LETTY
In the breakfast room next morning, Caroline found the little girl in
charge of Miss Miller, the nurse who was leaving that day. Letty was a
fragile, undeveloped child of seven years, with the dark hair and eyes
of her father, and the old, rather elfish look of children who have been
ill from the cradle. Her soft, fine hair hung straight to her shoulders,
and framed her serious little face, which was charming in spite of its
unhealthy pallor. Caroline had questioned Miss Miller about the child's
malady, and she had been reassured by the other nurse's optimistic view
of the case.
"We think she may outgrow the trouble, that's why we are so careful
about all the rules she lives by. The doctor watches her closely, and
she isn't a difficult child to manage. If you once gain her confidence
you can do anything with her, but first of all you must make her believe
in you."
"Was she always so delicate?"
"I believe she was born this way. She is stunted physically, though she
is so precocious mentally. She talks exactly like an old person
sometimes. The things she says would make you laugh if it wasn't so
pathetic to know that a child thinks them."
Yes, it was pathetic, Caroline felt, while she watched Letty cross the
room to her father, who was standing before one of the French windows.
As she lifted her face gravely, Blackburn bent over and kissed her.
"I'm taking a new kind of medicine, father."
He smiled down on her. "Then perhaps you will eat a new kind of
breakfast."
"And I've got a new nurse," added Letty before she turned away and came
over to Caroline. "I'm so glad you wear a uniform," she said in her
composed manner. "I think uniforms are much nicer than dresses like Aunt
Matty's."
Mrs. Timberlake looked up from the coffee urn with a smile that was like
a facial contortion. "Anything might be better than my dresses, Letty."
"But you ought to get something pretty," said the child quickly, for her
thoughts came in flashes. "If you wore a uniform you might look happy,
too. Are all nurses happy, Miss Miller?"
"We try to be, dear," answered Miss Miller, a stout, placid person,
while she settled the little girl in her chair. "It makes things so much
easier."
Blackburn, who had been looking out on the terrace and the formal
garden, turned and bowed stiffly as he came to the table. It was evident
that he was not in a talkative mood, and as Caroline returned his
greeting with the briefest acknowledgment, she congratulated herself
that she did not have to make conversation for him. Mary had not come in
from her ride, and since Mrs. Timberlake used language only under the
direct pressure of necessity, the sound of Letty's unembarrassed
childish treble rippled placidly over the constrained silence of her
elders.
"Can you see the garden?" asked the child presently. "I don't mean the
box garden, I mean the real garden where the flowers are?"
Caroline was helping herself to oatmeal, and raising her eyes from the
dish, she glanced through the window which gave on the brick terrace.
Beyond the marble fountain and a dark cluster of junipers there was an
arch of box, which framed the lower garden and a narrow view of the
river.
"That's where my garden is, down there," Letty was saying. "I made it
all by myself--didn't I, Miss Miller?--and my verbenas did better than
mother's last summer. Would you like to have a garden, father?" she
inquired suddenly, turning to Blackburn, who was looking over the
morning paper while he waited for his coffee. "It wouldn't be a bit more
trouble for me to take care of two than one. I'll make yours just like
mine if you want me to."
Blackburn put down his paper. "Well, I believe I should like one," he
replied gravely, "if you are sure you have time for it. But aren't there
a great many more important things you ought to do?"
"Oh, it doesn't take so much time," returned the child eagerly, "I work
all I can, but the doctor won't let me do much. I'll make yours close to
mine, so there won't be far to go with the water. I have to carry it in
a very little watering-pot because they won't let me lift a big one."
A smile quivered for an instant on her father's lips, and Caroline saw
his face change and soften as it had done the evening before. It was
queer, she thought, that he should have such a sensitive mouth. She had
imagined that a man of that character would have coarse lips and a
brutal expression.
"Now, it's odd, but I've always had a fancy for a garden of that sort,"
he responded, "if you think you can manage two of them without
over-taxing yourself. I don't want to put you to additional trouble, you
know. After all, that's just what I hire Peter for, isn't it?"
While the child was assuring him that Peter had neither the time nor the
talent for miniature gardening, Miss Miller remarked pleasantly, as if
she were visited by a brilliant idea, "You ought to make one for your
mother also, Letty."
"Oh, mother doesn't want one," returned the child: "The big ones are
hers, aren't they, father?" Then, as Blackburn had unfolded his paper
again, she added to Caroline, with one of the mature utterances Miss
Miller had called pathetic, "When you have big things you don't care for
little things, do you?"
As they were finishing breakfast, Mary Blackburn dashed in from the
terrace, with the Airedale terriers at her heels.
"I was afraid you'd have gone before I got back, David," she said,
tossing her riding-crop and gloves on a chair, and coming over to the
table. "Patrick, put the dogs out, and tell Peter to give them their
breakfast." Then turning back to her brother, she resumed carelessly,
"That man stopped me again--that foreman you discharged from the works."
Blackburn's brow darkened. "Ridley? I told him not to come on the place.
Is he hanging about?"
"I met him in the lane. He asked me to bring a message to you. It seems
he wants awfully to be reinstated. He is out of work; and he doesn't
want to go North for a job."
"It's a pity he didn't think of that sooner. He has made more trouble in
the plant than any ten men I've ever had. It isn't his fault that
there's not a strike on now."
"I know," said Mary, "but I couldn't refuse to hear him. There's Alan
now," she added. "Ask him about it."
She looked up, her face flushing with pride and happiness, as Alan Wythe
opened the window. There was something free and noble in her candour.
All the little coquetries and vanities of women appeared to shrivel in
the white blaze of her sincerity.
"So you've been held up by Ridley," remarked Blackburn, as the young man
seated himself between Mary and Mrs. Timberlake. "Did he tell you just
what political capital he expects to make out of my discharging him? It
isn't the first time he has tried blackmail."
Alan was replying to Mrs. Timberlake's question about his coffee--she
never remembered, Caroline discovered later, just how much sugar one
liked--and there was a pause before he turned to Blackburn and answered:
"I haven't a doubt that he means to make trouble sooner or later--he has
some pull, hasn't he?--but at the moment he is more interested in
getting his job back. He talked a lot about his family--tried to make
Mary ask you to take him on again----"
Blackburn laughed, not unpleasantly, but with a curious bluntness and
finality, as if he were closing a door on some mental passage. "Well,
you may tell him," he rejoined, "that I wouldn't take him back if all
the women in creation asked me."
Alan received this with his usual ease and flippancy. "The fellow
appears to have got the wrong impression. He told me that Mrs. Blackburn
was taking an interest in his case, and had promised to speak to you."
"He told you that?" said Blackburn, and stopped abruptly.
For a minute Alan looked almost disconcerted. In his riding clothes he
was handsomer and more sportsmanlike than he had been the evening
before, and Caroline told herself that she could understand why Mary
Blackburn had fallen so deeply in love with him. What she couldn't
understand--what puzzled her every instant--was the obvious fact that
Alan had fallen quite as deeply in love with Mary. Of course the girl
was fine and sensible and high-spirited--any one could see that--but she
appeared just the opposite of everything that Alan would have sought in
a woman. She was neither pretty nor feminine; and Alan's type was the
one of all others to which the pretty and feminine would make its
appeal. "He must love her for her soul," thought Caroline. "He must see
how splendid she is at heart, and this has won him."
In a few minutes Blackburn left the table, while Letty caught Caroline's
hand and drew her through the window out on the terrace. The landscape,
beyond the three gardens, was golden with October sunlight, and over the
box maze and the variegated mist of late blooming flowers, they could
see the river and the wooded slopes that folded softly into the
sparkling edge of the horizon. It was one of those autumn days when the
only movement of the world seems to be the slow fall of the leaves, and
the quivering of gauzy-winged insects above the flower-beds. Perfect as
the weather was, there was a touch of melancholy in its brightness that
made Caroline homesick for The Cedars. "It is hard to be where nobody
cares for you," she thought. "Where nothing you feel or think matters to
anybody." Then her stronger nature reasserted itself, and she brushed
the light cloud away. "After all, life is mine as much as theirs. The
battle is mine, and I will fight it. It is just as important that I
should be a good nurse as it is that Mrs. Blackburn should be beautiful
and charming and live in a house that is like fairyland."
Letty called to her, and running down the brick steps from the terrace,
the two began a gentle game of hide-and-seek in the garden. The
delighted laughter of the child rang out presently from the rose-arbours
and the winding paths; and while Caroline passed in and out of the
junipers and the young yew-trees, she forgot the loneliness she had felt
on the terrace. "I'll not worry about it any more," she thought,
pursuing Letty beyond the marble fountain, where a laughing Cupid shot a
broken arrow toward the sun. "Mother used to say that all the worry in
the world would never keep a weasel out of the hen-house." Then, as she
twisted and doubled about a tall cluster of junipers, she ran directly
across the shadow of Blackburn.
As her feet came to a halt the smile died on her lips, and the reserve
she had worn since she reached Briarlay fell like a veil over her
gaiety. While she put up her hand to straighten her cap, all the dislike
she felt for him showed in her look. Only the light in her eyes, and the
blown strands of hair under her cap, belied her dignity and her silence.
"Miss Meade, I wanted to tell you that the doctor will come about noon.
I have asked him to give you directions."
"Very well." Against the dark junipers, in her white uniform, she looked
like a statue except for her parted lips and accusing eyes.
"Letty seems bright to-day, but you must not let her tire herself."
"I am very careful. We play as gently as possible."
"Will you take her to town? I'll send the car back for you."
For an instant she hesitated. "Mrs. Blackburn has not told me what she
wishes."
He nodded. "Letty uses my car in the afternoon. It will be here at three
o'clock."
In the sunlight, with his hat off, he looked tanned and ruddy, and she
saw that there was the power in his face which belongs to expression--to
thought and purpose--rather than to feature. His dark hair, combed
straight back from his forehead, made his head appear distinctive and
massive, like the relief of a warrior on some ancient coin, and his
eyes, beneath slightly beetling brows, were the colour of the sea in a
storm. Though his height was not over six feet, he seemed to her, while
he stood there beside the marble fountain, the largest and strongest man
she had ever seen. "I know he isn't big, and yet he appears so," she
thought: "I suppose it is because he is so muscular." And immediately
she added to herself, "I can understand everything about him except his
mouth--but his mouth doesn't belong in his face. It is the mouth of a
poet. I wonder he doesn't wear a moustache just to hide the way it
changes."
"I shall be ready at three o'clock," she said. "Mrs. Colfax asked me to
bring Letty to play with her children."
"She will enjoy that," he answered, "if they are not rough." Then, as he
moved away, he observed indifferently, "It is wonderful weather."
As he went back to the house Letty clung to him, and lifting her in his
arms, he carried her to the terrace and round the corner where the car
waited. For the time at least the play was spoiled, and Caroline, still
wearing her professional manner, stood watching for Letty to come back
to her. "I could never like him if I saw him every day for years," she
was thinking, when one of the French windows of the dining-room opened,
and Mary Blackburn came down the steps into the garden.
"I am so glad to find you alone," she said frankly, "I want to speak to
you--and your white dress looks so nice against those evergreens."
"It's a pity I have to change it then, but I am going to take Letty to
town after luncheon. The doctor wants her to be with other children."
"I know. She is an odd little thing, isn't she? I sometimes think that
she is older and wiser than any one in the house." Her tone changed
abruptly. "I want to explain to you about last night, Miss Meade. David
seemed so dreadfully rude, didn't he?"
Caroline gazed back at her in silence while a flush stained her cheeks.
After all, what could she answer? She couldn't and wouldn't deny that
Mr. Blackburn had been inexcusably rude to his wife at his own table.
"It is so hard to explain when one doesn't know everything," pursued
Mary, with her unfaltering candour. "If you had ever seen Roane
Fitzhugh, you would understand better than I can make you that David is
right. It is quite impossible to have Roane in the house. He drinks,
and when he was here last summer, he was hardly ever sober. He was rude
to everyone. He insulted me."
"So that was why----" began Caroline impulsively, and checked herself.
"Yes, that was why. David told him that he must never come back again."
"And Mrs. Blackburn did not understand."
Mary did not reply, and glancing at her after a moment, Caroline saw
that she was gazing thoughtfully at a red and gold leaf, which turned
slowly in the air as it detached itself from the stem of a maple.
"If you want to get the best view of the river you ought to go down to
the end of the lower garden," she said carelessly before she went back
into the house.
In the afternoon, when Caroline took Letty to Mrs. Colfax's, a
flickering light was shed on the cause of Mary's reticence.
"Oh, Miss Meade, wasn't it perfectly awful last evening?" began the
young woman as soon as the children were safely out of hearing in the
yard. "I feel so sorry for Angelica!"
Even in a Southern woman her impulsiveness appeared excessive, and when
Caroline came to know her better, she discovered that Daisy Colfax was
usually described by her friends as "kind-hearted, but painfully
indiscreet."
"It was my first dinner party at Briarlay. As far as I know they may all
end that way," responded Caroline lightly.
"Of course I know that you feel you oughtn't to talk," replied Mrs.
Colfax persuasively, "but you needn't be afraid of saying just what you
think to me. I know that I have the reputation of letting out
everything that comes into my mind--and I do love to gossip--but I
shouldn't dream of repeating anything that is told me in confidence."
Her wonderful dusky eyes, as vague and innocent as a child's, swept
Caroline's face before they wandered, with their look of indirection and
uncertainty, to her mother-in-law, who was knitting by the window.
Before her marriage Daisy had been the acknowledged beauty of three
seasons, and now, the mother of two children and as lovely as ever, she
managed to reconcile successfully a talent for housekeeping with a taste
for diversion. She was never still except when she listened to gossip,
and before Caroline had been six weeks in Richmond, she had learned that
the name of Mrs. Robert Colfax would head the list of every dance, ball,
and charity of the winter.
"If you ask me what I think," observed the old lady tartly, with a
watchful eye on the children, who were playing ring-around-the-rosy in
the yard. "It is that David Blackburn ought to have been spanked and put
to bed."
"Well, of course, Angelica had been teasing him about his political
views," returned her daughter-in-law. "You know how she hates it all,
but she didn't mean actually to irritate him--merely to keep him from
appearing so badly. It is as plain as the nose on your face that she
doesn't know how to manage him."
They were sitting in the library, and every now and then the younger
woman would take up the receiver of the telephone, and have a giddy
little chat about the marketing or a motor trip she was planning. "But
all I've got to say," she added, turning from one of these breathless
colloquies, "is that if you have to manage a man, you'd better try to
get rid of him."
"Well, I'd like to see anybody but a bear-tamer manage David Blackburn,"
retorted the old lady. "With Angelica's sensitive nature she ought never
to have married a man who has to be tamed. She never dares take her eyes
off him, poor thing, for fear he'll make some sort of break."
"I wonder," began Caroline, and hesitated an instant. "I wonder if it
wouldn't be better just to let him make his breaks and not notice them?
Of course, I know how trying it must be for her--she is so lovely and
gentle that it wrings your heart to see him rude to her--but it makes
every little thing appear big when you call everybody's attention to it.
I don't know much about dinner parties," she concluded with a desire to
be perfectly fair even to a man she despised, "but I couldn't see that
he was doing anything wrong last night. He was getting on very well with
Mrs. Chalmers, who was interested in politics----" She broke off and
asked abruptly, "Is Mrs. Blackburn's brother really so dreadful?"
"I've often wondered," said the younger Mrs. Colfax, "if Roane Fitzhugh
is as bad as people say he is?"
"Well, he has always been very polite to me," commented the old lady.
"Though Brother Charles says that you cannot judge a man's morals by his
manners. Was Alan Wythe there last night?"
"Yes, I sat by him," answered Daisy. "I wish that old uncle of his in
Chicago would let him marry Mary."
This innocent remark aroused Caroline's scorn. "To think of a man's
having to ask his uncle whom he shall marry!" she exclaimed
indignantly.
"You wouldn't say that, my dear," replied old Mrs. Colfax, "if you knew
Alan. He is a charming fellow, but the sort of talented ne'er-do-well
who can do anything but make a living. He has an uncle in Chicago who is
said to be worth millions--one of the richest men, I've heard, in the
West--but he will probably leave his fortune to charity. As it is he
doles out a pittance to Alan--not nearly enough for him to marry on."
"Isn't it strange," said Caroline, "that the nice people never seem to
have enough money and the disagreeable ones seem to have a great deal
too much? But I despise a man," she added sweepingly, "who hasn't enough
spirit to go out into the world and fight."
The old lady's needles clicked sharply as she returned to her work.
"I've always said that if the good Lord would look after my money
troubles, I could take care of the others. Now, if Angelica's people had
not been so poor she would have been spared this dreadful marriage. As
it is, I am sure, the poor thing makes the best of it--I don't want you
to think that I am saying a word against Angelica--but when a woman runs
about after so many outside interests, it is pretty sure to mean that
she is unhappy at home."
"It's a pity," said the younger woman musingly, "that so many of her
interests seem to cross David's business. Look at this Ridley matter,
for instance--of course everyone says that Angelica is trying to make up
for her husband's injustice by supporting the family until the man gets
back to work. It's perfectly splendid of her, I know. There isn't a
living soul who admires Angelica more than I do, but with all the needy
families in town, it does seem that she might just as well have selected
some other to look after."
The old lady, having dropped some stitches, went industriously to work
to pick them up. "For all we know," she observed piously, "it may be
God's way of punishing David."