THE COMING OF MISS CAROLINE
She came to us auspiciously on a day in the first week of June.
Mistress Caroline Lansdale, a one-time belle of the Old Dominion, relict
of the late Colonel Jere Lansdale, C.S.A., legislator and duellist,
whose devotion to her in the days of their courtship had been the talk
of two states. Not less notable than his eloquence in the forum, his
skill in the duello, had been the determined fervor with which he knelt
at her feet. And I waited no more than a hundred seconds in her presence
to applaud his discernment.
I had pictured an old woman--some aged trifle of an elder day, sad,
withered, devitalized, intemperately reminiscent--steeped in traditions
that would leave her formidable, and impracticable as a friend to me. I
had fancied her thus, from Clem's fragmentary and chance descriptions
and my own knowledge of what she should be by all laws of the probable;
and she was not as I had evolved her.
The day she came was one of Little Arcady's best; quite all that her
anxious servitor could have wished,--a day of summer's first abundance,
when our green-bordered streets basked in a tempered sunlight, and our
trim white cottages nestled coolly back of their flower gardens. Harried
alien as she was, she would be welcomed with smiles, and I was glad for
her sake and Clem's when I hurried home to dress for that first dinner
with her.
On my way across the lawn at six-thirty I picked a bunch of the newly
opened yellow roses as a peace offering, should one be needed. Clem, in
his most formal dress, received me ceremoniously at the door, his look
betraying only the faintest, formalest acknowledgment of having ever
encountered mine before. With a superb bow toward the drawing-room and
in tones stiffly magnificent, he announced, "Mistah Calvin Blake." It
was excellently done, but I knew he had rehearsed the "Mistah."
Then a woman rose from one of the deep old chairs to offer me her hand,
and a soft quick laugh came as she perceived my difficulty, for my one
hand held the roses. These she gathered gracefully into her left hand,
while her right fell into mine with a swift little pressure as she bade
me welcome.
"Clem has told me of you, Mr. Blake. I feel that you are one of us. Let
me thank you at once for the consideration you have shown him."
In the half light I hesitated awkwardly enough to speak her name, for I
felt that this could not be the mother of Little Miss. Rather was it the
daughter herself. I stammered words that must have revealed my
uncertainty, for again she laughed, and then she ordered lights.
Clem came soft-footedly with a branching candelabra, which he placed on
the round-topped old table by which she had been sitting. She moved a
step to where the soft lights glowed up into her face, and with mock
seriousness stood to be surveyed fairly.
"There, Mr. Blake! You see I confess all my years."
And I saw the truth, that she loitered gracefully among the vague and
pleasant fifties. But then she did a thing which would have been
injudicious in most women of her years. Her hand, still holding my
roses, went up to her face, and her cheek glowed dusky and pink against
the yellow petals. I saw that she rightly appraised her own daring and
felt free to say:--
"You _see_! My confusion was inevitable. Not one of those candles can be
spared if I am to believe you are Miss Caroline."
Again she laughed, revealing now a girlish freshness in the small mouth,
that had somehow lingered to belie the deeper, graver lines about her
dark eyes. As she still regarded me with that smiling, waiting lift of
the short upper lip, I called out:--
"More lights, Clem! I need all you have."
Whereat Miss Caroline fell into her chair with a marvellous blush, an
undeniable darkening of the pink on cheeks that were in texture like the
finest, sheerest lawn.
Never thereafter could I refuse credence to tales, of which many came to
me, exposing Miss Caroline as an able and relentless coquette. Nor
could I fail to understand how the late Colonel Jere Lansdale would have
found need to be a duellist after he became her lover, even had he
aforetime been unskilled in that difficult art.
As she chatted, chiefly of her journey, I falsely pretended to listen,
whereas I only stared and in spirit was prostrate before her. Mere
kneeling at her feet savored too nearly of arrogance. I felt the need to
be a spread rug in her presence. She sat back in the chair that embraced
her loosely, a slight figure with a small head, on which the heavy
strands of whitening hair seemed only a powdered lie above the curiously
girlish face. A tiny black patch or two on the face, I thought, would
have made this illusion perfect. And yet when she did not laugh, or in
some little silence of recollection, the deeper lines stood out, and I
could see that sorrow had long known its way to her face. It even lurked
now back of her eyes, and I knew that she tried to keep her face lighted
for me so that I should not detect it. She succeeded admirably, but the
smile could not always be there, and ghosts of her dead years came
stealthily to haunt her face as surely as the smile went.
When Clem, with an air of having had word from a numerous kitchen crew,
stood before us and bowed out, "Miss Cahline, dinneh is suhved!" I gave
her my arm with a feeling of vast relief. Not only was Miss Caroline an
abiding joy, but apprehension as to my modest complicity in her late
distress had, too, evidently been groundless. She had once, with what
seemed to be an almost artificial politeness, asked me about our timber
supply and the state of the lumber market; queries to which I had
replied with an assumption of interest equally artificial, for I was
ignorant of both topics, and not even remotely concerned about either.
Seated at the table, which Clem had arrayed with a faultless artistry, I
promptly demanded the removal of a tall piece of cut glass and its
burden of carnations, asserting that both glass and flowers might be
well enough in their way, but that I could regard them only as a blank
wall of exasperating ugliness while they interrupted a view of my
hostess. Whereat I was again regaled with that imcomparable blush.
Clem served a soup that had been two days in the making and was worth
the time. But even ere the stain had faded from the cheeks of my
hostess, cheeks of slightly crumpled roseleaf, another look flashed the
smile from her eyes--a quick, firm, woman look of suffering and
defiance.
She had raised her glass, and I mechanically did the same.
"Mr. Blake, let us drink standing!--we women earned the right to stand
with you."
A little puzzled, I stood up to face her, as Clem pulled back her chair.
One hand on the table, the other reaching her slender stemmed glass
aloft, she leaned toward me with a look of singular vehemence.
"To our murdered brothers and husbands and sons, Mr. Blake! To our lost
leaders and our deathless lost cause! To Jefferson Davis and Robert
Edmund Lee! To the Confederate States of America!"
A black wind seemed to blow across the face of her servitor's fluttering
eyelids. But I drank loyally to Mrs. Caroline Lansdale and whatsoever
that woman would. I could see that Clem exhaled a deep breath. How long
he had held it I know not.
We resumed our seats, and the dinner went forward with my hostess again
herself. It was a dinner not heavy but choice, a repast upon which Clem
had magically worked all his spells. There was a bass that had nosed the
river's current that morning, two pullets cut off in the very dawn of
adolescence, and a mysteriously perfect pastry whose secret I had never
been able to wring from him beyond the uninforming and obvious enough
data that it contained "some sugah an' a little spicin's."
Having for my luncheon that day suffered an up-to-date dinner at
Budds's, I felt a genuine craving for food; yet the spell of my hostess
was such that I left her table ahungered.
Again there was an inexplicable reference from her to the timber and
sawed-lumber interests of the Little Country, and the circumstance that
another black wind seemed to shiver the eyelids of Clem lent no light
to the mystery of it. But then, as if some recondite duty to me had been
safely performed, she talked to me of herself, of days when the youth of
the Old Dominion had been covetous of her smiles, of nightly triumphs in
ball and rout, of gay seasons at the nation's capital, amid the fashion
and beauty and wit of Pierce's administration and of Buchanan's, of
rounds of calls made in her calash, of bewitching gowns she had worn, of
theatres and musicales and teas and embassy receptions, in a day when
Harriet Lane was mistress of the White House.
For my pleasing she laughed her sprightly way through memories of that
romantic past, when she danced and chattered in the fulness of her
bellehood, bringing out a multitude of treasured mementoes, compliments
she had compelled, witticisms she had prompted, pranks she had played,
delectable repasts she had eaten at Lady Napier's or another's, the
splendor of pageants she had witnessed. And though she was back in an
elder day, she glowed young as she talked, whether recalling official
solemnities or a once-cherished gown of embroidered tulle, caught up
with bunches of grapes. The girl's mouth was her's--fresh and full,
unlined by care.
It was not until she talked of later, younger days that her face took on
an old look.
"When our federated states rose up in their might," was a phrase that
brought the change. Thereafter she spoke in subdued tones of a time more
eventful than romantic, but still absorbing.
She remembered the words in which she felicitated General Pope Walker
for having issued the order to fire on Sumter. She gave details of the
privation that Richmond on her seven hills had suffered in the latter
days, and she made plain why their women should rise with their men to
drink certain toasts; how they, too, had sacrificed and toiled and
suffered with the same loyal tenacity. She mentioned "the present
government" casually, as the affair of a day; and spoke of "Mr. Lincoln,
their Northern President," in a tone implying confidence that I shared
her feeling for him.
As we went back to the drawing-room for coffee, she summed up herself to
me, though she thought to sum up more than herself.
"They swept us with the besom of war, Mr. Blake, and they
overwhelmed--but they could not subjugate us."
As she spoke, my eyes caught for the first time a portrait that hung on
the wall back of her. It was the portrait of one dark but fair, with
shoulders of a girlish slenderness all but thin, with eyes of glowing
dusk and a half-smile upon her lips. It was like my hostess in a fashion
of line and color, and yet enough unlike her so that I knew it must be
the daughter. The face was a shade narrower of chin, a bit longer, and
in some obscure differing of the features there was an effect of more
poise, almost of a maturer dignity, so that while I divined it was the
face of her daughter, it would seem to have been better planned for the
face of her mother.
She followed my eyes to the picture, and her face was still almost
stern from her last speech, though it is true that the sternness was a
dimpled sternness, for the chin of my hostess was rounded.
"They overwhelmed us, Mr. Blake,--my daughter there, and me, and God
alone has counted how many other wretched women. Her they struck a
double blow--they killed the two men she loved. One was her father, but
she flew to the other. She found her picture in his dead hands. Our
young men were apt to die in that fashion; and when she put it back to
be buried with him, her eyes were dry. Even under her double blow, she
was stronger than I. She has been stronger ever since, but she suffered
more than I was made to. Oh, it was a fine thing for them to do!"
Her voice rose at the last into a little trembling gust of passion, and
I saw again the spirit that gave those women the right to stand with the
men. She recovered herself quickly, and the girl in her smiled upon me
again.
"You must overlook my forgetfulness. I shall not forget often,
especially now that I am among these murderous fanatics. But I was tired
to-night, and I was so glad when I knew I could talk to you freely."
Her eyes were upon me in friendly unreserve, in confident appeal.
In the face of what I should have felt, I was ashamed at that moment,
and in the nervousness of hidden guilt I handled the minute coffee cup
awkwardly. Clem, who must have been equally nervous, stepped to right
the thing in its saucer, with "Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah!"
From across the table I knew, without raising my eyes, that his mistress
glanced up at Clem in quick astonishment, then that her eyes were
fastened upon my face. I still regarded the coffee interestedly, but I
knew that I myself blushed now and I suspected that my hostess was pale.
"Major?" she began questioningly, then more decidedly, "_Major_ Blake?"
I raised my eyes to hers and nodded idiotically.
She laughed a little laugh that was icy in its politeness.
"How stupid of me, and now I must ask your pardon for all my tirade, for
my blasphemies, and for that monstrous toast I--really--"
She shot a look at Clem, under which he blanched visibly, then her eyes
were again upon me and she smiled with a rare art.
"Really, you will overlook an old woman's weakness."
It was the inimical, remote, icy superiority of her tone that nettled
me--perhaps her implied assumption that I would not know it for such.
But also I felt curiously stricken by that swift withdrawal of her
confidence, for Mrs. Caroline Lansdale had won me by her laugh and blush
of ancient girlishness. Further, I would not now be hurt by any woman,
though she were ten times my years, without a show of defence.
I arose as Clem hastily fled from the room.
"Miss Caroline--" I waited for the fine little brows to go up at that. I
had not long to wait.
"I shall positively never call you anything else but Miss Caroline while
you permit me to address you at all--understand it--I've associated with
your boy too long. Well, I did do four years of fighting, and I was
mustered out with the rank of Major. You might as well know it now as
later. You'll have longer to forget it. I wish I could forget it myself.
Not the fact, for I should fight again as long and try to fight harder
in the same cause, but the hellishness of it--the damnable, inhuman
obscenity of it--I should like to forget. I never said so before, Miss
Caroline,--there was no one to say it to,--but it made me old before my
time. Why, I could almost be a son of yours, if you will pardon that
minor brutality, and the thing is aging me to this day. I helped to kill
your young men and your old men, but you ought to know that I didn't do
it for holiday sport. The first one of your men I saw dead lay alone by
the roadside, a boy, foolishly young, with a tired face that was still
smiling. He'd fallen there as if sleep had overtaken him on the march.
Our column had halted, and I went to him. It must have taken a full
minute for me to realize that this was dignified war and not the murder
of a boy in a homely gray uniform. When I did realize it, I was so
weakened that I broke down and cried. I was a private then. I covered
his face, and got up strong enough to assault two other privates who had
found my snivelling funny. One of them went to the field hospital, and I
went under arrest when I'd finished with the other. You ought to know,
Miss Caroline, that the sight of thousands of your other dead never
moved me to any merriment. I tried to be a good soldier, but I felt the
death pains of every fallen man I saw. I didn't stop to note the color
of his uniform. Miss Caroline--"
I waited until I had made her look at me.
"The war is over, you know. Suppose you forget me as a soldier and take
me as a man. Really, I believe we ought to know each other better."
Clem had once found occasion to say, "When Miss Cahline tek th' notion
to shine huh eyes up, she sho' is a highly illuminous puhsonality."
I saw then what he meant, for Miss Caroline had "shined" her eyes, and
they flooded me with a distracting medley of lights. I thought she
struggled very uncertainly with herself. Her eyes shifted from my face
to the empty sleeve. Twice before that evening--I remembered it had been
when she spoke so enigmatically of the lumber industry--her eyes had
rested there briefly, discreetly, but in all sympathy. Now the look was
different. It wavered. At one instant I seemed to read regret that I had
come off so well--her eyes flickered suggestively to my remaining arm.
"Be fair," I said; "did I not drink your toast?"
I thought she wavered at this, for a blush deeper than all the others
suffused her.
"Besides," I continued warningly, "you are within the enemy's lines now,
and you may find me a help. Come!" and I held out my hand.
Very slowly she put her own within it. I noticed that it was still
plump, the fine skin not yet withered.
"You are very kind, Major Blake. I had been misinformed, or you should
have had no occasion to think me rude."
It was then that I wished definitely to shake Miss Caroline.
"Come, come," I said, "you are not giving me what you gave at first. I'm
not to be put off that way, you know. If I call you Miss Caroline,--and
I've sworn to call you nothing else,--you must be Miss Caroline."
She searched my face eagerly,--then--
"You _shall_ call me Miss Caroline--but remember, sir, it makes you my
servant." She smiled again, without the icy reserve this time, whereat I
was glad--but back of the smile I could see that she felt a bitter
homesickness of the new place.
"Your most obedient servant," I said. "You have another slave, Miss
Caroline, another that refuses manumission--another bit of personal
property, clumsy but willing."
"Thank you, Major, I need your kindness more than I might seem to need
it. Good night!" and even then she gave me a rose, with the same
coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to
think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her
weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed
her hand. I left her wilting in the big chair, staring hard into the
fireplace that Clem had rilled with summer green things.
When my fellow-chattel appeared next morning with my coffee, he was
embarrassed. With guile he strove to be talkative about matters of no
consequence. But this availed him not.
"Clem," I said frigidly, "tell me just what you said to Mrs. Lansdale
about me."
He paltered, shifting on his feet, his brow contracted in perplexity, as
if I had propounded some intricate trifle of the higher mathematics.
"Huh! Wha--what's that yo'-all is a-sayin', Mahstah Majah?"
"Stop that, now! I needn't tell you twice what I said. Out with it!"
"Well, seh, Mahstah Majah, of co'se, yo'-all tole me to fix it man own
way, an' Ah lay Ah'd do it raghtly--an' so Miss Cahline is ve'y busy
goin' th'oo th' rooms an' spressin' huhse'f how grand evehthing suttinly
do look an' so fothe an' so on, an' sh' ain't payin' much attention--Ah
reckon sh' ain't huhd raghtly--"
"Clem--the Bible says, 'How forceful are right words!'"
He stopped at my look, despaired, and became succinct.
"Well, seh, Ah jes' think Ah brek it to huh easy-lahk, by degrees, so Ah
sais yo' is a genaman of wahm South'n lahkings. Ah sais yo' been so hot
fo' th' South all th'oo that theh wah that evehbody yeh'bouts despised
an' reviled you. An' she sais why ain't yo' gone faght fo' th' South ef
yo'-all so hot about it, an' Ah sais yo' was eageh to go, but yo' been
in the timbeh business, an' one day yo' got rash about yo' saw-mill, an'
th' ole buzz-saw jes' natchelly tuk off yo' ahm, so's yo' couldn't go to
th' wah. Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah--Ah laid Ah'd brek it grajally--an' Ah
suttingly did have that lady a-thinkin' ve'y highly of yo' at th' time
of yo' entrance, seh,--yes, seh!"