ANGELICA'S CHARITY
As the car turned into the lane it passed Alan and Mary, and Mrs.
Blackburn ordered the chauffeur to stop while she leaned out of the
window and waited, with her vague, shimmering look, for the lovers to
approach. "I wanted to ask you, Mr. Wythe, about that article in the
paper this morning," she began. "Do you think it will do David any real
harm?"
Her voice was low and troubled, and she gazed into Alan's face with eyes
that seemed to be pleading for mercy.
"Well, I hardly think it will help him if he wants an office," replied
Alan, reddening under her gaze. "I suppose everything is fair in
politics, but it does seem a little underhand of Colfax doesn't it? A
man has a right to expect a certain amount of consideration from his
friends."
For the first time since she had known him, Caroline felt that Alan's
nimble wit was limping slightly. In place of his usual light-hearted
manner, he appeared uncomfortable and embarrassed, and though his eyes
never left Angelica's face, they rested there with a look which it was
impossible to define. Admiration, surprise, pleasure, and a fleeting
glimpse of something like dread or fear--all these things Caroline
seemed to read in that enigmatical glance. Could it be that he was
comparing Angelica with Mary, and that, for the moment at least, Mary's
lack of feminine charm, was estranging him? He looked splendidly
vigorous with the flush in his cheeks and a glow in his red-brown
eyes--just the man, Caroline fancied, with whom any woman might fall in
love.
"But don't you think," asked Angelica hesitatingly, as if she dared not
trust so frail a thing as her own judgment, "that it may be a matter of
principle with Robert? Of course I know that David feels that he is
right, and there can't be a bit of truth in what people say about the
way he runs his works, but, after all, isn't he really harming the South
by trying to injure the Democratic Party? We all feel, of course, that
it is so important not to do anything to discredit the Democrats, and
with Robert I suppose there is a great deal of sentiment mixed with it
all because his grandfather did so much for Virginia. Oh, if David could
only find some other ambition--something that wouldn't make him appear
disloyal and ungrateful! I can't tell you how it distresses me to see
him estrange his best friends as he does. I can't feel in my heart that
any political honour is worth it!"
There was a flute-like quality in her voice, which was singularly
lacking in the deeper and richer tones of passion, like the imperfect
chords of some thin, sweet music. Though Angelica had the pensive eyes
and the drooping profile of an early Italian Madonna, her voice, in
spite of its lightness and delicacy, was without softness. At first it
had come as a surprise to Caroline, and even now, after three weeks at
Briarlay, she was aware of a nervous expectancy whenever Mrs. Blackburn
opened her lips--of a furtive hope that the hard, cold tones might melt
in the heat of some ardent impulse.
"It isn't ambition with David," said Mary, speaking bluntly, and with an
arrogant conviction. "He doesn't care a rap for any political honour,
and he is doing this because he believes it to be his duty. His country
is more to him, I think, than any living creature could be, even a
friend."
"Well, as far as that goes, he has made more friends by his stand than
he has lost," observed Alan, with unnatural diffidence. "I shouldn't let
that worry me a minute, Mrs. Blackburn. David is a big man, and his
influence grows every hour. The young blood is flowing toward him."
"Oh, but don't you see that this hurts me most of all?" responded
Angelica. "I wouldn't for the world say this outside, but you are
David's friend and almost one of the family, and I know you will
understand me."
She lifted her eyes to his face--those large, shining eyes as soft as a
dove's breast--and after a moment in which he gazed at her without
speaking, Alan answered gently, "Yes, I understand you."
"It would grieve me if you didn't because I feel that I can trust you."
"Yes, you can trust me--absolutely." He looked at Mary as he spoke, and
she smiled back at him with serene and joyous confidence.
"That is just what I tell Mary," resumed Angelica. "You are so
trustworthy that it is a comfort to talk to you, and then we both feel,
don't we, dear?" she inquired turning to the girl, "that your wonderful
knowledge of human nature makes your judgment of such value."
Alan laughed, though his eyes sparkled with pleasure. "I don't know
about that," he replied, "though my opinion, whatever it may be worth,
is at your service."
"That is why I am speaking so frankly because I feel that you can help
me. If you could only make David see his mistake--if you could only
persuade him to give up this idea. It can't be right to overturn all the
sacred things of the past--to discredit the principles we Virginians
have believed in for fifty years. Surely you agree with me that it is a
deplorable error of judgment?"
As she became more flattering and appealing, Alan recovered his gay
insouciance. "If you want a candid answer, Mrs. Blackburn," he replied
gallantly, "there isn't an ambition, much less a principle on earth, for
which I would disagree with you."
Angelica smiled archly, and she was always at her loveliest when her
face was illumined by the glow and colour of her smile. Was it possible,
Caroline wondered while she watched her, that so simple a thing as the
play of expression--as the parting of the lips, the raising of the
eyebrows--could make a face look as if the light of heaven had fallen
over it?
"If you get impertinent, I'll make Mary punish you!" exclaimed Angelica
reproachfully; and a minute later the car passed on, while she playfully
shook her finger from the window.
"How very handsome he is," said Caroline as she looked back in the lane.
"I didn't know that a man could be so good-looking."
Angelica was settling herself comfortably under the robe. "Yes, he is
quite unusual," she returned, and added after a pause, "If his uncle
ever dies, and they say he is getting very feeble, Alan will inherit one
of the largest fortunes in Chicago."
"I'm so glad. That's nice for Miss Blackburn."
"It's nice for Mary--yes." Her tone rather than her words, which were
merely conventional, made Caroline glance at her quickly; but Angelica's
features were like some faultless ivory mask. For the first time it
struck the girl that even a beautiful face could appear vacant in
repose.
"Where are we going now, mother?" asked Letty, who had been good and
quiet during the long wait in the lane.
"To the Ridleys', dear. I've brought a basket." There was a moment's
delay while she gave a few directions to the footman, and then, as Letty
snuggled closely against Caroline's arm, the car went on rapidly toward
the city.
The Ridleys lived in a small frame house in Pine Street; and when the
car stopped before the door, where a number of freshly washed children
were skipping rope on the pavement, Angelica alighted and held out her
hand to Letty.
"Do you want to come in with me, Letty?"
"I'd rather watch these children skip, mother. Miss Meade, may I have a
skipping-rope?"
Behind them the footman stood waiting with a covered basket, and for an
instant, while Mrs. Blackburn looked down on it, a shadow of irritation
rippled across her face. "Take that up to the second floor, John, and
ask Mrs. Ridley if she got the yarn I sent for the socks?" Then,
changing her mind as John disappeared into the narrow hall, from which a
smell of cabbage floated, she added firmly, "We won't stay a minute,
Letty, but you and Miss Meade must come up with me. I always feel," she
explained to Caroline, "that it does the child good to visit the poor,
and contrast her own lot with that of others. Young minds are so
impressionable, and we never know when the turning-point comes in a
life." Grasping Letty's hand she stepped over the skipping-rope, which
the children had lowered in awe to the pavement.
"Letty has a cold. I'm afraid she oughtn't to go in," said Caroline
hastily, while the child, rescued in the last extremity, threw a
grateful glance at her.
"You really think so? Well, perhaps next time. Ah, there is Mr. Ridley
now! We can speak to him without seeing his wife to-day." Instinctively,
before she realized the significance of her action, she had drawn
slightly aside.
A tall man, with a blotched, irascible face and a wad of tobacco in his
mouth, lurched out on the porch, and stopped short at the sight of his
visitors. He appeared surly and unattractive, and in her first
revulsion, Caroline was conscious of a sudden sympathy with Blackburn's
point of view. "He may be right, after all," she admitted to herself.
"Kind as Mrs. Blackburn is, she evidently doesn't know much about
people. I suppose I shouldn't have known anything either if I hadn't
been through the hospital."
"I am glad to see you down, Mr. Ridley," said Angelica graciously. "I
hope you are quite well again and that you have found the right kind of
work."
"Yes, 'm, I'm well, all right, but there ain't much doing now except
down at the works, and you know the way Mr. Blackburn treats me whenever
I go down there." He was making an effort to be ingratiating, and while
he talked his appearance seemed to change and grow less repelling. The
surliness left his face, his figure straightened from the lurching
walk, and he even looked a shade cleaner. "It is wonderful the power she
has over people," reflected the girl. "I suppose it comes just from
being so kind and lovely."
"You mustn't give up hope," Mrs. Blackburn replied encouragingly. "We
never know at what moment some good thing may turn up. It is a pity
there isn't more work of the kind in Richmond."
"Well, you see, ma'am, Mr. Blackburn has cornered the whole lot. That's
the way capital treats labour whenever it gets the chance." His face
assumed an argumentative expression. "To be sure, Mr. Blackburn didn't
start so very high himself, but that don't seem to make any difference,
and the minute a man gets to the top, he tries to stop everybody else
that's below him. If he hadn't had the luck to discover that cheap new
way to make steel, I reckon he wouldn't be very far over my head to-day.
It was all accident, that's what I tell the men down at the works, and
luck ain't nothing but accident when you come to look at it."
Mrs. Blackburn frowned slightly. It was plain that she did not care to
diminish the space between Blackburn and his workmen, and Ridley's
contemptuous tone was not entirely to her liking. She wanted to stoop,
not to stand on a level with the objects of her charity.
"The war abroad has opened so many opportunities," she observed, amiably
but vaguely.
"It's shut down a sight more than it's opened," rejoined Ridley, who
possessed the advantage of knowing something of what he was talking
about. "All the works except the steel and munition plants are laying
off men every hour. It's easy enough on men like Mr. Blackburn, but it's
hard on us poor ones, and it don't make it any easier to be sending all
of this good stuff out of the country. Let the folks in Europe look
after themselves, that's what I say. There are hungry mouths enough
right here in this country without raising the price of everything we
eat by shipping the crops over the water. I tell you I'll vote for any
man, I don't care what he calls himself, who will introduce a bill to
stop sending our provisions to the folks over yonder who are fighting
when they ought to be working----."
"But surely we must do our best to help the starving women and children
of Europe. It wouldn't be human, it wouldn't be Christian----" Angelica
paused and threw an appealing glance in the direction of Caroline, who
shook her head scornfully and looked away to the children on the
pavement. Why did she stoop to argue with the man? Couldn't she see that
he was merely the cheapest sort of malcontent?
"The first thing you know we'll be dragged into this here war
ourselves," pursued Ridley, rolling the wad of tobacco in his mouth,
"and it's the men like Mr. Blackburn that will be doing it. There's a
lot of fellows down at the works that talk just as he does, but that's
because they think they know which side their bread is buttered on! Some
of 'em will tell you the boss is the best friend they have on earth; but
they are talking through their hats when they say so. As for me, I
reckon I've got my wits about me, and as long as I have they ain't going
to make me vote for nobody except the man who puts the full dinner pail
before any darn squabble over the water. I ain't got anything against
you, ma'am, but Mr. Blackburn ain't treated me white, and if my turn
ever comes, I'm going to get even with him as sure as my name is James
Ridley."
"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."