The Builders

"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.

"Why, Anna Jeannette!" exclaimed the young man, with genial mockery. "This is a pleasure which I thought your worthy Bluebeard had forbidden me!"

"Get in, and I'll take you for a little drive. This is Miss Meade. You met her that night at Briarlay."

"The angel in the house! I remember." He smiled boldly into Caroline's face. "Well, Letty, I'd like to trade my luck for yours. Look at your poor uncle, and tell me honestly if I am not the one who needs to be nursed. Lend her to me?"

"I can't lend you Miss Meade, Uncle Roane," replied the child seriously, "because she plays with me; but if you really need somebody, I reckon I can let you have Mammy Riah for a little while."

Roane laughed while he bent over and pinched Letty's cheek. That he had a bad reputation, Caroline was aware, and though she was obliged to admit that he looked as if he deserved it, she could not deny that he possessed the peculiar charm which one of the old novels at The Cedars described as "the most dangerous attribute of a rake." "I could never like him, yet I can understand how some women might fall in love with him," she thought.

"No, I decline, with thanks, your generous offer," Roane was saying. "If I cannot be nursed by an angel, I will not be nursed by a witch."

Beneath his insolent, admiring gaze a lovely colour flooded Caroline's cheeks. In the daylight his manner seemed to her more offensive than ever, and her impulsive recognition of his charm was followed by an instantaneous recoil.

"I don't like witches," said Letty. "Do you think Miss Meade is an angel, Uncle Roane?"

"From first impressions," retorted Roane flippantly, "I should say that she might be."

As Caroline turned away indignantly, Angelica leaned over and gently patted her hand. "You mustn't mind him, my dear, that's just Roane's way," she explained.

"But I do mind," replied Caroline, with spirit. "I think he is very impertinent."

"Think anything you please, only think of me," rejoined Roane, with a gallant air.

"You bad boy!" protested Angelica. "Can't you see that Miss Meade is provoked with you?"

"No woman, Anna Jeannette, is provoked by a sincere and humble admiration. Are you ignorant of the feminine heart?"

"If you won't behave yourself, Roane, you must get out of the car. And for heaven's sake, stop calling me by that name!"

"My dear sister, I thought it was yours."

"It is not the one I'm known by." She was clearly annoyed. "By the way, have you got your costume for the tableaux? You were so outrageous at Mrs. Miller's the other night that if they could find anybody else, I believe that they would refuse to let you take part. Why are you so dreadful, Roane?"

"They require me, not my virtue, sister. Go over the list of young men in your set, and tell me if there is another Saint George of England among them?"

His air of mocking pride was so comic that a smile curved Caroline's lips, while Angelica commented seriously, "Well, you aren't nearly so good-looking as you used to be, and if you go on drinking much longer, you will be a perfect fright."

"How she blights my honourable ambition!" exclaimed Roane to Caroline. "Even the cherished career of a tableau favourite is forbidden me."

"Mother is going to be Peace," said Letty, with her stately manner of making conversation, "and she will look just like an angel. Her dress has come all the way from New York, Uncle Roane, and they sent a wreath of leaves to go on her head. If I don't get sick, Miss Meade is going to take me to see her Friday night."

"Well, if I am brother to Peace, Letty, I must be good. Miss Meade, how do you like Richmond?"

"I love it," answered Caroline, relieved by his abrupt change of tone. "The people are so nice. There is Mrs. Colfax now. Isn't she beautiful?"

They were running into Monument Avenue, and Daisy Colfax had just waved to them from a passing car.

"Yes, I proposed to her twice," replied Roane, gazing after Daisy's rose-coloured veil which streamed gaily behind her. "But she could not see her way, unfortunately, to accept me. I am not sure, between you and me, that she didn't go farther and fare worse with old Robert. I might have broken her heart, but I should never have bored her. Speaking of Robert, Anna Jeannette, was he really the author of that slashing editorial in the Free-Press?"

"Everybody thinks he wrote it, but it doesn't sound a bit like him. Wasn't it dreadful, Roane?"

"Oh, well, nothing is fair in politics, but the plum," he returned. "By the way, is it true about Blackburn's vaulting ambition, or is it just newspaper stuff?"

"Of course I know nothing positively, Roane, for David never talks to me about his affairs; but he seems to get more and more distracted about politics every day that he lives. I shouldn't like to have it repeated, yet I can't help the feeling that there is a great deal of truth in what the article says about his disloyalty to the South."

"Well, I shouldn't lose any sleep over that if I were you. No man ever took a step forward on this earth that he didn't move away from something that the rest of the world thought he ought to have stood by. There isn't much love lost between your husband and me, but it isn't a political difference that divides us. He has the bad taste not to admire my character."

"I know you never feel seriously about these things," said Angelica sadly, "but I always remember how ardently dear father loved the Democratic Party. He used to say that he could forgive a thief sooner than a traitor."

"Great Scott! What is there left to be a traitor to?" demanded Roane, disrespectfully. "A political machine that grinds out jobs isn't a particularly patriotic institution. I am not taking sides with Blackburn, my dear sister, only I'd be darned before I'd have acted the part of your precious Colfax. It may be good politics, but it's pretty bad sport, I should think. It isn't playing the game."

"I suppose Robert feels that things are really going too far," observed Angelica feebly, for her arguments always moved in a circle. "He believes so strongly, you know, in the necessity of keeping the South solid. Of course he may not really have attacked David," she added quickly. "There are other editors."

"I am sure there is not one bit of truth in that article," said Caroline suddenly, and her voice trembled with resentment. "I know Mr. Blackburn doesn't oppress his men because we've just been talking with the mother of a man who works in his plant. As for the rest, I was listening to him this afternoon, and I believe he is right." Her eyes were glowing as she finished, and her elusive beauty – the beauty of spirit, not of flesh – gave her features the rare and noble grace of a marble Diana. Her earnestness had suddenly lifted her above them. Though she was only a dark, slender woman, with a gallant heart, she seemed to Roane as remote and royal as a goddess. He liked the waving line of hair on her clear forehead, where the light gathered in a benediction; he liked her firm red lips, with their ever-changing play of expression, and he liked above all the lovely lines of her figure, which was at once so strong and so light, so feminine and so spirited. It was the beauty of character, he told himself, and, by Jove, in a woman, he liked character!

"Well, he has a splendid champion, lucky dog!" he exclaimed, with his eyes on her face.

For an instant Caroline wavered as Angelica's gaze, full of pained surprise, turned toward her; then gathering her courage, she raised her lashes and met Roane's admiring stare with a candid and resolute look.

"No, it is not that," she said, "but I can't bear to see people unjust to any one."

"You are right," ejaculated Roane impulsively, and he added beneath his breath, "By George, I hope you'll stand up for me like that when I am knocked."

CHAPTER X

Other Discoveries

IN the morning Letty awoke with a sore throat, and before night she had developed a cold which spent itself in paroxysms of coughing. "Oh, Miss Meade, make me well before Friday," she begged, as Caroline undressed her. "Isn't Friday almost here now?"

"In three days, dear. You must hurry and get over this cold."

"Do you think I am going to be well, Mammy?" They were in the nursery at Letty's bedtime, and Mammy Riah was heating a cup of camphorated oil over the fire.

"You jes' wait twel I git dish yer' red flan'l on yo' chist, en hit's gwinter breck up yo' cough toreckly," replied Mammy Riah reassuringly. "I'se done soused hit right good in dis hot ile."

"I'll do anything you want. I'll swallow it right down if it will make me well."

"Dar ain't nuttin dat'll breck up a cole quick'n hot ile," said the old woman, "lessen hit's a hot w'iskey toddy."

"Well, you can't give her that," interposed Caroline quickly, "if she isn't better in the morning I'm going to send for Doctor Boland. I've done everything I could think of. Now, jump into bed Letty, dear, and let me cover you up warm before I open the window. I am going to sleep on the couch in the corner."

"Hit pears to me like you en Marse David is done gone clean 'stracted 'bout fresh a'r," grumbled Mammy Riah, as she drew a strip of red flannel out of the oil. "Dar ain' nuttin in de worl' de matter wid dis chile but all dis night a'r you's done been lettin' in on 'er w'ile she wuz sleepin'. Huh! I knows jes ez much about night a'r ez enny er yo' reel doctahs, en I ain' got er bit er use fur hit, I ain't. Hit's a woner to me you all ain' done kilt 'er betweenst you, you and Marse David en Miss Angy, 'en yo' reel doctah. Ef'n you ax me, I 'ud let down all dem winders, en stuff up de chinks wid rags twel Letty was peart enuff ter be outer dat baid."

The danger in night air had been a source of contention ever since the first frost of the season, and though science had at last carried its point, Caroline felt that the victory had cost her both the respect and the affection of the old negress.

"I ain' never riz noner my chillun on night a'r," she muttered rebelliously, while she brought the soaked flannel over to Letty's bed.

"I hope it will cure me," said the child eagerly, and she added after a moment in which Mammy Riah zealously applied the oil and covered her with blankets, "Do you think I'd better have all the night air shut out as she says, Miss Meade?"

"No, darling," answered Caroline firmly. "Fresh air will cure you quicker than anything else."

But, in spite of the camphorated oil and the wide-open windows, Letty was much worse in the morning. Her face was flushed with fever, and she refused her breakfast, when Mammy Riah brought it, because as she said, "everything hurt her." Even her passionate interest in the tableaux had evaporated, and she lay, inert and speechless, in her little bed, while her eyes followed Caroline wistfully about the room.

"I telephoned for Doctor Boland the first thing," said Caroline to the old woman, "and now I am going to speak to Mrs. Blackburn. Will you sit with Letty while I run down for a cup of coffee?"

"Ef'n I wuz you, I wouldn't wake Miss Angy," replied the negress. "Hit'll mek 'er sick jes ez sho' ez you live. You'd better run along down en speak ter Marse David."

"I'll tell him at breakfast, but oughtn't Letty's mother to know how anxious I am?"

"She's gwine ter know soon enuff," responded Mammy Riah, "but dey don' low none un us ter rouse 'er twell she's hed 'er sleep out. Miss Angy is one er dem nervous sort, en she gits 'stracted moughty easy."

In the dining-room, which was flooded with sunshine, Caroline found the housekeeper and Blackburn, who had apparently finished his breakfast, and was glancing over a newspaper. There was a pile of half-opened letters by his plate, and his face wore the look of animation which she associated with either politics or business.

"I couldn't leave Letty until Mammy Riah came," she explained in an apologetic tone. "Her cold is so much worse that I've telephoned for the doctor."

At this Blackburn folded the paper and pushed back his chair. "How long has she had it?" he inquired anxiously. "I thought she wasn't well yesterday." There was the tender, protecting sound in his voice that always came with the mention of Letty.

"She hasn't been herself for several days, but this morning she seems suddenly worse. I am afraid it may be pneumonia."

"Have you said anything to Angelica?" asked Mrs. Timberlake, and her tone struck Caroline as strained and non-committal.

"Mammy Riah wouldn't let me wake her. I am going to her room as soon as her bell rings."

"Well, she's awake. I've just sent up her breakfast." The housekeeper spoke briskly. "She has to be in town for some rehearsals."

Blackburn had gone out, and Caroline sat alone at the table while she hastily swallowed a cup of coffee. It was a serene and cloudless day, and the view of the river had never looked so lovely as it did through the falling leaves and over the russet sweep of autumn grasses. October brooded with golden wings over the distance.

"I had noticed that Letty had a sort of hacking cough for three days," said Mrs. Timberlake from the window, "but I didn't think it would amount to anything serious."

"Yes, I tried to cure it, and last night Mammy Riah doctored her. The child is so delicate that the slightest ailment is dangerous. It seems strange that she should be so frail. Mr. Blackburn looks strong, and his wife was always well until recently, wasn't she?"

For a moment Mrs. Timberlake stared through the window at a sparrow which was perched on the topmost branch of a juniper. "I never saw any one hate to have a child as much as Angelica did," she said presently in her dry tones. "She carried on like a crazy woman about it. Some women are like that, you know."

"Yes, I know, but she is devoted to Letty now."

The housekeeper did not reply, and her face grew greyer and harsher than ever.