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THE BUILDERS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ANCIENT LAW, THE
THE BATTLE-GROUND, THE
THE DELIVERANCE, THE
THE FREEMAN AND OTHER POEMS, THE
THE LIFE AND GABRIELLA
MILLER OF OLD CHURCH, THE
THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN, THE
THE VIRGINIA
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE, THE
THE WHEEL OF LIFE
THE BUILDERS
BY
ELLEN GLASGOW
[Illustration: colophon]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
CONTENTS
BOOK FIRST
APPEARANCES
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CAROLINE 3
II. THE TIME 20
III. BRIARLAY 25
IV. ANGELICA 44
V. THE FIRST NIGHT 59
VI. LETTY 70
VII. CAROLINE MAKES DISCOVERIES 84
VIII. BLACKBURN 102
IX. ANGELICA'S CHARITY 122
X. OTHER DISCOVERIES 142
XI. THE SACRED CULT 165
XII. THE WORLD'S VIEW OF AN UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE 176
XIII. INDIRECT INFLUENCE 194
BOOK SECOND
REALITIES
I. IN BLACKBURN'S LIBRARY 219
II. READJUSTMENTS 231
III. MAN'S WOMAN 245
IV. THE MARTYR 257
V. THE CHOICE 268
VI. ANGELICA'S TRIUMPH 281
VII. COURAGE 293
VIII. THE CEDARS 310
IX. THE YEARS AHEAD 324
X. THE LIGHT ON THE ROAD 339
XI. THE LETTER 348
XII. THE VISION 359
BOOK FIRST
APPEARANCES
THE BUILDERS
CHAPTER I
CAROLINE
The train was late that day, and when the old leather mail pouch was
brought in, dripping wet, by Jonas, the negro driver, Mrs. Meade put
down the muffler she was knitting, and received it reluctantly.
"At least there aren't any bills at this time of the month," she
observed, with the manner of one who has been designed by Providence to
repel disaster.
While she unbuckled the clammy straps, her full, round face, which was
still fresh and pretty in spite of her seventy years, shone like an
auspicious moon in the dusky glow of the fire. Since wood was scarce,
and this particular strip of southside Virginia grew poorer with each
year's harvest, the only fire at The Cedars was the one in "the
chamber," as Mrs. Meade's bedroom was called. It was a big, shabby room,
combining, as successfully as its owner, an aspect of gaiety with a
conspicuous absence of comforts. There were no curtains at the windows,
and the rugs, made from threadbare carpets, had faded to indeterminate
patterns; but the cracked mahogany belonged to a good period, and if the
colours had worn dim, they were harmonious and restful. The house,
though scarred, still held to its high standards. The spirit of the
place was the spirit of generous poverty, of cheerful fortitude.
The three girls on the hearthrug, knitting busily for the War Relief
Association, were so much alike in colouring, shape, and feature, that
it was difficult at a casual glance to distinguish Maud, who was almost,
if not quite, a beauty, from Margaret and Diana, who were merely pretty
and intelligent. They were all natural, kind-hearted girls, who had been
trained from infancy to make the best of things and to laugh when they
were hurt. From the days when they had played with ears of corn instead
of dolls, they had acquired ingenuity and philosophy. For Mrs. Meade,
who derived her scant income from a plantation cultivated "on shares" by
negro tenants, had brought up her girls to take life gaily, and to rely
on their own resourcefulness rather than on fortuitous events.
"Here is a nice fat letter for Caroline, and it looks as if it weren't
an advertisement." With one plump hand she held out the letter, while
she handed the dripping mail bag to Jonas. "Bring some wood for the
fire, Jonas, and be sure to shut the door after you."
"Dar ain' no mo' wood, ole Miss."
For an instant Mrs. Meade stopped to think. "Well, the garden fence is
falling down by the smoke-house. Split up some of the rails. Here is
your letter, Caroline."
A woman's figure, outlined against the rocking branches of an old cedar
beyond the window, turned slowly toward the group on the hearthrug. In
Caroline's movements, while she lingered there for a moment, there was
something gallant and free and spirited, which was a part of the world
outside and the swaying boughs. Though she was older than the three
girls by the fire, she was young with an illusive and indestructible
grace of the soul. At thirty-two, in spite of the stern sweetness about
her thin red lips, and the defiant courage which flashed now and then
from the shadowy pallor of her face, one felt that the flame and ardour
of her glance flowed not from inward peace, but from an unconquerable
and adventurous spirit. Against the grey rain her face seemed the face
of some swiftly changing idea, so expressive of an intangible beauty was
the delicate curve of the cheek and the broad, clear forehead beneath
the dark hair, which grew low in a "widow's peak" above the arched
eyebrows and the vivid blue of the eyes. If there was austerity in the
lines of her mouth, her eyes showed gaiety, humour, and tenderness. Long
ago, before the wreck of her happiness, her father, who had a taste for
the striking in comparisons, had said that Caroline's eyes were like
bluebirds flying.
The letter could wait. She was not interested in letters now, rarely as
they came to her. It was, she knew, only the call to a patient, and
after nearly eight years of nursing, she had learned that nothing varied
the monotonous personalities of patients. They were all alike, united in
their dreadful pathos by the condition of illness--and as a mere matter
of excitement there was little to choose between diphtheria and
pneumonia. Yet if it were a call, of course she would go, and her brief
vacation would be over. Turning away from the firelight, she deferred as
long as possible the descent from her thoughts to the inevitable bondage
of the actuality.
Beyond the window, veiled in rain, she could see the pale quivering
leaves of the aspens on the lawn, and the bend in the cedar avenue,
which led to the big white gate and the private road that ran through
the farm until it joined the turnpike at the crossroads. Ever since she
was born, it seemed to her, for almost thirty-two years, she had watched
like this for something that might come up that long empty road. Even in
the years that she had spent away, she had felt that her soul waited
there, tense and expectant, overlooking the bend in the avenue and the
white gate, and then the road over which "the something different," if
it came at all, must come at last to The Cedars. Nothing, not change,
not work, not travel, could detach the invisible tendrils of her life
from the eager, brooding spirit of the girl who had once watched there
at the window. She had been watching--watching--she remembered, when the
letter that broke her heart had come in the old mail pouch, up the road
beyond, and through the gate, and on into the shadows and stillness of
the avenue. That was how the blow had come to her, without warning,
while she waited full of hope and expectancy and the ardent sweetness of
dreams.
"My poor child, your heart is broken!" her mother had cried through her
tears, and the girl, with the letter still in her hands, had faced her
defiantly.
"Yes, but my head and my hands are whole," she had replied with a laugh.
Then, while the ruins of her happiness lay at her feet, she began
rebuilding her house of life with her head and her hands. She would
accept failure on its own terms, completely, exultantly, and by the very
audacity of her acceptance, she would change defeat into victory. She
would make something out of nothing; she would wring peace, not from
joy, but from the heart of an incredible cruelty; she would build with
courage, not with gladness, but she would build her house toward the
stars.
"There must be something one can live on besides love," she thought, "or
half the world would go famished."
"Come and read your letter, Caroline," called Maud, as she reached the
end of a row. "There isn't anything for the rest of us."
"I am so afraid it is a call, dear," said Mrs. Meade; and then, as
Caroline left the window and passed into the firelight, the old lady
found herself thinking a little vaguely, "Poor child, the hard work is
beginning to show in her face--but she has never been the same since
that unfortunate experience. I sometimes wonder why a just Providence
lets such things happen." Aloud she added, while her beaming face
clouded slightly, "I hope and pray that it isn't anything catching."
As Caroline bent over the letter, the three younger girls put down their
knitting and drew closer, while their charming faces, brown, flushed,
and sparkling, appeared to catch and hold the glow of the flames. They
were so unlike Caroline, that she might have been mistaken, by a
stranger, for a woman of a different race. While she bent there in the
firelight, her slender figure, in its cambric blouse and skirt of faded
blue serge, flowed in a single lovely curve from her drooping dark head
to her narrow feet in their worn russet shoes.
"It is from an old friend of yours, mother," she said presently, "Mrs.
Colfax."
"Lucy Colfax! Why, what on earth is she writing to you about? I hope
there isn't anything wrong with her."
"Read it aloud, Caroline," said Diana. "Mother, this fire will go out
before Jonas can fix it."
"He has to split the wood, dear. Look out on the back porch and see if
you can find some chips. They'll be nice and dry." Mrs. Meade spoke with
authority, for beneath her cheerful smile there was the heart of a
fighter, and like all good fighters, she fought best when she was driven
against the wall. "Now, Caroline, I am listening."
"She wants me to take a case. It sounds queer, but I'll read you what
she says. 'Dear Caroline'--she calls me 'Caroline.'"
"That's natural, dear. We were like sisters, and perhaps she took a
fancy to you the time she met you in Richmond. It would be just like her
to want to do something for you." The sprightly old lady, who was
constitutionally incapable of seeing any prospect in subdued colours,
was already weaving a brilliant tapestry of Caroline's future.
"'Dear Caroline:
"'My cousin, Angelica Blackburn, has asked me to recommend a trained
nurse for her little girl, who is delicate, and I am wondering if you
would care to take the case. She particularly wishes a self-reliant and
capable person, and Doctor Boland tells me you have inherited your
mother's sweet and unselfish nature (I don't see how he knows. Everybody
is unselfish in a sick-room. One has to be.)'"
"Well, I'm sure you have a lovely nature," replied Mrs. Meade tenderly.
"I was telling the girls only yesterday that you never seemed to think
of yourself a minute." In her own mind she added, "Any other girl would
have been embittered by that unfortunate experience" (the phrase
covered Caroline's blighted romance) "and it shows how much character
she has that she was able to go on just as if nothing had happened. I
sometimes think a sense of humour does as much for you as religion."
"'I remember my poor father used to say,'" Caroline read on smoothly,
"'that in hard dollars and cents Carrie Warwick's disposition was worth
a fortune.'"
"That's very sweet of Lucy," murmured Mrs. Meade deprecatingly.
"'As you are the daughter of my old friend, I feel I ought not to let
you take the case without giving you all the particulars. I don't know
whether or not you ever heard of David Blackburn--but your mother will
remember his wife, for she was a Fitzhugh, the daughter of Champ
Fitzhugh, who married Bessie Ludwell.'"
"Of course I remember Bessie. She was my bosom friend at Miss Braxton's
school in Petersburg."
"Let me go on, mother darling. If you interrupt me so often I'll never
get to the interesting part."
"Very well, go on, my dear, but it does seem just like Providence. When
the flour gave out in the barrel last night, I knew something would
happen." For Mrs. Meade had begun life with the shining certainty that
"something wonderful" would happen to her in the future, and since she
was now old and the miracle had never occurred, she had transferred her
hopes to her children. Her optimism was so elastic that it stretched
over a generation without breaking.
"'Mrs. Blackburn--Angelica Fitzhugh, she was--though her name is really
Anna Jeannette, and they called her Angelica as a child because she
looked so like an angel--well, Mrs. Blackburn is the cousin I spoke of,
whose little girl is so delicate.' She is all tangled up, isn't she,
mother?"
"Lucy always wrote like that," said Mrs. Meade. "As a girl she was a
scatterbrain."
"'I do not know exactly what is wrong with the child,'" Caroline resumed
patiently, "'but as long as you may go into the family, I think I ought
to tell you that I have heard it whispered that her father injured her
in a fit of temper when she was small.'"
"How horrible!" exclaimed Diana. "Caroline, you couldn't go there!"
"'She has never been able to play with other children, and Doctor Boland
thinks she has some serious trouble of the spine. I should not call her
a disagreeable child, or hard to manage, just delicate and rather
whining--at least she is whenever I see her, which is not often. Her
mother is one of the loveliest creatures on earth, and I can imagine no
greater privilege than living in the house with her. She is far from
strong, but she seems never to think of her health, and all her time is
devoted to doing good. Doctor Boland was telling me yesterday that he
had positively forbidden her undertaking any more charitable work. He
says her nerves are sensitive, and that if she does not stop and rest
she will break down sooner or later. I cannot help feeling--though of
course I did not say this to him--that her unhappy marriage is the cause
of her ill health and her nervousness. She was married very young, and
they were so desperately poor that it was a choice between marriage and
school teaching. I cannot blame anybody for not wanting to teach school,
especially if they have as poor a head for arithmetic as I have, but if
I had been Angelica, I should have taught until the day of my death
before I should have married David Blackburn. If she had not been so
young it would be hard to find an excuse for her. Of course he has an
immense fortune, and he comes of a good old family in southside
Virginia--your mother will remember his father--but when you have said
that, you have said all there is to his credit. The family became so
poor after the war that the boy had to go to work while he was scarcely
more than a child, and I believe the only education he has ever had was
the little his mother taught him, and what he managed to pick up at
night after the day's work was over. In spite of his birth he has had
neither the training nor the advantages of a gentleman, and nothing
proves this so conclusively as the fact that, though he was brought up a
Democrat, he voted the Republican ticket at the last two Presidential
elections. There is something black in a man, my dear old father used to
say, who goes over to the negroes---- '"
"Of course Lucy belongs to the old school," said Mrs. Meade. "She talks
just as her father used to--but I cannot see any harm in a man's voting
as he thinks right."
"'I am telling you all this, my dear Caroline, in order that you may
know exactly what the position is. The salary will be good, just what
you make in other cases, and I am sure that Angelica will be kindness
itself to you. As for David Blackburn, I scarcely think he will annoy
you. He treats his wife abominably, I hear, but you can keep out of his
way, and it is not likely that he will be openly rude to you when you
meet. The papers just now are full of him because, after going over to
the Republicans, he does not seem satisfied with their ways.
"'Give my fondest love to your mother, and tell her how thankful I am
that she and I are not obliged to live through a second war. One is
enough for any woman, and I know she will agree with me--especially if
she could read some of the letters my daughter writes from France. I
feel every hour I live how thankful we ought to be to a kind Providence
for giving us a President who has kept us out of this war. Robert says
if there were not any other reason to vote for Mr. Wilson, that would be
enough--and with Mr. Hughes in the White House who knows but we should
be in the midst of it all very soon. David Blackburn is making fiery
speeches about the duty of America's going in, but some men can never
have enough of a fight, and I am sure the President knows what is best
for us, and will do what he thinks is right.
"'Be sure to telegraph me if you can come, and I will meet your train in
Angelica's car.
"'Your affectionate friend,
LUCY COLFAX.
"'I forgot to tell you that Doctor Boland says I am prejudiced against
David Blackburn, but I do not think I am. I tell only what I hear, for
the stories are all over Richmond.'"
As Caroline finished the letter she raised her head with a laugh.
"It sounds like a good place, and as for Bluebeard--well, he can't kill
me. I don't happen to be his wife."
Her figure, with its look of relaxed energy, of delicate yet inflexible
strength, straightened swiftly, while her humorous smile played like an
edge of light over her features. The old lady, watching her closely,
remembered the way Caroline's dead father had laughed in his youth.
"She is as like him as a girl could be," she thought, with her eyes on
her daughter's wide white brow, which had always seemed to her a shade
too strong and thoughtful for a woman. Only the softly curving line of
hair and the large radiant eyes kept the forehead from being almost
masculine. "She might be as pretty as Maud if only she had more colour
and her brow and chin were as soft as her eyes. Her mouth isn't full and
red like Maud's, and her nose isn't nearly so straight, but the girls'
father used to say that the best nose after all is a nose that nobody
remembers." Smiling vaguely at the recollection, Mrs. Meade readjusted
her mental processes with an effort, and took up her work. "I hope Lucy
is prejudiced against him," she observed brightly. "You know her father
was once Governor of Virginia, and she can't stand anybody who doesn't
support the Democratic Party."
"But she says he treats his wife abominably, and that it's all over
Richmond!" exclaimed Maud indignantly.
Before this challenge Mrs. Meade quailed. "If she is prejudiced about
one thing, she may be about others," she protested helplessly.
"Well, he can't hurt me," remarked Caroline with firmness. "People can't
hurt you unless you let them." Nothing, she felt, in an uncertain world
was more certain than this--no man could ever hurt her again. She knew
life now; she had acquired experience; she had learned philosophy; and
no man, not even Bluebeard himself, could ever hurt her again.
"There was something about him in the paper this morning," said
Margaret, the serious and silent one of the family. "I didn't read it,
but I am sure that I saw his name in the headlines. It was about an
independent movement in politics."
"Well, I'm not afraid of independent movements," rejoined Caroline
gaily, "and I'm not like Mrs. Colfax--for I don't care what he does to
the Democratic Party."
"I hate to have you go there, my dear," Mrs. Meade's voice shook a
little, "but, of course, you must do what you think right." She
remembered the empty flour barrel, and the falling fence rails, and the
habit of a merciful Providence that invariably came to her aid at the
eleventh hour. Perhaps, after all, there was a design working through
it, she reflected, as she recovered her sprightliness, and Providence
had arranged the case to meet her necessities. "It seems disagreeable,
but one never knows," she added aloud.
"It isn't the first time I've had a disagreeable case, mother. One can't
nurse seven years and see only the pleasant side of people and things."
"Yes, I know, my child, I know. You have had so much experience." She
felt quite helpless before the fact of her daughter's experience. "Only
if he really does ill treat his wife, and you have to see it----"
"If I see it, perhaps I can stop it. I suppose even Bluebeard might have
been stopped if anybody had gone about it with spirit. It won't be my
first sudden conversion." Her eyes were still laughing, but her mouth
was stern, and between the arched black eyebrows three resolute little
lines had appeared. Before her "unfortunate experience," Mrs. Meade
thought sadly, there had been no grimness in Caroline's humour.
"You have a wonderful way of bringing out the good in people, Caroline.
Your Uncle Clarence was telling me last Sunday that he believed you
could get the best out of anybody."
"Then granting that Bluebeard has a best, I'd better begin to dig for it
as soon as I get there."
"I am glad you can take it like that. If you weren't so capable, so
resourceful, I'd never be easy about you a minute, but you are too
intelligent to let yourself get into difficulties that you can't find a
way out of." The old lady brightened as quickly as she had saddened.
After all, if Caroline had been merely an ordinary girl she could never
have turned to nursing so soon after the wreck of her happiness. "If a
man had broken my heart when I was a girl, I believe I should have died
of it," she told herself. "Certainly, I should never have been able to
hold up my head and go on laughing like that. I suppose it was pride
that kept her up, but it is queer the way that pride affects people so
differently. Now a generation ago pride would not have made a girl laugh
and take up work. It would have killed her." And there flashed through
her thoughts, with the sanguine irrelevance of her habit of mind, "What
I have never understood is how any man could go off with a little
yellow-haired simpleton like that after knowing Caroline. Yet, I
suppose, as Clarence said, if she hadn't been a simpleton, it would have
been that much worse."
"Well, I'm going," said Caroline so briskly that her mother and sisters
looked at her in surprise. "Jonas will have to saddle Billy and take the
telegram to the station, and then you can stop knitting and help me
finish those caps. This is my war and I'm going to fight it through to
the end."
She went out with the telegram, and a little later when she came back
and turned again to the window, Mrs. Meade saw that her eyes were
shining. After all, it looked sometimes as if Caroline really liked a
battle. Always when things went wrong or appeared disastrous, this
shining light came to her eyes.
Outside an eddying wind was driving the rain in gusts up the avenue, and
the old cedar dashed its boughs, with a brushing sound, against the
blurred window panes. As Caroline stood there she remembered that her
father had loved the cedar, and there drifted into her thoughts the
words he had spoken to her shortly before his death. "I haven't much to
leave you, daughter, but I leave you one good thing--courage. Never
forget that it isn't the victory that matters, it is the fight."
She heard Mrs. Meade telling Jonas, who was starting to the station,
that he must haul a load of wood from Pine Hill when the rain was over,
and while she listened, it seemed to her that she had never really known
her mother until this instant--that she had never understood her simple
greatness. "She has fought every minute," she thought, "she has had a
hard life, and yet no one would know it. It has not kept her from being
sweet and gay and interested in every one else. Even now in that calico
dress, with an apron on, she looks as if she were brimming with
happiness." Out of the wreck of life, out of poverty and sacrifice and
drudgery, she realized that her mother had stood for something fine and
clear and permanent--for an ideal order. She had never muddled things
under the surface; she had kept in touch with realities; she had looked
always through the changing tissue of experience to the solid structure
of life. Like the old house she had held through all vicissitudes to her
high standards.
Then her thoughts left her mother, and she faced the unknown future with
the defiant courage she had won from disillusionment. "If we were not so
poor I'd go to France," she reflected, "but how could they possibly do
without the hundred dollars a month I can earn?" No, whatever happened
she must stick to her task, and her task was keeping the roof from
falling in over her mother and the girls. After a month's rest at The
Cedars, she would start again on the round of uninspiring patients and
tedious monotony. The place Mrs. Colfax offered her seemed to her
uninteresting and even sordid, and yet she knew that nothing better
awaited her. She hated darkness and mystery, and the house into which
she was going appeared to her to be both dark and mysterious. She was
sure of her own strength; she had tested her courage and her endurance,
and she was not afraid; yet for some vague and inexplicable reason she
shrank from the position she had accepted. Mrs. Colfax's picture of the
situation she thought tinged with melodrama, and her honest and lucid
intelligence despised the melodramatic. They might all have been on the
stage--the good wife, the brutal husband, and the delicate child; they
seemed to her as unrelated to actual life as the sombre ghost that
stalked through Hamlet.
"Angelica! It is a lovely name," she mused, seizing upon the one
charming thing in Mrs. Colfax's description, "I wonder what she is
like?" Fair, graceful, suffering, she saw this unknown woman against the
background of the unhappy home, in an atmosphere of mystery and
darkness. "She must be weak," she thought. "If she were not weak, she
would not let him hurt her." And she longed to pour some of her own
strength of will, her own independence and determination and philosophy,
into the imaginary figure of Mrs. Blackburn. "It may be that I can help
her. If I can only help her a little, it will all be worth while."
She tried presently to think of other things--of the caps she must
finish, of the uniforms she had intended to make during her vacation, of
the piece of white lawn she must cut up into kerchiefs, of the mending
she would ask the girls to do for her before they went to bed. There was
so much to occupy her time and her thoughts in the one evening that was
left to her--yet, do what she would--look where she pleased--the sweet
veiled image of Mrs. Blackburn floated to her through the twilight, up
the long, dim road and round the bend in the avenue--as if this stranger
with the lovely name were the "something different" she had waited for
in the past. By a miracle of imagination she had transferred this single
character into actual experience. The sense of mystery was still there,
but the unreality had vanished. It was incredible the way a woman whose
face she had never seen had entered into her life. "Why, she is more
real than anything," she thought in surprise. "She is more real even
than the war."
For the war had not touched her. She stood secure, enclosed, protected
from disaster, in her little green corner of southside Virginia. Her
personal life had not been overpowered and submerged in the current of
impersonal forces. The age of small things still surrounded her--but the
quiver and vibration of great movements, of a world in dissolution, the
subdued, insistent undercurrent of new spiritual energies in
action--these were reaching her, with the ebb and flow of psychological
processes, as they were reaching the Virginia in which she lived.
The world was changing--changing--while she went toward it.