were careful not to cross her desires. She did not judge her harshly for her absence on the night of Letty's illness, partly because Letty had recovered, and partly because she was convinced that there had been an unfortunate misunderstanding—that Blackburn had failed to speak as plainly as he ought to have done. "Of course he thought he did," she had decided, in a generous effort to clear everybody from blame, "but the fact remains that there was a mistake—that Mrs. Blackburn did not take it just as he meant it." This, in the circumstances, was the best she felt that anybody could do. If neither Blackburn nor Angelica was to blame, then surely she must shift the responsibility to that flimsy abstraction she defined as "the way things happen in life."
Upstairs in the nursery they broke in upon a flutter of joyous excitement. Mary had just returned after a month's absence, and Letty was busily arranging a doll's tea party in honour of her aunt's arrival. The child looked pale and thin, but she had on a new white dress, and had tied a blue bow on her hair, which was combed primly back from her forehead. Mammy Riah had drawn the nursery table in front of the fire, and she was now placing a row of white and blue cups, and some plates of sponge cake and thinly sliced bread and butter, on the embroidered cloth she had borrowed from Mrs. Timberlake. The dignified old negress, in her full-waisted dress of black bombazine and her spotless white turban, was so unlike the demented figure that had crouched by the hearth on the night of Letty's illness, that, if Caroline had been less familiar with the impressionable mind of the negro, she would not have recognized her.
"So I'm back," said Mary, looking at them with her kind, frank glance, as they entered. She was still in her travelling clothes, and Caroline thought she had never seen her so handsome as she was in the smartly cut suit of brown homespun. "Letty is going to give me a party, only she must hurry, for if I don't get on a horse soon I'll forget how to sit in the saddle. Well, Angelica, I hear you were the whole show in the tableaux," she pursued in her nice, slangy manner, which was so perfectly in character with her boyish face and her straight, loose-limbed figure. "Your picture was in at least six magazines, though, I must say, they made you look a little too spectral for my taste. How are you feeling? You are just a trifle run down, aren't you?"
"Of course Letty's illness was a great strain," replied Angelica. "One never realizes how such shocks tell until they are over."
"Poor lamb! Look here, Letty, who is coming to this feast of joy? Do you mind if I bolt in the midst of it?"
"Father's coming and Aunt Matty," replied the child. "I couldn't have anybody else because mammy thought mother wouldn't like me to ask John. I like John, and he's white anyway."
"Oh, the footman! Well, as long as you haven't invited him, I suppose there'll be only home folks. I needn't stand on formality with your father and Cousin Matty."
"And there's mother—you'll come, won't you, mother?—and Miss Meade," added Letty.
"Yes, I'll come," responded Angelica. "I'm dying for my tea, dear, isn't it ready?"
"May I pour it for you? I'll be very careful, and I know just how you like it."
"Yes, you may pour it, but let Mammy Riah help you. Here's your father now, and Cousin Matty."
"Hallo, David!" Mary's voice rang out clearly. "You look just a bit seedy, don't you? Letty's illness seems to have knocked out everybody except the youngster herself. Even Miss Meade looks as if she'd been giving too much medicine." Then she turned to embrace Mrs. Timberlake, while Blackburn crossed the room and sat down near the fireplace.
"Well, daughter, it isn't a birthday, is it?"
Letty, with her head bent sideways, and her small mouth screwed up very tight, was pouring Angelica's tea with the aid of Mammy Riah. "You mustn't talk to me while I am pouring, father," she answered seriously. "I am so afraid I shall spill it, and mother can't bear to have it spilt."
"All right. I'll talk to your Aunt Mary. Any news, Mary?"
"Yes, there's news, David. Alan is coming in for his own, and it looks as if his own were enough for us."
"You mean the old man in Chicago——?"
"He died last week, just as he was celebrating his ninetieth birthday. At ninety one couldn't reasonably have asked for very much more, do you think?"
"And is Alan his heir?"
"His one and only. To be sure he wrote a will a few weeks ago and left every cent of it—I can't begin to remember the millions—to some missionary society, but fortunately he had neglected or forgotten to sign it. So Alan gets the whole thing, bless his heart, and he's out there now in Chicago having legal bouts with a dozen or more lawyers."
For the first time Angelica spoke. "Is it true that Alan will be one of the richest men in the West?" she asked slowly. "Thank you, Letty, darling, my tea is exactly right."
"If he gets it all, and he is going to unless another will and a missionary society come to light. My dear Angelica, when you see me a year hence," she continued whimsically, "you won't recognize your dependent sister. Alan says he is going to give me a string of pearls even finer than yours."
She spoke jestingly, yet as Caroline watched Angelica's face, it occurred to her that Mary was not always tactful. The girl ought to have known by this time that Angelica had no sense of humour and could not bear to be teased.
"It's funny, isn't it, the way life works out?" said Mrs. Timberlake. "To think of Mary's having more things than Angelica! It doesn't seem natural, somehow."
"No, it doesn't," assented Mary, in her habitual tone of boyish chaffing. "But as far as the 'things' go, Angelica needn't begin to worry. Give me Alan and a good horse, and she may have all the pearls that ever came out of the ocean."
"I read an account in some magazine of the jewels old Mrs. Wythe left," remarked Angelica thoughtfully. "She owned the finest emeralds in America." Her reflections, whatever they were, brought the thin, cold look to her features.
"Can you imagine me wearing the finest emeralds in America?" demanded Mary. "There's a comfort for you, at any rate, in the thought that they wouldn't be becoming to you. Green isn't your colour, my dear, and white stones are really the only ones that suit you. Now, I am so big and bold that I could carry off rubies." Her laughing tone changed suddenly, "Why, Angelica, what is the matter? Have you a headache?"
"I feel very tired. The truth is I haven't quite got over the strain of Letty's illness. When does Alan come back, dear? I suppose you won't put off the wedding much longer? Mother used to say that a long engagement meant an unhappy marriage."
"Alan gets back next week, I hope, and as for the wedding—well, we haven't talked it over, but I imagine we'll settle on the early summer—June probably. It's a pity it has to be so quiet, or I might have Miss Meade for a bridesmaid. She'd make an adorable bridesmaid in an orchid-coloured gown and a flower hat, wouldn't she, Cousin Matty?"
"I'd rather dress you in your veil and orange blossoms," laughed Caroline. "Diana or I have pinned on almost every wedding veil of the last five years in southside Virginia."
"Oh, is Aunt Mary really going to be married at last?" asked Letty, with carefully subdued excitement, "and may I go to church? I do hope I shan't have to miss it as I did mother's tableau," she added wistfully.
"You shan't miss it, dearie," said Mary, "not if I have to be married up here in the nursery."
Angelica had risen, and she stooped now to pick up her furs which she had dropped.
"Your tea was lovely, Letty dear," she said gently, "but I'm so tired that I think I'll go and lie down until dinner."
"You must pick up before Alan gets back," remarked Mary lightly. "He thinks you the most beautiful woman in the world, you know."
"He does? How very sweet of him!" exclaimed Angelica, turning in the doorway, and throwing an animated glance back into the room. Her face, which had been wan and listless an instant before, was now glowing, while her rare, lovely smile irradiated her features.
When she had gone, Mary went to change into her riding clothes, and Caroline slipped away to take off her hat. A few minutes later, she came back with some brown yarn in her hand, and found that Blackburn was still sitting in the big chintz-covered chair by the hearth. Letty had dragged a footstool to the rug, and she was leaning against her father's knee while he questioned her about the stories in her reader.
"I know Miss Meade can tell you," said the child as Caroline entered. "Miss Meade, do you remember the story about the little girl who got lost and went to live with the fairies? Is it in my reader? Father, what is the difference between an angel and a fairy? Mrs. Aylett says that mother is an angel. Is she a fairy too?"
"You'd think she was sometimes to look at her," replied Blackburn, smiling.
"Well, if mother is an angel, why aren't you one? I asked Mrs. Aylett that, but she didn't tell me."
"You could scarcely blame her," laughed Blackburn. "It is a hard question."
"I asked Miss Meade, too, but she didn't tell me either."
"Now, I should have thought better of Miss Meade." As Blackburn lifted his face, it looked young and boyish. "Is it possible that she is capable of an evasion?"
"What does that word mean, father?"
"It means everything, my daughter, that Miss Meade is not."
"You oughtn't to tease the child, David," said Mrs. Timberlake. "She is so easily excited."
Caroline and the old lady had both unfolded their knitting; and the clicking of their needles made a cheerful undercurrent to the conversation. The room looked homelike and pleasant in the firelight, and leaning back in his chair, Blackburn gazed with half-closed eyes at the two women and the child outlined against the shimmering glow of the flames.
"You are like the Fates," he said presently after a silence in which Letty sank drowsily against him. "Do you never put down your knitting?"
"Well, Angelica promised so many, and it makes her nervous to hear the needles," rejoined Mrs. Timberlake.
"It is evidently soothing to you and Miss Meade."
"The difference, I reckon, is that we don't stop to think whether it is or not." Mrs. Timberlake was always curt when she approached the subject of Angelica. "I've noticed that when you can't afford nerves, you don't seem to have them."
"That's considerate of nature, to say the least." His voice had borrowed the chaffing tone of Mary's.
As if in response to his words, Mrs. Timberlake rolled up the half-finished muffler, thrust her long knitting needles through the mesh, and leaned forward until she met Blackburn's eyes.
"David," she said in a low, harsh voice, "there is something I want to ask you, and Miss Meade might as well hear it. Is Letty asleep?"
"She is dozing, but speak guardedly. This daughter of mine is a keen one."
"Well, she won't understand what I am talking about. Did you or did you not think that you had spoken plainly to Angelica that evening?"
He looked at her through narrowed lids.
"What does she say?"
"She says she didn't understand. It is all over town that she didn't know Letty's condition was serious."
"Then why do you ask me? If she didn't understand, I must have blundered in the telling. That's the only possible answer to your question."
He rose as he spoke, and lifting Letty from the footstool, placed her gently between the deep arms of the chair.
"Isn't there anything that you can say, David?"
"No, that seems to be the trouble. There isn't anything that I can say." Already he was on his way to the door, and as he glanced back, Caroline noticed that, in spite of his tenderness with the child, his face looked sad and stern. "There's a man waiting for me downstairs," he added, "but I'll see you both later. Wake Letty before long or she won't sleep to-night."
Then he went out quickly, while Mrs. Timberlake turned to take up her knitting.
"If I didn't know that David Blackburn had plenty of sense about some things," she remarked grimly while she drew the needle from the roll, "I'd be tempted to believe that he was a perfect fool."
CHAPTER XIII
Indirect Influence
IN January a heavy snow fell, and Letty, who had begun to cough again, was kept indoors for a week. After the morning lessons were over, Mammy Riah amused the child, while Caroline put on her hat and coat, and went for a brisk walk down the lane to the road. Once or twice Mary joined her, but since Alan's return Caroline saw the girl less and less, and no one else in the house appeared to have the spirit for exercise. Blackburn she met only at breakfast and luncheon, and since Christmas he seemed to have become completely engrossed in his plans. After the talk she had heard on the terrace, his figure slowly emerged out of the mist of perplexity in her mind. He was no longer the obscure protagonist of a vague political unrest, for the old dishonourable bond which had linked him, in her imagination, to the Southern Republicans of her father's day, was broken forever. She was intelligent enough to grasp the difference between the forces of reaction and development; and she understood now that Blackburn had worked out a definite theory—that his thinking had crystallized into a constructive social philosophy. "He knows the South, he understands it," she thought. "He sees it, not made, but becoming. That is the whole difference between him and father. Father was as patriotic as Mr. Blackburn, but father's patriotism clung to the past—it was grateful and commemorative—and Mr. Blackburn's strives toward the future, for it is active and creative. Father believed that the South was separate from the Union, like one of the sacred old graveyards, with bricked-up walls, in the midst of cornfields, while the younger man, also believing it to be sacred, is convinced that it must be absorbed into the nation—that its traditions and ideals must go to enrich the common soil of America." Already she was beginning insensibly to associate Blackburn with the great group of early Virginians, with the men in whom love of country was a vital and living thing, the men who laid the foundation and planned the structure of the American Republic.
"Do you think Mr. Blackburn feels as strongly as he talks?" she asked Mrs. Timberlake one afternoon when they were standing together by the nursery window. It had been snowing hard, and Caroline, in an old coat with a fur cap on her head, was about to start for a walk.
Mrs. Timberlake was staring intently through her spectacles at one of the snow-laden evergreens on the lawn. A covering of powdery white wrapped the drive and the landscape, and, now and then, when the wind rattled the ice-coated branches of the elms, there was a sharp crackling noise as of breaking boughs.
"I reckon he does," she replied after a pause, "though I can't see to save my life what he expects to get out of it."
"Do you think it is ambition with him? It seems to me, since I heard him talk, that he really believes he has a message, that he can serve his country. Until I met him," Caroline added, half humorously, "I had begun to feel that the men of to-day loved their country only for what they could get out of it."
"Well, I expect David is as disinterested as anybody else," observed Mrs. Timberlake drily, "but that seems to me all the more reason why he'd better let things jog along as they are, and not try to upset them. But there isn't any use talking. David sets more store by those ideas of his than he does by any living thing in the world, unless it's Letty. They are his life, and I declare I sometimes think he feels about them as he used to feel about Angelica before he married her—the sort of thing you never expect to see outside of poetry." She had long ago lost her reserve in Caroline's presence, and the effect of what she called "bottling up" for so many years, gave a crispness and roundness to her thoughts which was a refreshing contrast to Angelica's mental vagueness.
"I can understand it," said Caroline, "I mean I can understand a man's wanting to have some part in moulding the thought of his time. Father used to be like that. Only it was Virginia, not America, that he cared for. He wanted to help steer Virginia over the rapids, he used to say. I was brought up in the midst of politics. That's the reason it sounded so natural to me when Mr. Blackburn was talking."
Letty, who had been playing with her dolls on the hearthrug, deserted them abruptly, and ran over to the window.
"Oh, Miss Meade, do you think I am going to be well for Aunt Mary's wedding?"
"Why, of course you are. This is only January, darling, and the wedding won't be till June."
"And is that a very long time?"
"Months and months. The roses will be blooming, and you will have forgotten all about your cold."
"Well, I hope I shan't miss that too," murmured the child, going gravely back to her dolls.
"I never heard anything like the way that child runs on," said Mrs. Timberlake, turning away from the window. "Are you really going out in this cold? There doesn't seem a bit of sense in getting chilled to the bone unless you are obliged to."
"Oh, I like it. It does me good."
"You've stopped motoring with Angelica, haven't you?"
"Yes, we haven't been for several weeks. For one thing the weather has been so bad."
"I got an idea it was because of Roane Fitzhugh," said the old lady, in her tart way. "I hope you won't think I am interfering, but I'm old and you're young, and so you won't mind my giving you a little wholesome advice. If I were you, my dear, I shouldn't pay a bit of attention to anything that Roane says to me."
"But I don't. I never have," rejoined Caroline indignantly. "How on earth could you have got such an idea?"
A look of mystification flickered over Mrs. Timberlake's face. "Well, I am sure I don't mean any harm, my child," she responded soothingly. "I didn't think you would mind a word of warning from an old woman, and I know that Roane can have a very taking way when he wants to."
"I think he's hateful—perfectly hateful," replied Caroline. Then, drawing on her heavy gloves, she shook her head with a laugh as she started to the door. "If that's all you have to worry about, you may rest easy," she tossed back gaily. "Letty, darling, when I come in I'll tell you all about my adventures and the bears I meet in the lane."
The terrace and the garden were veiled in white, and the only sound in the intense frozen stillness was the crackling of elm boughs as the wind rocked them. A heavy cloud was hanging low in the west, and beneath it a flock of crows flew slowly in blue-black curves over the white fields. For a minute or two Caroline stood watching them, and, while she paused there, a clear silver light streamed suddenly in rays over the hills, and the snow-covered world looked as if it were imprisoned in crystal. Every frosted branch, every delicate spiral on the evergreens, was intensified and illuminated. Then the wind swept up with a rush of sound from the river, and it was as if the shining landscape had found a melodious voice—as if it were singing. The frozen fountain and the white trees and the half buried shrubs under the mounds of snow, joined in presently like harps in a heavenly choir. "I suppose it is only the wind," she thought, "but it is just as if nature were praising God with music and prayer."
In the lane the trees were silvered, and little darting shadows, like violet birds, chased one another down the long white vista to the open road. Walking was difficult on the slippery ground, and Caroline went carefully, stopping now and then to look up into the swinging boughs overhead, or to follow the elusive flight of the shadows. When she reached the end of the lane, she paused, before turning, to watch a big motor car that was ploughing through the heavy snowdrifts. A moment later the car stopped just in front of her, a man jumped out into a mound of snow, and she found herself reluctantly shaking hands with Roane Fitzhugh.
"Tom Benton was taking me into town," he explained, "but as soon as I saw you, I told him he'd have to go on alone. So this is where you walk? Lucky trees."
"I was just turning." As she spoke she moved back into the lane. "It is a pity you got out."
"Oh, somebody else will come along presently. I'm in no sort of hurry."
His face was flushed and mottled, and she suspected, from the excited look in his eyes, that he had been drinking. Even with her first impulse of recoil, she felt the pity of his wasted and ruined charm. With his straight fine features, so like Angelica's, his conquering blue eyes, and his thick fair hair, he was like the figure of a knight in some early Flemish painting.
"It's jolly meeting you this way," he said, a trifle thickly. "By Jove, you look stunning—simply stunning."
"Please don't come with me. I'd rather go back alone," she returned, with chill politeness. "Your sister went into Richmond an hour ago. I think she is at a reception Mrs. Colfax is giving."
"Well, I didn't come to see Anna Jeannette." He spoke this time with exaggerated care as if he were pronouncing a foreign language. "Don't hurry, Miss Meade. I'm not a tiger. I shan't eat you. Are you afraid?"
"Of you?" she glanced at him scornfully. "How could you hurt me?"
"How indeed? But if not of me, of yourself? I've seen women afraid of themselves, and they hurried just as you are doing."
Unconsciously her steps slackened. "I am not afraid of myself, and if I were, I shouldn't run away."
"You mean you'd stay and fight it out?"
"I mean I'd stay and get the better of the fear, or what caused it. I couldn't bear to be afraid."
His careless gaze became suddenly intense, and before the red sparks that glimmered in his eyes, she drew hastily to the other side of the lane. A wave of physical disgust, so acute that it was like nausea, swept over her. Even in the hospital the sight of a drunken man always affected her like this, and now it was much worse because the brute—she thought of him indignantly as "the brute"—was actually trying to make love to her—to her, Caroline Meade!
"Then if you aren't afraid of me, why do you avoid me?" he demanded.
At this she stopped short in order to face him squarely. "Since you wish to know," she replied slowly, "I avoid you because I don't like the kind of man you are."
He lowered his eyes for an instant, and when he raised them they were earnest and pleading. "Then make me the kind of man you like. You can if you try. You could do anything with me if you cared—you are so good."
"I don't care." A temptation to laugh seized her, but she checked it, and spoke gravely. The relations between men and women, which had seemed as natural and harmonious as the interdependence of the planets, had become jangled and discordant. Something had broken out in her universe which threatened to upset its equilibrium. "I don't doubt that there are a number of good women who would undertake your regeneration, but I like my work better," she added distantly. She was sure now that he had been drinking, and, as he came nearer and the smell of whiskey reached her, she quickened her steps almost into a run over the frozen ground. Some deep instinct told her that at her first movement of flight he would touch her, and she thought quite calmly, with the clearness and precision of mind she had acquired in the hospital, that if he were to touch her she would certainly strike him. She was not frightened—her nerves were too robust for fear—but she was consumed with a still, cold rage, which made even the icy branches feel warm as they brushed her cheek.
"Now, you are running again, Miss Meade. Why won't you be kind to me? Can't you see that I am mad about you? Ever since the first day I saw you, you've been in my thoughts every minute. Honestly you could make a man out of me, if you'd only be a little bit human. I'll do anything you wish. I'll be anything you please, if you'll only like me."
For a moment she thought he was going to break down and cry, and she wondered, with professional concern, if a little snow on his forehead would bring him to his senses. This was evidently the way he had talked to Mary when Blackburn ordered him out of the house.
"I wish you would go back," she said in a tone she used to delirious patients in the hospital. "We are almost at the house, and Mr. Blackburn wouldn't like your coming to Briarlay."
"Well, the old chap's in town, isn't he?"
"It is time for him to come home. He may be here any moment." Though she tried to reason the question with him, she was conscious of a vague, uneasy suspicion that they were rapidly approaching the state where reasoning would be as futile as flight. Then she remembered hearing somewhere that a drunken man would fall down if he attempted to run, and she considered for an instant making an open dash for the house.
"I'll go, if you'll let me come back to-morrow. I'm not a bad fellow, Miss Meade." A sob choked him. "I've got a really good heart—ask Anna Jeannette if I haven't——"
"I don't care whether you are bad or not. I don't want to know anything about you. Only go away. Nothing that you can do will make me like you," she threw out unwisely under the spur of anger. "Women never think that they can cajole or bully a person into caring—only men imagine they have the power to do that, and it's all wrong because they can't, and they never have. Bullying doesn't do a bit more good than whining, so please stop that, too. I don't like you because I don't respect you, and nothing you can say or do will have the slightest effect unless you were to make yourself into an entirely different sort of man—a man I didn't despise." Her words pelted him like stones, and while he stood there, blinking foolishly beneath the shower, she realized that he had not taken in a single sentence she had uttered. He looked stunned but obstinate, and a curious dusky redness was beating like a pulse in his forehead.
"You can't fight me," he muttered huskily. "Don't fight me."
"I am not fighting you. I am asking you to go away."
"I told you I'd go, if you'd let me come back to-morrow."
"Of course I shan't. How dare you ask me such a thing? Can't you see how you disgust me?"
As she spoke she made a swift movement toward the turn in the lane, and the next minute, while her feet slipped on the ice, she felt Roane's arms about her, and knew that he was struggling frantically to kiss her lips. For years no man had kissed her, and as she fought wildly to escape, she was possessed not by terror, but by a blind and primitive fury. Civilization dropped away from her, and she might have been the first woman struggling against attack in the depths of some tropic jungle. "I'd like to kill you," she thought, and freeing one arm, she raised her hand and struck him between the eyes. "I wonder why some woman hasn't killed him before this? I believe I am stronger than he is."
The blow was not a soft one, and his arms fell away from her, while he shook his head as if to prevent a rush of blood to the brain. "You hurt me—I believe you wanted to hurt me," he muttered in a tone of pained and incredulous surprise. Then recovering his balance with difficulty, he added reproachfully, "I didn't know you could hit like that. I thought you were more womanly. I thought you were more womanly," he repeated sorrowfully, while he put his hand to his head, and then gazed at it, as if he expected to find blood on his fingers.
"Now, perhaps you'll go," said Caroline quietly. While the words were on her lips, she became aware that a shadow had fallen over the snow at her side, and glancing round, she saw Blackburn standing motionless in the lane. Her first impression was that he seemed enormous as he stood there, with his hands hanging at his sides, and the look of sternness and immobility in his face. His eyelids were half closed with the trick he had when he was gazing intently, and the angry light seemed to have changed his eyes from grey to hazel.
"I am sorry to interrupt you," he said in a voice that had a dangerous quietness, "but I think Roane is scarcely in a fit state for a walk."
"I'd like to know why I am not?" demanded Roane, sobered and resentful. "I'm not drunk. Who says I am drunk?"
"Well, if you aren't, you ought to be." Then the anger which Blackburn had kept down rushed into his voice. "You had better go!"
Roane had stopped blinking, and while the redness ebbed from his forehead, he stood staring helplessly not at Blackburn, but at Caroline. "I'll go," he said at last, "if Miss Meade will say that she forgives me."
But there was little of the sister of mercy in Caroline's heart. She had been grossly affronted, and anger devoured her like a flame. Her blue eyes shone, her face flushed and paled with emotion, and, for the moment, under the white trees, in the midst of the frosted world, her elusive beauty became vivid and dazzling.
"I shall not forgive you, and I hope I shall never see you again," she retorted.
"You'd better go, Roane," repeated Blackburn quietly, and as Caroline hurried toward the house, he overtook her with a rapid step, and said in a troubled voice, "It is partly my fault, Miss Meade. I have intended to warn you."
"To warn me?" Her voice was crisp with anger.
"I felt that you did not understand."
"Understand what?" She looked at him with puzzled eyes. "I may be incredibly stupid, but I don't understand now."
For an instant he hesitated, and she watched a deeper flush rise in his face. "In a way you are under my protection," he said at last, "and for this reason I have meant to warn you against Roane Fitzhugh—against the danger of these meetings."
"These meetings?" Light burst on her while she stared on him. "Is it possible that you think this was a meeting? Do you dream that I have been seeing Roane Fitzhugh of my own accord? Have you dared to think such a thing? To imagine that I wanted to see him—that I came out to meet him?" The note of scorn ended in a sob while she buried her face in her hands, and stood trembling with shame and anger before him.
"But I understood. I was told——" He was stammering awkwardly. "Isn't it true that you felt an interest—that you were trying to help him?"
At this her rage swept back again, and dropping her hands, she lifted her swimming eyes to his face. "How dare you think such a thing of me?"
"I am sorry." He was still groping in darkness. "You mean you did not know he was coming to-day?"
"Of course I didn't know. Do you think I should have come out if I had known?"
"And you have never met him before? Never expected to meet him?"
"Oh, what are you saying? Why can't you speak plainly?" A shiver ran through her.
"I understood that you liked him." After her passionate outburst his voice sounded strangely cold and detached.
"And that I came out to meet him?"
"I was afraid that you met him outside because I had forbidden him to come to Briarlay. I wanted to explain to you—to protect you——"
"But I don't need your protection." She had thrown back her head, and her shining eyes met his bravely. Her face had grown pale, but her lips were crimson, and her voice was soft and rich. "I don't need your protection, and after what you have thought of me, I can't stay here any longer. I can't——"
As her words stopped, checked by the feeling of helplessness that swept her courage away, he said very gently, "But there isn't any reason—— Why, I haven't meant to hurt you. I'm a bit rough, perhaps, but I'd as soon think of hurting Letty. No, don't run away until I've said a word to you. Let's be reasonable, if there has been a misunderstanding. Come, now, suppose we talk it out as man to man."
His tone had softened, but in her resentment she barely noticed the change. "No, I'd rather not. There isn't anything to say," she answered hurriedly. Then, as she was about to run into the house, she paused and added, "Only—only how could you?"
He said something in reply, but before it reached her, she had darted up the steps and into the hall. She felt bruised and stiff, as if she had fallen and hurt herself, and the one thought in her mind was the dread of meeting one of the household—of encountering Mary or Mrs. Timberlake, before she had put on her uniform and her professional manner. It seemed impossible to her that she should stay on at Briarlay, and yet what excuse could she give Angelica for leaving so suddenly? Angelica, she surmised, would not look tolerantly upon any change that made her uncomfortable.
The dazzling light of the sunset was still in Caroline's eyes, and, for the first moment or two after she entered the house, she could distinguish only a misty blur from the open doors of the drawing-room. Then the familiar objects started out of the gloom, and she discerned the gilt frame and the softly blended dusk of the Sistine Madonna over the turn in the staircase. As she reached the floor above, her heart, which had been beating wildly, grew gradually quiet, and she found herself thinking lucidly, "I must go away. I must go away at once—to-night." Then the mist of obscurity floated up to envelop the thought. "But what does it mean? Could there be any possible reason?"
The nursery door was open, and she was about to steal by noiselessly, when Mrs. Timberlake's long, thin shadow stretched, with a vaguely menacing air, over the threshold.
"I wanted to speak to you, my dear. Why, what is the matter?" As the housekeeper came out into the hall, she raised her spectacles to her forehead, and peered nervously into Caroline's face. "Has anybody hurt your feelings?"
"I am going away. I can't stay." Though Caroline spoke clearly and firmly, her lips were trembling, and the marks of tears were still visible under her indignant eyes, which looked large and brilliant, like the eyes of a startled child.
"You are going away? What on earth is the reason? Has anything happened?" Then lowering her voice, she murmured cautiously, "Come into my room a minute. Letty is playing and won't miss you." Putting her lean arm about Caroline's shoulders, she led her gently down the hall and to her room in the west wing. Not until she had forced her into an easy chair by the radiator, and turned back to close the door carefully, did she say in an urgent tone, "Now, my dear, you needn't be afraid to tell me. I am very fond of you—I feel almost as if you were my own child—and I want to help you if you will let me."
"There isn't anything except—except there has been a misunderstanding——" Caroline looked up miserably from the big chair, with her lips working pathetically. All the spirit had gone out of her. "Mr. Blackburn seems to have got the idea that I care for Roane Fitzhugh—that I even went out to meet him."
Mrs. Timberlake, whose philosophy was constructed of the bare bones of experience, stared out of the window with an expression that made her appear less a woman than a cynical point of view. Her profile grew sharper and flatter until it gave the effect of being pasted on the glimmering pane.
"Well, I reckon David didn't make that up in his own mind," she observed with a caustic emphasis.
"I met him—I mean Roane Fitzhugh to-day. Of course it was by accident, but he had been drinking and behaved outrageously, and then Mr. Blackburn found us together," pursued Caroline slowly, "and—and he said things that made me see what he thought. He told me that he believed I liked that dreadful man—that I came out by appointment——"
"But don't you like him, my dear?" The housekeeper had turned from the sunset and taken up her knitting.
"Of course I don't. Why in the world—how in the world——"
"And David told you that he thought so?" The old lady looked up sharply.
"He said he understood that I liked him—Roane Fitzhugh. I didn't know what he meant. He was obliged to explain." After all, the tangle appeared to be without beginning and without end. She realized that she was hopelessly caught in the mesh of it.
"Well, I thought so, too," said Mrs. Timberlake, leaning forward and speaking in a thin, sharp voice that pricked like a needle.
"You thought so? But how could you?" Caroline stretched out her hand with an imploring gesture. "Why, I've never seen him alone until to-day—never."
"And yet David believed that you were meeting him?"
"That is what he said. It sounds incredible, doesn't it?"
For a few minutes Mrs. Timberlake knitted grimly, while the expression, "I know I am a poor creature, but all the same I have feelings" seemed to leap out of her face. When at last she spoke it was to make a remark which sounded strangely irrelevant. "I've had a hard time," she said bluntly, "and I've stood things, but I'm not one to turn against my own blood kin just because they haven't treated me right." Then, after another and a longer pause, she added, as if the words were wrung out of her, "If I didn't feel that I ought to help you I'd never say one single word, but you're so trusting, and you'd never see through things unless somebody warned you."
"See through things? You mean I'd never understand how Mr. Blackburn got that impression?"
Mrs. Timberlake twisted the yarn with a jerk over her little finger. "My dear, David never got that idea out of his own head," she repeated emphatically. "Somebody put it there as sure as you were born, and though I've nothing in the world but my own opinion to go on, I'm willing to bet a good deal that it was Angelica."
"But she couldn't have. She knew better. There couldn't have been any reason."
"When you are as old as I am, you will stop looking for reasons in the way people act. In the first place, there generally aren't any, and in the second place, when reasons are there, they don't show up on the surface."
"But she knew I couldn't bear him."
"If you'd liked him, she wouldn't have done it. She'd have been trying too hard to keep you apart."
"You mean, then, that she did it just to hurt me?"
Lifting her slate-coloured eyes, the old lady brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead. "I don't believe Angelica ever did a thing in her life just to hurt anybody," she answered slowly.
"Then you wouldn't think for an instant——"
"No, I shouldn't think for an instant that she did it just for that. There was some other motive. I don't reckon Angelica would ever do you any harm," she concluded with a charitable intonation, "unless there was something she wanted to gain by it." From her manner she might have been making a point in Angelica's favour.
"But even then? What could she possibly gain?"
"Well, I expect David found out that Roane had been here—that he had been motoring with you—and Angelica was obliged to find some excuse. You see, responsibility is one of the things Angelica can't stand, and whoever happens to be about when it is forced on her, usually bears it. Sometimes, you know, when she throws it off like that, it chances to light by accident just in the proper place. The strangest thing about Angelica, and I can never get used to it, is the way she so often turns out to be right. Look at the way it all happened in Letty's illness. Now, Angelica always stuck out that Letty wouldn't die, and, as it turned out, she didn't. I declare, it looks, somehow, as if not only people, but circumstances as well, played straight into her hands."
"You mean she told him that about me just to spare herself?" Caroline's voice was angry and incredulous.
"That's how it was, I reckon. I don't believe she would have done it for anything else on earth. You see, my dear, she was brought up that way—most American girls are when they are as pretty as Angelica—and the way you're raised seems to become a habit with you. At home the others always sacrificed themselves for her, until she got into the habit of thinking that she was the centre of the universe, and that the world owed her whatever she took a fancy for. Even as a girl, Roane used to say that her feelings were just inclinations, and I expect that's been true of her ever since. She can want things worse than anybody I've ever seen, but apart from wanting, I reckon she's about as cold as a fish at heart. It may sound mean of me to say it, but I've known Cousin Abby to sit up at night and sew her eyes out, so the girl might have a new dress for a party, and all the time Angelica not saying a word to prevent it. There never was a better mother than Cousin Abby, and I've always thought it was being so good that killed her."
"But even now I can't understand," said Caroline thoughtfully. "I felt that she really liked me."
"Oh, she likes you well enough." Mrs. Timberlake was counting some dropped stitches. "She wasn't thinking about you a minute. I doubt if she ever in her life thought as long as that about anybody except herself. The curious part is," she supplemented presently, "that considering how shallow she is, so few people ever seem to see through her. It took David five years, and then he had to be married to her, to find out what I could have told him in ten minutes. Most of it is the way she looks, I expect. It is so hard for a man to understand that every woman who parts her hair in the middle isn't a Madonna."
"I knew she was hard and cold," confessed Caroline sadly, "but I thought she was good. I never dreamed she could be bad at heart."
Mrs. Timberlake shook her head. "She isn't bad, my dear, that's where you make a mistake. I believe she'd let herself be burned at the stake before she'd overstep a convention. When it comes to that," she commented with acrid philosophy, "I reckon all the bad women on earth could never do as much harm as some good ones—the sort of good ones that destroy everything human and natural that comes near them. We can look out for the bad ones—but I've come to believe that there's a certain kind of virtue that's no better than poison. It poisons everything it touches because all the humanity has passed out of it, just like one of those lovely poisonous flowers that spring up now and then in a swamp. Nothing that's made of flesh and blood could live by it, and yet it flourishes as if it were as harmless as a lily. I know I'm saying what I oughtn't to, but I saw you were getting hurt, and I wanted to spare you. It isn't that Angelica is wicked, you know, I wouldn't have you believe that for a minute. She is sincere as far as her light goes, and if I hadn't seen David's life destroyed through and through, I suppose I shouldn't feel anything like so bitterly. But I've watched all his trust in things and his generous impulses—there was never a man who started life with finer impulses than David—wither up, one after one, just as if they were blighted."
The sunset had faded slowly, and while Caroline sat there in the big chair, gazing out on the wintry garden, it seemed to her that the advancing twilight had become so thick that it stifled her. Then immediately she realized that it was not the twilight, but the obscurity in her own mind, that oppressed and enveloped her with these heavy yet intangible shadows. Her last illusion had perished, and she could not breathe because the smoke of its destruction filled the air. At the moment it seemed to her that life could never be exactly what it was before—that the glow and magic of some mysterious enchantment had vanished. Even the garden, with its frozen vegetation and its forlorn skeletons of summer shrubs emerging from mounds of snow, appeared to have undergone a sinister transformation from the ideal back to the actuality. This was the way she had felt years ago, on that autumn day at The Cedars.
"And he never defended himself—never once," she said after a silence.
"He never will, that's not his way," rejoined Mrs. Timberlake. "She knows he never will, and I sometimes think that makes matters worse."
As Caroline brooded over this, her face cleared until the light and animation returned. "I know him better," she murmured presently, "but everything else has become suddenly crooked."
"I've thought that at times before I stopped trying to straighten out things." Mrs. Timberlake had put down the muffler, and while she spoke, she smoothed it slowly and carefully over her knee. In the wan light her face borrowed a remote and visionary look, like a face gazing down through the thin, cold air of the heights. She had passed beyond mutable things, this look seemed to say, and had attained at last the bleak security of mind that is never disappointed because it expects nothing. "I reckon that's why I got into the habit of keeping my mouth shut, just because I was worrying myself sick all the time thinking how different things ought to be." A chill and wintry cheerfulness flickered across the arid surface of her manner. "But I don't now. I know there isn't any use, and I get a good deal of pleasure just out of seeing what will happen. Now, you take David and Angelica. I'm wondering all the time how it will turn out. David is a big man, but even if Angelica isn't smart, she's quick enough about getting anything she wants, and I believe she is beginning to want something she hasn't got."
"When I came I didn't like Mr. Blackburn." Though the barriers of the old lady's reserve had fallen, Caroline was struggling still against an instinct of loyalty.
"Well, I didn't like him once." Mrs. Timberlake had risen, and was looking down with her pitiful, tormented smile. "It took me a long time to find out the truth, and I want to spare you all I suffered while I was finding it out. I sometimes think that nobody's experience is worth a row of pins to any one else, but all the same I am trying to help you by telling you what I know. David has his faults. I'm not saying that he is a saint; but he has been the best friend I ever had, and I'm going to stand up for him, Angelica or no Angelica. There are some men, my poor father used to say, that never really show what they are because they get caught by life and twisted out of shape, and I reckon David is one of these. Father said, though I don't like heathen terms, that it was the fate of a man like David always to appear in the wrong and yet always to be in the right. That's a queer way of putting it, but father was a great scholar—he translated the "Iliad" before he was thirty—and I reckon he knew what he was talking about. Life was against those men, he told me once, but God was for them, and they never failed to win in the end." With the last words she faltered and broke off abruptly. "I have been talking a great deal more than I ought to, but when once I begin I never know when to stop. Angelica must have come home long ago." Bending over she laid her cheek against Caroline's hair. "You won't think of going away now, will you?"
Surprised and touched by the awkward caress, Caroline looked up gratefully. "No, I shan't think of going away now."